Envy isn’t anything I’m particularly prone to. But right now, I can hardly help it. I mean, it takes some serious work. Let me explain. In email newsletters and LinkedIn posts firms are starting to write about their presence at the annual IBA conference that’ll start on 30 October. Teams are being presented. Dates confirmed. This will only pick up and likely dominate my feed in about a week’s time. When I was still a partner at one of those firms, the IBA used to be at the same time incredible fun and hard work. In the years that I went, I actually didn’t

Sick and tired of hearing about „building a personal brand“, „need to maintain a personal brand“, „tips for having a strong personal brand“ and similar admonishments very close to the realm of Bull Sh*t Bingo? Here is a reframe, that seems to help many I work with around BD/marketing. Disclaimer: none of this is my idea; you can find this or similar thinking with Seth Godin, Chris Do and others…and THEY should know. Think of „your personal brand“ merely as the sum total of all perceptions and resulting expectations others have of you. Expectations not as morally-loaded „great expectations“, but very practically as in

We’ve all heard that it’s a good idea to put ourselves into other people’s shoes. What their concerns, preferences, fears, joys and overall situation might be like right now. It helps to understand what is happening, to calibrate one’s own behavior and quite generally to in a balanced way conduct human-to-human interactions.  And yet, there seems to be a both strange and relevant issue around this. It appears that for many it is a real stretch to practice empathy in this sense in relation to individuals who have higher (actual or at least perceived) social status or are in a position of influence. Associates

From one perspective, the law – at the very bottom of it all – has one purpose, and one purpose only: To coordinate human behavior, where societies have become large and complex enough that spontaneous cooperation within the relevant group of humans is no longer sufficient for an acceptable outcome. As lawyers we are using the tool of law (in the form of contracts, corporate structures, implementation of regulations, tax set-ups etc.) to shape specific aspects of human behavior and achieve results in the real world. If that is true, as business lawyers we need to know, understand and care (!) as much as

Maybe the situation is unfair. Or stupid. Or wrong. Actually, that’s almost certain. It practically always is. And yes, it’s also asymmetrical, it’s neither the same kind nor the same amount of unfair, stupid or wrong for everyone. It practically never is. Can we agree that it would be so much better if things were fair, smart and right, instead? And evenly spread? Great, that’s out of the way now. Because almost certainly it will take longer for things to get better than we are willing (or able) to wait with our next action. Which means that it’s far more practical to move forward,