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Ed interviews Conraad Saam, chief marketing officer of Avvo
30 minutes, 41 seconds
7.2MB
Patrick J. Lamb discussed the definition, concept and implementation of alternative fees.
Patrick J. Lamb is a founder of Valorem Group, a pioneering law firm in business litigation, based in Chicago, Illinois. He has long been a proponent of alternative fees. Listen as Ed and Patrick discuss the definition, concept and implementation of alternative fees.
34 minutes, 33 seconds
7.9MB
Dr. Bill Saleebey discusses the finer points of moving a law practice
Most of us don't appreciate the finer points of moving furniture, boxes of files, computers and all the other paraphernalia that makes up a typical law office... while not losing billable hours!
Dr. Bill Saleebey provides some clues to achieving a successful move in this interview with Ed.
Couple his words of wisdom with Chapter 36 of Ed's best selling book, The Attorney & Law Firm Guide to The Business of Law (2nd ed.), and you will be assured of success!
22 minutes, 34 seconds
5.2MB
Dale H. Tincher, CEO of ConsultWebs.com talks with Ed about search engine optimization
Dale H. Tincher, CEO of ConsultWebs.com, a web design company for law firms, talks with Ed about SEO, search engine optimization. They talk about how SEO can help produce increased revenues for law firms and some of the interplay between social media and SEO.
24 minutes, 50 seconds
5.8MB
Cookie Lewis Discusses Law Library Audits
What is a library audit, and how can law firms save huge sums of money by conducting such an audit? Cookie Lewis, M.S.L.S. is president of Askinfomania, a legal and business research firm, who conducts such audits. As a legal information strategist, she works with law firms to maximize their return on investment in their library resources and other law library management issues. In her interview with Ed, she discusses such audits, why law firms should consider having one, and how law firms can save many dollars of overhead with the right audit results.
22 minutes, 28 seconds
5.3MB
Maurice Vincent discusses In-House Litigation Support Services
26 minutes, 33 seconds
6.2MB
Derek Flower discusses the new Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500
He talks with Ed again, this time about the new ScanSnap S1500. This, according to Ed, is one of the best tools lawyers can have within their immediate reach. And the cost belies the benefits the ScanSnap delivers.
Listen to Ed and Derek discuss the benefits of this latest entry from Fujitsu.
17 minutes, 00 seconds
3.9MB
Maridee F. Edwards discusses civility with Ed.
Maridee F. Edwards is an attorney and mediator in the area of professional licensing and ethics matters in Jefferson City, Missouri. She is former Bar counsel for the Missouri Bar and speaks with Ed about civility in the profession.
There has been a recent fervor about teaching lawyers "civility" when dealing with other counsel and adverse parties. Aren't these the principles we should have learned at our mother's (and father's) knees, but somehow seem not to have learned? Are more influenced by "everything is fair in love and war," believing that the adversary system, by definition, is akin to war?
Therefore, everything the lawyer does is "fair" as long as not prohibited by some code. With the fallout in the economy and corresponding pressure on the legal community, is this becoming more acute?
Is the legal profession guilty of misconduct or rather merely reflective of what is happening in the rest of our society?
Maridee and Ed elaborate on this issue and what lawyers need to do in order to both effectively represent clients and stay away from violating rules of professional conduct.
30 minutes, 05 seconds
7.1MB
Darryl Cross of LexisNexis discusses differences between marketing and selling.
Darryl Cross is the Vice President of Client Profitability for LexisNexis. In this position, he reviews the marketing efforts of many lawyers and law firms. After all, it's marketing... and selling... that creates the revenue from which profitability will result. Darryl discusses with Ed the differences between marketing and selling... and why lawyers either fear or hate to sell their professional services. Darryl and Ed also discuss several easy ways in which reluctant lawyers can be more effective and thus thrive in this downturned economy.
22 minutes, 24 seconds
5.3MB
Stephanie L. Kimbro talks with Ed about virtual law offices.
Stephanie L. Kimbro is an attorney in Wilmington, NC. She talks about the virtual law office and her role as a "virtual" attorney. This is different than a virtual assistant. Listen and learn how you can adopt some of the aspects of the virtual law office in your practice during these tough economic times.
22 minutes, 32 seconds
5.3MB
Patrick Lamb talks about pressures on legal fees resulting from the financial crisis
Patrick Lamb, partner in the Valorem Law Group of Chicago, IL, is a leader in the national discussion concerning value billing. In today's conversation, Patrick talks about short-term and long-term pressures on legal fees resulting from the financial crisis facing our country. Patrick and Ed also discuss the impact that those pressures will have on lawyers' compensation.
20 minutes, 32 seconds
4.8MB
Rick Borstein talks with Ed about new products from Adobe
Rick Borstein is the Business Development Manager of the Legal Market for Adobe Systems, Inc. He talks with Ed about all the differnt versions Adobe Acrobat 9 and their associated features. He also discusses Acrobat.com for file sharing and collaboration.
For those who want to learn more about Adobe's products after listening to this interview, you go to Rick's blog, at www.adobe.com/go/acrolaw.
29 minutes, 28 seconds
6.9MB
Karl Robe talks with Ed about public relations and image.
Karl Robe, APR, possesses 15 years experience, during which he has counseled c-level executives from Fortune 100 companies to start-ups in business-to-business, public affairs and leadership communications. As an author, presenter and coach on a multitude of communications topics, his insights have appeared in The Strategist, Cris Manager, Wisconsin Law Journal and numerous other venues. Karl has achieved an Accreditation in Public Relations (APR), certifying a candidate's knowledge of public relations practice, communications, theory, management science and ethics.
22 minutes, 09 seconds
5.1MB
Tom O'Leary talks with Ed about leveraging the Internet to increase revenue
Tom O'Leary is the owner of The Attorneys ATM, a marketing and advertising firm based in Cincinnati, OH and the author of How to Dominate Google, Yahoo and MSN. In the past decade, he has assisted more than 400 small and medium sized businesses with their marketing strategies, with a focus on leveraging the Internet to increase revenue.
23 minutes, 46 seconds
5.6MB
Click here to download your free copy of How To Dominate Google, Yahoo And Msn.
Tom Kane talks with Ed about importance of conducting client interviews
Tom is a former practicing lawyer, who spent more than 22 years as a marketing person for law firms, both in-house and as a consultant. He is the author of LegalMarketingBlog.com, which has enjoyed a No.2 ranking for legal marketing on Google and Yahoo for more than two years. His last in-house position was as Chief Marketing Officer for a large national law firm.
23 minutes, 48 seconds
5.5MB
Collaboration and Conflict Resolution
Stewart Levine, author of Getting to Resolution and his latest work, Collaboration 2.0, talks about the benefits of collaboration, the higher heights that can be reached through collaboration, and the use of technology to aid this process. Among other comments, Stewart talks about 7 requirements for effective collaboration, it is important for lawyers to learn collaboration and to use this skill appropriately.
24 minutes, 14 seconds
5.6MB
Bruce Callow talks about the "dashboard" concept
16 minutes, 44 seconds
6.9MB
Mike Downey, attorney with Hinshaw and Culbertson LLP in St. Louis, MO talks about Alternative fees
27 minutes, 24 seconds
6.4MB
Jay Larock, Director of Product Management for Corel WordPerfect Office talks about the new WordPerfect
19 minutes, 15 seconds
4.4MB
Mark Britton talks about the Avvo lawyer rating system
41 minutes, 17 seconds
9.7MB
Ed Interviews Anthony E. Davis on risk management and professional responsibility
31 minutes, 02 seconds
7.1MB
Value Billing Podcast
29 minutes, 57 seconds
6.9MB
Ed Interviews Derek Flower, Senior Account Manager for Fujitsu Products of America, Inc.
15 minutes, 36 seconds
3.7MB
Ed Interviews Gretchen Neels, founder of Neels and Company - Strategic Business Communication, based in Boston
19 minutes, 55 seconds
4.7MB
Interview with Alexis Martin Neely
17 minutes, 51 seconds
4.1MB
Ed Interviews Andy Birol, business growth consultant and author of The Five Catalysts of Seven Figure Growth
16 minutes, 57 seconds
4.0MB
Peter Brusso Interviews Ed Poll at CA Bar
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
Jim Arden talks about Internet Security
24 minutes, 42 seconds
5.8MB
Ed Interviews Debbie Epstein, founder and principal or Flex-Time Lawyers LLC
25 minutes, 35 seconds
6.0MB
Ed Interviews Thom Singer, author of Some Assembly Required, 2nd edition and The ABC's of Networking
22 minutes, 01 seconds
5.2MB
Ed Interviews Scott Simmonds, Insurance Consultant for Buyers
Scott was a general agent for 20 years and has consulted with buyers for the last 7. While he works out of Maine, his consulting is national in scope.
Listen now for ideas on how to reduce your overhead and increase your protection.
33 minutes, 47 seconds
Ed Interviews Rick Borstein, Business Development Manager of the Legal Market for Adobe Systems, Inc.
Once again Ed has the pleasure of interviewing Rick Borstein. Rick is the Business Development Manager of the Legal Market for Adobe Systems, Inc. Among other topics, they discuss the search element of Adobe Acrobat.
18 minutes, 52 seconds
4.4MB
Ed Interviews Carol Fritz
07 minutes, 03 seconds
4.0MB
Ed Interviews Mimi Donaldson, Co-author of Bless Your Stress: It Means You're Still Alive!
20 minutes, 39 seconds
4.8MB
Recycling Electronic Equipment
14 minutes, 21 seconds
3.4MB
Microsoft Office 2007 for Lawyers
Donna discusses with Ed the new Microsoft Office 2007 and the dramatic differences between this edition and all of Microsoft's previous formats.
This edition is truly a remarkable switch in format that will require users to pay attention.
25 minutes, 27 seconds
6.0MB
Challenge of Building a Law Firm
Today, the Fragomen firm is recognized as the preeminent player in the immigration field, representing major corporate players around the world.
Listen now and learn techniques that you can apply for your own practice growth.
19 minutes, 7 seconds
4.5MB
Registered E-mails
Ed Poll interviewes Zafar Khan, chief executive officer of RPost, a new electronic registered mail system that allows you to both certify receipt of mail by the recipient as well as the contents of the attachments. Not even the U.S. Postal service can do the latter. It's the next best thing to having someone watch the recipient read your post. And, the best part, you don't even have to sign up for the service, just pay for the post as you use it. Listen for more details as Ed interviews Zafar.
21 minutes, 24 seconds
5.0MB
Marketing Strategies, Focus Groups, Branding & Brainstorming
In this week's podcast, Ed Interviews Holly O’Neill. She is the principal of Talking Business, a company focusing on marketing strategies, focus groups, branding and brainstorming for new products and services.
14 minutes, 47 seconds
3.4MB
Outsourcing Helps Lawyers Deal with Increased Secretarial Needs
Ed interviews Don Garrison of Quik Sek, a virtual dictation service. He discusses how his company uses "outsourcing" to help lawyers deal with increased secretarial needs. He talks about the company's technology to help lawyers deal with forgotten or never-learned dictation skills needed to use his service. Listen now to this interesting conversation.
14 minutes, 41 seconds
3.4MB
"Make more money... HEAPS more money!" - Part 2
An important lesson from Winston is that the work we do is what fuels our dreams. He suggests that we must live our life in a way that achieves our dreams before they carry us off, not after. That may be a great reason to listen to Winston again - to achieve greater success sooner so we have the wherewithal to achieve those dreams.
28 minutes, 04 seconds<br>
6.7MB
Click here to listen.
"Make more money... HEAPS more money!" - Part 1
Winston Marsh, a professional speaker based in Australia, is a marketing guru who helps businesses make more money ... heaps more money. In this first half of this fascinating interview, Winston addresses his distinctive license plate that helps him remember a key rule in marketing; as well as his unique formula for substantially increasing your revenue. You'll hardly be able to wait for next week for the second half.
27 minutes, 40 seconds
6.5MB
Interview with Donald A. Downey, Executive Director of minisoft Worldwide
Donald A. Downey, Executive Director of minisoft Worldwide, is interviewed by Ed Poll about collecting both WIP and AR. Don suggests that WIP (work in progress) that is not quickly converted into AR (accounts receivable) becomes sediment that needs to be cleared out.
Where the law firm uses the accrual method of accounting, there is an economic motivation to clear it out; where the law firm is a cash basis taxpayer, there is little motivation to do so ... but the law firm merely fools itself into thinking that there is still value in the amount that isn't quickly converted to an account receivable and then paid by the client.
Listen now to the full interview.
25 minutes, 12 seconds
5.9MB
Interview with Norm Thomas, Director of Business Development for Microsoft Professional Services Solutions
He then continues to discuss specific applications to help improve the efficiency of lawyers, and concludes with a sneak preview of their presentations at the forthcoming LegalTech Show in New York.
Ed starts his interview by asking Norm to clarify his role with Microsoft.
Click here to listen.
23 minutes, 21 seconds
5.5MB
Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Has New Features for Lawyers
This week, Ed interviews Rick Borstein, Business Development Manager for the Legal Community for Abobe Systems, Inc. Rick discusses The new version of Adobe Acrobat<sup>®</sup> and how new features are of special interest to lawyers.
21 minutes, 0 seconds<br>
4.9MB
Click here to listen.
Fee Collection, a Teleseminar given to the Canadian Bar Association by Ed Poll
Ed takes a "Fresh Look at Fee Collection for Lawyers."
If you desire more information following this podcast, we recommend Ed'd book, Collecting Your Fee: Getting Paid from Intake to Invoice.
Succession Planning
Leading and Learning, Inc. provides consulting services to the corporate world by guiding organizational change management. Billie talks about succession planning -- probably the single most important change that any organization can face.
34 minutes, 55 seconds
8.2MB
Click here to listen
"The DuPont Model"
Jeff Carr, General Counsel of FMC Technologies, in another interview, talks about the "DuPont Model" and compares this model to his own expectations when interacting with outside counsel for FMC. Jeff talks about how the law firm needs to partner with the Corporate Law Department, collaborating together, as contrasted to the traditional vendor-buyer relationship. Collaboration produces more effective representation at a lower cost to the company without discounting either the value or the per hour fee of the lawyer. Although alternative pricing is an important topic that will likely appear again in our podcasts, this is the last interview in our current series on the topic.
Alternative Fee Billing
Hugh Q. Gottschalk, an attorney in Colorado, leads us in yet another perspective on alternative legal services pricing. He also discusses understanding the cost of your services, budgeting for litigation and structuring the actual fee agreement with a client.
These discussions should be considered in light of the "reasonableness" of legal fees... and most importantly, how the lawyer can deliver quality services at a price that will produce a reasonable profit for the lawyer at an acceptable price to the client.
Click here to listen.
Alternative Fee Billing - Jeff Carr Interview
Alternative fees continue to be a prominent topic among lawyers. Our next several podcasts will feature interviews that Ed has conducted over the last 18 months with prominent thinkers on this subject.
Jeff Carr, General Counsel of FMC Technologies, responds here in the first of two interviews with him.
In today's world, the preeminent method of billing is still based on the hour. It's not the way that lawyers have billed traditionally. It used to be that bills were given on a bottom line for value rendered services.
Changes resulted largely by corporate counsel and insurance counsel in the 1970s, or perhaps more so in the early 80s, when people were frustrated with that kind of billing system. We went to the billable hour as a way to impose some cost control and as a way to understand the way law firms were billing us. Now of course we've got a whole generation of lawyers who know nothing else at this point.
Jeff Carr discusses this "new" horizon.
Tyco's Approaches
Jim Michalowicz, is the Litigation Program Manager for Tyco Corp. Formerly, he was with DuPont in a similar capacity for 13 years. Our interview with Jim also includes two other folks from the Tyco Legal Department who will also focus on development the best business practices for their legal department - developing the most effective and efficient approaches to handling the legal affairs of Tyco. Jim combines information management, relationship management and best business practices in his role as manager. Listen as Jim explains further about Tyco's approaches and what he expects from outside counsel that work with and for Tyco.
Interpersonal Communication
There are four personality styles – What is yours? Why should you care? How does your style impact your client relationships? Gayle N. Carson, President of Carson Research Center tells us why we need to know and why we should care about this issue.
Continue Reading...Providing Value to Clients
Christopher Marston is the CEO of Exemplar Law Partners, LLC, in Boston, MA. He has been receiving a lot of press coverage lately.
Why?
Chris, a member of the Massachusetts Bar, was the CFO of a technology company. This is his first venture into creating his own law firm. He brings his financial and management expertise to the opening of Exemplar Partners.
Chris was the CFO of a technology company. This is his first venture into the legal profession. He brings his financial and management expertise to the opening of Exemplar Partners.
Chris talks about providing value to clients. This means, among other things, no hourly billing and valuing the firm's human capital by creating the right work environment. He also talks getting clients more involved with their own legal matter to help increase their level of satisfaction.
Listen to Chris's comments which are unbiased by historical restraints of the legal profession. If you agree with him, think about how you can apply his principles to your own law firm and practice.
Internet Marketing
Many say the guru of creating blogs and promoting blogs is Kevin O’Keefe of Lex Blog (www.lexblog.com). In a recent interview Ed discussed with Kevin, one of their favorite subjects, using the internet (including blogging) to market one's law practice.
Alternative Fee Billing - Shared Risk
Ed Poll interviews attorney Rick Simses on the subject of alternative fee billing. They discuss sharing the risk of a matter with the client... what it means and how it should impact the client's fee.
What Do Huge Multi-National Corporations Look for in Outside Counsel?
Let's take another look at what general counsel are searching for when they hire outside law firms. This time, Thomas S. Brooks, Vice President of AT&T Law & Government Affairs, shares his views on the subject.
Alternative fee pricing
Ed Poll interviews attorney Rick Simses on the subject of alternative fee billing. They discuss sharing the risk of a matter with the client... what it means and how it should impact the client's fee.
What Do Huge Multi-National Corporations Look for in Outside Counsel?
Let's take another look at what general counsel are searching for when they hire outside law firms. This time, Thomas S. Brooks, Vice President of AT&T Law & Government Affairs, shares his views on the subject.
Click here to listen to the interview
Continue Reading...Get another 22 days each year!
Ed Poll, principal of LawBiz Management interviews Gayle Carson, president of Carson Research Center, on the topic of time management. While no one can truly manage time, Gayle shows us how to "pick up" 22 eight hour days over a year's time. That would make one very interesting vacation, or allow us to do a lot of additional billable work. .
How do Corporate Counsel select outside counsel
Steven A. Lauer, having been both inside and outside counsel, shares his thoughts on how today's lawyers should approach insiden general counsel to get their trust ... and their business. He currently is the Director of Integrity Research, Integrity Interactive Corporation.
Microsoft hits another home run!
Jeff Riffer, senior litigation partner in the law firm of Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro in Los Angeles, CA, discusses why and how he uses Microsoft's OneNoteTM software for day-to-day litigation.
Continue Reading...Value to the customer?
Ron Baker, a noted consultant and principal of Verisage Institute, quotes from Peter Drucker: "What is value to the customer?"
Value Billing - Podcast interview
Patrick J. Lamb, Managing Partner of Butler Rubin Saltarelli & Boyd LLP, a Chicago litigation firm, was interviewed by Ed Poll of LawBiz Management in 2005 about "value added billing." The principles espoused by Patrick then are still applicable and fresh today.
Audio Podcast -- Microsoft OneNote
Scott Rockfeld, Group Product Manager, Microsoft, discusses their new product for note taking and better organization.
