Policies

If you think you can improve a policy or procedure in your office, first ask yourself: Are you falling victim to the fallacy of Chesterton's fence?

Every so often a lawyer with a small firm will ask me what to do about providing employees with paid sick days. The practice is much more common in large firms, but many lawyers have come to expect it as a perk no matter how big their firms are. (To be clear, I’m talking about […]

Many large law firms forbid their lawyers from visiting social-media sites while at work. Some have actual software blocks, preventing sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even blogs like Above the Law from loading on the firm computers. Other firms tacitly discourage visiting these sites, since every six minutes wasted on them are six minutes that could have been billed. Small firms are less likely to have these policies or blocking programs, mainly because small firms are less likely to have any policies. Or IT departments. This is partly a generational issue. On the one hand, you've got the Millennials: twenty-somethings who are used to having IM chats, Pandora music, and Facebook walls floating in the background while they bash away at Lexis or Microsoft Word. On the other hand, you have more-senior (or just plain "senior") lawyers, for whom the Interwebs are something to either be feared or restricted to off-duty hours.