A September 2001 article from Legal Consulting firm Altman Weil, Inc., entitled Fiscal Management of a Law Firm, strongly supports the use of contract lawyers to increase a firm’s profit margin. The article discusses three key fiscal performance measures for all businesses (including law firms)—cash flow, revenues or collected fee receipts and profit margin—and identifies [...]

On Tuesday, June 16, I’ll be speaking on an alternative legal careers panel as part of Getting Back in the Game: How to Restart Your Career in a Down Economy, a day-long seminar sponsored by the New York City Bar and Vault.com. The panel runs from 1:45-3:00 p.m. Here’s the full program agenda: 9:45 AM [...]

Last week, the National Law Journal reported that a California plaintiff’s lawyer has filed a class action suit against Chadbourne & Parke, alleging that the firm engages in a pattern and practice of billing its clients based on hourly rates charged by online legal research providers, even though the firm actually pays a flat rate [...]

If you’re like most lawyers, your “to do” list is overflowing, and you probably feel that you’re facing an uphill battle just to get the “must do” items completed—never mind the fresh ideas you’d like to implement for better client service, business development, or just taking a few moments to enjoy lunch. Join Julie A. [...]

Often, articles in the mainstream legal media about contract lawyers focus on the large law firms that, through staffing agencies, hire armies of attorneys (either foreign or domestic) to do document review work. So it’s refreshing that Downturn May Have an Upside for Contract Attorneys, an article in today’s National Law Journal, discusses the world [...]

Back when the economy was growing, the issue of work/life balance was a hot topic in the blawgosphere as well as in the mainstream legal media. Although discussion of the issue has more recently taken a back seat to dollars-and-cents issues, by no means has it disappeared. In fact, organizations like the Total Practice Management [...]