Saw a great bunch of videos from ABA’s Techshow with the full article here and all 16 speaker presentations here. These are 6 minute presentations that answer the above, so, what is the future of law practice…
I honestly have no idea who Jack Newton is but the presentation is, What a law firm can learn from Zappos.com. The take-away…customer service. You can differentiate yourself as legal services become more of a commodity through providing great customer service. His last slide tagline: YOUR LAW FIRM IS A SERVICE COMPANY THAT HAPPENS TO SELL LEGAL ADVICE.
And from our friend Carolyn Elefant, The Lessons of Tommy Supreme. That’s a great lawyer/entrepreneur/blogger story that I was not familiar with at all. So this sole practitioner Tom Goldstein built a niche appellate practice that eventually was bought-out by BigLaw’s Akin Gump. Some take-aways:
- Power of Free – he did lots of pro bono work to raise his profile up front…could you do this? Or give-away a free publication?
- Boot Strap – he started as a home office guy…don’t throw away money on “fluff.”
- Niche Practice – you standout & marketing is cheaper because you’re only trying to reach a niche & you’re the expert not just some generalist.
- Hustle – you’ve got to go get those clients and be unconventional sometimes.





Hi Peter,
Thanks for the mention. Jack Newton is head of Clio, an cloud based practice management tool. Because he’s not a lawyer, he wondered with me afterwards whether I thought his talk had applicability to lawyers – so I’m sure he will be happy to see that you appreciated it also.
Carolyn Elefant