pshafton

Posts by pshafton

Non-Sequiturs: 10.22.07

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* Princeton Reviews Top 50 Law Schools [TaxProf Blog]
* Indiana Law Student Shoots Real-Estate Finance Casebook [Law Blog]
* Blawg Review #131 on business blog, Passion, People and Principles [David Maister via Blawg Review]
* Joe Torre and Contract Incentives [Conglomerate]
* Seen in White and Case’s NY boardroom last Thursday… [The Adventure Of Strategy]
* A Great Law Firm “Driven to [Self-] Destruction”? [Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices]
* The Boy Who Cried “National Security”: The Need for Greater Skepticism About Government Secrecy [Concurring Opinions]
* IntLawGrrls In Our Own Names [IntLawGrrls]
* Female Teachers Who Have Sex With Minors [Feminist Law Professors]
* Which Came First, the Lawyer or the Stable Boy? [New York Times]
* Gov. Spite-zer needs more EQ [f/k/a]

23 Comments

American Bar Association – 50 Ways to Market Your Law Practice

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HomeOfficeLawyer_thumb.JPGThe ABA Journal has put together a well-intended list of 50 ways to market your [father's] law practice. Here’s just a few to get a conversation started with the older partners in your firm:

1. Join your local chamber of commerce. It’s great for networking and community credibility.
5. Offer to write an article for your local paper on a topic such as why everyone should have a will or questions to ask a contractor. Make sure the byline includes the name of your firm and, if possible, your e-mail address.
7. Try to get a local reporter to use you as a legal expert. Send an e-mail offering commentary on a court case. Learn to translate legalese into English and reporters will love you.
18. Advertise in school and church newsletters and local marketer newspapers. This sort of advertising is usually cost-efficient and such publications are surprisingly well-read by their target audiences.
19. Post your business card on the bulletin board at your barbershop, beauty salon, grocery store, community center and house of worship.
22. Donate last year’s Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory or other slightly outdated law books to your local library with a bookplate bearing your name and firm name.
23. Donate magazines to your local jail, nursing home or school and hand over your business card when you drop them off.
32. Send out press releases. Small local newspapers are especially interested.
38. Write down a 30-second description of your practice and commit it to memory. This is called the elevator speech. Use it whenever someone asks, “What type of law do you practice?” Everyone in the firm should have a copy of the description.

And my favorite way to market a law practice:

50. Give vinyl or nylon briefcases to clients at their first visit. This will encourage clients to keep important papers for their case in one place and to bring everything to each office visit. Add a pen, key chain, pad of paper and some business cards to the case.

Read all fifty and let us know which ones you think are the most ridiculous. To be fair and balanced, do let us know if you find any of them worthwhile.
Oh, here’s a tip you won’t find anywhere in that list of 50 ways to market your practice: blog.
While you’re visiting the ABA Journal’s website, check out their Blawg Directory, which the authors of that list of fifty ways to market your practice failed to notice.

54 Comments

Professor Solove gives us the poop on David Lat

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Future.of.Reputation.jpgDavid didn’t expect me to get the scoop. No doubt, he’s been reading the reviews of Dan Solove’s new book, The Future of Reputation Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet.
I downloaded a free copy of Chapter 1.
Don’t know if Lat has read this review by PajamasMedia’s culture critic, David Freeman, who writes:

Shame and gossip and questions of personal reputation have been with us for millennia. In our time, however, they’ve gone electronic. The resulting change in the way the world communicates with itself is as significant to speech as anything since the invention of moveable type.

David probably noticed that Frank Pasquale posted a mini-review of the book he calls “a fun read that also manages to be a scholarly work on cyberlaw.”

Solove draws us in with the old classics of humiliation–South Korea’s infamous “dog poop girl,” Jessica Cutler’s embarrassed paramour, and the Star Wars kid. Each sparked an avalanche of comedy, critical comment, spoofs. . . . and, like hope at the bottom of Pandora’s box, a tiny bit of sympathy as we wonder: will we be next?
Pace Andy Warhol, that’s not likely, but Solove uses the titillating stories to explore a deeper question: do we have any right to control true information about ourselves? Or influence the way we are portrayed? If somebody posts a vicious lie, they can be liable for defamation. But what about disclosure of private facts–should we have any right to stop that?

Okay–titillating stories–we’d buy the book to read more of that, but when do we get to read about David Lat?
“The parts about David have not been excerpted or discussed elsewhere,” teased Solove, in an exclusive interview with Above the Law. “It basically tells his story – then the rest of the chapter launches into a discussion on the good and bad aspects of anonymous blogging! In the same chapter I also discuss the legal protections on anonymity, Wikipedia, the trade-off between anonymity and accountability, how anonymous bloggers can be unmasked if not careful, and the clash between privacy and free speech.”
“If only I could get the poop on David Lat, I’d be able to write a preview for the book,” I cajoled, “It’s a tough audience! Gimme something to placate the fanboys.”
Okay, after the jump…the excerpt about David Lat…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Professor Solove gives us the poop on David Lat”

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McInnes Cooper Canadian Law Firm Student Recruitment Video

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“Put Life on Your To-Do List and consider McInnes Cooper. In a nation-wide survey, McInnes Cooper was rated by its associates as one of the top firms to work for in Canada.”

You’ve got to give McInnes Cooper credit for using real lawyers in their video, unlike Allen & Overy.
The video has two story lines interwoven; a serious look at the firm and comedic episodes of the prospective student interview. Does it work?
They’ve got comments disabled on the YouTube page for the video, so it’s hard to know what the feedback might be from students they’d like to recruit. I suppose the agency that produced this video must have run it by some focus groups.
I think the firm comes off looking good in this one. And the interview scene where the lawyer takes a hair blower to the student’s… I won’t spoil it for you.
Anyway, you’ve got to give McInnes Cooper full marks for closing the pitch with a real hot Asian associate giving the ol’ “come-on and call me” in French!

37 Comments

What’s The Deal At Allen & Overy?

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Allen.Overy.logo.gifAllen & Overy in the UK has over-produced a hiring video that uses real actors to portray A&O solicitors engaged in really interesting work for global clients.
Watch the video here at RollOnFriday, which offers this take on it:

Presumably the prosaic reality of 15 hour days drafting intercreditor deeds and dealing with IT problems would not make great TV. And my, what a lot of TV there is: it goes on for an age, and watching it is like wading through treacle as cast members mention “the deal” every five seconds.

The film laboriously tracks “the deal” in minutes, hours, and days, walking us through the boring lives of A&O partners, associates and trainees in the split-screen style of 24. The performance of the associates falls well short of the drama of Boston Legal. In the end, it would have been a more believable if the deal had collapsed in the last-minute negotiations, like in the real world, where heads would roll on Friday.
Anyone seen better–or worse–law firm recruitment videos?

20 Comments

Making the Case for a White Christmas at Biglaw

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white.case.logo.gifThis just in from a tipster. It can’t possibly be true, so we’re taking it as a joke.
If you’re an associate at the firm, or work for Mr. Grinch at Biglaw, please let us know in the comments below. Tell us this can’t be true.
Tell us you’ve seen worse. What is your firm’s policy for the upcoming holiday season?

Ladies and Gentlemen:
We have had an unprecedented number of lawyers requesting vacation during the Christmas week this year (24-28 December). Although it is always difficult to predict what our respective work levels will look like so far in advance, given the number of vacation requests received to date, it is unlikely we can accommodate them all.
To those of you who have requested time away during this period, to those of you planning to do so, and to those of you who have received a tentative approval to be away during this particular period, I would ask that you consider taking your vacation at another time or being both patient and flexible as we determine as we get closer to Christmas, how best we can meet the needs of the firm and of our clients – which are paramount – while trying to accommodate, as we would very much like to do, our associates.
Please feel free to call me should you wish to discuss.
Regards,
Neal
Neal F. Grenley
White & Case LLP
1155 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036-2787

You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

182 Comments

While Lat’s away, we all can play!

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SocialPressure.jpg
A few of the more-alert readers here have noticed there’s an unusual name in the byline, today.
Let me introduce myself. My nom de plume is Piercie Shafton, an evocative moniker for a guest-editor of Above the Law, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Don’t bother to Google me. I’m not that Piercie Shafton: “the meddling tool of wise plotters–a hair-brained trafficker in treason–a champion of the Pope, employed as a forlorn hope by those more politic heads, who have more will to work mischief, than valour to encounter danger.” But I imagine that, in another time and place, I may well have been a figment of the imagination of a lawyer who published controversial writings under an assumed name.
And so, I find myself at the keyboard, today, unexpectedly blogging away about stuff that is none of my damn business.
I feel this inordinate amount of social pressure to be a bastard.
Comments are open for suggestions…

38 Comments

Morning Docket: 10.22.07

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* Who, Exactly, Is A Journalist? [Concurring Opinions]
* Law Student May Have Shot At Textbook With Assault Rifle [JournalGazette]
* Nixon Peabody Links Up With Boutique for London Launch — Everyone’s A Winner! [Law.com]
* Man gets life in ‘Curious George’ killing [CNN]
* “I’m not a morning person.” Child Abuse Excuse Riles Judge [New York Times]
* Courts and the Law: Justice’s Blind Trust [CQ Weekly]
* Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: When They Were Young [New York Magazine]
* The Carnival of the Capitalists #211 includes law blogs this week.

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