On October 8, 2014, the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued Formal Opinion 468, Facilitating the Sale of a Law Practice. The opinion discusses ABA Model Rule 1.17, which requires in part than when a lawyer or law firm sells their practice, the seller must stop practicing in that area of the law in the private sector, at least in the jurisdiction or geographic area of the practice being sold. But the opinion now says that the seller may assist the buyer in the orderly transition of active client matters for a reasonable period of time after the sale, thus helping to facilitate the sale of law practices.
The opinion notes that part of the reason the Rule was changed in 1990 to permit sale of a law practice under certain circumstances was to address the disparity between sole practitioners and law firm partners; since solo lawyers could not sell their law practices, their clients were at a disadvantage when the lawyer retired from the practice. Because a solo practice could not be sold to another lawyer, clients of that practitioner were left essentially on their own to find new representation.
By contrast, when a law firm is sold, generally there are other lawyers within the firm who are familiar with and can handle those matters without the client being forced to find new representation. Similarly, when a law firm partner retires from the practice, they are often able to continue to receive compensation in some form from the firm (in part for the “goodwill” they have established with clients), while sole practitioners were limited to the sale of the firm’s physical assets.
In part, the opinion states:
…[I]t seems reasonable to conclude that the transition of pending or active client matters from a selling lawyer or firm to a purchasing lawyer or firm need not be immediate or abrupt.
For example, one of the purposes stated by the sponsors of new Rule 1.17 was to address the disparity of treatment of clients of sole practitioners and law firms. Lawyers retiring or withdrawing from law firms are not precluded from assisting their former colleagues in the transition of responsibility for pending matters from the retiring or withdrawing lawyer to another firm lawyer. Where appropriate, a selling lawyer or firm should be given a similar opportunity, for a reasonable period of time after the closing of the sale, to assist in the transition of active client matters.
Neither the seller nor the buyer may charge the client for activities specifically related to transitioning, as opposed to activities that advance the client’s matter. However, according to the opinion, “The compensation, if any, to the selling lawyer or law firm for time spent on transitioning matters should be a matter of negotiation between the seller and the buyer in determining the consideration for the sale.”
The New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics has not provided an opinion similar to that in ABA Formal Opinion 468, although the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.17(a) states in part,
Retirement shall include the cessation of the private practice of law in the geographic area, that is, the county and city and any county or city contiguous thereto, in which the practice to be sold has been conducted.
It remains to be seen whether New York will adopt the same position with regard to transitioning client files from the selling firm to the purchasing firm.
Last year, The New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics addressed the sale of a law practice in Opinion 961 in which the Committee addressed the issue of the selling lawyer receiving a percentage of legal fees collected by the purchasing lawyer after the sale was completed.
The Committee found that,
A retiring lawyer may sell his or her law practice contingent upon receipt of a percentage of legal fees collected by the purchaser for services provided after the sale where the payment is in proportion to the services performed by the selling lawyer prior to the sale or fairly represents the value of the "goodwill" of the retiring lawyer. A provision requiring payment of fees for business that the selling lawyer refers to the buying lawyer after the sale is not permitted. (emphasis added)
New York practitioners who want more information about planning to retire or sell their law practice might be interested in the video webcast replay of a 2012 program, Selling Your Law Practice.
My last post talked about eliminating bad clients from your practice. But the best way to deal with truly difficult clients is by not taking them on in the first place. That requires that you be able to identify potentially bad clients early – preferably before a retainer is signed.
Create a pre-qualifying process. Think about the bad clients you’ve represented in the past and make a list of the warning signs or red flags that arose during your first conversation or initial consultation. If you can recognize the warning signs in advance, you can stop bad clients before they enter your practice.
To get you started, here are a few bad client warning signs:
Something about the client makes you uncomfortable
Pay attention to what your gut is telling you when you first meet with clients - if your gut tells you the client is not right for you, think twice before agreeing to the representation. I’ve worked with many lawyers who have had a bad feeling about a potential client, but then talked themselves into the representation. If you find yourself making excuses for a client's bad behavior, their inability to listen or follow directions, or other warning signs, STOP!
The client fired their last attorney (or has fired several attorneys)
Although this isn’t always a deal-breaker if the client has just fired one attorney, it does mean you’ll want to do a little digging to find out what the real problem was.
Litigiousness or a history of suing other attorneys
Beware - you could wind up next.
Evasiveness
Trust is an important element of the attorney-client relationship. If the client isn’t forthcoming, it may signal that they don’t trust you. This might be overcome after a little more discussion, but if you don’t feel you can trust the client or don’t think they’re telling you the truth (or the whole story), this might be a client to avoid.
Desire to educate you on the law
While it is good for clients to be engaged and interested in their matter, they need to trust your education, judgment and expertise. A client who tries to educate you on the law is signaling that they don’t trust your expertise. They will likely fight you throughout the engagement and chances are that they will be unhappy no matter the outcome.
Another form of this kind of client is the client who claims their brother in law, their neighbor or their best friend had the same legal issue and it was resolved faster, less expensively or in a different manner than you are advising – even if they were in another state in which the law was different. This second-guessing is another signal of distrust.
Promises of additional work or contacts
Clients who want to negotiate a discount in exchange for additional work from them in the future or for contacts they can introduce you to for additional work may simply be attempting to disguise their unwillingness or inability to pay for your services. Often, this additional work does not appear – or if it does, the contacts they refer also want a discount.
The client downplays their matter
When clients describe their matter with terms like, “I just need a simple…” “I only need you to write a demand letter…” “This should be a quick project…,” those matters are bound to snowball or become more complicated. If you consider taking on this kind of client, be sure that you are exceptionally clear about scope and fee before the retainer agreement is signed to avoid scope creep, and be sure that you would be willing to take on the matter if it were much more complicated than described.
Too much focus on fees
When clients are overly concerned about the fee or they ask about the fee before you even begin to discuss their legal problem, they will continue to be more concerned with your fees and the bill than the quality of the legal work you are providing.
Unrealistic expectations
Clients with unrealistic expectations for outcome, especially if they are on a limited budget or are in a rush, are likely to be unhappy even with stellar legal representation. While it isn’t uncommon for clients to misunderstand the law or to have high expectations, if your initial conversation isn’t successful in managing or tempering those expectations, you’re opening yourself up for problems later by taking on the client.
Rush jobs
When a client comes to you at the last minute or needs something in a rush, that client is signaling to you that they are generally unprepared, demanding, or otherwise difficult. Clients who wait until the last minute to seek a lawyer’s advice will likely be less than responsive to your requests and less than cooperative in providing documents and information you need for their legal matter. If you decide to work with them anyway, consider charging higher fees as a result of the time limitations.
Unreliability
Your client is your partner in the representation and you can’t do the best job for them if they don’t cooperate. Unreliability comes in many forms – not returning calls, failure to keep appointments, arriving late, not bringing documents or information requested, giving retainer checks that bounce. This behavior will only get worse as the representation progresses.
Consider putting a statement in your retainer agreement that the retainer does not go into effect and work will not commence until the client’s check clears. If the check does not clear in a certain amount of time, send a non-representation letter.
Additional Pre-Screening Elements
In addition to your list of warning signs, your pre-qualifying process might include some elements that help you to determine how committed the client is to the process, how much value they place on your services and how willing they are to pay for them. For example, you may want to spend a few minutes on the telephone or require clients to complete an intake form or questionnairebefore they come to your office for an initial consultation. Clients who fail to complete the form may not be serious about their matter or may be uncooperative in the future.
You may also require up-front payment for your initial consultation. This payment can be applied towards the work for any client who ultimately retains you, but it ensures that potential clients understand that there is value in speaking with you, even if they don’t decide to hire you. You can always decide to refuse or refund the payment when you deem it appropriate.
Turning away potentially problematic clients may be the best thing you do for your practice this year.
Are there any warning signs I've missed? Let me know in the comments!
Remember the "Don't Do" list from tip #5?Some clients may belong on your “don’t do” list. Every lawyer has horror stories about bad clients, clients they never should have agreed to represent, matters they should not have agreed to take on or that got out of control and caused a financial loss.
In order to keep your best clients coming back and referring additional work to you, you must ensure that lower value clients are not taking the place of higher value clients. One way to keep focusing on the highest value clients in your practice is to get rid of the bottom tier of your clients.
The 80-20 Rule
You may be familiar with the 80-20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, in which 80% of your work comes from 20% of your clients. Twenty percent of your clients will cause 80% of your problems.
Focusing on your best clients, rather than on your worst clients, brings a big return. Unfortunately, in reality, the bad clients tend to get more of a lawyer’s time and attention than the good clients.
Consider firing your “nightmare” clients, clients who don't pay on time or aren't the proper fit for your practice - your practice will benefit, and so will you.
Don't Be Afraid to Fire Bad Clients
While the idea of firing clients might be a scary one, allowing bad clients to pull your focus from your highest value clients can be even more detrimental to your practice.
Bad clients drive out good clients. If your practice is filled with lower value clients that don’t value your work, that are price sensitive, or whose work you just don’t feel like doing, you won’t have room in your practice to take on the higher value clients. And you’ll shortchange your existing high value clients because you’ll be focusing on the problem clients.
You might be afraid that turning away the client isn’t a prudent financial move. But not all clients are profitable. Consider the damage that bad clients do to your bottom line, your stress level, your focus and ability provide quality work not only for the bad client, but for other clients as well.
Bad clients and/or low value matters (or matters that are a bad fit for you):
Drain your energy
Make it more difficult to concentrate on the matters you’re handling for your best clients
Prevent you from seeking additional work from your good clients
Cause you to turn away business from a potentially good client because you’re too busy working on lower value matters or with bad clients
Sabotage your productivity
Increase stress and anxiety
Is it time for you to get rid of some clients? Perhaps there’s another lawyer in your area who needs additional work, or that is a better fit for your “bad” client’s personality or the type of work that client wants or needs. Now is the time to pull out your “go to” list.
Being busy isn’t the same as being successful or profitable. Getting rid of bad clients makes room for you to take on additional, higher value clients – and chances are that your higher value clients will be less price sensitive. Often, you can make more money with less high value clients than you can with high volume practice filled with lower value clients.
Getting rid of less desirable clients is only part of the solution. Once your practice is free of bad clients, you’ll want to keep it that way by not taking on those problem clients in the first place. You’ll need to put some systems in place to help you determine at the outset which clients are good clients and which are bad ones so you can send the bad ones packing before they cause trouble for your practice.
This post is excerpted from the upcoming book, How to Do More in Less Time: The Complete Guide to Increasing your Productivity and Improving Your Bottom Line, which I co-authored with Dan Siegel, due for publication later this year by the ABA Law Practice Division.
This month's issue of Law Practice Magazine is all about finance. If you're looking for some tips on how to improve your firm's financial performance, this month's issue can help.
For example, check out this article from Peter Roberts on starting a financial relationship with your client, in which Roberts shows you how a few minor tweaks in the way you package your fee agreement can make all the difference in the world to your clients.
If your financials aren't in the best shape, you might be interested in Jessica McKeegan Jensen's article on Pristine Financials, which will show you exactly what you need to know to get your financials in shape, and help you properly categorize income and expenses so that you get a better picture of exactly what's happening with your firm's money and what it means so that you can make improvements.
Once your financials are in shape, it might be time to review your malpractice insurance policy. Thomas Watson and Reid Trautz show you what to look for in your policy, what to consider when completing your application, and provide some tips on preventing claims by instituting good risk management policies. Having the incorrect malpractice coverage could cost you money - in more ways than one - so be sure to read through their article.
Need a loan? Sylvia See's article, "A Lawyer's Guide to Business Credit" tells you what bankers think when they're considering offering loans to law firms and what you can do to improve your chances of getting a loan when you need it.
Eric Seeger's article, "2014: Law Firms In Transition" looks at Altman Weil's Law Firms in Transition survey and lets lawyers know what they should be considering in the areas of change, staffing, pricing, and leadership going forward.
This month's magazine also contains regular columns on the Law Practice Division's four core areas, marketing, management, technology, finance and more. Don't miss my Simple Steps column on Improving Client Communications. After all, nothing impacts your bottom line more than having a good relationship with your clients.
In this month's "Big Ideas" issue of Law Practice magazine, Dennis Kennedy's article, The Productization of Legal Services talks about the possiblity of lawyers adapting traditional legal services into information products that can "make law firms money while they sleep" and act as marketing pieces for the firm's legal services which, as Kennedy points out, may result in potential clients actually paying lawyers to market to them.
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the "commoditzation" of legal services, particularly with changes in technology and services such as LegalZoom which provide access to some legal services that were formerly the exclusive province of lawyers. Lawyers rail against this idea of commoditization, sometimes for good reason. But what if, instead of fighting against this trend, lawyers started to work with it?
What if, as Dennis Kennedy suggests in his article, lawyers began to look strategically at the work that they do and the parts of that work that could be turned into information products and distributed widely to the public either as pure marketing pieces or as low-cost introductions to the firm's services, reaching the market of those who cannot afford, or believe they cannot afford (at least initially) the firm's services?
If these potential clients couldn't hire the firm at their regular rates anyway, is the firm really losing money by providing these resources and making a small amount of money? Or is the firm adding to its reputation, providing needed resources and potentially creating an expanded market for their regular legal services? Some potential clients might use the product to educate themselves about the area and then decide that they do need help after all and contact the firm. Or they may contact the firm for a future need, recalling how helpful the firm's product was.
This strategy might be particularly helpful for solos, small firms and new lawyers who are seeking to build a reputation or become known in their community.
In his article, Kennedy suggests a nine step process for productization, including:
Taking an inventory of the firm's information assets
Identifying potential products
Researching the market
Determining who will create the products from existing assets
Deciding how information products will be created
Diversifying product offerings
Setting prices
Of course, the decision to create and sell information products needs to be considered strategically. Kennedy also lays out some areas that firms should explore when creating these products, including those around ethics, compensation, and ownership of intellectual property in the products created.
What kinds of products might law firms create?
The article provides a few examples of information products that could be created by law firms, such as a software program that computes actuarial factors for tax planning, legal topic training videos, and a subscription-based research package. Other examples might include checklists (a checklist for individuals or businesses entering into a lease agreement), books or guides (a book on how to maintain your property for the greatest resale value, or a guide for HR managers on interviewing or keeping good personnel records), and more.
You might consider doing an inventory of your existing "assets" as the article suggests, even if you're not sure you're ready to begin creating information products. In my experience, most law firms have plenty of information that could be repurposed for marketing purposes, if not for sale, and many of these assets languish, forgotten, in law firm computer systems, rather than working for the firm. An inventory of these assets might even spark a great idea for an information product.
How do you think creating information products might help your practice? What kinds of information products do you think your clients would be interested in?
Last month, the Professional Ethics Committee of the State Bar of Texas issued Ethics Opinion 642, which addressed two questions:
May a Texas law firm include the terms “officer” or “principal” in the job titles of the firm’s non-lawyer employees?
May a Texas law firm pay or agree to pay specified bonuses to non-lawyer employees contingent upon the firm’s achieving a specified amount of revenue or profit?
The answer to both questions was no.
As to the first question, the opinion noted that the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct do not permit non-lawyers to have ownership interests in law firms, and that using the terms “officer” or “principal” would be misleading to the public, because those terms commonly indicate an ownership interest or control over the firm or significant portions of its operations.
The opinion cites the Texas rule (Rule 5.4) prohibiting lawyers from sharing legal fees with non-lawyers or from practicing law with any organization in which a non-lawyer is a corporate director or officer, or in which a non-lawyer has the right to direct or control the professional judgment of a lawyer. Lawyers cannot form partnerships with non-lawyers if the purpose of the partnership is the practice of law.
With respect to the second question, the opinion states unequivocally that any bonuses paid to non-lawyers that are tied to achieving a specified level of revenue or profit are prohibited because these types of bonuses
would provide an incentive for the firm’s non-lawyer employees to increase revenues, which could be accomplished through soliciting clients, or to reduce expenses, which could be accomplished by interfering with a lawyer’s independent judgment in practicing law. Furthermore, tying a bonus to achieving a specified level of profit is similar to tying a bonus to achieving a specified level of revenue because profit is a function of revenue and expenses.
However, a law firm is permitted to take profit into account when determining whether to pay bonuses and what the amount of those bonuses should be.
Non-Lawyer Officers in Law Firms
The Texas opinion does not mark the first time the issue of nonlawyer officers in law firms has sparked discussion regarding legal ethics. When Pepper Hamilton appointed a nonlawyer CEO in 2012, there was much discussion about whether the appointment was a breach of professionalism. And after the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued Opinion 464 in August of 2013, additional debate about nonlawyer ownership emerged (See this article from the ABA Journal).
Earlier this year, an article in Above the Law suggested that, “When law firms have to rely on banks for loans, they’ve already forfeited some measure of firm control,” and that if firms had the opportunity to bring in (nonlawyer) investment partners committed to the long term survival and success of the firm, perhaps some large firm collapses would not have occurred.
In November of 2012, the New York State Bar Association issued the Report of the Task Force on Nonlawyer Ownership, and at the House of Delegates Meeting of the New York State Bar Association held the same month, the House approved the recommendations contained in the report, opposing nonlawyer ownership of law firms, despite the growth of nonlawyer ownership in other jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and the District of Columbia. None of the 50 United States currently permit nonlawyer ownership in law firms.
Although I am unaware of any opinions in New York which address the issue of non-lawyer officers in New York firms, it is clear that New York prohibits nonlawyer ownership of law firms. New York’s Rule 5.4 (Professional Independence of a Lawyer) says:
(a) A lawyer or law firm shall not share legal fees with a nonlawyer, except that:
(1) an agreement by a lawyer with the lawyer’s firm or another lawyer associated in the firm may provide for the payment of money, over a reasonable period of time after the lawyer’s death, to the lawyer’s estate or to one or more specified persons;
(2) a lawyer who undertakes to complete unfinished legal business of a deceased lawyer may pay to the estate of the deceased lawyer that portion of the total compensation that fairly represents the services rendered by the deceased lawyer; and
(3) a lawyer or law firm may compensate a nonlawyer employee or include a nonlawyer employee in a retirement plan based in whole or in part on a profit-sharing arrangement.
(b) A lawyer shall not form a partnership with a nonlawyer if any of the activities of the partnership consist of the practice of law.
(c) Unless authorized by law, a lawyer shall not permit a person who recommends, employs or pays the lawyer to render legal service for another to direct or regulate the lawyer’s professional judgment in rendering such legal services or to cause the lawyer to compromise the lawyer’s duty to maintain the confidential information of the client under Rule 1.6.
(d) A lawyer shall not practice with or in the form of an entity authorized to practice law for profit, if:
(1) a nonlawyer owns any interest therein, except that a fiduciary representative of the estate of a lawyer may hold the stock or interest of the lawyer for a reasonable time during administration;
(2) a nonlawyer is a member, corporate directtor or officer thereof or occupies a position of similar responsibility in any form of association other than a corporation; or
(3) a nonlawyer has the right to direct or control the professional judgment of a lawyer.
Nonlawyer Compensation in New York
Rule 5.4 also governs compensation of nonlawyers in law firms, as shown above. But there is a notable difference in the New York and Texas rules. In Texas, Rule 5.4(a)(3) states, "a lawyer or law firm may include non-lawyer employees in a retirement plan, even though the plan is based in whole or in part on a profit-sharing arrangement."
However, the New York rule permits law firms to not only include non-lawyer employees in retirement plans based on profit-sharing, but also to compensate non-lawyers based on profit sharing. Although the New York rule used to mirror the Texas rule in this regard, the New York rule was amended in 1999. (The ABA Model Rule contains the same language as the New York rule).
Comment [1B] to New York’s Rule 5.4 notes that:
Paragraph (a)(3) permits limited fee sharing with a nonlawyer employee, where the employee’s compensation or retirement plan is based in whole or in part on a profit-sharing arrangement. Such sharing of profits with a nonlawyer employee must be based on the total profitability of the law firm or a department within a law firm and may not be based on the fee resulting from a single case.
In October 2000, the New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics issued Opinion 733, which addressed the question of whether a nonlawyer employee was permitted to be paid a percentage of profits or fees attributable to specific client matters referred by the employee. The opinion concluded that the firm was not permitted to base compensation on the success of specific efforts by employees to solicit business for lawyers or law firms.
But the situation gets a bit sticky if the nonlawyer employee is a marketer.
In November 2011, New York issued Opinion 887, which addressed the issue of compensation of a non-lawyer marketer. The opinion stated that bonuses for non-lawyer employees cannot be based on referrals of particular clients or matters, and may not be based on the profitability of the firm or the department for which the employee markets if such profits are substantially related to the employee's marketing efforts. However,
Where profits of the firm or the department are not directly correlated with the employee's marketing efforts, a bonus plan based on a percentage of the employee's salary or a percentage of the overall profits of the firm would pass muster under the Rule.
It is difficult to ascertain the circumstances under which this might apply. After all, the assumption would be that the marketer would deserve a bonus if their efforts were successful in bringing business to the firm, which would assume that the profits upon which their bonus was based would be "substantially related" to their marketing efforts.
In March of 2012, New York State Opinion 917 was issued, which concluded that
A law firm may ethically pay a bonus to a nonlawyer employee engaged in marketing based on the number of clients obtained through advertising provided the amount paid is not calculated with respect to fees paid by the clients. The law firm may not pay a fee for the referral or recommendation of a specific client.
Thus, it seems that successful nonlawyer marketers may be compensated with profit sharing based on the number of clients obtained, but not based upon the profits resulting from those clients.
What do you think: would nonlawyer ownership be good or bad for the legal profession and the clients it serves? Should nonlawyers be permitted to be "officers" in law firms, even if they don't have an ownership interest?
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Sarah Poriss for a video series especially for solos, called The Art of Being Solo, which will begin airing on June 16, 2014. The series provides insights from a variety of experts on a number of different topics from marketing to billing and everything in between.
The host of the summit, Sarah Poriss, is a solo herself, and she loves the business side of running her practice. She interviewed me and others to explore the issues and challenges faced by solos and small firm attorneys to answer the question “How can we all build a law practice that we love and that inspires us?”
If you're interested in the series, register for free access here.
The topic of my interview was billing and alternative fees. Alternative fee arrangements may not be easy to implement, particularly for brand-new solos, but when used properly, they do have a number of advantages, including:
Cost and revenue predictability
Development of project management skills
Emphasis on value over hours
Increased trust and stronger client relationships
Greater transparency
Improved communication
Alternative fee arrangements may require more work for the attorney, including more in-depth conversations with clients about their goals, budget and expected outcomes; more up-front planning; a better understanding of costs involved in providing services; tracking of budget and fees throughout the engagement; some level of standardization; project management skills; and an acceptance of some risk. But the rewards can be well worth it - and many clients are coming to expect (and indeed deserve) these services regardless of your fee structure.
Whether you decide to implement alternative fee structures in your practice or not, you should be as transparent with clients about your billing practices as possible, ensure that your bills are sent timely and that they are consistent, realistic and sufficiently detailed that clients can easily understand what was done, by whom, when, and why.
If you want to hear more about billing and alternative fees, check some of my other blog posts and articles on these topics:
...and watch my video in Art of Being Solo series (and you'll get even more tips with my free giveaway, too). But whether you're interested in billing or not, access to the entire video series is FREE, so check out some of the other experts as well by registering here. But don't delay - these videos will only be available for a limited time!
Last week was ABA TECHSHOW, the yearly technology conference and EXPO put on by the ABA's Law Practice Division. I was honored to participate once again as a speaker, and to help out with both the Division's book booth, answering questions and helping to sell the books put out by the many LP authors, and the Solutions Lab sponsored by the Legal Technology Resource Center (LTRC).
To those of you that I had the pleasure of meeting at TECHSHOW this year, thank you for helping to make TECHSHOW the wonderful experience that it is -- and for those of you who didn't make it, think about putting April 16-18, 2015 on your calendar!
I participated in three different sessions at TECHSHOW this year, and here's a quick recap -- along with some of the fantastic visuals (one of the coolest new additions to TECHSHOW, in my opinion) created by Stephanie Crowley and sponsored by MyCase - click on the images for a larger view.
The State of Legal Technology
The ABA Techreport is a comprehensive study performed by the ABA and the Legal Technology Resource Center on a yearly basis to find out what technology is being used by firms around the country. As part of the "Welcome to TECHSHOW" on Thursday morning, several members of the LTRC Board (including me) presented some of the results of the 2013 survey.
As you can see, the study shows that technology is becoming more and more a part of lawyers' lives; 89% of lawyers surveyed check their email on a mobile device; 78% believe training in technology is important to their firm; over 90% of lawyers are using social media and 48% use tablets at work.
Making Your Content Work for You on Social Media
Samantha Meinke and I discussed content and social media in our afternoon session on Thursday. We covered the different forms of content (long and short form posts, images, infographics, video, etc.) and where they work (and don't work), showed examples of effective and ineffective uses of social media, and talked about how to manage all of that content, whether you're just monitoring and listening or whether you're creating and distributing your own content. We covered different tools to help you manage your social media content and discussed using editorial calendars to plan and keep track of the content you create.
This visual was created as part of Samantha's "How to" session on using Facebook, but it was a good preview of our content session as well:
"How To" Use LinkedIn for Lawyers
Dennis Kennedy and I had great fun in the "How to" session doing a live demonstration of LinkedIn and taking attendees through their Profiles step by step to demonstrate how to edit them to create a more meaningful LinkedIn presence. We had lots of interaction and insightful questions, which led to even more discussions afterwards - including at our "Taste of TECHSHOW" dinner on Friday evening.
As always, TECHSHOW was packed full of interesting vendors, up to date technology information and thought-provoking sessions. Included among them was the Keynote by Rick Klau of Google Ventures, whose presentation covered three main points:
Data > Opinion
Just Say No
Think Big
Here is the visual from his presentation:
You can see all of the drawings from TECHSHOW here.
For a roundup of other information from TECHSHOW, take a look at this Roundup from the LTRC, or check out some of the related posts listed below.
Do you have a plan for the day, or do you constantly just react to what comes up – emails, telephone calls, or other interruptions? If you’re just reacting, you aren’t getting the most important things done, and it isn’t likely that you’ll have much focus.
Before every day, week or month begins, you should know what you plan to accomplish. When you have a plan, it’s much easier to say “no” to interruptions. If those interruptions aren’t actually urgent AND more important than what you already have planned, don’t let them distract you.
Create a Daily Plan
Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed or paralyzed by the amount of work you need to accomplish. Instead, use your prioritizing skills to determine every day which actions or tasks are the most important and make sure those take center stage in your day. Don’t let smaller, “urgent but not important” activities get in the way. If you’re a perfectionist, don’t let your obsession with getting everything ‘right’ overwhelm you or prevent you from accomplishing your goals.
Next, estimate the amount of time each activity will take to accomplish. Don’t be stingy with your estimate; estimating too little time will add stress and confusion to your schedule.
Finally, decide on a specific time when you will perform that activity and physically schedule it on your calendar. Make sure you leave some empty space or ‘downtime’ on your calendar in addition to the personal and family time that you schedule. And leave room for the ‘chaos factor.’
Be flexible: recognize that the schedule is not entirely set in stone. It is likely that there will be last minute emergencies, unforeseen circumstances or client crises that must be addressed. That’s further evidence that what doesn’t get scheduled and isn’t urgent, isn’t likely to get done.
More often than not, you probably react to whatever is in front of you, rather than determining in advance what you want to accomplish. If scheduling time on your calendar for important tasks allows you to complete them even half of the time, it’s probably a lot more than you’re doing right now.
The advantage to setting specific times to accomplish important tasks is that as soon as the crisis or emergency has passed, you can return to your schedule without missing a beat. Leaving your schedule to chance is much more likely to deteriorate.
Do a weekly review
Choose a time each week to review the work you need to accomplish and create a plan for the upcoming week. Many of my clients have more success doing their weekly planning on Thursday, rather than on Friday, when they are trying to get out the door for the weekend. Mondays work for some, but waiting until the week has already begun is not the best strategy for most. It's easier to enjoy the weekend when you know you can hit the ground running on Monday morning with a pre-set plan so that you can get right to work.
Use your calendar to plan not only deadlines, but time to complete work. When unforeseen circumstances arise, revise the plan as necessary, moving your appointments to complete work the same way you would reschedule any other appointment.
As part of your weekly review, ensure that your plans cover all aspects of your practice, including marketing, management, administration, business development and client work.
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