Category: General musings
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When lawyers meditate
Calm. Reflection. Space. Words that lend themselves to a description of life in a typical law firm these days. What’s that? They don’t you say? Hmmmmm, you may have a point. As the pace of business increases, and clients (as customers do in most areas of life these days) continue to seek “more for less”, it’s increasingly…
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Ever been delighted? By your lawyer?
About to embark on a consulting project for a law firm, I was preparing the kick off session and selecting the tools I thought would work best for them. Six Sigma, one of the leading methodologies for improving quality and efficiency has a core concept called “CTQs”; these are the requirements that are Critical To…
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The rise of the undead lawyer
One thing that has intrigued me over the last twelve months is the number of former lawyers who’ve ended up in really interesting, non-traditional roles in private practice. It’s not easy to pigeon-hole the type of role into any particular category: business development? knowledge management? talent development? strategic support? The roles span all of these…
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How hard is your work, really?
Outside the profession, despite the bad press that lawyers get, the majority of people still think of the practice of law as an intellectually challenging job. Fundamentally, I think they are right. It takes time to learn the black letter law that underpins the work, and more time still to understand how to apply it…
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The return of the hooded claw
At an LPO conference last week, a fairly routine question came from the audience about data security concerns. What was more interesting was the reply from the LPO provider. The speaker was a former partner at a major US firm, and went on a (good natured) rant about how secure the offshore operations were when…
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Could it be magic?
A short post today departing from my usual ramblings, but I couldn’t help but share my delight with the latest version of Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software. As Snoop Dog might say, it’s the shiznit! When I entered the profession back in ’97, the majority of senior lawyers I worked with were never far…
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That’s a really, er, interesting idea……
Product development remains a concept that’s alien to many law firms. Firstly, the idea of highly tailored legal services being associated with something as, well, crude, as a “product” is just plain wrong. Secondly, the firms just deliver what the clients want, so that’s really a type of product development, right? Unfortunately there’s a world of difference…
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Test your lawyer with a moment of truth
In the commercial world, cries of distress can often be heard. From corporate counsel, from HR directors, from CEOs. Every now and then, a big, bad and most of all URGENT problem arises. Maybe it’s a really important client contract going wrong, and somebody mentioned litigation. Maybe the IT team have found porn on the…
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The joy of simplicity
Looking back over my last few posts, I’ve noticed a worrying theme. They are getting longer. To me, that’s not a good sign. From my early days as a lawyer, I was always a fan of eliminating complexity. Wherever possible, I liked to draft documents in “plain English”, and read a number of books alongside…
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Breaking the chains: free the young lawyers
As we are often reminded these days, the world is flat. Or at least flattening. Trade is global. As the economy picks up, the survivors from the Western economies pick themselves off the canvas, and look enviously at those economies that have continued to demonstrate solid growth over the past couple of years. Whether or…
Intelligent Challenge 