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Developmental Order: How to Quickly Build Professional Development Resources in Law Practice

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Law firms generally don’t have any sort of organized collection of internal professional development resources.  That can come up as a problem, in a whole host of ways.   For one thing, it reduces the quality of your staff, who sort of have to figure everything out themselves.   For another thing, it decreases your efficiency, because everyone is just waiting around, to ask their supervisors about what to do next, when they can’t figure it out .  Finally, it means that your staff may be looking for jobs that are more supportive of their professional growth.     But, even for those managing partners who believe that providing professional development resources would be a viable way to avoid that string of disasters, the question is how they would do it.     It seems like it would be hard, and might take a lot of work; however, there are a bunch of levers that could be pulled, with respect to generating professional development materials, to...

The Name Game: Law Firm Trade Names Are Still Underutilized

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During and after the pandemic, bar associations removed certain rules that were antithetical to remote practice, including so-called ‘ bona fi d e office’ rules, in many jurisdiction s .     Now, while not directly related to remote practice, bar associations also took aim at the prohibition (in some jurisdictions ) on brand names .  These days, not a single bar association ethics code proscribes the use of brand names by law firms.     And yet, the majority of law firms still choose a business names with the principal lawyers’ names in it.     In many ways, that’s a missed opportunity.   A brand name confers lots of benefits on law firms .  First, just slapping someone’s name on a business, offers up nothing about what the business does .  With a brand name, you can allude to, or define , the services you deliver .  For example, if you add ‘injury’ to the brand name for a personal injury law firm, that gives folks a sense f...