Featured Candidates
Litigation Attorney
Steve is a well rounded candidate with top grades from top schools and a very stable job history. He is well versed in all phases of litgation and would be an asset to any top tier firm.
See his full resume here.
Junior Litigator
Suzanne is a premium young litgator with a fantastic educational pedigree and top clerkships. Able to hit the ground running, she would be an excellent choice for mid to large sized firm.
See her full resume here.
Ou is a very capable corporate paralegal with a masters from an Ivy League school as well as substantive experience in a top international law firm.
See her full resume here. |
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Patricia is a veteran litigation paralegal holding both a paralegal certificate as well as a BA. She is the consummate professional, always exceeding even the highest of expectations.
See her full resume here.
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Greetings!
Autumn is here! The changing of leaves and sound of school bells is a welcome reminder that it is time to focus on a strong third quarter. Despite the economic turmoil around the world, it appears that our clients are well positioned to weather the market upheaval. A combination of great employees and advanced planning are to thank for this - and there a number of other ways that you can get more out of your existing organization.
By thinking outside of the box, there are a number of ways you can maximize the capacity of your group and your facility. By maintaining your pre-economic meltdown momentum, you can get the most out of your existing employees. The articles in this copy of the Law Q newsletter discuss the ups and downs of a virtual workforce (a sure fire way to expand the capacity of your office), improving employee performance and ensuring that your firm continues to move forward. As your competitors struggle to make ends meet, try some of these techniques to make sure that you are well positioned for the holidays.
As always, please check out our featured attorney and legal staff candidates in the upper left hand corner of this newsletter. The resumes of both our featured candidates and our other top candidates can also be viewed on the 'Recruiting' page of our website at www.lawqteam.com. Have a great month and feel free to contact us with any of your recruiting or employment questions
Truly yours,
R. Christopher Newton
LAW Q, LLC
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Top Five Tips for Maintaining Momentum
Careerbuilder.com
When good leaders see momentum developing within their organization and harness it, positive results happen at a much more rapid pace and success becomes almost second nature. But to keep momentum going, you must revisit what started it, re-set goals, and re-energize, recognize and reward your team.
In the sports world, momentum is everything, and can change in the blink of an eye, swinging quickly from one direction to another. As Baseball Hall of Fame Baltimore Orioles Manager Earl Weaver once observed, "Momentum is the next day's starting pitcher."
In the professional world, momentum is perhaps not as fickle, but it is no less important. To have great success, momentum must be created.
Unfortunately, just because forward motion is being made, it is not guaranteed to stay. If momentum starts fading, there is a tendency for your subordinates, and even you as the leader, to find yourselves going through the motions of complacency. Therefore, not only must momentum be created, but a premium should be placed on making it last. It is the leader's responsibility to keep the ball rolling, utilizing and maintaining momentum to not just achieve immediate objectives, but your long-term vision as well.
Top Five Tips for Maintaining Momentum
Re-Set Greater Challenges
Perhaps the easiest thing to do to maintain momentum for your team is to keep raising the bar. Once a goal is achieved, it is easy for your organization as a whole to ease off the accelerator, pull back and catch a collective breath. Simon & Schuster publishing icon Michael Korda offered this advice: "One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals."
Setting new company-wide objectives each time one is achieved will consistently keep you moving full steam ahead corporately. Keep the new goals attainable and in line with what got you started-and make sure they fit in with the overall vision you have already created.
Review Individual Efforts
"Individual commitment to a group effort-that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work," Super Bowl-winning coach Vince Lombardi once said. Individual efforts within your organization helped create the initial momentum, and they will be crucial to helping maintain it.
In addition to establishing new corporate goals, meet individually with each player on your team. Evaluate their contributions for the previous momentum push and outline the next steps needed from him or her to keep things accelerating. Also gauge their perspective of where things were, where they are now and where they are going to keep an active read on the momentum pulse of your corporate culture.
Re-Energize
You do not want to be a task master, constantly pushing people to the brink of exhaustion, to keep momentum. Give subordinates a break when appropriate to prevent burn out-whether it is a corporate outing or simply a day away from the office-allowing them to get re-energized and refocused on the task at hand.
Just be wary of too much of a break: In 2007 the Colorado Rockies had tremendous momentum, winning 21 out of 22 games, including 10 straight as they headed into the World Series. But an eight-day layoff killed the team's streak and they were swept out of their championship bid in just four games. Keep the focus on re-energizing, not relaxing.
Remind
Something started the momentum you are experiencing. While you may not be able to completely recapture what created the initial buzz, you can facilitate events that will remind your team of what got them here.
Holding corporate outings, retreats, training sessions, rallies and team-building exercises on a regular basis will rekindle the original vision and purpose of the team, helping further a sense of excitement and keep your pace.
Recognize and Reward
Being a part of something big can get anyone excited and build momentum. But once the newness is gone, catering to the individual can keep things rolling for your team. Celebrate victories that have been hard-earned to generate the momentum by rewarding your team, either with symbolic accolades or real value awards.
Offer ongoing incentives for team members who routinely go above and beyond and recognize their efforts on an organizational-wide basis. Not only will it encourage recipients to continue their efforts, but others will be motivated as well.
*reprinted with permission |
Untold Hazards of Telecommuting From Home
Tracey I. Batt
The National Law Journal
In this high-tech day and age, there are many careers, including numerous legal positions, that can be performed in part or in whole from the comfort of one's home. For example, I am the executive director of a small, statewide legal services nonprofit organization. I telecommute from my spare bedroom.
This sounded like an ideal situation when I first took the job a little less than three years ago. To be sure, there are many positive aspects to this kind of position. Unless I have a meeting or a speaking engagement outside of my home office, I can dress comfortably without worrying about what does and does not constitute appropriate "business casual" attire. (My inability to tell the difference is a topic for a future column.) I can roll out of bed 30 seconds before I need to be at work. I can avoid purchasing all my meals from fast food chains, delivery services and vending machines. I can be home when the washing machine repair company or Federal Express says that they will be sending someone to the house between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. (That's not a time window, people. That's a time doorway.)
But there are many things that the proverbial "they" do not tell you about telecommuting from home. They don't warn you about the days when you say to yourself, "I'll just let the computer warm up while I brush my teeth. Oh hey! The message light is on. I wonder who called." The next thing you know, it's 4:55 p.m., the post office closes in five minutes, you haven't eaten anything, you forgot to feed the fish and put dinner in the crockpot, and you're still dressed in your fuzzy bunny slippers and "Dark Side of the Moon" boxer shorts.
They don't warn you that, when you don't need to worry about rush hour traffic or public transportation schedules, you always think you can fit in just one more task before you call it a day. Then you wonder what that light is and realize it's the sun rising.
I understand that many people work from home so that they can spend more time with their families. However, that is not my situation. There isn't anyone here but me. My job entails communicating with clients, pro bono attorneys, student interns, board members, grantors, speaking engagement hosts and people working on events, usually by telephone, e-mail and fax. I have been known to go a whole work week without having a single face-to-face conversation with someone who is not employed by the United States Postal Service.
I have caught myself having animated discussions with my pet betta Carmen Miranda Warning, who lives in a Lava Lamp-shaped fish bowl, and Kilroy the squirrel who, unlike his compatriots, does not flee the yard when I open the back door to fill the bird feeder, opting instead to peer at me from over the fence to ensure that he is the first back to the feeder when I re-enter the house. Clearly, they do not warn you about this. Nobody ever says at your firm going-away party, "And when you start talking to a chipmunk, we'll be here waiting for you." (Do I talk to a chipmunk? Yes. His name is Comma.)
They don't warn you that this lack of direct human contact will bleed over into your social life. When I worked in New York City, I had plenty of friends and workmates with whom I could go out for a drink, dinner, a movie or a show on the spur of the moment. Although I now live less than 45 minutes from my parents in one direction and my sister and my brother and his family in another direction, I can no longer get together with anyone on the spur of the moment. These days, gathering the family for something as simple as a barbecue in my suburban backyard is roughly akin to orchestrating troop movements or herding cats.
Also, because I don't interact directly with people on a day-to-day basis, I am socially unprepared. They don't warn you that your wardrobe will consist entirely of sweatpants, T-shirts and business suits, with nothing in between the two extremes. They don't warn you that you will wear makeup so rarely that your mascara will be a solid lump of carbon that will give you pink eye when you actually need it.
Most importantly, they absolutely do not warn you that, if the only human interaction you have is distance-based business communication and stamp purchasing, you will quickly lose any social skills you ever had, assuming you ever had any in the first place. So I am going to warn you, since no one else will: If you don't make an effort to get out and meet people, they will not come to you. As someone once said to me, "I never met anyone in my house."
If you're single and working from home, venture out occasionally and be a part of the world. Otherwise, you may find yourself on a first-name basis with no one but your neighborhood wildlife. And the folks at the post office.
I asked a friend, a writer who also works at home, how she copes with the lack of stimulation, at least while her children are in school. She responded that she deliberately draws a distinction between her "work" life and her "home" life, even though they occupy the same physical space, by dressing for work, even when she is working from home. She noted that doing so puts her in the proper "head space" for work. As she suggests, I need to find a way to do something similar, to draw that line: Now I am at work, now I am not at work.
My friend also mentioned that the work-at-home revolution accounts for all those people huddled over laptops at chain coffee stores with wireless access during the day, trying to shield their computer screens from prying eyes. Oh, is that what they are doing? It all makes sense to me now. People who crave the company of other people but still need to work leave the home office and sit in a room with other people doing exactly the same thing. That is a brilliant notion. Unfortunately, there aren't many aspects of my job that can be performed in a public setting over a steaming cup of coffee. But I'll bet writing columns for the National Law Journal is one that can.
*reprinted with permission 2008
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How to Get Above & Beyond Performance
Careerbuilder.com
While the experience of heading a team and achieving an initiative can be incredibly rewarding, the process of getting there, at times, will be quite painful. That is because there will be bumps along the road toward your vision: a member of your team leaves their job, meaning extra responsibility to go around for everyone; quarterly numbers fall off, necessitating doubled production to improve next quarter's results; you are way over budget, requiring extreme cutbacks; or a major deadline passes, calling for accelerated efforts to complete the task.
However complicated the issue may be, the solution is relatively easy: sacrifices must be made. Implementing that solution, though, can prove quite challenging. Motivating a subordinate to action with the enticement of a year-end bonus is simple.
But how can you effectively and appropriately ask someone to make a sacrifice of a severe nature? If handled correctly, you can have a team willing to do whatever it takes to press on. If managed poorly, you may find yourself in an even more dire set of circumstances.
Top Five Ways for Making and Receiving Sacrifices
Lead the Way
Rather than looking at a leadership position as one entitled to perks and privileges, an effective leader must view his or her own sacrifice as a consistent method for realizing their vision.
"Leadership means setting an example. When you find yourself in a position of leadership, people follow you," former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca explains. And as the leader, the first person to take one for the team should be you if you expect others to do the same. Rather than looking at a leadership position as one entitled to perks and privileges, an effective leader must view his or her own sacrifice as a consistent method for realizing their vision.
In driving the Chrysler Corporation from a near-death company to a profitable one, Iacocca made extreme sacrifices, including reducing his salary from that of a typical chief executive to only one dollar per year. Setting the pace on a constant basis encourages those following you to mirror your actions.
Offer Perspective
"Give people a convincing reason and they will lay down their very lives," business leader and activist Patrick Dixon says. Your team bought into your original vision. Keep it front and center in their minds when asking them to forfeit something, connecting the sacrifice to the finish line of realizing that vision.
Also, remind them that you are not asking for a permanent sacrifice, but a temporary one during this trying season. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as the old saying goes, such as longer hours or financial cutbacks. Once the worst has passed, you can turn the cruise control of normality back on.
Provide a Road Map
"I have found that being honest is the best technique I can use. Right up front, tell people what you're trying to accomplish and what you're willing to sacrifice to accomplish it," offers Iacocca. Explain exactly what you need from everyone, why it is necessary, and how you see the sacrifices working as a solution.
Giving your subordinates a detailed itinerary for navigating this road and reaching the destination will give them a clear view of your thinking. It will also show them that while this phase may be difficult, you are confident in overcoming it through a team effort.
Reward
You might not be able to financially compensate during a time of sacrifice, but you should still reward in other ways. If your team must work late, buy them dinner or offer additional flexibility in their schedule. If a cut in pay is required, offer extra vacation days or some other type of incentive.
Offering verbal praise might not have much tangible value, but publicly recognizing someone's sacrificial effort can be significant for that individual. Rewarding in this manner shows that you value and appreciate the sacrifices being made.
Remember
In addition to rewarding through alternative fashions, do not forget the efforts that allowed you to get through it once the challenge has passed. If the resources are now available, compensate individuals appropriately for the sacrifices they made. Also, broadcast both to your team and your industry what allowed you to accelerate ahead despite the bumpy road you had to travel. Not only will it make people individually and corporately feel that whatever they forfeited was worth it, it will create more motivation the next time a sacrifice is needed.
*reprinted with permission 2008 | |
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