Balloon Festival
Here are additional photographs from the Balloon Festival. It was a spectacular event.
.jpg)
Life Balance - Knowing when to fold 'em
We spent two weeks traveling 2500 miles with our Airstream trailer. Our ultimate destination was New Mexico and Albuquerque's Balloon Festival, I believe the largest of its kind in the world. This year, there were 550 balloons in the area. See six photographs taken by my wife as we enjoyed the R & R. During our travel to and from the Festival, we saw Arizona's Canyon de Chilly … and Twisters, a throw back to the 1950s with its absolutely fabulous malted milkshakes in Williams, AZ on Route 66. A great time!
How do you know if your fee is too high?
The press will fixate on this lawyer's hourly billing rate. But, that is not why he was disbarred. Rather, he was disbarred because of his wild and bizarre conduct.
There is no prohibition to charging a high hourly rate so long as at least 3 factors co-exist: 1.) The client receives value commensurate with the charge; 2.) The client perceives he/she has received value commensurate with the fee; and 3) There is sufficient communication between the lawyer and the client to confirm that the client understands what the charges will be ... and the client is sophisticated enough to accept or reject the engagement agreement and fee being proposed.
The difficulty with fee disputes is that they are always "Monday morning quarterbacking," usually being determined by people who are using outdated standards of evaluation. The only real issues are 1) Did the client understand the fee structure and 2) Did the client receive sufficient value (not time) to justify the fee.
Where are all the women going?
A recent article in WSJ suggests that "Women in Finance Shrink." It's clear that women up for reelection may not all win their elections, thus reducing the number of women in Congress. And law firms have difficulty retaining women as they become more senior...and, proportionately, women are not advancing in the ranks of management as high or as quickly.
Are we losing gains made in earlier years? Were those gains only superficial? Or have we arrived at the point where gender is irrelevant?
Travel provides opportunities
We are approaching the end of our vacation. We left Albuquerque's Balloon Festival (its 39th year) and then went to Canyon de Chelly in AZ. A unique experience. On our way out, we stopped at the Hubbell Trading Post, operated in the Navajo Nation by the Hubbell family until about 1964. From there, we traveled toward Flagstaff on Hwy 40 with the intent to go to Williams (for an outstanding chocolate malted milk) and then to Prescott , AZ to spend time with friends.
En route, however, we heard that there had been 3 tornadoes between Flagstaff and Williams. We got off the highway, waited for an hour ... and after we were told that the DOT could not predict the weather for the balance of the day, we decided to go south instead of west.
I had to sacrifice my malted milk ... oh well. I had two in Williams the week before. As we traveled south, we bordered the tornado path but missed it. The rain was heavy and we hoped we could also escape hail. We lucked out, although we did stop under some underpasses when the rain was so heavy we could not see.
We're safe and o.k. And tomorrow, we start our last stage en route home.
Stuff happens when you're planning. Success is the intersection of preparation and luck. And preparation must include flexibility, the ability to change as circumstances change. Perhaps we can think of such changes as "change orders" in the construction industry. There are many paths to achieve our goals.
Cal. State Bar Conference...personal thoughts
At the recent California State Bar conference, held in Monterey, CA, Ed stopped into the Expo booth of the Legal Secretaries. Most lawyers fail to appreciate how important a good secretary is to their success. Creating a good team best serves our clients… and they know it when they see it. That's the way to create a loyal bond between law firm and client.
