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Practice Management

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Ronda Muir is a senior consultant at Robin Rolfe Resources, specializing in the area of law firm and law department organizational development and dynamics.
By Ronda Muir

Post Frequency: 1.2/day

Last Entry: April 12, 2013 at 16:27:50

Emotion at Work: More on Anger, Crying and Gender

Posted on April 12, 2013
We published an entry on 'That Old Crying Feeling' in 2011 that won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week, and generated a lot of hits and discussion about displaying emotions in the office. We noted, among other things, that Michael Page International had found that mounting stress of all sorts leads one in three lawyers to cry...

Culture and Competence

Posted on March 26, 2013
The Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center and TAGLaw recently published a survey showing the value of their culture to the growth strategies of mid-sized law firms. First, these high-culture awareness firms view culture as a key factor in attracting laterals, with 70% of the firms ranking it as one of the top two factors...

Migrating to a New Platform

Posted on March 25, 2013
This blog has outlived its initial platform! Please bear with us as we migrate to a new one over the next month. Our new look and functions will be worth it. The Team at Law People Blog

Lawyer Personalities at Above the Law

Posted on March 17, 2013
Above the Law columnist Susan Moon, an in-house lawyer at Wyndham Worldwide, gave our The Unique Psychological World of Lawyers a nice plug last week, just hours after much of the data in it was discussed at a presentation at Yale Law School. An older article (since updated) and a "bit on the dry side," as she noted, she also found it "shamefully entertaining, such as finding out about the best ways to totally annoy your co-workers and how to play crazy mind games...

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Muir to Present at Yale Law School

Posted on March 05, 2013
Ronda Muir, Esq., will present a seminar at Yale Law School on March 13, 2013 on "The Unique Psychological World of Lawyers--Strategies for a Successful and Satisfying Career." She will review data from research with respect to personality assessments, positive psychology, conflict management, the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator and emotional intelligence showing the particular characteristics of lawyers that both reward and challenge them professionally and personally.

Attrition is Back!

Posted on March 01, 2013
A question was posed recently in the press: – "Why are lawyers such terrible managers?" The article appeared in CNN's online Money/Fortune magazine. It cites statistics from the National Association for Legal Professionals Foundation that in 2010 law firms with 100 and fewer lawyers and 251-500 attorneys lost nearly one fifth of their associates...

Who Wants to Go to Law School?

Posted on February 18, 2013
Given our last entry, it is not surprising that law school applications have been going down dramatically over the last few years. With the high cost of law school, the paucity of jobs (only half the number of jobs as there are law school graduates) and the dimming career and earnings prospects for lawyers who do get law jobs, young people are voting with their feet...

Adjusting to the New Normal

Posted on February 09, 2013
The takeaway from a review of the financial news on law firm economics for 2012 is, as the aptly titled "The Boom Years Are Not Coming Back" proclaims: Firms "can no longer rely on a rising tide that lifts all boats...

The Lawsuit(s) Whose Name We Dare Not Speak Part 2

Posted on January 13, 2013
A while back we considered in a couple of entries the issue of eroding ethics in the legal arena: What's Ethics Got to Do With It? Part 1 and What's Ethics Got to Do With It? Part 2. Apart from the regretful plunge in ethical behavior, another consequence of the well-documented and increasingly evident problem of lawyers failing to perform professionally is the liability risk they pose to management and their companies and firms...

To Joy, Peace and Prosperity in the New Year!

Posted on December 21, 2012
From all of us at Law People Management, we wish you, your family, friends and colleagues the blessings of joy and peace during this holiday season and throughout the new year. Let us take in hand the gifts of gratitude, persistence and hope as we work together towards prosperity in 2013! The Law People Management Gang

Law School--the Bomb

Posted on December 13, 2012
There aren't many developments in the legal industry that literally bowl you over--okay, the demise of Dewey & LeBoeuf was a fast-paced shocker. Hearing over the last few months questions about the future viability of one or another well-respected law school has been another...

What the White Coats May Be Missing

Posted on November 21, 2012
Speaking of doctors in white coats, one has identified an attribute that may not rub off onto you when you don your own white coat. According to Peter Ubel, a physician and behavioral scientist at Duke University, Starbucks employees have better training and are more effective in acting emotionally intelligent than doctors are...

Wearing the Emperor's Clothes: Putting to Success

Posted on November 15, 2012
In a study at Northwestern University, subjects who were told that the white coats they wore were doctors' coats outperformed by nearly 30% those who were told they were wearing painters' coats. Both cognition and attention improved dramatically on the various tests taken by those wearing "doctors' coats...

Notes from the Futures Conference: Part 3

Posted on November 09, 2012
Here is the third and final installment on some of the highlights from this year's Futures Conference of the College of Law Practice Management held at Georgetown Law School at the end of last month: What General Counsel Want From Their Outside Law Firms The panel's top considerations reflected the same ones outlined in the ACC's GC Value Insights, prepared in cooperation with a number of Fortune 50 general counsel: Partnership Understanding the Business and Goals Responsiveness High Quality Work in Cost Effective Manner Innovation and Flexibility Responsiveness...

Notes from the Futures Conference: Part 2

Posted on November 05, 2012
The following is a second installment about some of the highlights from this year's Futures Conference of the College of Law Practice Management held at Georgetown Law School the end of October: Hiring and Training Successful Lawyers Georgetown Law School reported on two research projects they are undertaking--'Integration and Fragmentation in the Modern Law Firm' and 'Developing Attorneys from the Future: What Can We Learn from the Fast Trackers?' The first concluded that one of the essential and most challenging aspects of integrating lawyers into a cohesive law firm is the issue of establishing and building trust, a conclusion consistent with lawyers' psychological profile of high skepticism and low sociability...

Notes from the 2012 Futures Conference of the College of Law Practice Management: Part 1

Posted on October 28, 2012
The following are some of the highlights from this year's Futures Conference of the College of Law Practice Management held at Georgetown Law School last week: New Model Law Firms New entrants into law firm alternative business models are Clearspire, which consists of 2 joined companies –one providing legal services to clients and the other providing technological and business support to the lawyers, the Potomac Law Group, a Washington DC firm that both provides contract and seconding attorneys, as well as legal advice, and Riverview Law, a UK firm started this year and now with a NYC office, which locates high expenses, such as legal talent, in low-cost markets...

Nice Guys Finish Last? A Meditation on a Questionable Virtue

Posted on October 12, 2012
Most of us have very high standards for the work we deliver our clients. We demand from ourselves and those on our team the best possible product. "Performance at whatever price" might be our mantra, even if it requires nagging and criticizing or even bullying...

Testing for Better Hiring

Posted on September 25, 2012
A series of articles in the Wall Street Journal last week discussed the trend in corporate America toward using analysis of data obtained through personality and other questionnaires from employees to guide better long-term hiring. The information obtained from employees coupled with their work histories gives employers, particularly of large workforces with potentially large turnover rates, a better predictive tool as to which potential employees are likely to stay longer, be more satisfied, be less likely to be dishonest and even be less likely to get hurt on the job...

What's Ethics Got To Do With It? Part 2

Posted on September 07, 2012
Early this year the American Economic Association, a leading group of academic economists, adopted more stringent conflict-of-interest rules to their code of ethics. That move was in response to criticism that the profession not only failed to predict the 2007-2008 financial crisis but may actually have helped create it through conduct which some contended should be unethical in the industry...

The Flat Demand Crisis

Posted on August 22, 2012
Citi's Midyear Report on the state of the legal industry for the first 6 months of this year is a cautionary read, harrowingly notable for its brevity. "[W]e're now concerned that this year the legal industry may be unable to match 2011's low single-digit profit growth...

What's Ethics Got to Do With It? Part 1

Posted on August 16, 2012
Recent reporting happened to recount within days of each other three instances of fraud in the legal world that bear some reflection. In New York in late July, after a short deliberation by the jury, two attorneys were convicted of 10 felony counts of perpetuating for over almost a decade mortgage fraud, including conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud...

LPM's Muir Cited Twice by NASJE

Posted on August 05, 2012
LPM's Muir is honored to be cited twice in the June 2012 newsletter of the National Association of State Judicial Educators (NASJE), entitled "Judicial Balance: Lessons for Life and Law." The newsletter "helps you navigate the sometimes exhilarating and sometimes treacherous waters of being a judge, and makes it easier to find and enhance your fulfillment in serving the public as a judicial officer...

Gender and Emotional Intelligence: Women Will Save the World?

Posted on July 28, 2012
The Dalai Lama proclaimed at the Vancouver Peace Summit a few years back that "the Western woman will save the world." Of course, he might have been a little heady over the company he was keeping there-- Nobel peace laureates Mairead Maguire, Jody Williams and Betty Williams, Mary Robinson, the beloved Irish president and tireless human rights activist, Susan Davis, whose humanitarian work has impacted the lives of millions in Haiti, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and several African countries, and Abigail Disney, whose widely praised film "Pray the Devil Back to Hell" tells the story of a group of determined Liberian women who ousted dictator Charles Taylor and installed Africa's first female president...

The Politics of Place: Where's Your Office?

Posted on July 16, 2012
While it's unlikely that anyone would attribute all of Research in Motion's troubles to corporate geography, it's worth noting that RIM's two chief executives, both now gone, were located over the last few critical years in offices about a 10-minute drive apart...

Clayton Christensen and the Innovator's Dilemma for Lawyers

Posted on June 23, 2012
We've been quoting Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, for many years. Christensen once called large American law firms "the most profitable businesses in the world," while at the same time indicting them: "Speedier information-gathering capabilities allow large law firms to increase utilization of less experienced lawyers without passing cost savings on to their customers...

The Diversity Myth Revisited

Posted on June 18, 2012
Muir's entry "What Do Women Want? Challenging the Diversity Myth" was republished in June's Law Practice Today, the monthly webzine of the ABA Law Practice Management Section. The article will also be used in the workshop at the ABA meeting this July, entitled "LPM Diversity and Inclusion Workshop: The New Look of Law Practice Management...

Video Interview: Discussing the Legal Industries Financial Landscape with LXBN TV

Posted on June 09, 2012
Following up our most recent post, Ronda Muir had the opportunity to speak with Colin O'Keefe of LXBN on the trying times the legal industry is currently facing. In this short interview, Ishe explains some of the more prominent numbers, what might be behind them and what the legal industry must do to adapt...

Current Financial

Posted on June 04, 2012
Here is the latest on the financial state of the US legal industry. Citibank reported last month that during the first quarter of 2012, demand for legal services grew a paltry 1.5%, although at least reversing the decline in the 2011 fourth quarter...

Muir to Speak on Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence

Posted on May 30, 2012
Ronda Muir of Law People Management LLC, Randall Kiser of DecisionSet, and Daniel S. Bowling III of Duke Law School will be co-presenting a Center for Competitive Management audio presentation on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 2pm EST entitled "Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence...

Dewey & LeBoeuf: Probing the Wreckage and the Reasons

Posted on May 23, 2012
As another pundit among many slowing down to rubber neck the wreckage strewn from the Dewey & LeBoeuf crash, it's hard to know where to start. The question that hovered on everyone's minds since earlier in the year, as the media dissected every move there, was whether we were watching the disintegration, again, of a major law firm: one which counted in 2011, at least according to statistics cited by the firm, over 1200 lawyers, 300 partners, 26 offices and revenue pushing $950 million...

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