Ask

Interview me on any of this

For podcasts, panels, classrooms, and reporters on deadline. These are the questions worth asking. Hit the envelope beside any one of them and it opens an email already about that question.

Deals, and the people inside them

• What actually kills a deal that everyone thought was done?

• An enormous cohort of Baby Boomer owners is selling their companies. Who is buying, and what happens to the places those businesses anchored? Short answer

  I wrote about the early shape of this in Business Transition Planning.

Housing, and who gets to live in a city

• You've been general counsel of a state housing finance authority and a commissioner of a city housing authority. What does the money look like from the inside?

• Denver has changed enormously in twenty years. What did the city get right?

• What is the line between youth homelessness and the housing pipeline, and where does it get cut?

The profession, and what AI is doing to it

• You asked whether artificial intelligence would kill all the lawyers. What's your answer now? Short answer

  Two passes at it, three years apart: Will Artificial Intelligence Kill All the Lawyers? and Law Firms Are Not Dead Yet!

• If the billable hour dies, what replaces it — and who loses in the transition?

Operating versus advising

• You have been the CEO, the CFO, and the general counsel of the same kind of company. Which of those jobs changed how you practice law?

• What do lawyers systematically misunderstand about running a business?

Teaching, mentoring, and career strategy

• What do you tell a student who says they want your career?

• What is the most useful question to ask someone about their own career?

The long view

• You've written about a D-Day cemetery and about wandering. What does travel do to professional judgment? Short answer

  A D-Day Wake Up Call and Not All Who Wander are Lost.

• What have you changed your mind about?

Something not on the list is usually the more interesting question. Either way, the fastest route is ckk@abacollc.com.