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Swimming Upstream: 20 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Your Practice

Starting a law practice requires a lot of planning, decision making, and hard work. Here are some common mistakes attorneys face and tips on how to avoid them and build a successful law practice.

Taking a Different View: Explore Mutual Interests with Facilitative Mediation

When clients seek help resolving disputes, put another option on the table. Facilitative mediation can leave them more satisfied than litigation, and at a lower cost.

Noncompete Agreements: A Suspect Expansion of Employers’ Rights

Employers that use noncompetition agreements should avoid relying on a recent appellate decision that gave the employer-litigant wide berth to restrict an employee’s postemployment activities. The opinion’s nonprecedential status and its conflict with published Wisconsin cases make it a shaky and likely short-lived leg on which to stand.

Web Extras

How to Collect a Debt

Successful debt collection requires knowledge of the relevant rules and regulations. It also requires gathering and assessing all relevant information about the debt, a process that presents opportunities for collecting the amount owed without having to resort to litigation. In this video, Kurt Carlson and Jim McNeilly explain the legal process for collecting a debt.

Form: Annotated Sample Restrictive Covenants Provisions

Form: Annotated sample restrictive covenant provisions, from 3 Wisconsin Employment Law ch. 15 (State Bar of Wisconsin PINNACLE 5th ed. 2013) (forthcoming)

Opinions, Voices & Ideas

President's Message
Advancing the Profession
Kevin Klein says you don’t need to be an “insider” to influence the Bar.

Your State Bar
Building Capacity
Today’s young lawyers can get the tools they need to become tomorrow’s leaders, says George Brown.

101
How to Collect a Debt
Kurt Carlson and Jim McNeilly explain the legal process for collecting a debt.

10 Questions
Ryan Holtan-Murphy: Man of Many Continents
This Packers fanatic caught the travel bug early on – he’s been all over the world, and recently did a Polar Plunge in Antarctica. That’s just sick.

As I See It
Expand Sentencing Options for Young Adults
Ken Streit & John Chisholm propose options for greater flexibility when sentencing 17-to-24-year-old offenders in appropriate cases.

Ethics
Electronic Lists: Protect Client Confidentiality When Seeking Advice
Do not breach client confidences when discussing specific legal matters on electronic lists and in other settings, says Dean Dietrich.

On Balance
5 Ways to Retain and Promote Women Lawyers
The lack of progress for women lawyers in leadership roles can have a negative impact on your business’s bottom line, says Paula Davis-Laack.