You At Work

"William Melater" (you can call him "Bill") is a young associate who's agreed to blog from time to time about life on the lower rungs of the legal profession as "The Dis-Associate," including—occasionally—what irritates him.

The season is finally here. (Whew.) The endless NFL negotiations are, well, negotiated. The rookies have pushed through their two-a-days and preseason games—and we are at the coin flip. Last night the Packers showed they still have the ...

You have been working on finding that job in your dream location. You've created a timeline and you are sticking to it. Using both public and personal contacts you have identified the positions you want, and now you are ready to apply. How in ...

Oh, come on. It’s almost Labor Day weekend and nothing’s going anywhere today. So you can either put your feet up on your desk and blatantly loaf … or you can do what we’re doing. Put your head down, huddle up to the computer and pretend ...

Finding a new job is hard enough when you are looking in your own backyard, but the difficulty level increases when you are job hunting from states away. It may be easier, of course, if you are heading back to a place you once lived or if you ...

So you passed the bar. CONGRATULATIONS! Now you are a real lawyer. After the pain and torment of law school and the nerve-jangling business of studying for the bar, you’d think this would be a good time to relax and regroup—and ease slowly into ...

I just hired a great new employee using LinkedIn Jobs. It turned out to be an incredibly easy and effective way to identify good candidates and fill the position with a minimum of effort. Deciding between candidates was the only tough part of ...

Want to build your law practice? Then the first thing you want to do is get a little bit famous. And one route to fame is getting your byline in print and pixels. To all who just muttered, “Yeah, but that’s nearly impossible,” oh no, it isn’t! ...

Even though you went to law school and have spent your career so far practicing law, the truth is, you actually run your own small business—regardless of the size of your firm. And while you may like to think of your practice as a runs-itself ...

When I was growing up, among my favorite heroes were Atticus Finch, Perry Mason and Clarence Darrow. Yes, I know it could have had something to do with Gregory Peck, Raymond Burr and Spencer Tracey. But to me they represented an ideal of what ...