Getting buy-in from others in the firm for business planning
Question: How do we get all the attorneys in the firm to buy-in and participate in creating both a firm plan and individual plans?
Answer: Generally, in my experience, successful planning is caused by an emphasis on the process from the top. The primary rainmakers of the firm, the management and managing partner all must be in concert: Planning is important and needs to be done by everyone in the firm.
Start with small projects, perhaps even individual coaching, to experience success with the process. Then, everyone will buy into the process.
A more forceful approach would be to determine compensation bonuses/rewards on the basis of plan development (a realistic and aggressive plan merits more compensation) and achievement of plan goals. Failure to achieve goals, however, should not be punished without consideration of the reasons for not achieving the goals: Personal illness, change of business conditions of clients, hard work but unrealistic goals, etc.
John Wooden, famed UCLA basketball coach says: "Failure to plan is planning to fail." It's better to know where one wants to go in his/her career. There, then, is a greater likelihood of achieving the goals.
Principle of delegation
Question: How do I create my own blog?
Answer: Hire someone! The expense is far less than the time spent (no matter how easy with TypePad or other tools) which will take you away from other marketing activities.
Delegation is a principle by which I live. I want to do those things that only I can do, like coaching, consulting and marketing for more work. Other things that I need done can be done (and usually better) by someone else.
If you think of the creation of a blog or other web machinations as working in the garden, i.e., your time away from the office, then so be it. Mine is cycling. I get little enough time to do that ... but if I did the other things myself, then I would get no cycling and always complaining about being overworked.
The issue of cash flow is important. But, if I can market for new business, I usually can get a client (with their cash flow) before or soon after I have to pay for the service I've delegated/ contracted to someone else.
Again, just my $.02 worth ....
Marketing to the Latino community
The Latino community is growing in the United States and represents significant buying power. This group also has significant legal needs.
Continue Reading...MCLE & Marketing - A bit of irony
In reading the October/November issue of Law Practice, the publication of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association, I was suddenly struck with a bit of irony.
The answer: YES!
The Court said that lawyers have the right to advertise their services. Advertising, by the way, is one aspect of marketing ... Despite this prohibition of restriction, State Bars across the country continue to say that marketing (the broader version of advertising) is excluded from MCLE legitimacy ... credit for programs on marketing are denied.
Now, what is wrong with the principle of helping lawyers identify those who can best use their services and how then to help them develop close relationships with them?
This is not a question of perpetrating a fraud on prospects, it is a question of how to identify what prospects want and then determining whether you, the lawyer, are competent to handle the matter.
How incredibly sad that the Bar discriminates against the small firm lawyer in this process ... how incredibly arrogant of the Bar to refuse to help its members where they need the help most, with clients!
Frankly, I think a lawsuit on constitutional grounds against the Bar would succeed, as did Bates v. O'Steen. But, lawyers seem able to address these issues in other ways, subverting the Bar's prohibition anyway. I prefer, however, to be straight rather than devious.
But then, this is only my opinion.
Fran Musselman -- a visionary
This evening, in Philadelphia, I had the pleasure of meeting Fran Musselman, former chair of the ABA's Law Practice Management chair. The occasion was the presentation of the LPM Section's highest honor, the Sam Smith Award.
During his comments, Fran talked about the basic principles that guided him during his long, illustrious career and as chairman of the major New York law firm, Milbank, Tweed law firm.
His principles were:
1. The client comes first
2. The client comes first
3. The client comes first
4. The client comes first
5. The client comes first
He added that the lawyer must be the conscience of the client. The client is not necessarily "right" at all costs; the lawyer cannot allow the client to do anything, if that "anything" is inappropriate.
6. The staff must be considered; they are extremely important to the success of the law firm and are too often under-appreciated.
7. Take care of your staff.
8. Take care of your staff.
9. Take care of your staff.
10. Take care of your partners
11. Last, take care of yourself.
These are the principles which guided him to success. They are words to live by.
Parenthetically, I just learned that the Bar Association of the State Bar of Washington has rejected MCLE credit for a program focusing on "Managing Client Expectations." In their words, the intent of the program is to teach marketing skills to lawyers. This is astounding! ... And pathetic! Helping lawyers to understand the needs of clients and managing clients' expectatins such that the rules of professional conduct are honored is the highest calling! Helping lawyers focus on clients, and concurrently make more money, also helps the clients by protecting lawyers from becoming marginal and likely invade the clients' trust account.
Fran also suggested that the computer should be used as a management tool and lamented that the computer is too oftehn misused with the result that collegiality among lawyers is destroyed.
Wise words! Despite Fran's 80 years, he is still active in the New York bar and very wise in his commentaries.
Testimonial -- It doesn't get much better than this
This e-mail testimonial was just sent to me:
1. Ask Ed what to do.
2. Do what Ed says.
3. ????
4. Profit!
Thanks
Are lawyers more or less ethical than taxi companies?
A further thought on this subject:
There seems to be something amiss here. Are lawyers ahead or behind the business curve? Are we more or less ethical than taxi companies?
Continue Reading...Technology & Client Service
According to a recent survey, 2/3 of customers who try to get service online give up and use the phone instead. That's an interesting statistic (Inc. Magazine, October 2005) and what's more interesting is that the phone's voice mail isn't much better. An earlier study concluded that 14 out of 15 automated voice-response systems
Continue Reading...Education is the basis for future law firm growth
Manufacturer Ben Serotta, founder of Serotta Competition Bicycles, had a problem: The sales staff at his 320 independent bike retailers failed to fit their customers properly; the result was that his hand-built frames didn't satisfy his objective. He decided that the instruction manuals, brochures and occasional face-to-face sessions with the disparate sales staff just didn't suffice.
Continue Reading...New honor given to www.lawbizblog.com
Just received notice from Mark Kuiack, the editor of the Canadian Bar Association's CBA PracticeLink Web site.
Mark said, "I'm writing let you know that I chose your blog as our 'Feed of the Week' in our Marketing section ... I often refer to your site ... I wanted to point CBA members in the direction of the great resources on the LawBiz blog...
Thank you again for providing such a valuable service!"
Save money - destroy old files
Question: How can I get rid of old files and save storage costs?
Answer: The question is a great question! Unfortunately, the answer is not always simple. Here are some observations, however, that might put the issue into perspective.
1. Bring in outside people to do this task; do not disturb the normal flow of your office procedures and current work flow. Engage a disabled person. This provides the person(s) so engaged with an income s/he might not otherwise have and you can generally pay a lower rate than for other folks.
2. Consider using a photocopy machine. Some large companies provide the scanning capability and do not charge a fee unless and until a photocopy is actually made. Scanning and placing files into a .pdf format is not deemed printing photocopies.
3. Begin with the oldest files first, reduce storage space and thereby save on real estate costs.
4. Be sure to have a lawyer or someone with the requisite knowledge review the files and remove all original documents before destruction of the files after scanning.
5. Consult the Rules of Professional Conduct and ethics opinions of your jurisdiction to verify the time for retention of files. After this date and your scanning process, destroy the files.
6. Do more than merely place files and old boxes into a dumpster. Consider hiring a file storage house to shred your tossed files.
7. After all this, consider the following observation by a colleague: "I am in the arduous process of scanning older files and so far, this is what I've found out: I have scanned 9,261 pages which is about 270 Mb of data. This is 179 files (about 130 client matters), which fit into about 5 1/2 bankers' boxes. All of these files were scanned into .pdf format. I have created an archive spreadsheet in Excel, so it is easy to track a document's location.
Obviously, at this rate a CD is the optimal storage media, because a DVD would basically be too much. Good luck, it's pretty time consuming."
Double Dipping - Billings
Are lawyers more or less ethical than taxi companies?
The rules of professional conduct in most States require that only one client be billed at one time. In other words, if your agreement with client A says that you will bill them for the time spent on their matter, and you have a similar agreement with client B, then you can bill only one client for each minute of time.
Continue Reading...
