Valerie A. Fontaine earned her JD from UC Hastings College of Law and her BA, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, from UCLA. She was on the Editorial Board of COMM/ENT, a Journal of Communications and Entertainment Law. Valerie practiced law with a prominent Los Angeles law firm and entered the legal search profession in 1981. Valerie is Secretary to the Board of Directors of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC) and Chairs its Newsletter Committee.
Regardless of the quality of your work product, how often you’re seen at the office impacts what your superiors and colleagues think of you. With technological advances constantly increasing connectivity, there’s a growing expectation that lawyers are available to work 24/7, yet a decreased need to spend time in the office to do so. A…
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Law firm financial data seldom was discussed publicly before law became big business. Today, however, the legal press ranks the largest US law firms on the basis of gross revenues and other indicators such as revenues per lawyer and profits per partner. (See the American Lawyer’s annual AmLaw100 and 200 rankings and the National Law…
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Over the past 30 years or so, the practice of law transformed from a genteel profession to big business. Lawyers became profit centers; law firms grew and consolidated; technological advances sped up and commoditized the work; competition increased; loyalty between lawyers and law firms and between law firms and clients decreased; and more nonlawyer professionals…
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The Great Recession sparked radical changes in the legal marketplace, including drastically reduced entry-level and junior associate hiring and the rise of core competency systems for their evaluation, compensation, and advancement. As part of this trend, there is a movement to reevaluate traditional criteria for hiring lawyers at all levels of seniority and possibly to…
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