2) a must-read is a commencement speech by lawyer, Stephen Ellis, posted on David Maister’s blog (http://davidmaister.com/blog/602/Being-a-Happy-and-Successful-Lawyer).

Mr Ellis wisely asserted: The fact is our profession has become increasingly unhappy over the past couple of decades. I am convinced the vast majority of that unhappiness derives from a singleseemingly innocuous event in the late 1980’s: The American Lawyer magazine began publishing the AM LAW 100, and listed the profits per partner of the 100 largest firms. Virtually all of the firms in this country immediately bought in to that statistic as the only credible measure of success. The game was on – we lawyers would now take our measure almost entirely from money, at least in terms of what was publicly discussed. Without question, integrity, service and professionalism were important, but how we measured ourselves was money

This was a terrible mistake and now, more and more of us see its dark implications: the bragging rights on how many billable hours we charge (and the matching lost weekends and evenings); rates that are topping $1000 an hour; and clients who believe their files are being worked to death by armies of inexperienced associates. All of this so the largest firms can bump their statistical rankings and everybody else can compare themselves to the published stars.

His whole speech will take 5 minutes to read. Five minutes well spent, I assure you.

I hope the profession sees the light instead of settling for those who will tolerate it the way it is.