@AdLawyer Keep overhead low and don’t borrow money. Be ruthless about retainers and don’t sell yourself short on rates. Have lunches and coffees with all your friends at the big firms. They have lots of conflicts to send your way!
@ryanmckeen It’s not one size fits all. E.g., repeatable processes might work for a worker’s comp practice, but not for a litigation boutique like ours that handles a wide variety of cases, counseling, and exposures
I love how every story in England makes it seem like they’re preparing for a trip to the sun. They’re playing in Dallas (air conditioned), Boston and New Jersey. Is this how they lost the war it was 82 degrees in Lexington?
Curt Cignetti: “we need to fix college football”
Everyone: “yes coach! We need to it’s so bad”
Nick Saban: “we need to fix college football”
Everyone: “you’re just mad you can’t cheat anymore. You paid players. Alabama is broke”
“Read books. Travel when you can. Learn how to cook one meal exceptionally well. Sit in old bars and talk to strangers. Wear your best jacket to dinner. Appreciate good wine, good music, and good conversation. Do the right thing, even when no one is watching. Set the example for younger men who are watching you. Call your parents. Take long walks. Leave your phone behind sometimes. Become the kind of man people feel better after being around. Life is short, so live it well.”
-J.B. Lloyd
In America, a stranger will rename you in a single breath, and you are simply expected to come when called.
I went to eat at a busy restaurant. A young man at the front asked for my name, to mark my place in line. I gave it the weight it has carried for eight hundred years.
"Nobunaga."
He smiled, nodded, and wrote it down with great confidence. Then he read it back to me, to be sure he had honored it correctly.
"Perfect. Banana, party of one."
Banana. He had heard my name, held it a moment, and returned to me something rounder and more cheerful. To refuse the name a host gives is to refuse his welcome. I bowed. I was Banana now.
Then he handed me a small black disc, said it would "light up and buzz" when my table was ready, and turned to the next guest as though he had not just placed a living thing in my hands.
I held it in both palms, the way one holds a small sleeping beast that may wake. I found a place to stand. I waited, ready.
It woke.
It screamed. It flashed red. It leapt and shook in my hands like a captured spirit demanding release. A lesser man would have dropped it. I did not. I gripped it, steady, looked into its blinking lights, and told it, in a low voice, that its time had come. Then I carried it back to the host with both hands, the way one returns a hawk to its master.
He took it without looking and shouted across the entire room.
"BANANA! Party of one, your table's ready!"
A hundred strangers turned. I rose. I crossed that floor as Banana, spine straight, chin level, a man answering to his name. A child pointed at me. I gave the child a small bow. He had recognized me.
All through the meal they kept me. "How's it tasting, Banana?" "More water, Banana?" The check, when it came, said Banana, and thanked me for visiting. By the end the whole staff knew me. They waved as I left. "Night, Banana!"
So tell me honestly.
For eight hundred years my clan answered to one name. Tonight I answered to a fruit, calmed a screaming relic in my bare hands, and ate among people who were glad I came.
When the little disc lights up, is the table truly mine, or am I only keeping it warm for the next Banana?
Because I have already decided to return on Friday, and to ask, very humbly, for the same disc.
Client: “Can we just offer them something to go away?”
Me: “Sure. I can try to negotiate a settlement if you have a number in mind.”
Client: “No! I’m not settling anything! They have no claim. I just want them to go away.”
Me:
Client: “Can we just offer them something to go away?”
Me: “Sure. I can try to negotiate a settlement if you have a number in mind.”
Client: “No! I’m not settling anything! They have no claim. I just want them to go away.”
Me:
You just won a 2-week, all-expenses-paid vacation to Florida. But there’s a catch: you have to stay within one region the whole time. What are you picking?