I know this has nothing to do with technology, but I think it is pretty cool. Andrew Simpson is a sole practitioner in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was handling a messy case between a mother and her son. Some complicated Federal jurisdiction questions came into play, and the case made its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At The Court Mr. Simpson didn't just prevail, he secured a unanimous 9-0 decision for his client! How cool is that. And he didn't just waltz into court with no opposition. His adversaries were represented by D.C. powerhouse firm Hogan Lovells.
One of my favorites shows to watch on television as a kid was Hogan's Heros. My how it amused me as time and again the misfit prisoners befuddled the hapless Nazis. One of my favorite bits was when Hogan and the boys would gather round the coffee pot that they had transformed into a receiver, to listen in on the bug they had placed in Colonel Klink's office. The intel gathered from that bug -- at least by Hollywood standards -- doomed the war for the Germans.
Guess what? If you have an Amazon Echo (commonly referred to as Alexa) in your law office, you are as vulnerable as Colonel Klink, and possibility violating your duty of attorney-client privilege to your clients.
Alexa is a powerful electronic device (along with its Google cousin Google Home, and others in the commerce pipe....). It is on all the time. It is listening all the time. It is processing all the time. No my dear friend it is not just on when you say the prompt word "alexa"). It must be on and listening at all times to hear that alexa prompt, and then rise to its next level of response. Once that magic word is spoken, Alexa really turns on the hearing. And she does not always stop. I have found that with my Echo (which is not in my law office) I have to frequently tell her "alexa off" or "alexa stop" to make that blue listening ring go off. While Amazon has never said as much, rumors are that all the sounds going in to every Alexa device world-wide are stored digitally on Amazon's servers. Giving a third party an invitation to record the privileged conversations occurring in your law office should give you pause to think about your possible breach of your attorney-client privilege. Consider this: audio recordings collected by an Alexa device have already been used as evidence in a murder case. They are hearing a lot!
Appreciate also that Alexa runs over your wi-fi network. If there are security breaches in your wi-fi, those vulnerabilities extend to Alexa. I remember watching a demonstration on television once by a hacker who was able to breach a wi-fi network, and then sit there while his computer acted as a mirroring screen for the computer that he had hacked. The same could easily enough happen with Alexa. If breached, she could become the bug in Colonel Klink's office, providing a stereo broadcast of everything said in your law office.
The device itself is also vulnerable. Last week the Amazon network went down so that Alexa devices could not talk back to their owners. They were still listening mind you and recording, but you would have never known it because she could not respond to what she heard and that blue recording circle was not illuminating. As more Alexa devices proliferate, you can be sure that hackers will accept the challenge and find ways to break-in.
Don't get me wrong, I Love my Alexa. But there is a right time and place for everything, and wrong time and place for everything. There is never a right time to have an Alexa in your law office.
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If you know me, you know I love practice management systems (what we used to call case management software in pre-cloud days). Some folks still call it "case-management." That's a gross misnomer, cause the stuff does so, so, so much more. Make the mistake of asking me a question on practice management systems and I'll talk to you until your ears bleed (just ask my friend Shane who bought me coffee yesterday morning and then asked....)
Aaron has his own preferences, that you can read about. As for me, I place Clio and Rocket Matter (we use Rocket Matter in our practice) at the top of the heap. CosmoLex and Practice Panther are moving up the mountain with impressive strides. MyCase is an old timer that is still relevant. Abacus and Amicus? Forget about 'em.
There are some other players that Aaron does not mention, but that I will: HoudiniEsq, Smokeball, LexRex.
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I can remember the first telephones I bought for my fledgling law office years ago. It was a Merlin system from AT&T. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world, and at the time it was. Sleek phone sets. Two big hardware boxes hanging in the utility closet. Music on hold, call transfer, do not disturb, voice mail. It rocked! And it was expensive!
We used that Merlin system for decades (heck you can still buy used sets online to this day!). Then newer stuff came out. Stuff that was affordable to buy, and cheaper to use on a monthly basis. We went with an internet telephone system from 8x8. It too had all the latest bells and whistles. On the software side it still does, because that stuff lives and grows in the cloud. The hardware still works just fine but, of course, newer stuff has hit the street since we transitioned six or seven years ago.
Family law is an intriguing practice area. As a family law lawyer you must be an expert in multiple areas of substantive law: family, civil procedure, evidence (yes, evidence, if you are good family lawyer!), tax, probate, even criminal. You need to be adept at negotiation. And, you must be a skilled trial lawyer. Poo-poo on those in the legal profession who say family lawyers don't need skills...
Depending on how you craft your practice, you can do a lot of traveling for work, or very little. I have friends around the country who maintain statewide practices. By choice, those folks live out of suitcases. Alternatively there are people like me, who limit their practices to one or two counties, thus avoiding the work-hotel life (though for me, practicing in the commuter hell of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties does present its challenges).
On the plus side, when I do travel for work, it is usually fun travel. As a Fellow in the AAML and the IAFL, there are a plethora of conferences available. Throw in the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association, and you can really travel for work and pleasure. And why not?
If your budget allows, work/CLE conferences expand your professional skills, expand your business network, and expand your personal horizons. They are a wonderful distraction from the day to day rigor of practicing law.
Recent work travels have provided a rewarding life balance for me. London, Bahamas, Lisbon, Chicago, Savannah, Tokyo, Stuttgart. That's about 50,000 airplane miles, and three, four weeks of time. But it is professional time mixed with personal time. That is a great combination.
As family law lawyers we all work very hard. We need to reward ourselves, and maintain a degree of separation from the emotion of our clients' worlds. Take a breath, step away. Find a conference. State bar associations put on great programs. The ABA puts on great programs. State Chapters of the AAML put on great programs, and you don't have to be an AAML Fellow to attend. In States that have them, certified specialist organizations put on great programs in great locations. Treat yourself!
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I have watched movies from bygone eras where the boss man speaks into a microphone, then the recording is handed over to his female secretary for typing up. To me these were extra steps that just were not productive, nor did the exercise foster creativity through reflection.
I have never, ever dictated anything (okay, about 15 years ago I tried Dragon Speaking, but it didn't work as well as typing, so I tossed it). For me, it has always been faster and better to type it up myself. Now that 99% of my written communications are electronic (either as emails or pdf), that practice is even stronger.
Apparently, though, the idea of dictation is not dead. Over at attorney@work, Eric Wangler has a nice little article on the continued viability of dictation. And, it looks like today's dictation platforms are a far cry from those tape recorders of yesteryear. Please click here to read Eric's article.
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Happy day after Christmas. I hope everyone is taking a few days off, and looking forward to the New Year. I know I am. Well, not completely. I had to procure some emergency orders for a client last week, and now I am needing to communicate with the other party. The only means available to me is the sending of text messages. But I want to make sure I have a record of the communications, and I don't want to be sending from my very private smartphone.
I learned this morning that it is possible to send messages from my computer to a cell phone number. Mark Coppock has a great instructional article at Digital Trends. From your Outlook, or Gmail, or other email program, in the "to" box you simply enter the recipient's cell phone number followed by the designation for the recipient's cell phone service provider, and off you go. For example, 9251234567@text.att.net would get your email to an AT&T subscriber with the phone number (925)123-4567.
Here is a table for the most popular cell phone service providers:
AT&T: number@txt.att.net
T-Mobile: number@tmomail.net [You may have to put a 1 before the number for it to work with Mobile]
The beauty of this system is that I have a record of the message in the sent folder of my email program. I don't have to take a screen shot of my phone, I don't have to run an app to archive the message. Very handy...
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It is amazing how much stuff I have plugged in to my computer. There is my internet phone. My webcam. Speakers. Multiple monitors. Wi-fi. A scanner. A printer. Chargers, and on and on.
Fortunately, someone somewhere invented USB ports. I have four built into my computer. What is great about USB, is the expandability. Each of the USB ports on your computer can be expanded, like a tree growing branches. Plug a hub into a USB port, and you create more capacity. Plug a hub into a hub, and you create more capacity. You can daisy chain to your heart's content, and expand your capacity without limit. Heck, I may plug a blender into my computer and make some margaritas!
I needed more USB capacity, so I went shopping. Turns out Amazon has its own 4-port hub, and it's quite good.
This little guy turns one USB port into four. It draws its power from your computer. And it works great. I am very happy with mine. Here's the best news: it costs $6.99 at Amazon Prime. That's a great bargain.
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One of the most essential parts of fair procedure and due process in a trial is the pre-trial discovery. Legal teams on both sides of the case are legally obligated to share and exchange all relevant documentation in an effort to avoid “trial by ambush”.
The concept of pre-trial discovery is becoming more and more difficult, though. With the growth of cross-border litigation in our vastly global economy coming to an all-time high, discovery has become a lot more complex.
During discovery, dealing with multilingual documents makes the entire process much more laborious. This can affect collecting, filtering, reviewing, and processing all of the various documents. One of the best ways to handle these multilingual documents is by following a decision-making algorithm for legal translation that you can use to complete your discovery efficiently and accurately.
What’s the volume of the discovery documents you’re looking through?
You can determine how you’ll handle your multilingual discovery documents based on how many legal documents you have to translate. For smaller volumes of discovery documents that hold less than 1000 words for translation into maximum two languages, the smart course of action would be to choose a full legal document translation that translates every page.
This would be done by hiring a human translator who has a legal background or subject matter expertise in the legal field so that they can accurately translate the source text.
Alternatively, if you need to translate higher volumes of discovery documents, full human translation can often be too expensive. Instead, you can partner with a professional translation company so that they can filter through the documents and identify a smaller subset of those documents to engage in full human translation. These professional translation services usually relies on two key options: machine translation and foreign language document review.
Machine translation
Machine translation works like this:
Scan, OCR (optical character recognition), and index all of the documents. These are then fed through a machine translator so that the translation company can determine the “overview” of each document and what it contains.
Your internal legal team goes over all of the documents that went through the machine translator to figure out which ones are the most relevant to the case.
All of the documents that were deemed relevant will then be translated word-for-word by a qualified legal translator
Foreign language document review
For foreign language document reviews, the usual process is:
The translation agency you hire will get onsite reviewers to determine which documents are relevant to the case by applying legal principles of privilege. These onsite reviewers are usually professional translators with legal expertise or multilingual attorneys.
This step is optional: For documents that are difficult to discern whether they are relevant or not, onsite reviewers can prepare summaries for review by the internal legal team in an oral or written form.
Once the set of documents have been finalized and approved as relevant to the case, they undergo full document translation by qualified human translators.
Choosing a combination of machine learning and foreign language document review is the most cost-effective approach when dealing with multilingual documents in discovery. Document types that have a higher chance of being central to the case – such as meeting protocols, contracts, or agreements – might be chosen to go through a more intensive foreign language document review. Meanwhile, the rest of the documents can go the machine translation route. Striking a strong balance between the two options and instituting a decision-making algorithm for deciding will earn you better results in your cross-border cases.
By Sirena Rubinoff is the
Content Manager at Morningside
Translations. She earned her B.A. and Master’s Degree from the Medill
School of Journalism at Northwestern. After completing her graduate
degree, Sirena won an international
fellowship as a Rotary Cultural Ambassador to Jerusalem. Sirena covers topics related to software and website
localization, global business solutions, and the translation industry as a
whole.
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I like this! It is the PowerCube. It features a 5 foot long grounded cord, four grounded plugs, and two USB outlets. It's a great alternative to the long, unruly power strips that we now use. I particularly like the two USB outlets given how many devices have USB chargers.
PowerCube also has versions without the cord, and without the USB outlets.
Plus, they come in all kinds of fun colors!!!
Good news, these babies are being sold at big discounts all over the internet for Black Friday. Search PowerCube
Wall plug with USB
Wall plug without USB
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As new technology emerges and new trends take over, how we market our business changes. You have to keep up in order to stay relevant, and all of the moving pieces should work together seamlessly so you can spend more time focused on generating new clients, and less time trying to string these things together.
So starts a very, very relevant post by Tom Foster over at Attorney@work.com
Utilizing client relationship management software
Reputation management
Lead nurturing
Using analytics
True this is an infomercial piece for Tom's company, Foster Web Marketing. The bottom line though is that it is also a tidy and fresh reminder of what we need to think about in our internet marketing worlds. Please click here to take a read.
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Do you wrestle with stacks of bank statements for your cases? Are you manually entering transactions from the statements into Excel spreadsheet? Are you begging for a better way? We may have one for you.
Jim Schaefer is a great forensic accountant based in Southern California. His firm, Schaefer & Company, specializes in family law forensics. Like me, he is also a repaid tech geek. Today I am lucky enough to have Jim guest posting on a new discovery of his for discovery in your cases. Here's Jim to tell you about PerfectAudit.com:
As you know, a direct mechanical tracing is comprised of two
parts: check register and
characterization columns. Perfect Audit
automates the check register portion. The software incorporates the bank
statement formats for bank accounts and credit card statements to provide a
pretty good quality OCR result from pdf format. (Brokerage statements are
beyond its scope.)
Picture feeding pdf bank statements into a hopper. In
a day or two you receive a searchable transactions listing that may be
downloaded in Microsoft Excel format. Thus Perfect Audit gives you the
check register portion for about 40 cents per pdf page. (you pay for what
you use with no minimum monthly charge).
Before using the Perfect Audit transaction data, you will
want to create a running balance column in your check register and check
against bank statement balances. I find that there are a few transactions
that are double-entered that are easily corrected.
Perfect Audit really shines when you are searching for the
other side of an internal money transfer for wire transfer as there is a search
capability on the dollar amount.
One tip is important. If you provide duplicate bank
statements to Perfect Audit, Perfect Audit will give you duplicate entrees in
its transaction listings. Thus it is best to avoid sending duplicate
statements to Perfect Audit.
I have seen unfavorable ratings of the software on the
web. My experience differs and has been quite good. (…and my
clients love it when I tell them we are using the latest robotic technology to
reduce the cost of their tracing.)
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To this day -- 30 years later -- I remember a story my law school civil procedure professor told us about his first attorney job. 20 years earlier he had been hired by a prominent Wall Street firm. He was assigned to a team for work on an appeal to a U.S. Court of Appeal. For three weeks his only task was to research the lives and histories of the justices assigned to the case. Not just their written opinions, but where they went to school, who they were married to, what their children were about, what kind of food they ate. What size shoe they wore... That level of intel gathering impressed me. The need to know your judge stuck with me.
I am a firm believer that it is only good lawyering to learn as much as you can about the judge you are litigating in front of. Venture capital and the artificial intelligence world agree with me, and their help is on the way.
Gavelytics is a start-up that focuses on gathering info about, and predicting rulings of, the judges
you are going in front of -- even in simple old family law.
Right now Gavelytics is limited to LA County and Riverside County, but that will change. It is also light on, but not without, family law judges. The user interface is pretty cool. The landing page for each judge includes where they are, who they work with, how you contact them, where they went to school, how they got to the bench. Take a look:
Click the image for a larger look
There's more. Here are some of the Gavelytics tools:
Judicial Workload
Learn how long it takes to get to trial, the average delay between complaint filing and the initial CMC, and average case length, all compared to the jurisdictional average.
Gavelscore
Discover whether a judge has ruled more often for plaintiffs or defendants in bench trials. No more guesswork about a judge's most important decisions.
Motion Analyzer
See how a judge has ruled on 100+ different types of California motions, including summary judgment, demurrers, and motions to compel.
Motion Details
Compare a judge's motion ruling tendencies to the jurisdictional average, providing crucial context so you can determine if your judge is an outlier–and what to do about it.
Learn how often parties make CCP § 170.6 filings against your judge
Take advantage of the wisdom of the crowds and see how often other parties paper your judge, all searchable by filing party and case type.
See crucial judge ruling and docket speed data in a single dashboard
The Judge Summary
Takes the most important judicial data points, like tendencies on summary judgment motions, discovery motions and docket speed, and puts them in a simple dashboard for easy reference.
What's it cost? $35 to $65 per month. Not bad. This is a technology that I am going to have to keep my eye on....
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Here's an interesting one for you my fellow members of the bar...
I am in the process of negotiating the settlement of a case. As with most cases, it has been a back and forth process. Last week opposing counsel sent me an email with settlement terms. On Monday I called the attorney's office and left a message asking him to call me. No return call. Yesterday morning I sent an email to the attorney asking him to call me so that we could wrap up the settlement. No return call. Today I called his office again.
The receptionist answered. “Hello.
John Harding to speak with _ _ _ please on the _ _ _ matter.” “Are
you calling in response to the last email he sent you?” “I am calling to talk
about the entire case.” Then she says, “There is no need for you to talk to him
unless you are calling to accept all of the terms of his email.”
Say what? Am I wrong, or is it out of line to be told by an opposing attorney's support staff when I can discuss a case with opposing counsel? Am I wrong to expect opposing counsel to return my call? Only after the receptionist emailed her boss, was I able to schedule a phone call with him for the next day.
Unbelievable. Then again, maybe I missed something during all those lectures on courtesy and professionalism....
I would love some feedback from the audience on this.
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If you fit the norm, the answer is 2.3 hours per day.
According to an exhaustive study completed by software company Clio, 2.3 hours is the average. The study results, published by Lawyerist.com, assert that "on average, lawyers bill less than 30% of their time. And they only collect on about 20% of their time."
Interesting data. According to the study:
Hours billed—utilization rate—goes up quickly as the firm grows. For solos, it’s about 25%. In firms of 4–7 lawyers, it goes up to about 40%. Above 10 lawyers, the average utilization rate is about 50%.
So what are lawyers doing with that unbilled time? According to the survey Clio added to its report this year, about half of that time goes to administration. About a third of it goes to business development (marketing) activities.
These numbers make sense to me. I may be doing better than 2.3 hours a day, but it still intrigues, surprises, frustrates me, how much of my time is consumed on tasks other than practicing law. Please click here to read the entire article.
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True story. I was flying out of Istanbul, Turkey the very day that the Trump administration's laptop controls for air travel went into effect. Of course, one of the airports that was subject to the new requirement that laptops had to be checked was Istanbul's Ataturk.
With my arrival at the gate for my Turkish Air flight to San Francisco, my Mac Book Pro was bubble
wrapped, labeled, logged, and then stacked with many others into a hardshell suitcase. Some 15 hours later that suitcase was opened at the luggage carousel in San Francisco, and dozen of laptops spilled onto the floor. I was tired. I was lazy. I grabbed my Mac, opened the lid, powered it on, and saw light. It was alive. Good enough for me. I signed the receipt and headed home.
It was not until the next day that I noticed that the case on my Mac had been cracked, Too late to seek recourse from the airline. But the lesson was learned. Even with bubble wrap, my computer was not able to withstand the rough and tumble world of airline baggage handling.
That flight from Istanbul eventually led to the purchase of a beautiful new Mac Book Pro. I also became more sensitive to the handling of my laptop while in motion. Recommendations led me to the BookBook Vol. 2 case from twelvesouth. Made of leather, with a crush proof spine, the BookBook is custom made for the Mac Book Pro. As twelvesouth describes it:
BookBook provides six-sided protection with reinforced corners on the outside, while velvety soft, microfiber lines the interior. Zip BookBook closed and now your MacBook is disguised as a vintage book that has been proven to prevent theft. How many other MacBook cases can say that?
Do I like it? Yes I do. The leather is rich. The custom Mac Book Pro fit pleases the German engineer in me. The zippers pull smooth and easy. I am confident in the rigid protection it provides, The $79.95 price isn't ridiculous for what you get.
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Harding & Associates Family Law.
Artificial intelligence, "AI", seems to be everywhere in the law practice discussion. But what is it? I don't really know? To resolve my lack of clarity I have been looking for the definitive summary. That has been a struggle. Much like the King's new clothes, there is plenty of buzz, but little explanation.
[T]eaching computers how to learn, reason, communicate, and make decisions. Cognitive tools are trained vs. programmed — learning how to complete tasks traditionally done by people, where the focus is looking for patterns in data, testing the data, and finding/providing results. Or, as I like to think about it, a research assistant who can sift through the deck and tell you what it found.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, refers to computer software and systems that don’t just do tasks they’ve been programmed for in advance—they actually learn as they go, improving their performance through feedback. These programs can quickly learn to complete data-intensive tasks that were previously relegated to bored and weary humans. By recognizing patterns in the relationships between words or data points, computers learn how to identify relevant information, recognize mistakes, and spot inconsistencies—all faster, and usually better, than humans do.
Okay, I kind of get it. But how is AI utilized by lawyers? That also seems to be a nebulous question. Here's more golden nuggets from Above The Law:
If you’ve used Google to find a song with just a few words from a lyric or searched Netflix to pick out a comedy that’s safe to watch with kids, you have used applied machine learning. Machine learning is an area of artificial intelligence that enables computers to self-learn, without being explicitly programmed, to look for specific pieces of information.
When lawyers use machine learning for discovery or internal investigations, it’s commonly called technology assisted review (TAR) or predictive coding. Although TAR has been around for a while, lawyers and litigation support professionals still have questions about how to best use it on individual cases.
Okay, we have a vague description of AI. What are some of the actual applications for legal practitioners? More from Legal Technology Today:
The primary areas where AI is being applied in the law, so far, include the following broad categories:
review of documents for discoverable or otherwise relevant information, generally referred to as technology-assisted review (TAR).
legal research through automated searches of a universe of case law and statutes.
contract and legal document analysis.
proofreading, error correction, and document organization.
There's still plenty to learn, but is is obvious the dialogue has started. Is it too early for family law lawyers to get on board? Of course not. Large marital estate generate lots of data for divorce. If I am understanding AI, the tools that are developing could be quite useful to us in wrangling all of the information and date more efficiently and effectively. We need to pay attention to this topic as family law practice continues to evolve beyond just the evolving statutes and case law.
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I love to travel (even it it is for work). It is a topic we have posted on before. Here for instance. And here. Recently I have been doing more business travel (a phase that happens about every 5 years). The uptick has invited me to update my travel tips, that I would now like to share with you.
Flying
When it comes to flying my core beliefs haven't changed. Southwest and Alaska work great for California and Nevada flights. Anything longer than that, and I fully advocate traveling first or business class.
For those California and Nevada flights I have a new option. JetSuiteX. This is a regional airline that uses regional jets. Its current route map includes Concord, San Jose, Burbank, and Las Vegas. What makes JetSuiteX so great. The airports. Check-in is a breeze. The airline recommends you arrive 30 minutes before your flight. You go to their private terminals, check in with the other dozen or so fliers, then walk to and onto the nearby jet. My closest airport is Concord. My destination airport is Burbank. Both are awesome alternatives to the frustrations of SFO, OAK, and LAX (any day I can avoid LAX is a good day!) The Concord terminal is great because there is free parking right there. Burbank requires a shuttle ride, but since I use Wingz in Southern California, parking is irrelevant. The planes are kewl, the pricing is good, and baggage, drinks, and snacks are complimentary.
Ground Transportation
Speaking of transportation, lots of fresh discoveries. Limos are out. Too expensive, and often times unreliable. I now use Wingz whenever I can. Think of Uber and Lyft, but with better pricing and better drivers. My last two trips have been in a very nice Tesla S.
Luggage
Most of the trips I am making these days, if they require an overnight, are for two or three days. On those short trips I have adopted the carry-on mantra. My carry-on equipment list includes a Travel Pro Magna 2 and an Everki Versa laptop backpack.
I like the Travelpro because of the telescoping handle, the 360 degree spinner, and the folding suit bag. On to the backpack. Yes, yes, yes I am crazy for briefcases. However, when it comes to airline travel, the Everki really works. It has a luggage strap in the back so that I can drop it over my Travelpro's luggage handle and then just roll along. It is checkpoint friendly, so I don't have to remove devices at security and put them in storage bins, and it has an abundance of felt padding to limit scratching to protect my Mac Book Pro and iPad Pro in the rough and tumble world of air travel. Oh yeah, it also has compartments for smartphones and sunglasses. Note: When it comes to luggage, and every other piece of gear mentioned, online prices are all over the place. Make sure you shop around.
Other Stuff
Here's some other tips. Make sure you travel with a multi-outlet, multi-usb power strip with a 9 foot cord, plenty of chargers and cables, zip lock bags for cords, cables, and dirty laundry. Finally, and this a Great tip: disposable hair net bags to wrap your stinky, street grime infected shoes. You can also wrap the hotel remote and telephone handset in them for a layer of germ protection.
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Divorce lawyer Erin Levine is a friend. She also reads this blog. I know the latter to be true because, as a friend, she tells me that she reads this blog. On top of all that, Erin is now an internet star. No, I am not talking about her new legal start-up, Hello Divorce. I am talking about her appearance on Lawyerist.com.
Erin's Desk! (Didn't know if she would be happy with me putting a picture of here here?)
Lawyerist.com is one of my favorite blogs. Lots of great lawyer stuff. One of my favorite sections of the blog is its How Lawyers Work feature. Each week Lawyerist has an interview with a lawyer about his or her work space, and the technology he or she uses. Fun stuff (with pictures).
Guess what? This week Erin is the featured star in How Lawyers Work. Yahoo!!!! Click here to check her out! Erin, when next we meet I shall bow to your celebrityness!! Way to Go!
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According to a survey conducted by the State Bar of Texas, most of us lawyers are satisfied with our jobs. 11,000 lawyers were surveyed, and a slim 13.5% said they were dissatisfied with being a lawyer. That's pretty good.
I know I complain about the biz, but at the end of the day I would say I am satisfied with my chosen career. I get to do intellectually challenging work. I am a member of a learned trade. I get to work in comfortable physical spaces. I earn a decent living. What more can you ask for? Well, I guess if I were to stick to the Caddyshack mantra, I could hold out for total consciousness....
