Articles
Rantings of a Partner
Prove the Value of Your Work for Your Clients and Partners
Billing may not be a pleasant task, but if you can take the time to detail the specific nature of the work you've performed, you will make the life of your partner easier, demonstrate your value to the client, and—in turn—get more work.
Always Do Your Best Work for Your Partners
Give your best work to your partners. Your partners are your clients. If you are not giving them your best work, you are not succeeding in your job.
New Associates: Build up Your Goodwill Before Taking Personal Time
So you are a new associate at your law firm. After a summer clerking at the firm and pretty much working nine to five with time off for fun and frolic, you may be wondering what is expected of you. In a word: everything!
A Marketing Trip Is Not a Second Honeymoon
About a year ago, I was at an ABA meeting in Florida with my wife and had dinner plans one night with four or five other couples. I saw a friend of mine and asked if he and his wife would like to join us. Wine would be flowing, the food would be great, and the company would be outstanding. My friend kindly turned down my offer and said he planned to have dinner alone with his wife...
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the lead character (appropriately named ‘Hamlet’) tells love interest Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery,” as he bids her to live a life of celibacy. In this computer age, I’ve found that young associates are about as likely to do manual research as they are to live of life of celibacy—which is to say that most associates don’t know how to do manual research. And that’s a shame...
Associate Pushback
The Partners I Want to Work With
No partner is perfect and associates learn quickly the types of partners they deal with best. Some like to work for partners who, although they provide little feedback, let them run with the case. Others like to work for partners who, although they tend to micro-manage their cases, engage the associate on all aspects of the case, allowing them to feel a part of the team.
Keeping Time: The Un-billable Hour
A wise man once told me that the most important marketing tool a lawyer has is his bill. Yet, often associates have no idea what goes into the process of transmitting billing entries into a final bill.
Share Your Enthusiasm for the Practice of Law with Your Associates
If Benjamin Franklin were alive today, he would probably say, “in this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and law firm partners complaining that associates don’t bill as many hours as the partners did when they were young…”
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The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002: A Primer | 
On July 30, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of
2002 into law, describing it as “the most far
reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.” The Act was adopted in an effort to restore investor confidence,
which had been rocked by a year of corporate scandals.
