Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part Five: The Chief Financial Officer
Photo by RDNE Stock project at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | November 22, 2023 This is the fifth in a series about questions articling students and new associates should consider when sizing up their new firm. This time, I will address the senior person in charge of the money, who could have any of the following […]
Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part Four: The Chief Technology Officer
Photo by Murray Gottheil By Murray Gottheil | November 14, 2023 This is the fourth in a series about questions that articling students and new associates should ponder in determining whether they have landed in the right place. This time I will address the chief technology officer (the “CTO”). Of course, being lawyers we need a […]
Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part Three: The Chief Operating Officer
Photo by August de Richelieu at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | November 7, 2023 In Parts One and Two, I set out some questions that articling students and young lawyers should ask about their firm’s managing partners and practice group leaders. Today I will tackle the much trickier issue of the chief operating officer (COO). The […]
Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part Two: The Practice Group Leader
Photo by Edmond Dantès at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | October 26, 2023 In Part One, I set out some questions that articling students and young lawyers should ask about the managing partner. This time let’s talk about your practice group leader (PGL). Here is a list of questions to help you determine the truth: If […]
Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part One: The Managing Partner
Photo by RDNE Stock project at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | October 24, 2023 When articling students or young lawyers join a law firm of any size, what they see at first is the carefully cultivated image that the law firm promotes and are often thrilled to be part of a fantasy world where every lawyer […]
The Ethics of Dictating Work Ethic
By Billy Hathorn, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons By Murray Gottheil | October 16, 2023 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Later he kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and decreed that going forward, people would have to work very, very hard, just to survive. From […]
That’s A Little Bit Too Thinky For Me
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | October 1, 2023 A young lawyer asked me for advice. He was contemplating making a jump from Big Law to a smaller firm, for the usual reason that he wanted to work less and enjoy life more. I was not completely sure that it was the […]
Stupid, Stupid, Stupid
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | September 27, 2023 I once proposed raising our hourly rates and was met with furious resistance by the head of our litigation department who assured me that no assessment officer would ever permit lawyers to charge the amounts that I had proposed. He was a brilliant […]
Artificially Human?
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | September 25, 2023 I have a theory about life which I espouse in my less optimistic moments. My theory is that for many people, things become less and less familiar as they age. What is socially acceptable changes, people dress and act differently, friends and family […]
The Zero You Deserve is Finally Here
Photo by Brandon Richardson at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | September 19, 2023 The title of this post is from an advertisement for Dr. Pepper’s zero sugar soft drink and is a nifty introduction to the topic of entitlement. One of my minor pet peeves is advertisements that tell me that I “deserve” things. How […]