In the workplace, as we small-law attorneys seek to fully integrate with our business teams, we look for opportunities to identify valued and trusted resources.

The Annual Meeting is so much more than CLEs. If you don’t know that already, this is your year to find out!

The authors will be more receptive to not only accepting your edits, but to adopting the underlying principles in future works, if they see that you’re adding value to something they already worked so hard on.

We take the easy way out when we prefer no-discretion policies simply because they are easier for mediocre managers to administer and mediocre employees to follow.

This was going to be a column about discretion and judgment, and my perception that we need to reinvigorate those skills in the modern workplace, but that topic has thus far defied my attempts to wrestle it into the confines of this page.

This column is not about compliance, or at least not “Capital-C” compliance; it is about compliance generally, corner-cutting lawyers and inscrutable IT departments. It’s also about workplace rules and constraints, imposed in the belief that they’ll facilitate the attainment of generally agreed-upon good things, and why they often fall short.

Your clients have races to run, and you’re helping them win.

Consider your expectations about the communication tools you frequently use, and look for possible disconnects between you and those with whom you closely work.

You may not love it, and it may exasperate you daily, but it’s integral to your life as a small law counsel (and a person on Earth), and a few minutes’ effort can go a long way toward tamping down chaos.