By Chere B. Estrin Legal Apartheid: The Poisonous Impact of the 'Non-Lawyer' Label on Professional Equality There is a petition going around to strike the term "non-lawyer" from use by the ABA. I can't help but stick my two cents in: "The use of the term "non-lawyer" creates an artificial hierarchy within the legal profession. It implicitly suggests that only licensed attorneys hold value or...
By Chere B. Estrin I had lunch last week with a friend who is the Director of Administration at a top, major law firm. The firm had been seeking a litigation paralegal for months. When I first received their search, the hiring requirements included 5-10 years of litigation paralegal experience, actual trial experience, ability to handle legal research, drafting and a whole host of other...
. Know now – before they start By Chere B. Estrin "…..a worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people."
Definition from a 2015 research study by Michael Housman and Dylan Minor at the Harvard Business School. You’ve certainly done it at least once – hired the Toxic Employee. You were sure they were “Ms. or Mr. Best Candidate...
By Chere B. Estrin This is the first of a two-part series. Next, we chat with Tara Eberhart, Paralegal Manager of an AmLaw firm who can straighten us out as to whether the paralegal position is about to be wiped out. I sat down with Dr. Don Billings, a long-time colleague, who knows just about anything one needs to know about legal technology and beyond. I figured he was one of the best to...
By Chere B. Estrin The other day while I was having my nails done and my lip waxed, I received a desperate call from one of our good clients, a major AmLaw 100 firm (the top in the country). The Talent Acquisition Manager had been looking for very experienced, sophisticated corporate paralegals across the entire country and could not, despite ads, referrals, many agencies and praying to the...
The Organization of Legal Professionals (OLP) has been surveying Litigation Support Professionals to uncover interesting insights and valuable facts to help LSPs make the most of their careers. The survey, sponsored by ZyLab and Career Numbers, is unlike traditional salary and utilization surveys. The survey is left open to regularly update the information and release new and interesting...
From our guest blogger, Tom Dezell:Be the Answer to the Hiring Managers’ Problemsby Tom DezellToday’s labor market is an employer’s market. Companies can select from arguably the largest candidate pool in history. Discouraged job seekers often complain that the disparity in numbers contributes to an atmosphere of employer arrogance. Their advantage of supply over...
I bet! In fact, I've often thought that being a law librarian would be a most interesting job. Just think about everything you would learn!"Librarians are curious people. We like to skim magazines and books, we like to surf the Web and we have some interest in a lot of topics. A former co-worker used to say that librarians are 'trivial' in that we are always picking up trivia -- a definite...
Goodness, gracious, this is a remarkable discussion about the future of big law firms! Thanks to lawyer, author, & blogger Robert J. Ambrogi for highlighting it in Legal Blog Watch:"When the general counsel of a major corporation says that the current model of the large law firm is heading towards extinction, ears perk up throughout the legal industry. That is precisely what happened...
Found this interesting post at the morepartnerincome blog which is sponsored by Juris,Inc.:"Hildebrandt’s Rees Morrison passes along a simple but clever technique for encouraging attorneys to improve efficiency by finding delegable tasks for non-lawyer members of the team. The idea comes from the corporate world but should work to everyone’s benefit in a law firm as well. The law...
