But are Baker’s 70 offices about to become… 69? For weeks, reports have been circulating about the possible demise of the firm’s outpost in San Diego. As you may recall, this little office is home to big drama.

Let’s look at the latest news about Baker in San Diego….

Last year, support staff members at Baker & McKenzie were on the verge of revolt. They complained to us here at Above the Law about frozen salaries and miniscule bonuses.

But perhaps they should just have been happy to have jobs? A tipster recently told us: “Check Baker & McKenzie San Diego. Management decided to close the office a while back, yet they have not told clients or employees. Culture of deception?”

Other sources have provided us with intelligence along similar lines. They claim that the office is closing this month.

The reports of office closure have intensified over the past week, but they are not new. Last month, a source with knowledge about Baker & McKenzie’s operations told the Daily Journal (sub. req.) that the San Diego office has been slated for shutdown. The managing partner of the office, Colin Murray, responded to the Daily Journal’s inquiries by saying, “I don’t know what kind of information you have.”

The kind of information we have is… not good. Lawyer headcount in the office has dropped dramatically over the past few years. Am Law Daily recently covered some high-profile partner defections, in the coveted area of intellectual property litigation:

Baker & McKenzie is losing two IP partners in San Diego, according to The Recorder, which reports that the duo of James Conley and Howard Wisnia will join the local office of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo. The departures leave Baker & McKenzie’s San Diego office, which had 45 lawyers a decade ago, down to 13 lawyers, four of them partners.

Thirteen lawyers may be on the high side. According to a correction posted on the ABA Journal, current headcount is even lower: “The San Diego office of Baker & McKenzie has only eight lawyers remaining after two of its intellectual property litigators jumped this week to Mintz, Levin….” (It’s not clear, though, where the ABA Journal obtained the figure of eight; if you run a search on the Baker website, you get 12 lawyers in San Diego.)

If the office does end up closing, could real estate miscalculations have played a role in its demise? According to commenters on our earlier staff revolt story:

This is a symptom of the real story……… B&M f**ked up the lease at the SD office a couple years ago and have had to pay double rent for space they no longer use. All the SoCal partners had/have to reach into their pockets to cover it. B&M ain’t giving the SD office squat.

See also:

True dat — the B&M partners made a huge miscalculation when signing up for the new office space, and making very costly improvements before moving in. I understand that it’s an entire floor of the building with 50 office spaces, but with only about 15 attorneys working there. And the SD partners have a reputation for being the most miserable a**holes in the world.

We reached out to Baker & McKenzie’s firm spokesperson in Chicago for comment on the possible closing of the San Diego office. He did not respond to our inquiries, made last week and again this week.

How should such silence, from Colin Murray in San Diego and from firm brass in Chicago, be interpreted? One source suggests: “When management does not deny closing, that tells you all you need to know.”

But look, it ain’t over until it’s over. Could the reports of this office’s demise be greatly exaggerated?

We’d like to get to the bottom of this. If you have information about what’s going on at Baker & McKenzie in San Diego, we welcome it, by email or by text message (646-820-8477 / 646-820-TIPS). Thanks.

Baker’s San Diego Outpost Continues to Shrink; Is Office Closing a Possibility? [ABA Journal]
Megafirm Merry-Go-Round: Lateral Movement Picking Up Among Legal Industry Giants [Am Law Daily]

Earlier: Is the Staff Getting the Short End of the Stick at Baker & McKenzie?

* Apple gets so emotional baby, every time it thinks of Samsung. [eWeek]

* Greece begrudgingly signed austerity legislation while lamenting, “Didn’t we almost have it all.” [What About Clients]

* The Bearcat would be a patrol car that had the stuff that you want, and the thing that you need. It would have more than enough to make the 4th Amendment drop to its knees. It’d be the Queen of the night, oh yeah. [Simple Justice]

* It’s almost time for the National Animal Law Competitions. How will I know if this is really happening? I say a prayer that one of these guys gets paid. [Animal Legal Defense Fund]

* Now that Super PACs are back on the table, a cabinet secretary could be your baby tonight, for a million dollars or so. [Election Law Blog]

* For some reason, the Columbia Law School twitter feed retweeted this article about the five leadership mistakes of the Emperor in Star Wars. I don’t know why? Are they saying that Dean David Schizer is like Emperor Palpatine? I don’t get it, I have nothing. [Forbes]

* R.I.P. Whitney Houston, lady with a voice that could put soul into a country song…

Because of his view on the 2nd amendment, these were the only guns Justice Breyer was packing.

According to MSNBC, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was robbed at knife point while on vacation:

The Supreme Court has confirmed that Justice Stephen Breyer, his wife and several family friends were the victims of a knife-wielding robber at the Breyer vacation home on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean.

Jesus, was the criminal trained in the Jedi arts? How many people did he menace with just one knife?

As we know from David Souter’s run in with the criminal element, Supreme Court Justices don’t have Secret Service protection. I’m not sure what has to happen before we decide that nine people who wield incredible power over volatile partisan issues, for life, should have high level protection, but I hope it doesn’t take a tragedy.

For now, we can kid about this because thankfully neither the justice nor any of his family or friends were injured. But reports indicate that the criminal made off with nearly $1,000 in cash…

On Twitter, somebody asked me the big money question:

@DavidLat @ElieNYC so if conservatives are just liberals who have been mugged, does that mean we can now kiss Obamacare goodbye?

Actually, I think conservatives are liberals who are terrified of being mugged, while liberals have been mugged but decided not to abandon liberty in favor of increased security. So I think the current right/left balance of the court will be fine. But I wouldn’t want to be arguing the next criminal’s rights case in front of the Court this term, just in case.

In any event, since Nevis is outside U.S. jurisdiction, I think it would be funny if Breyer caught this guy and administered some street justice to his assailant: “I want to look at the disparate impact of my fists upside your head.” “My shoe is going to apply strict scrutiny to your face.” “You’re about to receive the penumbra of an ass whuppin.”

… I’ll be here all week.

Justice Breyer robbed at knifepoint at home in Caribbean [MSNBC]
Who Protects David Souter? [Slate]

No one wants to be this guy.

At any job, there are various levels of misconduct that an employee can usually get away with or at least occasionally pull off without repercussions. Like, maybe you could get away with wearing jeans even if it’s not casual Friday. You might show up a few minutes late when your boss isn’t around, or you might check Facebook. I steal cars and blog while racing down East 14th after my east coast coworkers go home. You are not supposed to do it, but hey, it happens.

Then there are things you cannot do. Period. Things that any competent employee should simply know are unacceptable.

Included in this category of utterly verboten workplace activities are watching porn during a rape trial when you’re the on-duty court clerk. The list would also include falling asleep during a youth justice hearing — when you’re the judge running the proceeding.

But some people never learn. And then they lose their jobs. And we write about it (gavel bang: Adjunct Law Prof Blog) and show you video of the sleeping judge in court…

First, we have the details on the clerk, courtesy of Greedy Associates:

A veteran London court clerk was caught looking at some racy images — during a rape trial.

The 54-year-old clerk, Debasish Majumder, had worked at the court for years. He claimed he only looked at the pornography because he was “bored.”…

Majumder was found out when the judge saw him viewing the dirty photos. After all, the judge was sitting right behind him during the trial, which took place in December of last year.

How jaded you have to be to get bored during a rape victim’s testimony? The testimony would be unpleasant, maybe. Disturbing, probably. But boring? Seriously?

Things continue to get worse for Mr. Majumder. He admitted to watching porn at work on the reg. And police found child pornography on his home computer following the in court incident. Now he faces more serious criminal charges.

Maybe there’s a cultural divide. After all, this happened in England, where they have naked photos in mainstream newspapers. Maybe he just thought it was like looking at the news.

Meanwhile, on the homefront a Texas judge — more specifically a “special education hearing officer” — was forced to resign last week after he fell asleep in the middle of “testimony critical to a disabled teenager’s future.” From My Fox Houston:

In Texas, when the parents of special needs children disagree with the way their public school is educating their kid and efforts at compromise fail, there is often only one recourse to settle the dispute. It’s called “Due Process”, an educational court proceeding in which a state-appointed hearing officer listens to the issues and serves as judge and jury.

Larry Craddock was presiding at just such a hearing when he was captured on cell phone camera snoozing through testimony. Attorney Silver estimates Craddock slept through a quarter of the proceedings.

“We dropped water bottles. We tried coughing, we tried jumbling our books to help stir him awake, but it wasn’t working,” said parent Donna Harvey.

Parents who engage in a “due process hearing” often expend tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees fighting school districts with much deeper pockets.

Way to go, Larry. Next time, think of the children. It’s not like education is important or anything.

Of course, pics or it didn’t happen. Even better, we have video:

We get it. Sometimes work is boring. Sometimes we arrive at work sleep deprived and hung over. But do your damn job. If you want to take naps and look at naked women all day, move to Spain. I hear they pay people for that there.

Bored Court Clerk Watched Porn During Rape Trial [Greedy Associates]
Sleeping Special Education Judge Resigns under Fire [My Fox Houston]
Gavel Bang: Adjunct Law Prof Blog

– Professor Brian Leiter, delivering the Annual Midway Dinner Speech at the University of Chicago Law School last Friday evening.

Law school leaders only care about the Benjamins.

Now comes the time when law schools tell students that the 2012-2013 academic year will cost more than the 2011-2012 academic year, even though the schools will be providing no additional professional help to struggling graduates.

Some law schools will blame it on state budget cuts to education. Other schools will blame it on weak fundraising. Still others will give you a song and dance about how the increases are necessary to hire top professorial talent, and then there will be some schools who offer the unsaid, “we’re doing it because we can and you’ll just borrow more money to pay us.”

We don’t track every tuition hike, because just about every law school raises tuition every year for one reason or another. But when a law school is brazen enough to raise tuition by a higher rate than other institutions at the university — and expects law students to be too stupid to notice how they’re getting taken advantage of — we tend to notice…

Last year, it was Stanford Law School pushing through a tuition hike for law students that was much larger than the increase experienced by the rest of the university.

This year, it appears that Notre Dame Law wants to be the standard bearer for milking the law school cash cow while protecting other institutions in the university system.

Notre Dame had previously raised law school tuition at the same rate as the undergraduate college. But starting with the 2011-2012 year, the school decided to start raising law school tuition by an extra $1,000 over the undergraduate increase. This year, ND Law sent a letter to try to “explain” this disparity.

I put the word explain in quotes because the words strung together in this memo don’t really rise to the level of a coherent explanation about anything. Here’s the memo:

Notice how none of this involves putting money into helping students find a job. But that’s supposed to be okay because I’m sure that the students are happy to pay an extra thousand dollars to “maintain the high value of a Notre Dame Law School education and degree for generations to come.”

Which of course is code for “we need to pay professors more money!!!!”

Look, there’s is no better evidence of how university administrators view their law schools than when we see a tuition hike like this. The job market is soft and salaries for young lawyers are stagnant, but the good people in charge of Notre Dame don’t care. Squeeze the law students and hope they are too docile to complain.

Just know that when a university president looks at a law student, all he or she sees are dollar signs.

Earlier: Stanford Law Dean Explains Why Stanford Law Deserves a Bigger Tuition Hike Than the Rest of the University

Only God can save you now, James. Not sure if he's interested, though.

It might have seemed impossible, but things have gotten worse for those involved in the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

In addition to all the other evidence against the now defunct newspaper, which was run by James Murdoch, the son of everyone’s favorite terrifying Australian media baron, new email evidence — that investigators literally pulled out of a box in an abandoned office — indicates that the younger Murdoch should have known exactly what was going on.

This isn’t a smoking gun e-mail. It’s a smoking gun, fingerprints, and well-fit glove…

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an excellent story about what’s going on:

When The News of the World was closed in disgrace last summer, its newsroom was locked down by security guards. In mid-November, News International says, investigators searching the seized materials found a storage crate that, judging from a sticker on top, had come from the office of Colin Myler, the paper’s last editor. It contained a hard copy of an e-mail sent from Mr. Myler to James Murdoch on June 7, 2008 — in reality a chain of e-mails that included correspondence with Tom Crone, then an in-house lawyer.

“Unfortunately, it is as bad as we feared,” Mr. Myler wrote, speaking of an impending lawsuit that threatened to reveal that voice-mail hacking at the paper was endemic.

Last summer, senior News International officials said that in that crucial period in 2008, Mr. Murdoch had neither been told about nor shown documentation of the extent of the illegality at The News of the World. The discovery of the e-mail, said one former official with knowledge of the situation, was completely unexpected.

Why did it take so long to come to light? Linklaters, a law firm working for News International, said that a junior employee found it in November, but that senior officials at the firm did not know about it until December.

So, there is a lot to digest there. First, how the hell was discovery of this email unexpected? It is clearly relevant, and an in-house attorney was included on the thread. Second, it should have only been about ten seconds from when the junior employee found e-mail until nuclear alarm bells were going off across the office.

Originally the company said they thought the email had been deleted as part of a larger companywide initiative. Generally, that wouldn’t necessarily be a big deal. Companies have to get rid of old files as part of regular document retention policies. But perhaps unsurprisingly, News International wasn’t exactly going by the book:

[I]n January 2011, HCL said, News International asked whether HCL [Technologies, the company's email manager] was capable of helping “truncate” — meaning delete — “a particular database” in the e-mail system. The question came shortly after disclosures in a civil suit brought by the actress Sienna Miller raised fears that material about widespread phone hacking at The News of the World might become public.

News International did not explain why it wanted the deletion. HCL said it could not help and told the company to look elsewhere.

It is not clear whether the “stabilization and modernization program” that deleted the Murdoch e-mail was linked to News International’s request to “truncate” data. But it is clear that on Jan. 15, when the deletion took place, the company knew it was facing civil and potentially criminal inquiries. A month earlier, reacting to new information from the Miller and other cases, it had suspended the News of the World’s news editor, Ian Edmondson, on suspicion of phone hacking, and handed some material to the police.

I can imagine the internal discussion: “It’s about time to clear out all that old email, eh, chaps? What? We’re in the middle of litigation already? Oh, no. Don’t worry. These emails are entirely unrelated. Let’s go have a pint.”

Maybe it was an innocent mistake? “A dingo ate my email, I swear!” The article paints a nice little picture of the massive scope of e-discovery we are talking about here:

Dozens of people — lawyers, forensic accountants, forensic computer technicians and, sometimes, police officers — gather daily at a site in Thomas More Square here, where News International is based, searching through 300 million e-mails and other documents stretching back a decade.

On the other hand, the whole thing could be just another intentional act of dishonesty on the part of the company, in a long string of them. Yes, that sounds about right:

Last month, the High Court judge presiding over the civil lawsuits brought by hacking victims castigated News International for what he called its “startling approach” to e-mail. Even after the company received a formal request for documents, said the judge, Geoffrey Vos, “a previously conceived plan to delete e-mails was put in place by senior management.”

Speaking of News Group Newspapers, a division of News International, Justice Vos said that “they are to be treated as deliberate destroyers of evidence.”

These allegations border on absurdly brazen to begin with. But as the Times mentions, what will really make a judge blow his top is the fact that the company has claimed every step of the way to be cooperating as much as possible.

In any event, even as “deliberate destroyers of emails” News of the World seems to be comically incompetent.

Hacking Cases Focus on Memo to a Murdoch [New York Times]

In a month where some of our competitors included those involved in an alleged Biglaw ménage à trois and a lawyerly leader who allegedly made the most out-of-touch statement imaginable, the voters were swayed by someone else’s alleged statements (and perhaps her beauty, as well).

Let’s take a look at January’s Lawyer of the Month. This time, you don’t even have to Google her….

Just eight votes separated our Lawyer of the Month from our second-place finisher. Quite frankly, it’s inconceivable that ABA President William Robinson III didn’t come out on top. But it looks like Robinson — the same man who allegedly thinks it’s your own fault if you’re poor and unemployed — “should’ve known what [he was] getting into” when he went head-to-head against a prior Lawyer of the Day title-holder.

So who is January’s Lawyer of the Month? The winner of this month’s contest is none other than Ice Miller attorney, Courtney King. King’s claim to fame (or infamy) is her alleged statement to the police during her late-night arrest outside of a Louisville bar: “You are going to… die. I’m a lawyer. You can Google me. You are dead. I work at a law firm in Indianapolis.”

King is scheduled to be back in court on March 15 for a preliminary hearing. Will she be gettin’ lucky in Kentucky? We don’t know, but what we do know is that if she winds up back in jail, she can take solace in the fact that our readers think she looks hot in her mug shot.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Earlier: Lawyer of the Month: January Reader Poll
Google Me, B***h: The Real Deal on Courtney King’s Arrest
Lawyer of the Day: Alleged Death Threats Put Attorney on Ice

Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.

As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.

Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong

We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).

Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.

Basic Overview of the Lateral Hiring Market in Asia

We are fortunate to meet regularly in-person with senior US corporate and cap markets partners in HK / China, especially when Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney are visiting our Hong Kong office. Evan and Robert are friends with many key US partners in HK / China and the region and have at least close business relations with most key US partners in HK / China and Singapore. It is, in large part, through such in-person meetings during their many trips to HK (usually 6 such trips a year for Evan and 4-5 for Robert) and also other Asia markets, that we get a great read on the market and what US partners are thinking about the near-term and long-term prospects for their deal flow. We are very fortunate that such senior partners go out of their way to make time to meet Robert and Evan when they are in town. Further, we have Alexis Lamb permanently on the ground in HK having such meetings and Asia based partners also meet in the US with Evan and Robert when they are visiting there. Yuliya Vinokurova, our Russia-based recruiter, also works out of our Hong Kong office from time to time.

During Evan and Robert’s last three recent trips to HK, occurring from August to December ’11, the outlook of most of the US corporate partners they regularly meet with in HK improved substantially. While lateral US corporate associate hiring has not picked up yet in HK / China, the outlook for future deal flow has improved over the situation only a few months ago.

The general feeling in the market from most US corporate associates that we are speaking to these days is that hiring is very slow in Asia and will be for a long while, but the reality is not nearly as dire as this common view. While US associate lateral hiring has indeed slowed down significantly in the Asia markets, the slow-down has mainly been in US cap markets, but not necessarily in other practice areas. Cap markets hiring, especially at the top US firms, has always been the key driver for US associate hiring in Asia. Thus, when hiring in US cap markets is down, the entire lateral hiring market for US associates in Asia is significantly down.

US Cap Markets hiring in HK / China has not stopped entirely though. For example, in the past three weeks, we have made two US cap markets associate placements in HK, at a top US firm and a Magic Circle firm. We predict that US cap markets hiring in HK / China will not pick up that much until spring though and we don’t expect a repeat of the early ’11 US cap markets hiring boom in HK / China for years to come.

Keep in mind that in the first half of ’11, we were in the tail end of a two year IPO boom in HK / China and for most of that boom period, many top US firms’ HK / China offices were either on hiring freeze or only allowed limited hiring by their global firm management. By the end of ’10, most US practices in HK / China were finally given the full green light to hire as many associates as the partners’ on the ground felt they needed, but by that time most US cap markets practices in HK / China were woefully understaffed. Thus, the unprecedented hiring boom commenced.

As you know, late summer ’11 onwards brought on a slow down in IPO activity in HK / China. The slow down was caused mainly by volatility in the global markets, due in large part to the Europe crisis. Many clients of top US cap markets practices in Asia decided to put scheduled IPOs on hold. At the height of the Europe crisis and the volatility in the markets last fall, there was a realistic fear that many IPOs could be put on hold for a year or more. Despite the gloomy outlook at the time, it was a much more healthy market than in late ’08, when pencils were basically put down at cap markets practices in Asia. Late last year, cap markets practices in HK / China were still working on deals scheduled for closing in 4th quarter, but the expectation was that most of those deals would ultimately be put on hold, perhaps long-term. Things picked up in the markets late last year and some law firms’ clients pushed through their IPO 4th quarter closings after all. Most importantly, the feeling in the market is now that IPOs put on hold late last year and 1st quarter this year could come back in first half ’12, instead of in late ’12 or ’13.

Of course, there are many variables at play in the global markets that will determine things (our brief overview here is overly simplistic due to this being a blog post, rather than a dissertation), and there are surely economic challenges that China must overcome in ’12, but the outlook has improved substantially in the past 3 months. The Europe crisis has been put on hold, at least for a while, and the threat of a significant slow down in China’s economy has not materialized. Economists are now predicting China’s sizzling growth will slow some in ’12,and will still be at boom levels of around 8.5%. The predictions were far more dire several months ago by some economists, who were predicting a “hard landing” for China’s economy in ‘12.

China’s growth rate in ’11 was 9.2%, down from the 10.4% in ’10. The outlook for the first three months of ’12 is expected to be around 8.3%, but then pick up afterwards for the remainder of ’12. China’s growth in the 4th quarter ’11 slowed to 8.9%, a much smaller decline than what was expected.

We believe that starting after the extended holiday season of late December through an earlier than usual Chinese New Year presently upon us, a few more US cap markets practices in Asia will consider hiring again. It will likely be no earlier than spring though before we see a real increase in cap markets lateral associate hiring though.

We expect to continue to make placements in other practice areas though during 1st and 2nd quarters, especially as many US law firms in Asia continue to diversify and add new practices. While cap markets placements have been down, we have had higher than usual numbers of placements in Asia in fund formation, project finance and in new US litigation practices (mostly FCPA work). Our partner friends in fund
formation are flat-out busy for the most part. M&A placement numbers have been down a bit, but in better shape than cap markets.

IPO activity still is the driver for a lot of the US associate hiring though in Asia and when cap markets work slows, it can be difficult for partners busy in other practices in Asia to get clearance to make the hires they need. Firm management back in US or UK can be heavily influenced by the overall numbers of an Asia office, numbers driven by cap markets deal flow at many of those offices, when deciding whether to give the green light on hires in general.

Also, keep in mind that during slow hiring periods like this one, there is an abundance of very high quality cap markets and corporate US associate candidates on the market in Asia. When a hiring partner is unsure he should pull the trigger on new hires just yet and he has seven great resumes on his desk, it is much easier to hold off. Hiring decisions are rushed, on the other hand, when Asian background candidates from top 10 firms become scarce and that can happen very quickly in an obviously improving market. It could happen in spring or summer this year, if the markets continue to improve.

Being a lawyer who is involved in the community, I used to be frequently asked, “Hey, I want to get involved in the community, can you tell me how?” I don’t get asked that much anymore. “Community” is considered “the Twitter community,” or “the blawgosphere.” While the tech hacks haven’t yet declared community involvement “dead,” the fact that the result of becoming involved in the community is often organically-developed, real relationships with other like-minded people that may lead to business, is unattractive to those that have bought in to the notion that a collection of followers and friends online is a quicker path to lots of phone calls.

So if there are any lawyers left out there that are still contemplating community involvement, I offer the following….

Community involvement will get you business, but stop asking if it will get you business.

This is the question of the “I only do things that make me money” lawyers, the people who ask, “Does that get you cases?” or “Why do you do all these things in the community, you running for judge or something?” If you are involved enough, for long enough, someone is going to refer you business. I can’t tell you how many “hits” you will get, or set up a separate phone number to track the calls, but trust me, this is the way we lawyers way back in the ’90s used to build our practices — we get to know people and develop real relationships. If your goal is to get business, you will be very unhappy, as it will take a while (like more than a few keystrokes).

Involvement in a Bar association is not community involvement.

I know, it’s the young lawyers organization or your niche bar association. Sure, join them, get involved, but the “community” is not a group of lawyers. Consider a charity, hospital, rotary, Kiwanis, chamber of commerce. Yes, this type of involvement will cost you money — some even have minimum financial commitments. Just lay off the Starbucks, dump the SEO kid, and postpone buying your third iPad. You’ll be okay.

I know the thought of meeting non-lawyers that own businesses or work in industries other than law may be a foreign concept to you, but I assure you that if you put your mind to it, you can have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around whether moving to the “cloud” is necessary, or whether you made the right decision to leave Biglaw.

Involvement is not a happy hour.

I know, you don’t have time to get involved, you have kids. How unique.

Cut the crap, you have time. Stop using your kids or self-importance to avoid getting involved. You have time for one committee meeting a month (or so), and if you insist your time is just so precious and limited, take on a specific project that allows you to schedule meetings or conference calls around your schedule. If your idea of getting involved is showing up for a drink, get involved in a bar.

Find your passion.

Yeah, I know, it’s a cliché, but I find the reason people refrain from community involvement is because they don’t really give a crap about anything. No disease has touched them or their family, children’s issues (other than their own) are not interesting, and of course, they don’t see immediate cash filling their coffers.

If you’re one of these folks, my advice is to look for something off the beaten path. Stay away from the major charities and service organizations and look for something new, small, and under the radar that focuses on a need not served by other organizations. You’ll have a better opportunity to make an impact.

Sorry to interrupt your online marketing efforts. You may now go back to entering good keywords on your website and increasing your Google AdWords budget. I’m headed to a gala that I co-sponsored for a local charity that helps foster children.

Brian Tannebaum will never “get on board” at the advice of failed lawyers who were never a part of the past but claim to know “the future of law.” He represents clients, every day, in criminal and lawyer discipline cases without the assistance of an Apple device, and usually gets to work (in an office, not a coffee shop) by 9 a.m. No client has ever asked if he’s on Twitter. He can be reached at bt@tannebaumweiss.com.