How unlucky are we?

Somewhat off piste, but in his post The fickle finger of fate earlier today, Matthew Taylor (RSA’s Chief Executive) concludes with the following, with which, I expect, most of us (reluctantly) will agree (taken froman argument developed by Dan Gilbert in Stumbling into Happiness ):

We systematically exaggerate both the control we have over our own life course, and our own talents in comparison with other people. So, we have an inbuilt tendency to believe that good things in our life are the consequence of our own talents and actions while bad things are the result of misfortune.

Lawyers are no different to anyone else.

Neglecting strategy

An excellent email in my in box this morning from Edge International, with their Law Firm Strategy Newsletter. The topic? The Strategy Executioner (or, to paraphrase the opening, 10 easy ways to ensure that your law firm’s strategy never sees the light of day). You will need to subscribe to the Newsletter and visit Edge International’s website for more (their RSS feed is not great) but good reading, and a very telling conclusion,

The sad truth, though, is that much strategy fails because of simple neglect rather than active sabotage.

Do they teach them anything at law school?

My current transaction has been brightened (is that the right word?) by this email exchange. The context is the tabling of documents at the completion board meeting, and how to record this in the minutes.

Me: documents are usually “produced to the meeting” not “reproduced to the meeting”.

Reply: the documents were produced at minute 4 and are merely produced a second time when being considered individually (hence “reproduced”).

You couldn’t make it up if you tried!

Yet more on the billable hour

More posts in the world of blawgs, particularly Never mind the billables by Jordan Furlong in Law 21, following the article Killable hour in the latest Economist. Regular readers of this blog will know that selling time is one of my pet hates.

Furlong puts it very well in his post,

Your client doesn’t care how much profit you make for yourself; the client only cares that you delivered excellent value in a cost-effective (to the client) manner. How you bill your services is between you and your client; how much it costs you to deliver those services has to be your number-one business priority.

Selling time is the antithesis of selling value. Read Stefan Stern’s article Focus on value or pay the price in the FT (now some three months old). I liked his closing paragraph,

But for most businesses protecting margins in the next few months is going to prove extremely difficult. Cynics, Oscar Wilde once said, know “the price of everything but the value of nothing”. You know things are tough when the cynics don’t know the price either.

A great depression

Notwithstanding my injunction to cultivate a habit of optimism, the legal press continues to provide some element of corrective. It is some comfort, though not a lot, to know that lawyers across the piece are having the same problems, contemplating the same actions, and, quite possibly, making the same mistakes.

A sobering article in the FT last month, Redundancy and the threat of a great depression, caught my eye, and in particular the section on employees having to take on an increased workload. Now I have colleagues who think that this is no bad thing, but . . .

The potential for working harder, he [William Shanahan, medical director and lead addictions psychiatrist at Capio Nightingale Hospital] says, is exacerbated by technology: “BlackBerries and mobile phones mean that people are not managing their time well. They cannot relax even on a holiday, which can create problems with families.”

Managing time well is itself one more pressure on lawyers. It is one most of live with and, by and large, we learn how best to do it. It is, however, not just working harder, but also finding yourself with little or no work – and more time than usual. Having said that, writing this post is one way of dealing with the delay in replies from two of my clients on transactions where there is nothing more I can do until I hear from them further.