Archive for June 19th, 2008
Corporate control
One of my dislikes is our telling clients that we are always available 24/7.
Leaving aside that I am not (and so the claim is not strictly truthful), do my clients really want me to be available 24/7? When the job requires it, yes: but not all the time.
And how are we? The BlackBerry. I don’t have one (I gave it back) and I live in an area where there is no mobile coverage. But most of my colleagues do, and having one is very much seen as having ‘arrived’ (quite where is not clear) and even more when they are allowed to upgrade to the new model. They clearly haven’t read The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr,
The Blackberry has become the most visible symbol of the expansion of corporate control over people’s lives. Connected wirelessly to corporate servers, the ubiquitous gadget forms an invisible tether tying employees to their jobs. . . Many people feel a genuine sense of empowerment when they use their BlackBerry or otherwise connect from afar to their corporate network. They welcome the technology because it “frees” them to work whenever and wherever they want, making them more productive and successful in their jobs. The price they pay, of course, is a loss of autonomy, as their employers gain greater control over their time, their activities and even their thoughts. “Even though I’m home,” another BlackBerry user told the Journal, “I’m not necessarily there.”
For more from Nicholas Carr, see his blog Rough Type. It doesn’t always make comfortable reading (his latest post is on Twitter ~ a corrective to the recent law blog posts such as Law tweeting proposition 2 in Binary Law).
. . . and yes, I occasionally tweet (but not that often).
Wishful thinking?
Somewhat late in posting, but see this post (it links back to my Selling time post earlier in the month).
Fees to rise despite client pressure, say lawyers
Wishful thinking? Speaking with clients this morning at one of our regular Breakfast Clubs, it is clear that we cannot take anything for granted. What this period of economic uncertainty now offers us is an opportunity to revisit the relationship between lawyers and clients as regards fees and value: and to move the agenda to value.
