Weekly Report #8

This week I traveled to a big city to talk business with some like-minded plaintiffs' lawyers. The easy camaraderie among plaintiffs’ lawyers is something that makes every day more enjoyable, but something I didn’t know much about when I quit my job as a defense lawyer seven or eight years ago. In those days, it was most important to build alliances among other lawyers within the firm; it would have been a firing offense to talk too intimately about business with defense lawyers from other firms. Why the difference? I suppose it’s the economics of the legal business--plaintiffs’ lawyers spread the risk by building teams, whereas defense lawyers don’t want help from their competitors unless the client insists on it.

I wish I could say what we talked about this week, but I’d be violating lots of confidences and giving away gobs of strategic insider secrets. Some have told me they like these “weekly reports” about my practice, but I must admit they make me feel like a cheat. It seems about 98% of my practice is off-limits to public discussion. There’s the attorney-client privilege. There’s the discomfort my lawyer friends would feel reading about themselves here. There’s the foolishness of making my business strategies public, where they could be seized upon by my opposing counsel. And on and on.

Oh well. I can say this: this week I learned from my betters; had lots of fun during the day and after-hours; got some new ideas; and lost about $200 playing blackjack.