Let’s face it: dealing with e-mail is a nightmare. It’s kind of like taking out the garbage: it’s never finished. You dig through it and delete, delete, delete. Finally, your inbox is empty. You relax, play a little World of Warcraft, and the next thing you know, your e-mail inbox is full again.

It’s a nightmare!

What if you could turn the processing of e-mail into a game?

What if cleaning out your inbox was as much fun as Tetris?

The Email Game does exactly that: it makes processing e-mail fun (in a geeky lawyer sort of way).

It turns a pretty boring task into something mildly entertaining. It gets your competitive juices flowing, and it gets your e-mail inbox emptied out. It’s entertainment plus accomplishment all wrapped up into one simple software product.

The current version of the product integrates with Gmail and Google Apps. It’s not yet for you Outlook fans. If you’re a Google Apps person like me, then game on!

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Turn Emptying Your E-mail Inbox Into a Game

I’m filled with anxiety about the future of family law. It’s changing, and I wonder whether it’s going to cease to exist. It certainly won’t look the same in the near future.

Between the document preparation services, online dispute resolution options, non-lawyer ownership of law firms, the flood of new attorneys and resulting price competition, the decreasing desire of the market to involve lawyers in their lives, and the negative perceptions of family law attorneys, I wonder whether we’ll still be here 10 years from now. Or five years from now.

Things are changing—fast.

I’m also filled with excitement by the possibilities. Something new will come, and someone needs to create it.

The late Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

I’m working on the future, and so are many of you. The ideas I’m hearing are fascinating. Change is happening. It’s going to be interesting.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What’s the Future of Family Law?

We once had a lawyer, I’ll call her “Joyce” (since that’s her name), who worked in our firm. It was many years ago, and she was older than the rest of us.

She was married and had a kid. Most of us weren’t married and didn’t have kids. We lived in a very different mental space from Joyce.

Joyce got to the office at 8:30 and left at 5:30. The rest of us got in early and stayed really, really late. It wasn’t unusual to find some of us hanging around at 10 or 11.

Joyce sat down at her desk and 8:30 and got busy. She cranked through the work hour after hour, drafting documents and making calls. She was diligent about recording her time. At 5:30, she had recorded about seven or eight hours of billable time. She was a machine.

The rest of us were having a great time. We sat around chatting, drinking coffee, and debating what to do for lunch. By 11 at night, we were lucky to have recorded six hours. We weren’t machines.

Joyce had her priorities straight. She came to work to get her job done, earn a living, and get home to her husband and child. She wasn’t interested in us or our silly conversations.

Joyce was motivated to manage her time. The rest of us were motivated to have a good time.

There are zillions of approaches to time management, but the good ones all come down to one thing: priorities. Joyce identified the priorities that motivated her: she loved her husband and child. That’s what motivated her to stay focused and manage her time.

Joyce would have loved hanging out with us and killing time, but that wasn’t her priority. She ignored us and got home. Joyce never had a time management problem.

What matters to you? When you answer that question. you’ll find the time.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Can You Find the Time?

I’ve got a regular reader here who hates the pop-up ads we’ve been using to generate sign-ups for our email list. I’m sure she represents some significant portion of my readership. She has complained several times directly and via Twitter.

It just so happens that we’ve stopped using the pop-ups (so there’s no reason for you to jump on the bandwagon in the comments).

The reason we used the pop-ups is that they worked. They have been amazingly effective at adding subscribers. We stopped using them to test a different approach, which you may be viewing right now (that box with the big picture of me in it). We’re going to see how this approach works for a bit, and then we’ll shift again.

We were faced with a dilemma when the reader complained. Should we respect her wishes and miss the chance to gain more subscribers each day, or should we ignore her and go for the subscribers? Tough call, but we decided to go for the subscribers. It worked (although we may have lost her).

Sometimes our decisions annoy some of our readers. Sometimes you’re going to do something that displeases some of your market. You can’t worry about winning them all.

I was reminded of this lesson recently when we increased our initial consultation fee. We bumped it up a bit more than 50%. Some of our callers weren’t happy, and they’ve complained.

Overall, however, our revenues are up, and the new fee is working. We can’t make everyone happy. If we react to each of the complainers, we won’t ever make changes—there will always be someone who doesn’t like whatever you change.

For some of us, the need to be liked (loved) is powerful. We don’t want to make anyone unhappy. Unfortunately, sometimes we’ve got to make some folks unhappy to achieve our objectives. It’s a tough balance, but you’ve got to be willing to take the risk. When it comes down to being loved versus being successful, you’re going to have to make the call for you. Don’t be afraid to be successful.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

You Can’t Make Everybody Happy, and You Shouldn’t Try

We fired an employee a few weeks ago. She never saw it coming.

She was truly surprised that she got the axe.

I’ve noticed that the people we fire rarely see it coming. I’ve always thought they were kind of clueless.

Recently, however, I recognized that their surprise is not evidence of their cluelessness.

Their surprise is evidence of our incompetence as managers. We are dropping the ball. They shouldn’t be surprised. If we were doing our job as managers, they’d see it coming. They see it coming really clearly and in vivid colors!

It’s our job to show them what we expect, to show them the gap between our expectations and their performance, and to show them how to fill the gap. If we’re explaining, teaching, coaching, and providing feedback, they’ll be very familiar  with their deficiencies. They’ll know whether they’re failing to meet expectations, and they’ll know what to do to correct the situation.

We’re not giving sufficient feedback when employees are surprised by their own termination.

I’m not suggesting that every employee can do the job. I’m not suggesting that it’s our responsibility to fill the gap for them.

I am, however, suggesting that they should know exactly what they were supposed to do, and they should know they aren’t doing it.

Sometimes it’s our fault and not theirs.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Did the Employee You Fired See it Coming?

We’re facing a new challenge with marketing our practices on the Internet.

Here’s a Tweet we’re not likely to see:

“My divorce lawyer @leerosen really kicked my spouse’s ass. He’s the best!”

You won’t see my typical client putting that out on a social network.

Why not?

Because most clients prefer to keep their divorce issues private. They’ve got friends in common with their spouse. They’ve got kids they’ve got to raise. The last thing most of them want to do is advertise for their divorce lawyers. They want to get this finished and behind them.

Who cares? You’ve survived this long without them tweeting about you. So what?

Here’s the deal:

Ranking well in the search engines has become important in many of our practices. Google is the Yellow Pages of the modern age, and some lawyers are very dependent on marketing via the Web. No Google ranking sometimes equals no clients.

Google and Bing, the dominant search players, are increasingly emphasizing social signals in determining the rankings of their search results. In fact, Google made a huge change last week. Some lawyers game the system by putting out gobs of spammy, fake, anonymous tweets and other social endorsements of their work. That might work in the short-term, but it’s got huge potential to bite you later. I’d avoid that approach.

The bottom line is that we need to increase positive word of mouth about our businesses if we’re going to show up in front of people in need of our services. Today, word of mouth is communicated via social media. You need people saying nice things about you—online.

It’s now more important than ever that people say positive things about you on the Internet. Ideally, they’ll “Like” your page on Facebook, share your information via Twitter, and hit the +1 button on Google. That’s all-important now and getting more important every single day.

How do you get them to do it? Why would they want to say something good about you? How can you give them something worth sharing?

I’d suggest that you start thinking about these questions. Bring together your best and brightest and come up with some answers. The lawyers who get the answer right first are going to win.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

We’re Going to Disappear from Google If People Don’t Talk about Us

Authenticity is important in marketing. You need to let people know who you are as a person. You need to be human.

That’s all true in most instances.

It’s not true, however, if your life is a mess.

If you have so lost control of your life that you’re flitting from disaster to disaster, then keep it to yourself. It’s not going to help you build your practice.

For instance, if your spouse just left you, you’re declaring bankruptcy, and you’ve got a drug problem, then keep it to yourself. You don’t need to advertise those facts.

If you just got off the psychiatric wing, embezzled from your trust account, and tried to kill your brother, then keep it quiet. Don’t talk about it with everyone you meet.

I’m all for exchanging information with people you get to know. Trust is about self-disclosure, and it’s critical to building relationships. Self-disclosure normally involves starting slow and both parties equally disclosing. Self-disclosure does not involve revealing the most screwed-up aspects of your life at the first meeting.

Keep your mouth shut if your life is a disaster. People don’t trust people who can’t manage their own lives. You need to come across as competent personally and professionally.

Why am I mentioning this issue today? You can only imagine. Needless to say, I won’t be making referrals to the inspiration for this message.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Keep Your Screwed Up Personal Life to Yourself

Years ago, I started going to breakfast with a group of lawyers in various practice areas. We got together on Wednesday morning at 7:30 in a local restaurant. I ate more than I should have and, over time, bought bigger and bigger suits.

The weight gain wasn’t the only by-product of breakfast.

I also ended up with bunches of new clients.

There were usually four or five of us at breakfast.

We talked about nothing in particular. The focus was usually sports, politics, family, or occasionally business. Mostly, we didn’t see each other outside of breakfast. We just came back each week because we were having a good time.

I remember that we had to switch restaurants once when our place went out of business. We made the move and kept on eating.

What happened at breakfast that generated business?

Nothing magical happened. We just got to know one another, we built trust, and we came to understand how each of us was able to help clients in our respective practice areas. As the need to make referrals arose, we knew who to call. It was natural.

You should be going to breakfast with some lawyers. Find a handful of lawyers in different practice areas. Look for lawyers in practice areas that involve meeting lots of clients. Look at employment law attorneys, estate planners, and real estate lawyers. Consider criminal attorneys and personal injury lawyers. There are lots of options.

Most importantly, look for lawyers you like and who have common interests. Find people you’d like to see on Wednesday morning for the next 30 years.

Start with one lawyer. Don’t instantly create a group. Get to know one lawyer before you expand. Start slow without a master plan to take over the universe. Ease into breakfast and get comfortable.

Then let the group expand. Don’t control it; don’t feel like it’s a measurable marketing tactic that needs to be charted and graphed. It’s just breakfast.

Marketing is all about helping people know you, like you, and trust you. Breakfast is a perfect place to let that happen.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Turn Breakfast into a Steady Stream of Clients

You just signed up a bunch of new clients. January is good for divorce lawyers. Congratulations.

Those clients (I hope) either paid you a fixed fee or deposited funds into your trust account. Life is good.

A month or two from now, some of those clients will need to pay you some more. They’ll either need to replenish the trust account or pay some additional fixed fee if it becomes due.

What’s going to happen when it’s time for them to pay?

Some of them are going to tell you they can’t pay. You’re going to get some sad stories.

They’re going to explain that it’s difficult to come up with the required cash in the middle of a divorce. You’re very familiar with this particular tale of woe.

They’re going to explain that the equity line is tapped out or tied up. They’ll explain that their credit cards are maxed out and the 401(k) loan has reached its limit. They’ll tell you that their friends and family aren’t willing to step up and help and that they’ve visited their banker, who denied their request for a loan.

What will you do?

You’re faced with clients who clearly aren’t credit worthy. These clients would have obtained the funds from someone else if anyone else trusted them enough to make the loan.

I’m sure there will be some story, like “the bank won’t loan me the money on the house without the signature of my spouse and, of course, I can’t get the signature of my spouse.” Baloney! The bank will happily lend money to people when the risk factors and interest rates make sense. If the bank says no, there’s probably a good reason.

So what will you do when faced with walking away from the case or extending credit?

Don’t extend the credit. Walk away. That’s the right thing to do if the rules of professional responsibility allow you to get out. Don’t get sucked in.

Those lenders and family members that refused to loan the money know more than you do. Trust them rather than getting stuck for the money. There’s a reason they said no. You might not ever understand their thinking, but they are probably right.

Divorce lawyers across the country talk to me about their receivables. They complain about writing them off as a loss. I’ve never talked to a family law attorney who felt good about their receivables.

You’re a lawyer, not a banker. Don’t loan your clients money.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

You’re Not a Banker: Don’t Extend Credit

Click through if you can’t see the video. Enjoy!

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

In-Flight Wedding Proposal

A lawyer friend of mine casually remarked to me that she ignores the question-asking e-mails that come from her website visitors.

If you’ve got a website, then you’re getting e-mails from prospective clients. They’re asking questions about everything under the sun. They particularly want free legal advice.

Do you respond? How do you respond?

The answer (addressed from a pure marketing perspective) depends on your situation.

If you’re busy and never have a need for more clients, then feel free to blow it off. Ignore it. Just let it go. Yes, that’s rude, but we’re dealing with this from a marketing perspective only.

If you’re busy now but know you’ll have a need for new clients down the road, then you’re going to have to deal with the e-mail. After all, you built the website to assist you in generating new business. Why would you ignore the results of your efforts?

How to respond?

I’ve got three different approaches:

First, I sometimes answer the question asked by the person. I don’t get specific, and I try to be as helpful as possible without getting into a lengthy conversation. The fact is that these e-mails are usually reserved for people who actually need free legal advice and aren’t likely to hire us. If I have the time, I like to do what I can to help. You should consider the conflict of interest rules in your jurisdiction and be very aware of what it takes to create an attorney-client relationship.

Second, I send a stock e-mail response. I use a program called TextExpander (PC users check out ActiveWords) and I send a very nice, lengthy, but automated response that explains our process and options for getting specific answers. I sometimes customize the introductory part of the e-mail based on the question. The e-mail explains why it wouldn’t be helpful for me to answer the question without a thorough understanding of the facts. These e-mails go to people who might hire us down the road, but I’m not entirely clear about their circumstances. (I also use this approach for the very long, crazy e-mails some people send, although if they’re really, really crazy, I may ignore them).

Finally, I forward the e-mail to our intake person. She e-mails back or calls the person and moves forward with setting up a consultation. This approach is what I use for those folks who seem most in need of—and able to purchase—our services. I want us to move forward with the relationship.

Our website generates a ton of these e-mails. We attempt to route them to one person who handles them all (by posting an information e-mail address on the site), but visitors often find our individual addresses. It’s important to respond. These e-mails are often the beginning of a relationship. Ignore them at your peril.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Deal with E-mails from Prospective Clients

It’s a new year, and most of us have resolutions that we intend to implement in the next 12 months. Realistically, and unfortunately, most of us will likely drop the ball on those resolutions.

We will look back on the year, and—if we even remember our resolutions—we’ll wonder where the time went. We’ll blame the lack of time for our failure to do what we set out to do.

Think back 12 months. Did you have plans for 2011? Did you make resolutions? Did you prepare a strategic plan?

Did you get it all done? Did you get any of it done?

Year after year, we blame the lack of time for our failings. Unfortunately, we really have no idea where the time has gone.

This year should be different. I’ve got a plan for you. If you follow my suggestion, it probably won’t move you any further along the path toward achieving your resolutions, but you’ll know where the time went.

Here’s my suggestion:

Start a time log. I’m guessing that you’re already keeping up with your time so that you can bill hours. Just add to that list everything else that you do. Keep up with all of your activities regardless of whether they happen to be billable. The specific format of the log is irrelevant. The key is that you capture each and every thing that you do all day long so that you have a full record of how your time was spent. Some of you will automate the process with RescueTime or another product.

Keep this log for the next month. Be as detailed as possible. Use the log as a contemporaneous record of all of your activity. Don’t put off recording your activities until the end of the day because you’ll forget how you spent your time.

Once the month is over, go back to your time record with highlighters in several colors. Categorize your time using any system you choose. Figure out how much time you spent working on client matters, how much time you spent interacting with your staff, and how much time you simply wasted (Facebook, anyone?).

The objective is to give yourself some insight into where a month’s worth of time has gone. Hopefully, you’ll be surprised at the way you spend your time. Suddenly, you will know why most of us fail to achieve the objectives we set for ourselves at the beginning of the year. There truly isn’t enough time because we’ve wasted so much time.

Once you’ve done some analysis of your time, figure out where the time wasters are. How much time are you spending dealing with the crisis of the day? How much time are you spending dealing with matters that should have been better systematized? How much time are you wasting doing unproductive things that you simply enjoy doing? How much time are the people that you work with causing you to waste by distracting you? You’ll find that you are wasting time in your own unique and special way.

Suddenly you have the knowledge to do something about recapturing your wasted time. The first step toward solving any problem is awareness. This exercise enables you to become aware of where your time is going.

Now, you’ll have to make a choice about whether you are willing to attack the time-wasting problem. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. But at least you’ll know where it is that your time is going.

For most of us, knowing where our time is going is something we never figure out. We spend year after year wasting hundreds if not thousands of hours on things we didn’t even realize we were doing.

Creating the log will make you aware of what’s happening with your life.

We won’t get 2011 back, but maybe at the end of this year, you’ll have achieved some of your resolutions. Maybe that will be because you found the time you needed to actually work on the things you prioritized.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What Happened to 2011?

We hear stories about big firm associates billing crazy numbers of hours. When I got out of law school back in 1987, the story was that big firm lawyers billed a minimum of 1,800 hours per year. They made it sound like billing that much resulted in a miserable existence for the lawyers.

Since then, I’ve heard the number creeping up. It went from 1,800 to 2,000 to 2,400. Recently, I overheard a conversation about someone billing 3,000 hours.

I have no idea what really goes on in big firms. I don’t know whether those numbers include nonbillable time, pro bono work, firm hours, etc. It’s not really important for me to understand the billing practices of big firms doing what they do with big corporate clients. It’s a world apart from mine.

However, hearing those numbers does affect our smaller firm lives in one way.

We complain about our associates and their billing habits.

I hear lots of complaints from lawyers who have hired associates. They complain about the number of hours they’re getting from their young lawyers. They aren’t happy.

I’ll tell you that the complaining about associates (and paralegals) and their billables is universal. Most of us aren’t happy with the productivity of our lawyers, regardless of how many hours the associates bill. I’ve heard complaints from lawyers getting 40 hours a month, 90 hours, 120 hours, and 150 hours. There’s lots of complaining, and it’s clearly not related to any particular objective standard of what an associate “should” be billing. I think we’re affected by those big firm stories. Our associates never perform like we believe the big firm associates are performing.

Of course, having associates bill a healthy number of hours doesn’t help if you’ve got other issues. For instance, if your hourly rate is too low or your associate compensation is too high, it won’t matter how many hours they’re billing. The system is flawed, and you’re going to have trouble.

It’s helpful, however, to know what you can reasonably expect from an associate so you aren’t banging your head against the wall in frustration all the time.

What’s realistic? What should you expect from an associate?

I’ve been listening carefully for the past few months, and I’ve come up with a standard.

I think, in the practice of family law, that you should expect a minimum of 100 hours per month in billable work. When I say 100, I mean 100 after all of the craziness that happens to the hours like write-downs, discounts, adjustments, etc. You should expect a bill to go out for a minimum of 100 hours.

Are some firms doing better than 100? Yes, some are, but there are quite a few doing worse. Would I be happy with 100 hours personally? Probably not, but I’m pretty much unhappy with everything all the time. I enjoy complaining.

I think you can use 100 hours to give yourself a sense of whether your system is acceptable. If you’re below 100, then you need to make some quick changes. If you’re at or above 100 per month, then you can breathe a sigh of relief, stop complaining, and start figuring out how to improve on something that is basically working.

There are lots of reasons why family law associates bill fewer hours than their big firm counterparts. We need to accept that the gross number of hours will be lower. It’s important, however, for us to understand whether we have a sick system or a healthy system in our offices. At 100 hours, you’ve got a system that doesn’t require complaints.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Many Hours Should an Associate Bill?

This is the time of year when lots of attorneys are excitedly starting on their new annual plan. They’ve got a plan for improving their people, their technology, and their marketing. The plan comes along with time lines and key economic indicators of their progress. They’re jazzed to make some progress and have lots and lots of energy for hitting 2012 hard.

What about you?

Do you have a plan, and are you already working on it?

I’m listening now, and the silence is deafening.

No plan, you say? You’re too busy. You’re overwhelmed with the influx of new clients and calls from old clients.

I understand.

That’s a pretty typical response. It’s okay.

So how about we do something else instead of an annual plan?

How about, instead of a fancy one-year plan, you pick something you’d like to see improved in your practice? How about, instead of the plan lasting a year, we shorten it to 90 days? Let’s set one small goal.

What if, for instance, we agreed that you’ll add a Facebook page for your firm in the next 90 days? Could you make that happen? Maybe, instead of Facebook, it’s a plan to write down the systems used at the front desk (like accepting payments, greeting clients, etc.).

Would a 90-day plan be something you can wrap your brain around?

If so, it’s time to get moving. Screw the annual plan. Stop worrying about the big goals. Set something small and manageable, and just do it. Get something done.

A successful practice is far more likely to come from a series of successful 90-day plans than it is from the big, fancy annual plan that you abandon over the course of the year.

Set an objective and make a plan, and 90 days from now you’ll have scored a victory. What’s your goal?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Ditch the Annual Plan and Think Small

This is a struggle. The grass is always greener. People come, and people go. Today, they go more often than they stay. It’s the nature of a more mobile society with different ideas about loyalty. It’s not worth being distressed by the societal changes. It is what it is. Now we deal with it.

This is a continuation of the discussion started by my friend with 45 years of practice experience who notes that he hasn’t ever made any money from hiring associates. He’d like to figure out how to make it work. I commend him for his ambition at this point in his career. I can only hope that I’ll give a crap about improving anything after 45 years. Stay tuned for the next 20 years, and you’ll find out what happens.

Implicit in the discussion about keeping associates is that we need to keep them until they become profitable and then keep them well after that point to keep generating profits.

I disagree with that premise.

I say they’ve got to be profitable from the first day (or darn close to it).

If you can’t make money from them very early in their tenure, then this isn’t going to work for you. You can’t count on them staying for long. Of course, you hope they’ll stay, but you can’t build a business model based on hope. You need a profitability plan for every investment you make, and if you can’t see dollars flowing to the bottom line from the start, then it’s probably a bad investment. Everyone laments the short-term focus of big corporations, resulting in their quarter-by-quarter planning without attention to the big picture.

Why do they focus on quarterly results? Because it works, and they drive their stock price up. Having a great decade requires stringing together 40 great quarters. Focus on the short term when it comes to hiring associates. Those MBAs learned something in that $100,000 business school.

You’ve got to figure out a billing model and compensation plan that builds in profit from the very beginning. There is minimal time for training today. They need to bill—right now—or this isn’t going to work.

How do you get them up and running instantly? Most importantly, you need someone managing the associate. Hiring associates doesn’t work if you select people, set up offices for them, and tell them to get to work. Associates can’t be effective if they’re hunting up and down the halls looking for an open partner’s door when they have a question. They need someone supervising them who can answer the overwhelming number of questions and deal with their anxiety and uncertainty. You need someone in management who is excited about managing and growing lawyers. This can’t be an afterthought or a secondary duty of the manager. This needs to be the manager’s primary focus and passion if it’s going to work.

A great manager will deliver instant profitability by being certain that the associate’s time is being sold at a fair price and that there is a margin between the price you’re paying for the labor and the price at which the services are being sold. Certainly, new associates aren’t worth as much as more senior attorneys. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t sell their services at a profit. You’ll sell their work for less, but you’ll also pay less for it. With good management, the associates’ time will be used efficiently and sold profitably. Buy low, sell high: that’s the deal with running a business.

What happens when those associates decide to leave?

Well, some will leave, but, if you quickly turned those folks into profit centers, you’ll be less concerned. Sure, you’ll hate to see them go, but they’re not walking out the door with your investment. You had a fair exchange, they made you money, and if they need to go, they can go. Everyone can feel good about your time together.

However, in many instances, you’d like them to stay. Can you pull that off?

Sure you can. Here’s how.

Most of the associates who leave you have big dreams. They’re going to go off, start a firm, change the world, and make gobs of money.

Unfortunately, that’s not usually the way things work out.

The harsh reality is that they mostly leave, start practices, earn a crappy income, struggle for a few years, and then get a job somewhere else (if they can). They rarely achieve much of what they set out to achieve.

Remember, you’ve got clients. They need clients. Without them, you can’t get the work done and make money. Without you, they have no work to do and can’t make money. For now, you need one another. Don’t let it end so quickly.

Is it possible for both you and your associates to get what you need out of the relationship?

What if you can keep them while they do their own thing? What if they open an office but continue to do your work on a contract basis? The compensation system is easy if you’re doing something like the attorney compensation plan I described earlier this week.  They can keep getting your work done. You keep earning the margins on that work. You’re happy, the associate is happy, and the client is happy. It’s a win-win-win.

One day, maybe, these associates will build a practice and finally leave. In the meantime, however, the associates keep earning an income, and you keep getting the work out the door. There’s really no reason for the associates to go like they did in the old days. It used to be that you were left in a lurch, and they were left with a crappy income. Now they can accomplish their goals, and you can accomplish yours. Let them go away and do their own thing without going away.

The keys to keeping associates are good management, a fair compensation system, and a plan for them to achieve their dreams (without killing yours). You’ll find that with these systems in place, lawyers will stick around longer and make you more money. If the relationship ends, it ends on good terms and was a profitable experience for everyone involved.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Do You Keep a Good Associate?

I’ve struggled with this question for years. I’ve recently adopted a new plan. In fact, my new plan is one of my two primary objectives for this year.

Before I explain the new plan, let me just say this: attorneys can, pretty much, all become effective marketers. They just need the right motivation. How do I know? Because I’ve seen, over and over, non-marketers become marketers the minute they open their own offices. They can’t/won’t take a referral source to lunch—excuse after excuse. Then they sign a lease, put up a shingle, and are instantly “Ms. Go Out to Lunch.” It’s not lack of skill; it’s lack of motivation.

Here’s what I’ve been doing for years. My old system, if you want to call it a system, has been to identify the associates interested in marketing and then support the heck out of them. Mostly, I sit around and think critical thoughts about the majority of associates who won’t engage in any marketing behaviors at all. They drive me nuts.

We have a bunch of free seminars in the markets we serve. Our lawyers teach one of them each month. Mostly, they go through the motions: they show up, deliver the lecture, and come home. They rarely get a consultation from the seminars. It’s pretty much a waste of time for them to go.

Some of our lawyers, however, go teach the same seminars and come back with a couple of initial consults every time. Why? It’s not entirely clear to me, but these folks are good at marketing on every front. They’re the same people who take referral sources to lunch, get called by the media, etc. They’re natural marketers.

My system, for more than 20 years, has been to identify these natural marketers and do everything I can for them. I teach them everything I know, get them invited to speak everywhere I can, push the media to them, introduce them around, etc.

How’s that working for me? It’s great, but it’s only helpful to a very limited number of our attorneys since most folks fall into the other camp. Most of our people aren’t natural marketers, and they get neglected by me.

That was a mistake. That’s what I’m working on this year.

I was talking to Rich Harris, a preeminent Denver family law attorney,  and he explained what he’s doing with associates in his firm. I’ve decided to adopt the Rich Harris plan.

Rich meets regularly with all of his associates. He helps them develop an annual marketing plan with modest goals. He teaches them how to follow the plan, and he tracks their progress in regular meetings. He prides himself on their success, and he is an enthusiastic teacher. He even makes an outside marketing consultant available to the associates when they need feedback from someone outside of the firm. Rich reports great success with his plan—even from associates who aren’t natural marketers.

I’m in the process of arranging the meetings and getting the plans drafted now. We’re going to make progress this year. It won’t be huge, but it’s a big shift for me, and it’s going to generate business from some unexpected places. I’m looking forward to ending my critical, negative approach and doing something positive. I’ll let you know whether the Rich Harris plan works as well for me as it has for Rich.

On top of the plan I’m borrowing from Rich, we also employ financial incentives for marketing. Our system involves compensating our attorneys for their marketing results. The more clients they generate, the more they can earn. We pay a percentage of all revenues originated. I’m not going to go deep into that system today. My experience is that these systems are difficult to administer because it’s very difficult to determine the source of most clients. It’s important to employ a financial incentive, but it won’t, on its own, motivate attorneys to market. The training piece is essential.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how to keep these folks once we’ve turned them into effective marketers. Clearly, there’s little point in growing their skill set if you’re only going to create a new competitor and gain nothing in the process. Same time, same place, see you tomorrow.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Do You Motivate the Right Associate to Work and Build a Practice Within Your Office?

Today, we’re continuing the conversation about law firm associates. I’m responding to the attorney who wrote about his 45 years of hiring associates and his recent realization that he hasn’t ever made any money from his efforts.

Before we hit the compensation issue, let me say this. The guy who started this has a point that shouldn’t be taken lightly. He has been doing this for 45 years and hasn’t made money with associates. He has wasted a bunch of time and energy. Maybe he shouldn’t have done it. Maybe he should have taken as much work as he could handle and no more. Maybe he would have been better off without associates.

Why couldn’t he pull it off? It doesn’t really matter, does it? He couldn’t do it, and many, many of us can’t do it either. Should we fix it or stop trying?

I say, if you’ve been working at this for a few years and can’t make money from associates, then stop hiring them. It’s not for you. Hiring lawyers isn’t important. What’s important is building a business that you enjoy and that compensates you fairly. Don’t feel compelled to hire anyone. It’s not an essential activity, and for many, many lawyers, it isn’t profitable or worthwhile. I know many lawyers who have worked by themselves forever, and they’re quite content. You don’t need an associate, and you don’t need the hassles that come with hiring someone. This is a purely optional form of torture.

So, if you’re going to do it anyway, how do you pay them?

I’ve tried it all: salaries, base plus bonus, and pure commission.

Dan Pink won’t agree with me, but for lawyers, pure commission works best. No salary, no base: just put it all on the line, and let them play the game.

Why? Because they love games with rules, and they desperately want to win. If you make the game simple, with immediate feedback, they’re going to win. If you set it up right, a win for them is a win for you.

Here’s how we do it:

Case comes in, and we collect the fee (we charge fixed fees, but this works for hourly as well).

Lawyer does the work.

File gets closed (we now know the total fee for the case).

Lawyer gets 20% of the fee.

Let’s say a client comes in and hires us to draft a separation agreement. Our fee is $10,000. Lawyer works on the case for three months and gets the agreement wrapped up. Boom, check is written for $2,000. On top of that, our lawyers get free health, dental, life, etc., plus a match on their 401(k) and all of their CLE expenses, bar dues, etc. paid.

Also, for the first few months of new attorneys’ employment, we pay them a minimal salary of about $5,000 per month, just to tide them over until cases start closing.

How’s it working? Great. It works for the business, and it works for the lawyers. Everyone wins. The lawyers are motivated to wrap things up, which makes the clients happy. It’s all good.

Some of the lawyers have been here long enough to have been on other systems in the past. How does this system compare? The lawyers earn more under the current system. Why? Because they’re more productive. As the game got simpler and more understandable, they exerted energy in the right places. I think some of the lawyers surprised themselves with how much more productive they became under the current system.

We evolved to this system over time. It took a while to get everyone on board. Some switched easily, and some required a push. Some staffing adjustments had to be made, and we’ve simplified the system over time.

Is this the right system for everyone? Hard for me to say. I can only tell you our experience, and I can report that it’s working for us. Give it some thought, and feel free to share your ideas and comments below.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Do You Compensate an Associate?

I got an interesting e-mail from a lawyer the other day complaining about hiring associates. He’s been at it for years, and the following pattern has repeated itself over and over:

He hires an associate. He trains the associate. The associate leaves and starts a new practice across the street. Now he has a new competitor.

This lawyer has concluded that neither he, nor anyone he has talked to about the problem, has made any real money from hiring associates over the years.

He notes that when the associates leave, they usually take all of the practice forms and systems he has developed along with some clients. He also observes that, after they’re gone, the associates start doing all of the practice-building activities he tried to get them to do while they were working for him.

He is frustrated and asked me to answer four questions:

First, how do you pick the right associate?

Second, how do you compensate the right associate?

Third, how do you motivate the right associate to work and build a practice within your office?

Fourth, how do you keep a good associate?

Let’s start with picking the right associate: they say hire slow, fire fast. I think that’s good advice. They also say that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. These two ideas (hire slow and avoid insanity) form the foundation of my hiring approach. Insanity? Yes, for many years, I did all of the hiring. Result? Mostly disaster: I got it right maybe ten percent of the time. I tended to hire people like me. Those people, of course, don’t want to work for people like me (I wouldn’t last a week with me).

How did I break the pattern of hiring badly? I tried everything. I read books, watched videos, and went to lectures. Nothing worked. That’s why I gave up. I don’t do the hiring anymore. We have an attorney who handles the entire process, and I never even meet the applicants.

How’s it working? Much better than when I was doing it (it really couldn’t be worse than it was, since I failed most of the time). We’ve had three different managing attorneys over about 12 years, and they’ve all done a better job of hiring than I did. Why? I’m not sure. At some level, I think the kind of people who work for someone else are better at relating to the kind of people who will be good at working for someone else. Maybe that’s the secret?

What about hiring slow? I think that has helped. We are always interviewing (even when we don’t need anyone). We never feel a great deal of pressure to hire quickly because the pipeline is usually full. We’re keeping our eyes open and asking people over to meet with us. Once we find someone good, we pass that person around and get input from others in the firm. We’re not in a hurry, and we’ve got time to reflect on each applicant. We also get a sense, over a longer period, of the applicant’s true character. Applicants have a hard time sustaining a false act over a period of months. The truth usually comes out.

When we take our time interviewing, we end up covering different subjects in different interviews. One interviewer might focus on prior jobs, another might discuss courtroom experience, and another might get a sense of the applicant as a marketer. When we compare notes, we get a multidimensional sense of the applicant. We’ve also found that, by taking our time, things discussed in the interview start to make more sense as time passes and we’ve had a chance to let our thoughts settle. By not being in a hurry, we also give ourselves a chance to gather data from other sources that might not have occurred to us initially.

All in all, getting me out of the process and dramatically slowing down the process have resulted in a constantly improving group of lawyers.

Next up: how do you compensate an associate? Patience, my dear reader: we’ll get to that tomorrow. See you then.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Do You Pick the Right Associate?

I’m going off the radar…going dark…going on vacation.

I’ll be back on January 2, 2012, well rested, relaxed, and ready to go again.

In the meantime, have a great holiday, and thanks for reading and for contributing.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Off the Radar

In my practice, where we charge fixed fees for everything, December can be difficult. Revenues are affected by the holidays. My revenue anxiety often disrupts my holiday sleep. I wake up dreaming of bankruptcy judges and debtor’s prison.

Between prospective clients putting off the divorce until January, the days we’re closed, and the number of people on vacation, things can get very slow. It’s challenging.

Some practices don’t feel the holiday impact until January when they send out December bills and transfer income from the trust account. For most of us, it’s not really an “if” we’re going to feel the impact of the holidays, it’s a question of “when” we’re going to feel it. Different billing approaches create the cash flow crunch at different times.

What can you do about it now with five days until Christmas?

Nothing.

This year you’re going to have to cope, like most years.

However, there is hope.

You can much more easily manage next year—if you start preparing now.

Here’s my plan:

1. Wait until February and then take note of your expenses for the slow month you expect to come (for us, it’s December; for you, it might be January). Let’s say you’ll have expenses of $200,000 during that month.

2. Go back and look at historical data and determine the worst month you’ve ever had (let’s say it’s $100,000 in revenue for that awful month).

3. Now subtract the worst month from the expenses you calculated in step 1 ($200,000 – $100,000 = $100,000).

4. Start setting aside one-tenth of the amount calculated above ($10,000 per month). Put it in a separate account that, ideally, doesn’t show up when you check online banking balances. Make it an auto debit and have it come out weekly ($2,500 per week in our example).

5. That’s it. When you get to the slow month, you’ll have what you need. If the slow month turns out better than expected, then you’ve got a bonus. If not, you’re prepared. Either way, you’ll sleep better all year long.

More often than not, I don’t follow my own advice on money. I usually wing it and find myself wide awake at 4 AM worrying about things. This year is going to be different. I’m taking my advice and setting up my “secret” bank account. I’ll be sleeping like a baby. Will you?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What to Do about the Holiday Revenue Slump

Are you planning a 2012 advertising campaign? We’ve been down that road before, and it can be bumpy. Here are 10 lawyer advertising tips I’ve picked up as we’ve rolled along.

1. Comply with the rules in your state for lawyer advertising. In our state, for instance, we are required to include our address in every advertisement. That’s not something that ad agencies necessarily know. You’ve got to check on the rules on your own since it’s your law license that’s on the line. In some states, you can have your state bar review your advertisements  in advance.

2. Use a professional media buyer to purchase your advertisements. There are brokers who specialize in this field, and they are often free to you since they’re paid by the media outlet. These folks are experts, and there is plenty of need for expertise in this arena.

3. Make your ads about your prospects and their problems. Don’t let your ego drive you to make the ad about you. Remember, prospects care about themselves, not you.

4. Expect some results immediately. Ad sellers will tell you the ads take time to work, and that’s true. But if you get no response, then your ad probably isn’t working. Expect existing clients, friends, and family to notice your ads and comment on them. Expect some calls. If you hear nothing at all, it’s probably not working. Expect a reaction.

5. Expect your peers to give you grief about your ads. Even in this day and age of overwhelming attorney advertising, some of your peers will tease you about your ads. That’s good—at least you know the ads are running and someone is seeing them. Don’t let the teasing get you down.

6. If the most prominent part of the ad is your name or the firm name, you’re likely doing it wrong. Revisit tip number 3. This isn’t about your ego. It’s about generating revenue.

7. Look at your ad and replace your name with the name of your competitor. If the ad still works, you’re not distinguishing yourself. What’s special about you and your approach that’s different from the competition? Be different.

8. Whether you’re advertising on the radio, in the newspaper, or on TV, have someone other than the people working for the media outlet create the ads for you. All of the ads created by the same person tend to look the same. You want your ad to stand out. Use someone different.

9. Don’t worry about changing the ads. Develop a good ad and stick to it. Your prospective customers aren’t paying attention until they need your service. The ad isn’t getting old because they aren’t noticing it until they have a need to notice it.

10. Be creative about where you run your ads. Go where the customers are and avoid the shotgun approach. You don’t need to pay for ads in major publications and media outlets if small publications better meet your needs. Think about ads in professional directories (e.g., the real estate association directory), specialty publications (e.g., triathlon magazines), and narrow channels (e.g., the one-armed golfer channel). You don’t need to reach everyone—just those people in need of your services.

Advertising is challenging. You’ll get an expensive education along the way. Hopefully, these tips will save you a bit of money and time.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

10 Quick Lawyer Advertising Tips

I visited a law firm last week and opened up my sweet little Macbook Air while I waited in the lobby. I found the firm’s wireless network and connected. Because I’m nosy, I opened Finder (the Mac version of Windows Explorer) and noticed two computers on the network. Click, click, click, and I stumbled upon a load of billing data and client files. The firm’s QuickBooks data was right there as well.

Of course, I didn’t open anything, and when I went back to meet with the attorney I had come to visit, I explained that the firm’s files were all visible to anyone nearby.

There was no password required for me to get on the network. There was no barrier between me and the data. It was all accessible to anyone with a computer or smartphone—no hacking required.

What’s ironic about this story is that I had come by office to talk  to one of the attorneys about the security of data stored in the cloud. He wanted to learn more about how safe the firm’s data would be on Dropbox or Clio or one of the other cloud-based services specializing in handling client data.

We chatted about the security at his firm. The firm contracts with a local IT guy. The IT guy, theoretically, handles all of the security needs, including providing virus protection, firewall software and hardware, and other measures. Of course, it’s not working. Incredibly, no one knew it wasn’t working until I did my unsophisticated security check. Oops.

Is your data security dependent on an IT guy bending over your server with his butt crack hanging out?

I love the debate about cloud data security. Are we better off with data in our offices on our servers or stored somewhere on servers on the Internet? Which is more secure? Companies like Google, Salesforce, and Dropbox compete to hire the best software engineers in the universe. They are constantly recruiting the best and the brightest to add to their teams.

Are you getting the best and the brightest? Is your IT guy trying to decide whether to work for you or for Google? Or, more realistically, is he begging you for the business?

Do you really think your IT guy can secure your data better than these well-funded ventures? Do you really think you have the capacity to interview and select a qualified IT provider?

Certainly, the big firms suffer security lapses. Those lapses get well publicized, and the vendors lose customers when it happens.

But you suffer security lapses right there in your office regularly. It just doesn’t get publicized. Most of the time, you don’t even realize it happened.

Where is your data more secure? In your office or in the cloud? I’m keeping my data up there where it’s safe.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Is Your Client Data Secure?

Some argue that lawyers lack resilience. I concur. We don’t bounce back well. Far too often, we take a hit and lie down on the floor. We don’t get up.

Here’s the story I see quite often:

Lawyer decides to do some marketing. The focus is lunches with referral sources. Lawyer gets charged up about it and makes a handful of calls. A few lunches get arranged.

Lawyer goes to lunch, and it goes well. Lawyer goes to another lunch, and it goes well also. Then lawyer goes to the third lunch, and something goes wrong. Maybe the other lawyer is a no-show. Maybe the other lawyer is difficult. Maybe the lunch just feels awkward.

Now we’ve got a lawyer doing pretty well at traveling down the referral source lunch path. Out of three lunches, two went very well. Pretty good performance.

What does the lawyer see? The lawyer can’t stop focusing on the one lunch that went poorly. That’s all the lawyer remembers after the third lunch.

What does the lawyer do?

You already know the answer. The lawyer doesn’t schedule any more lunches. She comes to a grinding halt on the marketing plan.

Why? You already know why; you totally get what I’m saying. You completely understand. We all get it: we know ourselves.

That’s what most of us do, that’s who most of us are, and that’s why we kind of stink at marketing.

We fall off the bike, and we lie there on the ground, rolling around in misery. We know we should climb back on the bike and pedal, pedal, pedal, but we don’t.

We aren’t very resilient.

That’s not the end of the story, however. We aren’t stuck like this forever. There are things we can do.

I found this great article in Law Practice Today that provides six tips on becoming a resilient person. It can be done.

Resilience can be learned. We aren’t stuck as we are; we can change. Get up off the ground, get back on the bike, and get back to lunch.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Are You Having Trouble Sticking to Your Marketing Plan?

I’ve been having lunch with this guy, on and off, for four years. We’ve probably been to lunch eight times, met for coffee twice, talked on the phone a dozen times, and e-mailed back and forth every few months. He is, theoretically at least, a referral source. He’s an accountant with a pretty good practice.

I say he’s “theoretically” a referral source because, a few weeks ago, I realized he’s never referred a case to us. He’s a good guy, and I like him. He acts like he’s going to refer, but still—no referrals.

Sadly, I’ve learned a hard lesson here. Unfortunately, not every referral source refers.

Why? Maybe he doesn’t like me? Maybe he doesn’t have anyone to refer? Maybe he’s got another relationship that he prioritizes over our relationship? Maybe he thinks I don’t know what I’m doing? Maybe I’ve never referred to him and he’s waiting?

I’ve got a choice to make now.

I can write him off, stop taking him to lunch, and move on to greener pastures.

Or, and this is what I’m inclined to do, I can ask him why he hasn’t ever referred to me.

I’m imagining the following conversation:

“We’ve known each other for years. I’ve always enjoyed our meetings. I feel like we’ve helped one another with our practices by talking about things and sharing ideas. I realized the other day that, after all this time, I don’t believe I’ve ever had a client come to me as a result of your referral. I’m wondering about that. Is it possible that you’re making referrals and they’re not telling us where they came from? Is it possible that they’re just not making it to us? Or do you think there’s something else?”

Then he says “___________________.”

I have no idea how he’ll fill in the blank. Maybe it’ll go well. Maybe there’s a problem I don’t understand. Maybe we’ll fix it and get the referrals started.

My plan is to ask the question and see what happens. Is that what’d you’d do? Got a better idea? Let me know in the comments below.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What about Referral Sources Who Don’t Refer?

Back when I first opened my office, I bought some plants. About two months later, they were all dead.

Between the lack of sunlight, failure to properly water, and my brown thumb, the plants never had a chance.

I replaced the plants and killed the new ones. Replaced them again and, again, they died.

It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was the total opposite of pretty.

Desperate to make the office look nice, I started looking for options.

I asked around and found that many businesses use plant maintenance services to care for the plants.

We explored our options and found a vendor that leases plants to companies and then takes care of the plants. We signed on and have been using the service for 20 years.

The vendor we selected charges us a monthly fee for bringing in plenty of plants, taking care of them, and replacing them any time they need some TLC back at the greenhouse. The company sends someone through the office weekly to water and check on the plants, and it provides special plants for special occasions (like poinsettia plants over the holidays). The plants stay healthy and, at the first sign of an issue, they’re taken away and promptly replaced. I’ve been so impressed with the service that I’ve used them at my house for the past 15 years as well.

These vendors are willing to take care of a big office, and some of them will deal with a very small office. We’ve got a vendor in one of our offices dealing with just a handful of plants in two conference rooms.

There are usually several vendors in each market, and you’ll find fairly wide-ranging service offerings and pricing. It’s worth meeting with more than one vendor.

Having nice green plants in your office is helpful in making a good impression, and they add fresh air to your environment. Dead plants do none of the above. If you, like me, lack a green thumb and the time and inclination to care for plants, then find a vendor and turn your office green.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Are Your Office Plants Dead?

Dear reader,

I need your input. I want to be of use to you, and in order to be useful, I need some feedback.

What am I doing right?

What am I doing wrong?

What would you like more of?

What would you like less of?

What else can you tell me so that I can do an even better job of serving you here?

Please provide your thoughts (1) below in the comments, (2) use the contact form, or (3) e-mail me at rosen@rosen.com.

Thanks. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

It’s Your Turn

You know we’ve moved our firm’s data to the cloud: I can’t stop talking about it here, and I’m sure you’re getting sick of it. But, wait, there’s more for me to tell you about the move.

Here we are with our data living up on Salesforce, NetDocuments, and Google. Our servers have been shut down, wiped clean, and donated to charity.

It’s kind of lonely here: our IT guys don’t come see us much anymore since there isn’t much hardware here. In fact, at this point, we only own some telephone handsets (VOIP phones), a bunch of laptops and a few desktops, a bunch of printers and scanners, a wireless router, and a firewall. We don’t really have a network to maintain except for what happens between our Internet service provider and firewalls. It’s pretty basic stuff. There’s so little to our local system that there just isn’t much that can go wrong.

Mostly what we need at this point is hand-holding. We’ve got users who need someone to talk them through their daily crisis. “My e-mail isn’t working,” “my phone isn’t ringing,” “my laptop won’t start,” etc.

Buying help desk support is very different from buying support for an entire network.

First off, it’s cheaper. Our problems are simple. They don’t require a computer guru. Many of the issues are resolved by restarting the machine. Our support costs have dropped by 75%. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re saving 75%. It means some of the money is going to the services in the cloud rather than to the local IT firm.

Second, support requires a better bedside manner. In the past, we’ve compromised on people skills for technology skills. It was more important for us to find someone good than someone nice. It was more important that the network stay up than that an individual user get a prompt return call. Now we can focus on customer service skills for end users. Personality suddenly trumps training and expertise.

Finally, we find ourselves with free time. In the past, we spent gobs of time dreaming up new uses for the technology. We wondered how we could stay ahead and felt responsible for dreaming up new ways to improve our productivity. That’s not the case anymore. In fact, we’re struggling to keep up with the innovations coming out of our providers. Salesforce rolls out new features every 13 weeks. NetDocuments keeps upgrading. Google never slows down. We can’t implement the features and train our users as fast as the features are being pushed down the line.

Life remains good up here in the cloud.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Buying Tech Support in a Cloud World

Today you can set up a case management system, like Clio or RocketMatter, for a few bucks a month. These companies can have you up and running in five minutes. It’s pretty amazing.

We started our law firm back in 1990. Initially, we did all of our case management on paper. We kept a notebook detailing the status of every case and used it at meetings to track the progress of the file.

In 1993, we built a simple case management system on Microsoft Access. We were able to build the system ourselves. It worked pretty well when the network was up. Keeping the network up was a serious problem because one loose cable brought everything to a halt. We spent gobs of time running around checking the network connections on our Lantastic network.

In 1994, we moved our data over to Lotus Notes. That was a big development project. We hired a developer who helped us set things up. We continued to work with the developer, year after year, until this year. We couldn’t run the system without help due to the size and complexity of our applications. We kept improving the system until about two years ago, when we knew we were going to shift our data elsewhere.

The Lotus Notes system was built and tweaked to our precise specifications. It worked the way we worked, and it made life easier for us. It was, however, a continuing challenge for a firm of our size to maintain. We spent a great deal of money keeping it going (between $500,000 and $750,000 we estimate), but I’m not sure we would have been able to grow and profit without it.

This year, we shifted our data to Salesforce along with NetDocuments. We didn’t migrate much of the old Lotus Notes data to the new products (we were quoted $250,000 to move it all). Since most of our work is project oriented, we only moved currently open files to the new platforms. We’re leaving the old data in Lotus Notes and running a standalone computer with a copy of notes and all of our old data.

Many years ago, we made a similar, but easier, move of part of our data. We moved the images of documents from the original storage we had in an imaging product called Keyfile to simply using PDFs stored in Notes. That transition taught us that we don’t often need access to closed files and that we can function effectively with limited access to the old data. We’re relying on that lesson in this move and moving only a small percentage of our data.

Why Salesforce and NetDocuments when we could have gone with Clio or RocketMatter or a number of other excellent systems (many of which integrate with NetDocuments)? It certainly would have been less expensive to go with one of these systems since we’re having to use developers to customize the products we’ve selected. We’re doing it our way because we’re used to doing things our way. We don’t want to do things the way the developers at those companies choose to do things. Smart? Maybe not. If you can adapt the existing systems, communicate with the vendor when you’d like to see improvements, and save some money, you’re probably better off. I wouldn’t encourage you to follow our path unless you have some very good reasons.

You’re certainly fortunate if you’re starting out today with a new case management system and aren’t burdened with legacy systems and tons of old data. It’s a very different environment today than it was back in 1990. Enjoy it and take advantage of it. There has never been a better time to implement a case management system.  It’s good for you, and it’s good for your clients.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Twenty Years of Case Management Software

Law firm owners obsess about ranking well on Google. That game is coming to an end. It’s time to focus on Siri.

Siri is the personal assistant built in to the iPhone 4S.

When I need a divorce lawyer in Raleigh, I tell Siri that “I need a divorce lawyer in Raleigh,” and it returns a list of lawyers with reviews and their location on a map. If I just say “I need a divorce lawyer,” it returns lawyers nearby along with their ratings and locations.

I can hear you now: “It’s just another gimmick; it won’t last…”

I’ve got two responses for you. First, you don’t know what you’re talking about until you’ve used Siri. It’s incredible, and it works like a charm. I find myself using it constantly. “When I get home, remind me to fix the toilet,” I tell it and, boom, I pull up at home and it reminds me. “Wake me up at seven,” and I’m good to go at seven. “Text my wife that I’m on the way,” and off goes the text. The thing is amazing; it can even tell me the flight number of the airplane flying over my head. I’ve become very dependent because it totally works, and it gets better every day.

Second, the computer gurus are already doing tests, and one small study at The Arora Report revealed that every test subject who tried Siri reported seeing no need to EVER use Google again. In a ChangeWave survey of iPhone 4S users, Siri was ranked as the most important feature of the phone. You’ll be seeing more study results soon.

By the way, iPhone users fall into an excellent demographic for clients. And, if you haven’t noticed, they can’t make iPhones as fast as they can sell them.

What should you be doing?

Worry about Yelp. Get positive customer reviews there. That won’t be easy because it’s really hard to game Yelp. The site has great systems for preventing reviews from appearing from anyone not very active in the Yelp system.

Make sure you’ve got good visibility on local search engine listings like Bing and Google. Get your listings in order if you haven’t already.

Yelp is hard and will take time. The local listings are easy and should be done today.

Siri is important—very important. It’s going to have a big impact on the business you generate from people who don’t have a connection to you already. If you rely on the Web for clients, it’s time to shift a big part of your energy in a new direction.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

SEO Is Dead: Here Comes Siri

Your marketing needs to be different if it’s going to stand out. If it doesn’t stand out, it’s not going to work.

That’s true whether you’re advertising, networking, or putting signs up outside your building. If you’re doing what everyone else is doing, then it’s invisible.

Standing out is scary. It feels risky. Sadly, we tend to do what everyone else is doing when it comes to marketing.

Do a search on “Utah Divorce,” and you’ll see lots of ads for Utah divorce lawyers. What are the headlines on the ads? They’re almost all “Utah Divorce Lawyer.” They’re indistinguishable. No one even tries to stand out.

Erik Johnson in Salt Lake City, however, is willing to stand out. He’s doing something different.

Take a look at his site, Divorce Utah, and click on the video featuring his picture. The video lasts about a minute, and it’s unlike anything you’re going to see on anyone else’s site. It’s different.

What’s special about you? What are you doing to stand out? Are you willing to be different?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Here’s One of the Few Lawyers Willing to Be Different

I get asked about associate compensation more than I get asked about any other issue. Everyone wants to know how much we need to pay to get and keep someone good.

I just finished the latest John Grisham book The Litigators. It’s typical Grisham, and I enjoyed it. At one point in the book, one of the main characters, a big firm associate, discusses his compensation. He explains that his firm “bills [his] time at five hundred bucks an hour. Times three thousand. That’s one point five mill for dear old Rogan Rothberg, and they pay [him] a measly three hundred K.”

You do the math and discover that this character is earning 20% of his gross revenues. Of course, this is fiction. But is it far off from reality?

Historically, we paid associates more like 30%. Today, however, 20% is the new normal.

Why has the number changed? Two reasons: (1) economic pressure on everyone as we do more with less and (2) the cost of benefits. We’re all being forced to increase productivity and reduce costs—that’s a given. We’ve also all experienced the rising costs of employee benefits, particularly health insurance. Those costs have always been factored into employee compensation, and increases drive down the funds remaining to be paid as wages.

I talk to firms all over. We invariably discuss numbers. When I do the math, I find associate compensation hovering around 20% of the dollars produced by their work. An associate billing $300,000 per year is, more often that not, earning about $60,000. The numbers vary somewhat depending on benefits, support staff level, etc. But overall, 20% is the number I calculate most often.

When I talk to a lawyer complaining about how little he or she is making, I find that the firm is paying its associates more than 20%. Given that payroll is our single biggest expense, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Some firms tack on additional compensation for associates who add more value. For instance, it’s common for firms to compensate associates who generate business for the firm. If the associates are originating the work, they’re nearly always earning more money.

Take a few minutes and do the math. Determine what percentage you’re paying your associates.

Look at their dollars collected this year. Look at their compensation. Divide compensation by collection and see what you get.

Quick example: Associate generates $300,000. Associate is paid $60,000. My calculator says the firm is paying 20%. It’s also paying, on top of the salary, about $7,000 in health insurance, $6,500 in payroll taxes, FUTA, SUTA, etc., $2,000 in malpractice coverage, and $2,000 in continuing education, licensing, and bar association fees. Overall, it’s at 26% when you throw all the mandatory extras into the mix. That’s a good number.

If, however, you do the math and find you’re higher than my example, then you’re probably whining about why you’re not taking home as much money as you’d like. I’d suggest we just found the solution to the problem.

How do you move from where you are now to 20% if you’re paying more than you should? That’s a good question with a long answer. Let me know if you want me to talk about it here.

Happy calculating, and good luck fixing the problem once you realize what’s going on.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Much Should You Pay an Associate?

Square, the credit card processor for your phone, is cool, but there’s a much less expensive alternative.

I’m a pretty big fan of Square, the credit card processing service that allows you to turn your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone into a credit card machine. With this service, you plug a device into the audio jack of your phone and start swiping cards. I’ve seen lawyers using it in the office along with other vendors like coffee shops and ice cream stores. The reason people like Square is that you’re up and running in minutes, and you don’t have to deal with the hassle of opening a merchant account with your bank or other provider.

Square charges a fee of 2.75% of each swiped transaction. It charges 3.5% for transactions when the card isn’t available to be swiped. Square is growing like a weed and has added more than 500,000 accounts in the past year.

Square works really well and it has a great interface. Your clients can sign on the phone, and you can e-mail a receipt. Users love it.

The problem with Square is the fee.

A less expensive alternative is GoPayment from Intuit. Intuit is, of course, the company behind Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax. It has a service that is very similar to Square and involves a device that plugs into the phone’s audio jack. In addition to iPhone, iPad, and Android, this device also works on the Blackberry.

GoPayment charges 2.7% for swiped transactions and 3.7% on keyed transactions. Basically, it’s charging about the same as Square.

However, GoPayment offers a high-volume option that requires payment of a $12.95 per-month fee. Once you sign up for that plan, you’ll get a rate of 1.7% on swiped transactions and 2.7% on manually entered charges. That savings can really add up.

Let’s say you’re charging $25,000 per month on cards. That’s $300,000 per year. Using GoPayment instead of Square will save you $3,150 for the year. That’s not chump change.

GoPayment even gives regular bank merchant accounts a run for their money on rates. Plus, you can’t beat the convenience of being able to use the device on the go.

If you’re interested in taking cards, I’d check out GoPayment. If you find more and more clients paying with cards, then talk with your bank and other providers and see whether they can offer a better rate. You may, however, find that the convenience and rates offered by GoPayment make it a keeper.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Taking Credit Card Payments on the Go for Less

“Marketing is an ethical landmine.” That’s what the lawyer said to me. The attitude is “everything is dangerous.”

That’s the way some lawyers live. They spend their time examining every move and determining how much risk a particular activity poses to their law license.

Is that any way to run your business?

Will that mind-set help you grow your practice?

First off, I don’t mean to minimize your professional responsibilities required by the ethics rules in your state. It’s always a good idea to have a working familiarity with the rules and know an attorney you can call with questions. I’ve had run-ins with the regulatory people, and it hasn’t always ended well. It’s essential that you abide by the rules.

But it’s critical that you grow your practice. You’ve got to keep a steady flow of business walking through the door (physical or virtual). Fear isn’t good for marketing. If you spend all your time worrying, you won’t be out taking action to keep the new business coming.

Here’s the scenario I dislike the most:

Older lawyer, who hasn’t really done much to grow his practice, talks about the dangers of marketing. This lawyer pontificates about social media being a trap, advertising being unprofessional, and any marketing, other than doing good work, as the enemy of “professionalism.” One wonders whether the older lawyer really believes everything he’s saying or whether he simply wants to discourage competition.

Younger lawyer, hearing the tirade, backs off from undertaking marketing activities. Younger lawyer is scared and worries about being poorly regarded by the established attorneys. The younger lawyer can’t think about  new ways to delight clients, spread the word, and draw more people to his practice because the old lawyer has him in a panic. The young lawyer is broke and locked in a state of inaction.

Don’t let it happen to you.

Yes, we’re trained to identify and assess risk. We’re well suited for predicting all of the fallout that might come from every action. Focusing on consequences leaves us hesitant to act.

But our skills, our ability to analyze risk and reward, can also help us identify opportunities. We can see the positive possibilities right alongside the potential risk.

The key for us is to stay focused on the possibilities. We can see the path to avoiding risk and obtaining benefits. When it comes to marketing our businesses, we’ve got to stay focused on the rewards and refuse to allow the risks to paralyze us. The first step toward seeing things as they really are is to gain an awareness of how driven we are by fear. Open your eyes. See the fear. Now you’re halfway toward overcoming it.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Marketing Is an Ethical Landmine

The bar association holiday parties are here. As much as I hate to acknowledge it, bar association parties are amazingly effective at building your network and generating new business for your practice. Why do I hate to say it? Read on.

Here are my tips:

1. Go to the party. I know you might not want to go. Personally, I don’t want to go. Many of us kind of hate these things, but they’re usually much more fun than we imagine they’ll be. Just go.

2. Don’t drink. Or, alternatively, drink very little (like one drink maybe?). Drinking won’t help you accomplish your networking objectives.

3. Don’t talk to other practitioners in your area of the law except to say hello. Spend your time talking to lawyers who can refer business to you, not lawyers who compete for business with you.

4. Make it a game: go in with an objective like meeting 10 new people. Beat your goal.

5. Don’t make people ask you what kind of law you practice. Work it into your introduction. If they’re asking, you’re not mentioning it early enough.

6. Get contact info from anyone new that you meet. You should follow up with those people later and have lunch or coffee.

7. Don’t assume others remember you from the last time you met. Tell people your name as you shake hands. Always tell them your name unless they mention your name first.

8. Put your nametag on your right lapel so it comes forward when you extend your hand for a handshake. That makes it more visible.

9. Don’t bring your spouse or a date. Not everyone will agree with me here. Spouses make meeting new people harder: fly solo tonight. You’re there to build your practice. If you wanted to have fun, you’d be somewhere else. Jettison the spouse for the night.

10. Don’t talk to your old friends for more than a minute unless they’re already talking to someone you don’t know. If that’s the case, then go horn in on the conversation and get introduced.

11. Don’t dance. Nothing good comes from dancing.

Some folks are natural party animals. They aren’t reading these tips. They’re on their way to a party. For the rest of us, parties are harder and less fun. It is what it is. Go to the party; you’ll be glad you did.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

11 Bar Association Holiday Party Tips

You know the old story…the one in which the cobbler’s children have no shoes…that’s often us when it comes to dealing with the legal formalities of maintaining our business entity.

I have no idea what form of business entity you’ve created. There are different business forms in every state, including corporations, limited liability companies, and variations in some states specific to professional service firms. It’s possible that you’re operating as a sole proprietorship and haven’t formed an entity at all.

Regardless of your business form, it’s important that you keep up with the formalities required by your state.

Our firm is a corporation. We’re required to hold an annual meeting, record minutes, and take a few other fairly simple steps to maintain our corporate status.

Unfortunately, keeping up with those formalities, even though they’re simple, proved to be more than we could handle. That’s why, more than twenty years ago, we outsourced the details to another law firm. Those lawyers have stayed on top of it and made sure we have remained in compliance with the requirements of our state.

We hired a small firm that specializes in business law. The firm e-mails us once a year with a series of questions about things that have happened during the past year. Our answers form the basis of the minutes and other documentation the firm prepares for us. The firm sends the documents to us for signature, and the firm maintains our corporate records. It’s very reassuring to know that we’re always current on doing what we’re required to do.

It’s nice to know that we’ve got an attorney proficient in the details of complying with the law related to corporations on our team. Are you keeping up with the requirements in your state? Make sure you’ve got a good system in place to keep your business on track with the government.

Don’t be like the cobbler. Make sure your children have some shoes and that your business is meeting the requirements of your state.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Is Your Business in Compliance with Your State’s Laws?

We’ve talked before about how our firm has moved to the cloud. All of our data lives in Salesforce, NetDocuments, and Google Apps. We no longer have any servers in our office.

But what about my personal life?

I’ve moved my personal life to the cloud right along with the business.

Here are the services I use.

My financial data lives on the sites of the various financial institutions. I’ve tried Mint and other financial aggregators and haven’t found them particularly satisfying or helpful. To avoid needing these products, I’ve aggregated my finances into the fewest number of institutions possible. I’ve got a bank, an investment firm, and an insurance company (actually two), and I have concentrated my investments into these places so I have fewer sites to visit. I use BillGuard to keep an eye on fraud so I don’t have to visit the bank site very often.

Since someone in our house is always headed to a doctor, we use Simplee to keep up with deductibles, co-payments, etc.

My personal records live in Evernote. I drop everything into the desktop version of the program, and it uploads it all to the cloud. Evernote has everything from my medical records to home ownership documentation to old word processing documents from college. There are about 5,000 documents living in my Evernote account, and they’re all fully searchable.

My photographs live at SmugMug along with my videos. We’ve scanned all of our old negatives and slides and stored them there along with our newer digital images.

All of my working documents that are currently in use get saved in a Dropbox folder that syncs with the cloud. I’ve got instant access to those documents from my laptop, phone, and any other computer I happen to borrow. Once I’m finished with the documents, I move them over to Evernote for permanent storage. When I have a file that exceeds the Evernote file storage limit, I just leave it in Dropbox.

I keep track of my tasks, shopping lists, etc. with Wunderlist. It has a great web interface that syncs with the phone and a variety of platforms. I have my browser bookmarks on Xmarks, and I store my passwords on LastPass. My music is mostly streamed using Mog and Spotify, so I rarely access the old MP3s, and I use a variety of movie and TV streaming services like Hulu, Netflix, and others.

Moving to the cloud probably sounds more complicated than it is. It involves setting up some accounts and uploading your data. It’s not really all that involved compared to setting up software on your system.

I like knowing that my data is somewhere safe in the event that I lose my laptop. I also appreciate the constant improvements pushed out by the service providers.

You should consider joining me here. It’s peaceful up in the cloud.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

My Personal Life in the Cloud

Free samples work in lots of businesses as a marketing and sales technique. Will they work for yours?

Join me as I visit a local grocery store with my iPhone. If you can’t see the video, then just click through to the post to watch. It’s about three minutes long.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Free Samples and Your Law Practice

We get calls nearly every day from charitable causes seeking sponsorship of an event. They’re holding a golf tournament, an awards dinner, or even a circus, and they want local businesses to put up some cash in exchange for having their name on the invitation and a sponsorship announcement at the event itself.

Should you do it?

Maybe.

The answer is always yes if the event is being run by a group involving one of your people. If you have someone committed enough to volunteer for the organization, then you should probably step up and sponsor the events. For instance, we have a few lawyers volunteering for local charities. When they ask us to buy a ticket for a dinner or sign on as a sponsor, then we say yes if we can afford to contribute. It’s a no-brainer that you want to support the community involvement of your people. It’s good for business, and it’s good for your team.

The answer is always yes if the event involves a great referral source. If you’re getting 10 new clients a year from “Bob,” and “Bob” cares about the American Heart Association, then be sure to give to the cause when asked. Again, a no-brainer.

The answer is yes if the event involves a market you’re already focusing on. For instance, if you’re advertising in the local triathlon community (a shockingly affluent and divorce-prone group), and a representative comes to you for a race sponsorship, you should probably agree. Of course, as with all of these decisions, you’ve got to factor in your current financial position and your marketing budget.

Is the answer ever no?

Yes, you can say no to all the random calls you get from people you’ve never heard of before. These charities have phone rooms dialing for dollars. Just say no and move on. There’s no need to get involved in these causes.

You can say no when you’re out of money for marketing: you can’t afford to jump on every one of these opportunities.

You can say no when you don’t feel an obligation (to a referral source, employee, client, etc.), and the terms of the deal aren’t particularly appealing. For instance, if they want lots of money for minimal exposure, then walk away. Ideally, you’ll increase your visibility to everyone involved in the event and the charity. If that’s not going to happen, then be careful about spending your marketing money. While these events are for charity, it’s important that you be able to generate some awareness of your practice.

The perfect charitable sponsorship is an event that (1) you can afford, (2) is interesting and important to you, (3) gives you the opportunity to appear in public on behalf of the charity, (4) allows you to meet new people, (5) gives you the option of following up with the new people you meet, (6) is not offensive to others, and (7) makes you feel good. When you see those opportunities, you should jump in with both feet and get involved. You may find yourself involved with the charity long after the event is over.

You can’t agree to sponsor every charity that calls on you. However, you can choose to help some of them when the situation works for the benefit of everyone involved. Giving to charity can make you feel good, it can grow your business, and it can help your community. Do it when the right elements are present. Be smart about it and, of course, be charitable.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Should You Sponsor a Charitable Event?

I’ve sent some holiday cards in my time. Some years, I’ve sent 15,000 of them.

We’ve sent them to referral sources, clients, and former clients. The cards cost more than $2 each between printing, stuffing, and postage.

Is it a good investment?

It depends on your objective and approach.

What if you’re doing a steady drip campaign to a group of people (thousands of people)?

These mass mailings of cards are good for staying top of mind. They remind folks that you exist. If they’re part of an organized direct mail campaign, they can serve the purpose of helping recipients remember your name.

If, however, the cards are a once per year deal, then you’re wasting your money. No one remembers you from a card received in the mail along with 10 other cards received that day from other senders. The cards need to be part of an organized approach to communicating with your targets.

What if you’re mailing to your regular referral sources?

Mailing to the people you’re seeing and talking to all year makes sense. Even though your card might get lost in the shuffle, it’s good to connect with these people at the holidays. They know you, like you, and trust you, and it’s good to do what others are doing. You’ve got to write a personal note on the card. This shouldn’t be a burden because we’re talking about 20 to 100 cards. This is the small group of referral sources with whom you have an actual relationship.

What about mailing cards to other lawyers—the competition—who don’t refer to you? I get tons of these cards each year. Why? I have no idea except that people send cards because everyone sends cards. Initially, I thought these cards were sent by nice people trying to do the right thing. Then I realized most of these people aren’t really very nice. Maybe they send cards to make up for their personalities? Regardless, it’s pointless to send cards to other lawyers who don’t refer to you and who you don’t have a personal relationship with.

Bottom line: send cards to your referral sources, send cards to your friends, and, if you’re doing an organized campaign, send cards to others. Don’t, however, send lots and lots of cards to people you don’t know and hope that they’re going to remember you and refer to you. It doesn’t work, and it’s expensive.

Happy Holidays!

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Should You Send a Holiday Card?

Boomerang isn’t new. It has been around for quite a while. However, it is new to me because it works with Gmail, and I’ve only recently moved my business e-mail to Gmail. I think I love Boomerang.

I also discovered that Boomerang works with Outlook as well.

Here’s what it does:

I send an e-mail to someone and, right there in my Gmail compose screen, I check a box that “Boomerangs” the message back to me at an interval I select.

Scenario: I ask my assistant to book a flight for me to Bangkok. It’s important, and I don’t want it to fall through the cracks. I set the message to Boomerang in two days. I can choose any length of time or even a particular date. I can also select whether the message should Boomerang regardless of whether I get a response or only if I don’t get a response. It’s totally flexible.

Two days later—no plane ticket—I get a message back from Boomerang and follow up with my assistant. Sweet.

But wait, there’s more. Boomerang also lets you defer a message and send it later. Maybe you’d like to have your e-mails go out at 9 AM rather than at 3 AM so you look slightly less insane. Done. More likely, you’ve written the e-mail on Friday, but it really shouldn’t go out until Monday morning. No problem. Boomerang will let you schedule delivery for any time you choose.

Boomerang turns your e-mail box into your clutter-free to-do list. You can use it for recurring reminders like birthdays, bill payments, etc. You can even use it to remind you of filing deadlines and other events. In addition to integration with Gmail and Outlook, Boomerang offers a mobile version.

Boomerang has a free plan, but it only gives you ten message credits per month. It offers two versions of the paid plan for Gmail at $5 and $15 per month. The Outlook plan involves a one-time payment of $30. Boomerang is a great way to stop using your e-mail box as your task list and get it cleared out so it’s usable. Boomerang is worth a look.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Boomerang: A Great Add-On for Gmail and Outlook

I’m a chickenshit. I know it and, if you’ve been reading this stuff for long, then you already know that fact.

I rarely call people out for the crap they do or say. My blog is a happy-go-lucky place where I try to help you without saying anything overly controversial.

If I had any guts, I’d say more about the bullshit that’s written about marketing, search engine optimization, virtual practices, unbundling, etc. because there is so much bullshit that it would fill a thousand railroad cars every month.

Having guts—being willing to tell the truth, even when it’s controversial—is a good marketing practice. It generates attention, which usually translates into increased business. You should try it because it works. Calling someone out is great marketing. It’s amazingly effective.

And you, trained advocate, are uniquely well positioned to apply your critical thinking skills to all the bullshit that surrounds us. If you do it, you’ll instantly become prominent in our profession.

Exhibit  A: Brian Tannebaum, author of the blog My Law License. Brian represents lawyers involved in disciplinary matters before the Florida Bar. He’s also a criminal defense lawyer. Brian has great, big balls of steel. He doesn’t hesitate to call people out on a variety of topics, and he does it with the proficiency of a surgical strike. He’s launches very effective attacks, and he’s often right.

Brian’s willingness to think critically and write about it has gained him recognition across the country. I rarely meet a lawyer who hasn’t heard of him. The American Bar Association has recognized his blog. Brian is known for taking on marketing “gurus” who misrepresent their backgrounds to prospective attorney clients. He’s kind of a one-man Better Business Bureau.

Brian is fearless and doesn’t hesitate to step on toes in saying what he thinks. His boldness has enhanced his visibility, credibility, and recognition. He has a solid practice in Florida, and he’s constantly being recognized by his peers and has been elected to a variety of leadership positions in a number of bar associations.

Brian could have spent his time writing pleasant blog posts about how you should respond to client phone calls to avoid bar complaints and other tips of that ilk, but he doesn’t use his writing time and energy in that manner. Instead, he looks for a target that offends his sense of right and wrong and comes out with both barrels blasting. He takes shots— big shots—and he’s good at it. He’s unafraid of controversy, and that fearlessness is rewarded with recognition and referrals.

Does everyone like Brian? Nope. He’s got an abundance of people who would prefer that he go away and leave them alone. I’m pretty sure that most of those folks won’t refer to Brian.

Does having detractors damage Brian’s practice? I don’t think so. The real risk faced by a practice like Brian’s is lack of recognition. He’d be much worse off if he drifted around in obscurity, hoping a client might walk through the door. He’s better off having a few people hate him than having no one notice him. His risk taking results in the reward of a thriving practice.

What’s the lesson here?

Don’t be afraid of controversy. Look for it. Seek it out. You’re trained to take a position and advocate for it. Your marketing efforts will be enhanced by having a point of view, taking a position, and advancing a cause. Don’t shy away from taking on a person, institution, or issue. Ultimately, it will help you grow your business. Go for it.

I could learn something from my own advice on this issue. I should be more willing to challenge the status quo and those who offend my sensibilities. Maybe I should start reading my stuff rather than just writing it? I suppose I’ll tape this post to my bathroom mirror and see whether it sinks in.

Now, excuse me so I can head up to my room and see whether I can’t grow a pair.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Grow Your Practice by Being Controversial

I love self-help books and videos. I’m a total sucker for a Tony Robbins video. It’s kind of weird and pathetic.

Let’s not worry about me today. I’m probably beyond saving.

The question for you is, are you a self-help junkie? Do you find yourself reading endless business books, signing up for seminars, and joining online and real-world mastermind groups?

It’s all good if it’s getting you somewhere. If you go to a course, read a book, listen to a podcast, or watch a video and come back to work and execute, then it’s working for you.

If you can track a steady increase in your income, even as you consume all this stuff, then you’re in good shape.

However, if you consume self-help material and all that happens is that you come back totally motivated to buy some more self-help material, then we’ve got a problem.

The answer to our problems is rarely information. The answer is usually action (or the lack thereof). We need to execute, not think. We need to act.

If you get jazzed to build your practice and it doesn’t translate into immediate, efficient action, then the motivation you’ve obtained is a waste of your time.

Sometimes walking across hot coals teaches you that you can walk across hot coals. It doesn’t always help you take people to lunch to generate referrals. Feeling better about yourself isn’t always the answer. Sometimes the answer is doing the work.

I had a conversation with a woman the other day about blogging. I told her how my blogging had resulted in a significant increase in referrals from attorneys across the country. I suggested that she try the same approach by writing about divorce taxation. She explained that she would love to do that, but she didn’t have the time.

As we continued talking, she told me about her attendance at monthly attorney webinars on marketing as part of a subscription she bought for $1,000 per year. She then told me about her mentor and how they talk about marketing weekly and meet once a month. Then she mentioned that she’d just returned from a big seminar on law practice management.

How are her revenues? Awful. Are they growing rapidly? Nope. Is all her education about marketing working out for her? Nope.

Why? Because she’s learning and not acting. Acting, doing, executing is the answer. She’d have time to do if she’d stop learning.

Sometimes we know everything we need to know. Now we need to use it.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Will Walking across Hot Coals Grow Your Practice?

Someone asked me about the Yellow Pages at a seminar I taught last week. I was in a small North Carolina college town where the pace of life is a little slower than it is where I practice.

To tell you the truth, I haven’t even thought about the Yellow Pages in quite some time.

Is there still a role for Yellow Pages advertising in our practices?

In my practice, aimed at upper-middle income family law clients in a technologically sophisticated market, we stopped advertising in the phone book long ago. In fact, we haven’t paid those phone directory folks any money in more than a decade. We built our online presence back in 1995 and started moving away from phone directories shortly thereafter.

But every market is different, and every practice aims at a different segment of the market. Should you still be in the Yellow Pages? Should you consider going back if you left long ago?

Maybe so.

My philosophy of marketing is to go where the competition isn’t. Once I find that spot, I test like crazy. If all the lawyers in your market have moved on from the Yellow Pages, then maybe it’s time for you to try it now. If you do it, be sure to use a unique phone number and track your results call by call.

Generally, I think we’re in a post-phone-book world. Most of us find the businesses we’re looking for in alternative ways. But marketing isn’t static: it’s always changing. Advertising in one place might work today and be less satisfactory tomorrow. You can’t draw conclusions from opinions, and you shouldn’t just follow the pack.

Look for wide-open spaces to run your ads. Look for new and different ways to experiment with your marketing. Once you find those places, run your ads, do some tests, and carefully measure the results.

Maybe you’ll find that the Yellow Pages are the perfect place for you right now.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Should I Advertise in the Yellow Pages?

We had dinner in a local restaurant the other night. It’s a place we used to go to all the time. It was one of our regular places.

We stopped going as often because the restaurant scene in our area changed. Over the past few years, we’ve been getting more and more excellent places to eat. We have more choices.

We neglected the old standby.

For a variety of reasons, we ended up having dinner there on Friday night. I was excited to visit the old place. I’d always felt comfortable there: it was familiar. We sat down with some friends and reviewed the menu. I noted that not much had changed.

We selected our appetizers and entrees, placed our orders, and waited for the meal to arrive.

The conversation was great, the drinks were terrific, and the meal showed up in a few minutes. We got busy eating.

How was it?

Meh.

Everything was prepared as it should have been, but something was missing. I was disappointed.

The food and our reaction to it really got me thinking.

What I realized was that the meal was pretty much the same as it had been a few years ago back when we were regulars. The restaurant is still doing the job just as well as it had in the past.

So why did I react to the meal like it was nothing special?

Because the restaurant is standing still. It and its food are stuck in the same spot they were in two years ago.

While they stand still doing the same old thing, our restaurant community has changed. The new places are better than the old. The new competition is driving other places to improve, experiment, and be more creative.

The old place is as good as it ever was, but the new places are better. The world is moving forward, even if the old restaurant isn’t.

Good enough yesterday isn’t good enough today. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward.

It’s time for the old place to take it up a notch. It needs to improve the selection, quality, service, etc. It needs to find a way to stand out in the marketplace that exists today. It can’t rely on its history if it wants to keep adding new customers to the mix.

My question for you today is this: are you moving forward? Are you better today than you were yesterday? If you compare your service, quality, etc., are you doing better than you were two years ago? Or are you doing the same old thing in the same old way?

The marketplace keeps moving: it won’t ever stop. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. Which direction are you headed in?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Are You Keeping Up with the Competition?

There are bunches of books on the market for lawyers interested in marketing their practices. Many are published by the American Bar Association. There are other publishers in the game as well.

They cover everything from the basics of opening a practice and generating initial clients to more advanced volumes dealing with advertising, networking, and social media.

Should you buy them?

Sadly, most of these books have two strikes against them.

First, they’re often sold for a premium price. A similar book sold to business professionals might sell for one-quarter of the price or less.

Second, these books often aren’t very good. The really good authors focus on larger markets. For instance, you won’t find Seth Godin writing specifically for lawyers. The same is true of most other successful writers on marketing, management, and business topics. The lawyer book authors tend to be lawyers who haven’t done much marketing, and their writing isn’t particularly insightful. It’s unfortunate.

Most of the time, I find books aimed at the business market much more interesting and useful than those aimed at lawyers. I’ve found books like Small Business Marketing for Dummies much more helpful than the corresponding volume written for lawyers. Seriously, it’s a sad day when books aimed at dummies are better than books aimed at lawyers. It’s even worse when the lawyer book costs much, much more than the Dummies volume.

If you buy the non-lawyer books, you’ll likely find yourself making some decisions about how to apply what you learn to your particular business. That’s what all business owners have to do: they have to think about what will work in their industry. That exercise—the thinking—is good for you. It keeps your marketing fresh and interesting. It forces you to step away from a formulaic approach and develop marketing that is unique to you. That’s a good thing.

I stay away from the lawyer-focused books. I read all the time, and I find much more value in the wealth of material coming out of the authors focused on business. There’s good stuff out there. It just isn’t usually the stuff written for us.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Should You Buy a Lawyer Marketing Book?

I write these articles for a pretty broad audience. Some of you are tech and marketing neophytes. Some of you are very advanced. I try to make sure we’ve got something for everyone.

Today I’ve got a tip that is kind of advanced, but it might serve you no matter what level of expertise and experience you have with regard to marketing and technology.

Some of you are experimenting with QR (Quick Response) codes. These are the codes (like the one pictured here) that link to something on the Internet.

Someone seeing a QR code can point the camera on a smartphone at the code and, using a special application, have the phone read the code and take whatever action is prescribed by the code.

For instance, if you have an iPhone and have the Scanr app installed, you can scan the code to the left and you’ll be directed to our family law website.

What are lawyers doing with QR codes? They’re putting them on business cards, brochures, and advertisements and using them on websites. The codes can be used to download vCards, send visitors to websites, etc. The use of the codes is limited only by your imagination.

Now for the tip: When you’re using a QR code to direct a user to a website, it’s important to direct the user to the mobile version of the website. Don’t direct the user to the regular version of the site, or the user will be frustrated by trying to use the site on the tiny mobile screen. Remember that most QR code users are using their phone to interpret the code, so they’re going to be using the phone to view the site. You need to assume that they need the version of your site scaled for the tiny screen.

Our site, the one I’ve linked to in the code above, is set up to determine whether the visitor is on a computer or a phone and then serve up the right version of our site. That way, mobile visitors see one version, and other visitors see the other. You always want to make site visitors comfortable by serving up the version of the site that most readily meets their needs.

Lots of marketers are using QR codes to deliver visitors to the non-mobile version of their sites. That doesn’t make sense. If you’re going be on the leading edge, then make sure you’re doing it right. Use the mobile version of your site with your QR code.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Marketing Tip for QR Code Experimenters

Long, long ago, visitors to your website entered through the front door—the homepage. You could decorate it nicely and make sure it presented a warm and inviting presence to incoming visitors. Life was good: it was simple.

Today, your visitors barely notice the front door. They come in through the back door, the side door, and the windows, and some drop in through the roof. Many of your visitors never even notice that you have a front door.

Why is this happening? Why aren’t visitors coming to the page you designate?

Because they’re coming in different ways. At one time, they were referred by your marketing material or search engines, and the homepage was the only entry point to your site that they knew about.

That changed with social media. Now they come to different pages on your site because they’ve been sent there by friends and other connections.

Here’s an example: one visitor to your site discovers your child support calculator. That person sends the link to a friend or publishes it on Facebook. Now your visitors are coming directly to that page. The more people who come to that page directly, the more people they tell about it. Suddenly, the side door is your most-visited page.

Is this a bad thing?

No, it’s actually a great thing. It means that your reputation is growing by word of mouth. People are talking about you and referring their friends to your site. That’s terrific.

What does it mean for designing your website?

Well, that presents a challenge.

You now have to assume that visitors are coming in from all directions. You’ve got to think through the objectives of the site, and you’ve got to make sure visitors are seeing and acting on your calls to action regardless of their entry point.

For instance, if your objective is to generate calls, you can no longer have the “contact us” link appear only on the homepage. You may want the phone number to appear everywhere. If you’re seeking sign-ups for an e-mail newsletter, then you need that info in more places than you had it before.

The key is that you need to think about the users’ progress through the site. You can’t assume they’re going to start in the beginning and proceed to the end. In fact, you’ve got to stop thinking about a beginning and an end. You’ve got to think in the nonlinear way your users are thinking.

If you have an organizational scheme for your site, it needs to be readily apparent to users, regardless of which part of the site they first encounter.

Many of us built websites based on our old firm brochures. That model doesn’t work on the social web. You’ve got to think differently when engaging your visitors, and you’ve got to wrap your brain around the way your visitors are thinking.

Like all marketing, good website development requires that you put yourself in the shoes of the other person. The various entry points to your website require a slightly different way of thinking. Stop thinking about front doors and back doors. Start thinking about a house without walls, floors, or a roof. That’s where we’re living now.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Homepage Is Dead

I helped a lawyer out a few weeks ago. She wanted to talk about implementing fixed fees in her practice. We chatted for about 30 minutes, and I sent her some client agreement samples.

It was a pleasant call, and I felt like I had provided her with some direction that would save her some time. I had a good time on the call.

Last week, I got a nice card that included a present.

It was nice of her to send the card and the included item, but it really wasn’t necessary.

What did she send?

A gift card. For what?

For Greek Fiesta. Greek Fiesta is a cheap, wait-in-line gyro place I frequent quite a bit. In fact, I’m kind of obsessed with its chicken gyro.

Why was it the best gift ever?

Because this lawyer had taken the time to figure out what would matter to me. She clearly reads this site and pays attention to me on social media. She bothered to figure out what I might like, and then she tracked down the perfect gift.

They say that it’s the thought that counts.

They’re right.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Best Thank You Gift Ever

It’s not extraordinary for a small law firm to spend more than $5,000 per month on search engine optimization. This usually comes with a package of services like building a blog, tweaking pages, building inbound links, writing articles, creating videos, etc.

I’d be shocked if you haven’t been solicited by a company offering a package like I’ve described.

I interacted with a firm recently spending right at $6,000 per month for a marketing package with all of this included.

Was it worth it?

Yes and no.

The firm got some quick results and moved nearly to the top of some search engine rankings. That resulted in increased traffic and increased call volume. All good.

Unfortunately, the results weren’t long lasting.

As the dust settled, over a period of a year or so, many of the search engine rankings declined. Some of the search terms where the firm achieved a top ranking proved insignificant in generating traffic. Much of the content the marketers created proved useless to users and damaged the firm’s reputation for quality. The firm thought it was buying long-term marketing results. It wasn’t.

Was the firm happy with its spending decision? Not really. After spending nearly $100,000, the firm’s leaders have some regrets. They feel they would have been better off using the money internally by producing high quality content that was more helpful to their site visitors. They would have, had that they gone that route, created an asset for the firm rather than using the money to achieve short-term results.

If they had it to do over again, they would have asked attorneys inside the firm to write explanatory articles for their website dealing with a variety of issues faced by their clients. They would have worried less about gaming the search engines and focused more on providing value to prospective clients. They would have looked for a long-term fix rather than a short-term victory.

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of vendors selling attorney marketing ideas. They’ve got a strong self-interest in getting you to sign up and start paying.

You won’t find marketing sales pitches advocating doing it internally and going slow. You won’t find slick brochures advocating doing it yourself. It’s not easy to plan your own online marketing and then stick to a to-do list for getting it done. It’s easier to outsource the entire project and buy your way to the top of the search engines.

Unfortunately, the quick and easy solution isn’t always the long-term solution. The marketers will be long gone when you’re stuck with unsatisfactory results.

Be careful. Think before you act and try to determine whether you’re going to be another firm filled with regret about the money you spent.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Should You Believe the Marketers’ Promises?

Do you know much about your website visitors?

For many of you, the answer is a resounding “yes.” You know the number of visitors, where they’re coming from, which pages they’re visiting, etc., etc., etc. The data available is amazing.

If you already know this stuff, then I’m not talking to you today.

I’m talking to the lawyers who have no idea about what’s happening on their sites. That’s a big bunch of lawyers.

There are lots of ways to find data for your site. The easiest and cheapest way to do it is to use Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a sophisticated service that provides more information about your site visitors than you will ever be able to use. It comes with nearly limitless opportunities to learn about your visitors and their behaviors.

Google Analytics is free, and it’s incredibly easy to implement.

If you’d like data about your site, simply visit the site and sign up. You probably already have a Google account, so you’ll be logged in easily.

Once you’re in, you’ll have access to a simple code that you can cut and paste into your site. If doing the setup doesn’t interest you, it should only take your website guru 30 seconds to add the code.

Once the code is installed, you’re up and running. You’ll have immediate access to visitor data in real time. You can tell how many visitors are on the site right now, and you can see what they’re doing. It’s fascinating.

Over time, you’ll gather more and more data and be able to analyze historical trends. You’ll soon be able to see whether site traffic is growing or shrinking. You’ll know whether your web advertising is working. You’ll know how much time visitors are spending on the site and which pages get the most attention. You’ll find out which pages result in visitors leaving the site and which pages encourage visitors to dig deeper.

If you aren’t yet analyzing the quantity and behavior of your visitors, you’re missing out on actionable data that will help you build your practice and generate more business.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Many People are Visiting Your Website?

Many law firms are a conglomeration of lawyers doing different things. They may handle a variety of consumer cases ranging from personal injury to criminal law to family law. Other firms handle a range of commercial transactions from business formation to litigation to employment issues. It’s pretty common for a group of attorneys to come together in one practice and handle many, many types of matters.

How can a firm dealing in multiple practice areas build an effective website?

That depends on what constitutes “effective” in your mind.

If you’re building a site that informs visitors about a firm they’ve already heard about, then it’s easy to build a site. The site will be built around the lawyers and provide background, photographs, and other info about those attorneys and the services they provide. Visitors to the site are already generally sold on the lawyers and are mostly seeking to confirm their understanding about the firm’s ability to meet their needs. As a secondary function, such a site serves to inform clients with the effect of keeping them connected to the firm and cross-selling them additional services.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to build a site that generates new business without a prior referral, then the multi-practice firm website is much more challenging. These multi-practice sites don’t do well in the search engines because of their lack of focus. They also fail the three-second test for retaining visitors.

First, it’s important that websites rank in the search engines when the whole point of the site is to generate visitors. These multi-practice sites cover so many subjects that they don’t rank well for any particular type of search term. For instance, a site with information about family law, criminal law, and personal injury matters won’t rank well for any of the search terms related to those practice areas. The effectiveness of the site is diluted due to lack of focus.

These sites also fail the three-second test with visitors. Visitors come to a site and quickly decide whether to stay. Usually, they’ll give you about three seconds before they hit the back button. A multi-practice site has trouble keeping visitors because it’s not immediately clear to the visitors that the site solves their problem. They leave without really giving the site a chance.

It’s certainly possible to build a multi-practice area site that looks good. However, it won’t generate traffic from the search engines, and it won’t pass the three-second test. Those failings might not matter if you’re going to generate traffic to the site by means other than search engines. For instance, if you’re advertising the firm and the site, you’ll be less worried about the search engine problem. However, you’ll still need to make sure your site can hold the attention of your visitors.

If your goal is to generate traffic from search engines, then you’re going to have to take a different approach. You’re going to have to build a site for each practice area. These sites need to be information rich and oriented toward helping users understand and solve their problems. The site needs to focus on the problem rather than on the lawyers solving the problem. That’s how you rank well on search engines.

Some firms build these practice-specific sites in the form of blogs. They’ll build a main firm website focused on the lawyers and then build a separate blog for each specific practice area. The blog will delve deeply into the problems and solutions in language prospective clients understand. Over time, these separate sites rank well and generate new inquiries. This is an excellent approach.

These practice area-specific sites don’t need to be set up as blogs. You can simply build an information-rich site on the practice area and do just as well as a blog. The key is focus. By building a content rich, helpful site, you’ll generate inbound links, search engine rankings, and traffic. If traffic is your goal, then your best bet is to build something that specifically addresses the concerns of your prospective clients—make it about them and their problems and not about you.

Building effective websites starts with a careful assessment of your goals. Once you know what you need to achieve with the site, then you’re in a position to build what you need to achieve that objective. Lack of clear objectives will result in a lack of effectiveness. Don’t build a site that looks nice and makes you feel good. Build a site that does what you set out to do.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Websites and Firms with Multiple Practice Areas

You should be out with referral sources. These lunches, breakfasts, and coffees should be happening on a weekly basis. If they’re not, then you know what you need to do.

Usually, these meetings are going to be enjoyable. Sometimes they’re totally energizing.

On some occasions, however, these meetings are miserable.

One time, I was at lunch with an accountant. He was boring. I nearly drifted off to sleep, and that happened before the food came.

I’m not kidding. He was really boring. It was funny because I’ve been to lunch with a bunch of accountants. They’re a tough group. Mostly they’re pleasant enough, but they skew toward introverted.

It’s not uncommon for me to have trouble finding a topic that energizes them. I go hunting for their interests so I can ask questions, and I run into one-word answers.

“What do you enjoy doing in your free time?” I ask. “Reading” is the response. Uh oh, this is going to be a long lunch.

Back to the story about Mr. Boring. He wasn’t a one-word answer guy. He was billions and billions of words answer guy. I asked one question—something innocuous like “How are you?”—and we were off to the races. Of course, we were at the really, really boring races.

He went on and on droning and droning. I started to have an out-of-body experience. I found myself at the table across from us watching myself have lunch with this guy. I was in the Twilight Zone.

I barely made it through lunch.

Once I was back at the office, I started to put the guy into our follow-up system. We write a note and send it, then we follow up at 30 and 60 days before scheduling the next meeting.

As I entered his info, my body felt a sense of dread as I imagined the next lunch.

What to do?

Easy.

Drop him. Don’t put him in the system, don’t follow up, and don’t ever, ever go to lunch with him again.

It’s okay. You’re not going to like every prospective referral source. You don’t need to keep everyone on your list. You can move on to someone else. There are more than enough prospects out there.

Once I realized that I could just drop him, I started to feel the energy return. I started to smile. I was filled with relief.

You aren’t going to like every referral source. Don’t worry about it. If you make yourself miserable with marketing, you aren’t going to do it. It’s more important to stay in the game than it is to win with any particular referral source.

Keep marketing.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What If You Don’t Like Your Referral Source?

She’s upset. She’s blaming you. Things aren’t going as planned.

Here’s the deal:

She works in an IT job. She’s doing very well. Her company is growing like crazy and opening a new facility on the other side of the country. She’s been offered a position in the new place, and it’s a promotion. It’s going to result in her gaining responsibility, autonomy, and a substantial increase in pay.

She and her husband divorced three years ago, and she ended up with custody of the children. The kids see their dad every other weekend and for dinner once a week.

Things have been working out pretty well between her and her ex-husband.

Now she needs to move. She talked to the former husband, and he objected. “How will I see the kids?” he asked.

She saw her dream job plan unraveling right before her eyes.

She came to you and asked for help. You explained the options and the likelihood of success. You offered to try to make the relocation happen, but you warned her that it would be challenging.

The case moved forward. You did a great job in some depositions and preliminary motions. The court date is approaching.

Last week, in a meeting to prepare for the hearing, she explained that this had to work out. She simply can’t accept losing this opportunity for promotion.

You reminded her that you had previously explained the likelihood of success and that this was going to be difficult.

She started to scream. She isn’t screaming about the situation. She’s screaming about you.

“You said you could make this happen.” “You promised me this would work out.” “You took my money and now you’re telling me things aren’t going to go my way. You lied to me.”

How do you react?

Of course, you are immediately upset, defensive, and angry. That’s not what you said. You never made these promises. If someone is lying, it’s not you.

What do you say in response to these baseless allegations?

Most of us act out our defensiveness. We respond allegation by allegation to the attack. We explain why the accuser is wrong and why we are right.

RESIST THAT URGE.

Being defensive will not solve the problem.

Go in a different direction. Let the client keep talking. GIve her room to let it out. Don’t cut her off. Don’t slow her down. Let her go and go.

At some point, she’ll likely put the pieces back together and understand that she’s blaming you inappropriately. She’ll remember that it’s the situation, not you, causing the problem.

Let her go and go and go without providing a response to her allegations. Do NOT voice your defensiveness, no matter how strongly you feel it.

If all else fails, end the meeting. Resume on another day. There isn’t a need to respond to the allegations now. It won’t be helpful.

Where do we go from here?

In my experience, if you give the client some space and time, she’ll come around. I have these people call me on their way home and apologize. Sometimes it takes longer, but they usually come to their senses.

What about the client who doesn’t settle down?

Well, we aren’t the right fit for every client. Sometimes we’re better off, and the client is better off, if other counsel takes over the case. This might be one of those situations.

Before you refer her out, have a heart-to-heart conversation. Do it after the dust has settled and after your immediate defensiveness has cleared. Remind her of the advice you’ve been giving. Remind her of the choices she has made throughout the process. Help her assess the current status and posture of the case, and work together to find a solution that works for both of you. Often, as soon as we raise the idea of helping her find other counsel, she settles down and gets back on track. Sometimes a little reality check is necessary to get the relationship back into a productive mode.

When these situations arise, the key is to suppress your defensiveness. It’s natural. It’s understandable, but it’s totally counterproductive.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Are You Going to Make the Upset Client Worse?

We’ve got an ethics opinion dealing with attorney use of Groupon on the verge of being released by the North Carolina State Bar.

Groupon, in case you don’t know, is the leading “deal of the day” site. The site e-mails millions of people every day, offering a single product or service at a drastic discount.

I’ve bought a handful of Groupon offers for meals, and it has always worked out nicely. I also bought a discount tree-trimming deal recently, and it saved me a few hundred dollars.

Our State Bar is likely to approve the use of Groupon for attorneys. Specifically, the Bar responded to an estate planning firm that wants to offer a will package at a discount.

Should you use Groupon? Specifically, should you use it for a family law practice?

To be honest, I have a hard time seeing it work in terms of selling divorces. It doesn’t really seem like folks are just waiting on a good deal for a divorce. Dinner? Yes. Tree trimming? Maybe. Divorce? Not really.

But I’m fascinated to see the estate planners giving it a shot. If they do it, they’re going to get lots of exposure in the process. Even if recipients of the Groupon solicitation don’t buy a will, they’re going to be more aware of the estate planning firm as a result of the advertisement. The firm is going to raise its profile by increasing name recognition and awareness.

Is Groupon the right venue for raising your profile? It depends on your market and your goals. It might be the perfect place for you: it really depends on your marketing plan. Keep in mind that advertising, on Groupon or elsewhere, isn’t always tied directly to sales. It can also benefit the firm by raising name and brand recognition for the practice.

The bottom line on Groupon: I’m thrilled to see lawyers trying new things and breaking out of the box. Will this one work? Who knows? But you’ll never know whether something will work if you don’t give it a try. Maybe Groupon is the right answer for some practices. Maybe not. Trying new ideas is definitely a good plan for every practice.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Groupon for Lawyers?

I’d like to be done with books. I’d like to have all our reference volumes online.

Unfortunately, in the real world, that isn’t happening yet. Of course, a great deal of our reference material is available online, but much of what we need still comes printed on dead trees.

One day that will change. But it’s not happening as fast as I’d like.

In the meantime, we get pocket parts in the mail every few weeks. These supplements to your books often cost more than $75, even though they may contain as few as 50 pages. It’s amazing.

Do you need the pocket parts?

Often, the answer is no. The law is well settled in some fields, and the pocket parts just don’t have much of importance. You can easily skip a year and buy the update the following year. It really depends on the particular book.

The pocket parts often just show up with a bill even though you didn’t order them. You are usually signed up for an automatic subscription when you buy the book.

The booksellers are counting on you to open the pocket part, stick it in the book, and never think about whether you need it. They just want you to pay the bill.

Don’t do it. Think before you insert. Don’t automatically keep the supplement. Decide whether it’s something you really need.

Don’t hesitate to ship the pocket part back if you don’t need it. Don’t worry, the publisher will keep you on the list for next year’s update.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Do You Need to Buy the Pocket Parts?

You’re doing an initial consultation this morning. You’re in your best suit, and the office is straightened up.

She arrives at the front desk, and you walk out to the lobby and greet her. She stands up, and so does her mother. Her mother? That wasn’t part of the plan.

She’d like to bring momma back to your office to join you for the meeting.

What should you do?

I’m a big advocate of bringing momma (or daddy or best friend) back into the room when that’s important to the client. Of course, I don’t really want friends and family back there if there’s some potential conflict of interest issue (like when the client brings the new girlfriend or boyfriend).

Generally, I think it’s good to have someone come along for the consult because prospective clients are in such an emotional state that they can’t always hear and understand your advice. It’s good to have a second set of ears along for the ride.

As we get started with the meeting, I talk about attorney-client privilege. I explain that having the third party present will cause the loss of the privilege and that I can be required to testify to anything I hear in the meeting. I explain that we can, if necessary, have the third party leave for a bit to discuss anything that needs the protection of the privilege.

When I go through the little explanation of holding a private part of the meeting, the client invariably explains that the third party already knows all of what will be said in that private session. I explain that it’s not the third party the client needs to worry about revealing the info. I explain that we’re protecting the information from being revealed by me.

As we go through the meeting, I try to assess whether the client really wants the third party present or whether we’re having a threesome because the third party insisted. It’s not uncommon for the parent paying the fee to insist on coming to an adult child’s consultation. I make sure we have some private time when I can feel that pressure present in the room. It’s important to remember who the client really is, regardless of who might be paying the bill.

Overall, I think having the third party present is a positive. The privilege issues and the logistics of these meetings can prove challenging, but having someone rational helping is usually a good thing. Having a relationship with that rational person and educating him or her usually helps smooth that path to resolution.

Different attorneys take different approaches to dealing with third parties. I know attorneys who won’t let anyone in the meeting. I know others who take the client back first, talk through these issues, and then bring in the third party.

Your approach will likely be a unique hybrid. The key is being prepared for when momma shows up and having a plan. You’ll find that managing momma is as important as managing your client.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Should You Allow Mom in Your Consultation?

I was reading a recent post at the always-excellent My Shingle about competing with Axiom Legal (a new kind of law firm/service in the business arena). It became apparent in the post and the comments that lots of solos see price as their primary competitive advantage. That’s how they beat the larger firm competition.

For most of us, price is not the answer.

Competing on price is a horrible, awful, no-good race to the bottom.

A quick example: there is a county adjacent to the county in which I live where lawyers routinely write letters to anyone who gets a traffic ticket. These lawyers will handle your case and negotiate a deal for you. There are about ten of these lawyers in that county, all writing nearly identical letters (we don’t have to get into how I know about these letters—I’ll save that VERY FAST story for another day).

They compete on—you guessed it—price.

How much does it cost to have your traffic ticket handled there? Can you say $35? Ouch! That’s bad news for lawyers. What part of a student loan payment will $35 pay?

Anyway, there are lots of ways to compete beyond price. You can compete on quality by offering the very best representation in the practice area. Many of us don’t want an “adequate” lawyer at a low price. Many of us perceive our problem as the most important problem in the world. We want the best, and we’re willing to pay for it. We don’t want a discount lawyer.

You can compete on speed and responsiveness. This advantage is especially helpful when you’re competing for business with sophisticated consumers of legal services. Those folks know the pain of an unresponsive lawyer.

Price is my least favorite way to compete. There is a downward spiral that businesses competing on price often face. First, they cut wages, eating into their ability to attract excellence. Then they cut marketing expenditures, which is counterproductive when you’re competing on price since you don’t have a quality service to attract referrals. Finally, you’re attracting clients who will quickly move on to the next low-price provider. Those clients are tough to replace when you’ve already cut the marketing budget.

Competing on quality and responsiveness is the preferred approach for building a long-term, lucrative practice.

Do you really want to be the lawyer known for being cheaper than the rest? Wouldn’t you rather be the lawyer with a reputation for excellence, quality, responsiveness, and results?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Price Isn’t Your Only Competitive Advantage

If you’ve got someone on your team who needs to go, then do it this week.

We’ll be into November next week, and Thanksgiving (in the United States) will be here before you know it. Then we’re fully into the holidays in December.

You’ll look like the Grinch if you fire someone in November and December. Your whole team will talk about what a jerk you are.

This is your last chance to let the person go without it looking like you took the turkey right off the victim’s holiday table.

Hopefully, you’ve already done what needs to be done to prepare yourself and the employee for termination. You’ve been counseling the person, documenting your actions, etc. Of course, every state has different requirements. Thankfully, my state, an at-will state, has minimal steps for us to take. We can fire pretty much willy-nilly. Make sure you do what you’ve got to do to comply with the law in your jurisdiction.

It’s unfortunate, but some employees just don’t work out. Both of you will be better off when the relationship is over. I’ve fired people who have found a better fit and done very well for themselves. I was only holding them back by keeping them in a job that really wasn’t right for them.

It’s easy to procrastinate about letting go of an unsatisfactory employee. It’s easy to keep reexamining the situation and finding something positive that allows you to drag it out for another week.

However, these situations rarely get better. They get progressively worse. Once you’ve started thinking about when the end will come, it’s time.

This is your week. Take action. If you don’t, you’re going to be buying that employee a holiday gift a month from now, and then you’re really going to hate yourself.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Last Chance to Fire Someone This Year

They’re trying to change the world; we just need to change one little law practice. Our job is easier, right?

I’ve been paying attention to Occupy Wall Street since it started. I’m oddly fascinated by the whole thing. It kind of blows my mind that Adbusters and a small, ragtag group of protestors have inspired people to act all over the world.

Seriously, I doubt that I could inspire you to take someone to lunch. That fact that these folks have been able to get hundreds of thousands of people to show up at rallies and tens of thousands to sleep on the ground in parks is incredible.

I’ve now visited the protestors at Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, and I’ve been paying attention to the protestors here at Occupy Raleigh.

What can we learn from them?

Well, first off, I’ve learned that bathing is a good thing. Body odor really gets out of control when you skip a few showers (but I’ll save personal hygiene for another day).

What else?

We spend forever figuring out how to adopt technology in our law firms.

It’s not at all unusual for me to ask lawyers about their website and listen as they explain how they don’t have the time to make it happen. It’s on the list for the future. There’s no time now.

We procrastinate on technology, and even when we get moving, we take forever to educate ourselves, select vendors, and come up with a plan.

We move at a glacial pace.

What’s happening with technology at Occupy Raleigh?

Before I tell you, keep these things in mind. It is a leaderless movement. I’ve been observing some of the behind-the-scenes activity. It isn’t a smoothly running, well-managed group. It’s dealing with chaos. It has little money, little structure, and no hierarchy. It’s dealing with upset, hostile people, and some of its members are homeless. Much of its organizational activity takes place outside, on the sidewalk, with no electricity, minimal Internet, and a constantly changing group of people. It is resource deprived, and it has a fair amount of internal conflict.

On top of all that, it’s dealing with things like finding shoes for some of its members—literally, finding shoes. Trust me, it’s not like working in a nice office on the 27th floor. It’s messy.

So what has Occupy Raleigh done from a technology standpoint in its first couple weeks?

It’s built  a website. It’s good. It would like something more elaborate and is already rebuilding on another platform.

It’s set up six listservs for e-mail communication among members and committees. The e-mail lists are vibrant to the point of overwhelm.

It’s got a wiki that it’s using as a central repository of information like meeting minutes, listing things it needs to have donated, etc.

It’s got two Twitter accounts with hourly tweets updating the membership.

It’s got an active Facebook page.

It’s accepting donations online via its website with two integrated payment solutions.

It’s got printed material to hand out that is well designed and available at the occupation site.

It’s about to go live with streaming video of its twice-daily meetings. The group is working out the kinks now.

Website, social media, wiki, e-mail, listservs, e-commerce, video, printed material: it’s got it all, and it did it fast. If the organization were on law firm time, it would still be out shopping for the first cell phone. It’s moving quickly, without hesitation, and it’s making rapid progress.

We need to learn to move faster—much faster—than we do. We need to be unafraid to make a decision, implement it, and see what happens. We can always change later if necessary. Given the technology available and how inexpensive it is, we need to plunge forward. Take action, experiment, refine, and do it again. There’s no reason to wait.

Look at the attention these occupiers have garnered. Look at how quickly it has happened. You can move at the same pace if you’ll let go of the old ideas of researching, planning, thinking, etc.

Take action, move forward, make yourself visible, and use the technology in your practice: move, move, move.

It’s your turn to occupy your practice. Make yourself a poster that says “move fast” and hang it on your wall (put a peace sign on it or something). Together, we can occupy law firms all across the world!

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What Can Law Firms Learn from Occupy Wall Street?

Dear Associate,

If you already know everything, or if you think you do, there isn’t much we can teach you.

Love,

Me

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Note to Associates (With Love)

How do you decide who to hire as an associate? Sure, you’ve got lots of criteria related to legal education, experience, personality, achievement, etc. Those are good, and I encourage you to evaluate your prospective employees according to those factors.

But when push comes to shove and you’ve got to pick one over another, there is one piece of information that should be applied as the final litmus test. More on that in a minute.

Most of us run small firms. We need people who are good at a range of things. They need to be good speakers, good listeners, good writers, good researchers, and good with people. We need them to be able to handle the courtroom, the clients, opposing counsel, and negotiations. We need them to be able to keep clients happy, and ultimately, we’d like them to be able to generate new business in our community. They need to be effective marketers.

We need a jack of all trades.

It’s not easy to find folks good at all the things I’ve mentioned. It’s especially challenging to find someone good at marketing.

I’d suggest to you that you’ve got to find someone good at all of it. You need players who can take on any position depending on the demands placed on your practice. I’d also suggest that the marketing role is the most difficult role to fill.

So how do you compare two applicants, seemingly equally qualified, and predict which one will be better at generating business for the firm over the long haul?

Is the candidate going to be good at marketing?

I’ve sat in the room doing interviews and, after checking off all the “legal” qualifications, wondered whether the candidate would be good at marketing. “I like this person,” I think to myself. Others in the firm seem to like the applicant. I can easily see the person out in the community at events, volunteering, joining, etc. I’ve got a positive sense about the person as a marketer. I think it might work.

But I’ve been burned before. I thought the person would be good at networking and he or she wasn’t. I’ve been wrong on more than one occasion.

How can it be that I like these candidates so much and see them as prime marketing material, but they are unsuccessful at marketing?

Here’s my analysis:

Marketing isn’t difficult—especially networking. It’s easy and fun. It’s uncomplicated. It’s much easier to master than some complicated card games, like bridge.

So will your candidate be good at it?

Probably not. Why? Because the person doesn’t want to do it. He or she isn’t interested. Your candidate is turned off by the activity of building relationships with referral sources.

How can you tell? You know your candidate isn’t going to tell you the truth if you ask directly. He or she probably doesn’t even know the truth.

How can you tell?

Here’s the test:

Ask your candidates about social networking. Ask them about Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Dig in and ask what they do with social networking. Ask how they use it.

If they’re not on Facebook, walk away—no, run away. Anyone under the age of 80 who enjoys building relationships is on Facebook. I’m not exaggerating: my mother is on Facebook, and my mother-in-law is on Facebook—everyone is on Facebook. If they’re not on Facebook, they’re not building new relationships. That’s a generalization, but it’s also true. Run away.

The same goes for LinkedIn. Run.

After you ask about Facebook and LinkedIn, get a feel for how active they are. Friend them. Check out their activity level.

Then really dig in. Find out whether they’re on Twitter.

People good at relationships are on Twitter. They’re communicating with friends, and they’re meeting new people as they go along. There are lots of ways people use Twitter, and there aren’t any absolute tests. I think, however, that  Twitter usage is a predictor of networking success. Being present on Twitter is a very good sign.

The involvement of candidates on social media reveals their level of enjoyment in building relationships. If they don’t engage in social media, they don’t enjoy social activity. Today, social activity takes place, in part, on the Internet. If they’re not there, they’re not interested.

If I were faced with two equally good candidates and one was using Twitter and the other wasn’t, I’d hire the Twitter person in a heartbeat. That person likes people, likes getting to know new people, and is highly social. This person is more likely to become engaged with building referral relationships because he or she enjoys building relationships.

Use social media involvement as a test. Obviously, it can’t be more important than the candidate’s ability to do the legal work. It can, however, serve as a very good indicator of marketing success. In our practices, we need well-rounded people, and social media involvement is a valuable tool for checking out your candidate.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Hiring Litmus Test for Associates

What does your office look like? We all want to know. We’re curious to see how you’re doing it. We’d like to know how you’re doing it so we can learn from you. Please, please, please show us.

In fact, I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. Mine is in the picture to the left.

I’ve gone pretty minimalist with my desk lately. This is a picture of my workspace. I’ve been working from home and only rarely get to the office. It’s kinda ugly, but it’s working for me.

My office equipment consists of my MacBook Air, a Brother printer, and a Fujitsu scanner. Most importantly, I’ve got a nice Herman Miller Aeron Chair. My phone is in my pocket so it’s not in the picture. There really isn’t much to my space.

What’s your space like? Would you mind showing us?

I took this picture with my phone and did a quick upload. You can share your photo in the comments below. Just create a comment and hit the plus button in the lower left-hand corner of the comment box: it’s easy. If you have your photo on the web already, you can simply input the web address of the photo into the comment box (so long as the URL ends in png, gif, jpg, or jpeg).

Seriously, take a minute and show off your space. Feel free to provide your name, city, and state as well as a link to your website.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What Does Your Office Look Like?

There are things we all agree we’re better off without. For instance, does anyone have an 8-track player anymore? No. Does anyone still have a Mag card typewriter? No. What about those microtapes for dictation devices? Does anyone still have a fountain pen? Okay, okay, I know some of you love fountain pens (but even you know you’re kinda weird).

So what are you holding onto that you should really leave behind?

Here’s my list:

1. File cabinets (you don’t need them if you’re paperless, and we’re long past the time when you should have made this move)

2. File folders

3. Fax machines (use the online services if necessary, but even those should go)

4. Rolodex (does anyone still have one?)

5. Paper calendars, diaries, etc. (online calendars are shareable and available on your phone)

6. Pencils (what do you need a pencil for at this point?)

7. Hole punchers (if you get rid of the paper, you get rid of the holes)

8. Hole reinforcers (remember those little glue-on circles?)

9. Desktop computers (give your employees laptops so they can work from wherever they are)

10. Servers (make the move to the cloud)

11. Paper publications/books (get it online, or don’t get it)

12. Paper clips (what’s left to clip?)

13. Landlines (go to VOIP or cellular)

14. Trial notebooks (do it on the laptop or a tablet)

15. Staplers (might need a few for courts that aren’t using digital filing, but you don’t need one for every desk anymore)

16. Copiers (you’re probably better off with scanners and printers than the old-fashioned big copier)

Don’t stress: you can keep your pens and legal pads—for now. However, I wouldn’t encourage you to buy stock in pen makers.

What did I miss? What else should you get rid of? What will you never let go?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

16 Things Your Office Is Better Off Without

I’m not a huge fan of the annual holiday party. I could take it or, more likely, leave it.

In fact, one year I tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away.

It didn’t.

Prior to that year, we had always had an event at my house or at a good restaurant and had everyone from the firm over along with their partners. It was always nice (if you like that sort of thing). Everyone seemed to have a good time.

That year, I thought I could get away without having the party if I just ignored it. The holidays would come and go, and no one would notice. Good plan, right? I thought it would work.

It didn’t.

They noticed.

And the next thing you know, we were in a crappy restaurant (since bulldozed) having our holiday party. It took on a life of its own, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. On top of that, since I was out of the loop, I was unable to use the event in the way I like: to recognize the achievements, accomplishments, and contributions of our team. Of course, I ended up paying for the party anyway, so the whole thing was lose-lose for me.

Oh well, I learned my lesson.

Now, in June, I book a place for the party. We outgrew my house, and we hold the annual event at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. We invite everyone and their dates, and the folks working remotely come in for a couple of days (we’re looking forward to seeing our operations guy who has been working from Buenos Aires).

The entire event is carefully structured with an annual award presented along with some other traditions. The evening gets wrapped up with one of those gift exchange games that inevitably brings some amusing moments involving people stealing one another’s gifts.

Afterward, the party continues for some folks. Different groups split off and head for a variety of after-party locations. A good time is had by all.

If you’re going to run a firm, no matter how antisocial you may feel, it’s important to abide by social norms. In our culture, the annual holiday party is one of those requirements. If you haven’t already planned the party, it’s time to get on the stick. Party, party, party!

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

You’ve Got to Have a Holiday Party

American Express Open Forum is a great site for business education. The site has a wealth of articles and videos available for free. They cover everything from marketing to management to finance. Good stuff.

Recently the site created a bunch of short online classes called Crash Courses on a range of topics including YouTube Marketing, Perfecting Your Elevator Pitch, and The Art of Hiring. There are several other courses as well. They’re taught by good people, they’re short, and they’re interesting. American Express is using a platform from Veri.com that you might find useful as an option for building courses for your prospective clients.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Crash Courses for Running Your Business

Clients cry in our offices. It’s pretty common. Some cry a little; some cry continuously. Some can talk while crying, while some just completely shut down and lose it.

What do you do?

First off, be sure you have a box of tissues on the table. We’ve got a checklist for refreshing our conference and meeting rooms, and tissues are the number one item on the list. Make sure the tissue box is ready to go.

Second, acknowledge the upset. Tell the client that you know that these are difficult issues. Be sure you say it, even if it’s obvious, because people need you to articulate that you understand what’s happening.

Third, tell the client that crying is normal. Tell the client that many clients sit in the same chair and cry. Let the client know that this behavior is reasonable. The client needs to hear that he or she isn’t especially odd.

Finally, get on with it. The client came for help and needs to get it regardless of how difficult it is to talk about these issues. Push on and keep going. Ask your questions, tell the client what he or she needs to hear, and keep moving forward.

As you roll along, some will stop crying: they’ll get caught up in the discussion, and the tears will dry up. Some will just keep crying, and tears will stream down throughout the whole meeting. Don’t worry about it. If your client is participating, then he or she is benefiting from the meeting. Don’t worry about the tears: some people just come with lots of tears.

On occasion, the very rare occasion, you will have a client who just can’t engage with you. The sobbing will take over. The breathing will be labored, and the client simply can’t pay attention. In that instance, and I can count on one hand the number of times that has happened to me, you’ve got to cancel the meeting. Give it ten or fifteen minutes and then call it off. Be firm about canceling. Tell the client you’ll call to reschedule and wrap it up. If you stick around, the sobbing will only continue. At some point, you’ve got to call the meeting off if it’s clear that nothing productive is going to happen.

With the uncontrollably sobbing client, some will suggest that you take a break and resume in a few minutes. In my experience, that doesn’t work. You’ll take the break and come back, and the sobbing will resume right where it left off. These clients need more than a few minutes.

When a client is clearly in distress and can’t regain control, it’s important to suggest counseling. While crying is normal, there is a level of distress that isn’t healthy. Those folks need to be seeing an expert to assist them in working through the process. Make a referral so they can get the help they need.

Crying clients are a normal part of practicing family law. At some point, you’ll get used to meeting with people streaming tears. In the meantime, it’s helpful to have a plan for helping these clients get through the meeting and obtain the value they’re seeking. It’s never easy, but it’s part of the job.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Deal with a Crying Client

I’ve done some website reviews in the past, way back, and I get e-mails all the time asking me to do more of them. I’m not sure why they’re so interesting to you, but who am I to deny you?

Last night I went through a site and did a quick review (about 15 minutes) for you.

I always worry about doing these reviews because I don’t want to offend the attorneys involved in developing the site. My hope is that any sting associated with my criticism is offset by some useful ideas for improvement. It’s tough to get honest feedback about our sites because our friends and family want to be nice to us. On top of that, our friendly critics aren’t prospective customers, and they don’t see the site through the eyes of someone seeking help for the problem we solve. It’s tricky to get useful input and feedback.

Of course, my opinions on a site are only my own. I could be totally wrong. However, I have been playing with these concepts since the very beginning and have a pretty good feel for what works and what doesn’t when it comes to building a practice.

I’ve embedded the review below. If the video isn’t showing up in your reader, just click through to see the video. You can expand the video using the little button in the lower right-hand corner of the video so it’s easier to see the details.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What’s Wrong with This Website? A Website Review

It’s tougher than ever to get credit from a bank. Banks are stuck in a crazy place where they’ve got gobs of cash, yet they won’t put it to work.

It wasn’t always this way. For the first 20 years of running my practice, I could walk into the bank, sign my name, and walk out with a very big check. I was always kind of surprised at how easily the bank trusted us. We made deals on a handshake, and everyone left happy.

Not anymore.

While lending has tightened up, our need for expansion capital hasn’t. It’s helpful to have access to equipment loans, credit lines, and a leasing facility.

Unfortunately, your banker may not have much latitude to help. Your banker is in a tight spot caught between banking regulators, his or her superiors, and you. Most of the bankers I know personally wish they could extend credit more easily. They’re not happy with the current situation any more than we are. It’s a mess.

While getting loans is harder today than in the past, it’s not impossible. Banks still lend; they just do it much, much more carefully. Many things have changed, but the fundamentals remain the same.

One of the most important factors in obtaining credit is your relationship with your banker. A personal relationship goes a long way. Your relationship with your banker plays a big role in decisions related to your credit.

You need a strong personal connection to help motivate your banker to go to bat for you when the need arises.

Now is the perfect time to work on that relationship with your banker. There’s no time like the present to bond with the people controlling the cash. In fact, this is a great time to get to know a bunch of bankers, not just one.

Build a connection to someone in a big national bank. Get to know someone in an established local bank. Spend time with a banker from the aggressive new bank (there’s usually one in every community). The stronger your connections to these bankers, the more likely you are to get what you need when you need it. The more diverse your relationships, the better position you’ll be in to drive a hard bargain on the terms of the deal.

Go to lunch with some bankers. Eventually, it will pay off.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Take a Banker to Lunch

Executive suites are pretty sweet. These are office space intended for someone who needs a single room or maybe two. They’re usually in a nice office building and feature a shared lobby, kitchen, break area, and copier area.

Tenants in these spaces pay a bit more per foot but don’t have to provide their own receptionist or lobby. Most of these spaces come fully furnished, and you can be up an running in a few hours.

Some lawyers worry about negative client perceptions based on being in a shared space. I think most of us worry about this more than is necessary. I don’t think clients get wound up about executive suites and aren’t going to base their hiring decision on this factor.

When it comes time to lease an executive suite, it’s worth doing some serious research. When you commit to a year in one of these spaces, you’re making a $10,000-plus decision. Give it the thought it deserves.

Here are some issues to consider:

1. Some suites offer phone service. They’ll run your number through their receptionist and give you a professional-sounding phone person. Be careful, however, to review the lease and rules relating to ownership of the phone number. When you leave, you’re going to want to take the number with you. Make sure that’s something you’ll be able to do.

2. Some suites offer additional services like Internet, photocopies, faxes, conference room usage, video conferencing, etc. Take a look at the charges associated with these services. They’re not likely to be included, and they may be offered at unusually high rates. Don’t be surprised after you’ve already moved in. Personally, I don’t begrudge the high fees charged for these services given that the landlords invest a great deal to make these items available. Just know what you’re getting into before you sign the lease.

3. Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate the initial lease. Many of these vendors will make considerable concessions to get a new tenant. Explore your options before you sign up. Obviously, you’re going to get greater concessions when the landlord has lots of vacancies, and this will vary by market.

4. Don’t limit your negotiations to rent. Talk about concessions on the add-ons. Seek the use of the landlord’s other facilities for occasional use, free use of the large conference room, extra keys, discounts on video conferencing, etc. They’re more willing to concede on these extras than they are on rent.

5. Spend some time in the suite before you commit. Ask for a pass to use an empty office for a day. Spend your time observing the people to see whether you’ll be comfortable. Listen to the way noise travels through the walls, watch the receptionist, and listen to the call handling. Check out the snacks and drinks. Get a good feel for the place.

6. Take a look at the included furniture. Is it good enough? Will you have what you need? Will the window coverings work for you? Are you going to need to bring your own art? Get it in writing if the landlord promises to swap some of the furniture for something different.

7. Read the rules. Some companies have you sign a lease that incorporates house rules. The rules will likely cover a great deal of ground. Read them first.

8. Watch out for fees for vacating the space. Some landlords will bill you for months of dealing with mail forwarding, etc. Check the lease and the rules.

9. Sit in the lobby and pretend you’re a client. See how it feels to wait out there.

10. If you decide to use a computer softphone (like Skype) as your landline, check the rules on that. Some landlords restrict the use of VOIP phones and video conferencing on their Internet connections. Also, find out how much the Internet costs: it’s probably an add-on.

11. Don’t expect concessions on your lease renewal unless the market is very slow. Once the landlord has you, he or she knows it’s hard for you to leave. Don’t assume the landlord is going to give you the same deal you got in the first place.

12. Make sure you get any concessions, lease modifications, or changes to the rules in writing. You’ll likely deal with a salesperson when you’re negotiating and be handed off to the site manager once you move in. Don’t expect the site manager to honor any unwritten commitments.

13. Do some Internet searching of your vendor before you even look at the space. You’ll find lots of vendor-specific info to help you with negotiating the deal. Lots of former customers, especially the unhappy customers, will give you tips on how they ended up with a bad deal.

Executive suites are a great environment for lots of lawyers. They’re a terrific way to start a practice, and they may meet your needs for the long term. The key is to be an informed consumer and make sure you look out for yourself before you commit to the space.

Have you leased an executive suite? Do you have tips you can add to the list? Please do so in the comments below.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Lease an Office in an Executive Suite

I’ll miss Steve Jobs. I won’t talk about that here because there’s little left to be said and others have said it better than I ever could. He was really something special.

His passing got me thinking about the temporary nature of our existence.

As I write this, 24 hours after we were told of his death, the headlines, the blogs, and the discussions are already moving on. They’re already finding new things to talk about. Life goes on, fast.

Steve’s going to be tough to replace, and he will be sorely missed, but his chair is already being filled.

There’s a lesson in that.

Sometimes I feel paralyzed—held hostage—by my fear of losing someone important to our firm.

What will we do without that person? How will we survive? Who will do the work? These are the questions I ask myself.

Why do I still worry about this stuff?

I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve lost good people, and we’ve survived. Yet, I still worry.

I really don’t need to worry like I do—it’s pointless. We’re all replaceable. It’s inevitable.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

We’re All Replaceable

This site looks different depending on how you access it. If you come via your computer’s web browser, you see one thing. If you come via your mobile device, you see something else. Each of our sites has been optimized for visitors on browsers, iPads, and phones.

Why?

Because it’s hard to read some content on a phone. The screen is tiny, and it’s a pain to zoom in and out on every important detail. It’s frustrating and time consuming when the site doesn’t work right, and we quickly move on to something else.

A variety of mechanisms is available for converting your site to a mobile-friendly site. Some sites can accommodate a quick plug-in that, once activated, does all the work for you. That’s the case with Divorce Discourse. The site runs in WordPress, and a plug-in called WPtouch Pro does most of what needs to be done to make the site easily accessible on a smartphone.

One of our other sites, Rosen.com, is also optimized for mobile, but we had to approach it differently. Rosen.com is a more complicated site, so our developer built a custom mobile site theme. The plug-in was cheap, but the custom theme cost considerably more.

These applications look at all visitors one by one as they arrive at your site and determine which browser the users are employing. When a mobile browser shows up, the mobile theme is served. It’s pretty cool.

Do you need a mobile theme? If you’re using Google Analytics, you can check the number of mobile visitors. This site has about 25% of its visitors coming on phones and iPads. Rosen.com gets more mobile visitors, but they’re a smaller percentage of the total.

You’re going to need to deal with mobile visitors and make them feel welcome. You can do it now or you can do it later, but you’re going to need to do it. Make those visitors happy.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Is Your Website Aggravating Your Visitors?

I’m playing with a couple of technology products that I’m really enjoying, and I should pass them along to you.

First, I mentioned last week the video question response product VYou. I’m using it to post video responses to your questions. It’s working great. I got a bunch of questions and posted video answers from the readers of this site. The product is incredibly easy to use, and it’s free. I hope you’re having as much fun watching the videos as I am answering the questions. Feel free to ask anything you like, and I’ll do my best to provide a helpful response. I’ve put a link in the menu bar at the top of the page here on the site, which I intend to leave up indefinitely.

Of course, I don’t really control the video content at VYou. It might go away one day if these folks run out of money. I’ll be sad if that happens, but I’m not going to worry about it. I’d rather be nimble and quick, get the videos up easily, help some people, and keep moving. If the videos evaporate at some point, so be it. Sometimes we worry so much about the permanency of things that we get stuck in the planning stage and fail to execute. With VYou, you can be up and running and helping others in about three minutes.

Second, I’m really enjoying Smartr from Xobni. This is a cool product that shows you the latest social media info for the person sending you an e-mail. When I get your e-mail, I can instantly see your latest public Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn info plus your private updates if we’re connected. I’m using Smartr in Gmail, but it also works in Outlook plus all the smartphones. If I want to know more, I can click on the social media icon and get details about what’s really going on with you. It’s helpful for getting a sense of the person I’m talking to and reminding me of details about people I already know. It’s free, and the company just opened the product to everyone.

Truth be told, I love playing around with the latest products. I’m constantly installing and uninstalling applications on my laptop and phone. Are you? What have you found lately that’s useful and intriguing? What has your attention?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Latest Cool Applications in Video and Social Media Info

Associates need to know what’s expected of them. If you’re an associate, you want to know whether you’re doing a good job. If you’ve hired an associate, you’d like to have reasonable expectations.

What is reasonable from an associate?

In our world, most associates are seeking experience. They’re hoping to become a partner in the firm or planning to go out on their own at some point in the future. They’re working in their present position to learn, provide value, and grow as lawyers.

At a minimum, an associate should:

• Expect to put in 10 to 12 hours per day for the first year, with fewer hours in subsequent years. That time should be carefully tracked and, depending on the firm’s system, properly accounted for in the firm’s billing system.
• Expect to work weekends sometimes.
• Ask lots of questions.
• Research the answers before asking the questions and come prepared to discuss the possibilities.
• Ask for more experience: ask for courtroom opportunities, ask for client contact, and ask to go further with the research, writing, and drafting.
• Read everything you can put your hands on. Find books on litigation, discovery, tax, business valuations, forensic accounting, custody evaluations, etc.
• Read the pertinent statutes and family law treatises for your jurisdiction.
• Meet other lawyers in the community by getting involved in bar association activities. Build your network.
• Meet the local judges at bar functions, etc.
• Get along with the staff in your office. Be humble, not arrogant.
• Attend every educational event available and pay attention.
• Begin reading all significant family law cases in your jurisdiction and develop a system for outlining and tracking that case law.
• Read the state legal newspaper, blogs, and family law publications discussing current case law.
• Be afraid, but be willing to step up and volunteer to do things you many not feel ready to do. Do them anyway.
• Don’t complain; it’s supposed to be hard. Cope with the challenges and stay positive.

There are probably other things reasonably expected of an associate. That’s my start for the list. Did I miss anything?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What’s Reasonable from an Associate?

Here we go again: recession round two. It’s coming on fast, and the economy is headed for the dumper. Recession round two may not have officially started, but experts are reaching consensus about the inevitability of the next downturn. I don’t think there’s much argument about what’s happening.

The question is, how will you survive?

Take a two-pronged approach.

First, increase marketing activities to generate additional prospects. Do more networking, advertising, public relations, etc. Do more of whatever works for you in your practice. More prospects mean more clients. Go with your strength; rinse and repeat.

Yes, more marketing means more marketing expense. Your costs will necessarily increase. You’ll see a spike in your cost of acquiring each client, and you’ll be frustrated by the decline in conversion rate. We saw that decline last time around, and it’s likely we’ll see it again. The increased cost of client acquisition is a small price to pay.

Second, manage your expenses. Be certain that the expenses track along with revenues. If revenues go down, expenses should go down.

If you’ve been reading these posts for the past couple of years, then you’re prepared to keep expenses under control.

Here are the key actions to take:

• Variable pay: Ideally, you’ve got your team on a variable pay structure. Your payroll goes up and down with your revenue.
• Minimized rent: You’ve also reduced your overhead by reducing real estate, eliminating attorney and staff offices, and building a remote workforce.
• Outsource: Use lower-cost labor for appropriate tasks. Easy outsourcing includes IT assistance, marketing, accounting, benefits administration, administrative tasks, and some client interaction.
• IT in the cloud: You’ve moved your IT infrastructure to the cloud and eliminated servers and the associated expenses and achieved variability in the costs associated with managing your information.
• Phones in the cloud: You’ve also eliminated traditional phone systems along with commitments for other formerly fixed costs.

If your revenues go down, your expenses will go down. You won’t be happy, but you’ll be safe. You’ve eliminated the risk associated with the uncertainty. As revenues shift, expenses shift. You’re good, not great, no matter what the economy brings.

If you’re unwilling to ratchet up your marketing, you’re likely to suffer. If you’re unwilling to shift to a variable cost structure, you’re also going to feel the pain. If you take both steps, you’re going to ride this one out just like the last one. You’ll be prepared to deal with reductions in the top line, and you’ll minimize the impact of the changes on your bottom line.

At this point, we should all be pretty expert at riding the waves of recession. This time around might be easier since we’ve been through it before so recently. Hang on; here it comes again.

As usual, I accompany this article with my typical economic prediction disclaimer: I could be wrong, but if I’m wrong, so what? Aren’t you better off with more marketing and expenses under control? Don’t argue with me; just do it!

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Cope with the Double-Dip Recession

“Hi, this is Lee Rosen. I’m out of the office until October 5. I will not be checking my voicemails and returning calls until October 6. If you need immediate assistance, please press 7 to reach my assistant. Thanks for calling.”

That is NOT a message you’re likely to hear on my voicemail.

Mostly I say that I’m in the office all day. I make it clear that I’ll return the call as soon as I’m able.

Now, truth be told, I’m almost never in the office. I’m running from place to place, and I spend a fair amount of time out of town.

So why do I say that I’m in the office?

Because, while I get many voicemails each day, there is really only one kind of voicemail that I want to be absolutely certain gets left in my box. Those important voicemails are the messages from potential clients.

I really want potential clients to leave a message so we can call them back and bring them in for an initial consultation. Everyone else will leave a message either way: I don’t have to encourage them. They call and call and call.

What I don’t want to happen is for potential clients to hear that I’m out of the office and decide to call someone else. I want them to give us a chance to help them, so I tell them I’m available.

When they leave a message, if I’m truly busy, I forward it to someone on our team who will return the call immediately and explain my unavailability. Hopefully, we’ll schedule them for a consult, and they’ll retain us.

So yes, when I’m on vacation, I check my voicemails and do some forwarding. I don’t completely unplug. I’m sure that contradicts the advice of some work-life balance experts. Sorry.

However, I do make it a bit easier on myself. My voicemails are automatically transcribed by my phone provider. If you don’t have that service as part of your phone package, you can buy it from PhoneTag. This service does a great job.

When I’m out of the country or otherwise unable to keep an eye on my voicemail, I give someone else in my office access to my e-mail box (where my voicemails live) so that person can check it and do the forwarding. Basically, my message tells prospective clients and everyone else that I’m always available. In fact, I am always available because we always have someone who can handle the problem, no matter what it might be.

Are you turning away business through your voicemail message? Is that really what you intended to do?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Your Voicemail Greeting Is Turning Away Clients

Airplanes need lots of runway to come to a stop. There’s a lot of energy and power associated with dropping out of the sky, and it needs to dissipate. That’s why runways are usually more than two miles long.

Clients also come with a great deal of energy and power. Our clients aren’t always happy people. After all, life isn’t exactly working out as planned. They’ve got problems, and they’ve come to us for help.

They need runway to dissipate all of that energy. Give it to them.

When they call, wound up and full of energy, get out of their way. Give them runway. Stop talking and let them go. Give them the full two miles and maybe more. Let them talk and talk.

Stop, stop, stop! Don’t interrupt.

Don’t add value; don’t give advice. Just let them go and go and go.

If you’re going to say anything, say “ah,” “oh,” or “that must have been awful.”

I know it’s hard for us to keep our mouths shut; we’re challenged in that way. But we can do it if we try.

Back in the day, I’d play Solitaire on the computer while they talked. Now you can play Facebook games. Or, even better, you can reorganize your task list for tomorrow. Or, better than that, you can focus fully on what the client is saying. You can listen. Sometimes I wonder whether listening—fully listening with my full brain—feels even better to the client. It’s hard to judge.

Clients who have been given their chance to let it out—to speed down the runway—feel better, and they associate that feeling with you. They’ll behave better when it comes time to negotiate the deal. They’ll trust you more when you need to push them a bit.

Give them runway and let them talk. It’s just a natural part of working through this process, and it’s a big part of what we do for them as professionals.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Clients Are Like Airplanes

Many days, I spend my time dealing with one upset after another. It might be an upset client or, equally likely, an upset employee.

There’s always some problem, and we’re fighting fires from start to finish.

This client doesn’t like her lawyer. This lawyer can’t get along with that paralegal. This lawyer thinks that lawyer fails to understand reality, and on and on and on.

I spend much of my time focused on the problems because those are the issues brought to my attention by the people involved.

I don’t have time to focus on the stuff that’s going well.

I don’t spend time talking to the happy clients. I don’t spend time talking to the lawyers closing file after file and generating great client satisfaction scores on our surveys. I don’t talk to the people who show up and do their jobs without complaint.

That’s not good, and I’ve got to change it.

I need to spend much, much more time talking with the people who are doing exactly what we’ve asked them to do and doing it well.

I end up talking to the person who wants to complain about something rather than the person who just set the new monthly record for closing files.

I end up talking to the person who’s considering leaving rather than the person nailing it with perfect “10s” on our client satisfaction surveys.

I end up talking to the person who’s failing to earn a sufficient income and complaining about why we don’t pay her enough rather than the person who produces the highest return on investment in the firm.

I need to focus on the happy people, the productive people, and the people who are making our clients happy. More time with them will be good for them and good for me. Where is your time going? Who are you talking to?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Focus on What’s Right, Not What’s Wrong

Do you have a burning question you want answered about running your practice?

At one of our recent webinars, I conducted a poll asking you what you’d like as the topic of the next webinar. We got a bunch of positive responses for an open Q&A session.

We could do that, but it’s challenging to find a time when all of you can come, and I’ve screwed up the recording of the webinars more often than not, so I went looking for an alternative.

I found VYou, and it’s pretty interesting. It a free service that allows you to post written questions, and I can post video responses. Pretty simple. I really like doing the responses orally because it’s so fast.

You’re often receptive to the new services I bring to your attention, and the feedback you provide is interesting. You’re putting them to work in your practices. VYou might be something you can use. Maybe you’ll use it on your site to answer family law questions. Maybe you’ll use it to provide more info about your practice. Maybe you’ll come up with something really different and put it to work for you.

In the meantime, let’s put it to use here as a surrogate for the webinar. Post a question, and I’ll do my best to provide an answer. This is wide open, so feel free to ask me about marketing, technology, management, finance, or whatever you’ve got. If I know the answer, I’ll post it. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll say something like “that’s a gray area and requires further study.” Just kidding, of course I know all the answers!

You don’t need an account. Just enter your question below in the “Say Something to Lee Rosen” box. You can submit your question anonymously. If you prefer, you can provide your e-mail address and receive notice when your question is answered. Give it a shot. Ask a question and let’s see whether I can help you out a bit while we explore something new and interesting.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What’s Better Than a Free Webinar?

How many of your clients haven’t talked to a lawyer in your firm in the past seven days?

If that number is more than zero, then your reputation is at risk.

If you aren’t talking to your clients weekly, you can bet they’re talking to others about you.

And you won’t like what they’re saying.

Left to their own devices, our clients turn negative. We’ve got to stay connected to them, or they worry themselves into a state of despair. They start to imagine one worst-case scenario after another. They have vivid imaginations, and they never imagine happy things.

You’ve got to stay closely connected to them, or they drift out of your orbit and into unhappy land. Unhappy land is a place where your reputation is damaged, bills aren’t paid, refunds get requested, and complaints get filed with your licensing agency.

You’ve got to find a reason to connect with them, preferably by phone, and update them on the progress of the case (even when there isn’t any). You should explain the next steps and keep hope alive for a successful outcome.

The more often you speak with the client, the more likely that client is to become an advocate for you and your practice. Frequent communication results in high levels of client satisfaction and more frequent referrals.

Is seven days a magic number? No, it’s a minimum number. I’m an advocate for twice weekly contact. The more you connect with them, the happier they’ll be. Some client contact is inevitable as a result of settlement negotiations, scheduling events, etc. But some cases languish without much progress. It’s those cases where you really need to increase the level of communication. It’s those languishing files that cause much of the trouble.

Take a few minutes and run through your client list. Check on the last contact and see how long it has been. If it’s been more than a week, pick up the phone, spend a few minutes updating the client, and save your reputation from the damage done by a client in despair.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Client Communication Protects Your Reputation

Are your ears burning?

Are they talking about you?

You know they are. They can’t help themselves. You’re interesting!

They’re doing it on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. They’re even talking about you on blogs, forums, review sites, and elsewhere on the social web.

Don’t you want to know what they’re saying? Of course you do.

That’s why some kind person invented TOPSY.

Topsy is a search engine for the social web. Type in the terms you’re interested in (your name, your firm name, your blog name, etc.), and it instantly produces a list of mentions of your search term across the social web. It’s Google for Facebook, et al.

Topsy gives you some control over your searches. You can search in different languages, limit the social networks searched, and restrict searches by date. Topsy even allows you to subscribe to your searches and get regular updates via e-mail or RSS feed. Additionally, Topsy provides a little graph showing how frequently you’re mentioned in the social networks.

With Topsy, you’ll never have to wonder what they’re saying about you. Do a quick search and find out.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What Are They Saying about You?

Turnover? Please don’t talk to me about your employee turnover problem.

I was the turnover king for the first several years after I started my practice.

I fired people on the spur of the moment.

People quit after a week.

I had one person come and go in a single day.

I had people go to lunch and never come back. It was insane.

I hired fast and fired fast; I did everything fast.

It was a disaster.

Employee turnover is a killer. It costs us in a bunch of ways. The obvious costs involve lost sales, delays in producing the work, and an overall drop in productivity.

Those are, however, the obvious costs. There is subtle fallout that often goes unnoticed.

There’s the impact on other employees. They get sucked into the vacuum created by the absent employee. They end up covering while someone new is selected and their own work gets neglected. That affects their sense of accomplishment and pride. Their own deadlines get pushed back, and they’re disappointed with their progress.

Existing employees end up jumping in to train the replacement employees, and that further stalls their plan to accomplish their objectives.

Further, when someone leaves, everyone who stays wonders who’s doing the right thing. “Should I leave too?” is a question that many employees will ask themselves privately when their peer packs up and moves on.

Of course, turnover can result in a loss of clients both directly and indirectly. Some clients will go with the separating employee. Some will leave when their cases are neglected. In either event, the loss of clients affects revenues, and that’s not a good thing.

Finally, turnover affects the reputation of the firm in the legal and business community. Others wonder what’s going on when employees come and go. They question whether the firm leaders really know what they’re doing.

Turnover is demoralizing for everyone involved, and excessive turnover is never a good thing.

However, I can hear you agreeing and then jumping in with “but what do we do about (fill in the blank with name of annoying employee)?” I know, I know, you really need to get rid of her.

How do you balance the cost of turnover with the cost of keeping an unsatisfactory employee?

You can’t. This problem isn’t solved by keeping people who can’t cut the mustard.

The problem is solved by hiring better, training better, setting reasonable expectations, and managing your people to success. You’ve got to find ways to hire and keep good employees and end the cycle of coming and going.

Of course, there are costs associated with better hiring, better training, and professional management, but those costs pale in comparison to the cost of turnover.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Cost of Employee Turnover

You’re traveling for business. You’re in San Francisco. You’re heading to dinner with someone you know from law school. You’re looking forward to renewing an old friendship. Life is good.

As you walk out of the hotel entryway, the doorman asks whether you’d like a taxi. “Yes, please,” you respond, and a nice yellow taxicab pulls right up to you. The doorman holds the door open as you jump in and head off to the restaurant.

It’s a wild ride. The driver has the rap music cranked up a bit too loud. “Do you mind?” he asks. You shake your head and hold on as your body presses back against the seat when he accelerates to beat some other cars before his lane ends. The windows are open, and the breeze is intense as he flies by the orange barriers. You don’t have time to worry about the music or your hair blowing because he slams on the brakes at the next light.

You spend the next 15 minutes holding on tight as he zigs, zags, accelerates, decelerates, and jerks your body around. You contemplate just jumping out, but before you can decide what to do, the car pulls up at the restaurant. You survived. You try to pay by credit card, but he says the machine is broken, so you give up your last $40 in cash.

How will you get back to your hotel? You’re out here in the middle of nowhere, and the only taxi you see now is the one that just dropped you off. Of course, you’re also out of cash.

Oh well, you’ll worry about all that after dinner. Time to catch up with your old friend.

Fast forward three hours.

Dinner was terrific. It was great to see your friend, and you’ve had more than enough to eat and drink.

Now it’s time to get back to the hotel.

Another taxi? Cash?

Then you remember Uber. There’s an app on your phone (iPhone and Android), and you open it up. It instantly knows where you are (using GPS built in to your phone) and shows you how far away the available cars are (in minutes). One is four minutes away, and you press the button.

Instantly, the car is on the way. You get a text telling you the driver’s name, phone number, and arrival time. Oh, it also tells you how well previous passengers rated this driver.

Moments later, the driver pulls up in a beautiful black Towncar. The system texts you as he arrives so you can wait inside until he’s at the door.

You hop up from the table, walk out the door, and your driver has the car door open, waiting for you. You tell him where you’re going, and he pulls away. Moments later, you arrive at the hotel: no wind, no rap, no jerking your body around. It was an amazingly peaceful ride.

What about paying? You’re out of cash. No worries: your driver will be paid by Uber, your credit card will automatically be charged because you created an account when you downloaded the app, and the tip is already handled. The only thing left for you to do is rate the driver when you get a chance later that evening.

Taxis are an old, heavily regulated and licensed industry, set in their ways: sometimes delivering poor service, making it difficult to pay, and doing more to meet the needs of the owners than the customers. Uber is a young upstart intending to change all that. It came out of nowhere, and it’s got funding, smart leadership, and the Internet.

Sound familiar? If not, take a look at LegalZoom and MyLLC, among others. We’re ripe for disruption, and it’s steadily happening.

You’ll pay more for a ride with Uber (now in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Boston, and Chicago), and you’ll be glad you did. Things like that little text telling you that your car just pulled up are fantastic (and cost nothing to deliver except for some creativity). The service is kicking the crap out of the taxicabs, and the taxi drivers are largely oblivious to what’s happening.

Are you oblivious?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Lawyers Are Like Taxis

Those of us who run firms tend to think of attorney compensation as just another piece of the mix. It’s something we’ve got to figure out so the top line and the bottom line match. We need a program that treats everyone fairly, incentivizes the right behavior, and keeps the good lawyers from going away. It’s basically a math problem with some psychology mixed in.

It’s not a big deal to us. We play with it in our minds all the time.

But—and this is a big but—attorney compensation is a really, really, really big deal to the attorneys.

It’s the whole game to them.

You can’t make a casual reference to changing the attorney compensation system without setting off alarms in the big brains of your lawyers.

You’re stepping into a field of land mines when you bring up the how, whys, and how much of attorney compensation in front of the attorneys.

Tread very, very carefully.

In fact, I’d suggest you keep your mouth shut about attorney compensation entirely until you have a need to talk about it.

If you’re toying with changes, keep them to yourself until you have a plan. If you’ve read about something new and interesting on this front, don’t talk about it. Just keep all of your attorney pay ideas in a lockbox until you have a specific, detailed plan for changes and a more detailed plan on how you’re going to roll out the changes and sell them to those involved.

When you start talking about their pay, they go berserk. They’re change resistant in the first place, and their pay is the way they keep score. It’s their barometer of their well-being and performance. When you talk about changing it, you create an environment of instability. They need to know that all is well in the world, and knowing that you’re even thinking about changing their pay makes them queasy.

Of course, when you make compensation plan changes, you’re trying to secure the long-term viability of the firm, grow personal income for the attorneys, and create a win-win system. I know you’re being fair and reasonable. Your attorneys won’t see it that way. They’ll perceive your ideas as being hostile, threatening, and undermining their security. Your good intentions and motivations will not be apparent to your attorneys.

Be careful on this topic. Don’t treat it casually. Don’t think out loud. This is the most dangerous zone you’ll walk through. Treat it with the respect it deserves.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Attorney Salary Is the Third Rail

He sits down across from you at the initial consultation and tells you “he’s not paying one penny.”

She has called the office five times to ask questions PRIOR to her initial consultation, which was scheduled YESTERDAY.

He’s suing his former employer and his neighbor, and now he’s getting a divorce. He’s explaining to you why EVERYONE else is wrong and he’s right.

She was abusive to the receptionist when she was served a regular Coke instead of a Diet Coke.

Are you going to let this person hire you and ruin your life?

Or are you going to listen to your gut and refer the prospective client out?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Don’t Let Them Hire You

Regulars here at Divorce Discourse know I’m obsessed with moving big computer files.

Why?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because there are new companies starting every week working to make it easier to move files? I find it endlessly fascinating.

Here’s a scenario: you’ve got a client who needs to send you a big file (maybe it’s a scan of the client’s recent tax returns), and it’s too big for your e-mail server to accept.

The client gets frustrated and is about to drive over to your office with the document.

Hold your horses, unhappy, frustrated client. We can make this easy for you.

How can the client send you the file?

Here’s my latest solution:

First, open a Dropbox account if you don’t already have one (it’s free). You should do that regardless of whether you need to receive a big file (it’s a seriously handy service for backing up, syncing, and transferring files).

Second, open an account at FileStork (also free). You can use your Dropbox username and password to set it up.

You’re good to go.

FileStork will give you a web address that you send to your client. The client will click on the link and upload the file. The file will then appear in your Dropbox.

You can request a single file from the client, or you can set up a permanent link for numerous uploads. It’s pretty sweet, and it works really well. I’m using it as we speak. Try it: it’s free, and it works.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Help a Client Send a Big File

I make phone calls all day long. No one I call ever answers. I leave voicemail after voicemail, and I wait for a call back. I’m good with that system. That’s what I expect.

In fact, I don’t really start to wonder about the call again for a day or two. I don’t think about when the call will come until I spot it again on my task list. Usually, the fact that I’ve left a voicemail completely slips my mind.

I’ve had some embarrassing situations where the call has finally been returned, and I can’t recall why I placed the call in the first place.

I’m different, however, from our client. So are you.

We make phone calls for a living, and we’re not all that emotionally attached to getting a response. We’ll hear when we hear, and then we’ll take the next step.

To us, phone calls are just phone calls; it’s what we do.

To our clients, phone calls are something very different. For clients, phone calls represent major life events. They determine where the children will live, how much money they will have, and whether they will live in the house or away in an apartment somewhere. The phone calls feel like life and death events to our clients.

Life and death can’t wait on you to get back from lunch, back from the courthouse, or back from vacation. Life and death means NOW. Life and death requires a response. Life and death does not accept that this isn’t that big a deal to you or other lawyers—after all, it’s life and death.

We work for them, and they get to decide what matters. You’re right; they’re wrong. So what? They get to decide what matters.

Sure, you can set them straight, you can tell them how it’s going to be, and you can lower expectations.

But in the end, they all agree that phone calls are life and death, whether we like it or not.

Return the call  first and let other things wait. You’re not going to win this one. It’s life and death.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Phone Calls Aren’t Phone Calls to Clients

Some firms are still blocking social media. They have their computer folks block Twitter and Facebook along with some other sites. They pay for hardware and software filters that keep users from accessing these accounts.

They do it because they’re worried that employees won’t be productive if faced with the distraction of social media. They’re also worried that employees will do something stupid via social media and embarrass the firm, or worse.

There was a time when you could bring in the IT guys and have them flip a few switches, blacklist a few sites, and bing, bang, boom everyone was back to work and got a friendly message telling them to do something more important if they typed “Facebook.com” into their keyboard.

That time has passed.

Walk around your office. Look at the computers with blocked Facebook and Twitter. What’s sitting next to them?

It’s likely that a smartphone is right there on the desk propped up next to the computer keyboard.

After all, more than one-third of all American adults have smartphones now, and the percentage in your firm is probably much higher. They’ve got Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, Nosh, etc., etc., etc. right at their fingertips. You can’t stop social media. It’s a tsunami, and it washed over us all quite some time ago. It’s game over for your ridiculous rules and policies.

What are you to do now that everyone with half a brain can get around your lame attempts to block social media access?

You need a new plan. You need a new approach. You need to think of social media differently.

Yes, social media is a distraction. So are personal phone calls, frequent bathroom breaks, and cigarette smoking. You’ve figured out ways to manage those interruptions, and you’ll figure out ways to deal with this.

An important distinction, however, between those other distractions and social media is that with the right encouragement, social media can be a blessing to your firm. It gives employees the opportunity to promote positive feelings about the firm. It gives them a megaphone to spread the word about the good work you’re doing and the people you’re helping. With the right training, encouragement, incentives, and supervision, you can turn this “distraction” into an asset the builds your business.

Stop banning. Start accepting the reality of social media, and do your best to harness the influence it brings to benefit everyone connected to your practice.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

You Can’t Block Social Media

Just for fun, I Googled “law firm embezzlement” the other day (this is how I spend my weekends).

What came up?

Last week, a Virginia attorney was convicted of embezzling at least $450,000 from the law firm where she was employed. She was grabbing the social security disability checks before the firm could deposit them in the bank.

A few months ago, a California firm manager took $500,000 by writing checks to herself. She was sentenced to four years in prison.

A paralegal in Florida was arrested (that’s her in the photo), not convicted, of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from her firm.

That’s what I found in like 10 seconds.

Appalling?

Yep.

Were these law firms victimized by their team’s incompetent slackers?

No, they’re likely good firms led by busy lawyers focusing on other things—like practicing law.

I’m a big advocate of running your practice like a business because, yep, it’s a business.

If you need a reason for systems, procedures, safeguards, management, etc., then here you go.

How can you prevent this?

First off, conduct background checks before you hire (I learned that one the hard way).

Second, institute surprise audits. Have a qualified person periodically check everything for you.

Third, stay educated on how to run a business. Don’t think of reading and learning about management as less important than reading and learning about the law. They’re both important (like maybe $500,000 important).

Finally, keep an eye out for these red flags of embezzlement and take these embezzlement prevention steps. Don’t let it happen to you.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Embezzlement Is a Law Firm’s Dirty Little Secret

“Where did you get that idea?” is a question I get asked quite a bit.

I smile knowingly and try to act like Buddha. They look at me with admiration, and I soak it all in.

But today, I’m going to tell you the truth about where I get my ideas.

Drumroll, please….

I steal them. Yep, I’m not sure that I’ve ever had a good idea of my own. But over the years, I’ve really become an expert at stealing some super ideas from some smart people.

This fall, I’m stealing them in four places. I’ve already been to one, and I’ve got three more on my list. I go to these places planning to steal the best ideas, and it works time after time.

Place one: DreamForce. I just got back last week. DreamForce was a giant (45,000 people) conference put on by the folks who run SalesForce. It was held in San Francisco. It was amazing, and I left with a ton of notes about things we’re going to do in our firm. I’m already driving my people crazy with additions to their task lists.

Next up is the 2011 World Business Forum in New York in a few weeks. I’ll be hearing from Bill Clinton, Seth Godin, Jack Welch, Patrick Lencioni, Malcolm Gladwell, and a long list of others. I plan to steal some good stuff there.

Then I’m off to the Fortune Growth Summit in Phoenix, where I’ll hear from Daniel Pink, Youngme Moon, and Bob Parsons. More good ideas to steal.

Finally, I’m going to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. This festival is a totally different deal from the other business-focused programs; however, I’ve now attended several times and come away with just as many great ideas from Jonesborough as I do from the other events.

If you’re going to steal ideas, it’s important to put yourself in target-rich environments. These places have worked for me in the past. Get your ideas from the speakers and additionally steal from those seated nearby during the program, at breaks, and at the lunches and dinners. Other attendees are often my very best source for application of the ideas I’m stealing.

Get out and about. Go somewhere where you can learn. You’ll grow from the experience, and you’ll be able to act all Buddha-like when they wonder how you dream up such good stuff.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Where to Get Good Ideas

I’m decluttering in a big way. We’ve taken no fewer than 35 carloads of stuff to Goodwill and the dump in the past month or two. It’s amazing how much crap has piled up in our home after 15 years here. Of course, some of it was stuff we moved straight into the attic when we moved in and never unpacked. The rest is just the detritus of modern existence.

Among other things, I’ve been getting rid of my books. Much of what I read (sorry John Grisham) really doesn’t need to be saved, and those books were easy to take to Goodwill. Some of my books are reference books that I consult periodically, and I purchased digital copies of those and took the physical volumes to the donation center. Done.

There were some books that I wanted to keep, couldn’t find offered digitally, yet felt like I needed to have a copy. A really good example is my high school yearbook.

What to do?

At about the time I started this cleaning, I came across 1DollarScan. The company scans things for—you guessed it—one dollar.

I sent the company four books as a test. It actually charges one dollar for 100 pages, so I sent four books and $13 dollars.

The books went in the mail on August 13, and the PDF files arrived a few days ago (about 25 days later). My impression is that the company didn’t really open for business until last week, so my guess is my books waited a week before actually getting opened.

The PDF arrived via e-mail as a link to the file, which I promptly downloaded. You can also choose to store the files permanently in a YouSendIt folder.

Results? Terrific. The PDFs look great. I’m storing them on a cloud service I use, and I sent one of them to my Kindle and it worked like a charm. I’m totally satisfied.

Be aware that 1DollarScan doesn’t return the books. The books are destroyed in the scanning process.

1DollarScan will do more than books. The company also scans documents, photographs, business cards, and greeting cards. Also, while books are $1 for 100 pages, other documents are priced differently.

1DollarScan is a great way to get rid of all that junk you’ve accumulated that you’re not really ready to make totally disappear.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Get Your Books (and Documents) Scanned Cheap

Dedicating a single person to handling incoming prospective clients is critical. I’ve long advocated that position.

Of course, if you’re big enough, you can dedicate more than one person. I recently visited a personal injury firm that had a room full of people handling incoming new client calls. Very impressive.

I’m not going to devote time today to explaining why I think you need a specialist for this task—we can talk more about that another day.

However, once you adopt my philosophy and have one person focus on this task, you’re going to find that this person won’t last in that role forever.

Intake people have a shelf life. They start to burn out, run out of gas, become irritable, and need to transfer to some other role in your firm or move on. It’s reasonable for them to burn out. It’s to be expected given the nature of listening to upset people in crisis all day long. It’s something the best people can only take for so long.

These people don’t, however, all last for the same period of time. They don’t come stamped with an expiration date. Some people burn out on the task in 9 months, and others last two or three years. How can you tell when they’re done?

Don’t expect them to come to you and say, “I’m tired of the job and want to move on.” They don’t do that. They keep working and working long after they’ve passed their prime.

Of course, you won’t want to look for burnout in the position. It’s no fun to have to remove the person or to find and train a replacement. From both an employer and an employee perspective, it’s easier to leave well enough alone and keep the existing person in the position.

Unfortunately, doing nothing results in economic damage. You’re losing out on potential clients who otherwise might have hired your firm.

Let’s do some quick math. Let’s say you are retained by 50% of your consults, and let’s say your average fee is $10,000. Let’s also say that your initial consultation fee is $500. That means that the value of the average consultation is $6,000.

Let’s say your intake person is suffering a bit as a result of burnout and loses one consult out of ten who might have come in had a fresh, energetic, and enthusiastic person been on the job. Let’s say you do 30 consults per month. Big problem!

The burned-out call screener is costing you $18,000 in revenues per month. Your reluctance to make a change is costing you $216,000 per year. Not good.

So how can you tell when it’s time for a new person?

The obvious way is to check the trend on your gross number of consults. If it’s going up, you’re good, right? Down, bad?

Not so fast. In a crazy economic climate and/or in a fast-growing firm, those numbers can be all over the place. You can’t rely on the gross consults number.

So what can you trust?

One number really reveals the health of your intake person. It’s the cancellation rate.

Look hard at the number of consults scheduled and the number of no-shows and cancellations. That rate will go up significantly when your call intake person reaches burnout. That’s when it’s time for someone new—fast.

When we hire someone for this position, we explain burnout to them. We tell our new hire that this is a position in which he or she will learn a great deal and that it will open up opportunities in other areas. We help this person understand how this position promotes rapid growth. With that kind of preparation, your candidate isn’t surprised when, one day, it’s time to move on. The key is knowing when that day comes.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Know When It’s Time for a New Intake Person

If you’re going to grow, you need to capture the knowledge of those working in your firm and pass it along to others. It’s essential.

Here’s a quick story:

Last week, we had a lawyer ask a question about the appropriate documentation needed to facilitate a particular real estate transfer. She was confused by a particular procedure used in North Carolina. She asked for help. Five of our lawyers jumped in to assist, and everyone in our firm (lawyers, paralegals, and others) benefited from the discussion that ensued.

That hasn’t always happened in our firm.

In the past, knowledge transfer has been handled mostly by on-the-job training (meaning that you ask or answer questions and give or receive advice) and in a formal program (meaning that someone in the firm teaches a class or folks go to a continuing education program).

How’s that working for most firms? Poorly. Senior lawyers complain about the endless questions (or the folks who don’t ask questions and end up screwing things up), and junior lawyers complain about the inaccessibility of senior lawyers when they need a question answered. Everyone complains about boring continuing education programs that fail to offer practical advice for dealing with real-life problems.

Some firms employ more sophisticated efforts to capture and transfer knowledge, such as wikis and other online educational approaches. Does it work? Not really, since it’s challenging to get people to contribute their knowledge and more challenging to get others to go to the repository to seek answers.

The whole knowledge transfer thing is mostly a disaster, especially in small- and medium-sized firms.

What are you to do? This is what we did that allowed that real estate discussion to benefit everyone rather than just one lawyer.

Create a social network within your firm. Think Facebook for your office. You can’t keep people off Facebook, no matter how hard you try. They love it. Create a Facebook-like environment in your firm, and bingo—you’ve got knowledge being captured and exchanged.

Here’s what you do (and this really works in even the smallest of firms). Create an account on a service like Chatter, Yammer, HipChat, or CampFire. Each of these services has free and paid options. We use Chatter now (because we use SalesForce), and we previously used Yammer (both are very good).

Get everyone set up on your account. Put every single team member on the system and open it up to virtual employees as well (if you have them).

Encourage everyone to provide frequent status updates (just like on Facebook, except work related): “I’m trying to get the initial disclosures finished in the Jones file…” Give folks the latitude to say funny things, post amusing photos, and provide links to cat photos. Give people freedom to express themselves.

Then start posting essential info on the system. New courthouse phone numbers, holiday reminders, payroll changes, etc. Make the info relevant and use the system instead of using e-mail. Encourage responses and questions.

Finally, encourage everyone to start posting their questions on the system. When someone uses the old-fashioned approach (standing over you asking questions), push the person to use the system. Then push people to start answering the questions on the system as well. Praise folks who jump in with answers, prod those who don’t, and reward the sharing of knowledge. Once you prime the pump, you’ll see increasing levels of participation. The reality is that most lawyers love telling other lawyers what they know. Generating engagement with the system won’t be much of a problem.

The system will begin to take on a life of its own. It quickly becomes the most valuable resource in the firm. Users can get quick answers, and they can search old discussions for existing answers. You’re building a repository of knowledge that becomes the lifeblood of the firm.

These internal social networks probably aren’t as much fun as Facebook, but they become lively, interesting outlets for your team. They work. They hold the attention of the users, and they achieve your objective of putting what’s in the heads of your most experienced people into the heads of everyone else.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Teach Inexperienced Lawyers So They Really Get It

There’s a space somewhere between the present and the future that contains the sweet spot for generating profits in your firm. It’s important for you to be able to identify that spot and position yourself squarely in the middle of it.

The future is not the answer.

Here’s what I mean:

If you’re living in the future (thinking about what’s coming from a marketing, technology, and management perspective), you’re ahead of the industry and likely ahead of the customers. If you’re offering services no one wants yet, and if you’re doing it in a manner customers aren’t ready to accept, then you’re going to have a really cool service offering and no sales.

The present doesn’t work so well either.

If you’re living in the present (thinking about what’s due today and how you’re going to get it done), you’re probably going to miss opportunities. We lawyers tend to be in the present or sometimes even in the past. We’re not very open to change, and we resist the future. It’s easier for us to bury our heads, avoid change, and stay right where we are.

Your customers in the present are content (although you might be losing leading-edge customers) and pleased with your offering. The problem is that one day soon, they won’t be happy. They’ll be susceptible to poaching by others offering more up-to-date services and approaches to delivering the service.

There’s a middle ground.

In either the future or the present, you’re not really where you need to be. In the future, you’re often so far ahead of the market that there aren’t any customers. There isn’t any money. It’s great for bloggers and other pundits to spend time in the future (I like it there), but their purpose isn’t really to bring you along right now. They’re plotting the future, and you need to join them when the future gets here. Sure, you might want to arrive early, but it’s too early now to jump right up there with them because you’ll go broke.

The present isn’t so great either. The problem with the present is that we’re so bogged down in the details and busy with the day-to-day that we lack the time and energy required to keep moving forward. The folks stuck in the present are still using Windows XP and justifying it by explaining that it “gets the job done.” Yep, it does, but it needs to go. It’s time to move forward. You might not want to move all the way to the future, but it’s time to move forward some.

I’m using a technology example, but my point isn’t limited to technology. I’m talking about moving beyond the present in every element of running our businesses. I’m thinking about the evolution of the law, the evolution of the tools we use, and the evolution of the approaches we take. It’s important that we stay open to change and that we keep moving.

It’s easy to come up with examples from the past. I remember firms that resisted developing a firm brochure when everyone from every industry had brochures. Then I remember the resistance to websites ever after everyone had one. Now we see it with social networks, even though almost everyone is on Facebook.

The world—our world—is moving forward all the time. We’ve got to keep one eye on the future and determine the steps to take to keep up. We don’t need to fast forward; we just need to keep moving forward.

How do you find it?

The middle ground, the profit sweet spot, varies by market. There’s not one sweet spot for every kind of practice. You’ve got to match up what you’re offering with what your market is ready and willing to accept. You need to figure out what customers want (by asking them) and figure out what they’d like if they knew it were possible (and this is harder). You’ve got to look at the competition locally and consider what colleagues in other markets are doing (ahead of you and behind you) for perspective. All of this requires that you get curious, that you engage with your peers nationally and internationally, and that you explore what’s happening in other industries.

Thankfully, it’s easier than ever to satisfy your curiosity and gather information as a result of the available technology. Today online, you can not only read about what others are doing, but you can also actually communicate with those folks with ease. You have access to those living in the future, the past, and the present with a few keystrokes. You can ask colleagues endless questions as you figure out what makes sense for your market. You can easily figure out what’s working in your area of the law, other practice areas, and other industries without leaving your desk. Of course, getting up and getting out with others is also a tremendously valuable source of intelligence.

You should always be interested in what’s coming down the road. An awareness of the future is essential. You should also be keenly aware of where you stand relative to the rest of our industry. Most importunely, you should stay very aware of what’s happening with your customers. Don’t assume that what was once good enough is good enough now. Things are changing fast, and if you blink, you’ll miss subtle shifts in your customer.

But awareness is just the first part of the equation. If you’re going to find the profit-making sweet spot and stay in it (remember, it’s always moving forward), you’ve got to have more than awareness. You’re going to need to apply what you’re learning. You’re going to need to test some of your ideas. You won’t necessarily implement every innovation you discover. You should, however, experiment with some of your discoveries. Don’t hesitate to test those things you’re finding as you learn about the future. Be open to learning something new. Be open to being incompetent with respect to something you haven’t yet had a chance to learn.

With a balance of doing the work and listening to your market in your present, being curious about the future, and experimenting with some of what you’re learning, you’ll find the sweet spot of profitability. You’ll find yourself moving forward as time goes by, and you won’t find yourself left behind—and left without profits—when the future comes.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Stay Out of the Future and Out of the Past

We used to deliver these great gift baskets to referral sources around the holidays. We enjoyed doing it, and the referral sources enjoyed getting an assortment of wine, cheeses, cookies, chocolate, and other goodies. Everyone was happy.

Then along came our state bar with new opinions interpreting our rules to prohibit certain gifts to certain people.

Ugh.

Oh well, another rule making it more likely that lawyers will lose business to non-lawyer competitors adopted in the interest of protecting consumers. Whatever.

So how can you show your appreciation for the help your referral sources have provided to you and your clients if evil gift baskets are outlawed?

One approach, and it’s a win for everyone involved, is to provide links.

Links?

Yes, a link from your website to their website is a terrific way to show your appreciation.

It’s a way for you to say thank you and help them grow their business at the same time.

Who wins from the link?

Your referral source wins because his or her site climbs in the Google rankings as a result of increased inbound links.

Your referral source wins because he or she gets new customers as a result of your link.

You win because you encourage your referral source to keep referring each time he or she sees the traffic coming from your site in a website analytics report.

You win again because your site visitors appreciate that you’ve identified helpful resources for them.

Your site visitors win because they find trusted resources who have been vetted by you, and they avoid the need to search for themselves.

On top of all that, the link is lower in calories, fat, salt, and sugar than the gift basket. It’s also cheaper, and it gives all year long rather than just at the holidays.

You see, links really are the new gift basket.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Links Are the New Gift Basket

Lawyer is in court for a client, and another client’s phone call wasn’t returned for six hours: client upset.

Lawyer is 15 minutes late for a court appearance after getting a continuance for a different client in another courtroom: client upset.

Paralegal copies a document from an old case and forgets to change the spouse’s name in the draft sent to the client for approval: client upset.

What do these three situations have in common? An upset client.

What else? A completely justifiable situation causing the upset. After all, the lawyer was tied up and couldn’t return the call faster. The lawyer was helping another client and no harm came from being 15 minutes late (in fact, she called the clerk and alerted the judge of the delay). The paralegal saved the client money by reusing an old document.

So?

The clients are still upset. The justifications won’t fix the situations.

Clients perceive each of these scenarios as the firm treating them as if they aren’t important. No one likes to feel unimportant.

How do you make your clients feel important? You set expectations, and you meet them.

You alert them of your call-back policies, and you abide by those policies (which might mean someone else makes the call).

You call them and tell them to wait outside of the courtroom and explain that you’ve made arrangements to start 15 minutes later than expected due to a situation beyond your control.

You explain that forms are used and that drafts will have mistakes (that’s why they’re called “drafts”) and why that’s a good thing.

When clients feel like things are being handled as expected, they continue to feel important. When they start to feel like someone else or something else is your priority, they feel slighted, and there’s little you can do to repair that situation.

Do everything in your power to make sure your clients feel important. There’s never a reason for them to feel that other clients are more important than they are. They want and need to know that they are your most important priority. Careful expectation management allows every client to have that same feeling.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Avoid Client Upsets

Our last webinar was a big hit with a packed house. We’re going to do it again.

Let me warn you in advance that attendance is limited to 100 participants, and the spots were all taken quickly last time. Please sign up immediately if you’d like to come, as we can’t expand the size of the group.

We’re going to talk networking at this webinar. We’ll get together at 2 PM EST on Thursday, September 8.

We’ll talk for about an hour. You’ll get lots of information, ideas, and tips. There will be time for questions. I hope to see you there.

Networking is the key to a thriving practice. It’s the cornerstone of most successful practices and, unfortunately, most of us kind of stink at doing it. Fortunately, it’s not nearly as challenging as it seems. Networking successfully is something that can, with some persistence, pay off for all of us.

If you’ve got all the connections you need and if they’re each regularly referring business to you, then skip this program. If, however, you’re not getting the referrals you’d like, then join me and we’ll figure out how to get you on track with high-value referrals that keep you booked solid.

Here’s the description of the program:

Networking is more than meeting for coffee. It’s about building productive relationships that generate business with a systematic approach. You need a plan and a philosophy that generate results. We’ll talk through an approach that works and explain exactly what you need to do to make it work for you.

Space is limited. Reserve your free webinar seat now by visiting our registration center.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Free Webinar: Networking—A Systematic Approach

There are a bunch of great things you get to do if you add a partner to your practice. You should find someone immediately and negotiate a partnership agreement so you can get things going.

Why?

Because with a partner you can:

1. Buy life or key person insurance on one another.

2. Have partner meetings instead of doing client work or marketing.

3. Buy a server since you now need to share files and communicate with one another online.

4. Debate who is using business resources for personal business.

5. Argue about who is working more.

6. Go to lunch together instead of lunching with referral sources.

7. Get close to staff members and build alliances against one another.

8. Argue over the split of profits.

9. Argue over what to buy for the firm.

10. Spend hours comparing your billables to his or her billables.

11. Complain about one another to random people.

12. Hear from others how your partner has been complaining about you.

13. Argue over where to locate the office.

14. Renegotiate the partnership agreement over and over.

15. Scream at each other in the hall while clients wait out front.

16. Go to “marriage counseling” to learn how to communicate.

17. Negotiate the dissolution.

Did I miss anything?

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

17 Reasons to Find a Partner for Your Firm

Yesterday, I had lunch with a lawyer who just switched phone systems. He made the move because his old system was getting long in the tooth and he was able to get a better deal from the new vendor.

So far, so good.

He went through an installation disaster (but we’ll save that for another day).

As we talked about the phone system, it became clear that he mostly thinks of his phone as a dial tone. He needs to be able to make a call and receive a call. That’s pretty much what he asked for, and it’s (aside from the three weeks of minimal service during the transition) mostly what he got.

He didn’t realize that his phone system could do other things for him—lots of other things. I’m guessing that he’s not alone. After all, most of us (excepting me) are more interested in practicing law than playing with phones.

So for those of you fascinated by life and work (and not by phones and other gadgets), I’ll mention some of the cool things that your new phone should do for you (and may already do if you bother to dig in and figure out what you’ve got).

1. Your phone handset should be plug and play in any Internet connection in the world. I can plug my phone into an ethernet port anywhere, it automatically makes contact with our phone service provider via the Internet, and I’m up and running. Some handsets will run over Wi-Fi and don’t require a cable.

2. You should be able to use software on your computer to make calls instead of having to use a handset (it’s called a softphone), and it should work just like your handset but be on your screen. It generally requires a headset.

3. You should be able to use your cell phone pretty much like an extension in the office. You should be able to receive calls, transfer calls to others, etc.

4. You should have your own phone number so callers can dial you directly and avoid calling the main line and pressing your extension. Everyone should have his or her own number.

5. You should have a personal fax number (since we can’t seem to kill the fax yet), and faxes should come to your e-mail box.

6. You should have voicemail.

7. Your voicemail should come to your e-mail box if you like and should be transcribed so you can read it rather than listen to it.

8. You should be able to make any changes required (e.g., changing users, replacing handsets, revising extension numbers, etc.) without having someone at the vendor do it for you. You should have a control panel that gives you control.

9. You should have 411 information and 911 emergency.

10. You should be able to forward calls, transfer calls, and place calls on park and hold. Call transfers should be done blind and with and with alerts (meaning someone tells you who’s calling or just puts the call through).

11. There should be an online log of your calls.

12. You should be able to record your calls, whether call by call or all calls.

13. You should receive and transmit caller ID.

14. You should be able to have the phone ring simultaneously at the office, at your home, and on your cell. You should also be able to make it ring sequentially from location to location (e.g., starting at your desk, then your cell, then your home).

15. You should have the ability to have more than one phone and have them all work on the same number (e.g., handset on desk, softphone on laptop, app on iPhone).

16. Your system should provide PBX-type features including a virtual receptionist (if you want) so that the main line can be answered by the system and calls can be routed appropriately.

17. You should be able to pre-arrange holiday greetings for the main line, greetings for when the office is open and closed, etc.

18. Expect voicemail greetings based on the caller. For instance, you should be able to set one greeting for family, another for clients, another for everyone else.

19. You should be able to check your voicemail online, via your e-mail box, via your phone, and from any location.

20. Conference calling (that you can actually use) and call waiting that you can understand should be included.

21. Toll-free numbers should be an option.

22. Call groups (so you can assign the main line to a number of people for backup) should be standard.

23. Music on hold should be included.

24. You should expect a pricing plan that allows for affordable lines in rooms (like conference rooms) where the phones are rarely used (since everyone uses their cell phones).

25. Expect reasonable support from the vendor with heavy support during the setup of the system (check the web for reviews of the vendors).

26. Ideally, you’ll be able to call into your system and place calls via the system rather than direct from your cell phone in order to mask your cell phone number (if that’s an issue for you).

That’s a good start. I’m sure there are other things that I should have included. The phone is our most important business tool. Obviously, you need to be able to make a call, but the phone can and should do more for you today given technological developments.

Many systems offer these features and more, and they keeping adding new bells and whistles. It’s a pretty great time to make a call.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What Should You Expect From Your Phone?

Budgets are boring. However, they are important. Our clients need to plan for their future. We need to do the same. We even need to develop budgets for our practices.

That’s where Spendful comes in. This free product helps users keep track of their money.

Spendful is a hosted product. There’s no software to download, you can plot out budgets for many months in the future, and you can export the data for use in a spreadsheet.

Spendful has real potential for helping clients do some planning. You might also want to incorporate it as a mechanism for helping clients gather their data for your use. Spendful is built for use by individuals or groups so you can easily have your client share the data with you.

Check Spendful out and see how you can work it into your practice. It’s worthy of some experimentation and testing. The site says it’ll be free forever, so you’ve got nothing to lose. Let me know if you find it useful for yourself or your clients.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Free Software for Clients to Develop Budgets

There is a pattern to marketing a professional practice. Most of us don’t notice the pattern because we’re busy doing it, and it’s tough to see things that happen over a 30-plus-year period. We don’t usually see the big picture until it’s too late.

Today, I’m going to clue you in to the pattern early so you can see what’s happening from a 10,000-foot perspective.

Here’s the normal pattern for the many attorneys in private practice:

1. Practice opens. Marketing commences (networking, advertising, media relations, etc.—different practices mix it up differently). Clients come. Happy clients leave.

2. More marketing. More clients come and leave happy. Clients tell other people about being happy with lawyer (in person, on social networks, etc.).

3. Word spreads.

4. Marketing, but less than earlier. Word continues to spread.

5. Marketing expenditures largely cease. Word-of-mouth powers practice.

That pattern can take anywhere from 5 to 30 years to play out depending on the time, energy, and money expended on marketing.

Following this pattern works for most lawyers, and the process spreads out over an entire work life. By the midpoint of the typical lawyer’s career (age 45ish), the marketing effort is down to seeing people around town and at the courthouse. These random meetings lead to lunches, speeches, etc., but the effort is minimal because the word of mouth is strong. All the mid-career lawyer needs to do is keep the word going by showing up.

This model doesn’t work, of course, if you’re not satisfied with the base you’ve built or if you’re in a hurry. If you want to keep growing (at a rate faster than word of mouth allows), then you’ll keep increasing the marketing. Otherwise, you can reduce the marketing expenditures (in time and money) and start pocketing the extra money to build your retirement plan, pay for your kid’s college, etc.

If you’re doing this right, you’re building a marketing dividend (aka “a reputation”) that you can use to keep yourself afloat.

If you’re not doing it right—if your business is struggling—then you need to figure out where you are in the pattern and rebuild from that point forward. There are shortcuts, but they don’t reap the same dividend. For example, television advertising generates clients right now. It tends not to build a reputation for the long term. It’s an expensive, short-term hit with short-term impact.

I was fortunate to see the pattern and accelerate it. We jumped off the starting block quickly and moved fast. That was a function of spending a great deal of time, energy, and money on marketing very early in the cycle. You can do the same whether you’re at the beginning or middle of your career. You can devote more resources to building word of mouth and you’ll grow faster. You can take those short-term marketing opportunities to accelerate the development of happy clients.

Ultimately, however, in family law, what you’re looking for is that dividend. You want everyone in the market to know you, like you, and trust you. You want a stellar reputation, and you want it to pay off as you sail through the back end of the pattern.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Marketing Goes Down and Revenues Go Up