Staff Meeting Success: Must Do & Definitely Don’t!

#1 “Must Do!” Hold regular, pre-planned and productive staff meetings. #1 “Definitely Don’t!” Without adequate preparation and the right facilitator to ensure employee meetings are productive, positive and efficient, don’t go there. I could stop writing now as the most critical points of my message are listed above.  A checklist is offered below, however, with [...]

Does Your Employee Evaluation System Need a Boost?

How do you conduct employee evaluations in your office?  Think it could use some updating and/or revamping?  If so, please see a recent article written for republication in my workshops, seminar presentations and in Lawyers USA: Does Your Employee Evaluation System Need a Boost (or perhaps a total overhaul)? And, as always, many thanks for [...]

Making Fertilizer from Office Poop

As our awesome grandkids would tell you, we scoop lots of poop on our mountainside horse and donkey ranch.  If we had a nickel for all our scoopings through the years, we’d likely be more than financially set for life. I’m retained by professional firms to serve as their investigator, coach, consultant or temporary administrator.  [...]

Employee Terminations: Self-Audit Tips from Hiring to Firing

Employee Terminations: Self-Audit Tips from Hiring to Firing…..okay…I know personnel management and especially employee firings are NOT desired or enjoyable subjects for most of us…but it is reality.   You can read my partial list of recommendations on the hiring process, the management and supervision of employees and the termination of them when things just [...]

Problem Managers & Employees: Danger Signals & Red Flags

MANAGERS/LEADERS/SUPERVISORS (Note: No Order of Priority Intended….I Consider All These Red Flags as Needing ASAP Attention!) (c) Nancy Byerly Jones 2010  Excessive/chronic telephone & email message pileups Regular client/customer complaints about unreturned telephone calls Trying to keep up with it all without short hot list (“cheat sheet” or “road map”) re highest priorities for each [...]

Office Sharing: Maximizing the Benefits & Minimizing the Risks

For those considering office sharing (or already doing so), here are a few of my recommendations for minimizing the risks and maximizing the benefits: Tips on office sharing and executive suites  (from chapter in ABA/Law Practice Management’s Flying Solo, Edition 4 Publication) Other questions?  Either leave a comment or email me at nbj@nbjconsulting.com and I [...]

Preventing Partnership (and Family!) Implosions

Hello to All! Copied below is a somewhat altered version of my September  ’09 Lawyers USA column.  It is a further expansion (and more polished!) of my 8/25/09 post on greed and unresolved disputes.  Let me know what you think, what you’d add or disagree with and best wishes for a wonderful (and safe) upcoming [...]

Employee Considerations in Law Firm Mergers

I just sent the suggestions copied below to an attorney looking for merger tips to pass along to a client law firm about to merge w/another firm.  Doing so made me realize how often in mergers (whether law firms or other businesses) there’s too little attention paid to our employees and what they are going [...]

Law Office Mental Health Policies for Well Known & Our "Other" Addictions

Alcoholism, substance abuse and depression; these three afflictions usually receive the most attention at CLE programs and in legal publications. This makes sense in light of the continuing (and alarming) rise in the numbers of attorneys suffering with these impairments. What we don’t hear as much about, statistically or otherwise, are the more subtle impairments [...]