June 2011

Find Amazing Employees in this Secret Spot

One of our philosophies is to keep our head count as low as possible.  We would rather outsource a variety of functions to individuals who run their own businesses than add employees who require management, benefits, paid vacation, etc. To that end, we have recently outsourced our bookkeeping function. Like nearly everything we do, we [...]

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Avoid This Practice Model at All Costs

I’ve been analyzing family law practices for a very long time. There are basically four models. Type 1: The high-end practice—fewer cases, higher fees, greater expertise. Type 2: The upper-middle-income practice—a good caseload per attorney, personal attention to each case, cases are fairly standardized with some being more complex than others (business valuations/professional practices). Type [...]

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Only Amateurs Ignore Their Costs

Last week, I ran an article about looking for ways to cut your prices in half. I asked you to consider finding ways to make that kind of cut possible over a period of five years. The concern I’m addressing is the change in market conditions resulting in lowered demand and increased supply. My contention [...]

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Six Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me

I’ve learned so many lessons from trial and error—mostly error. It’s not much fun to learn this way, but the lessons stick. Here are a few of them. 1. It’s all in the statutes. Well, it’s not all in the statutes, but most of it’s right there, especially if you read the annotations. I had [...]

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My Mobile Toolkit

I’m away from the office for five weeks. I guess I really should say I’m away from the home office, as we don’t actually have desks in our office spaces since we’ve converted to a conference-room-only layout. I’m working from coffee shops when I need Internet service and from a house up in the mountains of North [...]

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Who Is to Blame for the Unhappy Client?

We survey our clients when we’re finished working with them. We use a single question that provides a score of between 0 and 10. We factor the score into our compensation plan for our attorneys. When an upset client gives us a bad score, we sometimes have an upset attorney complaining about the client and [...]

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What If You Have to Cut Your Fees by Half?

For a moment, set aside your ideas about what’s going to happen with the economy and pricing. Allow yourself to believe that I’m right about one thing. You can resume your existence in your own reality very soon. Here’s the thing: Five years from now, you’ll be charging one-half of what you’re charging now for [...]

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Note from a Client about Trust

I called you, and you took two days to call me back. I went a little nuts when you called back. I was angry that it took you so long to call. Yes, you were busy. You had a good excuse for taking so long. Why did I lose it? Why did I leave you 8 [...]

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