The Handbook of Law Firm
Mismanagement

"The Handbook is to the law firm experience what M*A*S*H was
to the Korean conflict."
--Chicago Bar Association Record

Law used to be a profession. People went to law school because they didn't have the drive for business, or the stomach for blood. Now things have changed -- law is a business -- and lawyers need the drive and the stomach, not to mention a sense of humor.

This collection of memos, speeches, and notes of committee meetings from the mythical firm of Fairweather, Winters & Sommers has everything you need to know to royally mismanage a law firm. We learn from our mistakes -- or so they say -- and Fairweather, Winters & Sommers has made them all.

The topics range from the growth of receivables (eliminate the computer print-out?) and the attraction of new clients (with essence of cigar?), to the preservation of associates (pay them the going rate and they may stop going) and the opening of a branch office (in the Caribbean?!)

This is Catbird's best selling book, and any lawyer you give it to you will quickly tell you why.

$13.95 paper, 200 pp., ISBN 0-945774-12-5.

Excerpt from The Handbook of Law Firm Mismanagement

While it is not, strictly speaking, essential to understand the theory of relativity in order to fill out time sheets, it certainly doesn't hurt to have a grasp on the rudiments. Most honest physicists will acknowledge that relativity can be boiled down to two fundamental principles -- there is no such thing as absolute time and space, and quarter-hour segments are as good as any other unit.

The implications of these two principles to time sheets and to the philosophy of time are apparent upon a moment's reflection. To time sheets, the absence of absolute time and the acceptability of quarter-hour segments make it perfectly kosher to bill a quarter hour for a quickie telephone call. To the philosophy of time, these principles make the much-heralded accuracy of the quartz watch of dubious import.

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