New Gig: American Lawyer 'Dicta' Column

I recently added to my hodgepodge of current professional pursuits by becoming a semi-irregular contributor to The American Lawyer. My first column is called On Life Support. On the point about the ABA considering 1,300 hours a full time billable year in 1963, I asked Joan Williams in our background interview if there was any sort of comparable baseline today. Loved her response: "They wouldn't touch that one with a 10-foot pole."

Responses:

• Jordan Furlong, There's no such thing as work/life balance


• Robert Ambrogi, Work-Life Balance and the Space-Time Continuum


• Scott Greenfield, Work-Life Balance or Professionalism: Who Wins?

Unhappy Meal: Little Thanks For Law In The Holiday Leftovers

Unhappy Meal
Originally uploaded by ninjaneil902

The festivities have prevented me from diving fully enough into this post from Law and Letters, "Why you shouldn't go to law school," and its active comment thread, but I do love this line: "'Thinking like a lawyer' is a bug, not a feature."

Should Mr. Gowder fail to convince you of the uber-toxic caliber of dissatisfaction in the legal field (that's "in," not even "with"!), don your flak jacket, stay well under cover, and peruse the comments to David Lat's innocent enough see-you-after-Thanksgiving post, which offhandedly invited folks to "bemoan [their] fate" in the comments if they happened to be working through the holiday.

Because You Build Better Professions Faster With Sticks Than With Carrots

Originally uploaded by Caselet

Adam Liptak has a good piece today about Building a Better Legal Profession, a group born, like so many useful and effective things in life, of frustration and impatience. (Someone ought to purchase holdingsomewhiteshoedfeettothefire.org and redirect it, just to avoid any potential confusion, yes?)