Blog Posts: Law Blog

There are many facets to success. The road is different depending on your profession, but in all situations, it involves opportunity and preparation, as well as timing and hard work. The preparation and hard work count as investing in yourself and your future. Preparation makes the hard work look easier to those on the outside. It’s the investment in yourself. So...

Thinking about celebrating is inspired by my wife, who has a big birthday tomorrow. We have made special plans with people we care about. In these times it would have been easy to not do so, have a quiet moment with immediate family, and move on. But, when you do that, time keeps marching forward and you’ve missed an opportunity. The opportunity missed is the cha...

In our scattered multitasking world focus still matters. Our brains aren’t built to do multiple things at once, at least not well. This is a problem when we have tasks or projects requiring focus and attention. You probably have tools or processes you use to try and focus. This may include closing your office door, putting your phone on "do not disturb", or doing...

We live in a world of entrenched people and positions. Right now, you may be thinking of politics and similar high-level issues, but I am not. I’m considering this on a day-to-day level in relation to your work and personal lives in how you deal with people on any topic. For me it’s about my clients and whom I have to deal with on their behalf. I certainly deal...

Delivering outstanding advice to your client or customer is what you should strive for. My firm has defined its culture and “Deliver Outstanding Legal Advice” is fundamental #1 of the JW Way. Without this, nothing else we do matters because this is central to why clients hire us. The same is true of your clients or customers no matter the nature of your busine...

I recently heard someone on a podcast say part of why he thinks his children have grown up to be good young adults included ingraining in them the idea of “doing the right thing, even if it sucks.” Many times, doing the right thing is easy (and some people still choose doing the wrong thing). Other times it is hard. In my work, an example is when a calendaring ...

Dreams are great. They can sustain us through hard times or hard work. They can lift us up and let us down. We can learn from them whether or not they are realized. Have you followed any dreams in your life? Most dreams die. When this happens to you, what is your reaction? Does it drag you down or paralyze you? If so, you need to rethink how to look at failure; you...

We all make mistakes. Regularly. Do you think about what happened and try to learn from them, or do you beat yourself up? Or does it depend on the mistake and what and who it affected? Next time you make a mistake, take a step back and think how you prevent such a mistake from happening again. The cycle of beating yourself up does no good. It wastes time, which is ...

I mean this in two ways. First, read news and know what’s going on in the world. Second, read books. Doing both is important in all facets of life. As for news, read whatever you like, such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post or other papers. Better yet, read or skim two, preferably with different takes, such as being left or right...

Efficiency and organization are important. We all work hard, but, if you’re going to put in the effort and time, are you reaching your goals? This could be the calls you planned to make in a given day, or tasks or projects on your to do list (assuming you use one). It’s one way to try to be efficient and organized. Many ideas exist to help with this and most ar...