Practice Management

ABA Journal, we got an award for you right here.

By Dan Hull

The winner of first annual What About Clients? Legal Journalism Award.

The ABA Journal deserves a big award this year, too.

The best hard news coverage of 2008 is "Narcissists With Big Egos Lead Many Law Firms, Consultant Says" (Nov. 11, 2008), by the Journal's Debra Cassens Weiss. The short article broke the news of an Altman Weil Report to Legal Management published in April entitled "Understanding and Working with Narcissistic Leaders".

The Altman Weil report, in a nutshell: "Some narcissist law firm leaders are good, others bad". And that narcissists are not like you and me, Ernest. The real story, of course, which the Journal brilliantly and subtly blew the lid off of, is that once-respected Altman Weil (a) is so hopelessly out-to-lunch at the moment that it thinks that this kind of information and advice to its clients is valuable, or (b) is now betting that its clients, which include some very fine and mainly American law firms, are lame enough to think that this subject merits time, ink, discussion and fees.

But just highlighting this "discovery" and "analysis"--even if Debra was just kidding and was appalled and entertained as we were--is enough to give the ABA Journal the nod. Breaking this 2008 story was so huge we don't really have to wait until the end of December to give it to Debra and the Journal. See also Holden Oliver's companion piece "Action Item: In FY 2009, get nicer narcissists on Executive Committee". Our congratulations to the ABA Journal.

The ABA Journal easily snatches the first annual "Oliver" award.

Altman Weil: "The leader in legal consulting", seer, connoisseur of the obvious. Above: John William Waterhouse's "Echo and Narcissus" (1903)

Full post as published by What About Clients? on December 05, 2008 (boomark / email).