Friend, here's The Timesheet for August 2008

Paul's Law & Disorder greeting card line currently features 18 cards that touch on a variety of legal topics, from law firm politics ("In law there is no substitute for hard work, but sucking up to the senior partner works pretty well") to judicial hardheartedness at holiday time ("I have taken into account that it is Christmas and you are my mother, but . . . .") and more, with additional cards planned in the months ahead.

Many of the Law & Disorder cartoons featured in the Billable Hour Card Store also illustrate Brennan’s four humorous books. We Have the Time if You Have the Money: How to Promote Your Legal Practice, is geared to lawyers. And, while A Legal Guide to Dying: Baby Boomer Edition, The 10 Greatest Legal Mistakes in Business . . . and How to Avoid Them, and The Law is an Ass—Make Sure it Doesn’t Bite Yours are intended to introduce basic legal concepts to non-lawyers in an easy-to-read manner, according to Brennan, many lawyers use the three books to familiarize themselves with areas of law outside their specialties, and mine them for ideas about how to explain legal concepts to their clients. All four books are available as downloadable e-books for $13.95 each. (The Law is an Ass will be available by the end of September; the other three books are available now).

Brennan’s cartoons and books draw on lessons he has learned in a globetrotting legal career that has taken him from a law clerk position in Toronto to his own firm in Mooloolaba (a Queensland, Australia seaside town), with stops along the way as a partner in London and Sydney law firms; solicitor at New Scotland Yard; counsel and investigative manager for Intel; and a consultant in Hong Kong.

Says Brennan : "It struck me how similar lawyers were when I was sitting in a Taiwan criminal court. Cranky judge, ingratiating prosecutor, hectoring defense counsel and detached defendant. I couldn’t follow what they were saying, but I felt right at home. Although members of the general public may complain that they cannot understand lawyers, attorneys around the world have a common language and outlook."

1. Improve skill in taking and defending depositions.
2. Improve written work product.
3. Get more experience in advising clients.

Unfortunately, lawyers at every stage of practice can set vague goals. Have you ever said you’d like to "bring in more business" or "increase your billable hours" or "get more exposure to your target clients"? These ambitions count as little more than wishes, because they’re not concrete and measurable.

How do effective leaders frame their intentions? They set SMART goals, and they write down those goals. A SMART objective is:

Specific: define what you intend to accomplish with sufficient detail to be meaningful. Instead of planning to improve his deposition skills, Carl might have decided he wanted to get comfortable with the "funnel method" of questioning witnesses.

Measurable: a quantifiable definition of what you intend to accomplish. (As Peter Drucker said, "What gets measured gets managed.") Carl might have said that he’d like to take 8 depositions over the course of the year and rate his comfort and skill in using the "funnel method" on a scale of 1 to 10.

Achievable: design a goal that’s a stretch, but a stretch within your reach. Carl might realize that he’d be unlikely to take 8 depositions over the next year, and so he’d scale back to 4 depositions.

Realistic: create a sensible plan to attain your goal, considering your abilities and limitations. Carl might approach the partner with whom he worked the most to share the goal he’d set and to get the partner’s buy-in, which would include agreement that the goal was realistic.

Time-based: define the time in which you’ll measure your efforts to determine whether you hit your objective.

When you know what you want, you’re much more likely to seek out and accept opportunities to reach your goals. Take a moment to recast your #1 objective as a SMART goal and write it down somewhere, perhaps in your calendar. And then notice what happens over the next few days and weeks. Chances are good that you’ll take steps toward your goal that you wouldn’t have taken without being concrete and clear and what you wanted to happen.

Julie Fleming Brown, J.D., A.C.C. provides attorney development coaching and consulting to law firm associates and partners, focusing on topics such as leadership, client, and professional development; career strategy; and work/life integration. A certified leadership coach (Georgetown University), Julie publishes the weekly email newsletter Leadership Matters for Lawyers and posts often on the Life at the Bar Blog. Learn more at www.LifeAtTheBar.com or by contacting Julie by telephone at 800.758.6214 or by email to jfb@lifeatthebar.com.

©Stu Rees. All rights reserved.

Did you know that Stu also licenses his artwork for use in newsletters, presentations, print publications and on websites? He even offers special rates for student and teacher use.

You can also purchase original artwork and custom prints (framed or unframed) from Stu.

Timesheet readers get 15% off all licensing orders, original artwork and custom prints (use coupon code BILLHOUR). Click here for information on licensing or purchasing one of the hundreds of images Stu offers. For more information on original artwork and custom prints, click here.

The Law & Disorder eZine spoke to John Fytit, sole practitioner about the effect of a Costs Court on his practice.

Q: Do you support the proposed new Court?

A: I do. My firm intends to give up law and focus solely on costs to complement the new Court.

Q: But wouldn’t clients complain that you are charging them for doing nothing?

A: Well, they say that anyway. To my mind, not providing any legal service other than producing a bill would result in less complaints as there would be less to complain about. There would be fewer insurance claims and it would be a lot cheaper too as our costs would be a fraction of what they are now.

Q. How would it work?

A: After drawing up the costs agreement we would move straight on to the bill. We would get rid of billable hours and try new innovative methods of billing. Presently, we are looking at Double or quits.

Q. How would the Law Society view this?

A: They would need to manage this change. Continuing Legal Education without the tedious legal content would focus on the more important transferable skills, such as ethics. They could introduce motivational courses but I do not think that we would need them.

Q. Why would clients instruct you?

A. We would need to work out the product offering, hire a sales team with telesales support. We would need to be more strategic and focus on deliverables such as committee meetings, annual conferences and team building away days.

Q. Are you not concerned that the larger firms would form Departments focusing solely on costs?

A. I thought that they had.

Paul Brennan is a legal cartoonist, author and speaker. He is the author of We Have the Time if You Have the Money: How to Promote Your Legal Practice, A Legal Guide to Dying: Baby Boomer Edition, The 10 Greatest Legal Mistakes in Business . . . and How to Avoid Them, and The Law is an Ass—Make Sure it Doesn’t Bite Yours, which are intended for a worldwide audience. He blogs at www.101reasonstokillallthelawyers.com. In his day job, he is the principal of Brennans Solicitors, a law firm located in Mooloolaba, a Queensland, Australia seaside town, where he practices in the areas of business law (including franchising), intellectual property, trusts and estates, immigration and real estate. For more information on booking Paul as a speaker, visit www.lawanddisorder.com.au.

©Dan Rosandich. All rights reserved.

Like this cartoon? Send it to friends, clients or colleagues on greeting cards. To order, visit The Billable Hour Card Store.

In keeping with the Aussie theme of this month's newsletter, here's some more humor from down under:

To watch more hilarious videos from around the web, join us at The Video Venue!

Broadman, in association with the Warner Bros. animation art studio, is now offering custom-framed fine art lithographs of four hilarious Warner Bros. cartoon scenes with legal themes. In Court Order, Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam stand before a judge as they battle for the property rights to Bugs’s rabbit hole. In Law and Disorder, Lawyer Daffy Duck points accusingly at Elmer Fudd on the witness stand, while Judge Bugs wields his sledgehammer . . . uh, gavel . . . over Elmer’s head, before a jury comprised of Porky Pig, Pepe Le Pew, and other well-known Warner Bros. characters. In Legal Alien, Bugs is an immigration judge, peering down from the bench at Marvin the Martian and his dog, K-9. And in Acme on Trial, Wile E. Coyote pleads his case against ACME, with the Road Runner poking his head from behind the bench. You can view all of these images at Broadman's website, or call Jessica Cheney at 805-230-1393 or email her at jessica@broadmanfinearts.com.

click here to enlarge (large file; please be patient)

©Suzan Charlton. All rights reserved.

Like this cartoon? Send it to friends, clients or colleagues on greeting cards. To order, visit The Billable Hour Card Store.

Suzan Charlton is a professional cartoonist who is rumored to practice insurance coverage law as a hobby for a major Washington D.C. law firm. Her cartoons cover a wide range of law-related topics, from law school grades to law firm romance.

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Available on Licensed to Grill

Whoa, for the longest time (2x)

If these lawyers talk another day
We the jury will make sure they pay
What else can we do
We’re trapped inside this courtroom
This trial has lasted for the longest time

Whoa, for the longest time (2x)

Once I thought this trial was nearly done
Then they put their depositions on
That’s when they lost me
With their expert testimony
I haven’t listened for the longest time

They said this won’t last very long
It’s been two weeks
My job could be gone
Maybe I’ve been hoping too hard
‘Cause we’ve come this far
And it’s only half over

We get six whole dollars every day
That is less than what McDonald’s pays
I want my life back
Maybe even see my wife
But I know that won’t happen for the longest time

Who knows how much longer we’ll go
The judge said one week
But I don’t think so
This must be what hell is like I know
And there I’d rather go
And it’s one thing I’ll trade for

I don’t care who loses or who wins
I just want this misery to end
And then it’s our turn
To torture lawyers when we’ll
Be deliberating for the longest time

Whoa, for the longest time (3x)

Just one of the hilarious songs on

To view Juris Comic, click here

Whatever the damage that’s happened to you,
A lawyer can find someone else you can sue;
But, as lottery ads caution us every minute,
A person has got to be in it to win it!

Breach of a contract? A nice slip and fall?
Just sue the bastards—go after them all!
Libel or slander? A big auto crash?
Go for the gusto, a barrel of cash!
Doctor malpractice, with oodles of pain?
Rehab yourself in a castle in Spain!
(If it’s a class action lawsuit you’ve got,
Your lawyer will now start to shop for a yacht!)

A wonderful feature of going to Court
Is that it is clearly an all-weather sport—
Despite snow or sleet and regardless of rain,
Dampened attorneys will still entertain,
Trying to forge a huge paperwork blitz
To swamp the opponent with motions and writs.

Though lawyers on TV are always in court,
Practice in real life’s a much different sort,
As cases that TV resolves in an hour
In actual fact many years may devour;
Litigants who have been through it may wail
That justice can be far outpaced by a snail.

So don’t let yourself be shut out of the game—
Find someone else you can possibly blame,
As modern folks tend to recriminate
For losses our forefathers might have called "fate."

Fred C. Russcol, Esq. is Of Counsel to Castro & Remer, P.C. in Ossining, New York. This poem was originally printed in the Westchester Bar Journal and is reprinted with the permission of the Westchester County Bar Association.