These platforms can improve communication and security for your firm and your clients. Your lawyers’ cellphones are chirping off the hook with notifications. Clients are calling, texting and emailing looking for answers now. But lawyers may be in court all day or otherwise unable to divide their attention. How do they...
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Developing Personal Integrity
JW Way* Fundamental #8: Act with integrity. “Demonstrate an unwavering commitment to doing the right thing in very action you take and in every decision you make. Own up to your own mistakes and apologize. If you make a mistake, clean it up.” The expression of integrity is a...
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Performance Management Best Practices
One of the ironies of performance management systems is that so many people find they do not perform very well. A survey by People IQ, a company that provides Web-based performance appraisal systems, reported that only 13% of U.S. managers and workers and just 6% of CEO’s believe their organization’s PM system...
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Why Low Employee Turnover Isn’t Always A Good Thing
I recently heard of a man who was named principal at an under performing school in need of reform. His staff had been there for decades and were extremely resistant to change. Constantly having his efforts thwarted, he quit in frustration after one year. This is an extreme example...
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8 Tips for Effective Communication
The JW Way Fundamental series offers 27 Fundamentals that are the foundation for our unique culture. In this featured Article we explore one of them. JW Way Fundamental #10: Communicate to be Understood “Know your audience. Use the language of your audience to write and speak clearly concisely, in away...
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Innovation Is A Red Herring Without Cultural Change
A future-ready company comes from passionate employees who feel confident enough to work together, challenge the status quo, and deliver new insights that will delight clients and grow profits. What does it take to thrive in today’s knowledge economy? If you read commentary from the legal industry, the answer...
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How to really hold people accountable
The topic of “accountability” anchors almost every leadership discussion I witness these days. While I hear the word accountability ad nauseum, what I see are leaders who lack the intestinal fortitude to follow through on the actions that create it. Here are the things you’re doing that are eroding accountability. Taking Control The...
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Put Your Creativity to Work (Yes, You)
By Jay Harrington Almost everyone accepts that we are in a time of radical change in the legal industry. Demand for legal services is flat. Entrepreneurs are finding ways to leverage technology to pick away at work — from discovery to estate planning — that once was the exclusive domain...
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Managing Legal Change Initiatives: Strategic approaches to introducing change
The following piece was authored by Patrick J. McKenna for Ark Group’s publication Managing Legal Change Initiatives. The following represents comments that I offered in a recent interview and are based on my three decades of working with large law firms internationally who invariably are trying to execute...
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THE DEATH OF DEFERENCE
By Nick Jarrett-Kerr | Jan 29, 2019 Lawyers have always been a distrustful bunch, but in the last twenty years the growth of larger law firms on the back of increased accountability and performance management seems to have repressed independence of thought amongst professionals, who have been encouraged to focus much...
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