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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