Slow Holiday? Do These 5 Productive Things to Keep Busy

If you're not scrounging to make up some missed billables, the end of the year and start of the new year often brings with them a massive slow down. It's just that time of year when the world simply...

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Texas Law Firm Paying for Safe Rides on New Years

One Texas law firm is doing some creative marketing and hoping to make a difference locally this New Year holiday. Instead of throwing money away on traditional marketing, the firm seems to be putting up about $30,000 so that...

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The 'Justice Bus' Is Real and Awesome!

While lawyering out of a food truck may not be something lawyers in private practice are clamoring to do, one Legal Aid office in Kentucky is breaking the mold and getting mobile. Legal Aid of the Bluegrass received a $50,000...

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Does Your Career Need a Tune-Up?

Many drivers take their cars in for service only when something goes wrong. It's the same with teeth. If they don't hurt, many people figure, why see a dentist? This approach, of course, is all wrong. If you treat...

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We Can Do Better With Diversity, BigLaw Says

One problem with being a leader is that people expect more out of you. Just ask the guys at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. They have 12 new partners, and 11 of them are men. In a law...

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FindLaw's 8 Best Litigation Tips of 2018

Litigation doesn't have a one-size-fits-all approach. And litigators and trial attorneys need to always be looking to improve and up their game. Here in the FindLaw Strategist blog, we've been doing our best to help by blogging about all...

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Pro Tip: Don't Drink Before Court If You Want to Win

One of the time-tested ways to beat a traffic ticket is to show up in court and hope the police officer doesn't. There are other legal strategies, but the first rule of winning anything is to show up. Attorney...

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How to Handle an Unruly Attorney During a Deposition

Depositions can make or break a case, and can make or break some attorneys' careers or reputations too. Take for example the Illinois attorney who recently was recommended to face a disciplinary action by the state's disciplinary hearing board...

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Big Firm Invites Only Women to the Partners' Table

Not so long ago -- like seconds ago -- it would be business as usual for a law firm to promote only male partners. Today, it shouldn't be unusual for a law firm to promote only female partners. But...

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Is a Six-Hour Workday Better for Everyone?

There's very little doubt or disagreement among anyone that works for a living that there are too few hours in the day. However, rather than doing the impossible and adding more hours into the day, the brilliant minds over...

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The Best Part of Being a Federal Judge Is Speaking Your Mind

If asked, judges often say they like their jobs for noble reasons. They dispense justice and bring balance to the universal conflict of man, or something like that. Superman said it better. But if you could get inside the...

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How to Avoid Terminating Sanctions

For most lawyers, terminating sanctions are something you'll never need to worry about. However, for the unlucky some, no matter how strongly you advise a client, they're just not going to get it. In the recent child molestation case...

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3 Reasons to Lower Your Fees, but You Only Need 1

It's Christmas. That's one good reason to lower your fees. Even if it's just a one-time discount in a greeting card, your clients will love you for it. Well, that would be a Christmas miracle, so maybe they would...

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Etymology of Great Legal Words: Bail

In the world of criminal justice, one of the more important legal terms, especially for the people actually facing the charges, is bail. It's also a significant word in the civil context, such as when property is temporarily held...

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Lawyer Faces Sanctions for Using Screenplay Format in Complaint

It was a dark and stormy night for attorney Ilya Liviz. Frustrated with courts turning down his appeals, he decided to file a complaint written in the form of a screenplay. In the end, the court was not entertained....

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Arbitration No Longer Required for Kirkland Staff

The Pipeline Parity Project has scored another big victory in the fight to eradicate the scourge that is arbitration for law firm employees. This week, Kirkland and Ellis announced that it would no longer require arbitration for staff, adding...

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What's Happening With Expert Witnesses?

Being an expert witness is good work if you can get it. According to a new survey, however, more than 90 percent of the time lawyers want experts who already have litigation experience. It makes sense, and also shows...

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Trump SCOTUS Potential Proposes Discovery Ban on Cases Under $500K

We've heard so much about Russians, collusion, and porn stars, it's getting really old. If it weren't for stories about Mueller, Cohen, and Kavanaugh, many lawyers would have tuned out the saga of scandals. But now comes a presidential/legal...

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3 Tips for Collaborating With Co-Counsel You Don't Like

Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher, reportedly said that he never met a man he didn't like. Apparently that was a misquote. In the annals of social history, however, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that we need to...

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Holiday Office Party Planning Tips for Small Firms

The holidays are a great time of year to do some fun legal marketing. Yes, usually the words fun and legal marketing in the same sentence will cause some sort of breach in the space-time continuum. However, the exception...

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Is Relocating Worth It for Your Legal Career?

For both new and experience lawyers, the question of whether it's worth it to relocate for a job can be challenging. While the decision may be simpler for new or younger attorneys that haven't laid down roots in a...

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ProTip: Don't Threaten to Kill Other Lawyers, or Anyone

As a lawyer, it's important to really remember one thing: you're a lawyer and your conduct while lawyering and while not lawyering matters because it reflects upon the profession as a whole. To that end, lawyers really can't threaten...

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Why You Should Never Argue Outside the Courtroom

Lessons in the law come from all kinds of places. Often, it is in the courtroom where litigators demonstrate their skills. It is beyond Trial Advocacy 101; it is the real deal. Sometimes the lessons occur outside the courtroom,...

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Gadgets to Purchase When Starting a Law Firm

Are you planning on starting your own practice in the new year? If so, you might be looking to outfit your office during the holidays when prices on some good-enough-for-legal-work consumer-grade tech might be at an all-time low price. Below,...

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3 Biggest-Ever Hyperbole To-Dos in Law Firm Marketing

If you know anything about Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, or Lawyer Marketing, cosmic truths come in threes. Three Star Wars trilogies, three rings to rule them all, and three more rules about hyperbole in law firm...

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3 Biggest-Ever Hyperbolic Don'ts in Law Firm Marketing

People probably expect lawyers to exaggerate; it's what we do. Like when an attorney says a client chained to a chair in court is "not guilty," who really believes that? It's not a lie, but everybody knows the real...

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Avoiding Mental Health Care Can Increase Chances of Malpractice

If you've never been in a dentist's chair and watched the smoke float away from the drill grinding your tooth, you don't know what it means to have a root canal. It's one of the reasons people avoid going...

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Can Lawyers Represent Clients Paying With Crowdfunding?

In the world of online fundraising, otherwise basically known as crowdfunding, the opportunities are seemingly endless. In fact, lawyers and clients have successful crowdfunded litigation. However, due to the relative newness of the crowdfunding sensation, those in the legal...

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5 Best Lawyer Dad-Jokes to Use on Social

Just being on social media may be good, but creating engaging content is better. And as Arlo Guthrie's father once told him, "Ya know Arlo, if you can't be great, it's better to be long." So when you're thinking...

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Federal Rules of Civil and Appellate Procedure Changing Dec. 1

For federal civil and appellate practitioners, there are a few rule changes coming next week that you might want to make sure you're ready for. One involves some significant changes to FRCP Rule 23 involving class actions, and the...

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Try a Different Hobby to Improve Job Performance

In Opposite World, "yes" means "no" and "no" means "yes." If you need a better explanation, ask a teenager. The point is that some things are counter-intuitive, like hobbies that can improve your work. You would think that playing...

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Law Students Send #MeToo Message to BigLaw

Since when did law students get to tell BigLaw firms what to do? Since the #MeToo movement, it seems. After Harvard law students said they would boycott Kirkland & Ellis over its mandatory arbitration agreements for summer associates, the...

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Becoming a Sports Lawyer, Not Jerry Maguire

Everybody knows Jerry Maguire was not a real sports agent, but they also know his most famous line: "Show me the money!" Leigh Steinberg is a real sports agent and lawyer, and he is oft credited as the inspiration...

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When Video Evidence Gets Deleted

A recent civil suit involving a South Carolina school and student who was incessantly bullied, attacked, and injured while at school, highlights one critical problem that attorneys can often face when trying to get that holy-grail surveillance camera footage:...

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To Tweet or Not to Tweet; It's Not Shakespeare

Matthew Stiegler is an experienced appellate lawyer, but what's more important is that he is on Twitter. That may be a misstatement of his career accomplishments. However, he probably knows more about using Twitter than the average appellate practitioner....

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Impostor Syndrome: Do You Have It, Too?

Impostor syndrome is the feeling that you are not cut out for your job, combined with a fear of being discovered as a fraud. That's the syndrome plaguing many lawyers today, writes Neha Samat in an article for the...

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How to Exploit Your Dog for Law Firm Marketing

Do you have a dog and a law firm? If so, you might want to consider exploiting your dog's cuteness to help market your law firm. Simply put, your law firm's social media needs content, and people love dog...

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Why You Should Use Calendaring Software for Court Deadlines

Why should you use calendaring software to meet court deadlines? One word: malpractice. Here are a couple more: insurance rates. Here's a whole phrase: peace of mind. However you want to say it, it should go without saying. A...

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How Not to Sabotage Your Success as a Lawyer

Here are only two ways not to sabotage your success as a lawyer.

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Real Cocktail Napkin Contract Trial Underway

Warning: The following may trigger law school exam or bar exam flashbacks.Regardless of when you went to law school, the question surely came up in your contracts class: Is a contract written on a cocktail napkin a legit contract?...

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Why High-Profile Depositions Matter

A deposition can win a case; everybody knows that, but few lawyers practice that way. Too often depositions are boring affairs from beginning to end with recitations that sound like mindless prayers: the "rules of the road," the admonitions,...

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PSA to Romantically Involved Lawyers: Use Redaction!

Lawyers do it every day. But for one pair of form-crossed Ohio lawyers, who did it and didn't redact, the state's bar decided to set an example. The two lawyers met at a conference and hit it off. They...

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Lawyers Who Count Chickens Before They Hatch Lay Eggs

Defense attorney John Shely reportedly lost the largest verdict in an individual "bad faith" insurance case in Oklahoma history. But the $25.5 million verdict did not make him the biggest loser. After all, attorneys don't really lose anything in...

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7 Social Media Tips for Law Firms

If your law firm isn't on social media, you are simply missing out on some easy and free marketing that can be done in your downtime from anywhere. Every platform you want to be on has an app that...

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Why Lawyers Should -- or Should Not -- Show Off Clients

Client endorsements are the best. "He really understood my case." "She helped me when I needed it the most." "My lawyer got me $2.1 million ...." Well, not all endorsements work. The thing is, if clients are giving you...

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Do You Language Correctly?

Lawyers may have grown accustomed to ignoring Bryan Garner and all his nitpicky wisdom about language and the law. But in his recent ABA Journal piece on modern language usage, Garner dropped a bombshell nugget of wisdom that's just...

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5 Cool Marketing Ideas for Lawyers

Giving out swag and using traditional advertising methods may not be a big driver of clients for most lawyers (or any industry really), but some of the cooler marketing ideas can actually help drive business. That is, if you...

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Sessions' Last Act: New Justice Guidelines for Civil Consent Decrees

The day before resigning, Attorney General Jeff Sessions laid down some tighter guidelines for the Justice Department on civil settlements. Consent decrees "should be employed carefully and only after review and approval of senior leadership," he said. It was...

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The 5 Best Tips for Solo Practitioners

When it comes to solo practice, the ABA Journal has long been a fantastic, and free, resource for practice tips, legal news, and motivation/inspiration, especially for solo practitioners. Like our blogs for legal professionals, the ABA Journal creates content...

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Celebrate Veterans Day Like a Lawyer

For some, the veteran's story is not a good one. They come home to find out they can never go home again. Disillusioned, their battles too often end tragically. Lawyers who help in those struggles can become heroes. Veteran's...

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