Professional Development

The associate walked into my office clearly upset and asked if we could talk. She closed the door and let loose: “George is such an asshole! He makes my life miserable and now he's given me a bad review!” She checked off the details of this ...

Lawyers can easily find themselves, very early in their careers, in a predicament of epic proportions. It happens when you don’t know what to do next, and end up in a rut — a long, deep track made by the repeated passage of the lawyers (um, ...

Question: I'm an inexperienced lawyer, and naturally timid. How can I be expected to thrive in a networking environment? What's the best way to follow up after meeting someone? When should I ask for their business? In this ...

The wait to hear about an online job application is often too long, and the process is often discouraging. If you don’t have a personal connection to the employer, it will be difficult to get through the screening process without matching most ...

One of the striking things about law practice is our “sink-or-swim” mentality when it comes to junior associates. They do their law studies, we recruit them through various mechanisms, and then we basically just leave them to it. Then comes ...

It was my worst nightmare as a young lawyer.

As I looked out at the audience while teaching a CLE course recently, I started to wonder how many of them were there because they were interested in the material or because they just needed the credit hours. What were they really doing when ...

It’s a short list of skills that separate great performers from average performers. Confidence, also called personal presence, is one of those critical skills. Those who have it (or fake it well) usually succeed. Clients expect you to have ...

There's no getting around it. As a lawyer, you must be able to meet the gaze of everyone you speak to, and you should always make eye contact when addressing an audience. Easy to say, of course, but somewhat harder to execute. I’ve heard lots ...

I appreciate a nice, tidy “to-do” list — and how moving through the list can offer clarity of purpose, digestible milestones and a sense of accomplishment. But when it comes to mapping out their career paths, lawyers can find a to-do list is ...