Tag Archive: Personal Thoughts
For those following our Airstream adventure, we’ve got a few pictures for you.
Also included below is a shot of a couple of our grandchildren who spent a night with us at the rally.
We went to our second rally, a rally of other Airstreamers … felt almost like a law firm retreat … with as many different agendas as usually appear in such retreats! This retreat, however, focused on the social conviviality of the attendees … it was more like getting to know your partners at the retreat than seeking to gain consensus on a serious challenge to the firm..
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Lesson learned:
1. People do business with people they like.
2. Bonds are created among people with like interests.
3. Loyalty develops from the bonds among people.
4. Geography, in today’s era of high technology, is no longer a delimiting factor in relationships or in business.
5. Client retention depends on loyalty, not just meeting expectations.
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Last Friday, I had the great pleasure of riding my bike, with a friend, up Bear Mountain, a legendary cycling route in this part of the country. I’m here to see my son’s new child, a strapping 8# boy, Mitchell Gibson Poll, my 11th grandchild!
The weather was great, neither too humid nor too hot. Riding with a better rider than I and one who knows the area well was a treat as I didn’t have to worry about what was beyond the next bend in the road or how to get back to our car at the end of the ride. We covered about 41 miles in 3:30 hours; the last descent was like icing on cake and the last ascent was like "just too much!" 🙂
On the way up Bear Mountain, we heard cannon from across the Hudson River and saw billowing smoke over the hills. Later, I concluded that the cadets were practicing for July 4th celebrations.
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On June 18th, only 8 days ago, Mitchell Gibson Poll entered the world, a strapping 8# baby boy! He joins the "cousins club" of 10 other grandchildren and I’m looking forward to meeting him.
I’m leaving on Thursday for New York, taking my bike with me, and will introduce myself to him. It’s marvelous when new life begins … and, because of him and his sister, I expect to become more familiar with Westchester County and New York City …
I’ll be out of the office for two weeks, but with this marvelous (depending on your point of view 🙂 ) thing called technology, I’ll be in touch … May even write a few more blog notes now that the book is out of my hands! 🙂
Happy and safe July 4th to all.
Ed
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On this date, my daughter-in-law gave birth to a strapping 8 pound baby boy! Enough said — naturally I’m very proud and happy that mother, son … son are doing well.
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Law firm management lessons learned from this trip:
1. Being a member of a team has challenges, but also many rewards.
2. Clients want to know that you have a team working for their benefit. The team can be no more than a secretary or paralegal or even "outsourced" components such as expert witnesses, et al., but a team nevertheless.
3. Building a team, as with any finely tuned mechanism, takes time. But, your perseverance will pay off handsomely in both economic terms as well as personal satisfaction.
4. The right team, both as to members and as to size, will always do better than a sole practitioner or "BigLaw." Evidence of this can be observed in almost any sport, from the "team" sports of basketball and football to the "solo" sports of golf, cycling and figure skating. (more…)
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Floyd Landis won the Tour deFrance in 2006. After what was perhaps the most incredible single day performance, normal drug testing samples were taken – as they always are from the winners.
Several days later, negative results of the tests were leaked to the press … and Floyd Landis has been living under a cloud of suspicion ever since.
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The Association of American Law Schools has approved the creation of a new Section, Balance in Legal Education, designed to improve legal education and create a better balance between law school education and law practice.
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In the “Musings of a Dinosaur,” the doctor discusses his hospital re-credentialing application and the dilemma of a sole practitioner.
He says, among other things, “‘Solo’ means ‘alone.’ No other medical professional in the office. No one. How can anyone fill out a form like that (asking for another doctor’s confirmation of competence, a sort of peer review) meaningfully? Oh, I can probably find a buddy somewhere to sign it and send it in, but this whole episode has got me thinking about several things.
“I know I am competent; that I keep up to date; that my charts are wonderful, my patients love me, and my outcomes at least average. At least I think I know this. I believe it, at any rate. But realistically, with no one else in the office (short of an actual observer coming into the office, watching me interact with patients and auditing my charts), how can I prove this?”
How can a professional prove competence? And why is it that professional organizations appear to focus on eliminating the sole practitioner or at least making it economically far more difficult to practice in the solo setting?
Are lawyers in a different boat? See Carolyn Elefant’s recent discussions concerning the plight of the sole practitioner (lawyers) and my discussion concerning The State Bar of California’s new malpractice insurance effort that will impact sole legal practitioners more than “BigLaw” practitioners.
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To qualify as a lawyer in most States, one needs to graduate from law school and then pass the bar exam. (There are some exceptions.) Nothing unusual about this.
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