In this fifth post, inspired from Justice Carole Curtis’s Dealing with the Difficult Client (written when she was a lawyer), we take a look at how to handle the dishonest client. There are different degrees to which a client can be dishonest. On one end are clients who may tell half-truths or who conceal facts from you, and on the other are clients who maliciously lie to you. It isn’t often clear whether the intention is malicious or if the untold truth can come back to hurt you or your client at a later date.

Outright lies can be a …

It’s tax time and the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.    Do you feel that you are paying to much taxes but only complain to your accountant when its tax time?  A better approach to to be proactive.

Check out tips to help you stay on top of next years taxes:

IDENTIFY HOW MUCH TAXES YOU ARE PAYING – AND BE PROACTIVE ABOUT REDUCING IT

1. Don’t wait until tax time. Contact your accountant early in the year
2. Have your tax bill forecasted in advance to identify potential tax reduction opportunities
3. Set aside

Lots of baby boomers are avoiding succession planning. One can only assume that at least some of them are lawyers!

So, for today’s tip, I’ll give you 5 good reasons to stop procrastinating:

1. Proactively planning for succession allows you to minimize the risk of having to deal with it in crisis mode, should you decide to retire earlier than expected.
2. It takes time to develop a thorough succession plan.
3. It may take longer than you expect to implement your succession plan. So, you will want to pad projections for training, mentoring and hiring, in case things don’t go as planned.

In the old working model, being less human—less attuned to interactions and emotional issues—was often a competitive advantage. Messy human stuff needlessly complicated matters. But the AI revolution will reward those who are more human in their approach to services involving high value consultation and collaboration.

How long will it be before robots learn people skills? Although there have been significant advances since the development of computer-based therapists several decades ago, humans have a solid head start that we need to exploit.

Gary Klein is a research psychologist known for his pioneering work in how people make high stakes decisions …

Think about all the aspects of your job that you weren’t trained for.

Delegating

Managing people

Priority management

Developing job descriptions

Interviewing

Performance management

Leadership

Business planning

Retreats

Marketing

How much of your day is spent on this list and other such functions? How much of your energy does it take to learn and do it all?

Can you assess the impact on your success as a professional, and even on your very quality of life, if you were to improve in any of these areas, by say 20%? 30%? 40%? What about improvements to multiple areas?

You see where …

Can all grinders become finders?

The need for heads-up entrepreneurial lawyers grows as heads-down commodity “grinder” work diminishes. How can we develop more “finders” who see fresh opportunities to attract clients on a daily basis? How can we accelerate this shift in mindset? How can we use every interaction to enhance the firm’s reputation for making clients feel they are in good hands? And how can traditional rainmakers become better finders in an evolving marketplace?

While formal strategy sessions are vital to set the firm’s overall marketing and services direction, the day-to-day work of cultivating differentiated, high value consultation and …

What is a “learning experience”?

Merely “having an experience” does not guarantee how much we will learn from that experience.

Lawyers are rarely trained to excel in the most basic skill required to thrive in today’s work environment: How to learn faster in action. A widely accepted rule of thumb is that 80% of the knowledge needed to do your job is gained informally, during routine work activities and interactions. Yet developing this valuable resource is typically left to chance rather than leveraged intentionally.

A recent issue of The Economist notes, “…employers are putting increasing emphasis on learning as a …

In this fourth post of a series inspired by Justice Carole Curtis’s Dealing with the Difficult Client, we discuss the dependant client. The dependent client can appear like the perfect client. The client looks to you for answers and easily accepts your recommendations. If a file goes smoothly, no problem. But if something goes awry the client will blame you for a critical decision.

As the lawyer you are not the decision-maker. Your role is to be an advisor and to help the client make decisions. Make it clear to the dependant client that important decisions are wholly in …

This is the third post inspired from Justice Carole Curtis’s Dealing with the Difficult Client (written when she was a lawyer). The obsessed client is the one that emails you at 2 a.m. about an aspect of the case. The client can take up not just a lot of your time but also use up your firm’s resources – from emails to daily calls to the receptionist and law clerk, and whoever else is on the team. The client may do their own research, insist on keeping copies of everything, and forward you with news clippings and cases that the …