Welcome

Welcome to Dogs at Law, the blog devoted to dogs and their lawyers, or lawyers and their dogs. Dogs are a lawyer's best friend, just see the Economist if you don't believe me.

In this article, dogs in the workplace foster trust and collaboration - and everyone could do with a bit more of that:

"Some of the groups had a dog underfoot throughout, while the others had none. After the task, all the volunteers had to answer a questionnaire on how they felt about working with the other—human—members of the team. Mr Honts found that those who had had a dog to slobber and pounce on them ranked their team-mates more highly on measures of trust, team cohesion and intimacy than those who had not."

And if that isn't enough to show how good it would be if we could all go to work with you, there's more:

"In the other experiment, which used 13 groups, the researchers explored how the presence of an animal altered players’ behaviour in a game known as the prisoner’s dilemma. In the version of this game played by the volunteers, all four members of each group had been “charged” with a crime. Individually, they could choose (without being able to talk to the others) either to snitch on their team-mates or to stand by them. Each individual’s decision affected the outcomes for the other three as well as for himself in a way that was explained in advance. The lightest putative sentence would be given to someone who chose to snitch while the other three did not; the heaviest penalty would be borne by a lone non-snitch. The second-best outcome came when all four decided not to snitch. And so on.

Having a dog around made volunteers 30% less likely to snitch than those who played without one. The moral, then: more dogs in offices and fewer in police stations."

And just to show it's true, visit the fabulous site of Alexander Ramage Associates (scroll to the bottom for the "management" team).

See more of you soon!