How your firm feels about bar associations

The results are a surprising 50/50 in our latest survey. 50% of our readers work for law firms that encourage partcipation in bar associations -- all of those work for firm that allow time for bar meetings and encourage leadership roles; the other 50% work for law firms that don't -- within that group 17% of those surveyed said their firm impliedly discourages participation. That's an unfortuate statistic.

Musings on the R word

This Autumn has been full of unfortunate falls. We have yet to see if professionalism in the law will expand or contract, and if lawyers will be viewed more positively or negatively during these times of the R word.

But even closer to home, we are all asking ourselves: Was the boom in financials directly related to the boom in law firms? (oh yes, those of you in denial, that was a boom) In New York and probably everywhere else in the country you have to say yes. How is the bust going to affect us lawyers, or me associate/counsel/junior partner/partner? I think we have already seen some of the effects.

Don't hold your collective breaths because there is inevitably more to come . . . .

When what you deserve and your sense of entitlement don't match

Most of you have probably already seen this article from the law journal, but it is worth a late posting by me, even if for nothing more than to emphasize that greed often accompanies unprofessionalism and is plain ugly.
http://www.law.com/jsp/nylj/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202424738820

Your thoughts on why we aren't liked

Fifty (50%) of you voted that the cause of the public's perception that lawyers act with less than the utmost integrity is changes in the practice of law that are increasingly modelling corporate practice.

So, essentially you are saying that the public is right (the public, indeed in never wrong) and it is not mere perception; things have actually changed and it is only natural that attitudes would change too (unfortunately for the worse).

Well, let's hope that those changing practices do not lead to a meltdown in the legal world akin to what is going on in the financial world, because the chances for the government bailing us out would be even less likely . . . .

What is going on?

There appears to be a lull in the discourse of professionalism these last couple of weeks. Is it because with the arrival of new associates everyone is on their best behavior? Or is it because summer is over and everyone is concentrating on back to billing?



Take a minute out to comment and let me know. I hate to be in the dark.