Law Practice Matters

Evernote for Lawyers and Law Practice Today

2009-10-27T18:13:36Z

Folks who follow me on Twitter (@erikmazzone) know that I love Evernote. They also know I drink too much coffee and hate Notre Dame and the Red Sox.

But I digress.

If you are curious about Evernote - what it is and how you might use it - I wrote an article in the October issue of Law Practice Today that is a short primer on Evernote. Check it out and see if you can use Evernote in your office or at home.

Stay Closer to Clients - 4 Tips for Better Email Newsletters

2009-10-26T18:00:00Z

I have a love-hate thing with email newsletters.

On the one hand, I am consititutionally incapable of refraining from signing up for an email newsletter from any business I patronize. Erik see sign up list. Erik sign up. On the other, I occassionally stare at my overstuffed Gmail inbox with the intense desire to nuke the entire thing.

While I will sign up for newsletters with reckless abandon, simply making it into my inbox is no guarantee that I will actually read the thing. In fact, I delete most of the newsletters with the same gusto that I signed up for in the first place. Every once in a while, though, I'll actually read one.

I signed up a while back for an email newsletter from a restaurant near my home (Acme in Carrboro) that I go to now and again. I wouldn't say I am a regular there. I signed up for the email because my mom told me that she really liked the emails she received from Acme. (Don't you get all of your tech tips from your 70 year old mother?) So I decided to give it a shot.

I've been getting weekly emails from Acme for a couple of months now, but yesterday I got one that stood out. I not only read the entire thing, I called my wife over so I could read part of it to her. By the time I finished reading it, I was ready to call Acme for a reservation. As far as email newsletters go, this one was a big success.

All of that got me ruminating on what was so good about this newsletter and how could I (or you) put that to use in my own (theoretical) email newsletters. After reading through it a few times, I pulled out 4 things that made this particular newsletter really work.

1. Be Engaging

The do not pass Go, do not collect $200 threshold issue for a good email newsletter is that it needs to be engagingly written. If your newsletter does not hold your reader's attention, nothing else much matters.

The newsletter from Acme was engaging. It contained a funny story about a person who raised her own Thanksgiving turkey and the subsequent flight to freedom of said turkey to the top of a nearby tree. It was funny enough that I read it to my wife, who in the interest of full disclosure, sympathized with the turkey and found the story somewhat less hilarious than I.

Don't fret if you don't have the comic storytelling chops of David Sedaris. Your email does not need to be roll on the floor funny -- it just needs to be engaging enough for your readers to actually read it.

2. Offer Value

Funny, engaging stories are great, but not enough. You also need to offer some value, some content, other than your story telling ability.

The real message of the Acme newsletter was: Thanksgiving is coming up; it takes a lot of work to prepare Thanksgiving dinner; and going out for Thanksgiving dinner (at Acme, for example) might be a nice change of pace.

The good folks at Acme realized that I, like most Americans, will shortly be trying to figure out what I am going to do for Thanksgiving. They also realized that I know how much work getting ready for Thanksgiving is and that I might be interested in some alternatives. Then they offered me an alternative: skip the hardwork and take my family to dinner at Acme.

The newsletter offered value to me by solving a problem that I had not yet worked out.

3. Be Personal

One of the things I really liked about Acme's newsletter is that it was personal. It did not sound like some corporate non-speak produced by a PR flack. It sounded like a person. That alone goes a long way in my book. I'd guess your clients would feel the same.

That said, this creates a thorny problem for lawyers. We spend a lot of time in law school and legal practice learning to behave like professionals, like officers of the court. While this is an indispensable thing for lawyers to learn and perfect, it is not a skill that is particularly helpful when it comes to staying close to clients.

It's a fine line to walk: to retain professionalism but show humanity. I don't have great advice for exactly how to do it, other than to suggest you imagine yourself dealing with a loved one battling a serious illness. Imagine your conversations with the doctors. Imagine how you would like them to treat you, to talk to you.

If you are anything like me, you want them to seem professional and on top of their game, but you also want them to convey that they understand that this is a very big deal for you and your loved one. It's not an easy balance, but it is do-able, and it starts with understanding that professionalism and humanity are not incompatible virtues.

4. Include a Call to Action

If you take the time to write an email newsletter, make sure you know what you want your readers to do after they read it. Do you want them to call you? Click on your website? Refer a friend to you? Schedule an appointment?

This doesn't have to be a sleazy Sham-Wow "act fast, supplies are limited" kind of appeal. Deciding what you want the reader to do is the framework that the entire endeavor rests on. As Steven Covey wrote in his landmark Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: begin with the end in mind.

The Acme newsletter had two calls to action: one was for the reader to make reservations to have Thanksgiving dinner there. (I think I am going to do exactly that.) The second was a reminder that on Tuesday (a slow restaurant night, generally) nights they run a particular special. The newsletter comes out on Tuesdays at around 5:30pm, so it is well timed for readers to take them up on the call to action.

It doesn't matter whether your email newsletter promotes a law practice or a restaurant, the basic rule is the same: don't serve up spam.

In Defense of Multi-tasking, or How I Justify Driving and Texting

2009-09-04T17:06:59Z

Not really. It's hard to text at 80mph.

Kidding. Sort of.

But that's between me and my traffic attorney. (Thanks, Timothy!)

Recently, multitasking - that darling of 80's productivity - has gotten a bad rap. It turns out that multittasking makes it harder for your brain to focus or switch between complicated tasks. (Tip: avoid complicated tasks; works like the dickens!)

Here's the thing about these studies, though. They all treat multitasking as if it is some kind of weird street performance involving juggling a smart phone, a laptop and two flaming chain saws. That kind of misses the point.

I know fairly few lawyers who literally try to talk to a client on the phone while simultaneously sending an email to a spouse and reviewing a contract in a different matter. More likely, all of these tasks are open on the desk in front of them and the attorney tries to quickly switch between the tasks. Sadly, even this may be making us stupider. (Damn you, Twitter!)

But is multitasking, as put into actual practice, really that bad?

Take my day today for example.

I have the day off today. I decided to drive my wife's car out to a body shop to get an estimate on some work that needs to be done (no, smart aleck, the damage was not caused by texting and driving. A branch fell on our car while it was parked in our driveway. So the damage was caused by an altogether too casual approach to lawn maintenance. See? Multitasking not involved.)

While I was at the body shop, I got a bunch of emails from bar association members that I needed to return. So, while the body shop guys were preparing their estimate, I sat in their lobby with my Palm Pre and fired off a bunch of emails.

This, to me, is multitasking. I was on a mission to get one thing done - namely, the estimate for body work. Had I not had my smart phone (or had I cared more about the possible damage to my cognitive powers CNN warned about) I would have paged through a magazine while my email inbox overflowed and bar association members went without answers.

(Sidebar: seriously, CNN is warning people off of multitasking? A few seconds watching CNN, with it's mind-bending array of crawls, headlines, graphics and Wolf Blitzer shouting from in front of a bazillion tv monitors, is enough to induce a Manchurian Candidate like reaction in almost anyone.)

But I digress.

This kind of multitasking - by which I mean the technology-enabled ability to productively work from anywhere - is a boon to lawyers and clients alike (not to mention bar association practice management advisors...) It's not dangerous, it reduced my stress level and spared me the embarrassment of reading O magazine in front of a bunch of guys who already thought my sandals were not the most masculine footwear I could have chosen.

So, go on ahead and multitask. Find and use the technology that allows you to be productive from those black holes in life where you are typically neither productive nor having fun (doctors' offices, airports, body shops).

Just don't do it while you're going 80 down the interstate.

Niche Marketing for the Small Law Firm

2009-09-03T19:50:35Z

Sometimes you learn something brand new. Other times you find a new way to look at something old.

The other day I was at a meeting (no surprise there; Bar Association life includes a LOT of meetings...) of the NCBA Law Practice Management Section Council. Our new section chair is my friend Lee Rosen of Divorce Discourse; Lee is fairly well known in our state as an innovative law firm managing partner with an outside the box approach to, well, just about everything.

So I knew this section council meeting would be a little different.

I came to learn that the meeting would be different in two main ways. First, we spent the beginning part of the meeting doing an ice breaker. I have kind of a love/hate thing with ice breakers; on the one hand, I hate getting up in front of colleagues and having to go through the ritual mortification that is your average ice breaker (if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?), but I undeniably feel better and more connected to the people around me after I do.

In short, I am the guy ice breakers are made for.

This was the first section council meeting of the year and after we went round robin around the room and everyone participated in the ice breaker there was a palpable camaraderie and closeness in the room. We all knew and liked each other a little better and felt a little more at ease. It set a positive tone for the rest of the meeting and had me wondering why I don't do more ice breakers in the meetings I chair.

The second, and even more impactful, difference in this council meeting was that we dedicated a portion of the meeting to something really cool.

We had a couple of young lawyers come in (not council members) who had just opened a law firm. They presented an issue -- how to best go about marketing their new firm -- to the members of the section council and then the section council spent about a half hour helping them generate ideas and solutions to help solve the issue. The lawyers and legal administrators on the section council have a lot of combined experience in firms of different sizes and practice areas and was able to put a lot of concentrated horsepower on helping these young lawyers.

One of the ideas that came up was that in marketing a new law practice, the smaller your practice niche (a word I insist on pronouncing like it rhymes with "itch" because pronouncing it with a French accent makes me feel like an effete movie villain) the easier it is to be remembered.

One of the two young lawyers is an avid college sports fan interested in building a criminal practice, so naturally, one of the ideas that came out was to work on becoming the criminal defense lawyer every student on campus at the local university calls for traffic infractions, etc. Drilling down even more, he could become the criminal lawyer known by the football and basketball teams on campus -- groups that have demonstrated, over time, an historic commitment to keeping criminal defense lawyers busy.

(Interestingly, shortly after the meeting I came across a new legal blog called The Law on Campus published by Jason Reddish, which is dedicated to serving this same niche in Maryland.)

Now, marketing your practice in a small niche is not ground-breaking advice, but it is good advice. And like most good advice it is given far more often than it is followed.

The usual reason given for why a narrow practice niche is desirable, is that it is easier to market a narrow niche than a broad one. If you are a general practitioner who serves a 15 county area in any and all legal matters, it is very hard to know how or where to focus your business development time and resources. If you want to be the go to person for DUI infractions on one college campus, it suddenly starts to look a lot more straightforward. That is the reasoning I would have given.

But there was a bit more: listening to everybody discuss the issue gave me a different view on something I thought I knew.

The folks on the section council emphasized that what was great about a tight niche like the one we discussed was not just how it made marketing easier and more effective. Because it draws on the lawyer's life experiences, interests and passions it creates a nexus between the lawyer and the group of people she hopes to represent - a closeness - that helps the lawyer to better understand and ultimately serve the needs of her clients. It's the win-win that is so frustratingly elusive sometimes in law practice.

So while I didn't learn something brand new, I did get a brand new way of looking at an old issue.

It was probably even worth enduring the ice breaker.

Is There a Time Bomb in your LinkedIn Profile?

2009-08-22T18:47:16Z

I got an interesting email the other day.

It was from a North Carolina lawyer asking me my opinion about a facet of LinkedIn profiles. The question was (paraphrasing): do you think social networking profiles that ask users to list their "specialties" could yield potential violations of Rule 7.4 of the Rules for Professional Conduct?

He was asking about LinkedIn in particular, so I decided to take another look at the profile. LinkedIn profiles feature a field called "specialties." Here is a screen shot off of my profile (right before I nuked my own specialties section):

Rule 7.4 of the North Carolina Rules for Professional Conduct (which loosley conforms to the ABA Model Rules) reads:

The rule prohibits a lawyer from stating or implying that he is a specialist in a field of practice unless he meets the other criteria set out in the rule. Since that part of the LinkedIn profile is clearly labeled "specialties", the only safe thing to write is, "I am a NC State Bar Board Certified Specialist in [blank] law." Just about anything else one might write in this field might well be considered to be an improper statement or implication under Rule 7.4.

This could be a real time bomb for a lawyer in private practice. It would be frighteningly easy for a lawyer to go on autopilot here and interpret the term "specialties" like a layperson, as a synonym for "practice areas." A quick search on lawyer profiles on LinkedIn reveals that it's not a hypothetical problem.

Boom.

If you are practicing law in North Carolina (or another jurisdication with a similar rule) and have a LinkedIn profile, it appears that the only obviously permissible content to include under "specialties" is a recital of board certified specialization. If you want to include any information beyond that, I'd recommend calling the ethics counsel at the State Bar to make sure that you stay clear of a rule violation.

There's nothing particularly novel about any of this other than the application to social media.

It's a pretty straightforward application of a pretty straightforward rule. I've noticed in my work, though, that lawyers who don't understand social networking very well sometimes get it in their heads that the Rules of Professional Conduct don't apply on LinkedIn (or Facebook or Twitter or whatever).

They do. As far as the North Carolina State Bar is concerned (your mileage may vary in your jurisdiction), social networking activity is very much part of the real world governed by real rules and with real consequences.

Frankly, it pains me to write this kind of stuff because I worry that it will turn off lawyers to social networking (or any kind of networking, for that matter) altogether. That's the last thing I want to do. It's my job to help my bar association members -- particularly those in solo practice and small firms -- to build and run great law practices. Effectively marketing a practice is an exceedingly important part of that undertaking.

Don't let a time bomb deter you from social networking.

Just defuse it.

Stop Counting Your Friends

2009-08-19T12:28:17Z

Quick: how many friends do you have in real life?

If you were able to quickly answer that question, the response was probably "none." (If so, please close your browser now, get up from your desk and go interact with a real, live human.) We don't keep an exact count of how many real life friends we have because the number itself is irrelevant.

How many friends do you have on Facebook (or connections on LinkedIn or followers on Twitter)?

The number is just as irrelevant in social networks, yet many people who would never tally their real life friends become obsessed with how many friends/followers/connections they have in their social networks. This is particularly rampant among those who view social networking exclusively as a marketing outlet, and it is killing what is great about social networking -- namely, that it allows us to make new friends (or reconnect with old ones) without regard to distance or time zone.

This social networking number fixation is a natural, if unhelpful, consequence of the various networking sites prominently displaying a user's number of contacts like a sports score. We equate displaying more friends with winning and the problem starts when we prioritize the number of our contacts over the quality of the relationship we have with our contacts.

Prizing quantity over quality is antithetical to the entire undertaking of networking. Strong networks do not exist to burnish the ego of one person; strong networks exist for the mutual benefit of all the network members. Believing that having thousands of LinkedIn connections or Twitter followers is the same as having a strong network is hallucinatory at best and self-destructive at worst. Make your contacts feel like a number and they will surely respond by acting like one.

The measure of network is not in the number of members, but in the amount of benefit its members derive from membership. First, tend to the contacts already in your network, and then add to your network sustainably and organically.

In building a law practice, it's a lot less important to count your contacts than it is to be able to count on them.

Hiring Associates: What Tools to Look For

2009-08-17T12:00:38Z

One of my favorite business books isn't a book about business at all. It's about baseball.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis is the story of the Oakland A's and how they remained competitive in a division when they were grossly outspent by their opponents. The situation is not unlike the way small and mid-sized firms are routinely outspent by the biggest firms in the "war for talent" as legal recruiting was combatively known.

The secret of the Oakland A's was that they selected talent that was undervalued by the baseball establishment.

Most baseball recruiting centered on the 5 tools a baseball player could have (speed, hit for average, hit for power, strong throwing arm and good defense). Players were rated on how many of those tools they possess, with a player possessing all five (the elusive 5 tool player) being the most rare and sought after.

The A's manager derisively remarked that the other teams' preoccupation with 5 tool players made it seem like they were recruiting to "sell blue jeans" rather than to win baseball games.

By contrast, the A's found a less sought after skill set that they identified through analyzing reams of statistical data about potential recruits. They found hidden talents that others missed, often disguised in odd packages. End result: they spent far less per win than their more moneyed competitors.

Similar to the baseball establishment, legal recruiting (particularly by large law firms doing on campus interviewing) also traditionally focuses on tools. The four tools that big law firms prize most highly are:

Law school prestige - sadly informed by the enduring, though silly, US News rankings
Class rank
Grades
Law review participation- because anyone willing to spend that much time writing a note nobody will ever read probably won't blanche at billing 2800 hours in a year

The lawyers who possess more of these tools command higher salaries at more prestigious firms working on the biggest cases. The Editor of the Harvard Law Review, instead of the five tool player, becomes the four tool lawyer, and can expect a sky-high starting salary at her chosen firm.

This high-salary recruiting leaves behind the many small and mid-sized firms that can not afford to pony up $160,000 for their very own Harvard Law Review editor. Without the budget to compete for the top talent, these firms have very little chance to win the game this way. With the economic downturn of the last 11 months intensifying the pressure, small and mid-sized firm managing partners would be wise to learn from the A's and switch their recruiting strategy to finding undervalued assets in the legal talent marketplace.

Here are the 4 tools I'd be looking for if I were a law firm managing partner today:

1. Maturity

Too many brand new lawyers enter the workplace with unrealistic expectations and unsustainable debt loads; the immature ones will blame that situation on your firm and quit (or worse, rot on the vine). A mature lawyer who enters practice with realistic expectations about what can be achieved and a plan for how to achieve them starts the race without an anvil tied to her leg.

2. Likeability

An underappreciated trait in the law: associate attorneys who are likeable will attract clients quicker, retain clients more easily, and be less likely to receive a grievance or fee dispute when they screw up. Likeability counts. As it turns out, law practice is more like high school than law school.

3. Sales Experience

Call it what you will: persuasion, selling, influence, or opinion making. The private practice of law is a sales job. The never-ending list of people a lawyer must persuade includes clients, judges, opposing counsel, witnesses, court clerks, etc. Too many new lawyers are either unwilling or incapable of using this skill, if not downright hostile to it. A lawyer who has a work history including time as a salesperson is more likely to have developed this skill set and a willingness to use it.

4. Entrepreneurial Mindset

If I had a nickel every time I heard a law firm partner complain that associates don't behave like firm owners (an entirely predictable state of affairs given that associates don't have ownership interests in their firms) I would have enough to hire my own first year Harvard Law Review editor. Or at least call one from a pay phone. Long distance.

It's pointless to complain that non-owners behave like non-owners. Instead, hire an associate who knows that he is an owner -- not of your firm but of his own law practice. New lawyers who understand they run a solo practice no matter who signs their paychecks engage in fruitful owner-like behavior much earlier -- in my anecdotal experience -- than lawyers who want to become partners in your law firm.

Not coincidentally, all four of these tools can be found in associate attorneys likely to be left behind by the lottery known as on-campus recruiting. Graduates from less prestigious law school, second career lawyers, and students who worked full time while going to law school all become strong potential recruits if you know what you are looking for.

Maybe these tools will work in your firm or maybe you will come up with your own list of undervalued tools.

Or maybe you'll just go back to selling blue jeans.

We're All Technology Geeks Now

2009-07-29T21:21:36Z

Today I am in Chicago at the annual meeting of NABE: the National Association of Bar Executives. It's an association for the people who run bar associations. I always look forward to coming to these conferences because it is one of the few times a year I get to talk to other folks who do my job in other states and talk about how to do our jobs better.

Here's the gorgeous view from my hotel room, by the way:

Since I am a relatively new bar association employee (been on the job about a year and a half, which doesn't sound so new until you start talking to bar association people whose typical tenure on the job gets measured in geologic terms), I haven't been to very many of these conferences yet, but I have noticed some differences at this annual meeting from prior ones.

One of the main things I've noticed this time around is that there are a lot of educational sessions involving technology, including a plenary session on using Microsoft Outlook more efficiently. While there are several IT folks from bar associations that attend NABE meetings, this is not what I would generally consider to be a techie crowd. I would say bar executives roughly mirror the technology level of the lawyers who comprise their memberships, which is to say there are a few really tech forward people and a whole bunch of others who tolerate technology.

All in all, it feels like there is an increasing emphasis on technology education here and after thinking about it for a bit (and looking around the rooms of people eager to learn how to control their email in-boxes or unlock the secrets of Adobe Acrobat 9) it occurred to me that technology has wormed its way so deeply into our lives that there is no real division any more between technology geeks and non-geeks.

We're all technology geeks now.

I'm not saying we all need spend countless hours obsessing over iPhone apps or reading the nonstop stream of breaking tech news from across the blogosphere. We do, however, need to acknowledge how far technology has permeated our work and home lives and recognize that the days when one could choose to be totally unplugged and still have a vibrant professional life in the law (or in bar associations) are behind us for good.

Starting Out Solo

2009-07-14T18:24:49Z

I am working on starting a pilot program at the North Carolina Bar Association. It's called Starting Out Solo and is based on a group by the same name that started up in Massachusetts (trademark hawks can relax, I have permission to reuse the name). we're hoping to get up and running in the next couple of months.

The Massachusetts Starting Out Solo was begun by a lawyer named Audrey Heidt. It is a working group of solo practitioners who went straight from law school into solo practice (or pretty close to it) -- a situation that I am seeing a lot more of in North Carolina these days. The group members get together every six weeks or so for an evening meeting. Each meeting focuses on some facet of starting and running a solo practice. The group members take turns setting the agenda and running the meeting, and everyone contributes to the knowledge base. No one is set up as the lone guru instructing from the mountain top; instead, everyone shares his or her best ideas.

I'm excited about this program. It is going to be free (though membership in the NCBA and our GP, Small Firm, Solo section is a prerequisite) and limited to twelve attorneys in the pilot. While I hope (and expect) the group to provide a lot of value to the participants, I am particularly hopeful that it will help combat the isolation that a lot of lawyers experience in solo practice. It's hard enough starting and running a solo practice when you are experienced in your craft; add to that the additional degree of difficulty that comes with having to learn to be a lawyer at the same time you are learning to run a business and the task really becomes Herculean.

I hope that our Starting Out Solo, like Audrey's original group, helps makes the transition into solo practice a little less stressful and a lot more fun for the participants. I'll let you know how it goes.

Lawyers Continue Moving to LinkedIn... Faster

2009-06-17T19:43:35Z

Hi, I'd like to add you to my professional network.

If you are already using LinkedIn, you'll recognize that message right away. You're also in good company.

Since he first blogged about it in June 2008, Steve Matthews of the Law Firm Web Strategy Blog has kept tabs on how many lawyers are creating profiles at LinkedIn. The growth rate has been impressive throughout and the most recent quarter is no exception. Steve cites that there are 840,000 people in the law practice industry with profiles on LinkedIn as of June 2009.

That is a growth rate of 49% in the most recent quarter, up from 39% the quarter before.

There are a lot of good reasons to create a LinkedIn profile: it helps your search engine visibility, it's free, and it affords users access to lots of vibrant groups, discussion boards and communities. More important than any of these, though, is that it is a low-stress and nearly painless way to begin the process of networking. (Or, re-begin, as is the case for so many of us.) No cold calling, no awkward conversations, no feeling slimy for hitting up contacts for business. In about 10 minutes per week from the comfort of your own home or office you can build and curate a decent LinkedIn profile.

Go on ahead and give it a try. If you like, I'll be your first contact.

I'd like to add you to my professional network.