We dabble as podcasters in much the same way that Ron Burgundy dabbles in the jazz flute: smartly. It was only a matter of time, however, before just the one Legal Talk Network podcast was not enough. So, we opened…
We continue our conversation with Lee Holland, Esq. about his journey through personal and professional crisis. (You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here).
LCL: In setting up your firm you focused on work you love, how did you go about identifying the work that you loved and wanted to focus on?
LH: I found my specialty as a FINRA advocate for consumers and reputable industry clientele largely by happenstance, but have always had a strong sense of enforcing fairness. Past legal representations had exposed me to many different areas of practice, and with those, many different types of clients with many different backgrounds. From my experience, I felt the strongest connection when working with individuals as clients, and the best of those interactions were largely 1-on-1 relationships. I became a FINRA arbitrator in 2005, and I quickly grew to respect the organization and its mission, while simultaneously becoming more active and interested in promoting effective financial regulation.
Burnout is one of the more common catastrophes that occur in high stress legal jobs, whether that be in a large firm or a solo practice. The key to avoiding burnout is to recognize the warning signs and be prepared…
July 1, 2015: Mark Your Calendars for the New Massachusetts Rules of Conduct. The New Massachusetts Rules have been in the works since 2013 when the SJC’s Standing Advisory Committee on the Rules of Professional Conduct published its proposed revisions…
We continue our conversation with Lee Holland, Esq. about his journey through personal and professional crisis. (You can read Part 1 here).
LCL: In your transition from a high pressure large firm job to working for yourself and being a stay-at-home father, were there any difficult aspects of that transition? If so, how did you handle them?
LH: The transition was difficult in ways that were unexpected, and also challenging in more readily apparent ways. For instance, I knew it would be a challenge to balance being a solo and simultaneously be a fully engaged father available to my children during the school/work week, but I had decided that the latter needed to be part of my life, and the former would just have to adapt. I am grateful for clients who are understanding. With advance planning, most if not all of the sorts of scheduling challenges I had envisioned can be easily managed. Good communication and honesty with self and clientele has earned me the ability to raise conflicts with clients in a way that we are able to work around. The discussions that led me to have this chemistry with my clients pay repeated dividends throughout the representation. I believe that my clients respect me all the more for my decisions to achieve a personal/work balance that permits so much family time. They know my time is valuable beyond the financial, as is theirs. They can sense that I know and respect the value of their time as well.
This series began with a post on the Massachusetts Data Privacy Laws, which provide standards for businesses that keep certain types of personal information. Following up that statutory and regulatory update, I provided you with my top digital security tips, including tip…
According to Merriam-Webster, one of the definitions of crisis is “an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially: one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.” We all face crises of one kind sometime in our lives. For Lee Holland, Esq., he faced multiple crises at one time. LCL Clinician, Dr. Shawn Healy, sat down with Lee to ask him about his crises and how he grew from them.
I love the new Little Caesar’s’ commercial. There’re so many good things going on here. (Yes, apparently, Little Caesar’s is still in operation -- news to me.) The lawyers are preposterously stuffy. They’re ordering pizza by committee -- a group…
As I write this blog entry, I am thinking about what words to use next in order to express my intended message in the most succinct way possible. When I feel that my choice of words is successful, I feel good. I then want to write more with the hopes of repeating that experience. However, when I stumble over the words or it seems like I am hitting a barrier, I feel discomfort. My first tendency is to stop writing (to end the discomfort) and shift my attention to something else, something more pleasurable (email, coffee, the next thing on my to-do list, staring at the ceiling, etc.). This, by the way, is the recipe for procrastination.
Thursday, our annual marketing conference went down. Mercifully, this is the last blog post I will have to write on the subject. Don’t worry, though: you’ll hear about the 2016 program when it rolls around again, next Spring. But, before…