Did you get your NCAA tournament brackets in on time?  Thanks to a timely reminder from a colleague, I got mine in with 11 minutes to spare.

I doubt that anyone would argue that March Madness directly impacts workplace productivity. Actually, of all of the major sporting events, March Madness seems to have the most significant, negative impact on workplace productivity, followed by fantasy football and the Super Bowl. In fact, 86 percent of U.S. workers expect to devote at least some time at work this week to follow the games. Forty-five percent of Americans are likely to enter at least one college basketball pool between March 11 and March 18.

According to the Baltimore Business Journal’s non-scientific poll 69 percent of voters (220 as of Friday morning) thought that March Madness activities in the workplace were nothing more than harmless fun. Of course, the fun is no longer harmless when your office network grinds to a halt because of unusually high number of employees covertly streaming the games on their computers.

At least one social psychologist reads significantly more into March Madness-related activities. Don Forsyth says employers can learn a lot about their employees by observing how their employees fill out their brackets

“You could tell how each person made decisions, how they exhibited bias, whether their choices were rational or irrational, if they used mathematical analysis or if they based on emotions,”  he says.

Wow.  I hope no one is analyzing my March Madness picks that closely.

While I have yet to find a company that analyzes its employees’ brackets in any kind of detail, I think most firms have decided to embrace March Madness. After all, a large number of employees are going to watch at least some of the games. Having a TV on in the break room should help ease network traffic, at least to some extent.

More importantly, the tournament provides a natural ice breaker and can encourage a sense of community and the building of relationships. And rivalries. (Friendly ones, of course.)

Now, excuse me while I go spend some time plotting my chances of moving up in the rankings — I’m sure I can get out of this 10-way tie for 149th place. (Hey, it’s a big pool!)

Powered by Bookmarkify™

And more power to them. I happened upon this New York Times article over the weekend: How Companies Learn Your Secrets. The gist (it’s about 7,000 words, but it’s a quick read) is that Target hires statisticians to increase revenue.

Target, like many other corporations, wants to get repeat business. Most of us are set in our buying ways — we usually shop at the same places until some life-changing event happens. Those life-changing events include moving, marrying, divorcing, graduating and, of course, the holy grail of life-changing events: having a baby.

As most parents will tell you, having a baby changes everything (as it should). New parents must wrestle with sleep deprivation, continuous family illnesses, financial changes (sometimes including converting to one-income family for a short time, if not longer) and figuring out how to best care for their new bundle of joy.

New parents and parents-to-be are more open to changing their retail routines, as they try to fit their new purchasing requirements (baby food, formula, pacifiers, diapers and everything else) into their old shopping habits.

For example, Target hopes that new parents will stop shopping for food at grocery stores and convert to Target, which has a grocery section and baby products section. The theory is that they can predict which of their customers are pregnant based on purchasing habits.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Read the rest of this entry »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

A few days ago, Gawker published “Confessions of a Therapist.” (Warning: The story, starting with the headline, covers some mature topics.) In it, the therapist talks about some of his clients in generalities and the approaches he took to help them. The therapist also talks about trends he saw between them and things he wished he would’ve done differently.

Is what the therapist did here breaking some kind of ethical code? Although the therapist’s article can be viewed as entertainment, it can also inspire hope and be used as a tool by other therapists as they look for ways to improve their own practices. Slate reports it’s not a violation of ethical code for a therapist to talk about his or her patients as long as the patient’s identity remains hidden.

Even though the therapist adhered to the code of ethics and concealed the identity of his clients, his (or her) actions still raised eyebrows and questions related to confidentiality. I didn’t think anything of it while reading the article, but apparently some people thought the clients could still be identified by such generalized descriptions.

For lawyers, of course, the line is a bit clearer. They must adhere to a strict code of confidentiality when it comes to information about their clients. They can only talk about or publicize information about their clients if their client has given informed consent. This happens often in high-profile cases when the lawyer basically buys the rights to a client’s case/story in order to write a book or make a movie/ TV show.

But what about if a lawyer wants to do something similar to the therapist who wrote for Gawker?

I’m many years away from starting my Great American Novel, so I’m not intimately familiar with the rules, but I imagine they are similar to in the case of the therapist. How else would books like this be able to be published? I would think it could be hard to write how-to books for lawyers given the ethical constraints, but these types of books that include first-hand accounts of professionals are incredibly valuable teaching tools. It’s the next best thing to learning by doing.

I know a glimpse into a lawyer’s mind while handling a case would have been a very welcome change from the endless waves of casebooks after casebooks I read in law school. Is it possible to create more books of this genre in the legal profession? Or are the ethical constraints too stringent to allow for this tool?

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Following up on John Cord’s post about how to get a job, I’d like to pose a question to readers who have already completed the seven (not always easy) steps to get a job: what led you to choose (and I use that term loosely) your job?

Did you decide to become a lawyer first and then choose what practice area you would like to pursue, or did you have a general idea of what exactly you wanted to do from the beginning?

People get jobs for all different reasons: because they know someone close to them in the field; they realized they were good at it; they were recruited into it; they worked their way up from a first job; or they just fell into it. I’m wondering how many of us young lawyers out there are in the job we set out to get, or if we are even setting out to get the position of our dreams anymore.

After three-to-four years of trials and tribulations and — in some cases –  hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, are many of us settling for whatever position we can get, or is the problem that many of us never had a clear idea of what we wanted in the first place?

How many people are going to law school just because they like the idea of pulling their lawyer card? (Which, as we’ve seen in past blog entries and news stories, doesn’t normally work.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

With much of the stress of the holidays over now and work not as busy as normal this week, it’s a good time for many of us to reflect on the past year and set personal and professional goals for what we want to achieve in 2012.

The federal government’s list of Americans’ most-popular new year’s resolutions is probably what you would expect. Among the goals:

• Lose weight
• Manage stress
• Manage debt
• Save money
• Take a trip
• Volunteer more often
• Get a better education
• Get a better job

I have the first six of these on my resolution list this year as well (as I do pretty much every year).  But I also have some professional resolutions.

I’m at work this week and using the time to get some things done around the office, cleaning out my desk and trying to start new habits to make my work more effective next year. Professionally, I’d like to stay more focused in 2012 and work on my organization and follow through.

I’d also like to attend more CLEs and become more involved in bar associations. FindLaw suggests focusing on writing skills, technology and marketing, which I think are good, broad starting points for even the best attorneys to find something specific that they can improve upon.

What about everyone else: are you making any resolutions to make your practice more effective next year? Anyone have any tips on how to stay motivated when Feb. 1 rolls around and those last 5 pounds are still stuck on you and the emails and calls to return are piling up?

Whatever your goals for next year, good luck and happy new year!

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Including today, you have six days left to give to charity for that all-important 2011 tax deduction. If you’re like me, you started out strong in the early part of the year, but slowed down around July or August.

Now is the time to sit down with your receipts to determine how much you have given and whether you have achieved your giving goal (or, whether that goal should change or — hopefully — increase). Here are some last-minute ideas:

American Red Cross: Sometimes I disagree with their politics, but they do good work. Also, if you are strapped for cash, you can walk in and simply open a vein — a process you can repeat every 59 days if donating whole blood, or sooner if you do apheresis.

National Multiple Sclerosis Society: A friend from high school developed MS a few years ago, and this is now my charity of choice. I’ll hit you up again in time for the 2012 MS Walk.

Maryland Food Bank: The Maryland Food Bank accepts donations of money, food or time. Right now, the Lawyers’ Campaign Against Hunger is only $46,786 short of its $290,000 goal. For more on the Maryland Food Bank, see prior blog posts by Michael Siri and yours truly.

Wherever your money or time goes, please give generously. We are lucky people. Happy new year.

Powered by Bookmarkify™