Reasonable hours. A regular paycheck. No constant pressure to market your practice. No wonder lawyers in private practice often view a corporate in-house position as the Holy Grail of legal work.

I always emphasize the importance of remaining optimistic when coaching lawyers on the topic of job hunting. And, lawyers being lawyers, I always need to provide some reason why they should remain upbeat. I have a simple answer: The job market is actually much less competitive than you think when you consider that so many other job-seekers make fundamental mistakes.

In a draft proposal issued last month, the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 recommended no new restrictions relating to online marketing. The Commission did offer some useful guidance on how to interpret some web-based marketing tools within the context of existing ethics rules – guidance that I intend to pass along to the solo and small-firm lawyers that I coach.

"New NY State Bar Head Stresses Importance of Family," announced a headline in the New York Law Journal last month.

That certainly caught my attention. It's not too often you read about bar leaders talking about work-life balance—especially male bar leaders. I was impressed. It seems to me that "balance" issues in the legal profession are most frequently raised by women lawyers and rarely by their male counterparts.

When U.S. News & World Report decided to rank law schools, this ranking – for better or worse — fundamentally changed the law school admissions process.

So when U.S. News announced that it would join forces with Best Lawyers to publish rankings of lawyers, that announcement got the ABA's attention. Would this be a game-changer in the already-controversial issue of law firm and lawyer rankings? Apparently, the ABA thought it might – and felt compelled to examine the issue.

If you are a partner considering a move to another firm, you probably have two main reasons. The first almost always involves money. The second usually concerns personality factors or firm culture. That's shorthand for "I'm working with a bunch of jerks."

When coaching attorneys, an issue frequently raised is the challenge of effectively communicating to clients what you think the result of the matter you handling will be. Most lawyers overestimate the importance of the outcome as a factor in determining client satisfaction. While clients are obviously concerned about outcomes, client satisfaction is determined far more by how well the attorney manages the client's expectation of the outcome, rather than the outcome itself.

Even with the best of marketing tactics, the time needed to build a successful law practice is usually measured in years. There is one tactic that—if properly executed—can help you attain an established practice practically overnight. That tactic is buying rather than building a practice.

In the famous 1977 Bates decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that lawyers have First Amendment rights, too; legal advertising is constitutionally protected commercial speech. Prior to that, state's ethics rules prohibited all advertising — and we never saw any of those amusing (and not so amusing) lawyer commercials on television.

Whenever asked by attendees at one of my marketing CLEs or by my lawyer coaching clients whether they should market their services differently because of what they perceive as "unique circumstances," I am always somewhat amused.