| October 2009 | e-Newsletter |
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New and Improved Billable Hour Card Store is Here, Just in Time for the Holidays
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Since 2006, The Billable Hour Company has offered unique humorous greeting cards especially for lawyers and legal professionals. Now, just in time for the holiday season, we’ve launched the next generation Billable Hour Card Store, combining the best features of our old card store with many exciting new ones.
| Feature |
Old Billable Hour
Card Store |
New and Improved Billable Hour Card Store |
| Formats |
5x7 (portrait) or 7x5 (landscape) folded cards, with envelopes included |
5x7 (portrait) or 7x5 (landscape) folded cards, with envelopes included
New 5x7 (portrait) or 7x5 (landscape) postcards |
| Images |
More than 300 humorous law-themed cards for all occasions
Variety of traditional greeting card designs for all occasions |
More than 300 humorous law-themed cards for all occasions
New Wider variety of traditional greeting card designs for all occasions
New personalized photo cards with a variety of borders to choose from |
| Fulfillment |
Mail cards directly to recipients on date you choose
Ship cards to you with blank envelopes
If cards are shipped to you, shipping is via USPS Priority Mail |
Mail cards directly to recipients on date you choose
Ship cards to you with blank envelopes
New Ship cards to you with stamped envelopes printed with the recipients’ addresses and your return address (in other words, FREE envelope printing)
New If cards are shipped to you, you choose from various UPS shipping options
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| Checkout |
Create an account before completing your order
Accept Visa and Mastercard |
Create an account before completing your order
OR
New Quick Checkout—no need to create an account (though we encourage you to do so, in order to take advantage of more card store features, including saved address book)
New Accept Visa, Mastercard, AMEX and Discover
New Freedom account lets you pre-pay for as many cards as you like
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We still offer all of the great features you’ve come to know and love, including:
✔Flexible: Need 1 card for a colleague’s birthday, 100 cards to keep on hand to dash off a quick "Thank You" note for referrals, or 472 holiday cards? No problem: order as many cards as you want
✔Easy to Use: Quickly find just the right card by browsing our intuitive categories and subcategories (main categories include Especially For; Holidays; Occasions; Practice Areas; and Topics). At the Card Store launcher page, just click on Premium Cards (don't worry: "Premium" means only that they're more customizable than our EZ Cards. All of our folded greeting cards are the same low price.)
✔Great Value: Folded greeting cards are $2.99 each, postcards are $1.35 each. Bulk discounts start as low as 10 cards
✔Personalizable:
✔Compose your own message for the inside of your card, choosing from a variety of fonts, font sizes and font colors
✔Upload a signature or logo (which will be printed under your message)
✔Upload a photo to print inside the card
✔Organized: Upload your address book and save it on our system to facilitate quick ordering; add to your address book at any time
✔First Class: All shipping options that include postage include first class stamps: your cards will never look, or be treated, like bulk mail
✔For Any Occasion: Christmas, Hanukkah (coming soon), New Years, Valentines Day, graduation, anniversary, Thank you, birthday, Thanksgiving, retirement, promotion, and more
You'll find all of these legal humor holiday cards only in the new and improved Billable Hour Card Store:
We also have a wide variety of more traditional Christmas cards, Thanksgiving cards, Seasons Greetings cards and New Year's cards (Hanukkah cards coming soon).
Feature Article: Work = Death?
by Julie A. Fleming
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Imagine, for a moment, a world in which a lawyer’s work and life are completely separate.
No, I’m serious. Pause and imagine it.
When I try to envision that world, I get deeply distressed. If work and life are separate, and if life has no part in work, what does that imply? Work = no life, and the absence of life = death. So, work = death.
Ouch.
I began thinking about this when someone recently questioned the name of my website and blog (and, for that matter, business): does "Life at the Bar" mean I focus on work/life balance? (An ironic question, since that’s a phrase that I truly dislike and find dangerously misleading.) But no, I focus on a much broader scope of topics, and I’ve never had a coaching engagement that’s centered on or been directed primarily toward work/life balance.
Or perhaps I’m a life coach for lawyers? There’s nothing wrong with that; life coaching can be a valuable service. But that isn’t what I’m about. I work with clients on business development, career strategy, leadership development, among other issues, and we typically address life coaching issues only to the extent that it affects my client’s professional life. In other words, if a client is going through a divorce, we may touch on how to stay focused on work when in the office, even when grief or anger threatens to overwhelm, but I’m not the coach to help with sorting through how to approach friends who stop calling because of their divided loyalty resulting from being friends with the divorcing spouses.
Instead, "Life at the Bar" derives from the concept that, to be effective advocates and counselors, we must be alive—fully present, focused, and all systems go—in practice. While there’s certainly a separation between professional and personal life, it strikes me as sad that work and life are viewed as being divisible, separate domains that must be balanced. And I begin to imagine conference rooms and courtrooms full of zombies citing legal maxims, just waiting to leave the office and return to life. Thank goodness that isn’t true for most lawyers!
I’m moving more and more toward the concept of WorkLife Integration. Integration means that, while professional life and personal life remain separate (as I would suggest they should), there’s life in work, and work and life go hand-in-hand. Work is endowed with passion and purpose and emotion and logic and humor and relationships and all the other things that make life lively.
Most importantly, no one has to spend hours at the office, slugging through the slew, waiting for 5 pm or 7 pm (or later) to begin living again during precious non-work hours, and no one has to attach an ill-fitting mask to survive. When work and life are integrated, we’re reasonably authentically who we are, whether at home or at work, and rewards flow in both places. Of course, there will be times when we’re eager to leave the professional focus at work and to turn to the personal focus at home, or vice versa, but there’s life in both places.
So. How integrated is your WorkLife?
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Julie A. Fleming, J.D., A.C.C. provides attorney development coaching and consulting to law firm associates and partners, focusing on topics such as leadership, client, and professional development; career strategy; and work/life integration. A certified leadership coach (Georgetown University), Julie publishes the weekly email newsletter Leadership Matters for Lawyers and posts often on the Life at the Bar Blog. Learn more at www.LifeAtTheBar.com or by contacting Julie by telephone at 800.758.6214 or by email to jfb@lifeatthebar.com.
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Cartoon: Stu's Views
by Stu Rees
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©Stu Rees. All rights reserved.
Like this cartoon? Send it to friends, clients or colleagues on greeting cards. To order, visit The Billable Hour Card Store.
Questions about ordering greeting cards from The Billable Hour Card Store? Check out our greeting card FAQs.
Did you know that Stu licenses his artwork for use in newsletters, presentations, print publications and on websites? He even offers special rates for student and teacher use.
You can also purchase original artwork and custom prints (framed or unframed) from Stu.
Timesheet readers get 15% off all licensing orders, original artwork and custom prints (use coupon code BILLHOUR). Click here for information on licensing or purchasing Dog Ate My Discovery, other discovery cartoons, or any of the hundreds of images Stu offers. For more information on original artwork and custom prints, click here.
Cartoon: Courtoons
by David Mills
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Courtoons are the creation of David Mills, an Ohio appellate lawyer who works with litigants and law firms involved in civil and criminal cases in federal courts across the country. Visit David's law firm website at www.MillsFederalAppeals.com
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Video of the Month: Tom Goldstein: Hire Me for Your Supreme Court Case
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To watch more hilarious law-related videos from around the web, join us at The Video Venue!
Lawtoons
by Suzan Charlton, Esq.
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©Suzan Charlton. All rights reserved.
Like this cartoon? Send it to friends, clients or colleagues on greeting cards. To order, visit The Billable Hour Card Store.
Suzan Charlton is a professional cartoonist who is rumored to practice insurance coverage law as a hobby for a major Washington D.C. law firm. Her cartoons cover a wide range of law-related topics, from law school grades to law firm romance.
Song of the Month: It's In His Briefs
by The Bar & Grill Singers
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(sample)
Available on A Time to Grill
Does your lawyer know what to do?
How can you tell if he’s right for you?
Is it in his fee?
Oh, no you’ll be deceived
In his law degree?
Oh, that’s no specialty
[CHORUS]
If you wanna show what your lawyer knows
It’s in his briefs
That’s where it is, oh yeah
It’s in his briefs
That’s where it is
Oh, is it in his face?
Oh, no that’s just his charm
Maybe his briefcase?
Oh, no he’ll do you harm
[CHORUS]
Quiz him, and ask him nice
To find out what your lawyer knows
If his stuff’s what he says it is
It’s there in his briefs
How ‘bout the way he acts?
Oh, no that’s not the way
And you’re not list’nen to what I say
[CHORUS]
Quiz him, and ask him nice
To find out what your lawyer knows
If his stuff’s what he says it is
It’s there in his briefs
How ‘bout the way he acts?
Oh, no that’s not the way
And you’re not list’nen to what I say
[CHORUS]
Just one of the hilarious songs on
Cartoon: Law and Disorder
by Paul Brennan
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Like this cartoon? Send it to friends, clients or colleagues on greeting cards. To order, visit The Billable Hour Card Store.
Litination: Supreme Court Kicks Off "No Votes = Free Floats" Promotion
by Court Jester
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WASHINGTON, DC - Think some ice cream drenched in a fountain soda of your choice can cure even the worst case of the legal blues? Even if you don’t, the Supreme Court of the United States sure does. Today, flanked by a life-sized root beer bottle and a mound of soft serve ice cream, Chief Justice John Roberts announced a new partnership between the nation’s highest court and A&W Root Beer that is sure to bring out the kid in any experienced appellate lawyer.
Under the terms of the promotion, titled "Float Your Argument Elsewhere," each time the Supreme Court renders a decision, counsel for the losing side can use his or her Supreme Court visitor badge to redeem a free Root Beer Float at any participating A&W store. The badge must be used at an A&W within 24 hours of when the Supreme Court’s decision is announced and cannot be used in conjunction with any other promotion or redeemed for cash.
"A&W, with its ‘All American Food’ slogan seemed like a natural fit for this promotion," explained Roberts when Litination sat down with him over a basket of Corn Dog Nuggets and Fries. "It was really the late Chief Justice Rehnquist’s idea, so it’s a shame he’s not here to see it in action. You see, since we only grant certiorari to review the most complicated issues, it was hard for Bill, and frankly all of us, to see the expressions on the losing attorneys’ faces. Now, with this promotion, you can actually see some of the fourth and fifth chair attorneys get a little excited at the frosty delight that’s headed their way."
Roberts may be on to something. Local A&W store owner, Martin Van Clyven, can recall numerous times when he’s seen customers provide a Supreme Court visitor badge in exchange for Root Beer Float. "Most of the time, these people look like they haven’t slept or seen natural light in weeks so I feel a sense of relief in giving them a root beer float," explained Clyven when questioned about the promotion. "What’s also interesting is that several times I’ve had these customers ask me for a job. Seriously, I’ve got a Columbia Law School grad running my store in Bethesda. I know, a little risky, but it’s not rocket science so I’m sure with time he’ll get the hang of it."
Court Jester is a member of the Litination who believes that the practice of law requires a sense of humor. His goal is to provide an entertaining diversion from the regularly scheduled billable hour or law school seminar. He provides fake legal news and links to real headlines at www.Litination.com. His hope is that one or the other will provide you with a laugh in an often unnecessarily stressful day.
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