When I was growing up, I started making model rockets. I started with a kit but after a while, I built my own. The engines I could buy at the store didn’t go as high as I wanted, they were unreliable in wet weather, and I couldn’t buy them locally. Building my own engines might solve all those problems.
One day I was reading through my brother’s high school chemistry book. He was ten years older than me and I thought I might find answers about the proportions of chemicals to mix in my rocket engines, how big (or small) the rocket nozzle needs to be and such. Internet search engines hadn’t been invented yet and books were where you went to learn things.
My brother blew by, slammed the book shut, laughed, and said, “you don’t even know what you are reading.”
He was right. And I don’t hold a grudge for his saying it. But what he didn’t understand was that I had set a goal to double the height that the store bought rockets flew. I did not know how to do it, but I was reaching to learn how. Reaching, that is where learning happens.
I have never fully understood anything in a chemistry book. But today, even after all these years, I remember which chemicals to mix at what ratios and how to calculate the size of the nozzle to make a model rocket engine climb into the sky.
I try to pay my experience forward in a restorative way. When I encounter someone reaching to understand something that might be way too advanced from where they are, if it is my book to give, I try to just give it to them.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
Talking to clients during a pandemic is a best practice. Actually, talking with clients is always a best practice. If you are not already doing it, a pandemic might be a great opportunity to develop the habit.
Clients will remember who communicated with them, and who didn’t.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
While developing the “Culture of Compliance” materials for the Enemy in the Camp continuing legal education course, I struggled for an accurate definition of a “Culture of Compliance.” There are lots of resources surrounding a Culture of Compliance – books, videos, lectures, white papers, etc. Few attempts have been made, however, to define it. I could not find a single attempt to define a Culture of Compliance in the context of a law firm.
To me, law firms are unique organizations in this regard as several of their collective sworn duties give safe harbor to those who intend to work against a Culture of Compliance. For example, the duty of confidentiality encourages groups within the firm to safeguard client information not just within the firm but within sub-groups in the firm. This lack of openness has shown to be fertile ground for non-compliant attorneys and staff employees (sometimes referred to as a Corporate Silo). To restate, the lack of openness resulting from the desire to protect client confidence gives a hidden enemy room to act out of sight.
In his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, explains why the definition is so elusive. The “Culture” is not one thing that can be identified. It is a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole – a system. His definition is found in his search to define morals:
Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible.1
When defining a Culture of Compliance in a law firm (or elsewhere), each of these things or parts that make up the system has to be developed in such a way that they work together to form the Culture. Each thing or part omitted leaves room for a hidden enemy.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
