While you may not be able to control the economy, the legislature, regulations or trends, you may be able to stay one step ahead of them. That’s where the product life cycle comes in. If you understand the product life cycle, you may be able to avoid the valleys and stay ahead of the competition. Don’t be put off by the term “product” — the concept applies to legal services, too.

Your law firm cares about your personal and professional growth. But make no mistake, the law is a business — often a cutthroat one. Your firm has made a big investment in you in terms of salary, benefits, training and overhead. It expects a return on that investment.  As a young lawyer, it’s important to understand your firm’s point of view as to your value, and to a great degree it comes down to dollars and cents.

Given the nonstop, hyped-up headlines, you may worry about competing with a robot for your next job. Rather than fret, why not start investigating ways artificial intelligence technology can give you an edge — both in the job market (somebody needs to know this stuff) and in actually delivering legal services? (Your competition is working on this right now.)

“This is the year.” He sounded casual enough, but I saw the inner force he hoped to screw to the sticking place. “This is the year I finally get out of here and start doing things I love.” We’d been down this road before. The goal is always the same: Leave the firm where he feels tied to work he doesn't enjoy. But extracting himself has proved nearly impossible. Quitting ... anything, is rarely easy. Here are five things that just may get you to hold your nose, close your eyes and take the leap. It’s your time. ...

How can you learn confidence? Sometimes you have to figure out how to act like you're confident until you feel it. Here's one way to go about it.

Big firm or small, there's a single question the partners ask about young associates: "Is she a keeper?" And, while legal skills certainly count, we all know what ultimately swings the pendulum on that question: "Can she bring in clients?" Help has arrived — just in time for fall — in the form of our newly updated e-zine, packed with practical advice on business development for new lawyers.

I am a lawyer and a parent. I also try to have a social life, volunteer, take care of my pets, and run a household (not completely by myself, thank goodness). Recently, a friend — also a lawyer and parent — and I were discussing the challenges of work-life balance, or work-life integration. Here's one question we tossed around: Is it “better” to compartmentalize work and the rest of life or to integrate them? For example, if I am at the pool with my daughter in the afternoon and a client calls, do I answer and handle the issue at that moment? Or, do I send it to voicemail and deal with it later?

Earlier this year, I shared statistics about threats of violence made against attorneys. Stephen Kelson, a shareholder at Christensen & Jensen PC in Salt Lake City, focuses on commercial litigation, personal injury and mediation, but he has also studied violence against legal professionals and prevention for over a decade. He was gracious to answer some follow-up questions on lawyer safety, based on results from his 26 statewide surveys.

Effective marketing is an ongoing journey, especially because the whole landscape of online marketing is always in flux. Your law practice changes over time, and changes at Google, Facebook and other big sites affect your strategy, too. Even online user behavior is changing at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with. Carving out success in this kind of shifting environment often feels like a gargantuan task, but the challenges can be overcome. You just need to be sure that your firm has a plan in place to adapt to the changes.

Jeff Bezos has many powerful mantras for his business, but this is one of my favorites: It's always "Day 1" at Amazon. What he means is that Amazon will never stop being a startup. It’s a message that he drilled down on in a recent letter to shareholders (written from a building he works in named “Day 1”), in which he wrote: "Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1."