Moving day!

It’s moving day for the Life at the Bar blog! 
It’s been a busy couple of weeks behind the scenes getting the new space ready to go.  Almost everything has been moved over (except for a few recent comments, and I’ll be working on that) and the new space is open for visitors.
Please come on over [...]

Working breakfasts, lunches, and dinners

When I sat down to write today’s post, I intended to write about how excellent client service blends into client development. I’d planned to suggest some tactics for extending the relationship so you become a “trusted advisor” (to borrow David Maister’s phrase). One of the tactics I’d planned to suggest was, not surprisingly, [...]

Make it memorable.

One of the best books that I’ve started reading¹ this year is Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The thrust of the book is that ideas that are memorable share certain common features. By learning those features, you can make your own ideas more “sticky.” The six principles that [...]

Monday Shorts 10/22/07

This week’s shorts are posted on Monday instead of Tuesday for two reasons: first, because some very skilled people have been making (as-yet not visible, but substantial) changes to my blog and I don’t want to upset that applecart, and second, because I’ve been in San Diego for the past week for a conference and [...]

Wonderful women bloggers

I am very late in joining in on a project making its way around the blogosphere: the W Magical List of Women Bloggers. The list now includes more than 125 blogs, some of which are among my favorites, and introducing to me others that I’m excited to be discovering for the first time. [...]

Tuesday shorts: 10/16/07

Today’s shorts are very, very short.
Email interpretation: We’ve come to rely on email as a quick and easy way to get a message across. Quicker than voicemail and an easy way to create a record, we use email for everything from assignments to news to forwarding jokes. David Giacalone of f/k/a [...]

Women’s business development efforts

Steve Seckler of the Counsel to Counsel blog recently posted the Women Attorneys Business Development Study, prepared by Dr. Harry Keshet of Keshet Consulting. The report is 48 pages, and it should be required reading for women lawyers.
I found one of the most encouraging findings to be the following.
Predictors of High Originations
* Years [...]

Practice skills: resilience (part 2 — the strategies)

As promised in Wednesday’s post on resilience, today’s topic is how to be resilient in the face of challenges and adverse events.
I recently worked with a client who tended to get stuck in things that had gone wrong or felt like slights to her. For instance, after opposing counsel accused her of acting in [...]

Practice skill: resilience (part 1)

I recently ran across a post by Ruthie on Ruthie’s Law inquiring, “Are you tough enough?” Ruthie suggests that:
The most successful lawyers are the ones who can accept that occassionally making mistakes is the price of progression, pick themselves up, move on and vow not to make the same mistake again. The most successful [...]

Tuesday shorts: 10/9/07

A few things from the last week that deserve to be highlighted…
Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. offers a fascinating interview with Bruce Stachenfeld of Duval & Stachenfeld, a New York-based firm that’s made the news recently with its unusual compensation plan. The firm pays first-year lawyers $60,000 and calls them “opportunity associates.” [...]