I was convinced it would work. Point the device at the right star, and I would return to my home. I was standing outside the front of my house on a cold winters evening. The sky was ablaze with sparkling lights you could almost touch. I aimed the device and waited to be lifted up to the stars. I was excited, but also vaguely apprehensive of the journey ahead, after all I was only 3. Then, my father called me back into the house. I wasn't to see the "device" again until I returned to my hom...

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed working practices across the globe. It has been predicted that as much as 80 percent of the legal workforce will remain transient or permanently working from home after the COVID-19 crisis ends, with only around a fifth as full-time office workers. Although law firms typically weather downturns better than the overall economy, revenues, working practices, and working culture will all change. The expected economic downturn may not directly translate into a ...

Many law firms today are far too focused on increasing market share; they should be paying attention to what makes them a more profitable business. Market share doesn't matter much if you're not profitable, and firms cannot simply grow their way to prosperity by undercutting the competition. Instead, firms must focus on value creation and increasing clients' willingness to pay for their services. The question should be: "What can your firm do better, or more efficiently, and more profitabl...

The discipline of knowledge management (KM) continues to evolve along with our ability to record larger and more varied kinds of information than ever before. Since its inception in the 1990s, it has passed through several stages, quickly becoming a credible field, and now an integral part of major businesses worldwide. Now, many have started to argue that KM is undergoing resurgence, possibly even transforming into KM 3.0, thanks to developments in artificial intelligence (AI). And, while...

The legal sector is facing a period of major metamorphosis - disruptors are making waves in the structuring, process, and service-delivery models, and client's needs are becoming more demanding and value-focused. As the landscape of law transforms many firms will be left facing a situation of, in John Alber's words, change or die. How will law firms keep up with upcoming rapid and volatile changes to the legal sector, and what form will they take after the transformation? What will the law...

Strategies for gathering and harnessing knowledge have existed in law firms for decades. However, knowledge management suddenly found itself in the spotlight as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Enforced remote working reduced opportunities for knowledge sharing between colleagues and this gap was filled with knowledge databases and experienced knowledge lawyers. Now that hybrid and virtual workforces are here to stay, these new working practices have combined with technological developme...

Love songs and Hollywood romances make it all sound so simple: You find your soul mate, move in together, get married, never stray from the path of monogamy, and live happily ever after. But real life tends to be more complicated. Many couples pursue alternative living arrangements, and some even pursue alternative loving arrangements.The twenty-nine personal essays in this collection offer a variety of perspectives and experiences with nontraditional relationships and forms of coh...

An examination of the understudied, yet significant role of Florida and its populace during the Civil War.In many respects Florida remains the forgotten state of the Confederacy. Journalist Horace Greeley once referred to Florida in the Civil War as the “smallest tadpole in the dirty pool of secession.” Although it was the third state to secede, Florida’s small population and meager industrial resources made the state of little strategic importance. Because it was ...

Encountering Ensemble, is a text for students, teachers, researchers and practitioners who wish to develop a deeper understanding of the history, conceptual foundations and practicalities of the world of ensemble theatre. It is the first book to draw together definitions and practitioner examples, making it a cutting edge work on the subject.Encountering Ensemble combines historical and contemporary case studies with a wide range of approaches and perspectives. It...

This collection features five peer-reviewed reviews on rust diseases of cereals.The first chapter provides an overview of the wheat rust pathogen lifecycle and discusses recent integration of basic biological knowledge and genomic-led tools within an epidemiological framework.The second chapter introduces stripe rust and provides an overview of its decimation of crop yields worldwide. The chapter summarises recent advances in identifying stripe rust resista...

London in den 1990er Jahren: Lorimer Black ist zufrieden. Als Schadensregulierer einer großen Versiche- rungsgesellschaft hat er Karriere gemacht, weil er die Fälle stets zugunsten seines Arbeitgebers regelt. An einem kühlen Wintermorgen begibt sich Black zu einem Geschäftstermin - und findet dort einen Erhängten. Von diesem Tag an ist alles anders: Black wird zum Spielball von Großinvestoren, verliebt sich Hals über Kopf in die wunderschöne, aber verheiratete Schauspielerin Flavia Malinve...

An existential manual for tragic optimists, can-do pessimists, and compassionate doomersWith global warming projected to rocket past the 1.5°C limit, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd is thrown into a crisis of hope, and off on a quest to learn how to live with the "impossible news" of our climate doom.He searches out eight of today's leading climate thinkers — from activist Tim DeChristopher to collapse-psychologist Jamey Hecht, grassroots strategist adrienne ...