This guide is a practical resource for those firms that want to provide better client service and at the same time, improve the working environment for both lawyers and staff. It provides strategies to change the climate of the law firm, boost morale, and effectively and efficiently manage the firm. Issues discussed range from leadership and partnership issues to the basics of running the office. Includes a companion CD-ROM with more than 25 model forms, agreements, worksheets, questionnaires, policy forms, and more.

Moving women into the executive suite is not just a job for women. If you (or a man you know) need help understanding how and why men can sponsor high-performing women into leadership roles while avoiding the potential pitfalls, Ida Abbott's new book shows the way.

Find out how harnessing the powerful business principles of design thinking can make retirement your best chapter in life. There is no one right time or way to retire. Retirement is a major life transition; but if you spend the time designing a future filled with promise and possibilities, the prospect can be utterly exciting and revitalizing. In Retirement by Design, professional mentor and coach Ida Abbott shows you how the innovative business principles behind design thinking can be applied to plan a rich, fulfilling, and more meaningful retirement. Her guided workbook uses a business-like approach to leaving business, making your switch much smoother and less jolting. Whether you’re considering a new place to settle down, working through financial planning, strategizing how to unwind a business, or deciding on which organizations you want to stay engaged with, making critical decisions takes a lot of organization, thought, and planning. Abbott shows how the five principles of design thinking will revolutionize your retirement-planning process: Empathy: Get inside the shoes of your future self. What will be important to that version of you? Define: Hone in on what is and will be most critical for you to focus on (whether it’s volunteering, family, activities, or skills). Ideate: Draw, scribble, brainstorm, and throw around as many different retirement scenarios as you can come up with. Prototype: If retiring across the country in Arizona sounds perfect—try it out first. Come up with opportunities to test out your scenarios with short trips and trial time off. Test: This is the fun part—get back to the drawing board and try more retirement scenarios (and future versions of yourself) before sitting down to make those life-changing decisions. The new and innovative, self-coaching approach of Retirement by Design helps you spearhead and navigate a major next step in life. Whether your retirement is 10 years away or swiftly approaching, this workbook ensures you will create a future that is perfectly tailored to you.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

By any measure, the law as a profession is in serious trouble. Americans' trust in lawyers is at a low, and many members of the profession wish they had chosen a different path. Law schools, with their endlessly rising tuitions, are churning out too many graduates for the jobs available. Yet despite the glut of lawyers, the United States ranks 67th (tied with Uganda) of 97 countries in access to justice and affordability of legal services. The upper echelons of the legal establishment remain heavily white and male. Most problematic of all, the professional organizations that could help remedy these concerns instead jealously protect their prerogatives, stifling necessary innovation and failing to hold practitioners accountable. Deborah Rhode's The Trouble with Lawyers is a comprehensive account of the challenges facing the American bar. She examines how the problems have affected (and originated within) law schools, firms, and governance institutions like bar associations; the impact on the justice system and access to lawyers for the poor; and the profession's underlying difficulties with diversity. She uncovers the structural problems, from the tyranny of law school rankings and billable hours to the lack of accountability and innovation built into legal governance-all of which do a disservice to lawyers, their clients, and the public. The Trouble with Lawyers is a clear call to fix a profession that has gone badly off the rails, and a source of innovative responses.

This book examines the dissatisfaction within the legal community and offers practical, real world solutions for increasing lawyers' satisfaction with their careers. Contributors, including Scott Turow and Michael Tigar, explore the gap between aspiration and experience and share the experiences that have led them to this urgent call to reinvent the practice (and business) of law. Written with insight and candor, Raise the Bar shines much-needed light on the modern law practice and offers recommendations to restore some of the age-old satisfactions from a life as a lawyer in our society.