It has always amazed me how lawyers speak very differently in formal meetings to how they have expressed themselves in correspondence. Business communication should be about expressing, not impressing by using jargon, cliché and archaic language. Actually, it doesn’t impress people, it just creates distance. People no longer want correspondence from their professional advisor that is aimed at ‘impressing’ them. I have already given my views in a previous post about how crucial correct grammar can be in business communication but vocabulary is also important. However, when looking at strategies to deal with these issues, one area that is often overlooked is how a business communicates with its clients. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact - it’s not always civil.Society is becoming more and more consumer orientated and with stiffer competition in all sectors, businesses really need to do what they can to ensure customer satisfaction and retention. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for 41 years. Making the changes the profession needs to make to stay competitive, to avoid having all our meals eaten by upstart innovators is what Biglaw, small law, solos, and every firm in between must do. We need to simplify what we do and how we do it. Request for Admission Number 25 supports my Occam’s Razor theory. Do you think that social media helps you to work smarter? Doubtful, but it does make you work harder because of all the time you spend on social media and the late nights you have to spend foraging for billable hours.Īs an aside, a recent Instagram feed, is hilarious and truer than most attorneys will cop to. Some people are starting to throttle back on social media. We suffer from information overload and problems concentrating. Simon said, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” He said that long before social media, and he was spot on. Not on any list but my own, and heretical as it may sound, although coming from this dinosaur, not all that surprising, reduce the time spent on social media. If you check it first thing, then you know what you have to do straight away, pushing things down on your to do list in order to respond to whatever crises or emergencies have arisen while you were unavailable. I had never really thought about why I do that, aside from being OCD and making sure I haven’t missed anything, but the reason makes sense, especially in today’s world where people on a team work remotely from all different time zones. Do work, if you have to, and we all know what that is like, but be working and make sure that’s on those timesheets.įifth: Check your email first thing. I don’t know whether an air mattress under your desk qualifies for napping purposes. If you’re not at your desk or, if offsite, readily available at a moment’s notice, then those powers know beyond a reasonable doubt that you’re not working. ![]() Another suggestion that will horrify the powers that be. So how efficient and effective were all those all-nighters that clients were billed for? Apparently our brains can only focus for 90 minutes at a time, and after that, brains need rest, preferably 15 to 20 minutes. ![]() Really? That’ll go over big with the powers that be. Here’s one list which I’m sure will provoke shudders to those whose metrics depend on hours billed and not results achieved. So, suggestions about how to work “smarter,” not “harder,” abound. Join us on September 21st for a CLE-eligible webinar on how you can avoid costly mistakes.
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