ABA Journal lists LawBizBlog in top 100
American Bar Journal includes LawBizBlog in top 100!
Ed Poll finds plenty to post about from his speaking schedule alone. He writes about outsourcing and the cold-hard-cash facts of starting—or ending—a law practice.
Go to the Journal and vote for LawBizBlog.com!
Cyber Monday is here!
Cyber Monday is here .. indications that sales will be ahead of last year by 15% to 20% on line! Buyers are shopping at the physical stores and then going on-line to seek better prices. Boot up and go shopping! When times get tough, the tough go shopping ... <g>
Yesterday, I bought a great camera, a new model from a high quality brand. I couldn't believe the difference in the pricing between what I saw in the store and the price of a reputable on-line operation (which, by the way, has a physical store in New York). And my wife says she will buy everything on-line this year in order to avoid the long lines and surly service in stores.
Is there an ethical issue in this circumstance? What are the ethics of using the service of a store, determining what you want, and then buying on-line because of a price differential? Is there any difference between this circumstance and comparing pricing among various stores?
Selling your law practice with a covenant not to compete
Where courts have refused to uphold a covenant not to compete given by one lawyer to another in the sale of a law practice, one of the primary arguments against validating the covenant is that clients have a right to counsel of their own choosing. And, the argument continues, saying that a lawyer cannot practice law in a given area for a reasonable period of time restricts that right.
Social Capital - How to invest
“J. A. Barnes in the 1950s defined a social network as ‘an association of people drawn together by family, work or hobby.’ In the digital age, social networking websites amplify opportunities to associate and grow our social (personal and/or professional) capital.”
Continue Reading...Does disclosure affect strategy or competence?
Did you see the Tuesday edition of Wall Street Journal, Health section? David Armstrong discusses the business interests of doctors -- and their ethical responsibility to disclose their personal financial interests in any business that benefits from their prescribed medical treatment, whether that treatment be medicine, equipment or otherwise.
The bottom line is that it is the patient's responsibility to ask the doctor if he/she has any financial connection to the recommended treatment. The suggestion is that if the answer is "yes," the patient should get a second opinion. Not bad advice, but still a matter of personal trust and interaction between the doctor and the patient.
If the doctor has a financial interest in a treatment modality, this may influence the doctor's prescribed treatment. Note that there is no movement here to demand that doctors disclose whether they have malpractice insurance. Perhaps because the existence of insurance is not likely to influence the treatment modality to be prescribed.
Why is it that some lawyers misguidedly believe it is important for lawyers? It's existence or absence does not affect the legal strategy advised or vigor or competence of legal representation. As a side note, however, it is interesting to note that most of the lawyers advocating that other lawyers make disclosure DO have a personal financial stake in the outcome of this discussion. Most represent insurance carriers who whose premium income might increase. Yet, there is no disclosure required by them in their discussions of this topic. Interesting, eh?
Is pessimism prudence?
My wife would probably agree and say "yes." I have always said that she would have made a great law school professor because she can see every negative possibility, some I couldn't even imagine, in every situation! The "parade of horribles," as it was called in law school.
Her response is that by envisioning what could go wrong, she can prepare for it happening and be ready to overcome it if it does happen. Perhaps her attitude is where i got the title for my book Disaster Preparedness & Recovery Planning for Law Firms.
In today's ABA email, there seems to be some vindication for her approach. An article by Debra Cassens Weiss said:
"... Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies positive psychology, says most optimists do better in life than merited by their talents alone.
But with lawyers, the opposite is true.
Seligman's survey of law students at the University of Virginia found that pessimists got better grades, were more likely to make law review and got better job offers.
"In law," he told the newspaper, 'pessimism is considered prudence.' "
E-billing: Blessing or Burden
In an article in the September 2007 edition of Law Firm Inc., e-billing is discussed. Here are some of the primary points made in the article:
Pro
• Find errors and charges that aren’t in keeping with the client’s billing standards
• Compares costs among various outside law firms
• Saves 15 - 18% of its outside legal costs in some instances
• Reduces workload in reviewing and approval process
• Increase payment by 30 days to the law firm
• Faster pay increases profit for the law firm
Con
• Increased cost connected with e-billing
• Usually have to hire a dedicated person/staff to deal with the e-billing detail
• Places small firms at a competitive disadvantage because they generally can’t afford the cost of the software, the learning curve and the additional staff required to handle the process
• On-going software maintenance fees
• Additional fee for each additional custom billing template needed for a new client
• Added accounting requirements
• Steep learning curve for attorneys to learn different billing codes for each client
• Increased possibility/likelihood of billing errors because of lack of uniformity in codes
• Rejection of total billing invoice when there is a human error on one element – invoice is returned for correction
• Notification of error is seldom complete and law firm is expected to know what the error is; if this is not the case, the process becomes process, return, fix, return, reject, etc., until it is finally determined what the error is and it’s fixed.
The article concludes that, at the moment, e-billing today is not likely to benefit law firms, though it may in the future; but it clearly is an added cost of doing business.
Thus, whether it's a blessing or a burden depends on which side of the table this discussion finds you.
Follow up to lawyers blogging
After I posted my Q & A about lawyers blogging, I received a copy of the ABA's Law Practice Today with its lead article being a well-written piece by Greg Siskind on lawyers and blogging.
Another article in this edition concerns the changing landscape of the legal profession and outsourcing, written by me.
Do blogs work for lawyers?
Q:
Ed, you’re an avid blogger—I read LawBiz® Blog all the time. I’ve even contemplated starting my own blog. What could blogging do for my private law practice?
Peter Brusso Interviews Ed Poll at CA Bar
Peter Brusso, CEO of Infocard.cc, works with service businesses to create small CD-ROM business cards. He interviewed Ed at Ed's State Bar of California annual conference booth in September, 2007. Peter is also CEO of podcastingforlawyers.com.
In this first interview Ed discusses the importance of a business plan. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."
Interview 1
13 minutes, 50 seconds
3.2MB
In this second interview Ed discusses the power of coaching and mentoring and the importance of learning how to run a business.
Interview 2
11 minutes, 28 seconds
2.7MB
Canadian lawyers share best practices
In October, managing partners from across the country gathered at the Canadian Bar Association's third annual high level conference created to focus specifically on their issues. They came together in Montreal to exchange ideas and discuss best practices. The Lawyers Weekly wrote about the conference and, particularly, my remarks.
Lawyers fees compared to the value of those fees
Rees Morrison observed, "Certainly no law firm can hazard more than a guess on the worth to a particular client at a particular time of its 10 paralegal hours, 20 associate hours, and 8 partner hours on a revision of a major sublease. For much that law firms do, value and cost are incommensurable."
I agree with Rees when one looks backwards. However, if one reviews the matter with the client before the engagement actually begins, the client generally will be able to assess the value to him/her/it. At that point, the law firm and client, together, should evaluate whether the anticipated service can be delivered for a fee that is commensurate with the value delivered as perceived by the client.
Budgeting for the matter, with the involvement and concurrence of the client, will go a long way to establish both the value to the client and likely fees the law firm will charge.
In this discussion, we must be careful not to equate the result for the client with the value because no law firm can guarantee the outcome.
Malpractice Insurance Disclosure Sent to Committee
The State Bar of California’s Board of Governors narrowly voted to amend the current proposal to require lawyers who don’t carry malpractice insurance to disclose this fact to their clients. The amendment would require such disclosure only in those situations where a lawyer is required to have a written engagement agreement pursuant to Business & Professions Code §6147 & 6148.
That amended proposal, then, was defeated; a subsequent sense of the Board was to send this issue to its own committee (Regulations, Admissions & Discipline Committee, not the original task force that was submitting the proposal) for further study. Two issues were uppermost in the Board’s mind. One was whether the amended proposal could be adopted by the Board without further public comment and, second, whether the full ramifications of the original proposal were completely understood by the Board.
It is hoped that the RAD committee will be successful in addressing the issues that face all of the stakeholders involved, the public and members of the Bar, without the perception of self-interest or financial gain for the Bar ... and with the interest of all lawyers in mind (including the 30,000 not currently insured).
Continue Reading...Thinking outside the pumpkin
In his latest post, Peter Darling pays me the ultimate compliment: "... in his usual elegant, lucid way, Ed is making an incredibly important point (about thinking "beyond the norm"). As marketers, our whole job is to innovate.
Lawyer Benchmarks Taught by Airstream
There are benchmarks in life ... and in our law practices. Benchmarks might be as significant as a marriage, a birth or a death. In law, it might be graduating from law school, opening one’s own practice, winning a significant case, or in today’s world of Baby Boomers, moving into our "second season."
The Airstream trailer (see my earlier posts on this subject) has taught me and confirmed many lessons I’ve learned over the years. Here are just a few that our current trip has triggered:
Change is part of life, and we must learn how to manage change to be successful
Change requires that we be flexible
Life involves continuous improvement
Luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity
Thinking beyond the norm
Sometimes, in today's very competitive legal environment, lawyers and law firms must think "outside of the box," beyond the norm. Creating a strategy for your future is mandatory for success, for knowing whether you've arrived at "success." Obviously, that is not a "given," not automatic. We must first create, then implement, to be successful.
Other fields of endeavor often provide us with examples of this type of thinking. See below for one example in the art world. I've seen this type of approach only twice in my life, once by Salvador Dali in possibly my favorite works of art of all time and once by my sister (also an artist).
See the Cochrane Mural
For those people that live in another part of the world, Cochrane is a community just west of Calgary, Alberta . (Not the one in Northern Ontario.)
This mural was unveiled at the Cochrane Ranche House July 1, 2007. Each tile is 1 foot square, is it's own individual picture, and each is by a different artist. All of them together form this huge mural. You can click on each of the tiles to see them in detail. Check out the horse's eye and nostril and anywhere else on the mural. Also the two below it.
Managing Partners Compensation
In an article written by Richard Gary (Firm, Inc., March/April 2006), he says that "... the principal message that compensation decisions affecting the managing partners should send is: ‘The qualities that will make our firm successful over the long term are superior lawyering, client service, teamwork, and fairness.’ In practice, that means that the (full time) managing partner should not be the firm’s highest paid partner ..."
Agreed that the compensation system must appear to be fair. If not, the whole infrastructure of the firm will collapse. But, one must realize the importance of the position. As Gary concurs, managing partners preside over businesses whose revenues are in the millions, even hundreds of millions, of dollars. This is not a position to be taken lightly or to be appointed to just because "you were out of the room at the time of the vote." This is a demanding position, requiring the trust of everyone (lawyers, staff, etc.) in the firm to be successful. This is the CEO of the firm and should be compensated accordingly.
Continue Reading...Email takes a holiday on Friday
USA Today said in a recent column that Fridays are going from casual to e-mail-free. That may be the only way to cut down on the excesses of email. Use email at business only for important tasks that cannot be done otherwise, especially communications in the same office. Address important emails first. And don’t procrastinate responding ... This may help some.
Continue Reading...Disaster preparedness - Business continuity
While making a presentation about recovering from disasters to the Association of Legal Administrators national conference for financial issues, (see my latest book, Disaster Preparedness & Recovery Planning) I listened to another presenter talking about the insurance aspects of disaster. She noted some frightening statistics: More than 40% of all businesses never reopen after they experience a disaster; of those that do open, more than 30% fail after two more years of operation.
Continue Reading...Disaster plans impacted by technology
Gary Chen, Senior Analyst for Yankee Group Enterprise made the following important points in the recent Application Continuity 2007 conference about technology:
- 83% of medium businesses (more than 100 people) have remote or mobile workers
- That means that only 17% of such businesses have no mobile workers at all
- Lifestyles today blend work and personal activities with fluid boundaries between the two
- 15% of our workforce are telecommuters
- 23% of our workforce travel long distance
- 27% of our workforce travel locally
- "Anywhere solutions" can boost productivity and enhance the probability of recovery in the event of disasters
- New technology for unified communications, not yet a driving force, is generally reviewed, if at all, at the time of replacement or updates rather than as an independent purchase now
- One of the greatest challenges facing today's business is that information is lost or stranded within the head of one individual
That means that technology becomes even more important in the management of a law firm. Technology affects current law firm profitability and becomes essential for survival and continuity in times of disaster. In current terminology, "knowledge management" will be the backbone of the success and survival of a law firm. And knowledge management needs enhanced technology to be effective and readily available. As I've said before, I believe law firms of the future will grow or die based on their effective implementation of knowledge management.
Law Firm Profitability Boot Camp
See the press release concerning our Boot Camp for Law Firm Profitability, given in Boston, MA for the benefit of Lawyers Weekly and the Social Law Library ( a very unique library in the John Adams Courthouse).
Collecting Your Fee mentioned
Don Downey graciously mentioned our book, Collecting Your Fee: Getting Paid from Intake to Invoice (ABA 2003) with the following comment:
“… a client who genuinely respects you and the work you did will pay your bill in a timely manner.” ED Poll (2003)
In meeting Ed a few years ago and having the opportunity to speak with him on several occasions, I can’t help but say that those few words embody AR collections. Not just law firm collections, but all collections. When we communicate with our clients, we need to keep in mind that every communication either gets us closer to payment or further from a payment. Our motivation, if you haven’t already seen it, should be closer to receiving payment!
Building Loyalty
Q: My practice is in a rut and I don’t know why. How can I attract more clientele—both old and new—as well as those who come from diverse backgrounds?
Mandatory Disclosure If No Malpractice Insurance
Q: As a sole practitioner, I’m nervous about the possibility that new requirements that lawyers must disclose in writing if we don't have malpractice insurance. How will mandatory disclosure affect my business?
