My boss has recently stepped up the office breakfast and lunch meetings. When I started it used to be once every few weeks, maybe six to eight weeks. In the past 1 month it has been like every week, and they were all business breakfasts or lunches. We would discuss work mainly but in the past two weeks we have embarked on a professional improvement program based on a book by a bloke called Gerald Riskin. The book is simply titled “The Successful Lawyer” and it is a program comprising a text and a set of CDs. The book has sections where the reader is asked to note down responses on a separate note book, for discussion. You know – the usual professional development set of materials. What this means of course is – homework. I thought we would just read and share our thoughts, but in the past couple of meetings, at least 2 of the lawyers – the boss himself and one other lawyer – had copious notes. They were reading these notes out during discussion and I tell you these people are serious about this program. I didn’t take it lightly either – I read the sections, listened to the CDs and actually jotted down some of my thoughts. Just not as thorough or detailed or comprehensive as these 2 lawyers’. I guess I need to step up my seriousness about this program – actually set aside fixed time schedules to do the sections, away from the family room, where the television is often turned on and the whole family sit down to enjoy the rich offerings. It is good to see such desire to better oneself, such determined and measured push to make the practice more focused and purposeful. I admire this lot and I have become very impressed. The boss spent a small fortune in buying the books, CDs and special folders to hold the material including notes to be taken. I don’t see many firms in KL doing this unfortunately. In both the firms I had worked in, the only personal development program was the odd seminar but those were skill specific programs, not a whole professional development scheme as this is.