Rjon Robins at How to Make it Rain has a new free, e-book out entitled Ten Rainmaking Mistakes Made by Solo Practitioners here…give it a read.
Archive for July, 2006
Hey I know I’ve dined with some law school students who read this blog so I thought I’d post a job listing aimed at law students if you’re still out there:
Virtual law clerk. Part-time (flexible), as needed, virtual law clerk for small Chicago law firm. The position will include general legal research and law clerking. We also want someone with technology skills to assist with the Firm’s blogs and Web presence. The Olson Law Firm, LLC, 125 S. Wacker Dr., Ste. 300, Chicago, IL 60606, 312-629-9900. No telephone calls please. Please contact Peter Olson: petero@olsonlawfirm.net.
Here’s an interesting productivity tip, via LifeHacker:
Get one thing done first – THEN check your email:
Author of Never Check Email in the Morning Julie Morgenstern suggests spending the first hour of your workday e-mail free. Choose one task – even a small one – and tackle it first thing. Accomplishing something out of the gate sets the tone for the rest of your day and guarantees that no matter how many fires you’re tasked with putting out the minute you open your email client, you still can say that you got something done. Once you’re “open for business” and paying attention to incoming requests, it’s too easy to get swept away into the craziness. So get your day started off on the right foot, with just one thing done.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project put out a study here on blogging yesterday. Here’s the NYTimes piece.
The report contains some interesting figures. It says that 4% of the U.S. population have blogs. The percentages of people who blog sort of track the numbers you see for general internet and technology usage in that its a bit more white and affluent than the general population.
Perhaps the bigger number to look at is that 39% of Internet users view blogs and that’s a pretty big group if you’re advertising or wanting to be seen generally.
Has anyone else gotten any CLE mailings from small groups of private lawyers putting on CLEs? I mean not bar associations or affiliated with a IICLE group but just 5ish lawyers advertising CLEs?
This might be a profit center for you. I honestly don’t know but it must not be that difficult to get certified by the Supreme Court to qualify. I just got a mailing for a family law seminar put on by former ISBA President Bob Downs, Joseph Gitlin and a handful of others coming up.
Not to be too cynical, but why should any of the fairly prominant lawyers in various practice areas speak for any of the bar association CLEs at this point when they can just form a small business of their own and profit from it?
Anyone make to ISBA’s Make it Rain CLE on Tuesday? I think I’d give it a 6.5 out of 10 rating. I don’t think it was particularly original but some of reminders are always useful and slightly different angles were given for sure. The presenter was lawyer turned consultant, Gideon Grunfeld, Successful Career Strategies, Inc. These are my personal take-away points to complete immediately and/or over the next quarter:
1. Business card redesign. Gideon calls this the most underutilized promotional tool. I think he’s right. Possibly other than your Website, what do potential clients see more than your card? I fail in this area frankly due to my own cheapness. I need to have my practice areas on the card. I do have our three office locations listed. I need to tell potential clients what I do and/or what benefits I provide. Use the back of the card too. My card is limited right now just because I cheaply just used one of the template cards that limited my space rather than doing a more personalized design. Even nice business cards aren’t that expensive and they’re worth it!
2. Website. He gives a lot of tips for these. I think I’m going to finally bite the bullet and outsource this area of our firm. One easy thing though that I can do within the next week is: have a direct call to action & contact information on every page of your site! I fail on this. The way search engines often bring up pages to your site that are not the front page or the contact page, I’m missing out of really closing the deal with clients in this area.
3. Billing. One thing Gideon talked about was Psychological Breakpoints in your fee setting. This is essentially the gas pricing rule of their $.9 rather than rounding up. Make sure you’re not billing people at $205 or $305 an hour. He suggests each $25, $50 and $100 are important barriers to stay below. The other aspect of billing he discussed that I violate was his view that when a client asks how much something will cost, the answer should always some variation of “it depends.” And obviously when you hear more facts of a situation, you will give a client some range or hourly rate. But don’t volunteer right up front some set fee because then the client has you boxed at a certain rate and then they assume everything you do is at that rate and then the client may not use your services for something down the road where they don’t think that rate you put out there is appropriate. Your rate should always DEPEND on the facts of each situation.
4. Contact Management. I need to get clearly separated batches of our clients in our three practice areas: real estate, family and elder law. Then very targeted mailings, legal updates, newletters, ect. can just go right out to the right group. Currently our contacts are just lumped together in Microsoft Outlook.
5. Speeches and Articles. Nothing new here, I’m just putting it down because I’m going to do these more. Anyone entering ISBA’s Lincoln Award Legal Writing Contest? I am…can you take me?
I got an e-mail from one of the listserves I’m on about a new lawyer referral Website: lawrex.com. Take a look at the sight; they offer the intial six months free.
It appears to reward you for being an active referrer and a receiver of referrals. I’m not sure how much that has to do with lawyer competence, but maybe it has potential.
I’ve been seeing some of these ads from the various legal education providers regarding Basic Skills Courses for newly licenses attorneys. Recall that IL Supreme Court Rule 793 has a 15-hour basic skills requirement for new attorneys…ah, you thought your formal education was over for a while, right? Wrong!
Tom Kane has posted his Top Ten Marketing Tips with links to some explanation and elaboration. There is great advice you can absorb in a couple of minutes. I regularly follow Tom’s blog.
Take a look at the Entrepreneur’s Life blog on a good piece highlighting the problem of your clients not knowing the breadth of your ability or experience.
Are you in too small of a box with your clients? Tell them all that you really offer!
