-
Know Your Limits: Setting Boundaries to Better Serve Clients
A few weeks ago when we discussed the train wreck interview and the need to manage clients, a point was raised about paternalism. And honestly yeah, there is a such a problem with attorneys thinking that managing clients means they know what’s best in all aspects of a client’s life. And in certain segments of the legal industry, primarily legal aids and in sectors where we worked with marginalized communities, there is a risk of falling into a paternalistic behavior. We may often hear of this when we’re critiquing non-profits whose leaderships tend to not look like the community they represent. But I have seen situations with attorneys of color…
-
Who’s the Daddy? Managing Clients
So there’s so much to discuss when it comes to the #SohoKaren situation and let me say emphatically her behavior may have stemmed from a lot of issues, but the most troubling one is the racism. Y punto. But what I want to talk about here is her hat. Ok, not just the daddy hat, but everything that led to an interview with a daddy hat and the importance of client management. Managing clients, especially difficult ones, is a skill set we must develop sooner rather than later. A common misconception is that we say yes to every client whim, but that is a disservice to the client. While we…
-
Lessons Learned During Ten Years of Practice
So, in early November I passed the ten year mark. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been practicing for ten years, but at the same time, I’ve been able to pack so much in the past decade. There was so much happening in early November, I didn’t feel like there was space to discuss this milestone but there is no way I can reach this anniversary and not say something! I thought it would be fun to share some big and small lessons that have made the difference in my career. When I graduated law school, it was at the height of the worst recession (ha!) and no one–NO ONE–in my…
-
Managing While Managing Your Own Stress
So by now we’ve maybe gotten into a groove of working from home, and overseeing projects, but if you’re a new supervisor (whether it’s full time staff or interns) finding a way to manage while managing everything else that comes with a pandemic can feel like a bit much. In these situations, when it feels overwhelming, we may end up doing one of two things: completely letting go, which is not great or micromanaging to an extreme, which is never good. So what can you do to ensure you’re still being a good supervisor while dealing with everything else? One. Scream. Seriously! We may not recognize how anxious we…
-
Break It: Moving Past Stereotypes to Advance your Career
I want to direct folks back to the ABA report about women of color leaving law. The report is great and breaks down so many of the issues women face that cause a road block in their career. One frequent theme that the participants highlight is how difficult it is to find mentors/sponsors in their career because they are not able to make a connection with those in positions to help advance their careers. The women profiled found it difficult to connect with the white male leaders in their firms, but noticed that the men did not have that same hesitancy/barrier to help white women. They hypothesize that a big…
-
Side Bar: One Year
I haven’t done a side bar in a while. Things are just so routine, working from home, and also tumultuous, that it’s hard to keep track! But I did want to take a moment to acknowledge this milestone. I survived one year in city hall! And holy wow–what a year. I can’t even get into the nitty gritty of it, but just the growth (along with the growing pains) has been tremendous. Early on, a colleague who has been there for a really long time told me the work would flow between the ridiculous and the sublime and I think that captures exactly what it is like to be in…
-
Gaining Clients’ Trust through the Phone: Effective Client Counseling During COVID
By now you’ve probably seen the insta quote about how you’re not working from home but rather working at home during a pandemic, which yah fact, for sure. This sudden need for many of us to telecommute isn’t due to a shift in practice but literally done to save lives so I get that it’s not business as usual. And I also get that many courts are suspended for the time being but the thing is that for those of us practicing, it’s not just about working but fulfilling our duty to our clients. If you’re still doing consultations, working through discovery, filing petitions etc., then your work product still…
-
Getting That Polished Look: Simple Ways to Increase Executive Presence
We have talked about executive presence before (many times before!) but as a quick reminder, Executive Presence, is a theory that in business/work, people respond to you depending on your executive presence, which is really how you’re perceived based on how you look, speak, and act. There is a whole lot to dissect in that simple statement, especially if you include how race and gender play into all of this. But in the day to day, as you are establishing your own career, executive presence does play a role in your daily work and I wanted to discuss how the first part of EP (how you look) is something that…
-
Why Can’t I Shake This? Beating Imposter Syndrome Once and For All
Hi, my name is Nubia and it’s been 0 days since I last felt insecure about my professional capacity. Ok, maybe it’s been more than 0 days, but the reality is that experiencing imposter syndrome is a frequent occurrence and beating it means really working to recognize when it’s happening and then working hard to dismiss it when it occurs. Imposter syndrome is a feeling that you are not capable of doing what you’ve been tasked to do and that at any moment people will discover that you are a fraud. Often we attribute our successes to luck rather than skills and diminish our accomplishments lest others point out just…
-
Sidebar: It’s been a year or, I’m back bb!
Hello, So, for my ride and dies, I’m so sorry we’ve had such a long pause on the sidebar series. It’s been a minute. For those that are new, sidebar is just way fo me to share some (usually fun) updates on my life. I like giving this peek into my month to month because I find it less likely for people to take guidance and advice from some rando. It’s also fun to get to know each other this way! But having said that, you probably noticed sidebar stopped around March and that is because I was in a weird spot that was not super easy for me to…