Professional Development

Feedback is constructive information you can use to identify problems you need to correct and strengths you can build on. It can also give you new ideas that will revitalize your practice. But getting feedback, even when you asked for it, can ...

If you’ve ever had someone say to you, “Come in here and shut the door," because you "need some feedback" on that project you just finished, you may have an instant aversion to the word “feedback.” For many of us, it’s a synonym for “criticism” ...

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 ...