Make a Good Name for Yourself at Work
Photo by dziner
Whether you’re working in a mega law firm or a tiny non-profit office, you need to have a positive image among your coworkers. If you’re known as the lazy butt or the slob, your career won’t go far. But if you follow these tips, your public image will shine.
Clean your desk – How can you be productive with mounds of papers all over your desk? Your coworkers will wonder the same thing. And if they give you something important, will it get lost in the shuffle? Keeping a tidy desk doesn’t ensure that you’re productive, but it will remove the stigma that you’re a slob.
Fuel the car – Do you ever use the company car? Have you ever returned it with little gas left in the tank? To me, that’s an inconsiderate gesture, not considering the person who needs the car next. My personal goal is to always return the company car with more gas in the tank than when I picked it up.
Respect the kitchen – You don’t want to be the guy who leaves a mess in the company kitchen. The cleaning staff will surely hate you, and your coworkers will probably become upset as well. Nobody likes using a messy kitchen, and everyone will know if you’re the sloppy one!
Be budget-minded – Every company has to watch their budget. If you constantly ask for expensive things or needlessly spend money, people will know. Your coworkers won’t respect a spendthrift, since it reflects poorly on the entire organization. Just because you can order it, that doesn’t mean you should buy it on the company dime.
Dress well – Are you respecting the company’s dress code? Perhaps more importantly, are you dressing nicely in accordance with the dress code? Your attire and overall appearance are huge factors in your office image. If you dress sloppily, people will think you do sloppy work. Even if your job is fairly secure, you should still dress for success.
Listen to voice mail – Even you hate it, you still can’t just ignore your voice mail. What if your boss left one for you? Ignoring voice mail tells people that you’re too important to care about their message. Maybe you are important, but you don’t want to be conceited towards others.
Be easy to contact – No, you don’t have to be glued to a Blackberry. But you need a way for people to reach you. Make it clear which contact method you prefer, and people will respect that, for the most part. But if coworkers can’t get a message to you at all, they’re certainly not going to be happy.
Bribe them – If you try all of this and your coworkers still don’t care much for you, give them presents! I say that partially in jest, but maybe you should try inviting some of them to lunch (on you!). Or simply buy somebody a cup of coffee. Take someone out for a beer. A simple gesture like this could help to lower their defenses and get you on their good side.
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Cool Gifts for Lawyers and Professionals
Is there a lawyer on your shopping list? If I’m anything like other attorneys, we’re a hard group to shop for. So I picked out a few things you might consider for the lawyer on your Christmas list.
Chopsticks in your pocket
To start off this list, here’s a cool set of chopsticks for Chinese-food-loving attorneys. Long nights of document review inevitably end up in Chinese take out. But now you can eat in style!
Unscrew the end of the chopstick, and you can slide the white ash tip out. Flip it around, screw it into the base, and you’re ready to eat. Cool, right?
Cold drinks at hand
Since lawyers work long hours with little sleep, it’s vital to have cold drinks and snacks handy. This spiffy mini-fridge does just that.
This fridge is whisper quiet, and it has a cool digital display that shows the current temperature. It cools to 44 degrees and warms to 140. It’s got a 20 liter capacity, and it comes with adapters for your home and car.
Don’t be late
As an attorney, you’ve got meetings with clients and court appearances to make. The Neverlate Executive Alarm Clock will make sure you’re up right on time.
It’s got two separate 7-day alarm schedules (one for you and your spouse), along with another set of every-day alarms. Altogether, it has 21 alarms! And you get to pick from 4 buzzers or 20 preset radio stations. Or you can plugin your MP3 player and wake up to any song you choose. To keep that iPod charged, the Neverlate has a USB port on the back. What else could you want?!
Warm coffee & cold tea
I hate it when my coffee gets hold. And nobody likes drinking iced tea when it gets hot. That’s why you need this USB drink warmer & chiller. Plug it into your computer, and you’ll have every drink at the perfect temperature. Plus, the slick black color will look cool on your desk.
Where’s your sign?
Doesn’t everyone need a cheesy street sign? Lawyers now have their very own! You might not want to put this in your office, but it would be good decor in the garage or workshop.
A bag for everything
The days of hard-sided briefcases are gone. But respectable attorneys still need a stylish bag for carrying around the essentials.
Here’s a Kenneth Cole Reaction messenger bag that is built from full grain Nappa leather. The flap is held shut with magnets, so the inside is easy to access. And it looks cool!
Keep it warm
It’s important for attorneys to dress nicely. You can’t expect clients or the court to treat you seriously if you look like a college kid.
This slick wool overcoat will look great with all your suits. And it will keep you warm during even the coldest winter days. Bundle up in this coat and you’ll be ready for action!
Go wireless
Phones are a lawyer’s lifeline to the world. With them, we talk to clients, judges, and colleagues. Without phones, we’re nothing but a fancy suit.
To make those hours on the phone easier, get the lawyer on your gift list an awesome wireless headset. This Plantronics model even comes with a remote handset lifter. Life without wires is so beautiful!
Don’t waste paper
Like all professionals, lawyers are busy people. And we have lots of notes to make. But that takes lots of paper. No longer!
This cool desktop writeboard (formerly “Jot It”) by Cocoa Living gives you a slick whiteboard surface for your desktop. It has an interchangeable, customizable card that helps organize your notes. And the writeboard even has a tray in the back for storing your dry-erase marker!
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AIM Buddies in Google Talk!!
Hooray!!
No longer do you have to run two chat clients. As this announcement from Google confirms, you can now chat with your AIM buddies right from the chat window in Gmail.
Score one for simplicity!!
If you’d ever like to chat with me, I’m on GTalk (aflusche@gmail.com) and AIM (andrewfflusche). I’m on Skype sometimes, but not very often (aflusche).
If I don’t have your chat screen name, send it on over or drop a comment below. I’d love to get to know you better.
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Imprisoned for Life by Loaning a Car – Felony Murder
Photo by Johnny Grim
I just received a great email from a new reader, Ashish. He pointed out an interesting article from the NY Times. It’s about a guy who loaned his car to a friend. Then the friend committed a burglary, which turned violent and ended in murder. Now the car owner is serving life for murder.
Ashish then asked about the law behind this case and whether or not it applies in Massachusetts. In short, the answer is yes.
Felony murder
As the Times article explains, this is an American legal doctrine that punishes people for murder, even if they didn’t physically murder someone.
If you’re involved in a felony and someone is killed, you can be charged with murder. That’s the basic rule.
Felonies are typically violent. They are crimes like robbery, burglary, and rape. If you are committing a felony (even just the getaway driver) and someone is murdered in the process, the law charges you with murder. Don’t be a felon.
Massachusetts
To answer Ashish’s main question, Massachusetts still has a felony murder rule. Here’s the source for that:
“[T]he felony-murder rule in the Commonwealth imposes criminal liability for homicide on all participants in a certain common criminal enterprise if a death occurred in the course of that enterprise.” Commonwealth v. Matchett, 386 Mass. 492, 502 (1982), quoting from Commonwealth v. Watkins, 375 Mass. 472, 486 (1978).
Again, don’t be a felon.
Any questions?
I hope this post makes sense. I’d like to write more articles like this, explaining crazy legal things in terms that regular people can understand.
If you have a question about this post, just drop a comment below. If you have another question, contact me.
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Ingenious Point-of-Sale Donation Tactic
Photo by Mindful One
Many retail stores cooperate with charities, especially during the holidays. When you’re checking out with your purchases, they ask the familiar question: “Would you like to donate $1 for…”?
I’ve never donated.
Until now.
A few days ago I was shopping with my wife. When we paid for our stuff, the cashier asked us a different question: “Would you like to round up to donate to…”? It was such a cool tactic, that I had to say yes!
I can’t even remember what the charity was – I think something to help clothe kids. But I donated a few cents because it was just a few cents. Heck, they weren’t even asking for a whole dollar from me. They just wanted me to round up to the nearest dollar and give the change to the charity. What kind of miser would I be if I refused?!
This is like the ubiquitous tactic for pricing goods. You always see $9.95 instead of $10. Psychologically, it’s a better deal. You’re only saving 5 cents, but your brain thinks you’re saving an entire dollar. For the same reason, just a few cents seems like nothing, compared to a full dollar.
What about you? Do you donate $1 for a charity when asked? Or have you heard cool donation tactics like this one? Let’s talk!
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Vote for the Best Law Student Blog
My great friend, Brett McKay, was nominated by the American Bar Association as having one of the best law student blogs. Over at The Frugal Law Student, he writes about managing his personal finances as a graduate student.
Voting runs until January 2, and Brett’s sitting in a close 2nd place position. That’s why we need to vote for him!
He’s had a quality blog for several years now. And he’s a solid guy.
The current 1st place law student blog is run by several third year students who just whine and complain about their poor life. Surely we can’t let them be recognized as the best law school blog!
Please take a second to vote for The Frugal Law Student. Brett will appreciate it.
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Welcome Yahoo! Finance Readers
Thanks to Penelope Trunk’s article on Yahoo! Finance, you might be a new visitor to Legal Andrew. If so, thank you for stopping by!
To read
Here are some articles you might find interesting:
- Facebook Isn’t Private, and 7 Other Things You Should Know
- Green Tax Incentives Around the World
- Photo Law – Your Right to Take Pictures in Public
- Lunch, Break, and Hour Laws You Should Know
- Zen to Done – Productivity at its Simplest
You can also subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates when I post something new.
About me
I’m a 25-year-old attorney, living in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I’m married, and I’m the Staff Attorney at American Life League.
You can find more information on my about page. Feel free to contact me any time.
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Check Out My Tumblelog
Do you have a tumblelog? Check out mine!
There are cool things that I run across and want to share with you. But many of them are short or wouldn’t fit my themes at Legal Andrew.
Twitter (follow aflusche) allows me to share some of them, but not very well. And I’m falling off the Twitter bandwagon again. It just interrupts my day too much.
But now I have a tumblelog (feed). It allows me to share tons of cool things with the world, in just a few seconds.
Courtesy of Tubmlr, my new micro-blog has a handy bookmarklet. Whenever I see something cool online, I just click the bookmarklet. Then I select what type of thing I want to share (photo, video, quote, link, etc). Fill out a field or two and save. Then I proceed with my day.
I’ll link to YOU
A big motivation behind my new tumblelog is that I can share link love with more people. It will purposefully contain a wide array of things, so almost no link is out of place.
If you’d like me to link to your article or site, just send me an email. I’ll do my best to help out!
I just ask that you try to send a link my way, either to Legal Andrew or my tumblelog.
Are you tumbling?
Do you have a tumblelog? Please share it below so we can all see your random posts. 🙂
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My Latest Project – Call Center Consultant
I want to apologize to all of you awesome readers. I haven’t written much lately. But I’ve been busy.
Brandon Hopkins and I have been working on a joint venture: Call Center Consultant. We’re taking a PR 0 domain and trying to turn it into a money-maker in one month.
We started out with a few goals, so we could determine if our work was successful. By November 30, we wanted to have 2,000 unique visitors, 150 articles online, and $100 in revenue.
It’s now November 22, and we’re having some pretty good success:
- We have 89 posts online, and I think we’ll make our target of 150. They’re all pretty focused to selected keywords, but not spammy.
- We’ve had 17,535 unique visitors. We’re getting good search traffic now, but a lot of those visitors are from some hot StumbleUpon posts we’ve done.
- Our revenue is doing well, but a little shy of our goal. I think we’re at about $35 right now. Hopefully some of our affiliate programs will start converting.
- We rank #5 on Google for call center consultant. I’m astounded by that!
I’ll probably do another post on Call Center Consultant in early December. At that point, we’ll know exactly how we did with our experiment. And we’ll decide if we should continue this blog or let it sit and try a new one.
To keep up on further updates for this project, I’d suggest subscribing to Brandon’s feed. His blog is about making money online, so he’s written several posts about what we’re doing.
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Digg Has What It Takes – Login Memory
Digg is clearly the largest social news site. It drives tons of traffic, has millions of users, and regularly crashes web servers with its influx of traffic. But what makes Digg better than the plethora of Digg clones out there?
Digg keeps users logged in.
Propeller always logs me out periodically. Then I have to go through the hassle of logging in again. The same goes for Sk*rt (and what’s with that name!?). And Sphinn makes me login almost every visit.
But I never have to re-login at Digg.
I have wondered if Firefox has a problem on my machine. Or maybe I’m just doing something wrong. But I think the other clone sites just don’t have the know-how to keep me logged in. They just aren’t smart enough.
Consequently, I participate at Digg much more often. I’m never turned away by a big login screen and blinking cursor. All the other sites lose visits and votes from me, just because I’m lazy. But really it’s because their sites don’t have what it takes to be login-free.
What about you?
Do you have to re-login at other social news sites? Does Digg work the best for you?
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About Andrew Flusche
Lawyer, bicyclist, husband.
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