A couple re-posts here that I found enlightening…

The article title is a piece from the NYTimes here looking at methods doctors are using to run better businesses.  The 4 business tips from the piece are:

• Limit staff costs;
• Spread-out expenses;
• Go electronic; and,
• Monitor and tweak as needed.

I know only the basics about a medical education but I do find that dentists and doctors generally are better business people than lawyers, not sure why. Two things really stick-out to me whenever I make a visit to the dentist/doctor. First, there’s usually excellent delegation and specialization. Thinking about my dentist just because I’ve seen her more recently, there’s a receptionist, a dental assistant, a person who deals with billing, and the dentist. I’m most impressed by the fact that the dentist doesn’t do anything other than the real dentistry work where she’s needed for a fairly brief time so her value is absolutely maximized….all greeting/prep/billing is done by others. Second, and I’m being a tad repetitive but I think the point is critical, someone other than the doctor/dentist is wholly responsible for financial matters.  With one exception I cannot recall ever discussing money issues with my doctor/dentist. Lawyers can learn a lot through a trip to the dentist to get their teeth cleaned.

And finally, Keeping the Cash Flowing:  A Dozen Tips for Getting Clients to Pay More Promptly. My favorite were:

• Make it easy for the client to pay;
• Consider delivering invoices in person for significant clients;
• Create prompt payment incentives or slow payment disincentives;
• Be the squeaky wheel.

Many points of review for me but one item I’m absolutely using which is new for our billing procedure is “Provide in your engagement agreement that you will charge their credit card or process the withdrawal for the full amount of the invoice 10 days after sending it out.” Get a credit card on the file and get a hold on some money if there’s a payment delay/problem.

Checkout the article HERE about running a virtual law practice that appears in this month’s Illinois Bar Journal…the flagship magazine of the Illinois State Bar Association. Wow, the author’s name is the same as mine…small world.

Tell me if you need a copy or password help.

That’s Whopper with a capital “W” meaning the proper noun that you purchase at Burger King. And I’ll admit it, I had 2 Whoppers for dinner last Thursday night. It’s not something I recommend regularly at 670 calories a pop but it was my last hard training day before last weekend’s Lake Geneva Triathlon and I hadn’t had much lunch and my wife and I were going swimming that evening, and, well it just happened.

My little trip to Burger King got me thinking about a good restaurant analogy used by Rjon Robbins on a recent coaching call. He compared a “Hamburger only” restaurant with an “Order anything you want” restaurant and used that comparison to argue in favor of greater specialization in your law practice.

He made 2 primary points with one that I’d surely considered before but the other being really an expansive/new perspective for me:

First, a niche specialization implies greater expertise or skill. I get that…from McDonalds serving the best french fries to recently consulting with a highly regarded neurosurgeon when a family member of mine had brain surgery instead of heading to the family practitioner down the street. I think most people get that…Specialist > Generalist.

But the more eye-opening-to-me perspective was his view that you must put the success of your legal services business ahead of serving the “order anything you want” clients. And as I sit here this view isn’t hard to understand that, sure, the success of my law firm SHOULD be more important than the whims of certain clients. Yet how many of us have bent over backwards for clients and let client demands drive our lives and often our practices into the ground?? Just think of the difference between representing 50 divorce clients vs. 50 totally disparate client matters. For the sake of argument lets assume the same fees are generated from either bunch of 50 cases, but, my goodness, the 50 divorces would likely be what 10% of the work of the 50 totally disparate matters (maybe less). That is a huge difference in simple net profits alone not to mention issues like office policies or procedures that would allow the 50 divorce cases to be handled easier and easier over time whereas the 50 unique cases would be a hard, start-from-scratch slog each time….so remember:  My law firm business > “order anything you want” clients.

Our federal legislature hasn’t been too confidence inspiring of late…as of 10pm Washington, D.C. time the House has just passed the debt reduction legislation with the Senate likely to follow suit Tuesday at noon. For those of you keeping score at home that’s less than 12 hours before the United States of America would default on debt and face a myriad of treacherous financial results. A crappy, last-minute compromise.

And yet a ton of lawyers do the same thing every day…don’t do it!

This is a repeat post triggered by an excellent presenter at the child welfare CLE I attended Friday. I wrote about this topic previously:  Your Most Important Lawyering Occurs Outside the Courtroom.  The question she posed was:  Are you a hearing-based lawyer? Meaning, are you like Congress and just scrambling at the last minute to slap something together or are you giving your clients well-considered and intentional representation based on their goals and not the court’s schedule.

I agree with this quote from the program:

The most important stuff does not happen at court hearings but rather between the court hearings.

]]> http://soloinchicago.com/1911/are-you-better-than-congress/feed/ 0 http://soloinchicago.com/1855/mastermind-weekend-starting-friday-more/ http://soloinchicago.com/1855/mastermind-weekend-starting-friday-more/#comments Wed, 29 Jun 2011 09:11:06 +0000 Peter http://soloinchicago.com/?p=1855

Looking forward to kicking off the 4th of July weekend by lighting the fuse beneath my law practice starting Friday in Chicago. Rjon Robins & Howtomanageasmalllawfirm.com is bringing these free, in-person Mastermind meetings to Chicago, Ft. Worth, Dallas, and San Franciso over the next two months. Checkout some reviews here from previous meeting participants.

My review to follow after a little detour to the Northwoods.

Mastermind Epilogue

I did make it to Day #1 of RJon’s little Mastermind retreat last week in Chicago. I’d recommend the experience if you’re free for any of the upcoming Mastermind meetings. Why? The main benefit is simply getting 10ish lawyers sitting around a conference table and getting unabashed, hardcore legal business advice. Unless you’re doing your own meetings or have some great mentors around you the reality is that lawyers aren’t getting this type of business forum anywhere else.

Plus it was fun to meet engaged lawyers from around the country and to meet this heretofore ‘Internet RJon‘ in the flesh. Thanks for the invite RR.

Sure, it will take quite a paper cut to kill a man but too many emergency motions can be pretty darn debilitating to your law practice. An emergency motion is simply a court motion where the regular 5 business days notice are not given…often little or no notice is given. Sometimes they’re necessary (not as much as they’re used) but emergency motions really wreck a schedule and cause a tremendous legal work backlog. Frequently the 20 cases that need your attention must come to a halt so you can run into court to deal with the single emergency motion that often isn’t really an emergency.

The inspiration for this post is a matter I’ve been spending a LOT of time with of late, almost exclusively due to emergency motions. The case has been in court 8 times in 5 weeks and all but maybe 2 of those court dates were “emergency” and unplanned/unscheduled court dates. And even ignoring the stresses involved in this particular case, a single client matter has really backed-up the work flow in my office.

What’s a sole practitioner to do in the event of EMERGENCY??

And I’m asking primarily because I don’t have a perfect answer. Because the nature of an emergency motion implies that something important and urgent is being brought into court on very short notice so my usual bevy of ‘coverage’ attorneys don’t work…I need more than someone to step-up for 5 minutes before a judge. I suppose I need more like an ‘Of Counsel’ sort of individual or someone a tad more intimately familiar with our clientele and practice.

The easier solution might be better delegation of tasks generally, then there’s not as much of the law firm business work flow coming to a halt. It’s easier to delegate the mundane day-to-day drafting versus often unique in-court emergency matters.

Or you can simply avoid the domestic relations practice area with its combination of often imbalanced clients and family explosiveness. It’s extremely rare to see emergency motions in other practice areas.

Who doesn’t like attending Continuing Legal Education (CLE) programs?

I’m always amused at the ‘CLE rush’ that’s happening currently as second-half-of-the-alphabet folks like me need to complete our CLE requirements by the end of June. I’m getting bombarded by e-mail and telemarketer CLE spam with all sorts of seminar offerings…finish your 24 credit hours in a single day, YES! Granted I’m sure there are some part-time practitioners who are just doing the minimum CLE to keep their law licenses active but I really don’t get any full-time serious lawyer who needs to cram to finish 24 CLE hours over 2 years. If you really don’t enjoy learning and improving your lawyering and business skills what are you doing with your professional life? Seriously.

A single CLE seminar can be potentially transformative to your legal services business and thus your life too. Maybe it’s dramatic improvement within your current practice area, or, a new/captivating practice area discovered, or, perhaps a game-changing business concept. I think I stumbled into a “game-changer” recently at one of the Chicago Bar’s lunch-time Solo/Small Firm Practitioners committee meeting entitled, Creating a Niche Practice (full webinar available to CBA members).

The primary presenters were Steven Gursten at Michigan Auto Law and Morgan Adams, the Tennessee Trucking Accident Lawyer. I thought a very compelling case was made to really narrow one’s law practice and do things a LOT different than how law practices have traditionally done things.

My 3 top takeaways:

Start with a descriptive name/URL (practice area, geographic area, both?)…lawyer last name law firms mean nothing. I think that’s a great macro-level point…what does “The Law Office of Joe Smith” mean to anyone other than Joe’s 100 person social network maybe 3 of whom are potential clients. Note Steve’s (Michiganautolaw.com) & Morgan’s (Tennesseeaccidentlaw.com) Web addresses. Is your Web address selection becoming maybe the most important decision a potential legal entrepreneur makes? I’ve definitely been checking out some domain names for a couple niches I’d like to hit harder since I attended the program. Your Web address helps your business now and it’s a valuable asset for selling in the future. This may be tough if you’re real early in your career in terms of knowing what niche(s) to pursue but as you learn what you like go register a handful of domain names…it’s not costly to register a Website for a year or 2 ($25 a year I believe with our host).

Inbound (effective) vs. Outbound (less effective) Marketing. The distinction here was “inbound” where people are coming to you vs. “outbound” where you’re going to them in obtrusive ways like direct mail or television commercials with the point being that outbound marketing is losing it’s effectiveness. I’ve been a critic of outbound marketing or general public advertising for sometime; it’s expensive and the return is horrible. The inbound idea is new to me. I heard this to be a combination of our DIY culture and akin to people starting their problem solving with a Google search…say by searching “special needs trust attorney Chicago.” Then if you have the right Web address and the quality niche blog, eBooks, white papers, and videos in the area that potentially solves a persons problem then they’ll be inbound to you and your Website.

What’s Hot and What’s Not…ABA. I was tipped-off to this twice annual listing that’s put out by the ABA’s Law Practice Magazine and Robert Denney Associates. It’s a rating of law practice area trends that is helpful to review as you considering “niche-ing” your practice. Here’s the latest version.

Who likes recurring monthly expenses?

I hate products/services that require monthly/installment contractual agreements. I think of these as being the carbon-monoxide of a business or personal budget…silent, stealth killers. And that’s the trick for the product or service-provider, right, getting that price point at a low enough level that the consumer thinks “oh what’s $19 per month.” Well, that’s $228 a year fella…real $$$. All that to say I’ve been taking a hard look at some of my Firm’s recurring monthly expenses notably our telephone/fax services and making some changes.

I’ve used eFax since the day I opened my doors back in 2005 and I’ve used eVoice for at least the last 2+ years since I’ve been in a more virtual practice setting. They’re both part of J2 Global Communications, Inc. and for the most part I’ve been pleased with their products but as the largest player in that market place the pricing has crept-up. We currently pay $30 monthly for eVoice and $20 monthly for eFax with an extra charge per page faxed…so generally $50-ish monthly.

In the last week we moved our office telephone# to Toktumi for $15 monthly so I just cut our telephone costs in half. Toktumi also has a $10 flat monthly Internet fax option that includes unlimited monthly sending/receiving of faxes. I MAY just move both phone/fax to Toktumi and bag a $25 monthly/$300 annual expense savings and be quite pleased with myself.

But has the time now arrived that a fax is wholly unnecessary? What are your thoughts or experiences? Anyone dumped their fax machine/number completely?

I used to have my hand in residential real estate a lot more than I do currently…by choice and due to soft real estate market conditions I haven’t been involved with a real estate transaction in 6 months. I think of residential real estate as very fax intensive particularly due to the various contractual notice provisions. So since I’m not really doing real estate any longer and quite frankly don’t want to return to it in the future…why do I need a fax (e-fax account or otherwise)?

My current monthly payment to eFax gets me to May 14th so I have nothing to decide until that point but I plan on being ready to decide by that point. I MAY just use the Toktumi monthly unlimited $9.99 plan. But I’m also intrigued by Pay Per Fax and Innoport Express (the two providers I’ve located) where you simply pay per use to either send or receive a fax. I KNOW that using one of those providers would bring cost savings, my only hesitancy is on the fax “receive” side of the coin. Both of these providers seem to do a similar set-up with receiving faxes. You “reserve” one of their fax #s that is good for some time period like 6 hours and that’s how you receive faxes . Would that be a hassle or turn-off to clients however infrequent it might occur? Someone calls and says I want to fax you something and then I/legal assistant would need to get our temporary # from one of the sites, then call-back the person wanting to fax something, then they can fax something…assuming they fax in the next 6 hours. Obviously a lot more hassle than just having a fax# on the Website or something and folks can fax whatever/whenever.

Of course we could just answer NO when someone asks about faxing something.
What do you think?

Do you have a specific “follow-up” system or process within your law firm?

You should because it can be oh so simple and yield wonderful customer service benefits + put dollars-in-your-pocket.

My first lawyer boss instilled this follow-up mindset in me and to a great extent it has stuck with me. Very simply the idea is to be constantly thinking about what’s next or what’s the next step that needs to be taken with regards to a client matter and then to have some tickler type system in place that reminds you or organizes yourself to actually DO what’s next. In my office it’s just a little box of dated follow-up notecards that I or an assistant looks at daily to see if there are follow-ups due on a particular day. Because a lot of what you’re doing as a lawyer is communicating with other attorneys or employers or potential clients asking them to do something and you need to FOLLOW-UP on those requests and/or verify that the requested action has been taken. So the 2nd or follow-up step becomes a nice customer service touch to be able to verify to a client that the letter you sent somewhere was received and such-and-such is now being done. Or, oftentimes at the 2nd/follow-up step something that should have been done hasn’t been done and then it’s time to put the lawyer pants on and ratchet things up a notch which often means MORE LEGAL WORK!

For example, these are 3 follow-up cards currently in my follow-up box…

• Follow-up regarding client X’s notice to withhold income for child support. We got this gentleman’s child support lowered recently but then needed to forward the order/notice to withhold to his employer so the amount being withheld gets lowered. This likely won’t lead to more work on this case but it’s sure nice to be able to verify that this employer has gotten the notice and has formally reduced the child support withholding.
• Follow-up regarding legal discovery. Had a case in court last week and the opposing party has been slow in turning-over some financial documentation so an order was entered giving him 14-days to comply with the discovery request. Now this might turn into more work if I’m on top of things…call the opposing lawyer, 201k letter, motion to compel. I don’t want it to go that route but good follow-up is good customer service.
• Follow-up regarding unallocated support expiration. Unallocated support is merged child support and alimony for those of you outside family law land. One of my client’s obligations to pay unallocated support concludes in a few months. I want to make sure he knows this so he doesn’t overpay and he should petition the court to lower this because it’s being withheld from his paychecks. And he may want to pay me to do that petitioning which is good for the lawyer.

Seriously, when you do nearly anything substantive as a lawyer it’s rarely a single act…it’s usually an action intended to bring about a reaction.

Editor’s Note: This is a bit of a “tease” for tomorrow’s CLE presentation sponsored by the Illinois State Bar Association, Building and Managing a Virtual Law Firm…online or live attendance options available.

What do I mean when I say “Virtual Law Practice”? Three macro points undergird much of what I’m focused on in practicing virtually:  1) No single bricks/mortar office location; 2) Personnel working from multiple locations (anywhere); 3) Paperless (at least trying to be as best as a lawyer can).

I’m often asked what were the best and worst decisions I’ve made since hanging my shingle back in 2005 and interestingly both answers are different sides of the same coin. My worst decision? Over-paying for unnecessary downtown Chicago office space. My best decision? Getting rid of that over-priced office space. My decision to leave our bricks/mortar office space and the related $1,200-$1,500 in monthly rental expenses at its core was about survival. $1,200-$1,500 monthly is REAL money, particularly in the very early years of a solo law practice. Our monthly office rent obligation was far and away our largest monthly expense and constituted 60%-70% of our total monthly business expenses.

Why did I need a Wacker Drive Chicago location?

My legal assistant has always worked from home and thus the only two reasons for the office space were as a place for me to work and for new client meetings. Upon further analysis I decided that I can work wherever I am and often in the vacant bedroom at my home a lot more conveniently and less expensively than commuting to Chicago daily. That left only the new client meeting issue unresolved. As an attorney specializing in the domestic relations field where there are regular court appearances, I’ve found that in most cases there’s only a single client office meeting and that’s right up front at the initial consultation stage. Over the 2+ years where I maintained a bricks/mortar office location I ascertained that new client meetings constituted two to four meetings per month on average. So in essence I was paying some $1,200-$1,500 for five hours of office usage each month.

My firm has not maintained a bricks/mortar office location since January 2008. All client meetings take place at very nice temporary office providers. If you’re not familiar with many of the “executive suite” companies, this is actually becoming a very popular and competitive marketplace for not just attorneys but for many service businesses in general. This set-up has not only saved money but it actually allows us to offer far greater convenience to our clients just in terms of multiple office locations. This “virtual” set-up saves big money and we can offer a better service to our clientele…what’s not to like?

Communicating with Clients and Team Members

In my firm, interaction with my legal assistant and clients has evolved in two primary stages. As I mentioned above, even when I did maintain a traditional office location my primary legal assistant was not officed there. At this stage the receptionist at our office provider would simply forward telephone calls to wherever my legal assistant was located. Also, we had a small computer network built and my legal assistant remotely connected into the network over the Internet to access our documents and accounting software. Until about the last year, our client communication remained very traditional and paper-based with letters and court orders sent via U.S. Mail or e-mail. Over the last year and currently our focus has been on getting everything up “into the cloud.” For my firm the primary change has been to utilize cloud-based collaboration software whereby everything that used to be sent via U.S. Mail or e-mail is now uploaded into the secure collaboration software program which saves money and is much less paper reliant. So over the last year or so we have moved to both cloud-based financial management software for client billing and collaboration software for general project management primarily for document sharing between our dispersed staff and with clients. Although there are now several “one stop” cloud-based law practice management packages I find them to be cost prohibitive at the moment.