Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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Even if it’s been a few years since you’ve paged through a copy of Robert Southey’s children’s tale of Goldilocks & the Three Bears you probably recall the little girl Goldilocks who stumbles through the forest into the home of three bears. Goldilocks proceeds to try the 3 bowls of porridge, the 3 chairs, and the 3 beds, eventually settling on the one that was JUST RIGHT!

Two of my current active cases and the opposing lawyers in those cases has got me thinking about what’s “Just Right” when balancing the speed/thoroughness continuum in providing legal services. On the one hand there’s the case where we’ve been waiting 5 months to get a couple of lien releases so my client can proceed with a mortgage refinance. Five months ago the opposing lawyer said she’d agree to a compromise payment in return for the lien releases…5 months later NOTHING (Granted, the lawyer can surely change her mind but she’s consistently said that she’ll take the payoff in exchange for the release of liens & yet we wait). At the other extreme is a case that should be a ho-hum negotiated dissolution of marriage. Meaning, there’s general agreement about child custody arrangements and property settlement but settlement documents still must be prepared and perfected which typically take a couple months between 2-3 drafts, letters back-and-forth, plus a client meeting or two.  Yet in this case the lawyer shoots off harried & sloppy letters with grammatical errors and issues left unaddressed. And even more annoyingly he includes these false deadlines at end of his letters with threats like “if you don’t respond by Friday then we’re going after you’re client’s retirement accounts.” So there’s too fast/sloppy and there’s the glacially slow (or never).

How ’bout JUST RIGHT?

Thoroughness & Attention to Detail Should be Your Calling Card (Trumps Speed). As a non-criminal attorney 2 keys for me as a lawyer are making sure every word is correct and every issue is covered. Simple, but not always easy when you’re dealing with thousands of words. Completing work in a timely fashion isn’t something to be ignored but personally with the exception of real estate transactions, deadlines are mostly self-imposed or surely court deadlines when hearings/trials approach are critical but our court system doesn’t move too fast now does it. And if you’re hourly billing more thoroughness equals more money too!

It’s the Communication, Stupid! I attended a great seminar yesterday put on by the ISBA entitled Presenting with Excellence put on by Steve Hughes of Hit Your Stride. Steve gave some great hints about learning styles, physical learning environments, PowerPoint, and verbal/non-verbal delivery. Of course the 1 word seminar title:  COMMUNICATION. It was kind of funny speaking to the guy sitting next to me as we hearkened on about how sooooo many issues from marriage to politics to darn near all that we do professionally as lawyers in some way relates back to simple communication. And while each lawyer and client has their own personal expectations that vary greatly across the public spectrum that can’t all be known, the Goldilocks Lawyer focuses on consistent GREAT COMMUNICATION.

Your Credibility & Reputation Depend on It. Because what would you think about the 2 lawyers mentioned above if you’re the opposing lawyer/client or if you’re their client? Personally I abhor the lawyer who is sloppy and falsely threatening…he’s creating more work due to sloppiness and angering everyone involved. Being a slow & thorough lawyer isn’t a bad thing, that’s just a communication problem. Just tell everyone what’s going on & why. I was on a flight a couple years ago that was delayed for a long time and eventually we were put on a whole other plane due to a mechanical problem. Yet the passengers were constantly communicated to, various snacks were constantly provided, and the airline was honest and really do you want to get out quickly on a damaged aircraft? Conversely, just last week my commuter train actually failed to stop at my stop (although it was scheduled to stop)…blew right by it. It stopped at the next stop, zero communication…good luck getting home to you folks. Who took the credibility/reputation hit?

Are you a Goldilocks lawyer for your clients? That’s really what we’re talking about…lawyering ain’t math, there are many right answers and different people like different “flavors.” But I’d suggest great thoroughness and great communication will help make you Just Right!

One never knows what you might see on a long-weekend in SW Michigan!

Anyone enjoy reading obituaries?

I do actually. And it’s not some prurient fascination with death or anything like that, for me, it relates to my love of history and in this case the very personalized tale of someone’s life. And oftentimes a good obit. can be very instructive as to a persons decisions and accomplishments and I can learn from them.

Recently I was struck by the death and story of Theo Albrecht of Frankfurt, Germany, a co-founder of the Aldi grocery store chain. It wasn’t anything personal but rather some of he and his brothers business practices that jumped out at me thinking there’s some application to the business of law.  Here’s some of the language from the obit. (from the NYTimes) that I want to tease out a bit and wonder if there’s not an application to running a legal services business:

After being released from Allied prisoner-of-war camps following World War II, Theo and Karl Albrecht took over their parents’ small grocery in the bombed-out city of Essen and, out of necessity, sold only a small number of essential items. When the economy began to boom, competitors expanded their inventories to include thousands of items, but the Albrecht brothers realized they could operate more efficiently by limiting selection and keeping stores fairly small.

“The Albrecht brothers said, ‘Why do I need all these other products? I make most of my sales with these few products and have a lot less complexity and costs,’ ” said Matthias Queck, research director in Frankfurt for Planet Retail, a market research company.

Rather striking isn’t it, maybe less is more? Although there’s an Aldi about 5 minutes from where I live I think I’ve only been in an Aldi once in my life. My wife who is the resident “foodie” in our family and the person who also does the weekly grocery shopping has remarked that Aldi has great deals but she can’t complete the full weekly shopping there because of their slightly limited selection (consistent with the above). I didn’t realize that Aldi owns the Trader Joe’s chain as well which essentially uses a similar “limit selection” model for more higher-end foodstuffs. We’ll go to “Joe’s” more frequently but again you can’t quite do your total weekly grocery shopping there.

Is there “Aldi” application to the business of law??

• Sold only a small number of essential items. In lawyerland this is practice specialization, no? The opposite of this “Aldi” model would be a general practice where you may work in a limitless number of subject matters. Why is this practice area limiting concept so hard for me to pull the trigger on? At some level it just sounds counter-intuitive…the idea that limiting your market somehow would increase your business. Of course there is a ton of evidence inside the law and outside the law to support that premise yet I still hear subconscious whispers saying, “Don’t drop that 10% practice area because that might be the chunk that grows into my million dollar niche.” Yet I know that even I have a negative perception of lawyers (at least in an urban market like Chicago) who claim to be general practitioners or list a bunch of unrelated practice areas on their business cards because I KNOW she can’t be an expert in those many fields.

• They could operate more efficiently by limiting selection. These next two points are really the supporting points to the first point and what I need to use to argue with my own subconscious when it’s telling me to maintain small, unprofitable practice areas. I’d focus on intellectual efficiency and marketing efficiency particularly. It is HARD WORK to represent someone well if you practice in oh more than 5 practice areas. An example from last week, a friend asked me to review a commercial lease for him. I’ve done that before but it’s something that is in that 5% area of my practice and it took a lot of time to pull up some old leases and grab a checklist off the Internet and I still probably didn’t do an A+ job. Conversely if he had wanted to discuss the defense of an indirect civil contempt preceding within the domestic relations division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, I likely wouldn’t have had to do anything other than draw on my experience from the tens of similar cases I’ve handled just this year. With marketing I’m not sure I would focus on “efficiency” so much as simple effectiveness. I don’t use much paid advertising where I’m paying for multiple ads or something since I practice in multiple practice areas, however, in our e-mail newsletter and Website presentation I’m sure I have lessened our marketing EFFECTIVENESS by garbling our focus and likely leaving people guessing as to where our practice expertise lies.

• Make most of my sales with these few products and have a lot less complexity/costs. I’m reading a lawyer/management book now (I’ll likely post a review when I’m done so I’m not naming it yet) that says if you don’t have systems or processes for everything you’re doing in your law practice, then, all you own is a “job” you don’t really own a legal services business separate from yourself because too much is dependent on just you. McDonalds being the opposite example where it can have huge turnover of immature teenagers flipping burgers but continue to thrive because of its operational manual, i.e. their “systems.” I can totally see how I can cut complexity/costs by cutting practice areas and really systematizing my law practice. I have decent systems for billing and marketing but I’m SORELY lacking in my systems in the substance of my practice and it’s surely because I’m too broad.

Can you apply the above to your legal services business? Is this concept holding you back? Are you too broad, too general? I believe this “breadth of practice” challenge has been the #1 or #2 hurdle for me in growing a great legal services business. Why not give it a try for 6 months to a year?

Forgive me for the sales pitch but please understand I’m not pitching for bar associations, I’m pitching for the specific benefits YOU can get from a couple of local bar associations. On the general topic of leveraging a bar association membership, let me direct you to Ten Tips For Making Your Bar Association Dues Work For You & Leverage Your Bar Membership for Marketing.

But more specific for you Illinois/Chicagoland folks, some timely “specials” from the Bar:

ISBA’s Meet Me at the Bar. The Illinois State Bar Association is offering a FREE 6-month membership for any non-members who haven’t been members for the past 2 years. Great bar association & IT’S FREE!

Chicago Bar Association’s Lawyer Referral Service. This is either my best or a close second best source of business…if you can qualify, SIGN-UP NOW! I think bar association lawyer referral services are generally good and rather inexpensive forms of marketing where there’s not much to lose. But the CBA really differentiates itself by the marketing it does for the referral service. It does a combination of Google, print media, and cable TV advertising that really gets the phone ringing. It’s $200 per year and I probably earned $5,000 from that $200 investment last year.

That’s a nugget given to me by Rjon Robbins over at How to Manage a Small Law Firm on a helpful coaching telephone conference recently.

Simply it’s the old “ghost” of under-billing reappearing which I’m trying to exterminate from my life and law practice once and for all (see my post entitled, Another Problem with Under Billing). Next call, Ghostbusters!

Rjon gave me some great thoughts to really put my fees at the level they should be instead of shooting myself in the foot via under-billing. We spoke in the context of an uncontested divorce where I’m currently charging flat fees ranging from $750-$2,000 depending on things like the nature of the asset division and/or child-related issues. He asked me what would I like to charge? Reply, $2,000-$4,000.

So how to ramp up my fees?

1.  Charge the fee you want to charge. Not always easy for those of us not particularly comfortable asking for money. But, I’ll only make $4,000 if I charge $4,000.

2.  Now cram a great product and wonderful services into that “package” to fit the premium pricing. Since if you’ve been paid a solid, premium price then doing great work for client and meeting with client regularly and staffing client regularly is fine and rewarding. You’ve been paid handsomely and you’re doing excellent legal work. I think we’ve all “felt” the difference in the legal work we’ve done for great client who pays promptly versus not great client who at their best pays but not promptly…the pricing issue is essentially the same issue.

Because the opposite scenario is a lawyer killer that I’ve been through (survived physically, true, but the practice suffered). The opposite scenario is the post’s title…it’s under-billing or charging too low of a fee with the result being I whittle down the legal services and quality of legal work I provide to fit the too low price. The real life picture is client pays fees of lets just say $500 for an uncontested divorce. Now I know I can spend very little time on this case for it to retain even a semblance of profitability for me. Any more than maybe 3 hours of my time and this has become a total money loser, right? So now there’s a client who thought she was getting my “A game” who isn’t happy being ignored and there’s me as lawyer also unhappy that I wasn’t using my “A game” because I want to be an excellent attorney but can’t be one when I under-bill. With the conclusion being an unhappy client who won’t be recommending me to her friends (if not outright criticizing me to her friends) and a dissatisfied lawyer who hurt his practice and pocketbook only because of a stupid fee quote up front.

Under-quote one case and it’s a useful learning experience but do this repeatedly and it’s devastating to your law practice.

I’m quite pleased and very excited to be a part of the American Bar Association’s new Solo Blog Network and thought that it’s high time I introduced myself. So welcome, and I look forward to seeing you back here again real soon! Don’t hesitate to e-mail me at peter@soloinchicago.com.

The more time I spend sitting around courtrooms for my own cases & even more relevantly for this post, the more time I spend sitting around courtrooms observing other lawyers, the more strongly I feel that the title above is CORRECT!  I’m sure there’s an exception or two to the above where trials are inevitable such as in some of the criminal or personal injury areas, but in many, many practice areas court appearances tend to be mostly of the “status report” variety or mere formalities to have a judge sign-off on some settlement. And that’s why you need to do your heavy lifting/lawyering back at the office.

I think too many lawyers & clients do not get this.

How do you know if you’re not doing enough strong lawyering outside of court? The fact that you or your cases are in court too frequently might be the first strand of evidence. Second, are you in court too much on matters that are mostly logistical in nature like discovery disputes or temporary orders or mere case logistics? I just observed a big deposition controversy in the last few days at Daley Center that surely should have been handled without judicial intervention.

I think of the in-court vs. out-of-court balance as very similar to athletics where 90% of your time is spent practicing and games comprise only 10% of time. Practices are where the heavy lifting occurs and your skills are developed. If you attend a football game you can tell who worked hard in preparation for the game in comparison to the person who sloughed-off during the week thinking he could just show-up on Saturday and make things happen. The courtroom picture is very similar. I can almost always tell which lawyer has communicated with opposing counsel long before this court date or has been pushing her client to answer discovery or speak to the other party about settlement or push the case forward generally.

Here are 5 reasons to step-up your Outside-the-Courtroom Lawyering:

1. Less court = Less lawyer/client hassle. I don’t mind going to court and frankly I like a good old contested hearing once in a while but you can’t tell me that most clients enjoy going to court. Nope, most clients dread going to court. It’s time off from work, coming downtown, paying for parking, and just an uncomfortable high stress situation in general. I talk to clients up front about 3-4 case approaches from mediation to lawyer as mere scrivener to cases where EVERYTHING is in-court and strictly between the lawyers. Once in while I do end up in the extreme category where everything happens in court and only between the lawyers, but honestly that’s the worst place on the continuum to be.
2. Client Ownership & Client Actualization. Every case is the client’s case. I might live with a situation for several months or sometimes a couple years but it’s the client’s for life. I’d rather have great input in shaping the terms of a judgment instead of strictly having terms imposed on me. List client action points with every letter you send after a court date and check-in with clients via telephone/e-mail to make sure progress is happening.
3. Be a Level 5 Lawyer. Jim Collins in Good to Great talks about Level 5 leaders as the essential leaders where certain companies made the jump from good to great. The book analyzes the traits of certain select high-performance corporations. In a nutshell, Level 5 Leaders “blend extreme personal humility with intense professional will.” I think there’s a relevant parallel to lawyers…the ideal “Level 5 lawyer” has intense pride focused solely on the case result and client satisfaction whereas many lawyers sort of want to pad their ego by keeping case decisions only in their hands and subtly raising their own importance while undermining client satisfaction and frequently worsening case results.
4. Start with the End in Mind. Once you’ve been retained by a client, you should immediately set out a case map with your client laying out time-frames, action points, and the major decisions that will be decided over the course of litigation. Get the client engaged and working on her case immediately. In my practice using the example of a dissolution of marriage case, decisions are typically going to be made regarding 1) property division, 2) maintenance, 3) child custody, and 4) child financial support…talk through the statutory standards on those matters up front and see if the clients can work through these matters together. If the clients can make these decisions themselves great, if not make sure you’ve done your strong out-of-court lawyering so you know where court intervention IS necessary more quickly. The trouble is when 6 months into a case a client may not even yet know or understand the items a court may need to decide or the decisions that need to be made.
5. No fights about temporary orders or discovery, EVER. Granted I can’t always achieve this but it is a rule of mine that I tell clients up front. This is the crap that wastes critical dollars, lawyer time, and is wholly unsatisfying. I never want to be the lawyer in court from a few weeks back who had to argue about re-scheduling a deposition in open court. The mother has custody of the kids while the divorce is pending, keep supporting them, keep the temperature down, and work out a parenting schedule between the two of you.

The copy room @ 32 W. Randolph, 14th Floor

I’ve seen these signs popping up in the Parentage Court’s copy room of late. Reaction?