During my third year of law school, I was a member of the Lamar Inn of Court at Emory Law School. For those unfamiliar with the American Inns of Court, it’s an organization based on the English Inns of Court and designed to bring together law students (known in the Inn as pupils), junior practitioners… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Musings
Subscribe to Musings RSS FeedIs it what you thought it would be?
Posted in Coaching for lawyers, MusingsMy home office in Atlanta is on a two-lane primary road just a few blocks from Emory University’s law school. Today is graduation, and since about 6:30 AM, I’ve been watching cars full of well-dressed people, taxis, chartered buses, and even limos drive by. It’s quite the parade! And in fact, today marks the 15th… Continue Reading
Strategy or opportunity?
Posted in Coaching for lawyers, MusingsI recently read a sentence (in a non-public email, so I won’t cite the source) suggesting that most lawyers and law firms are opportunists, not strategists. That brought me to a dead stop. Lawyers are trained (and generally self-selected as well) to think logically and analytically, and most lawyers put a high stock on strategic… Continue Reading
Back to the real world: how do you return from vacation?
Posted in Musings, Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceBy the time this posts, I will likely have landed back at the Atlanta airport, home from vacation and from the ABA annual meeting. First, I’d like to thank Peter Vajda publicly for his posts. Relationship is always an interesting topic, and I believe that in many ways our relationships shape and promote or inhibit… Continue Reading
Dare To Dream, Gridlock and the Two-Professional Couple
Posted in Dual-career couples, Guest blogger, MusingsChildren, no children. Be social, stay at home. Go to church, be an atheist. Spend large sums on a rental home, invest the money. Gridlock. Gridlock is part of the fabric of being a couple, especially a two-professional couple where time is a premium and consistent dialogue about personal issues is not very common. However,… Continue Reading
Two Heavy-Duty Partners in Relationship
Posted in Dual-career couples, Guest blogger, MusingsSo, Bill Clinton will be fast and furious on the campaign trail supporting Hillary’s bid for the Presidency. Good news or bad news? In 2004, Howard Dean’s spouse, Judith Steinberg Dean, stayed more “stage right” and was seen infrequently. Good news or bad news? The question that surfaces is this: Can two full-time, fully-engaged-in-a-professional-life partners… Continue Reading
I Love Your Being a Lawyer; I Hate Your Being a Lawyer
Posted in Dual-career couples, Guest blogger, MusingsI’m excited to share some thoughts about lawyers in relationship with you this week. Why relationships? In addition to my work as a life and business coach, I have dedicated much of my coaching practice to support couples in relationship. Having been in a 15-year failed marriage, and married to one who had been in… Continue Reading
Feeling a bit out of control? Welcome to law — and life.
Posted in Coaching for lawyers, MusingsI was visiting DC earlier this week and flew out on a 7 AM flight. Thanks to the early hour and my grogginess, I put my regular reading material to the side and spent some time reading Business Traveler magazine, dreaming about luxury travel. And then I happened across an article titled Flight Fright, which… Continue Reading
Warning: first impressions linger!
Posted in Musings, The practiceI’ve been making a lot of calls this week, not only to lawyers and law firms but also to doctors’ offices and a variety of businesses, and I’ve discovered something disturbing. On a distressingly high number of these contacts (including some in-person contacts as well as phone calls), the people who greeted me and who… Continue Reading
Independence Day: what does it mean for lawyers?
Posted in MusingsTo those of you in or from the U.S., Happy Independence Day! Today’s a day that many celebrate with cookouts, fireworks, parades, and the like. I’ve had an interesting lead-in to the holiday through conversation with my husband’s parents. They live in England, though they spend a great deal of time now in the U.S. … Continue Reading
More post-crash: Request for reader help
Posted in MusingsSo I spent the last two days restoring my files from my online back-up. I’ll identify the service I’ve been using now, because it’s been a life saver: Data Deposit Box. It’s cheap and easy. But even though it’s an automated back-up system, some human thought is required to make sure that it’s backing up… Continue Reading
Women in law firms
Posted in Musings, The practice, Work/life balanceThe WSJ Law Blog has an interesting post asking whether women lawyers are reaching a crisis point. The MIT Workplace Center has issued a report titled “Women Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership,” which states that of the 1000 Massachusetts lawyers surveyed, 31% of female associates and 18% of male associates had left private practice, as… Continue Reading
Living fearlessly
Posted in Coaching for lawyers, MusingsGraduation is approaching, and I thought I’d share this excerpt from Michael Ignatieff‘s 2004 commencement speech to Whitman College graduates. The theme will perhaps strike a chord with some of you. My theme is living fearlessly in a fearful world. Living fearlessly is not the same thing as never being afraid. It’s good to be… Continue Reading
Tag, I’m it: Gotta Get Goals
Posted in Just for Fun, MusingsStephanie West Allen has tagged me to participate in the Gotta Get Goals meme. The idea is to share 5-10 over-the-top, fabulous goals that I will need to achieve to say I’ve reached my wildest dreams in life. Now, that’s fun! I’ve always kept goal lists in one form or another, simply because I think it’s… Continue Reading
The role of wealth in life at the bar and in associate retention
Posted in Musings, Work/life balanceMoney is always an interesting topic, and wealth even more so. I remember being in middle school and fantasizing with friends about being rich. We imagined that if we could just make about $60,000, we’d be set. (Of course, I’d venture to guess that all of our parents were earning at least double that at… Continue Reading
Interesting new resources for women who are lawyers
Posted in Musings, NewsOne of my mother’s friends, Margie Pitts Hames, argued in the Supreme Court in 1971, in Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade. She told me that when she went to the clerk’s office before arguing, she was told to put on her hat — because court reporters at that time were required to wear… Continue Reading
Success tips for lawyers (and some poetry, too)
Posted in Musings, The Secret Society of Happy Lawyers, Work/life balanceToday I ran across a Law Practice Today article titled How to Be More User-Friendly, by Wendy L. Werner. The article lists reminders of what lawyers need to do, be, or think about “to not just be tolerated by the rest of the world, but to flourish.” Here’s the list, and I strongly encourage you to… Continue Reading
Email “addiction” experiment
Posted in Musings, Work/life balanceI tried something new and different this week. I left my Blackberry at my desk when I closed up shop for the day. Now, granted, I work from home, so it isn’t such a big issue for me to go back to my desk, check email there, etc. And I can hear my office phone… Continue Reading
Another take on associate retention rates
Posted in MusingsMost of the news about associate retention is cast in negatives — quoting, for example, that 60-62% of entry-level associates will have left their firms by the end of their fourth year in practice. What if changing jobs more frequently is simply a fact of modern life? Or the result of dual career couples, the consequence… Continue Reading
Predictions following the salary bump
Posted in Musings, NewsHas anyone missed the news about the recent salary bump? Somehow, I doubt it. Plenty of questions remain, such as to what extent salaries increases will spread to other parts of the country and what increased expectations, if any, will be imposed on the anointed associates. I’d like to make several predictions about what’s likely… Continue Reading
Sustainability
Posted in Musings, Work/life balanceI burn my candle at both ends It will not last the night. But ah my foes and oh my friends It gives a lovely light. Edna St. Vincent Millay What do you think when you read this? If you’re like many lawyers, you felt a flutter of recognition — perhaps just before you… Continue Reading
The Secret Society of Happy Lawyers
Posted in Just for Fun, Musings, The practice, The Secret Society of Happy LawyersIn the discussions that led up to the Lawyers Appreciate… countdown, Stephanie West Allen mentioned the Secret Society of Happy People to me. The name captured me – raptured me! — and it kept floating back to the surface as we were choosing the name for the countdown. Stephanie recently requested authorization from Pamela Gail Johnson, the creator… Continue Reading
Challenges for female litigators
Posted in Musings, The practiceYesterday’s WSJ Law Blog pointed to an American Lawyer article entitled Obstacle Course, outlining the challenges female litigators have in “break[ing] through old stereotypes to build top-tier practices” in the “male-dominated world of litigation.” Referencing one female partner’s internal struggle not to deal with food arrangements for trial prep meetings and another who was asked (15 years ago)… Continue Reading
Get happy!
Posted in MusingsAre you thinking this is a strange topic for a legally inclined blog? Perhaps it isn’t… Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine featured an article titled Happiness 101, addressing the field of positive psychology. As described on U Penn’s website Authentic Happiness, positive psychology is the field founded by Dr. Martin Seligman that: focuses on the empirical… Continue Reading