The Complete Lawyer - Volume 2

	FOCUS ON
	How To Prevent The Dreaded "Dissatisfied Client Syndrome" Client satisfaction rates among the Fortune 1000 plummeted by nearly 13 points in the past year. Local and regional markets fared little better. Why are clients so unhappy and how you can prevent the “dissatisfied client syndrome” with yours. By Marcie Borgal, BTI Consulting Group

What Do Clients Want?

Fully addressing client expectations may require lawyers and their firms to take a step back to basics – aligning lawyer training, work-life balance and retention with client interests for starters.
By Paula Patton, The NALP Foundation

Excellent Lawyers Go Way
Beyond The Technical Skills

If the deadline is today, I need to get it a week before today. I don’t need to get it at noon with a 5 o’clock deadline for filing. When a lawyer does that, he’s not being very responsive and fails to meet my expectations.
TCL Interview: Allen W. Nelson, Crawford & Company

The Most Frustrating Attorney
I Have Ever Worked With

When you ask him what time is it, get ready to listen to a long lecture on how to build a watch! He is an impatient listener, and will interrupt often to assist you in answering his own questions.
TCL Interview: Joe H. Hall, Specialty Caseworks

A Great Outside Counsel Is
Worth Their Weight In Gold

They must have an understanding of and respect for budgetary constraints, a view of his or her job as partnering with me and my company and a willingness to put in the hours when there's a crunch on.
TCL Interview: Gali Hagel, Hoover Group, Inc.

The Secret Of An
Effective Legal Team

Provide constructive advice; be quantitative When talking of risks; be clear and concise and be proactive in talking about how fees can be minimized because that discussion will inevitably come.
TCL Interview: Jane Jordan, Emory University

	BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
	Want Ad There’s no longer much mystery remaining as to what clients want out of their law firms. Try hard not to gasp, but do you remember Tom Hagen, consigliere to Don Corleone, in the movie The Godfather? By Alf Nucifora, Nucifora Consulting

	COACHING & MENTORING
	Coaching Tools For Better Client Communication Most lawyers know how to talk, but what about the ability to listen? Not only to what’s being said, but also for what’s not. By Laura Biering and Debby Stone, Corner Office Coaching

	COMMUNICATIONS
	Equality: If You Want The Best Results People who confuse professional expertise with infantalization have a hard time with equality. Most professionals assume that they have the answers and will do the thinking for the client. And most clients assume that they will be the receptacles of the professional’s thinking. The results are always diminished. By Nancy Kline, Time to Think, Inc.

	LEADERSHIP
	The Science & Art of Retaining Your Best Associate attrition is costly and wasteful in human and financial terms. Distressingly, many firms see it as an inevitability to be figured into the cost of doing business. Isn’t there another way to think about this? By Ellen Moran, Leadership Dialogues & Gary Schmidt, Saville Consulting, Inc.

	NAVIGATING YOUR CAREER
	Moving From The Stress Cycle To The Balance Cycle It’s especially hard for lawyers not to get caught up in the Stress Cycle. We are competitive, ambitious and typically impose unrealistic demands on ourselves. But you can break free of it. You can start by stopping. By Anne Whitaker, Career Development Coach & Counsel On Call

	PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
	Creating "MO" Time We spend more time at the office and get less done. Administrivia gobbles up huge chunks of the day. By the end we’re so strung out we can’t enjoy whatever down-time is left. So why can’t lawyers learn to manage time? By Stephanie Kane, Life in Law

Emotions Count. Sometimes
Even More Than Content.

70% of us experience great difficulty handling the conflicts and stress that inevitably surface at work. By building EQ skills lawyers can understand and manage emotions to improve their own performance, as well as that of their team.
By Lac D. Su & Nick Tasler, TalentSmart

	THE FAMILY—ELDER CARE
	Breaking The Stereotype Of Aging I continue to be awestruck at agism and the people who continue to dismiss a whole generation of adults as sick, infirm, forgetful, crochety, inflexible, and/or not quite up to the game of life. By Lucy Whelchel, Market Driven, Inc.

	WOMEN IN THE LAW
	10 Sure-Fire Ways To Lose A Client If you're not interested in confronting self-limiting beliefs, about your business development skills make sure to do the following 10 things. By Ellen Ostrow, Lawyers Life Coach

	WORK/LIFE BALANCE
	An Impossible Challenge Are we destined to fight for our lives, so that we are not cannibalized by our work as lawyers? Is the objective to compartmentalize our lives into at least two parts: (1) our life and (2) our work; and then defend life from work? By Dennis Coyne, Coyne Coaching & Consulting

	CLE CALENDAR
	CLE For The Whole Lawyer The Atlanta Bar CLE Board rings in the new Bar year committed to continuing its “Whole Lawyer” initiative. Tune in for programs and events that address building relationships with your clients, your practice areas, your personal and professional development needs, and CLE that suits your own schedule: CLE for the Whole Lawyer.

	LETTERS From The CLE Board Chair
	How To Give Clients What They Want To maintain lasting client relationships, it is imperative to strike that delicate balance between meeting their needs and your firm’s billable hours requirements. It all begins by understanding what your client wants. By Lynn M. Roberson, Swift, Currie, McGhee & Hiers, LLP

	From The Editor
	It's About the Relationship If you are a member of the leadership of a law firm large or small, or are an individual lawyer trying to grow your practice, what strategies or methodologies are available to you to help you address your clients’ most pressing concerns? There are many and they work. By Don Hutcheson, Editor & Publisher

	TECHNOLOGY
	Data Security For Small Firms Owning a small firm or a solo practice makes you the data security manager, with only yourself to answer to for security lapses. So, what kind of disaster recovery plan do you have in place? By Tom Alexander, CLC Technology

BOOK REVIEWS

Lowering the Bar

Marc Galanter’s book is the comprehensive source of jokes about lawyers in the United States. However, he does not merely compile and recite them; he also explores the historical and social context of jokes and offers some intriguing thoughts as to why lawyers are such a popular topic for them and why there is a prevalence of lawyer jokes in America.
Review By Monica R. Parker, The Great Escape

	HUMOR
	My fees are quite high, and yet you say you have little money?