Our first official tour day was action-packed. In the morning, we visited our first Rebel of the journey, Cheryl Conner, at her home in Sherborn, Mass., her wooded property as our backdrop.
Sometimes it takes an ethereal person to make us more grounded. Cheryl Conner, 56, who sees herself as a “change agent, visionary, lawyer and economist,” hopes to use age-old concepts to inspire new approaches to the law as applied to business and politics.
The Rebels Tour crew – Molly, Rachel, John and Ed – touched down in Boston on Sunday.
Next week, the Legal Rebels ‘09 Tour will be visiting an expert on going solo.
It’s nearly 1 a.m. on a summer night in Taiwan, and Mae O’Malley still has work to do.
As we motor down I-95 from Sept. 14-25, we’ll be stopping along the way to visit with some of the most innovative lawyers in big firms, solo practice, bar associations, law schools, nonprofits and legal technology companies.
With reality TV all the rage, it may only be a matter of time before camera crews start following Carl Malamud. Exterminators, nannies and fishermen get their own shows, so wouldn’t it make sense that America would tune in to watch a guy who resembles Paul Simon—the musician, not the late senator—driving an old Jeep Wrangler from library to library to check out how they’re storing documents?
Four people trapped in a confined space for two weeks as they barrel down the highway, in search of the future of the practice of law. Is it a reality show in the making, a homicide waiting to happen, or both?
Thomas Bruce, co-founder of the world’s first legal information website, is many things.
His wife, playwright Judith Pratt, describes him as a polymath, and she ticks off an imaginary list: “He knows computers, theater, opera, woodworking tools. And although he hasn’t studied French, Italian or German since college, he can cope in those languages.”
With more than 200 nominations of could-be Legal Rebels, we had a lot of choices of where to go for our Rebel-a-day road trip. Our choice – the tradition-bound but hungry BosWash corridor, right down that scenic boulevard I-95.
It was fall 2005, and Indiana University law professor Bill Henderson had a dilemma. He was gathering statistics, analyzing data and speaking at law firms across the country, but none of his IU Bloomington colleagues, all experts in established legal practices such as constitutional law and torts, could fathom exactly what he did.
In the world of academia, where tenure is won through peer recognition, that’s a problem.
Adam Reich knew early on it would take more than just good lawyering to free his client. It would take a movement.
So he set out to start one.
Our Legal Rebels project—profiling 50 of the profession’s leading innovators—gets under way today. (Learn more about why we launched the project and what we hope to accomplish at LegalRebels.com/about.)
Jeffrey J. Hughes’ business card is printed in a conservative font—with black ink, of course—on nice, white card stock. It looks distinguished, like he’s someone who will come to court in a pinstriped suit and rescue you, if need be.
But he’s not wearing a suit today. If he were, the espresso machine he’s operating might blow steam on it.
On New Year’s Day 2007, Patrick J. Lamb was calling from Chicago, and his message to the lawyer on the other end was clear: “One year from today we’re starting our firm.”
Then Lamb hung up and quickly dialed two more numbers. His next commands were even shorter. “We’re on the clock,” he told litigators Nicole Auerbach and Mark Sayre.
Laurel Edgeworth prefers the driver’s seat. Tall, slender and athletic, her light blond hair cut into a sleek bob, the Sacramento, Calif., native is a master of control.
Within four months of graduating from law school, she passed the California bar exam, stepped into a full-time position at her firm, and launched an online business: Law Clerk Connection.
Richard Granat doesn’t smile or show much facial expression when he talks—often for long periods of time—about his numerous online ventures, all of which focus on using the Internet in legal services delivery to underserved firms and clients.
If you’re searching for David Van Zandt, look for the tall, blue-eyed man in a purple shirt.
Pride in your product, Van Zandt says, is crucial to a successful business. So as dean of Northwestern University School of Law, he wears something with the school color or a Northwestern logo every day.
Every day in private practice, Roderick A. Palmore thought about how he could distinguish himself as a lawyer. As the first black partner at Chicago’s Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon, some say he had little choice.
Now executive vice president, general counsel, and chief compliance and risk management officer at Minneapolis-based General Mills, Palmore is judging how law firms outpace their competition.
It’s midnight, and corporate paralegal Denise Annunciata sits in her corner office, bleary-eyed, staring at her computer screen. There’s no view to relieve the tedium—her office being in the corner of her back bedroom in Framingham, Mass.
As she tackles a mountain of securities matters (aka blue sky work) in front of her, the other half of her brain rapidly sifts through ways to handle the unending influx of work.
