Thriving In The Legal Profession

This coursebook addresses key topics in the evolving legal profession and the business of law. The book features chapters on the traditional law firm; the corporate client; the emergence of alternative legal services providers; legal technology; access to justice; employment and diversity in the legal profession; and legal education reform. Students will learn from detailed, insightful interviews of a broad range of legal industry professionals, including the general counsel of an international company; chief litigation officer of a Fortune100 company; director of knowledge management at a Biglaw firm; a legal innovator who founded a pioneering legal process outsourcing company; a legal industry consultant; and a legal tech startup CEO and co-founder. Interactive exercises and questions for reflection and discussion are included throughout the book. Read reviews of this title here.

Softbound - New, softbound print book.

Thriving in a Multi-Generational Law Firm: How to Increase Communication and Collaboration Among Lawyers focuses on the question of whether four generations can co-exist and thrive in a law firm. Due to differences in communication styles, backgrounds, values, use of technology and work ethics, law firms and lawyers are encountering challenges to stability, profitability, and work satisfaction. This Special Report identifies the conflicts between the different generations currently working in law firms, which, if they continue on their current trajectory, will compromise the long-held traditions and culture within the legal profession. It will address how generational differences set up conflicts between colleagues and will promote different ways to create positive change and harmony within firms. It contains a key analysis of why associates leave, the cost of turnover (which is in the billions of dollars), and what law firms can do to increase retention and productivity. This title will provide readers with a more thorough understanding of the points of view of each generation operating in law firms. By utilising case studies from law firms of different sizes and from different locations, the book posits solutions to solving generational challenges law firms currently face. It is a practical, user-friendly guide to positive law firm change which will be valuable to partners, associates and professional development staff of all generations working in law firms of any size.

The Thriving Lawyer: A Multidimensional Model of Well-Being for a Sustainable Legal Profession is based on an innovative model, grounded in science. This book serves as a resource for promoting well-being and culture-change in the legal community by educating about pertinent issues impacting lawyers, and how to address them. It is a roadmap, highlighting the many over-arching and inter-connected aspects of well-being, and enabling readers to identify and target the issues most relevant to their unique situations. Along with practical strategies, the book provides a big-picture framework, illustrating how the many intersecting individual and organizational factors which influence well-being are all related, yet separate and distinct. The framework provides a foundation for creating change, and where you focus first will depend on the needs, the situation, and any unique challenges faced by you or your organization. The Thriving Lawyer explains why, in addition to self-care, change is needed on the organizational level in terms of workplace culture and policies, as well as normalizing self-care and eradicating stigma. This book is intended to benefit individual lawyers, their organizations, and professionals who support them, by educating, motivating, and promoting self-care and healthy work environments.

Running a successful law practice means wearing two hats. Your clients are counting on you to be an expert in your area of law. At the same time, you have all the demands of running a small business - something many of us didn't fully anticipate when we graduated from law school. Our legal education gave us the foundation we needed to become excellent legal practitioners, but few of us have the training necessary to build a successful business. The result is that we work as hard as we can to do excellent legal work, and we wonder why that doesn't result in a growing, thriving legal enterprise. So, we spend more time at the office being the best lawyers we can be, until our family and personal lives suffer and we start to lose our passion for the law. The truth is, you can create a legal business that is not only growing but is highly profitable, and you can do it while taking time to enjoy life outside the office. The American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys figured out how to do it more than two decades ago. Since then, we've helped hundreds of attorneys nationwide to transform their practices and their lives. Our secret is simple. Systems. Believe it or not, most law firms have very few intentional systems. They have no unique way of operating, no overall firm brand. Without systems, it is difficult for them to be consistent in the services they provide. Academy law firms are different. We have developed 11 Systems to support deep, lasting client relationships - many of them spanning multiple generations. Our Members have used these systems to transform their law firms into practices they love.

"This collection of articles is an effort to create a greater understanding of the empirical issues that lie behind the debate over whether in the practice of law the ideals of professionalism have been replaced by the demands of commercialism. This book is the most systematic attempt so far to examine what professionalism means in the various arenas of legal practice in the United States. It also seeks to advance the theoretical interpretations that lie at the heart of the scholarship on professionalism and establish a framework for analyzing the issues that is more grounded than previous idealist accounts, yet retains some of the ideas of contingency and changeability that structualist accounts have ignored"--Preface.

An Associate's First Year: A Guide to Thriving at a Law Firm provides guidance on the expectations of a first year attorney, establishing yourself as a leader within the firm, receiving and responding to performance feedback, and much more.