Our attorneys meet each week to discuss new developments in the law, issues we may be facing in any of our cases, and to share our knowledge. I practiced as the only bankruptcy lawyer in a firm, so I fully understand the importance of having others with experience to bounce ideas off of. Our ability to share that knowledge and experience is one of our competitive advantages over our competition.
I often start the meeting with a short presentation. These are often about our firm’s practice standards – the things we do and the way we do them to better serve our clients.
Last month I spoke about the Milwaukee Bucks and how they won their playoff series against the Boston Celtics. The post-game interviews focused on a single word, repeatedly. That word was “habits.”
Celtics coach Brad Stevens said, of the Bucks, “they’ve been building habits every day and those habits showed up and they showed up over and over again.”
Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said pretty much the same. “Habits is a word we use a lot. Building our defensive habits and building winning habits. The players are the ones that gotta do it. They’ve got to commit to it. I thought their commitment…it leads to good habits…and we need it going forward.”
I talked about these interviews and about habits because that is what our firm tries to do with our practice standards. We try to make it a habit to provide clients with as much certainty as possible, including timelines and budgets. We try to make it a habit to return calls and e-mails promptly. We try to make it a habit to give clients repeated status updates, and in writing.
We know we won’t always be perfect. The Bucks weren’t, and they ended up losing
in the Eastern Conference finals. But
like the Bucks, we will continue to work on our habits because habits build
winning.
If you have ideas on habits lawyers should maintain, or ideas about how to stay
with your habits, please let me know and we can share ideas. Thanks.
