Collegiality, Fairness and Majesty: A Portrait Unveiling of Judge William J. Mazzola

Last night, I had the honor to present opening remarks at the portrait unveiling of the Honorable William J. Mazzola. He has served as a Court of Common Pleas Judge in the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania for 31 years. My late father, Richard. F. Furia, Esq., presented the opening remarks at the Judge’s swearing-in in 1981 when I was just a pre-teen.

While I won’t repeat my speech, there are a few things that struck me as important to share with our blog readers. First is the importance of the judiciary in America.

Having served as a law clerk for several years, I got to witness first-hand the dedication, desire, determination and impartiality it takes to sit effectively on the bench. The ability to weigh facts and evidence, follow the letter of the law, take nothing personally, ignore public opinion and preside over a fair trial in order to effectuate justice is daunting. Yet, last night, every person who spoke about Judge Mazzola said that this is exactly what he has done for 31 years. He was serenaded, as you will, by President Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe and Judges C. Darnell Jones, Eugene E.J. Maier, Benjamin Lerner and Marlene Lachman. His praises were further sung by The Justinian Society Chancellor, Annette Ferrara, Philadelphia Councilman Dennis O’Brien, and attorneys Michael E. Wallace and Jay Gotleib. Everyone commented about the Judge’s sense of fairness, and ability to command a room, take charge and get things done. We all agreed that Judge Mazzola has served our legal community well throughout the years so it was our honor to present a visual legacy of His Honor to the Court.

Another truth that was reinforced for me last night is the collegiality of the bench and bar in Philadelphia. While Philadelphia is considered a large metropolitan city, our legal community is quite small. We’re all just one degree of separation away from the other. Last night, the Judge and his adoring family were surrounded by attorneys and judges with whom they have worked and socialized for more than three decades. Attorneys, paralegal and secretaries from Stack & Gallagher, where the judge worked in his early days in the office next to my father, were there in numbers. Former A.D.A.s who worked with the Judge came to celebrate his accomplishments. And of note, more than 20 judges attended the portrait unveiling to wish their colleague well.

Finally, as I walked the long, column-adorned corridors of City Hall on my way to the ceremonial court room on the sixth floor, I was reminded of the majesty and spender of the century-old home of Philadelphia’s government and judiciary. City Hall is the nation’s largest municipal building (larger than the U.S. Capitol). It is situated in the exact geographical center of William Penn's original 1682 plans for the city. The building is a unique architectural and sculptural triumph including more than 700 rooms and 250 architectural relief’s and freestanding sculptures, including its most famous 37-foot bronze statue of William Penn which stands atop the clock tower. Like Judge Mazzola with his father, Donato, I too walked the corridors hand-in-hand with my father as a young girl. Dad spoke of the majesty of the building and the hard-work of the people within it. He taught me to have a love of the law and respect for those who administer it. And he always told me that everything in life comes full circle – and so it did at Judge Mazzola’s portrait unveiling.

  

I concluded my remarks with the words of my father, delivered 31 years ago:

“Let us acknowledge our legacy – if we will this living canvas – as a monument reflecting the fondest hopes of his pioneer ancestors – who begins anew his life this time – certainly among colleagues who will encourage, support and respect his fortitude.”

Proofreading Your Content: The Area to be Nit-Picky

Posted by Rose Strong

Have you ever read an article or book and found that one glaringly wrong typo and wonder how no one caught the glaring error? We’ve all read signs in store windows and thought the person who wrote it should go back to high school English class and review sentence structure. Many of these typos have made it into emails or on Facebook for some good belly laughs.

- Gun Shop
- Prince Harry

Fresh eyes are so important in writing professionally. Regardless of what your business is or who you’re writing for, if it isn’t well-written on your website, blog post or printed materials or even your Twitter feed and Facebook status, you could be losing potential business.

Mangle a sentence or misspell a few words, forget a comma or two and you immediately send the message that your business does haphazard work.

This past May, I started with Furia Rubel in the capacity of office administrator. With an office staff of five, this position is more than just keeping an appointment calendar, answering the phone and filing. It offers a variety of tasks, one of which is proofreading.

For the past nine years, I’ve been writing professionally as a part-time freelancer, mostly for a local weekly newspaper here in Bucks County. Let me say one thing, there is a world of difference between being the writer and being the proofreader.

As a writer, I do my research, put words on the screen, review a few times and send them off to an editor. Regarding proofreading, you’d think that it’s basically about checking for misspellings and making sure sentences make sense. Oh no! That’s only part of the job.

For the last five months, I’ve had a crash course in proofreading and I’m still learning. And the job of course, is about making sure things are spelled right, but don’t forget about extra spaces, over-used quotation marks and the Oxford comma.

And then of course there’s style. In Furia Rubel’s case, that’s the AP Stylebook for most things, but there are those odd questions we ask one another, “Is it health care or healthcare?” “Does nonprofit have a hyphen?” “Is board of directors capitalized?” “Should that have a comma or semi-colon?” “Shouldn’t that word be pluralized?” “Is third-world-country a politically correct term?” And the list goes on, every day. The AP Stylebook is our go-to source for these kinds of questions.

It sounds nit-picky, (yes, there is a hyphen in that) but it all comes down to doing great work, making sense and sharing a cohesive and well-thought-out message with our audience.

- Cost of Not Proofreading
- Grammar Girl

LinkedIn Skills Endorsements for Lawyers

If you use LinkedIn, then you are probably familiar with the Recommendation function. It’s the one where you can write up a glowing report about someone with whom you have worked or vice versa. The idea, of course, is that your positive opinion of them enhances their credibility.

Well, LinkedIn has introduced a new feature called Endorsements. With just one click, you can now endorse your connections for a skill they have listed on their profile or recommend one they have not added. The upshot is that now when you look at a connection’s profile, you not only see the skills he or she claims to possess, you see what others agree are the skills that he or she actually has.

Here’s how it works:

On the top of your connections’ profiles, you will now see a box titled recommended endorsements. You just click the ones with which you agree.

Or, if you scroll down to the new Skills and Expertise section, you can see which skills were endorsed and by whom. The skill that has been endorsed by the most people appears at the top of the list with the rest appearing in descending order of popularity.

The great thing about this feature is that it creates an easy way to scan for a specific skill set. It’s also faster to create than writing a recommendation. After all, it can take some time and forethought to write up a good one.

My own experience as a PR person tells me that you’re going to want to keep asking colleagues for written recommendations as well as endorsements. Endorsements focus on skills while recommendations focus on your qualities as a co-worker or strategic partner - they should be complimentary.

Also, you’re going to want to give some thought to the skills that you want endorsed. You need to manage how you are perceived and act accordingly. While you can’t control which skills people choose to endorse, you can let your connections know which ones you want featured. Or, at the very least, check your endorsements periodically to make sure that the picture being painted of you reflects your best talents.

For more on One Click Endorsements, check out Dave Berger’s write-up  on the LinkedIn Blog.

Advice from Arianna Huffington and Other Lady Leaders – PA Conference for Women 2012

I had the pleasure to attend the Pennsylvania Conference for Women (www.PAConferenceForWomen.org) in Philadelphia. There were a lot of great nuggets to digest and wonderful women to meet. Here are some of the highlights:

Poet, mother, professor and national and international lecturer on black culture and literature,
Sonia Sanchez, was one of the highlights of my day. She started her presentation by singing to the audience. This woman of tiny stature filled the room with abundance, reflection and joy. Some of the things she said that inspired me were:

•Never give up on love.

•A long walk of “herstory” and of history is worth putting all else aside.

•Listen to the lessons taught of your elders – they can be earth shattering.

Cheryl Strayed (@CherylStrayed) is the author of the critically acclaimed novel “Torch,” and memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the inaugural title for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. Her stories and essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Allure, The Rumpus, The Missouri Review, The Sun, The Best American Essays and elsewhere.

•We all have to bare the unbearable.

•We all seek the spiritual journey and learn that it lives within us - we just have to find it.

•You can't set out to write a best seller, you just have to set out to write your best.

Lisa Beth Weber, Gloria Feldt and Gina Rubel

Gloria Feldt (@gloriafeldt ) is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, world changer and expert in women’s relationship with power and leadership. Her latest book, “No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power,” reveals how women can reach parity from the boardroom to the bedroom for good—our own and society’s. I attended her breakout session with my friend, an artist, singer-songwriter and creative thinker, LisaBeth Weber (@lisabethweber), who knows Gloria well. Gloria’s program was all about how women can think about, redefine and embrace power. Here are some of the points she made:

•The word power comes from the Greek root "possibility" - ask yourself, what do I have the power to......... (do, say, be, affect, etc.)?

•Women dance with power - we sometimes crave it and sometimes don't - we have less intention and desire for power as a whole than men. In fact, women lose $500,000 to $1 million in our lifetimes because we fail to value our services and negotiate effectively as a whole – this needs to change.

•Women need to redefine power from "power over" to "power to" in order to embrace and seek power. Then, define our boundaries, speak up, set our intentions and make change.

•The resources women need to be successful once we embrace power are courage, strength, confidence and the ability to acknowledge our powers.

•Power Tools: know our history, define our terms, use what we have, embrace controversy, carpe the chaos, wear the shirt, take action, employ every medium, tell our story.

•Women can lead and live without limits.

•Power unused is power useless.

•If you want your voice heard as women, write op-eds – we cannot be heard if we don't speak up. She referenced the OpEd Project (www.theopedproject.org) and encouraged all women to check out the website and get involved.

•It is harder to change a culture than it is to change a law.

The second and diverse breakout session was moderated by Bonnie St. John (@bonniestjohn), a television and radio personality, mother, business owner, amputee who became the first African-American to win Olympic or Paralympic medals in ski racing, and the author of six books. The others were: Alba Martinez, a Puerto Rican powerhouse who has served as the CEO of the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS), and now serves as a principal in Vanguard’s Retail Investor Group; Judith von Seldeneck, a Texas-born woman, and CEO of Diversified Search, a founder of the Forum of Executive Women and former executive assistant to Vice President Walter F. Mondale; and Cindy Gallop (@cindygallop), an Asian Brit and founder of www.ifwerantheworld.com personifies energy, power and raw-honesty. She opened saying, “I like to blow shit up.” I could have listened to these women for hours. Their diversity of ethnicity, experience, counsel and accents added to their great perspective and excellent advice. They said:

•Overconfidence and under-confidence are equally as damaging if not properly managed.

•Learn to leverage your network and don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.

•Women leaders need to take a stand on things like integrity - stand up for what you believe in and be accountable.

•Be proud to be a woman! Wear bright colors not men's suits. Stand out in the room.

•Top-down structures, who wins, status and how one matters are the traditional models of male-driven businesses. Instead, business structures need to be redefined around how women lead and manage – we have the potential to create a better business world.

•The old world order is dying and new world order is taking over. Millennials have nothing to lose.

•Biggest mistake I've ever made is not firing someone fast enough (in all contexts).

Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) was one of the day’s keynote speakers. She was both authentic and entertaining. I first met Arianna at a Philadelphia Bar Association luncheon several years ago and had the pleasure to see her again at the PA Women’s Conference. She is the president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of thirteen books. Originally from Greece, she shared the story that she moved to the United States to get away from a love relationship that was not going to end in marriage – which was the start of her journey to become one of TIME magazine's list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

•If you think you are too small to be effective, you have not spent the night in bed with a mosquito.

•If Lehman Brothers was Lehman Brothers and Sisters perhaps they would still be around.

•Sleep your way to the top – literally.

•Women need to define success in a way that honors us - it's not the male definition of climbing the ladder.

•All people imagine the possibility of tragedy and failure but negative fantasies are unnecessary and draining.

•Biggest fear for women is fear of failure but failure is a steppingstone to success.

Cindy Gallop (@cindygallop) also presented a breakout on How to Redesign Your Work to Fit Your Life. She has a background in brand building, marketing and advertising, Cindy has a reputation as a highly compelling and inspirational speaker. She is a passionate advocate for women in business and agrees with Madeleine Albright’s sentiment that, “There is a special place reserved in hell for women who do not help other women.” Here is what she had to say:

•Tweet with the hashtag #changetheratio when women are unrepresented. We need to create the change we want in the world.

•If you articulate it, you can make it happen.

•Those people who say it can't be done should get out of the way of people doing it!

•Well-behaved women rarely make history! You have to buck the system.

•There is a formula for business success: hire only the best, provide them with a clear vision, let them succeed, demonstrate your appreciation and share the success.

•When it comes to setting up businesses, everyone defaults to the corporate norm instead of being innovative. Don't do business the same as everyone else. Collaborative competition means status quo. Set yourself apart.

•Identify what you love doing then focus on it under the conditions within which you love doing it.

•If you want to predict the future you must invent it.

•A business plan can be anything you want it to be as long as it says how you are going to make money.