"The Klekamp family's extraordinary generosity honors Donald Klekamp's legacy while strengthening our ability to prepare the next generation of talented legal minds," said University of Cincinnati President Neville G. Pinto, in the university's news release.
I'm incredibly proud of the firm and what we've accomplished in the last year. We had certainly, the year before, a historic year financially, and this year was also historic in being one of our best financial years in history.
The legal profession rewards endurance, precision and control. It also quietly normalizes stress, isolation and overextension. For patent practitioners and other IP lawyers, the pressures are uniquely acute: compressed prosecution deadlines, high-stakes litigation exposure, often unrealistic client-driven budget constraints, regulatory whiplash at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and increasingly complex technologies layered with global filing and prosecution strategy.
Effective discovery requires more than compliance - it requires strategy. Litigators can balance expansive discovery rights and privacy concerns without slowing cases down through practical, results-focused approaches that consider proportionality, electronically stored information management, and the specific discovery rules applicable to their jurisdiction.
Fear is not a flaw or weakness. It is often a signal that something meaningful is trying to surface. For lawyers who want growth that feels aligned and sustainable, learning how to work with fear instead of around it can unlock real change. Our conversation focused on awareness, integrity, and inner stability, all essential skills for professionals who carry responsibility, ambition, and pressure every day.
Lawyers and clients often develop years-long relationships during which clients and lawyers cultivate connections that often transcend the traditional attorney-client framework. During this relationship, clients may ask for favors in the form of favorable billing terms or other advantages that the lawyer is uniquely able to provide. Although it is acceptable to perform such favors for clients, lawyers should not do so under the assumption that it will result in additional work.
As a finite supply of business exists in the legal industry, practitioners need to compete against each other. Clients consider many attributes when selecting counsel, including abilities, costs, and the capability to handle a given representation. When a lawyer suffers a health issue, it can create difficulties in maintaining client connection, since clients might believe that they should select other counsel without the same health challenges.
It's not only law firms and legal departments that are adopting GenAI systems without fully understanding what they can and cannot do - court systems may also be tempted to adopt these tools to short circuit workloads in the face of limited resources. And that poses some risks and concerns to the rule of law, a notion that hinges on accuracy, fairness, and public perception.
From law firms to in-house legal teams, the rules of value are being rewritten. The question is: Who's ready to lead the change? In the first episode of 2026 for the UpLevel View podcast, Stephanie Corey and Ken Callander sit down with Rita Gunther McGrath, Columbia Business School professor and Wall Street Journal columnist, to talk about how AI is forcing professional services to price outcomes instead of hours.