You need a new website (or maybe it’s your first website), and there are a gazillion options.

First off, depending on how busy you are at this point, you might want to consider building it yourself. It’s not rocket science to build a simple site or blog. I really like SquareSpace. The site offers an awesome interface, cool premade designs, and an incredibly reasonable price. It is a soup-to-nuts solution. It’s worth considering.

If, however, you’re committed to hiring someone to do the work for you, then these tips should help you pick the right someone:

1. Don’t hire someone who specializes in law firm websites. Your site will end up looking like the sites of all the other lawyers. Plus, lawyers generally hire fairly lame vendors, so you won’t be getting the latest and greatest technology or design for your site. Companies selling to lawyers don’t have to be cutting-edge to compete, so they tend to languish way behind the firms doing work in more progressive industries.

2. Hire someone with experience. You don’t want to be the client providing on-the-job training. Make sure the company has been doing exactly what you need for other clients. It should have pertinent experience. If you want a blog, then make sure the company has done blogs. If you want a forum or video or whatever, then make sure it’s done that specific kind of work before.

3. Take a good look at the company’s website. If it’s anything less than excellent, then walk away. Don’t buy the “Cobbler’s children have no shoes” crap. If the company builds good sites, then its site should be outstanding.

4. Look at the work the company has done for others. Dig in and examine it carefully. Don’t skim the homepage and move on. Click around. See whether the sites the company has built are achieving business objectives. If the site has a forum, see whether it’s getting participation. Examine every element of what the company has built and see whether it’s working.

5. Call former clients. Have conversations with the people directly involved in the construction of the site. See whether it was finished on time and on budget. Ask whether the designers provided creative ideas. Ask how the working relationship progressed. Ask whether they would use the firm again. If they’re not using the firm now, ask why.

6. Figure out what team you’re getting. Is the salesperson going to work on your project or sell it to you and disappear? Who will actually do the work? Have you met the people you’ll be dealing with as you move forward?

7. Understand the company’s system for site building. Find out how it approaches building a site. Does it have a systematic approach it can explain to you now? Make notes when the salesperson explains the system and then ask the designer about the system and see how the answers match up. You’ll quickly find out whether there’s a system or a bullshit sales pitch.

8. Find out who owns the code Make sure the contract provides that you’ll own the code and the design. Don’t pay for the construction of a site that you’re actually just renting. Make sure you can leave the web design company and take your site with you.

9. Make sure the price is the price. Check on change orders, add-ons, etc. Find out what you’ll pay for the site over the course of 24 months. Don’t assume that everything is included in the first number you hear. Figure out what you’ll really be paying for the entirety of the project so you can compare apples to apples.

10. Make sure the company works with WordPress. There are lots of content management systems on the market, but I have a strong preference for WordPress. This site and all of our other sites are built on WordPress, and it’s a solid platform with a huge industry built around it. When we need help with our site, it’s easy for us to find excellent assistance. Make sure they have experience building sites on WordPress, and you’ll buy yourself lots of flexibility when you decide to make changes to the site.

Building a website can be an exciting activity. It feels good when you have a site that highlights the advantages of working with you. The process of creating the site forces you to focus on the good things you do for clients. If you work with the right web design company, you’ll enjoy the process and get more than just a website out of the work. Choose the firm carefully, and the end result will achieve your goals and grow your business.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

10 Tips for Choosing a Web Design Company

“I’ve got one quick question,” she pleaded into the phone. “I just need a little advice,” she went on.

Another caller said, “I’ve been looking at your website, and I’m impressed. I was hoping you could give me some advice over the phone.”

They want free consultations. They want advice without paying for it. They’re in a difficult situation, and they need help.

How do you feel when that happens? When it happens to you, I’m guessing that you want to help. You have what the caller needs, and you’re anxious to assist. However, you hesitate because you’ve got mouths to feed: yours and maybe your kids. On top of food, you have student debt to pay and a payroll to meet. That’s why you hesitate to give out free advice.

Of course, you would never be like that caller. You would never call a lawyer expecting free advice, right? You know better.

Well, here’s a little reality check.

Those quotes I started with aren’t from prospective clients seeking legal advice.

They’re from lawyers calling me seeking marketing, management, and technology advice. They want help selling their services, making technology decisions, developing compensation plans, and figuring out how to build website traffic.

I get requests every single day for free advice from lawyers.

You’d think they’d know better, wouldn’t you?

I’ve reached a point where I pretty quickly turn the conversation to my initial consultation fee and hourly and daily rates for my advisory services. I explain how I handle these calls and how I can help.

That puts an abrupt end to many of these calls. “Oh…I see. Ah…thanks,” they say as they hang up. That’s the last I hear from many of them.

Would I like to help everyone who calls? Sure. Why don’t I? You know the drill: mouths to feed…

Is the advice you give your clients worth what you’re charging? Do you save your clients time and money? Do you add value to their lives? Yes, yes, and yes: you deserve to get paid.

What about me? Am I able to help, add value, increase profits, etc.? You bet: I’m able to do all of the above using strategies and tactics I’ve tested for 25 years. My stuff works, just like yours.

Free consultation? Not so much.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What to Say When They Ask for Free Advice

You’re busy. You’ve got clients calling at all hours and deadlines you’ve got to meet.

You’re also reading articles here and on other sites about the importance of social media. You feel pressure to get involved with Facebook and Twitter.

You’ve got a teenager who understands social media (and not much else as far as you can tell).

Why not hire your kid to do the social media for you?

It’s very tempting to let the teenager tweet for you, update your Facebook status, and keep up with your Facebook page.

Should you?

No.

Don’t do it.

It’s a bad idea.

Why?

Because social media is about connecting with other people. It’s about engaging with others and building relationships.

Social media is a conversation. It’s you talking to real people and those people talking to you. It’s a conversation.

The conversation between you and prospective clients or between you and referral sources needs a critical element on your side of the conversation. It needs you.

Without you, your social media participation isn’t going to work. It’s a seriously bad idea that’s likely to cause you more harm than good.

If you don’t have time for social media, then don’t do it. Don’t worry about it. Just let it go and do what you need to do.

You’re better off skipping social media than delegating it to someone else. Delegating social media is like delegating your attendance at a family reunion. It’s not going to work.

Social media isn’t for everyone. It’s not part of every marketing plan. Your practice can succeed without social media if you generate business in other ways.

If you’re going to get involved in Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms, then do it yourself. If you’re not going to do it yourself, then just don’t do it.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Delegate Social Media to a Teenager?

We have experimented with a variety of compensation systems for our attorneys over the years.

We designed each system with the objective of (1) keeping the lawyers happy and (2) increasing profits.

We’ve tried straight salary.

We’ve tried salary plus bonuses based on a variety of objective factors.

We’ve tried salary plus bonuses based on a subjective decision by management.

We’ve tried formulas tied to revenues and origination credits.

We’ve tried salary plus commissions for originating cases and/or generating billable revenues.

We’ve tried all of the above with adjustments for uncollected billings.

We’ve tried a variety of other approaches based on all of the above.

What works?

Our experience is that simpler is always better. It’s impossible to change behavior when people don’t understand the compensation system. It’s shockingly easy for a compensation system to get confusing when work and life get busy. You’ve got to make the system really, really simple if you want your people to respond to it.

Is your system overly complicated?

Apply my “one breath” test. If you can explain the system without taking a breath, then you’re good to go. If not, then go back to the drawing board. Make it really, really simple.

Example: “You’ll be paid $100,000 per year.” That’s one breath.

Example: “You’ll be paid $50,000 plus 10 percent of your collected revenues.” That’s one breath.

Example: “You’ll be paid 20 percent of your collected revenues plus 10 percent if you originated the case.” One breath, but it’s getting close.

Keep it simple, and you’ll see results. Make it complicated, and you’ll get the same old behavior you were trying to change.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Complicated Compensation Systems Don’t Work

“I’ve told my staff to stop scheduling consults because we’re so busy.”

That’s what a lawyer said to me, expecting me to be excited for him.

Of course, I smiled and acted impressed.

All the while, I was thinking, “Why aren’t you raising your prices?”

If you’re booked solid, then it’s time to increase your fee, whether that means increasing your fixed fee, your hourly rate, or your retainer.

You don’t want to be 100 percent booked unless you’re doing it while maxed out on price.

Sure, we’re professionals, but we’re also running a business. Either increase your capacity or increase your price. Don’t turn business away.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

When Should You Raise Your Prices?

There are lots of things you can put on the back burner in your practice. In fact, most things need to go on the back burner sometimes in order to focus on something critical.

For instance, when you’ve got a two-week trial that’s going to require your full attention, you’re forced to let everything slip. You may run out of office supplies, miss a deadline on renewing the credit line, or fail to address your paralegal’s request for a raise. It can all wait while you spend night and day getting through the trial.

However, one thing can’t wait. If you put it on the back burner, you won’t have to worry about the two-week trial, paralegals, office supplies, or credit lines. In fact, if you put this on the back burner, then you won’t have to worry about any of it.

What’s the one thing?

Marketing.

You’ve got to keep the marketing going if you’re going to stay in business. Marketing is the lifeblood of a practice. If you fail to drive new business in through the front door, you won’t have to worry about the back door. You won’t have a door anymore.

Does that mean you’ve got to take a break from the two-week trial and take someone to lunch?

No, but it does mean you should be thinking about connecting with other lawyers you bump into at the courthouse while you’re at the trial. This is a great time to schedule some lunches with attorneys in other practice areas.

The trial is a great time to build your relationships with clerks who are constantly being asked about lawyers by prospective clients.

The trial is a great time to pop in on other judges and say hello and renew your relationship. It’s an excellent time to connect with your expert witnesses who are also great referral sources (mental health professionals, accountants, actuaries, vocational experts, etc.). Helping your experts feel comfortable and confident will generate referrals from them far more effectively than a Christmas card or gift basket.

The trial is also a time when your marketing systems should be taking care of themselves to keep your practice growing. You should be comforted in knowing that your website is humming along, your blog is posting new content (written in advance), and your email auto-responder sequence is pumping out information. Of course, your YouTube channel is being watched and your podcasts are being downloaded. All of that requires that you pay attention to those issues when you’re not tied up in trial.

Marketing requires a portion of your attention—constantly—or you’ll slip into serious trouble. Build systems that allow you the flexibility to be away for trial with the confidence that things are working as they should to grow your business. Develop habits that allow your presence to serve as an attractor of clients. Be friendly, be respectful, and do an amazing job in front of that gallery of prospective clients as you argue your case. Keep marketing on the front burner, and you’ll have endless opportunities to do excellent work for your clients.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

You’re in Trouble When You Let This Slip

“She seemed perfectly nice. I liked her, but something didn’t feel right,” said our new client, referring to the lawyer from another firm that she’d met for a free consultation.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I couldn’t understand why she met with me for free. The good lawyers all charge for their consultations,” she explained. “I need the best, and I figured she probably wasn’t it,” she went on.

As I probed a bit more, I discovered that the free lawyer had given some good advice. She helped the client feel better and gave her some information she needed.

However, the free lawyer didn’t get the client. She didn’t get paid for her time in the consultation. She got nothing, and it was all because the client, a woman of means, didn’t trust the lawyer giving away her expertise for free. She didn’t trust her specifically because the advice was free.

Lots of people decide how good you are based on what you charge. For many of us, free is worth exactly what it costs.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How That Free Consult Cost You the Client

I spent the day last week talking with a group of lawyers about creative marketing ideas. We covered all sorts of progressive, aggressive approaches to generating new business employing the latest technology and ideas. Unfortunately, these group members were suffering from a problem. We all have the same disorder. We suffer from Networking Avoidance Disorder (N.A.D.).

I figured it out when, during one of the rare lulls in the conversation, the topic of networking came up.

Some asked how often each of us took someone out to lunch or coffee to build a referral relationship.

Silence engulfed the room. Eyes shifted toward the floor. This group suffers from N.A.D.

Of course, a few members of the group do regular networking lunches. They’ve built a thriving practice based on referrals.

However, the others said that they don’t do lunch often. They know they should, but they don’t.

These non-networking lawyers are avoiding networking to their detriment. They’re taking the easy way out by focusing on technology, advertising, and other non-networking approaches to generating business.

Why won’t they network? Because N.A.D. is a horrible and disabling affliction.

I think that deep down, we avoid networking due to fear of rejection. It’s like dating. We don’t want to ask and get turned down. We avoid pain, and networking has the potential (mostly imagined) to be painful.

So why not accept who we are and use these non-networking approaches to marketing? Why not just build a great website, run some pay-per-click ads, and hope for the best?

Because networking has the highest return on investment of any marketing approach. We can spend an hour or two and begin a relationship that generates a dozen or more referrals each year. With a bit of follow-up, those referrals can continue for decades. There isn’t another approach that has such a high payoff for such a low price.

If you’ve got N.A.D., then it’s time for treatment. It’s time for a cure. You can’t afford to allow N.A.D. to control your life.

My experience is that the cure comes one day at a time. It starts with a phone call placed early in the day inviting a friendly lawyer to lunch. The call goes well, and the positive reinforcement is the key to the cure. The next day you place another call and schedule another lunch.

The next thing you know, you’re going to lunches several days a week, and the lunches turn out to be fun. You’re on your way to recovery.

Suddenly, referrals start to call your office, and some of those referrals become clients. More and more positive reinforcement is the cure.

As your practice grows, you’ve got to keep placing those calls and scheduling those lunches. The calls are the key to maintaining your treatment so that you don’t relapse into N.A.D.

You can do it: place those calls, and Networking Avoidance Disorder can be a part of your past.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Do You Suffer from Networking Avoidance Disorder?

Some lawyers have difficulty getting their clients to respond to client surveys. They send out forms, and they get very few responses.

What can you do to get nearly every client to give you the feedback you’re seeking?

Should you send gifts like a Starbucks gift card? Should you offer a discount on the next bill? Should you offer to babysit their kids if they’ll fill out your form?

None of that is necessary.

Here’s what we do—and it works.

We don’t send a form.

We call.

And when we call, we explain that we have just one question and that it will only take a minute to answer the single question.

They all agree to proceed.

We ask the single question, and we let them talk. Usually, they have more than a single answer. They like to elaborate. We get it all down.

The key to getting responses is (1) to call, don’t write, and (2) to keep it short.

Take that simple approach and you’ll get what you need, and you can keep the Starbucks cards for yourself.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Do You Get Your Clients to Respond to Surveys?

We’ve been messing around with our LinkedIn company page for Rosen Law Firm.

I don’t claim to be an expert on the details of managing these pages. We’re constantly struggling to keep up with the changes made by sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, and maintaining our pages is time consuming and sometimes complicated.

In working on our LinkedIn page this week, we came across something interesting and a little scary.

We had never modified our page previously. This was our first effort to clean it up and customize it.

What we found is that, by default, every employee of our firm was designated as an administrator of the page. Anyone who has ever claimed to work for our firm in his or her LinkedIn profile had the ability to modify the page.

Thankfully, none of these people bothered to fool around with the page, but they could have if they had tried. A disgruntled employee could have wreaked havoc by modifying the page in some offensive way.

It took all of two seconds to change the settings on the page and designate a few key employees as administrators. It’s easy to make the change.

You should go ahead and claim your page and lock it down so that only authorized employees have control. LinkedIn is a popular and important network, and you wouldn’t want to lose control of your presence on the site.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Your LinkedIn Company Page May Be Vulnerable to Attack

A recurring theme on this site is “how bad I am at…,” and I’ve got another example of one of the many things at which I suck.

This one?

I frequently fail at communicating to our team the reasons for my decisions.

I do things without telling anyone why.

That leaves people scratching their heads. Actually, if I’m lucky, they’re just scratching their heads. Realistically, they’re left angry and unhappy. They’re confused, and they aren’t sure what I’m doing or why.

Angry, unhappy, and confused people aren’t very effective at implementing my directives.

You’d think I’d have figured this out by now, given that I’ve been doing this for more than twenty years.

Alas, I still struggle with telling people why I’m doing what I’m doing.

Here’s the deal: we make decisions, and we want our team to take action in accordance with our plans. We want to see results, and we want to see them now.

However, it’s tough for them to execute on a plan when they don’t really understand what it’s all about. We all need to know what we’re supposed to do, but we also need to know why. Why? Because things are never as simple as they seem. Invariably, following directions requires some improvisation. We can’t improvise if we don’t understand the rationale for the plan.

Recently, I increased our initial consult fee. As you might expect, increasing the fee resulted in a decrease in consultations (the demand curve, right?). The lawyers experienced the reduced number of consultations as a bad sign. In fact, I expected fewer consultations but better prospects. I got the result I was seeking, but it came at the cost of anger, unhappiness, and confusion. I’ve had to talk a few people in off the ledge.

What should I have done differently?

I should have talked through the rationale for my decision. I should have explained what I was doing and why instead of just doing it. I made a critical mistake, and I paid the price by having to deal with the fallout.

Our people need to understand what’s happening and why. It’s disrespectful to our people when we fail to adequately communicate and explain our reasoning. I plead guilty.

Learn from my experience. Communicate your reasons for every action, whether you have 100 team members or just one. Communicate, overcommunicate, and then communicate some more. That’s a cornerstone of effective leadership, and it will get you the results you’re hoping to achieve.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Decisions Require Explanation

We’d all like to know how our clients feel about our service. I find universal agreement on that idea.

Many lawyers survey their clients to find out what they’re thinking about their experience with the law firm.

However, some lawyers hesitate. They’d like to do the surveys, but they’re afraid of the responses. They don’t want to hear bad news.

Relax. You’re not going to get bad news.

You’re going to hear some good stuff. You’re going to gain some insights about how you can go from good to great. You’ll like the feedback.

How do I know?

I know because the upset people usually don’t need a survey in order to express their vexation. They’ve already voiced their concerns. They’re the ones yelling and screaming at you and your staff.

The upset people don’t hold back: they call, they e-mail, and they send nasty, certified letters. You already know what those folks have to say.

The other people—the majority of your clients—have thoughts that will help you grow and improve your practice.

Go ahead and ask them what they think. You’ll be happy you did.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Are You Afraid to Survey Your Clients?

Let’s do something today that makes a big difference when it comes to attracting clients.

It’s just one little thing.

It’s going to take you all of one minute to make the change, and it’s going to be the single thing you hear about over and over from prospective clients.

You’re going to be shocked at how many clients comment on what we’re about to do, and you’re going to discover that it’s the reason lots of clients hire you going forward.

This one little thing is going to affect your practice, whether you’re selling legal services to consumers, businesses, or government. It’s going to make a difference to every single prospective client who reads your biography on your website, in your seminar handout, or wherever your bio shows up.

What’s the change?

You need to reveal one thing about yourself. The thing needs to be personal, it needs to be honest and true, and it needs to show you in less than a perfect light.

You need to tell people something about yourself that’s a little embarrassing. You need to share something that might make you blush.

Mention that you’re afraid of snakes (I am) or that you’re afraid of alligators (I’m afraid of those too). Mention that you were held back in the second grade or that you failed your biology class in high school and you had to go to summer school. Don’t hide your secrets; let them come out. People will love you for it. Open up a bit: tell us your secret.

But hold back a little. Don’t tell them that you killed a hobo last night. Don’t tell them that you just got off the psychiatric unit. Don’t tell them that you can’t get through the day without heroin. You can go too far. If you’re not sure what’s appropriate, then e-mail me and I’ll tell you whether it’s going to work.

You’ve got to help people understand that you’re human, that you’re real, and that you’re not perfect.

If you bio reads like this: “He was the valedictorian of his high school class, went on to Yale where he graduated summa, dumma, booma, and then went on to law school at Duke,” then it’s time for a little vulnerability. How about “He was the valedictorian of his high school class, but he couldn’t get a date to the prom. His sister offered to go with him, but he decided to stay at home instead.” Harmless info, but it makes you human.

We’ve all got something we can share that will help others understand who we really are, but most of us try not to share that info. We’re making a mistake when we keep this stuff secret.

Let it out. Tell your story. Be human, and help others get a glimpse of what you’re really all about.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Make One Change to Your Bio

It’s possible that your office phone system is five years old and you’re paying for plain, old-fashioned phone service. If that’s the case, you’re probably paying more than $60 per line, per month for each business line.

Are there many lawyers who haven’t updated their phones since 2008? You bet. There are tons of lawyers so busy with practicing law that they’ve taken an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to these issues. It’s time consuming and complicated to update, so they just leave things as they are and try to keep from getting buried by client work.

If I roll back the clock to 2008 and look at my phones and Internet, I’d find a bunch of handsets wired to a central phone server in our closet. The server had never-ending issues with some kind of card crashing. We had a steady stream of visits from the repair guy.

We were paying for about 15 lines, and our bill exceeded $1,000 per month. We paid for a service contract for our phone system, and we paid for replacement parts on top of the contract.

Are you still living with a deal like that?

You don’t have to. If you’ve been neglecting your phones, it’s time to look at what’s available.

We moved to an Internet-based VOIP phone system. We no longer have a phone server (so no service contract, hardware, etc.), and our phones can be plugged into an Internet connection inside or outside of the office.

We’re paying about a third of what we were paying, and we have more features than we had before.

We don’t have a contract, so we’re free to switch providers at a moment’s notice, and our phones are consistently up and running.

The call quality is very good, but it’s totally dependent on the quality of the Internet connection we’re using. It’s terrific in our office, and it’s marginal in a coffee shop on an island off the coast of Thailand. It’s excellent from my home and most hotels.

Is our system the best system around? I don’t know. We’ve been with our provider for over a year and had great success. It keeps adding features, so we’re happy. Has something better come along since we made our move? Possibly, although my impression is that these providers are fiercely competitive and keep leapfrogging each other with more and more features.

Should you revisit your phone choices? Yes, if you haven’t changed in a few years. The technology is moving fast, and you’ll save yourself time and money if you invest some energy in exploring your options.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Is Your Phone System Ready for an Update?

Every state has its own system for selecting judges.

Some have appointments by the governor. Some have merit retention elections. Some have traditional elections, and some have hybrid systems merging the other systems into something unique.

Regardless of the particulars, the selection of judges is political.

Judges are selected by the voters or by politicians doing it on behalf of the voters.

Ultimately, in your work, it doesn’t matter how the judges are selected. Just remember that it’s a political process, and political influences determine the outcome of the process: that’s the nature of the game.

It’s helpful to your practice to be influential in the political process that determines who becomes a judge. It’s useful for you to become a player in the game and have a voice in the selection of these individuals. You need to be a part of the process and not just an onlooker or observer.

Why?

Because, no matter how much we might hope it doesn’t matter in the justice system, being involved in the process makes a difference in the way you’re treated by the system.

You’ll see the impact in small ways, like when you’re offered assistance without waiting very long when in a courtroom. You’ll see the impact in larger ways when your relationship with the court results in the judge placing greater trust in your statements than those of opposing counsel. Being engaged in the judicial selection process matters in large and small ways, and it matters to you and to your clients.

How do you get involved?

If it’s an electoral system like we have here in North Carolina, you can donate money to the candidates, volunteer for their campaigns, raise money for their committees, attend parties and fundraisers, and help the campaign in whatever way is required.

In an appointed system, you can get involved in influencing the selection. That might mean writing letters on behalf of candidates, helping in the campaign of the governor or other officials responsible for making the selections, organizing support for candidates, etc. You might even work toward placement on the committees selecting or reviewing the candidates.

If you’re new to figuring out the system in your state, then go ahead and jump in. Get involved in campaigns, start observing public meetings, and dig in and figure out the finances of politics in your area by examining public records. Talk to local political leaders and find out how you can help, and do it with your eyes and ears wide open. You’ll quickly figure out the politics of judicial selection in your jurisdiction.

Some attorneys avoid the political games involved in judicial selection. They aren’t interested, or they aren’t comfortable with the process. You should appreciate their lack of engagement because it leaves the door open for you. Jump in and get started. Being a part of this process will advance your cause and your career.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Get Involved in Judicial Selection

I hate to sound like a crazy conservative, but there’s something they say that makes sense.

They’re always talking about the wisdom that comes from being responsible for a payroll. That’s the thing they go on about when they’re promoting a business person seeking elective office.

I’m not sure whether managing a payroll is essential experience for serving in government. I’ll leave that to the pundits.

I do believe, however, that being responsible for a payroll is excellent training for advising others about running a business.

I’d suggest that you not listen to business advice coming from anyone who hasn’t been responsible for meeting payroll.

If they haven’t been on the line for making sure other people were paid, then I’m not sure how much credence I’d give to their advice.

They may have lots of information to share based on articles they’ve read or other experiences: that’s all good.

But learning—really learning—comes from putting yourself on the line. When you know you’re on the hook to a bunch of people counting on you so that they can eat and feed their children, you’re seriously in the game. Those are the people you can trust to understand the importance of your questions. They understand why it matters and what’s at stake.

Those people—the people who have real responsibility—are the people I’d go to for advice on running a business. Those people are the wise advisers you need.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Get Your Business Advice from Voices of Experience

Building a practice is tough. It’s easy to fall prey to shortcuts. Don’t let it happen to you.

Mistakes will be made: they’re unavoidable. This is hard work, and the only way to get it right is through persistent effort and experimentation. Thankfully, we learn the most from our mistakes. Those are the things we’re certain not to repeat. Mistakes can be your most valuable teacher.

While I’d hate for you to miss out on the learning experience of mistakes, I feel that it’s my duty to help you avoid a few of the biggies. These are some of the most common mistakes I see as lawyers new to practice attempt to build their practices.

Mistake #1: Thinking you can do it on the Internet.

It would be nice if we could do all the marketing required to be successful on a laptop from our bedrooms while watching television. It won’t work. Yes, the Internet is important, and you can do amazing things with blogs, websites, Facebook, and Twitter. But you’re also going to have to go out in the real world and connect with people. You’re going to have to build a network of referral sources if you’re going to see serious revenue come through the door.

Mistake #2: Building a $5,000 website.

Lawyers are still calling up website vendors and hiring them to build big, expensive sites. They use fancy designers and complex content management systems. It’s not necessary. Today, you can build a great site with a very small investment. Sites like this one are built on WordPress (a free, open-source platform) with an investment of a few hundred dollars and some sweat equity. Don’t pay the big bucks for a website.

Mistake #3: Failing to ask for help.

Building a practice is a team sport. This is the time to ask for help from friends, family, and others in your network. Reach out, and you’ll find others who are more than willing to assist you. Many of us are independent and don’t want to look weak. We keep it all to ourselves and feel like we’ve got to take care of ourselves. This isn’t the time for that kind of thinking. Tell others what you need and how challenged you are by your circumstances. Ask for and accept their offer of help.

Mistake #4: Borrowing money.

Don’t borrow money to build your practice. You probably already owe a fortune in student loans. Don’t add to that balance by accepting a loan from the bank or using credit cards. Keep your expenses low, and don’t take steps that require cash. Use your time and energy to build the practice. Don’t use borrowed money. Borrowing money is a trap that’s hard to escape, and you’ll end up working for the lender rather than yourself. Bootstrap your way to success.

Mistake #5: Taking on a partner.

Lots of lawyers bring on a partner immediately. Why? Because misery loves company—that’s why. Of course, no lawyers acknowledge that they found a partner because they were afraid and didn’t want to go it alone, but that’s usually the truth. Go it alone when it comes to ownership. You’ll cope with the fear, and you’ll only have one mouth to feed. Having a partner doesn’t achieve an economic objective, and building a practice is an economic activity. It might make sense to add someone later—usually an employee—but starting off with a partner is almost always a bad idea.

Mistake #6: Hiring a staff member immediately.

Just like adding a partner is a bad idea, so is hiring an employee. Keep it light, nimble, and cheap. If you have to work 18 hours a day to avoid hiring, then work 18 hours a day. Hold off as long as possible to make your first hire. Certainly, don’t do it at the outset. The last thing you need is the management headache and the expense of an employee when you’re scrambling to keep your head above water.

Mistake #7: Signing leases.

It’s tempting to lease office space, rent a copier, and commit to a bunch of gadgets. Don’t do it. Again, keep it cheap and flexible. Don’t make any long-term commitments until you’ve got your feet on solid financial ground. You can work around the need to make commitments by sharing space with others (if you need space), using the copier at FedEx, and patching everything else together without locking yourself into anything. Don’t make any financial commitments to anything. You’ve got time to do all that later, after you’ve got clients and a steady stream of revenue.

Put your energy into gathering clients through meeting referral sources and prospective clients. Use your free time to add to your website and blog. Use social media to build your connections. This is a time for growth of your top line. Allow your business the flexibility to change and adapt as you find clients and discover their needs. Don’t assume the things you thought at the outset will be consistent with what you discover after some time in the field. Learn as you go, and give yourself the freedom to pivot as the need arises.

Mistakes are unavoidable. You’re going to make them, no matter how hard you try. Hopefully, you can skip the mistakes I’ve mentioned here and save your energy for digging yourself out of the mistakes you discover on your own. Good luck.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Seven Practice-Building Mistakes to Avoid

Attorneys come, and attorneys go. Get used to it. It doesn’t mean much about you; it’s just the nature of the game.

It’s nice, however, to have some sense of when they’re going to leave so you can get ready. It’s economically challenging to keep a spare lawyer packed away for use on a moment’s notice, so you’ll want to be very aware of an impending resignation so you can take action to replace the disloyal bastard departing attorney.

How can you tell when attorneys are on their way out?

1. They start dressing well. Shoes are shined, their hair is done properly, and their clothes aren’t wrinkled. They look snappier than they’ve been looking.

2. They ask more computer questions than they’ve asked in the past. They’re very interested in how to email files, back up address books, etc.

3. Their door is closed more than usual.

4. Suddenly, they have no more complaints about anything. Many lawyers are incessant complainers. When they stop complaining, they’ve moved on in their heads.

5. Suddenly, they’re working hard to close out open files. They’re interested in scheduling settlement conferences or mediations or pushing things forward in court. They’re doing the things you’ve been begging them to do.

6. They take secret cell phone calls. You’ll see them grab the cell phone, tell the caller to hold on, and quickly walk out the door. Sometimes you’ll happen upon them talking on the phone in the exterior hall or outside on the street.

7. They start carrying a second cell phone. Who needs two cell phones? Someone up to no good, that’s who.

8. There are odd absences from work, and they block out specific times from their calendars for things that don’t make any sense.

9. They fail to show up for the firm’s social functions.

10. They are “checked out” at attorney meetings and just don’t have much to say (which is very odd for most lawyers).

11. They seem embarrassed or awkward when they’re forced to talk to you (which they avoid doing in the first place). They avoid eye contact with you.

12. You walk in, and they suddenly switch the screen on their computer.

13. They aren’t communicating with their legal assistant. The legal assistant doesn’t know where the lawyer is or what that event on the calendar is all about.

Eventually, you’ll develop a sixth sense about who’s happy and who isn’t—who’s staying and who’s leaving. You’ll know they’re on the way out long before they realize that’s what they’re going to do. Most lawyers aren’t well equipped to practice family law. Many of them will try it out and decide to switch fields. Others aren’t good at working for others and will need to go do their own thing. You’ll get better and better at spotting these different types of lawyers as you go along.

With practice and with an eye on these 13 signs, you’ll become an expert at knowing when it’s time to ramp up the hiring engines. You’ll have your replacement ready right about the time your lawyer gives you notice.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

13 Signs a Lawyer Is about to Quit

I went to see comedian Lewis Black tonight. He was hysterical.

He started off his show with a disclaimer.

He said, “Nothing is going to change tonight. Nothing I say is going to make any difference at all. You’re going to wake up in the same river of shit tomorrow morning that you’re in today.”

That’s a line I’d like to use at initial consultations.

Why? Because clients believe that we’re going to clean up their mistakes, fix their problems, and make them happy.

We’re not. They created their own “river of shit,” and we can’t change it. Sure, we can fix their marital status, but that’s not what’s going to make them happy. Life is far more complicated than they sometimes choose to believe.

We deliver solutions to legal problems. We don’t deliver happiness.

Lewis Black disclaimed all responsibility for making a difference. He was off the hook at that point. The ranting commenced. He was free to say what he thinks and not worry about the impact.

You can apply the same sort of disclaimer in your practice. It’s incredibly freeing, and it relieves you of a great deal of the psychological responsibility for your clients.

Tell them up front that you can’t make them less miserable. Explain that you can only resolve the legal issues. Tell them it’s up to them to make themselves happy. We don’t offer that service.

Don’t stop there. Talk about the money too. You know they’re going to be upset about the cost of the services. Deal with it now.

Explain that they’re going to spend far more money than they’d like. Tell them that you didn’t create this mess, and fixing it is going to be ridiculously expensive. Feel free to explain that their lives won’t be any better when this is over: they’ll still be miserable if that’s the choice they make. You can explain that happy people make their lives happy and that you don’t have anything to do with it.

Will they run from your office screaming? Will they hire someone else who lies to them?

No, in my experience they appreciate the honesty. They’re happy that you’re shooting straight with them. They’re more likely to hire you, not less.

Give it a try. What do you have to lose? One client? One client with wildly unrealistic expectations?

Lewis Black said it and, shockingly, not a single person in the crowd of several thousand got up and walked out. We sat there for two hours laughing so hard that it hurt.

Try it; you’ll like it. You’ll feel better. They’ll know you aren’t trying to sell them a bill of goods, and you’ll have a client with realistic expectations who knows you can only do what you can do.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Truth Will Set You Free

Some lawyers are getting screwed by their banks.

Why?

Because it never occurred to them to do otherwise.

I don’t really understand the economics of running a bank: I’m clueless. However, I have come to understand that many of them want us as clients.

They want our operating accounts and our trust accounts. They want us to open lines of credit. They want us to lease equipment through their leasing groups, and they want us to buy our office buildings with mortgages they provide. They’d like our credit card processing business, and they’d like to lease us safety deposit boxes. Of course, they also want us to refer our clients and our employees, and they want our personal business as well.

They’re willing to give you things in order to get your business. The key is figuring out how much you can get and maximizing your take by pitting one bank against another. You’ve got to get them in a bidding war for your business.

We’ve had banks offer us daily courier service to pick up deposits. They’ve given us free credit card and check machines. They’re willing to give us free checking accounts, trust accounts, and money market accounts. Of course, they can give you favorable terms for extensions of credit, and they can make their experts available to you for consultation when necessary on financial issues. What else might they give you?

You’ve got to ask and push. You’ve got to meet with more than one bank and keep asking for more. See whether they’ll throw in free credit cards, debit cards, checks, and computer services like automatic sweeps of funds to your money market accounts. Find out what kind of cash management services they offer and push on those. Negotiate discounts for everything that results in a fee: everything is negotiable. Make sure you get free online bill paying and mobile banking applications. Get them to make your personal banking free as well. Some will do your payroll, and some will provide you with free accounting software. You can even negotiate tickets to the theater, sporting events, and seats at the bank’s table at charitable events. There’s more out there for you to get. Be creative and ask for everything you can think of. They might refuse, but who cares?

Push and push and push and get them to one-up one another. See who makes the best offer. Get everything you can get. Don’t let them screw you. Go ahead and ask, and you’ll get more than you imagine.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Stop Paying the Banks…Let Them Pay You

The attorneys in our firm who are certified as specialists by the North Carolina State Bar have “Board Certified Family Law Specialist” in their signature blocks on their emails. It’s nice. It’s distinctive, and it lets the public know that they hold a special certification after undergoing testing and review by the State Bar.

The attorneys in our firm who aren’t yet certified have “Attorney at Law” under their name in the signature block.

Which title conveys higher status? Which is better?

I assumed that the “Board Certified” title would be the way to go.

I assumed that until one of our clients asked one of our specialists this question: “Are you a real lawyer?”

“Yes, why do you ask?” she responded.

“Because the other lawyers have ‘Attorney’ in their signatures and you don’t,” he explained.

Our “Specialist” went on to point out that she had been reviewed by judges and fellow attorneys, taken a test, and practiced for a prescribed number of years. She also explained that she had to take extra continuing education courses to maintain her certification.

Okay, so in that instance, the “Specialist” designation wasn’t working so well for her. That’s probably because she was dealing with an unsophisticated client, right?

Wrong. Her client is the chief executive officer of a very successful company. In his role, he regularly deals with attorneys. He employs several large firms to advise him on corporate matters. He’s a sophisticated consumer of legal services.

What’s the takeaway for our “Specialist”? She should probably include the title “Attorney” in the signature block. Moreover, she should probably stop assuming that those outside of our profession have the foggiest notion as to the meaning of our terms of art.

We think we’re cool when we get special designations and certifications. Your prospective clients might think you’re an inferior lawyer, and that’s not cool at all.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What’s the Best Title for You?

The economy is bad—that’s what they say. They’re probably right: it’s bad.

What does that mean for you?

Nothing: it means nothing at all.

Why?

Here’s the deal: you work in a market. It’s a market of a certain size. Let’s say, for instance, that there are 550 divorces (or bankruptcies, or criminal cases, or whatever) in your service area each year. Of the 550, we determine that a certain number of those cases involve lawyers. Let’s say it’s 200 total cases in which lawyers are hired on both sides. That’s 400 engagements per year for family law attorneys in your area. You with me?

Now, hypothetically, there are five lawyers in your market handling family law cases and five dabblers who have general practices. Let’s estimate that 300 of these engagements go the family law specialists. The fees in those cases amount to $3,000,000 per year in your example. On average, each specialist takes $600,000 of that revenue. In a bad year, the overall revenue drops by 20% so, on average, each specialist sees a drop in revenue to $480,000.

What if instead of your revenues going down, in a bad year, you drive them up? Could that happen? Sure, it could: you can win even when others are losing. The market can shrink while you grow.

How?

Marketing, that’s how. You’ve got to keep exerting pressure on the competition so that you don’t experience the downturn and, in fact, experience growth. I talk to lawyers every day who have spent the past four years driving revenues up by 20% per year, each year. They’re doing it while other lawyers whine and complain about the economy.

Those lawyers are networking, blogging, email marketing, advertising, etc. They decided to ignore the overall economy while working on their personal economic situation. While the market was shrinking, they were expanding. I’m certain you know of some firms where the number of attorneys and staff has grown while others stagnate or decline.

Don’t let the economic talk bring you down. Don’t believe that a down economy means anything negative for your practice. When others hunker down and slow their marketing, it’s time for you to turn on the jets and grow, grow, grow. Now is a good time to break out of the doldrums and experience the growth. Don’t let the worry about the economy turn you into a loser. Now is the time to win.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

“Today’s Economy” Is for Losers

Every lawyer I talk to wants to hire someone to help. Those who don’t have employees see hiring as the solution to all of their problems.

They’re wrong. It’s not the solution: it’s the beginning of many more problems.

I’d advise avoiding that first hire for as long as possible and then avoid it some more.

You can get the work done without hiring. Here’s how:

1. Hire a virtual assistant. You can find qualified people who will assist you with just about anything on an hourly or contract basis. There are individuals and agencies who will work for you one task at a time without an employer-employee relationship. My virtual assistant helps with my travel arrangements, returning calls, screening e-mails, etc. She’s amazing, and I only pay her when I need her.

2. Use Ruby Receptionist to answer your phone. We’ve been using this service with great success as our backup receptionist.

3. Use Earth Class Mail to open and scan your mail. You can outsource your mail service to this company, and it will do it all.

4. Use a temp service when you have a big copying or organizing project. Get on good terms with one of the agencies, and it will send you their best people.

5. Hire contract lawyers to help out with cases when you don’t have the time or expertise to take on a matter.

6. Start dictating and use SpeakWrite for transcription.

7. Get a bookkeeping service and an accountant.

8. Find some interns to help with legal research. You’ll find colleges and law schools willing to help you hook up with their students. If there’s no law school in your area, you can set up a virtual internship and work via phone and e-mail.

9. Hire a driver (or car service) so you can get work done when you’re stuck in the car.

10. Go paperless so you’re not hunting for documents. That will save you gobs of time and free you up to do other work.

11. Implement a practice management system so you’re better organized. Again, this is a huge time saver that allows you to get more done.

12. Have your voicemails transcribed by PhoneTag. You won’t have to listen, and you’ll get more done in less time.

13. Get your bank to pick up your deposits (or get a check/credit card machine) so you don’t have to drive to the bank.

14. Use a courier service for filing documents in court and making deliveries.

15. Set up an account with a mobile notary for getting client signatures notarized.

16. Hire a cleaning service to keep the office neat.

17. Contract out the maintenance of your flowers and office plants.

18. Use an executive suite instead of a private office so you’ll have a receptionist provided by someone else. The receptionist will also answer your phone.

19. Hire part-time employees. Yes, it’s hiring, but part-time generally means fewer problems.

You can only know the misery of having employees after you’ve done it. Ask any employer what I mean and, if you catch him or her in a weak moment, you’ll get a heartfelt answer of misery, agony, and disappointment. Of course, I’m not suggesting that our firm doesn’t have extraordinary employees who bring nothing but joy and happiness to our lives. That’s certainly the case in my practice, but, as you know, I’m a gifted manager who can do no wrong. You might not be as gifted, and hiring might make you miserable.

Use these 19 steps to avoid hiring for a bit longer. You’ll preserve your sanity and, once you hire someone, you’ll know how right I am.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

19 Ways to Avoid Hiring Your First Employee

“I’ll do anything except family law.”

“I don’t know how you practice family law.”

“The last thing I’d do is handle a divorce.”

“Family law is the worst.”

These are the things some other lawyers say. They’re baffled as to how we do it. They wouldn’t come near a family law case.

They don’t get it. They don’t understand.

You aren’t here for the reasons they come to the practice of law. You aren’t motivated by the things that motivate them. You aren’t interested in what interests them.

You’re different.

You’re unique.

You’re special.

You’re willing to help when the going gets tough. You’re willing to help when people reach their lowest lows. You’re willing to step into the fray when the wheels are coming off.

You’re unique in your willingness to wade into the mud, take your client’s hand, and walk her to a safe place.

They would never do what you do. You’re willing. You help. That’s what makes you matter.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Difference Between You and Them

Blogging works for me. This blog, Divorce Discourse, generates family law referrals from attorneys around the globe. It’s great.

The biggest question I get is “How do you find the time to blog?”

Today, I’ll tell you two of my secrets.

First, I write every day. It was hard in the beginning. I’d write a post and then forget for a few days. Then I’d do another one and skip a week. If you page back to the beginning, you’ll notice that I was very sporadic. Eventually, I got more consistent, but I wouldn’t write daily. Sometimes I’d write in spurts and crank out three or four articles at once and then take a break. That worked, but I’ve found that sitting down every day and writing one post each day works better for me. I get in a rhythm, and ideas keep coming to me day after day. Eventually, the writing became a habit, and I miss it if I skip a day.

Second, I dictate some of the posts using my iPhone and SpeakWrite. I usually do it in the car or while stuck waiting somewhere (often my daughter’s softball games or in traffic). If I can find an idea, I can usually dictate a post in under 10 minutes. The dictated posts are usually filled with errors, so I clean them up and post them to the site when I have another 10 minutes free. It’s much easier to edit my draft than it is to think of something to say in the first place. If I get inspired, I start dictating.

SpeakWrite, by the way, charges a penny and a half per word, so my posts usually cost about $7.00 for the transcription. This article is 402 words, so it cost $6.02.

For me, the key is to write the post when I get the idea. I used to just jot a note to myself and write it later, but it doesn’t take much more time to just dictate it in its entirety. That way, it’s mostly done and feels easier to wrap up.

The reality is that creating this blog takes lots of time, but that time is usually spent learning the lessons I pass along here. Telling the stories is easy. Learning the lessons is hard (and usually painful).

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Find Time to Blog

I’m listening to the new Madonna album now (don’t judge me!). I’m using MOG, a music service that I subscribe to. It allows me to listen to unlimited music without having to purchase the album. It costs $9.99 a month for unlimited access to something like 10 million songs.

Let’s not worry about why I’m listening to the Madonna album. I’ve always liked her: I confess it, okay. Leave me alone.

Anyway, let’s get to the point. As I listen to the new album, I’m skipping forward one song at a time. I give each song about 15 seconds before I move to the next one. Of the 12 or so songs on the album, I’ve found about three that I really like. I’m making that determination, remember, after listening for 15 seconds.

How long do website visitors give your website before clicking away? How long do you have to hook them and keep them before they go back to Google to find a different lawyer?

If you get 15 seconds, you’ve been given a gift. Realistically, you’ll likely get under three seconds. They barely give you the time it takes for the page to load and for them to find the back button on their browser.

Visiting a new website is just like listening to a new song. Visitors give you a chance—a very brief chance—to make a great impression.

Take a look at your site for three seconds and see what it says to you. If it doesn’t draw you in and hook you, then it needs something that it’s missing.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Your Website Is Like a Madonna Album

Most of us don’t get very much helpful feedback about our performance in court or otherwise. Generally, the feedback we get is the ruling from the judge on a recent hearing. We then know whether we won or lost, but we don’t know much about what worked and what didn’t.

That’s unfortunate. Feedback is the key to improving our performance.

Feedback Is Essential

It’s hard to get better if you have no idea what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.

Sometimes I envy the waitstaff in a restaurant. They perform 10 to 20 times per meal. After each performance, they get feedback in the form of a tip. They can quickly modify their behavior so that they take the steps necessary to maximize the tips. The feedback loop is tight, and the improvement in their performance is speedy.

We don’t have that opportunity. Most of the feedback we get is based on months or years of effort.

That isn’t the way it needs to be. There are things we can do to get feedback and use it to improve our performance.

Of course, getting feedback isn’t always pleasant. Some of the feedback will inevitably be negative. It might sting. It can be painful to hear about the things that aren’t working out as well as we’d like.

But feedback truly is essential if we’re going to grow.

Feedback Is Out There If You Want It

Where do you get feedback?

Judges are always an excellent source of input. Most judges I’ve known have been more than willing to give me their opinions about my performance. Of course, you’ve got to wait until the case is over so that you avoid ex parte communication issues. Once the case is over, however, you’re free to talk with the judge at length.

Ask your judge for an opportunity to sit down. Find a time that’s convenient for the judge: don’t pop in and expect the judge to have the time to talk with you. Make an appointment.

Ask the judge to critique your performance. Explain that you really want honest feedback, no matter how harsh. Explain that you know you suffer from some failings and would like to improve. Then, after you have made your request, sit back, shut your mouth, and listen. Take notes. Let the judge go on and on and take everything in. Don’t get defensive. Don’t argue with the judge. Just take notes and learn what you can from this individual.

Another source of feedback is opposing counsel. After the case is over, talk to opposing counsel about his or her opinion of your performance. I have found that more experienced attorneys are usually very willing to give me their opinions about how I did. Again, ask the question and then listen. Don’t get defensive; don’t explain things. Just listen and take it all in. Take notes and review your notes later so that you will really have an opportunity to absorb what you’ve been told.

These People Will Tell You Exactly What They Think

Another source of feedback is courtroom personnel. Talk to the clerks and the bailiffs and ask them to critique your performance. These individuals have usually listened to hundreds of lawyers doing their job. They have opinions about what works and what doesn’t. Their feedback may not always be right, but it’s worth hearing.

Finally, your client is an excellent source of feedback. I’m a big believer in surveying clients and asking for as much feedback as they’re willing to give. You’ll learn what matters to clients and what doesn’t. The things that matter to clients aren’t always the same things that matter to you, or to the judges, or to the other attorneys.

Of course, all feedback comes with a biased perspective. Each individual in the process will have different thoughts about your performance based on his or her own experiences: take it all with a grain of salt. Don’t be offended. Listen and learn. You’ll grow from the information that you’re collecting.

Ultimately, your objective is to do what the waiter does. Create a feedback loop that gives you information about how you’re doing so that you can quickly correct your performance to improve the results that you obtain for your clients. The more feedback you get, the faster you’ll improve. Keep the input coming, and the output will get better and better.

Photo credit: Glamhag

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Why Waiters Have an Advantage Over Lawyers

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed the highway people clearing out the underbrush near the exits on the highways around my house.

I always thought it looked nice when they cleared out the underbrush. It gives the area a nice, tidy look.

Today I came to understand why they’ve been doing it. Turns out the highway people aren’t that concerned with aesthetics.

It turns out that much of what they’ve been doing is intended to deter homeless people from camping out in the bushes near the exits. It’s often a wooded, unused area that’s a convenient place to live if you’re making your living by standing at the exit with a sign asking for help.

Politics and sympathy aside (we could spend days debating the plight of the homeless), it’s an interesting strategy for managing a problem. The government has eliminated the conditions that encouraged the homeless to frequent the exits seeking money. They cleared the brush and effectively cleared out the problem. They attacked the conditions and environment that facilitated the situation.

I have to admire the governmental approach, even if I don’t entirely approve of the objective. The government is getting the results it’s seeking.

Now let’s apply this approach to your practice.

Do you have an environment that allows problems to fester? Do you have conditions that result in issues recurring in your practice?

For instance, do you have people sitting in such proximity to one another that you encourage personality clashes? Could you separate them and reduce the issues?

Do you have such a mess in the file room that things get lost more often than they should? Do you have technology that’s so old that you spend a fortune on service calls? Is that happening because you and your partners can’t agree on how to work together? Is the business structure ineffective when it comes to solving problems?

Do you skimp on legal research capabilities so that your failed research results in lost cases? Do you have an open door policy keeping you from focusing, resulting in a failure to meet deadlines? What are the conditions that allow these issues to persist? Where is all that coming from? Is it about your insecurity? Is it about a partnership that should have been abandoned years ago? Is it about an owner-heavy business with too many leaders and not enough followers?

You’ve got a system perfectly designed to deliver the results you’re getting. Change the system, and you’ll change the results. Your environment is a key element of that system. What could you change in the environment that would change the outcome of your system? Move backward from the bad outcome and study the conditions that allow the existence of the underlying issues. Find the root of the problem and attack it there. Take a look at the environment and see what you can do to change your outcomes.

Is it time for you to clear out some dead underbrush? Time to cut down some weeds?

Once you figure out a way to use the brush-clearing example to improve your practice, go ahead and take a few of the extra dollars you’ve earned and donate them to WIN – Women in Need so it can help homeless women and children since they can’t camp out near my house anymore.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Does Your Environment Encourage Your Problems?

The look of your office says a lot about you. Prospective clients make quick judgments about your competence based on the look of your space.

Unless you are a very unusual lawyer, you probably don’t know much about interior decorating. In fact, if you’re one of those lawyers who thinks that you’re really good at decorating, you’re probably wrong—sorry. The reality is that the kind of brain that’s good at practicing law generally isn’t very good at decorating spaces for living and working.

We are in the midst of a complete update of our home. It’s going on the market tomorrow. We’ve been at this for many, many months.

Today, the photographs were taken for the real estate listing. The stager came in and set up the furniture and changed out some art and other accessories. She brought lots of furnishings with her and had us move out lots of things that we’ve lived with for a long time.

In the course of a few hours, she turned our house upside down. It went from being a relatively frumpy, suburban home to a showplace. The things she did with relatively inexpensive accessories are mind-boggling. This house hasn’t looked this good for a single moment of the 17 years we’ve been living here.

Of course, you can do a fair amount yourself to improve the look of your office. You can eliminate the clutter and put confidential information away so that clients won’t see something they shouldn’t see. You can even do some basic decorating. However, you probably aren’t going to make your office look really nice on your own.

You would be much better off if you brought in a professional to do the decorating in your space. I know we all think that we’re good at decorating our space. In fact, many of us believe we’re pretty good at just about everything. Unfortunately, we aren’t.

Look, you expect your clients to hire a professional to get their legal work done. You’d argue until you’re blue in the face over the value of having an attorney at your side as you go through the legal process. Why do you question the value of other professionals?

In a few minutes, a trained interior designer can do things that you can’t do no matter how hard you try. I know that I could never have changed my house in the way that the stager did.  There is absolutely no way I ever could have made things look as good as she did.

You can hire an interior designer to come to your office for a small fee, and the designer will spend a few hours with you tweaking the layout, the art, and the furnishings. The decorator can make suggestions for you on things to purchase and tell you specifically where to hang pictures and where to put art objects. Sure, you’re going to relinquish some control. You’re going to lose a little bit of your personal style. However, you’re going to make a much better impression on your clients.

The cost of the designer and the cost of any purchases you make will be more than paid for by the increase you’ll experience in business. Let’s face it, no matter how good a lawyer you are, you can’t stop prospective clients from making judgments about you based on your surroundings. A professional can make those surroundings much more professional and attractive.

Respect the training and education of others. Interior designers have been through an extensive process to learn what they need to know to do their job. Don’t hesitate: trust the designer. Hire an expert to take care of the look of your office. You’ll be glad you did.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Make a Great Impression with Your Office

Identity theft is an issue for law firms. We handle sensitive documents and data, and failing to protect that information puts our clients at risk.

I had the opportunity to interview John Sileo, an expert on these issues.

I found the interview interesting for three reasons. First, the guy has some interesting things to say. Second, the interview was sponsored by Fellows, the shredder people. This is a fascinating format for spreading the word about the company’s products. Finally, the interview format—the video professionally produced in the studio and my participation by phone—is an efficient and effective marketing approach. It worked well, and the final product is slick and useful. This approach is something you might consider for your practice.

Watch the video, and click though using this link if the embedded video doesn’t appear in your reader.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Identity Theft Plus a Novel Marketing Approach

It’s easy to blur the lines between you and your business.

It’s important that you avoid doing that.

You are not your business. Your business is a separate entity from you.

Sure, you may file one tax return depending on the form of your entity, but it’s important for you to draw a distinction between you as a person and the law firm you own. It’s important that you think about what’s good for you and what’s good for your business. Those two agendas might not always coincide.

With respect to you as an individual, you probably have goals and objectives. You may seek to build net worth, pursue interests, and maintain a particular lifestyle.

Your business, however, is an entity that should be considered separately. You’ll likely have particular objectives for the business. Maybe you seek to increase its value and sell it in its entirety or one piece at a time to new partners. Maybe your goal is to create a desirable mechanism for raising capital in the coming era of non-lawyer ownership of law firms. Maybe you’re building a business intended to survive for 100 years and provide for future generations. Maybe it’s a lifestyle business that will make your personal goals possible.

Whatever the goal is for the business, it needs to be thought about as something separate from you. When you create plans for yourself, they should be distinct from the business plans. When you create plans for the business, they should account for the long-term objectives of the business and address the goals of that entity.

You are one distinct entity; the business is another. Sure, the business may provide for you as an owner and/or employee of the business, but you should always draw a distinction between the two entities in your mind. Don’t let the two entities merge. That’s bad for you and bad for your business.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

You Are Not Your Business

Your town probably has a locally produced talk radio show of some sort or another. Of course, there are fewer and fewer of these shows as the national talk show hosts take over all the available time slots, but there are still some local shows, especially on weekends.

The shows need guests to fill the time. They’re always looking for something interesting. Going on the show will increase your visibility and help you grow your practice.

How do you get on the show?

You call the host and mention your interest. Some shows have producers who line up the guests. Some hosts manage the guests themselves. The host will tell you who you need to call. Follow up with an e-mail. Keep in touch if the host doesn’t invite you on immediately.

What will you talk about?

Ideally, the host will take calls, and you can answer questions. That’s easy, and it keeps the show flowing.

If that’s not the format, there’s always something happening that relates to your practice. Look for recent news stories (there’s always a celebrity divorce I can discuss). Check out the appellate courts for recent decisions. Legislators are always proposing something controversial that you can discuss. Worst case, you can talk about interesting scenarios that somehow relate to sex (sex always sells).

Being a guest on the show is good exposure for your practice. It’s also good practice for those moments when the national media calls about breaking news. You’ll be more comfortable in the big leagues if you’ve been practicing in the minors.

Take a few minutes and track down your local shows. Spend some time this week tuning in to the shows and get a feel for the host and the format. Then place your call and see what happens. What have you got to lose? Nothing.

Make sure the show gets recorded, either by the station or by someone on your team. Send me a link to your segment, and I’ll post it here on the site. I can’t wait to hear you on the radio.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Get on a Local Talk Radio Show

When you’re asking for money, use an approach calculated to minimize conflict and maximize results.

Asking for money is challenging for many of us. We aren’t comfortable with asking for payment on accounts or replenishment of trust accounts. We’re normally talkative to the point of annoying others, but when it comes to money, we get quiet.

You should, of course, send your client an invoice explaining fees that are due. Send it via e-mail or snail mail. That’s a reasonable approach.

However, when the bill isn’t paid, it’s time to deal with collecting the amount due.

That’s when we need to go low tech. Don’t let your hesitation about asking for money steer you toward high tech. It’s easy to put technology between you and your client in an effort to avoid a difficult conversation.

Instead of talking about an outstanding balance face-to-face or on the phone, many of us try other approaches. Email is our favorite. We shoot off a quick message (or even better, have someone else do it) and hope for a quick payment.

Email is no way to collect money. Don’t do it. It’s a mistake.

Conversations about money with clients who aren’t paying their bills need to take place one-on-one.

Asking for money tends to surface issues. Clients who are unhappy about anything respond to requests for money with negativity. You don’t want that conversation happening over email. Email is a terrible way to have an upset conversation. You need to talk to the client the old-fashioned way: you and the client connecting directly so you can hear each other.

Ideally, you’ll remind your client about fees when he or she is in the office talking with you. It’s helpful if you’re actually working for the client when you bring up the fee. The second-best approach is a phone call. You should make the call rather than delegating it to someone else. You need to be in the game when it comes to fees. Don’t hand it off to someone else. The client hasn’t forgotten to pay. The client got the bill and ignored it. You need to find out what’s going on by placing the call yourself.

Be proactive about collecting balances from your clients. Make the call. Find out what’s going on and figure out how the client is going to fulfill his or her obligation. Don’t put an email or an automated system between you and the client. Don’t bring an administrative assistant or paralegal into the process.

Make the call. Get it done. Find out what’s going on, and collect the money. That’s the approach that will minimize conflict and maximize results.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Don’t Use Tech to Collect

Prospective clients call seeking help. In many instances, you can’t do for them what they need.

For instance, they may need help in an area of the law in which you don’t practice. They might be unable to afford your services. They may not have a dispute that justifies your fees. They may have social service issues rather than legal issues. The list of things they need that fall outside of your expertise is endless. If you’ve ever answered your office phone, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Do you simply tell those folks you can’t help and say good-bye? Or do you point them in the right direction?

It’s much smarter to refer them to someone who can help. You’ll achieve three things when you make the referral. First, you’ll get them off the phone and save yourself some time. Second, you’ll leave them feeling good about you so they think of you when they have a need for your services down the road. Third, you’ll help out the person or agency to whom you made the referral.

Of course, making these referrals takes time. It involves hunting down the appropriate destination for your caller. It can take hours to locate someone who can help.

That’s why you should do it before the caller calls. You should maintain a list of referrals for every situation so that you’re ready to go before the phone rings.

Develop a list of attorney referrals for every practice area and every geographic area. Add nonprofits to the list and specify the help they provide. Find the numbers for the various legal services options and figure out whether there are lawyer referral agencies you can use. Build a good list and keep building it as you identify resources.

We keep our list on Google Docs, and we publish it to our website. Our intake person accesses the list each day and gives out numbers and website addresses all day long. She feels good about passing out the information, and it clears her line for the next call.

Build your list now and keep it current. It’s good for your callers, and it’s good for your practice.

Photo by marc falardeau

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Who Can Help When You Can’t?

Should you let your employees know what the other employees are earning? Should you let them know what you’re earning?

When it comes to salary information, there are lots of opinions about whether to “open the books” or to clamp down and keep things private. Books have been written on this topic, and the subject is fascinating.

Feel free to take whatever approach you like, but you should know one thing with absolute certainty.

What should you know?

The employees in your office who want to know how much others are earning are going to find out. They will dig and dig and dig until they know what they want to know.

No matter how hard you try to lock down payroll information, they are going to defeat you. They will get the numbers one way or another. There is nothing you can do to stop them.

I can hear you now: “I can protect the data; I’ve been protecting it for years, and they haven’t accessed the numbers.” However, you are wrong. They have figured it out, if they care, and you’ve got at least a few employees who care.

How do they do it? They come across records left on the copier, they gain access to computer files you thought were locked down, they convince someone with access to spill the beans, or they just get together and tell one another the numbers. You can’t stop it, and you’re wasting your time, energy, and money if you work hard to put up a fight.

Should you actively disseminate the information to save them time so they can get back to work?

We don’t, but you might want to think about it as an option. They’re spending a bunch of your money digging around and strategizing about how to get the info they want.

In our firm, we assume that folks are going to find out one way or another (we’ve been right for 22 years), and we prepare ourselves to defend our decisions if someone gets out of sorts over something we’ve done. We think about the justification for our decisions before we lock ourselves into some change in salary. We ask ourselves whether what we’re doing is fair, whether it will make sense to others, and whether it’s going to throw our system out of whack.

Do we get it right? Do we make good decisions? Sometimes, but realistically, we’re just doing the best we can. It’s difficult to evaluate people, and it’s difficult to assign value to their work. Priorities change, and our needs shift over time as we adjust to circumstances. Deciding how much to pay each person is tricky, and thinking through the impact of those decisions is sometimes something we’re not very good at doing. There are lots of unintended consequences of our decisions.

Be prepared, no matter what decisions you make on payroll, for all of your employees to know what you did. There’s no hiding that information. The cat is out of the bag, and it’s going to stay out of the bag forever.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Protecting Salary Information

The word is out that Google plans to penalize websites that are over-optimized. Website owners and those who sell search engine optimization services are abuzz with speculation as to what’s actually going to happen.

As usual, Google is vague in explaining what’s coming. In fact, Google is usually vague about what it’s done even after it happens.

Will your site be affected by the changes?

Probably not, unless you’ve engaged in spammy tactics to push the site up in the rankings. Doing things like buying links on link-building sites is likely to hurt you. So is paying a search engine optimization firm to spray your links across hundreds of fake blogs, social media accounts, and directories. These tactics have worked for a while and, if all goes as planned, these sites will likely drop in rank when the change kicks in.

It’s pretty easy to spot the sites likely to get shot down. You do a search on a keyword phrase and a site comes up near the top of the rankings. You click on the site, and the content stinks. Realistically, a useless site only makes it to the top of the rankings because it’s been working the system. It isn’t ranking well because it’s helpful to the searcher. That’s what Google is attempting to correct.

Should you change course? Should you take corrective action?

You should be fine if you’ve built a site based on excellent content and the links back to your site are natural and from sites that logically ought to link to your site. If, however, you’ve been doing sneaky black-hat link building by paying a service to help you, then you should expect to get slapped—soon. Is there a way to fix it now, before the algorithm change is implemented? No one knows, and Google isn’t telling. Sorry.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Google Is about to Slap Down Some Websites

She walked into the lobby, stopped at the front desk, and asked the receptionist “for a copy of my file.”

The receptionist cheerfully responded that she would get to work copying the documents immediately. The client sat patiently in the lobby and waited. About 30 minutes later, the receptionist handed the woman a complete copy of her file.

The client left with the documents. The receptionist sat back in her chair, proud of having done some work and making a client happy.

Unfortunately, a big warning sign had just been overlooked. In asking for her file, the client was sending a very loud message about her status with the firm.

The client was telling everyone involved that she was unhappy. The receptionist didn’t get the message. Unfortunately, because the receptionist missed it, no one in the firm knew that this was a client in complete and total meltdown.

For many clients, asking for a copy of the file is the equivalent of saying “I am completely unhappy with the work you’re doing.” It’s their way of saying that they’re on the verge of firing you.

These clients are asking for a copy of the file because they either (1) want to take it to a new attorney for review or (2) are considering taking action against you in one way or another. Clients don’t ask for a copy of their file for their scrapbook.

You need a system in place so that everyone responsible for the client’s satisfaction becomes aware when a file copy is requested. The red flag needs to be raised immediately. The attorneys involved in the file need to be alerted. The managing attorney and supervising attorneys need to be told at once.

Once that file has been requested, you need to shift to recovery mode. It’s time to dig in and find out what’s going on in the client’s head.

Hopefully, the file request isn’t the first you’ve heard of the unhappiness, but, in many instances, it will be the first sign of trouble. Clients are naturally reluctant to say negative things to their attorney. They need you on their side, and they are sometimes unwilling to express their dissatisfaction.

When you see that file copy request occur, jump in and figure out what’s wrong. Investigate and do what you can to solve the problem. If may be too late to fix things, but you should have a system in place that alerts you to the situation.

Don’t let a request for a copy of a file go unnoticed. Take it for what it is and deal with it. Talk to your people now and make sure everyone is alerted when the next file request comes your way.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Don’t Miss This Client Danger Sign

My brother, Alex, was here in our house the other day and touring the improvements we’ve recently made (it’s about to go on the market, so we’ve finally cleaned it up). He was looking at my small desk and asked how I managed with so little space.

“Where’s your paper, your files and folders? Where are your books?” he asked.

Of course, most of us have reams of paper in our home office spaces. We’ve got mail, bills, documents from the office, files filled with old bills, instruction manuals for gadgets and appliances, car titles, auto repair records, home maintenance receipts, old tax returns, medical bills in process to insurers, and on and on and on. We’ve got piles of paper stacked on our desks, piled on our bookshelves, and filed neatly in two drawer file cabinets.

I don’t have any of that. It’s all gone. I’ve got a clear desk with a laptop, a scanner (more about that shortly), and a few miscellaneous knickknacks. There’s no stapler, no staples, no stapler remover, no paper clips, and not much else.

I’m confident that you’ve already figured out that my home office is paperless. That scanner (a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500) has done a great job of clearing out all of the paper over the course of a year or two. It’s also played a big part in the digitization of every photo I’ve saved over the past 40 years. My desk is clean and clear.

Where is my stuff?

My personal documents live in the cloud on Evernote. I also have a local copy of everything on Evernote on my computer, and I back that up to an external drive. I’m a huge fan of Evernote, and it’s part of my daily work flow. I’ve scanned all my old tax returns, medical records, bills, correspondence, financial statements, instruction manuals (which are often downloadable), real estate records, auto records, and even papers I saved from college. They’re all available instantly on Evernote.

My work-related documents live on NetDocuments along with all the documents from everyone in the firm. We have constant access to that repository, and our clients have access to their documents as well. NetDocuments does a great job of keeping our documents safe and sound as well as available to us.

My photos live on SmugMug. Some were scanned on the ScanSnap. Others were scanned directly from the negatives by ScanCafe. Scanning directly from the negatives (or slides) provides a much higher quality image. SmugMug makes the images available to us on our laptops, TV, etc., and we keep a backup on a portable drive.

Finally, my books were scanned by 1DollarScan. The company charges $1 to scan 100 pages. It’s scanned my old yearbooks, some cookbooks, and any other publication that I cared about that wasn’t available digitally. The only paper books I’ve got right now are two advance review copies sent to me by the publishers (who are increasingly making advance copies available for e-readers).

I’ve asked every one of the vendors I deal with to stop sending me paper copies. I get all of my bank documents, credit card statements, utility bills, medical bills, etc. on the web or via email. Our mailbox rarely has anything other than junk mail in it. Cutting off the paper at the mailbox helps tremendously.

As part of the final phase of our home improvement project, we’re leaving this morning for a week in local hotel while some workers refinish our hardwood floors. I’ll pick up my laptop as I walk out the door and I’ll have all of my files, records, books, photos, and even my old high school yearbooks with me. If I need any records or documentation, I’ll have it right at my fingertips, and I won’t have to worry about anything getting disturbed at home by the comings and goings of the workers.

Paperless is easy today. It’s convenient and it’s cheap. If you’re still buried in paper, it’s time to dig out and move those piles of paper off your desk and out of your house.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Paperless Home Office

Hiring your first employee is scary. Are you ready? Should you commit to the overhead? Do you have the revenue to justify the expense?

Rodney Dowell interviewed me and Scott Stewart on the topic of hiring your first employee for his show “The Un-Billable Hour” on the Legal Talk Network.

Should the first employee be a lawyer, a paralegal, or an admin? Should you hire someone or outsource? If you’re going to go ahead and hire someone, then how should you go about doing it?

These are the questions we answer in a lively discussion on Rodney’s show. Listen to it here.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Hiring Your First Employee

Does your computer guru think the way he thinks because it’s in his best interest to think that way?

If you ask a cloud computer vendor about moving to the cloud, he’s going to tell you it’s a good idea. He’ll emphasize the ability to work remotely, the savings over maintaining servers, the economies of scale, security, backups, etc.

If you ask the local IT guy (the one who takes care of your server) about the cloud, he’s going to tell you it’s a bad idea. He’ll emphasize the loss of control of your data, the difficulties of switching systems, the challenges of customizing applications, etc.

We’re good at uncovering bias on the witness stand. We need to be equally good at understanding the biases of the vendors.

Some lawyers think of local IT consultants as objective advisers. They’re not. They have a dog in the fight, and they frequently have an interest in steering you away from a cloud-based product.

When you study your invoices for keeping your technology running smoothly, you’re going to find that a big share of your monthly outlay revolves around maintaining servers. That expense changes when you move to the cloud.

It’s important to note that the server maintenance cost doesn’t disappear. You’ll still contribute to the upkeep of servers if you transition to the cloud. However, those dollars will run though the fingers of the cloud-based system provider rather than the local guy. That makes a big difference to everyone involved.

Understanding the bias of the local IT consultant is tricky. Most of us have a long-term relationship with the firm we’ve been using. We trust our consultant.

It’s hard to believe that our IT firm would direct us away from cloud-based products to protect its pocketbook, but that’s what I see happening all the time. It’s not intentional; it’s not malicious. The firm is giving you its best advice based on what it knows and what makes it comfortable. Unfortunately, it may not be keeping up with the latest technology because, for the IT firm, the latest developments aren’t what pays the bills.

When you’re looking at changing technology, think about the bias. Examine the vendors with the same skills you use to cross-examine witnesses. Dig deep and understand the underlying motivations. There isn’t an easy and simple answer when considering a move to the cloud: every decision has its pluses and minuses. However, it’s important that you get reliable information from everyone involved and think critically about why you’re being told whatever it is that you’re hearing.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Is Your IT Consultant Biased?

Don’t let yourself get blindsided in court by someone better prepared.

Here’s the situation: you’re arguing your issue, and you wrap up your presentation. Opposing counsel responds with a case that hurts you. It’s not directly on point, but it’s analogous. It’s close enough and damaging enough that you should have known about it beforehand.

Opposing counsel was better prepared, and your client suffered because of it.

You feel bad, but you researched the issue. You had no idea this damaging case was out there. You didn’t research the matter in such a way that you’d uncover the case the opposing attorney found. It had never occurred to you to research in such a manner as to find that case. You didn’t know enough to approach the research like opposing counsel did.

Unfortunately, you didn’t know what you didn’t know, and it bit you on the ass.

The unknown is scary. You just don’t know what you don’t know, and it can keep you up in the middle of the night.

How can you minimize the risk of the unknown?

You can get back to learning. Most of us slow way down on learning when we leave law school. We know how to do the research, and we’re prepared on our particular issue, but we stop keeping up on things we don’t (we think) need to know. We stop learning the law that doesn’t apply to our particular practice and situation.

That’s dangerous. You don’t have to let this happen to you. There’s a simple approach that will largely solve the problem.

Here’s what you do in four easy steps:

1. Subscribe to a legal newspaper or other service that provides you with summaries of all the appellate decisions in your jurisdiction.

2. Read the summaries on family law (assuming you practice family law), plus read anything applicable to civil procedure and/or evidence. Skim, at a minimum, everything else.

3. Read the full text of any opinion that requires further attention.

4. Repeat each week.

If you’re willing to go one step further, I’d suggest that you write a paragraph or two about each important decision and maintain a database so you can reference this material later.

What difference does staying current make if you’re going to do the research on issues as they arise anyway?

The difference is that, in reading the opinions, you’re confronting issues that aren’t arising in your practice (at least, not yet). These opinions are forcing you to think through scenarios you haven’t considered. You’re expanding the scope of the things you know that you don’t know. You’re opening your mind to the possibility that there’s more out there that you haven’t previously considered. That’s a good thing.

With this approach, when it becomes necessary to research an issue, you’ll approach it with a broader perspective. You’ll research in ways you wouldn’t have otherwise considered. You’ll be far less likely to be surprised by a clever opposing counsel.

Start reading the decisions. Start reducing the unknown. Next time, it will be you pulling the unexpected case out of your litigation bag and leaving your opposing counsel wondering how that happened.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Four Steps to Staying Current on the Law

We’re looking for you: all of us. Sometimes we need to call, sometimes we need to have something delivered, and sometimes we want to mail you some money. You are hard to find. It’s annoying.

Most of us now use Google like we used to use the phone book. We use it to find phone numbers, street addresses, and email addresses. We type in your name and sometimes add your city or occupation.

If your name doesn’t pop up near the top of the results, we get frustrated. Now we’ve got to do more to find you than we planned. I know, I know, it’s a very First World problem, but it’s our reality.

You can pay someone in the search engine optimization field a pile of money to get your name near the top of the results for searches on your name. That’s an option that often works, but it can really get expensive.

Alternatively, you can try BrandYourself. It’s in the business of helping individuals, not businesses, rank well for their names. The site will—for free—help you manage your personal website, LinkedIn page, or a free BrandYourself profile page toward the top of the search engine results. It’s demystified the process and gives you step-by-step guidance to help you get the recognition you need. It also offers free tools to monitor your progress.

BrandYourself won’t solve every problem, and it won’t help you win the battle on competitive keywords on Google. It will, however, help you get your name up there where it belongs, and it does it at the perfect price: free.

When we come looking for you, don’t hide. Make it easy for us to find you. Try BrandYourself and see whether you move right on up to the top.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Here’s How to Get Your Name on Top of Google

Managing people is frustrating whether you’re big or you’re small. People are our biggest asset and, realistically, our biggest liability.

There are lots of approaches to management, and bookstores (remember those?) are filled with manuals on the various techniques.

I’ve tried a bunch of different ideas, and one of them has been most helpful to me. It works whether your employees are on-site (like ours used to be) or remote (as most of ours are now).

The technique? The daily report.

It’s simple, and it’s powerful. Here’s what you do:

Ask your employees, all of them, to e-mail you a daily report at the end of the day. Ask them to keep it short and sweet. Ask them to provide you with a list of the things they accomplished today. If an e-mail isn’t convenient, then let them put it on a sticky note. Keep it quick and easy.

That’s it. It’s simple, yet powerful.

You’ll get connected with what’s being done and how much progress has been achieved. Your people will become more aware of how much—or how little—they accomplished that day. You’ll know whether things are on track or coming off the rails.

Some days you’ll already know what’s going to appear in the report: you were there all day, and you were involved in the progress. Other days, you’ll be surprised because you were in court or otherwise away from the office. It will be good for you to stay in the loop.

The report works for a variety of other reasons as well. It keeps you from getting frustrated when you can’t otherwise tell whether anything is getting done. It gives you fodder for complimenting your team, and it gives you data for making judgments about salary increases, employee evaluations, etc.

Launch the daily report requirement and see what happens. If you’ve got more than a handful of employees, then you can expect one or more to fail to submit the report daily. That’s a bad sign. Those people probably need to be made available to other firms. Show them the door.

For those who comply with your request, you’ll find yourself feeling much more positive about the work getting done, and you’ll find yourself in a better position to lead and manage the direction of your practice.

Implement the daily report. You’ll be glad you did.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Management Technique: The Daily Report

I’ve been asked four times in the past 10 days about switching from one cloud-based case management system to another.

In all three instances, the lawyers are using either RocketMatter or Clio. For one reason or another, they have minor complaints about the products. In a nutshell, they’re complaining that the products aren’t set up to do things the way they like to do them. The RocketMatter users think Clio would be better, and the Clio users think RocketMatter would be better.

“Should I switch?” they all ask.

The answer is NO! Stick with what you’ve got, and make it work for you.

First off, these lawyers are on the leading edge. Most lawyers—the vast majority—aren’t using case management systems, especially not cloud-based systems. If you’re doing anything with case management, you’re ahead of the pack.

Second, you’ll always find a system with some feature that you don’t yet have: that’s a good thing. These systems leapfrog one another. One company will get a good idea and implement it, and the other will copy it quickly. Competition keeps the systems moving forward: we’ve seen it before with Westlaw and Lexis. If there’s something you’re missing, you likely won’t have to wait very long for it to come along.

Finally, switching systems is a nightmare. Converting data, training users, and taking time to pick the system all distract you from generating business and serving clients. It’s never easy to move from one system to another.

I’ve had two case management systems. We started with Lotus Notes back in the early 90s. We stuck with it for about twenty years. Now we’ve moved to Salesforce and NetDocuments. We moved because we could justify the cost of switching to the cloud, and we made a valid business case for the move. My guess is that we’ll stick with this choice for a very long time. There isn’t a good justification for switching once you’ve made the move to the cloud.

If you find yourself obsessing about cloud-based case management systems, you need to have a conversation with yourself. Ask yourself why you’re focused on the internal side of the practice. Why are you worrying about how the work gets done? That’s not where your head needs to be.

Get focused on attracting new clients and serving them with excellence so they’ll tell their friends. The case management system is like pens and paper clips: pick one brand and stick to it. Don’t worry about it after you’ve made the choice. These systems are all good and getting better all the time. They’re moving quickly to get it right, and they’ll likely deliver on their promises. Make your choice, trust your decision, and don’t look back.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Time To Switch Cloud-Based Case Management Systems?

My tendency to see what’s wrong with the world, rather than what’s right, makes me a terrible manager.

I get so focused on the stuff they screw up that I rarely notice the stuff going right.

Typical day: 35 things go right; one thing goes wrong. I can’t stop thinking about the one thing. I’m sort of a nightmare to have as a boss.

The impact of my attention on that one thing is all negative: no good comes from my focus on that thing. I can quickly take someone doing most everything right and make him or her a very unhappy camper. I get so focused on the bad stuff that I barely notice the good.

Unfortunately, that is a fairly natural tendency for many of us. We think we’re doing the right thing. We completely justify our focus. We explain that the mistakes are what get us in trouble. The mistakes are the things that get us sued for malpractice. That all makes sense to me. It just has the impact of demoralizing everyone in our employ.

You get more of what you focus on. Focus on mistakes, and you get more mistakes. Focus on what’s going right, and you get more of what goes right. I’m not sure why things work out that way, but they do. It’s the way of the world.

I find myself in constant need or reminding if I’m to stay focused on the positive. I have to tie a string around my finger, put sticky notes on my monitor, and ask people to pester me to stay focused on the successes of my team. It’s really hard for me.

If you’re struggling with this, like I am, it’s essential that we make a change.

It’s absolutely essential that we pay attention to what’s going well. We’ve got to acknowledge it, compliment it, and promote it to others. We’ve got to notice the good stuff and be the cheerleaders for the stuff that’s working.

I challenge you today to find the things going well: they’re all around you. Pay attention to them today, and let the other things drift to the back burner. Talk about what’s being done right, tell your people how pleased you are with their success, and brag to others as well. Spend the day focused on the positive, and you’ll find yourself surrounded by more positives. Keep reminding yourself to stay focused on what’s going right.

While you’re at it, do me a favor and remind me as well. I need your help to stay focused on what’s going right. I’d like to be more positive. I’m sure my folks would appreciate your help in keeping me on track.

Some of you have good ideas for staying focused on the positive. Please share your ideas in the comments below. I can use all the help I can get.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Grow Your People by Focusing on What’s Going Right

Buying ads on another attorney’s name is about to be a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct in North Carolina.

Our North Carolina State Bar has been busy recently. It has just published a proposed Formal Opinion that bars lawyers from running search engine ads targeting another lawyer’s name. It may soon adopt the opinion after the time for comment has passed.

It’s making it a violation of the rules to buy ads targeting another lawyer’s name. It’s prohibiting Lawyer X from running ads targeting searches for Lawyer Y’s name.

Unfortunately, the enforcement of rules like the one proposed may be tricky.

Here’s the scenario:

Lawyer X is trying to grow his practice. He’s running ads on Google AdWords (the little ads you see when you do a Google search). In setting up his campaign, he picks some keywords including “Raleigh Divorce Lawyer.” That’s a good search term, he assumes, to get in front of consumers searching for a lawyer in Raleigh.

His ads start running, and he begins to get some clicks and ultimately, some clients.

Then he gets some unpleasant news in the form of a grievance from the North Carolina State Bar.

The grievance, in my hypothetical scenario, was filed by one of his competitors when she noticed that a Google search for her name plus the phrase “Raleigh divorce lawyer” displayed ads for the other lawyer. For instance, if you Google search “Lee Rosen Raleigh divorce lawyer” (that’s the screenshot of the search results page above), you’re going to see my listing in the organic results, plus you’re going to see lots of ads appearing around the periphery of the page. Those ads are purchased by other lawyers.

Are those advertising lawyers targeting “Lee Rosen”? Probably not. They’re probably targeting the keyword phrase “Raleigh divorce lawyer,” but their ads come up because their phrase is attached to my name in the search. If you do a search on “Lee Rosen” alone, then you’re not going to see the ads. (You may, however, see a Morgan Stanley ad, interestingly.) However, it’s possible and indeed likely that a lawyer wouldn’t target just the lawyer’s name. The lawyer will likely target the name combined with some descriptive words. It’s cheaper to target specific phrases than broad phrases, so it’s good advertising practice to narrow the keyword phrase targeted.

Many Google searchers looking for me type my name coupled with something like “divorce lawyer” or “NC divorce lawyer.” They do that because it narrows down the results and is more likely to give them what they’re looking for. They will almost always use descriptive words when they need to find someone with a very common name.

The bottom line is that it’s really hard to tell what keywords the advertiser targeted based on the ads that appear. It’s exceedingly complicated.

As lawyers become aware of this Opinion, I suspect they’re going to check their names and see whether anyone is targeting their names. When the ads pop up, they’re going to assume their competition is violating the rules. Emotions will rule, and grievances will be filed: I predict chaos.

When regulators get involved in advertising and commercial speech, things get tricky. This is a complex issue involving significant legal and technological challenges. Be aware that regulatory authorities are reviewing these concerns and attempting to intervene in appropriate ways. Be aware that you can get caught in the crossfire.

If you’re endeavoring to grow your business using advertising on the Internet, you should pay close attention to these developments, keep ethics counsel on retainer, and stay involved in and aware of the activities of your regulators. It’s getting tricky out there: pay attention.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Is Another Lawyer Using Your Name to Get Clients?

Lunch can serve a purpose more important than getting you through until dinner.

Employee turnover is bad for business. You’ll lose clients when their cases are turned over from one attorney to another. Switching attorneys really freaks out clients in the midst of a crisis. You’ll end up losing fees and making refunds. It’s a nightmare.

Turnover hurts you in other ways as well. It damages your reputation in the legal community: people wonder why no one sticks around. It’s bad for your revenues, since you’ll spend gobs of time interviewing and training. It’s demoralizing to your team: they wonder why they should stick around since everyone else is rejecting the firm. Turnover is bad, bad, bad.

Stopping turnover is complicated. It’s especially difficult once you have a culture in which turnover is the norm. It can be tough to turn things around. It takes a long-term plan for repairing hiring and training as well as for making adjustments to the management systems and culture. All of that can take years and will likely require outside assistance.

However, there is something that you can do right now that will make a difference. You can do something different with your lunches.

Before I go too far with this, let me tell you about my lunches. I get very little time alone. Like you, I spend most of the day talking to one person or another about work-related issues. I wake up in the morning and interact with my spouse and with the two teenagers that live in my house. When I finish working, it’s back to spouse and teenagers. I’m talking to someone during pretty much every waking hour.

I like to escape for lunch. I have a restaurant I frequent regularly, and I have my regular table. I take a book, eat my sandwich, and read for about an hour. It’s terrific.

Unfortunately, my lunch hour gets booked up with referral sources and others a few times a week. It takes me forever to get through a book. I really love my lunches alone.

I mention all of that to give you some sense of how difficult it is for me to give up one more lunch, but give it up we must.

You see, your lunches can help you reduce turnover. I’d encourage you to take your team, one at a time, to lunch. Sit for an hour and talk about work, talk about your personal life, and ask lots of questions. Ask about their work, their life, their family, their pets, and whatever else comes up. Be interested in learning about them and building your relationship. Use the lunch to really get to know them.

Those lunches will go a long way toward reducing your turnover. They’ll result in employees who feel more connected to your firm and will be less likely to leave. They will create loyalty and foster an understanding of why things are the way they are. These lunches will serve you and your firm well.

Lunch meets lots of needs. Nourishing the relationship between you and your team can be one of the most valuable things you can get out of your midday meal.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Lunch Can Slow Employee Turnover

Do your website visitors think they need a lawyer or a solution to their problem?

I visited your website last night. I found lots of information about you and why you’re the best lawyer for the job.

I’m guessing that prospective clients visiting your site would be impressed. They’d think you’re the perfect lawyer for their situation—if they needed a lawyer.

Unfortunately, many of your website visitors don’t really want a lawyer unless “it gets really ugly.” They’d like to handle this inexpensively and with minimal conflict. They imagine lawyers would only make it more expensive and worse.

They don’t believe that they need a lawyer.

That “no lawyer” mind-set used to be the starting point for a few people—those do-it-yourselfers like the engineers and software guys. Now it’s more widespread. They used to walk into a store and expect a clerk to help them buy their clothing, but now they do it online without any help at all. They fill up their own gas tanks, do their own tax returns, fix their homes with parts from Home Depot, book their own vacations, serve as contractors for their additions, list their homes on the M.L.S., and buy and book their NetJets online.

They’re used to handling challenging situations without the help of others.

The new reality is that many clients now approach the problem without believing that they need a lawyer as part of the solution.

They think they need a legal document. They’ve been hearing from LegalZoom and other providers that all they need is a completed form.

You know better. You know the value of the service you deliver. You know that you can help those clients avoid unexpected consequences and economic disaster. You are thoroughly convinced of the value of your services.

The problem is that the prospective clients don’t know how important it is to hire you. They don’t understand all of the benefits you bring to them in the form of avoiding mistakes, poor planning, tax consequences, and other trip-ups. They don’t understand how you can enhance their overall situation. They don’t understand that you’ve seen situations like theirs before or that you know how to avoid unexpected scenarios.

They really believe that all they need is a form. That’s true not only of people in lower income groups, but it’s also true of people who earn substantial incomes. It’s even true of people who have previously engaged attorneys to deal with complicated legal problems. Many of them simply don’t believe that their family law matter involves the need for the kind of legal advice that you’re able to provide.

When you’re marketing your services, on your website and elsewhere, you need to slow down. Don’t jump immediately to your qualifications. Slow down and explain the need for an attorney. Explain the value you bring and the assistance you’re able to provide. People don’t care about your Georgetown degree if they don’t need what you’re selling. Help them understand that they need you.

Talk less about your qualifications and more about the need for legal services. Focus on the value that you provide to a client.

Your site should focus more on the benefit derived by a client who hires legal counsel. You need to understand that your competition is, in many instances, not the other lawyers. Your competition is your clients’ belief that they need a form and not you.

It’s important that you stop comparing yourself to other lawyers and start competing for the opportunity to help your clients solve their problem. Position yourself as the solution to the problem, not as a lawyer better than the other lawyers.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Your Competition Isn’t Your Competition

Sometimes we get so focused on the pennies that we lose track of the dollars (or even the thousands of dollars).

I’m a big advocate of fixed fees. We’ve been using them for years.

I know that fixed fees aren’t for every practice. Some lawyers can’t charge fixed fees due to the rules in their jurisdiction. Others aren’t comfortable with the concept, based on the nature of their practice.

Recently, one of our lawyers came back from a mediation freaking out about the mediator’s bill. The mediator had billed our client, as mediators usually do, on an hourly basis. That’s fine with me—I understand that it’s challenging to apply fixed fees to mediation (although I believe it can be done). The bill was a couple thousand dollars for the day (split between the parties).

The mediator then added about $25 as an expense for lunch (they had sandwiches delivered).

The client wrote a check for his share.

Our lawyer was bothered by the lunch charge, and so was the client. The lawyer didn’t like it because she felt that her client was buying her lunch, and that’s not something she would have normally let happen. The client was bothered because he was already spending a fortune, and the extra $25 didn’t help. Were they being rational? Does it matter?

The mediator recouped $25 in exchange for aggravating the lawyer who had suggested the mediator. She also annoyed the client. Smart billing practice? I think not.

We spend a bundle in time and money getting clients. For most mediators, that means wining and dining other lawyers. For the rest of us, it means building relationships with a range of professionals. When we have one of these relationships, it has a lifetime value that can be worth tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Do we want to risk that relationship for $25?

Don’t risk your referral relationships for the price of a lunch. It’s not worth it. It’s not a smart business practice. You’d pay $25 for the meal if you could convince the referral source to go to lunch with you. Don’t worry about spending it in the course of your work—it’s money well spent.

If you feel compelled to recover the cost of the sandwiches, then build it into your hourly rate or your fixed fee. Don’t add it on to the bill. Don’t give your clients or referral sources any ammunition for getting irritated. It’s not worth it.

Don’t get so focused on the pennies that you lose sight of the dollars. Don’t nickel and dime your clients.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Don’t Nickel and Dime Your Clients

I’ve watched lawyers turn to one another for advice about running their practices for as long as I can remember. They bump into an issue—like how to keep their computers running or how to market their practices—and they call another practitioner and ask for advice.

It’s the blind leading the blind.

It’s how we all end up using the same lame technology solutions and doing the same lame things to market our practices. Mostly we aren’t well trained in handling these issues, we aren’t well versed in the options for addressing them, and we usually ask one another for help.

Of course, we ask for advice about everything else as well, and our peers never hesitate to offer an opinion. It’s how we end up looking like a great big flock of sheep all following one another as we walk around in circles.

Recent example:  ”I need a new IT guy. My IT guy sucks. Who should I use?” asked one lawyer of another. “Use my guy,” the other lawyer answered. And the flock grows a bit bigger.

Why do we ask lawyers?

Why don’t we ask successful people running successful businesses? Do you think maybe they’ve got better ideas about how to run a business than the average lawyer? Do you think they’re maybe a bit smarter when it comes to operations, marketing, or sales?

For many years, I was a member of Vistage. It’s a great organization that creates small groups of business owners and chief executives who gather monthly to share advice and insights. Each member helps the other members, and you get a great diversity of advice and input to help you run your business. I was the only lawyer in my group.

Within a few months, it became quite clear to me that, no matter how smart I thought I was, these other people were much smarter than me when it came to running a business (I, of course, could crush them when it came to bullshitting on the phone). They knew things about operations that I’d never even considered. They knew things about marketing that I hadn’t even thought to wonder about. They had years and years of experience thinking about earning business when I’d been thinking about becoming and being a lawyer.

I went to them for advice, and they delivered. Their advice frequently was very different than the advice I’d been getting from lawyers. It was much better than the same old lawyer advice I’d been hearing forever. The stuff they said made sense, and it worked. Vistage was a hugely important piece of my development as a businessperson.

Once I realized what I’d been missing, I stopped asking lawyers for help on running a business. I turned to my Vistage friends. Then, I discovered another amazing treasure trove of advisors. I’d been talking to these people for years and never realized they could help.

One day, in a long settlement conference, I started talking to one of my clients about issues in my practice. He gave me some great advice. From that point on, I started asking my clients for advice. My clients? Yep, it turned out that I’d been sitting next to amazing business advisors for years and hadn’t realized it.

My clients, many of whom ran successful businesses, were happy to explain to me what they were doing to be successful. It was fairly typical that I’d sit in a mediation for 10 hours or more trying to settle their case. We had hours to kill in idle chit-chat. I turned those long, boring sessions into business discussions and learned tremendous things from clients who were running companies or playing key roles in operations, marketing, technology, or finance. They were more than happy to share the lessons they’d learned about making a business successful.

Today, my point is that you should broaden your circle of advice and information. Don’t turn to lawyers for input on non-legal issues. Find yourself some experts with practical experience dealing with your issues. Find people who have successfully managed the problem you’re addressing and ask them for help. You’re surrounded by these people, and more of them are easy to find. The world is out there running businesses and making them work. Talk to those people first.

Turn to your attorney friends when you need legal advice. Turn to your business friends when you need advice for running your business.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Where to Get the Best Business Advice

There is a range of benefits you can offer to your employees. Different firms create different bundles of benefits, and the range of options is pretty broad.

Some firms create a standard package for every employee. Some allow employees to pick and choose from a variety of benefits, putting together their own package on an employee-by-employee basis.

Benefits include traditional offerings like health, dental, vision, short- and long-term disability, and life insurance as well as retirement options like 401(K) plans and other opportunities to defer income. Some firms offer flexible spending accounts, and some provide health savings accounts. There are firms with creative benefits ranging from paid parking to carpool and bicycle-commuting reimbursements to allocations of time for flex time, family leave, and vacation packages of different varieties.

Some firms have the purchasing power to negotiate better deals than others based on the number of employees involved. Some firms have opportunities to purchase benefits through membership associations, allowing them to buy benefits usually only available to larger entities. Some firms are stuck with very limited choices.

Which employee benefits should you offer? Which benefits make a difference to your employees? Which benefits help you retain employees and keep them happy and productive?

Some will argue that younger employees care more about benefits like vacation time and less about retirement-related benefits like 401(K) matching. Some will argue that a more mature team cares more about health insurance and provisions in retirement plans that allow for loans for a kid’s college tuition. Different employees care deeply about different benefits.

It’s confusing when you try to read your employees’ minds and determine what matters to them. You’re likely to fail.

Thankfully, you don’t have to read their minds. There’s a solution at hand.

Stop worrying about what benefits they want and start asking them. Talk to your people about benefits and find out what they’re thinking. That’s the best way to make sure you’re offering a decent package that has the desired impact.

Sit down with your people and find out what their priorities are and tailor the benefits to meet the needs of the group. You’ll likely find that your people think about benefits differently than you do. That’s important to know.

At the outset of your discussion, make it clear that changing benefits is complicated. Let them know that changes can take a year as you cycle though the expiration of old plans. Let them know that tax laws affect the choices you can make and that your budget isn’t unlimited. Don’t turn the session into a shopping trip: keep it on a brainstorming level rather than allowing it to turn into a decision-making session. Don’t make any promises.

You’ll start to learn what matters to your people. Don’t argue with them; don’t explain why it’s important to plan for retirement or how critical it is to be protected from catastrophic health issues. Just listen to your people and find out what they’re thinking and how they prioritize their needs.

Once you know what matters to them, you can start the process of shifting your benefits to meet their needs. You won’t ever find affordable benefits that precisely meet the needs of every employee, but you can start and move in that direction.

As your benefits more closely match the needs of your employees, you’ll achieve the goals of increased productivity and higher employee retention. Expect a slow process with incremental change. You’ll move your purchasing in the right direction.

Don’t assume that you’ll get your benefits exactly right at some point and you’ll be finished with this issue. That’s not the nature of the game. You’ll be forever tweaking benefits. Your workforce will change. They may age, and their concerns may change. Over time, you may hire different types of people, and their needs may be different from earlier employees. Keep checking in and measuring the mood of the group. Each year, you’ll make a few more changes and stay current with the needs of your group.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Perfect Employee Benefits Package

I got an email from someone in a Texas law firm yesterday. She isn’t a lawyer—she’s an office manager.

I got curious about her based on something she said, so I went to the firm website by clicking on a link in her signature.

Once I got to the site, I quickly located the “About Us” page. That led to information about the firm and the attorneys. I couldn’t find anything about her. I hunted around and concluded that the firm had opted not to include info or pictures of anyone other than the attorneys.

Big mistake.

They’ve given this woman a title, an email address, and a phone. She’s an ambassador for the firm. She’s out and about online, and she’s communicating with me. Like it or not, she’s the face of the firm to some folks—to people like me. I was trying to find out more about her and the firm because I was curious about referring to them. When I couldn’t find what I needed, I wandered away from the site and forgot about the firm.

I lost interest, and I lost my motivation to refer.

The firm should have included a bio about the woman with some basic information. It should also have included a nice photo. Having a picture and a bit of information would have turned my anonymous emailer into a full-blown person. I would have felt more connected to the firm. I would have been more likely to remember the firm and more likely to refer when the need arises.

Additionally, by failing to include her on the site, the firm diminishes her. It makes her less important than those featured on the site. That’s a mistake—you should always seek to boost the credibility of your team by building them up and promoting them. Don’t miss out on that opportunity.

You’ve set her free in the world. She is representing you. You’ve given her some authority and responsibility. You’ve given her the tools she needs to build her network. Now, you’ve got to back her up and present her on your site. Don’t leave her off—it makes her seem small and you even smaller.

If you’re going to let your people out in public, then you’d better let the public know about your people. If you don’t, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business and generate more goodwill. Put up her picture and her bio and make it interesting. The benefits will come back to you.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Why You Should Put Your Staff on Your Website

Over my 25 years of practicing law, I’ve seen the economy change quite a bit. The biggest impact in my little world has been the price of associates. Over the years, it has come steadily down to the point where we can now pay an associate very, very little money.

That has an impact on the mix of employees in a law firm. I’d advocate that you stop hiring paralegals and replace them with lawyers.

It’s a harsh fact of life that attorney pay has declined significantly. It’s a matter of supply and demand, and the supply of attorneys is well beyond the demand. There aren’t nearly as many jobs as there are lawyers.

Should we be upset about this fact? For more than a decade, we’ve known that law school hasn’t been a good career move if you’re worried about income. Law schools have been cranking out graduates even when they knew jobs weren’t going to materialize, and a cursory review of the business and legal press made it clear that career prospects weren’t going to be pretty. If people chose to go to law school and missed that information, they weren’t looking very hard.

Of course, there are lots of reasons to go to law school beyond the money. That’s a personal decision.

The impact of these extra lawyers is lower and lower pay for attorneys. That’s an opportunity for law firms and for clients.

We’ve reached a point where a recent law school graduate can be hired for less—and sometimes much less—than a good paralegal. The reality is that the salary for associates isn’t going to increase for a long time unless a particular associate proves very valuable. Salaries will probably continue to decline over the next decade.

Of course, comparing lawyers to paralegals isn’t an apples-to-apples analysis. Lawyers may require expensive licensing expenses, training and education costs, and insurance. You’ve got to look at the particulars as you consider your options. Compare billing rates, productivity, and the wage and hour laws (which may require overtime for paralegals and not lawyers, among other things). Today, I think you’ll find that lawyers compare pretty favorably to paralegals.

Generally, lawyers are more useful than paralegals. They’re versatile. They can go to court. They have greater credibility with many clients, and they’ve been deeply educated in thinking about problems in an analytical manner. They’re productive, helpful, and capable. That’s all good for you and your firm, especially if they aren’t able to command a high paycheck.

It’s unfortunate that the economic situation is what it is with respect to the value of attorneys in the marketplace. We don’t control that value.

We do, however, control the management of our practices, and it’s incumbent upon us to create value and deliver that value to our clients. In the current economy, you may be better positioned to create value for your customers with attorneys rather than paralegals. It’s time to evaluate that decision.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

It’s Time to Replace Your Paralegals . . . with Lawyers

Your lobby is important. It’s the first impression some clients have of your firm. They make judgments about the quality of your work based on what they see as they wait for their appointment. Your lobby is far more important than you imagine.

Here are 18 tips for making your lobby work for you rather than against you.

1. The lobby needs to feel welcoming. When people open the door, they should feel compelled to enter, not to run in the opposite direction. Stand in the doorway and see whether the space draws you in or pushes you out. Think “black hole” sucking in everything under its influence. Most law firms go for a “power” look. Don’t do that: it feels good to lawyers, not clients.

2. Lower the lights to the minimum acceptable level. Keep it as dark and as comfortable as possible. The lobby is a great use of interior space. Save the windows for people who get wound up about windows (you know who they are). If the space has windows, then twist the blinds to minimize the incoming light.

3. Use table lamps, not overhead light. Use low wattage bulbs, and choose the warmest light bulbs you can find. Keep the lighting dim and cozy. Think peaceful oasis.

4. Turn on some music in the background. We’ve got an iPad hooked up to a Bose speaker. It plays 24/7. Make the music comforting and soft. Think classical or new age—no lyrics.

5. Use warm, dark, muted colors for decorating. Use a blue carpet, darkish brown wall covering, and dark furniture. Think meditation room, not office building. Use wood, not metal. Remember, the lobby isn’t for you; it’s for them.

6. Put in a fountain with running water. Make sure it makes noise. The sound of running water is peaceful. Let the sound wash over your visitors and drown out other sounds coming from the building.

7. Place art on the walls. Use abstract paintings in those same warm, muted colors. Use a few big paintings rather than a bunch of small art pieces.

8. Eliminate all noise other than the music and the water in the fountain. Be sure nearby offices and conference rooms can’t be heard from the lobby.

9. Get the receptionist out of the lobby. Put that person behind a wall with a window so people in the lobby can have some solitude. Make sure your receptionist can’t be heard from the lobby when talking on the phone.

10. Use big, plush, comfortable chairs in the lobby. Don’t use sofas. No one wants to sit next to anyone else. Give people space to sit alone.

11. Move people out of the lobby if it starts to get crowded. If you’ve got two clusters of seating, then move visitors to conference rooms once there are two people or groups waiting in the lobby. Don’t force people to interact.

12. Try to arrange the traffic pattern so that people move around the edges of the lobby to enter and exit. Try not to have the primary path run straight through the middle.

13. Add plants to the mix. Fit in as many plants as you can, and rotate them in and out so they don’t die. It’s dark in the lobby, so the plants can’t stay there indefinitely. Use live plants, not imitation.

14. Put magazines in the lobby, but only four or five different magazines and only the latest edition of each magazine. Keep it simple and uncluttered.

15. Assign people to check the lobby every hour. They should arrange the magazines, straighten the chairs, check the music, and pick up dead leaves. Keep the lobby in perfect condition.

16. Check the temperature. It needs to be just right: not too hot and not too cool. No sweating, but no shivering either.

17. Make sure there are coasters for drinks. Don’t make people wonder about whether it’s okay to put the drink on the table. Make it easy so there’s no stress involved.

18. Create good air circulation in the room. Don’t let odors linger. Don’t let food odors from other parts of the space enter the lobby. Keep the air fresh and pleasant.

Creating a space that is comfortable, inviting, and relaxing isn’t easy. It’s probably not the best task for most lawyers. If you’re struggling, get some help. There are decorators you can hire who can do this in their sleep.

You’ll know you’ve got it right when clients comment on how peaceful and relaxing it is to wait in your lobby. You should expect them to want to stay out there where it’s comfortable. Listen for comments about how they could spend the day in your lobby. When you start getting that kind of feedback, you’ll know you’ve got it right. If you’re not getting spontaneous comments about the lobby, then you haven’t hit it right yet. Keep working on it, and keep listening for feedback.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

18 Tips for Making Your Lobby Work for You

Outsourcing is increasingly common. There are opportunities for you to save money, gain efficiency, and spread the wealth around the world. We’ve been doing it in a variety of ways for several years with great success.

We outsource most of our technology, marketing, accounting, human resources, and executive assistant services. We’re always looking for ways to better serve our clients, and outsourcing helps us find excellent providers at lower cost.

Recently, our North Carolina State Bar issued a Proposed Formal Ethics Opinion relating to the outsourcing of clerical or administrative tasks to individuals in foreign countries. It was responding to an inquiry regarding the use of an Indian company that provides typing and transcription services (2011 F.E.O. 14).

If adopted, the opinion will require disclosure of the use of the company and will mandate obtaining the client’s written consent. The opinion is consistent with opinions released by state bars in Ohio and New York and by the American Bar Association (Formal Opinion 08-451).

When we realized the inevitability of this opinion, we took action. Last October, we modified our client agreement to reflect the use of outsourced foreign labor and services. We inserted the following language in the agreement:

“The Client acknowledges that he or she is employing the Firm instead of any particular individual and that the Firm will assemble the team of professionals best suited to each Client to serve the Client’s specific needs and requirements at each stage of the Representation. Sometimes our professionals will reside outside of the United States and Client specifically consents to the use of these professionals.”

We ran the language by our private ethics counsel and obtained their approval. We’ve been using it in our client agreement for five months now.

Of course, since the Formal Ethics Opinion hasn’t yet been approved in our state, we haven’t yet had a problem with the language, and hopefully it will satisfy the requirements of our regulator.

More significantly, we’ve now presented the agreement to many clients without any issues. We haven’t had a single client question the language, nor have any of them worried about the security or professionalism of the work. The language didn’t cause any upset or disruption at all.

If you outsource any services (including, for instance, transcription of voicemail or provision of e-mail), I’d encourage you to include similar language in case your services are fulfilled in other nations. Of course, you should run this by your ethics counsel just to be safe. It’s inevitable that something you’re doing or using involves outsourcing to someone outside of the United States, and you’re better off being safe than inadvertently getting caught up in an ethics trap.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Ethics of Outsourcing

We have an attorney in our firm who is fairly new to marketing. She has been practicing law for several years, but she hasn’t done much of the getting-to-know-you-lunch kind of thing.

She decided that she wanted to jump into the marketing game and increase her income.

On January 2, we met and came up with a plan. She took off at full throttle. She called prospective referral sources cold. She had no connection to them, but she got past the receptionists, assistants, and voicemails and got people on the phone. Sure, she ran into some obstacles, but we strategized our way around them.

Within days, she was meeting people at Starbucks for coffee and having lunch with individuals and small groups. She called more prospects each day, and she asked her lunch dates for more ideas on other people to call. She has been hardcore about her effort for about eight weeks now.

How’s it working?

She’s had some referrals as a direct result of her meetings. She has had a retainer or two as well. She’s reaping the rewards of her efforts.

On top of the direct results she seeing, she’s also been remarkably effective at converting her consultations into clients. Many of her consultations over the past eight weeks have not been a direct result of her marketing. These are people who were attracted to our firm in other ways. She is converting her consults into clients at a rate that is well above her usual.

I’ve seen this burst in conversion rate success before. Somehow, getting out and meeting people—building your network—has a halo effect. I can’t determine whether it’s caused by the energy she’s getting from succeeding at networking or whether, somehow, the networking has some spillover impact on her reputation. It’s a mystery to me, but I have repeatedly noticed that attorneys out marketing see higher conversion rates so long as they keep up their networking activity.

Now that she’s winning at this game, what’s she going to do?

Over and over, I’ve watched attorneys in her situation suddenly slack off. They start winning, and they immediately stop doing what caused them to win. Why? Beats me. It’s baffling.

She needs to keep going. She needs to keep doing what she’s doing. You can bet we’ve had that conversation. She says she’s going to keep it up.

But I’ll tell you there are some powerful forces that seem to slow attorneys in her situation down. She’s going to feel the pressure of managing her higher caseload, increased calls from referral sources asking questions, and increased consultations. It will be easy for her to put her referral source meetings on hold while she gets control of everything else. The referral source meetings can easily be moved down the priority list so she can keep up with the other work.

Shifting the priority of the referral source meetings will be a mistake for her. They’re the source of her success. Backing off on the thing that’s making you successful doesn’t generate more success. The key to continuing success is to continue to do the thing that’s making you successful. That seems logical right up until you start getting successful, but then it gets murky.

Don’t let that happen to you—don’t let it get murky. If what you’re doing is working, then keep doing it—don’t stop.

So today, I’m talking to you. But I’m also talking to her. She needs to keep it up, and you need to follow her lead. Don’t stop.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Don’t Stop Marketing When It Works

You work in a firm with 75 or 80 attorneys. It’s a big operation, and you’re a cog in the wheel. Sometimes you feel like you lack much control over the marketing or management of the firm (that’s probably because you actually lack much control). Of course, your lack of control doesn’t make you any less accountable for producing revenues and generating new business. You’re expected to produce results regardless of whether you’re in charge.

You might, doing an objective review of the situation, feel like you’re in an impossible situation. You’re told to go do something and then denied the tools you need to do it. You’re given the responsibility to develop business, but others control the marketing funding and decision making. The lack of control leaves you in the twilight zone when it comes to adding new clients to your roster.

Or does it?

Are you really out of control? Are you really in the twilight zone?

It certainly feels like it sometimes. You’re told that you need to bump up your revenues to cover your overhead. You investigate online marketing opportunities. You talk to a company like Avvo and get information about pricing for an online listing. You take what you’ve learned and request that the marketing committee members approve what you consider to be relatively minor expenses.

“Denied” is the response. Of course, it’s said in a much kinder, gentler manner, but the answer is still no.

You try again with something else, and again, the answer is no.

Yet, while your efforts are being endlessly frustrated, you’re still expected to generate more revenue.

Total responsibility plus no control equals head-exploding frustration. Kaboom goes your brain. Ugh.

Again, I ask, are you really in the twilight zone? Are you really out of control?

Sure, they won’t let you spend much money. They won’t let you take interesting, innovative steps. They won’t let you do things you’re sure would work. But are you out of control?

I’d argue that you aren’t. I’d argue that you actually have far more control over your destiny than you feel right now. I’m confident that you can affect the revenue number without the approval of the marketing committee, and you can do it right now.

How?

You’ll win at the marketing game by focusing on a different type of marketing opportunity. You’ll win by doing the things the committee is trying to get you to do. I know, I know, it’s depressing when they’re right (I hate it more than you can know). We’re usually asking for permission to do things that are easier for us. The committee is pushing back and forcing us to do things that feel hard (even if they don’t articulate that idea).

Listen, we look for marketing opportunities like Avvo and other Internet listings because they’re easy. They aren’t stressful, and they don’t cause us to start sweating and fearing rejection. An Internet listing is a simple expenditure of funds, and it doesn’t involve one-on-one contact with people. It’s a low-risk marketing option.

Unfortunately, low risk usually means low reward. That’s absolutely the case with most Internet marketing. The payoff is proportionate to the expense and effort required.

The high-reward marketing opportunities involve building relationships. The high-reward opportunities require calling people you don’t know and getting to know them. They mean picking up your phone, dialing a number, and feeling uncomfortable for a few minutes. High risk equals high reward. If it’s comfortable, it’s probably not terribly profitable.

Ultimately, that’s what the marketing committee members are telling you. They’re saying “skip the listings and go to lunch.” They’re telling you that you have total control over the marketing because you control your time and energy. They’re saying make that phone call and go have coffee with that lawyer, mental health professional, accountant, or clergy member.

You’re not in the twilight zone, and you’re not lacking in control: you’ve got the opportunity to add to the top-line revenue number if you’ve got a phone for calling and a lunch that needs eating.

No one wants to hear that the old, stodgy partners on the committee are right. We want to believe that they’re stuck in their ways and afraid of innovation. We might be right to an extent. But—and this is a big “but”—they’ve got a point. We can win at this game without innovation. We can win with the old tools they understand and appreciate. We can win with relationships and lunch.

You’re not in the twilight zone. You’re right here in the land of networking and relationship building. One-on-one relationships have worked since the beginning, and they’re still working to build practices today.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Generating Business When the Marketing Committee Says No

I’ve had a steady stream of lawyers asking me about the right amount of marketing.

“How much should I spend?”

“How much time should I devote to marketing?”

“How many referral source meetings should I do each month?”

The answer is easy and, to me anyway, it’s obvious.

You do as much marketing as you need to do to meet your goals for your practice.

If you’re busy and you don’t want more work, then you’re doing the right amount. If you’re insufficiently busy, then you should do more.

If you’ve got plenty of free time because you lack clients, then you should spend that time engaging in marketing activities. If you don’t have time and you don’t have enough business, then you need to figure out what you’re doing with your free time. That’s a discussion for another day.

Where it gets tricky is when you are busy, are making plenty of money, and have limited time for marketing. Lawyers in that situation sometimes put their marketing on the back burner. They hold off on keeping up their networks, etc. because they don’t have time.

Deferring marketing can be a mistake for many of us. We skip the marketing to attend to client matters, and the next thing you know we’re in a roller-coaster cycle of feast or famine. We do lots of marketing and get busy, then we stop marketing and run out of new business. Then we repeat the cycle. It makes our financial lives uncertain and frightening.

It’s important to determine the right commitment to marketing time and money and stick to it.

Figuring it out is a trial and error proposition. In the beginning, you’re likely to need a substantial time investment to prime the pump and get things going. In the end, closer to retirement, you’ll be able to cut back on your efforts and reap the benefits of a solid reputation. During those middle-30ish years, you’ll have to closely monitor and tweak your expenditure of time and money.

Most of us will get on that roller coaster for a few years as we find the right balance. We can lessen the extremes of that ride by staying involved in marketing even in boom times and always understanding that we can’t completely abandon our efforts.

Eventually, you’ll bring the ups and downs closer together and establish equilibrium. You’ll find the time and money balance that’s required to keep the phones ringing each day. The key is to always pay attention to the need to generate new business and never allow the daily grind to distract you from keeping your marketing moving forward.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a formula for getting the balance right. The need for a commitment to marketing will vary by practice area and by individual lawyer. You’re going to have to accept the need to experiment as you move forward. The reward for experimentation, however, is substantial. As you figure out what’s required to keep your practice strong and healthy, you’ll lessen your anxiety and stress. You’ll discover the answer for you, and you’ll know exactly how much legal marketing is enough. You’ll be able to relax and keep your practice humming along.

I wish I had a specific answer and could tell you how much legal marketing is enough. I wish it were that easy. Unfortunately, it’s not. Realistically, you’ll have to accept a bit of uncertainty for now in return for the promise of specifics as you conduct your own grand experiment.

With some effort, you’ll know the answer soon. You’ll know what’s required of you, you’ll know that you can keep it up indefinitely, and you’ll feel comfortable in the knowledge that your future is secure.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How Much Legal Marketing Is Enough?

We are approached all the time by people looking to go in together and do a joint marketing activity. Usually, it’s a financial planner who wants to put on a joint seminar on divorce.

He, and it’s usually a “he,” wants to rent a room, invite a bunch of people to a seminar, and feed them breakfast or dinner while we explain the law and financial issues involved.

We’ve done it before, and while it’s not something I’d strongly encourage you to do, it’s sometimes worth the effort. It’s not my favorite marketing activity, but it gives us exposure to his clients and friends and vice versa.

Not very long ago, we were approached by one of these guys who wanted to do the joint appearance thing. He wanted us to split the costs of the room, mailings, etc. We spent a couple of lunches talking about the possibilities and details.

As the discussion went on, I started to feel queasy about the guy. I’m not sure what was triggering alarm bells, but something didn’t smell right. I really can’t tell you what made me have second thoughts, but I think we divorce lawyers develop a pretty good feel for people and their honesty and trustworthiness. I wiggled out of the effort and feigned being overworked.

The next thing I knew, the guy was in a hospital (a personal development center) in Virginia for 60 days. I’m not sure what happened that precipitated the hospitalization, but it couldn’t have been good. It turned out that my gut reaction was right on this guy.

You’re going to have opportunities to do these joint efforts. There are all sorts of professionals—mental health, accounting, and financial—who want us on the stage with them. They need our credentials to fill out the program.

Do some checking on them before you put your reputation on the line by appearing with them. Ask around and spend some time on a search engine checking them out. When things don’t smell right, you should trust your instincts and run in the other direction.

Your reputation is too important to risk on people who doesn’t have their life in order.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Should You Do Joint Marketing with That Guy?

Maybe she clicked on your listing on Google when she searched for a divorce lawyer. Maybe it was your ad in the right sidebar of the search results in Bing. Something caught her attention, and she landed on your page.

What happened before she clicked? What were her thoughts?

What was she thinking about that caused her to search?

Was it something her husband said about the way she looked in that dress?

Was it the threat from her boss’s wife to call her husband about the affair?

Was it that voice in her head that told her she’d put up with enough of his drinking and that it was time for her to go?

Something triggered the search. Something resulted in her clicking on your listing. Something is going on in her head.

If she arrives at your site and your message is consistent with what she’s thinking, feeling, and worrying about, then she’s going to move forward with you. If she lands on your page and it doesn’t speak to her needs, her situation, and her feelings, then she’s going to click away.

Sometimes the mismatch is obvious. When she clicks on your listing and finds the headline “DWI LAWYER,” she’s going to click away—fast. When she shows up and the page is all about what a great lawyer you are, she’s probably going to click away as well.

When, however, the page is about her, when she sees herself on your page, she’s going to stick around and look some more. She’s going to give you a chance to further connect with her and potentially continue the relationship offline. The page needs to speak to her, in words and pictures she can understand, so that you touch her heart.

She needs to land on your page and find a place of safety, a place where she can feel comfortable and know that you’re concerned about her and her situation. She needs to know you’re ready, willing, and able to help.

You’ve got to put yourself in her shoes, in her mind-set, and visit your site. Land on your page and feel the way she feels. See whether what you find makes you stay or makes you go back. That’s what marketing is all about. You’ve got to think about her, be her if only for a moment, and say the things she needs to hear so she’ll stay.

Take a minute and step into the shoes of your ideal client. Think about what happened to cause her to click, and see how your site looks now.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What Made Her Click on Your Site?

You’ve got a handful of lawyers in your practice. They’re of all different shapes, sizes, and personalities. Some excel at litigation, and some are excellent at negotiation and collaboration. They’re all very different from one another.

Over time, you’ve figured out how to tailor the workload of each attorney differently. When a case comes up in front of Judge Smith, you make sure Lawyer A appears at the hearing because she has a better relationship with Judge Smith. The results tend to be better for Lawyer A.

You make sure that Lawyer B drafts the appellate briefs. Why? Because Lawyer B does a better job than the others on briefs.

You’ve got a list in your head of the key skills and attributes of each of your lawyers, and you tailor the workload to their particular assets. It makes sense.

For some reason, however, many of us don’t do the same thing when it comes to initial meetings with prospective clients. For some reason, we assign these meetings according to systems and rules that aren’t consistent with the way we assign other work. Unfortunately, we frequently fail to assign these meetings to the attorney best equipped to handle the prospective client.

Why? From what I can determine, the assignment of meetings with new clients gets bogged down in tradition, compensation plans, and ego. We let a variety of factors influence our decisions on this issue, and this keeps us from simply putting the best person on the task.

Unfortunately, failing to make a rational decision about assigning initial consultations can have a direct and immediate financial impact on your practice. Sending a lawyer who isn’t particularly good at converting prospective clients into clients can cost you money—lots of money.

How should you assign consultations?

You shouldn’t make assumptions about what works and what doesn’t. You need a numbers-based system.

You should start collecting data. You should count the number of consultations conducted by each lawyer and then track the number of retainers. The number of retainers divided by the number of consultations will reveal the conversion rate for each attorney. You should track that number monthly and start creating a graph detailing each attorney’s progress.

It’s important that you compare apples to apples. You’re going to find that attorneys conducting a few consultations per month are sometimes going to have a higher conversion rate than attorneys conducting lots of consultations. It’s hard to remain attentive and empathetic when you’re doing many consultations. Don’t jump to the conclusion that your newbie is a consultation superstar. Give her time to adjust to multiple meetings per month and see what happens to the numbers. It’s stressful giving newbies a bunch of consultations as a test, but it’s the only way to figure out how they’re doing.

Don’t assume that newbies don’t know enough to do a good job in a consultation. You may find that knowledge and experience have little to do with a high conversion rate. You’ll likely find that empathy, compassion, confidence, and listening skills mean more in these meetings than years of experience. Put your newbies in the room and see what happens.

Once you have some data for each of your attorneys, start shifting more of the consults to the winners and fewer to the losers. Think about it. If you move 10 consults to a winner with a 60% conversion rate that might have gone to a mediocre player with a 25% conversion rate, you’ll have 3.5 more clients. Multiply 3.5 times your average client lifetime value, and you’ll see why it’s important to start collecting data and stop making assumptions.

The data in our firm has revealed a wide disparity in effectiveness. We’ve got attorneys with conversion rates as low as 5% and others with rates more than 10 times higher. It’s always shocking to me to see the disparities, and I really can’t tell why one attorney turns so many consults into clients and others can barely get anyone to hire them. It’s odd to see it happen when you know your lawyers and know they do a great job serving clients. It’s shockingly difficult to predict who will succeed and who will fail.

You’re only going to improve the conversion numbers in your firm if you discard your assumptions, do some testing, and wait for the results. My guess is that you’ll be shocked at some of what you find, and you’ll find yourself putting the right people in the right roles and increasing the overall profitability of your practice.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Don’t Send the Wrong Lawyer to an Initial Consultation

I am not a relaxed person. I spend the better part of most days monitoring our business. I look at statistics all day long.

Of course, some of what I evaluate is big picture. I get a monthly report that provides me with trailing 12-month graphs of a bunch of key indicators for each of our offices. Looking at those charts helps me evaluate our course and make corrections. My monthly reports are probably important and useful. They are “healthy.”

Today, I’m talking about the insane stuff I review. These are some of the statistics I evaluate every few hours all day long. This is the “unhealthy” data that probably isn’t very helpful.

For those of you who feel compelled to obsess over hour-by-hour progress, I offer you these indicators. Each of these products provides data, but mostly they’re fulfilling some other function. The data is a by-product of their primary purpose.

Google Analytics: I look at our website traffic in real time. I count the number of visitors and look at where they’re spending time on our site and how much time they’re spending on the site. Google Analytics is purely for gathering data. It doesn’t do anything other than keep you informed. Google Analytics is powerful, free, and totally addictive.

AWeber: Our e-mail provider makes data available in real time so I can see how many people have signed up for our free e-course. AWeber handles all our outgoing marketing e-mail and give us access to a wealth of data.

QuickBooks: I keep up with our revenues all day long and check our payables constantly. I’m not a QuickBooks fan, but it works, and it gives me quick and easy access to data so I can stay on top of our progress.

AuthorityLabs.com: This site helps me keep up with our rankings on Google and Bing, but it only gets updated once each day. This is another purely data application, like Google Analytics. It does nothing other than provide data.

FeedBurner: I monitor how many subscribers I have for this blog. Of course, it does all the work of providing the RSS feed for this site, but I mostly use it for checking data.

CloudFlare: I get a different perspective on the number of visitors we’re getting to our sites. This service does much more than provide data: it keeps our sites fast and online.

Wistia: I find out how many visitors have watched our videos and how much of the videos they’ve watched. Wistia hosts most of our videos, and we use it primarily because of the great data.

Libsyn: I keep track of the number of downloads we’ve had for our podcasts. This service is very reasonably priced and also provides very detailed reporting.

iTunes Connect: It gives me data about the number of users who have downloaded our iPhone app. I can get similar data for our Android app as well using the Android Marketplace.

Unbounce: I review data on our landing page split tests so we can see which headlines and other features of our pages are winning in our tests. This is an excellent service for split-testing your Web pages.

Salesforce: We keep all our client data in Salesforce, so I have a dashboard providing me with key indicators like call volume and consult numbers.

By the time I work through the reports on each of these services, it’s time to start over again and see what’s changed. Looking at data can consume your entire day. It’s worse than Facebook.

I don’t wish all this data on any of you. It’s burdensome and not very helpful. If, however, you can’t resist, now you know where to turn.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Monitoring Your Law Firm Hour by Hour

I’m not much for titles. I don’t really care what you call me. I don’t really care what’s on my business card. It just doesn’t matter to me.

There are things I do value, such as money, autonomy, and authority, for example. Those are some of the things I care about. I don’t care about the label you put on my job.

Some people don’t see things the way I see them (you already knew that, but I’m constantly surprised).

They place importance on the title their employer gives them. Everyone is different, I suppose.

Be aware that it matters a great deal to some of your people that you call them the “client services coordinator” rather than the “receptionist.” Some have a strongly held preference for “administrative assistant” over “secretary.” Everyone has a different perspective.

Find out what your people care about when it comes to titles and use that information to help them find satisfaction in their work. It matters to some employees to move from “Paralegal” to “Senior Paralegal” to “Paralegal Manager,” etc.

Be aware of the importance of this issue and use it to the advantage of your practice. Titles are cheap, they make people feel good, and they are important.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

The Value of a Job Title

It’s 4 a.m., and you’re awake. You’re worrying and can’t settle down and get back to sleep. It’s not just tonight; it’s night after night. You’re awake and can’t get back to sleep.

I’ve got a question for you: What are you worrying about? What, specifically, is making it impossible for you to sleep?

Is it a hearing that’s coming up?

Is it a client?

Is it revenues?

Is it a particular employee?

Is it something unrelated to work?

What is it that has you tossing and turning?

For me, it’s usually something specific. I know what’s driving me crazy when it’s happening. Do you?

Once you figure it out, I’ve got a solution for your problem. I’m going to help you get back to sleeping well.

Once you’ve identified the problem, we’re going to take care of finding a solution.

Of course, some people can’t sleep for medical reasons. Some aren’t awakened by problems or concerns. They can’t sleep for far more complicated reasons: if that’s you, then see a doctor. I can’t help you with medical issues, unfortunately.

However, if you’re stressing out about a particular problem, then let’s get to work.

Here’s what you do if you want to sleep well. Ready for it?

You need to take action to solve the problem.

You need to come up with a plan and get to work.

You’ll note that I didn’t say that you need to solve the problem. You don’t. You just need to take steps to solve the problem, and you’ll settle down for a good night’s rest.

Let’s say, for instance, that the problem is revenues. You need to bump up the number to meet your expenses and take home some cash. You’re waking up dreaming about your phone failing to ring.

What do you do?

Come up with a plan. Decide how you’re going to attack the problem, and take some action. Maybe you’re going to run some ads on Google AdWords. Go ahead and get started. Read the materials on the AdWords site and put some money in your account. Get started. Do some experimentation, and you’ll see some results. Take action.

Maybe the problem is a particular hearing you’ve got coming up. We sleep when we’re well prepared and ready to go. We wake up when we’re not sure whether we’ve done what we need to do. Solution? Take action. Prepare more so you’ll feel good about your readiness for trial. Take action.

Taking steps—taking action—to solve your problem makes you feel better and sleep better. Your actions might not be successful immediately, but you’ll start determining the path to success. You can’t succeed without failing, and taking action is the only path to eliminating the problem.

Taking action will allow you to sleep. Worrying won’t get you anywhere. With worry, you won’t sleep, and the lack of sleep prevents you from taking the needed action. It’s a vicious cycle. You need to get up and do something about the problem. Move toward a solution, and you’ll start sleeping again.

Take action, and have some sweet dreams.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What’s Keeping You Up at Night?

I was standing in the lobby of the Wake County Register of Deeds office with six television cameras lined up filming me. There were balloons surrounding me and microphones shoved in my face.

It was fantastic!

Here’s the story:

We wanted some free publicity for our family law practice.

The idea was to give away free marriage licenses on Valentine’s Day. We’d tell the local media what we were doing and see whether we could get on TV and in the newspaper.

It worked. It really, really worked.

We worked with the elected official who issues the marriage licenses. She was very careful to make sure we didn’t break any rules. She agreed to allow us to set up outside of her building with a poster and balloon display. The poster, of course, featured our firm name and explained what we were doing.

I stood next to the poster and balloons and handed out envelopes of cash for anyone headed in to get a license. At that time, they cost about $50 each. We handed out cash all day, and couples streamed in and bought licenses. Many of them headed across the street to be married at the courthouse.

Throughout the day, reporters came over and interviewed me and some of the couples. We had a few print publications, some radio stations, and then, finally, the TV people showed up. It was odd how they all came at the same time. It was great. It was chaos—good chaos.

The media loved the irony of a divorce lawyer promoting marriage. It was a perfect, amusing story to fill the news on an otherwise uneventful holiday.

The story appeared on all of the local stations and even made its way to CNN. We were everywhere you looked on the Valentine’s Day TV news and in the papers the next day.

Mission accomplished. It was a great Valentine’s Day.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How St. Valentine Grew a Family Law Practice

We are approached by vendors selling video production every week (it’s not quite as bad as the search engine optimizer solicitations, but it’s getting there). They pitch the idea of producing videos and putting them on YouTube.

“YouTube is the second-biggest search engine behind Google,” they say. And, of course, they’re right. YouTube is worthy of consideration when you’re developing your marketing plan.

However, YouTube is not for everyone. In fact, it’s not that important for many of us. It fails to generate business for many, many practices.

There’s a test you can apply to determine whether YouTube will make a difference for your practice.

Head over to YouTube and do some searches that your prospective clients are likely to use. Type in “divorce law in [your state]” and see what happens. You’ll likely find some videos addressing the topic.

Watch the videos and, most importantly, look at the date each video was posted and the number of views for each video. I’ve checked and, in some states, videos have been up for years and have as few as 50 or 100 views counted. These are the videos that come up at the top of the results.

If no one is watching the videos in your state, then it’s not that important to invest money in getting videos up for your practice. I’ve found that more often than not, the videos aren’t being watched on many legal topics. The only people benefiting from some of these lawyer videos are the people selling the video production services.

I did some digging and found that the statistics provided by YouTube include the number of views recorded on YouTube and on other sites. Those view counts include the plays that take place on your site or on other sites where the videos are embedded. If you see a video that says it has been watched 44 times, then it truly has been watched only 44 times.

It’s hard to imagine that spending thousands of dollars on videos and having only a handful of people watch them is a smart marketing decision. Be careful with your money.

We’ve done some YouTube videos for our firm. We did them ourselves with a consumer camera and a black blanket as our backdrop. Our total expenditure was next to nothing. You can find an example by searching for Raleigh Divorce Lawyer.  It makes sense to experiment. You never know what’s going to work for you. Be careful, however, when it comes to spending big bucks when the data don’t support that decision.

Take a look at the view count and see whether anybody is watching. Video might be the wave of the future, but in your market, the future may be quite a way off in the distance.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Do Lawyers Need to Put Videos on YouTube?

You need a vacation. You always need a vacation. We just got back from Grenada, so vacations are on my mind (the photo is the view from our room).

I’ve harped on this before, and the situation isn’t getting any better. Many of us don’t take enough vacations, and it’s bad for our health, our marriages, our children, our co-workers, and our clients. You’re not at your best when you’re worn out, exhausted, and stressed. When you’ve been working too hard for too long, you aren’t able to perform at the top of your game.

Some of you will object to taking a break. “I can’t afford it,” “I don’t have time,” “My trial schedule is impossible,” “My clients go crazy when I leave,” “I come back to twice as much work so I might as well not leave,” “My kids are in different schools and we can’t coordinate,” etc.

That’s not acceptable. You’ve got to go. We all know deep down that I’m right about this—you absolutely, positively need a break.

My proposal for you is that you (1) plan your next trip if it’s not already on the calendar, (2) buy the tickets now so you’re committed, and (3) plan the trip after that—right now. You need to get into a cycle of planning the trips at least six months out. It’s easier to commit when it’s way off in the future. If you do it my way, you’ll always have something on the calendar. Do it leapfrog style so that when you return from a trip, you’ve already got the next trip on the calendar. As soon as you get back, go ahead and commit to the trip after that. Just keep the cycle running, and you’ll always have a vacation agenda.

You can’t afford it? Sure you can. It doesn’t have to be an expensive trip; it just needs to be a break away from the office and away from home. Book a cabin at the nearby lake or buy a tent at Walmart and go camping. No matter what you do, you’ll be energized for work when you get back. You’ll even be energized by a week in a tent on top of a mountain where it rains every day. Crazy, screwed up vacations generate new energy just like perfectly choreographed vacations. It’s getting away from the routine, the stress, and the daily grind that matters.

You don’t have time? You’ll be more efficient when you get back. You’ll be less likely to get emotionally sidetracked, and you’ll be more effective at settling cases because of your newfound rationality. You really may not have time, but taking the time away will create more free time for you to catch up when you get back.

Your trial schedule is impossible? Most court systems have some mechanism, if you plan in advance, for you to designate time away for a break. The glitch is that you have to plan in advance. Just do it now and accept that it may be a while before you get to go. You’ve got to start the cycle, and there’s no better time than now. Worst case, go to your local judges and explain your situation. Tell them you need a break, and see whether they’ll accommodate you. I’m willing to bet they will.

Your clients go crazy when you leave? Yep, but they go crazy when you stay. Crazy clients are part of the deal, and it has little to do with vacation. They’ll be just as crazy when you get home. Go, go, go.

You come back to twice as much work, so you might as well not leave. That’s true: things pile up while you’re gone. But some of what piles up will resolve itself while you’re away. Sometimes the fires just burn themselves out, and clients figure out that they can solve some of their own problems. That’s a win for you and a win for them. You’ll spend the first day or two back catching up, but things will quickly return to normal. You can’t put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own. You need some time for yourself.

Vacation is essential to coping with a challenging job. You’ve got a challenging job, and you’re in it for the long haul. Take your vacation.

Some of you are saying to yourself, “Yep, Lee, you’re right, but…” Listen to me now: don’t have that conversation with yourself. Just plan the trip. You need to get going, and you especially need to get going if you’re finding a bunch of reasons to put off planning the trip. You are the person I’m talking to, and you need to listen. Plan the trip, plan the trip, plan the trip. Just do it right now regardless of your reservations.

Rent a houseboat and hang out on the lake. Fly to an island and look at the sea. Head out west and ski down a mountain. Book a week at the beach and build sandcastles. Go to Disney World. Just go because life is short, and you deserve a break.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

When Is Your Next Vacation?

Our firm has tried it all when it comes to marketing.

We’ve done referral source meetings, seminars, books, newspaper ads, phone book ads, radio, television, Internet advertising, directory listings, direct mail, and on and on.

None of it works. You won’t run a TV ad and be deluged with clients. The same is true of advertising on the Internet, doing seminars, or running an ad in some directory. No single approach to marketing turns on the fire hose, resulting in a deluge of clients. It’s just not like that. That’s true no matter what the salesperson told you when he sold it to you. There is no magic bullet.

The deal with all of these marketing approaches is that they work a little. Over time, the impact of different approaches accumulates. You’ll eventually have a thriving practice if you’re willing to keep the marketing going as you slowly grow.

Unfortunately, many of us do something counterproductive. We try something, and it doesn’t work, so we quit. We try something else, and it doesn’t work, so we quit. We try a third approach, and it doesn’t work, so we quit. That’s not going to help you over the long haul.

You need to lock in on a couple different avenues to build your practice (I’d always start with building a network of referral sources, speaking to groups, and writing for publications), and be religious about sticking with them. Don’t expect the floodgates to open. You’ll get a call here and a client there, but don’t quit when they don’t line up outside your door. Keep going.

Give it time (like two years) and just keep at it. You’ll get frustrated with your lack of progress, but use your frustration to double down on your efforts. Use your frustration to do more of the same, not less. Keep doing it even if it’s not generating the results you’d like to see.

Eventually, your efforts will pay off. You’ll find that someone you had lunch with six months ago (who had forgotten about you) heard you speak at the Rotary club meeting and then saw your article in the business journal. Out of the blue, a friend asked him for a referral, and he remembered your name and sent his friend over. Boom—you’ve got a client.

Did that client come from the lunch, the speech, or the article? It’s the persistent combination of all of your efforts that generates the client. You can’t start and stop, you can’t quit, and you can’t shift directions every 90 days. Set your course and stick to it, and you’ll see results.

You see, nothing works in marketing. However, everything works in marketing. It just takes time, commitment, and consistency. The growth will start slowly and then become exponential so long as you continue to follow the path you’ve set for yourself.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Law Firm Marketing Doesn’t Work

You just finished an initial consultation. The client left after saying, “I’ll think about it and let you know.”

Should you follow up with the client? Should you call or write or what?

Here’s the deal: We are hesitant to follow up. We rationalize our hesitation by telling ourselves that we’ll be “pestering them,” that we’ll “look desperate,” or that we’re being “overly pushy.” It’s our resistance to selling our services that holds us back.

Quick story: When I was a young lawyer, I bought insurance—lots of insurance. I’ve got life, disability, etc. The salesperson was amazing at separating me from my money. I finally told him to just take my checkbook and do what he needed to do. I lost the ability to resist. Most of my income now goes to the insurance company.

At each of our meetings, this insurance guy pushed me to give him the names of lawyers to whom he could sell his insurance. I gave him every single person I knew, and he continued to push. He was relentless.

I had the opportunity to watch him sell to one of the partners in the firm where I was employed. Of course, I had given him her name, and he started calling her. She came to me and yelled at me for giving her name to him, and she didn’t return his calls. Giving him her name wasn’t really a good career move.

He called her once each day for a week and left a message. Then he called each day for the next week. Then he called each and every single day for a year.

What happened?

She finally met with him, and she bought insurance. I’m wiling to bet she still has the insurance today.

Was he desperate? Probably. Was he pestering her? Yes. Was he overly pushy? Totally.

Did it work? Yes.

Should you be the insurance guy? I don’t know, but it worked. It worked so well for this guy that he stopped taking new customers years ago so he could service his existing customers. In fact, he started culling the less profitable accounts so he could focus on his high net-worth clients. Yep, I think it worked pretty well.

Should you be that persistent? To tell you the truth, I doubt you have the ability to be that persistent. I don’t have it, and I don’t know anyone other than the insurance guy who can perform like that. If you’ve got it in you, then I say go for it.

But if you’re more like most of us, then I’d suggest you do more follow-up than you’re comfortable doing. When I get questions about how much follow-up to do, the question usually focuses on whether a second or third phone call is warranted. It’s rarely about making 200 phone calls to the same person. I’m confident that you can go much further than you are now without looking desperate, pestering, or being overly pushy.

Most of us are so unwilling to go very far with follow-up that I think we can easily go as far as we’re willing to go without creating backlash.

My advice is to go for it. Do as much follow-up as you can tolerate, and then do a bit more. See what happens. The proof, after all, is in the pudding. If it’s working, then keep doing it. If, after pushing, you find that it’s not working, then stop. Most of us have very little to lose by going beyond our comfort zone. Go for it, and let me know what happens.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Should You Call Your Prospective Client after the Consult?

Lunch with a prospective referral source comes with a price tag. It’s expected that they’ll refer to you and that you’ll refer to them. That’s an unspoken understanding in most referral relationships.

Unfortunately, if you’re aggressive about building marketing relationships, you don’t have enough referrals to hand out to everyone. You certainly can’t do a one-for-one exchange when you’re out with five or six referral sources per week and maintaining dozens of relationships. It’s especially challenging if many of your referral sources are in the same profession as one another.

What can you give back when you can’t give referrals?

Plenty.

You’ve got a wealth of assets you can use to fulfill the need to make the relationship reciprocal.

Access: Your referral sources need access to an expert. It’s important to them that they be able to pick up the phone, dial your number, and get you on the line. They may be making the call with their client in the room. They need to look connected. They need their client to understand that they play in the big leagues. Being able to get you on the line immediately helps them make the right impression. Give them your mobile phone number and explain that they can call anytime. By making yourself available, you’re giving them a valuable gift.

Answers: When they call, be prepared to answer their questions. They need a quick answer so they can move on to the next thing, and your willingness to help out, without charge, is incredibly important to them. In the same way that you enjoy placing a quick call to a peer and saving yourself hours of research, they appreciate the help you provide when you answer their question. Be ready to go when they call.

Updates: Help them stay up-to-date on developments in the law. Provide them with informative newsletters, articles, and seminars. You’re their go-to expert, and they need to know what they don’t know.

Insider info: Sometimes they want the inside scoop on opposing counsel or the judge. You’re in a position to know what really goes on and who’s who. Be ready to give them the insight they need to understand the personalities involved.

Jumping the line: Sometimes all they need is quick help for the referral they’re making to your firm. Be ready to expedite things when necessary in order to move their client to the head of the line. That might mean making an initial consultation happen right now instead of three days from now. Treat the clients of your referral sources special, and it reflects on the referral sources, making them look good.

Charitable contributions: We all care about a variety of causes. When referral sources ask you to go to a charity dinner, go. When referral sources ask you to write a check, write it. Care about what they care about, and your relationship will thrive.

Pro bono: Once in a while, good referral sources will ask you to do a good deed for someone they know. Do it.

Do a favor: You’ll find that non-lawyer referral sources need help with all kinds of things that relate to the law. I recently asked a politician friend to write a letter on behalf of a referral source’s child. I made a quick call that made a big difference to the referral source. Use your legal network to help out.

Referrals to other lawyers: Your referral source may not know many other lawyers. Yet the need for other lawyers arises all the time. Keep a list of attorneys you suggest in other practice areas and in other parts of the state and country. Be a resource for finding a lawyer when you’re not able to handle a particular matter.

These are some of many ways you can pay referral sources back for making a referral. You don’t always need to respond to a referral with a referral. In fact, in many instances, you can do more good for your referral sources with one of these other approaches to making the relationship mutual.

If you’re maintaining as many relationships as I hope you are, you can’t possibly reciprocate with a referral every time. This toolbox of opportunities for helping your referral sources should go a long way toward keeping the ledger balanced.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What Can You Give When You Can’t Give Referrals?

Sometimes my most mundane articles prove most helpful to some readers. Today I’m going with mundane.

We have three locations with conference rooms. We have no offices and minimal staff on-site. When our lawyers are meeting with a client, they are often the only representative of our firm on the premises. Some of those meetings involve collecting payments from clients, especially at initial consultations.

There are lots of ways to deal with payments. You may already have a better approach than we do. But I’ll tell you what we’re doing, in case you find it helpful.

Mostly, we get paid in three ways. Some clients pay us with credit cards. Some pay with checks, and some pay with cash.

Credit cards: We have a credit card swiping machine in each location. These machines connect to the Internet and print a receipt. They are the standard machine you see in many stores and are provided to us by the company that handles our merchant account. We didn’t have to pay for the machines. Theoretically, we could use a portable device like Square with a Smartphone, but the rates are about double what we’re paying for the old-fashioned swiper. Sometimes we take credit card payments by phone and simply key in the card info. We pay a higher rate for these “card not present” transactions.

Checks: Our credit card machine also accommodates checks. We can run the check through the machine, and it magically deposits the funds into our account without charging us a fee. It’s sweet. Sometimes we get checks that can’t be run through the machine (certified or bank checks). In those instances, we have our attorneys send the check to our main office via FedEx. We deposit the check into the bank. Thankfully, we have a bank branch in our building. We also take check by phone using CheckWriter software.

Cash: We receive a fair amount of cash, especially for initial consultations. Generally, we have the attorney keep the cash and authorize us to draft the amount from the attorney’s personal checking account. We do the draft using check-writing software, CheckWriter, so that we can do the transaction without the physical check. Sometimes we’ll ask an attorney to run the cash by a local branch of our bank, and sometimes (keep this a secret) we FedEx the cash to our main office.

Payment by Phone: In some instances, we have clients pay by phone. This usually happens when clients decide to retain us a week or two later and prefer not to stop by to make payment. We’re set up to do credit cards by phone (at a higher “card not present” rate) or take checks by phone using CheckWriter. Our goal is to help a client make a payment without any hassle at all.

A friend of mine recently explained that, in his remote offices, he doesn’t have a credit card machine, so he has people pay in advance over the phone. That’s convenient and, as a by-product, has dramatically reduced his no-show rate. That’s a pretty good by-product, huh?

For many years, we avoided having our attorneys deal with collecting payments personally. There was always an administrative person available to handle taking payment and to issue a receipt. For some reason, we thought it unprofessional to deal with the payment ourselves. At some point, due to necessity, our attorneys got involved in dealing with the payment and shockingly, the world didn’t stop spinning. Attorneys asked for payment and clients handed over the cash, checks, and credit cards. It wasn’t nearly as awkward and uncomfortable as we worried that it might be. We changed our system, and life went on.

Are you doing something different? Got any good ideas to make this easier? Put your input in the comments below so we can all learn from you.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

How to Accept Payments from Clients

Everywhere you look, people are playing with their smartphone. I knew we needed to get our firm on their phones. But how?

Well, arguably, they already had us on their phones, but only in the Web browser. If they really want divorce information, we’ve got a mobile-friendly version of our North Carolina Divorce site. Everybody talks about apps, apps, apps. We needed an app.

I had no idea where to turn to get an app built. It seemed like something for big companies, gamers, and computer people—not small law firms.

What to do?

I found an ad for an app development firm on the Web. I called. The firm started asking questions that I couldn’t answer. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll call back when I’m ready.”

I realized that wanting an app wasn’t good enough. I had to have a concept in my head for what the app would do and how it would do it.

Back to the drawing board.

First off, I considered an app version of our family law site. That seemed workable but didn’t seem much better than having folks visit the site in their browsers. It would be redundant.

We needed an app that would actually prove useful to our prospective clients. We needed something they’d download and keep because it was helpful.

We settled on a North Carolina child support calculator app as our first effort.

Then it was time to figure out how to turn an idea into an actual app.

I started asking around and found out that one of my friends had an old college roommate who had gone into the iPhone app development business. I got an introduction.

“Sure, I can do it,” he said. We spent a few hours talking through the idea, and he went to work.

We went back and forth for a month or so. First, he got clear on what we wanted the app to do. Then he started laying out screens and sending them to us. We tweaked his designs so that the app actually got the right user input at the right stage of the process. Back and forth we went.

Once the screens looked right, he built the code that made the screens do what they were supposed to do. He did his programming thing for a few weeks. Then he had something for us to test.

He walked us through the process of installing the app on our iPhones even before the app was released and available in the App Store. There’s a process for developers to send apps to one another and run them without making the available to the public. During that stage of the development, we got signed up with Apple so that we’d be able to release the app when it was ready.

After a great deal of testing, it was time to release the app on the App Store. That was easy, and we got gobs of attention for making the app available for free.

Total cost of the building the app? $4,000.

We learned a great deal about the process from our experience. Working with an excellent developer gave us a sense of what needed to be done.

We took the lessons we’d learned with the iPhone app development and moved forward to Android. We hoped to keep our costs down since we now had a much better sense of what was required.

We went to a site like worker.com and posted a project seeking developers. We got a bunch of responses with bids. The lowest bidder (undercutting the others by half) explained that he wanted to be able to use our project as part of his portfolio: he needed the credential of having completed the project. We decided to give him a shot.

This time we were very clear about our specifications and requirements. We were able to tell the developer exactly what we wanted, how we wanted it, and when we expected delivery.

The project moved along and was delivered (about 3 weeks later than hoped). Total cost? $50. That’s right: $50.

We’ve subsequently come up with some additional ideas for apps and had them developed as well. We haven’t done anything that cost as little as $50, but we’ve had some success in promoting our firm with the applications we’ve built.

There’s a learning curve involved in building applications, and you need a good idea, but it’s a manageable undertaking. The key is carefully defining the project: before you start, you need to know exactly what you want and how you want it to work and look. From there, it’s simply a matter of going back and forth with a designer and a programmer.

If you’ve got a good idea for helping consumers, then give it a shot. Figure out a way to provide them with something they need, and make it available on their phones.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Developing an iPhone or Android App for Your Firm

When I was 37, I had a heart attack (actually, the doctor initially called it an “event,” which I liked much better than “heart attack”). I landed in the hospital for about 10 days, during which I had quintuple-bypass surgery. Then I spent about six weeks getting fully back up to speed. It wasn’t fun.

It all happened while I was trying a child custody case. It wasn’t one of those fall over and die things. In fact, I was able to finish my trial and drive myself to the hospital. Apparently, I was pretty lucky not to have died during the episode.

Anyway, I was fortunate to be able to leave the office for almost two months without any significant impact for my clients. They barely knew anything had happened. We had a number of lawyers who jumped right in and took over my cases, and things kept moving. It was all good.

Many of us don’t have the infrastructure that allows us to be out of the office for weeks. We need to stay in close contact with our clients and staff, or things come off the rails pretty quickly. That’s a dangerous situation.

Medical emergencies are unexpected. You don’t know they’re coming. That’s why they’re emergencies.

Today’s question is, what are you going to do about covering your clients if you’re unexpectedly out for a month or two?

Do you have a plan?

If not, it’s time to put something together. This is most challenging for solos.

If you’re a solo, I’d suggest you get together with some other solos and build a network to help one another with emergencies. Ideally, you’ll have a few people join up with you in this effort. You’ll need to address the following issues:

1. Decide how you’ll notify one another of the emergency (you need to get spouses/family involved because you might be incapacitated).
2. Explain your systems (calendar, files, docket control, computers, etc.). I’d suggest an “emergency manual.”
3. Identify key staff for coordination. If you each have a staff, it would make sense for those folks to check in with one another periodically just to maintain the network.
4. Address compensation concerns. Who’s going to pay what to whom?
5. Make emergency financial plans. How will you handle short-term cash issues if the practice doesn’t sustain itself?
6. Add everything else you can come up with, and that’s going to be a bunch of stuff.

Ideally, you’ll find backups who are familiar with the law in your practice area. That can be tricky, especially in a small town, because of conflicts issues. You’re going to have to talk through all of this. You’re going to have to build trust to make this work. You’re going to have let go of some of your sense of invincibility because this can really happen. I really couldn’t believe I was lying in a hospital bed with oxygen in my nose!

Working on an emergency plan is unpleasant. It’s not something we want to address. It’s easy to put this on the back burner and ignore it. Don’t do it. Make it a priority. Figure out what you’re going to do if something bad happens. It just might.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

What’s Your Plan for an Emergency?

I just went to lunch with a lawyer who asked me to refer him business. He explained that he was struggling a bit right now and really needs some clients. He wanted to know whether I had anyone that I might be able to refer to him.

How did I react to that request? Read on.

We lawyers get very wound up about looking like we have things under control. We’re calm, cool, and collected. We look like we’ve got it together.

This is often the case even when the wheels are totally coming off the bus. We can be in complete and total meltdown and still look good.

For many of us, our greatest fear is the fear of embarrassment. We don’t want to look bad—ever.

Unfortunately, that fear of embarrassment is a major driver and results in our being very self-sufficient. We put a positive spin on everything, and we act like we can do it all ourselves. We don’t need any help from anyone.

I suspect that, sometimes, our fear of embarrassment is behind the high rates of depression and substance abuse in our profession. I’m no expert on that topic, so I’m just speculating.

However, I do know that our fear of embarrassment is a major impediment to the growth of our practices. We hesitate to ask for help, and that’s a mistake. It’s hard to ask for help when everything is “perfect.”

I had another lunch recently, and the lawyer spent most of the meal explaining how well things were going. He told me about the stream of new business he was generating. He casually mentioned that his firm would welcome any referrals we could make. He didn’t really ask for referrals so much as let me know that I should be referring to his firm when matters arose in his niche.

Did I want to help this guy? Not at all. Mostly, I didn’t like him and didn’t have any interest in helping him. Why? We didn’t click: he was arrogant and I left lunch highly motivated to refer to someone else.

What about the guy who asked for help at the first lunch? I loved the guy for asking. He was honest and vulnerable, and I felt like I could make a difference for him. He needs my assistance, and I’m more than willing to do everything I can to help him through his difficult period. I left lunch energized about finding him some clients.

Most of us are good people who want to help. We can only help if we’re asked. If you need the business, ask for help. You’re far more likely to get what you need.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Are You Asking for Help?

I was a Tony Robbins fan. I read his books and bought some of his tapes. Some of it is good stuff, and I paid attention to him for a couple of years.

I incorporated much of what he said into the way I run my life. It helped.

Then I moved on. Tony mailed me invitations to seminars, offered to sell me more stuff, and kept after me for a while. I ignored him.

Why?

Because I was busy doing stuff. I was taking action. I had learned the lessons he was teaching and moved on.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way everyone rolls.

I was talking to a woman recently. She’s a lawyer practicing family law, and she’s a self-help consumer. She’s highly motivated to…consume more self-help. Sadly, the self-help message isn’t prodding her to improve her life: it’s only prodding her to buy more self-help stuff. That’s not good.

If you’re a self-help junkie, it’s time to put the messages you’ve been receiving to use. Stop consuming self-help, and start doing what needs to be done.

The secret is not ideas, motivation, and positive feelings. The secret is action. You’ve got do something for good things to happen to you. Reading about taking action doesn’t cut it. The same is true of listening and watching. You need to be doing.

If you want to grow your practice, build your network, advertise, and get visible. If you want a better-managed practice, start doing one-to-ones, giving feedback, and coaching. If you want more efficiency, start building systems, employing technology, and hiring better people. Improvement requires action.

It’s time to pack up your Tony Robbins stuff and whatever else you’ve bought and give it to Goodwill. Put it in a box, and drop it off at the charity’s door. It will pass it along to someone else who needs that information.

Then get back to the office and get to work. Take action, execute, and check things off the list. You’re good enough now: you don’t need more self-improvement. Take what you’ve got, and put it to work.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Are You Addicted to Self-Help?

You’ve visited offices and watched employees and noticed the difference.

Some teams are amazingly energized, hustling, and productive.

Some teams are lethargic and slow, and they can barely find the energy to greet you at the door.

Why?

There are many reasons why the culture is so dramatically different from one office to the next. Usually, the differences are largely a reflection of the differences between the leadership of each team.

There is one thing the leaders of those energized, productive teams do that the other leaders aren’t doing.

What is it?

They’re asking for more. They have higher expectations. They assume their people can do more than they’re doing, and they demand it.

Steve Jobs was an extreme example of that kind of leader. He didn’t tolerate anything less than an extraordinary effort.

What are you willing to accept? What is it that you tolerate?

Is that person at your front desk a receptionist capable only of answering the phone and greeting guests with a smile? Or is she someone who can handle the desk and phone while managing a team of programmers in India developing an iPhone app for calculating child support while she keeps a group of law students on track as they develop content for your website?

What do you expect from her?

If all you expect is smile, greet, and answer, then that’s what you’re going to get. If you expect more, you’re going to get more. How much more?

She’ll do everything she can for you if you ask for it. She won’t always succeed, but she’ll give it her all, and you’ll get more than you’re getting now.

Give her a chance to live up to your expectations. Give her a chance to grow. Give her a chance to do something she never knew she could do.

Expect more and ask for it, and you’ll be that office with amazing energy, hustle, and productivity.

Article from: Divorce Discourse -

Why Do Some People Get More from Their Team?

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?