Law Practice Tip: Do You Have A Client Notepad?

August 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here is an easy way to keep your clients happy and make their lives easier: have mini-notepads on either side of your desk. It is one of those ridiculously obvious things (except that a lot of lawyers don’t bother with it).

It took me years to figure it out. It finally occurred to me at a doctor’s office: at the end of the appointment, they rattle off a list of medications, dosages and schedules, and things to watch for and what to do. Finally, they ask, “got that?” before smiling, shaking your hand and running out the door.

THAT’S WHAT IT’S LIKE TO SEE A LAWYER!!!

Simply providing a pad and paper greatly helps our clients keep all of the information and instructions that we go through during appointments straight.

On both left and right sides of my desk, I keep mini sticky-back notepads with pens. This lets my clients take notes and take with them. It’s easy and it makes getting things done easier for my clients and myself.

Got a practice management tip? Tell me in the comments!

Filed Under: Practice Tips

Dammit! I’m a Lawyer, Not a Soothsayer!

July 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Problem solving fortune cookie

It is an axiom in the practice of law that lawyers cannot promise a particular result.

It is also axiomatic that as soon as an individual requires the services of a lawyer, they will forget this. So, any question like…

If I do A, what will happen?

Falls into the realm of promising a result, if one tries to answer it. The same goes for the following:

If I do A, will B happen?
How do I stop B from happening?

This is a variation on promising a result, in the sense that it is a protection racket. “We can help you avoid B[ad thing], if you do the following, and pay us money.” The often unspoken part of these questions is…

I know what I want to do, and I want you to tell me that it is going to be ok.

Or, put another way, “I want you to ratify my action and indemnify me against bad consequences.” Now, do lawyers do this? Sure. Absolutely. Lawyers often provide advice on prospective courses of action to protect their clients. However, there has to be the understanding that:

  1. The lawyer cannot guarantee a result.
  2. If things go tits up, the lawyer will effectively go, “Huh? What do you know about that?”

Unfortunately, this tends to not go over well. Which often results in the client either being angry, or suing the lawyer, for not having a good enough crystal ball. Simply put, I hate these questions.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Tomasz Stasiuk

Filed Under: Editorials, Practice Tips

Ignore the Analytics

July 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Google Analytics Hacks

When you first start blogging, you will want to see how many people (other than you mom and your spouse) are looking at your site.

DON’T

Analytics are the beauty magazines of blogging. They will just make you feel ugly and make you want to go back to bed with a pint of ice cream. You won’t know what you are doing and that’s ok. When you are starting out is a great time to make mistakes. It’s the perfect time, in fact: fewer people are looking at your site!

  • Websites need time to grow.
  • Bloggers need time to grow, too.

It will take time to find your voice and figure out the things you want to cover. At first, you will feel like you are shouting into the howling wilderness. And in many ways you will be. However, you need that ego to keep you going to the keyboard to keep creating content. And analytics are worse for your self confidence that striking out at a single’s bar. Analytics prove statistically that no one likes you, and that is something no one needs to hear during the fragile starting months.

Keep telling yourself that you are awesome and that it will just take some for everyone else to see that too. Yeah, just like your mom said. Now, go give her a call! She’d love to hear from you.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Search Engine People Blog

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With:

Faster Markdown with TextExpander

June 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If I convinced you to try Markdown, here are some Text Expander snippets to make using Markdown faster!

Note: The snippet abbreviation is in quotes (remove if pasting into TE), followed by the snippet.

These two are brazenly borrowed from Practically Efficient:

abbreviation: uurl    snippet: [%clipboard](%|)

Use this when you have the url in clipboard: inserts link syntax, pastes the url in the right spot, and puts your curser into the anchor text brackets.

abbreviation: llink    snippet: [%|](%clipboard)

Use this when you have the anchor text but not the url: inserts link syntax, pastes anchor text, and puts your curser into the url parens. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , ,

Writing Under the Influence

June 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Coffee is my drug of choice.

Coffee beans @ Pulau Ubin

Yeah, sorry to disappoint you. Worse still, revealing such a mundane stimulant so early in the post will probably turn off a lot of Google searches unless I put in something like, “Walnut shells, roasted, soaked in tequila can produce a remarkably open state of mind and facilitate…” However, then there is the liability issue and I really don’t care to be a test case with hundreds of pages which ultimately can be summarized as:

If you screw with stoners, we’re going to nail your ass to a wall.

- Love, the Supreme Court Board of Law Examiners.

Coffee. Yes, coffee. The dark mistress. For me ,at least, it often produces a mild euphoria and slightly trance like state. No, no double-rainbows. I still know what is going on, but some filters are lowered and I am better able to channel creativity.

It does not last though. So, while I’m on the right side of “happy coffee” mountain, I need to write. Because I know that soon, I will becoming down the jagged side of the post caffeinated crash. See! Coffee is like other drugs. But, please don’t criminalize it.

I have already written on the book today, and I can feel muse leaving me now. So, I will try to write a bit more, then take the kids home and make dinner and then edit. Editing I can do straight.

Creative Commons License photo credit: jensen_chua

Filed Under: Blogging, Editorials Tagged With: ,

Markdown for Lawyers

June 22, 2011 By 2 Comments

You may have heard lawyers talking about Markdown and how it is making blogging easier. So what is Markdown?

Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

Say what? In short, Markdown lets you write and format text for the web at the same time, while still using plaintext files. Here are the main benefits of Markdown.

Markdown is Portable and Makes the Round-Trip

I want to write where ever and whenever an idea hits.

  • At the office.
  • At home.
  • Out with my iPad.
  • Or in bed with my iPhone on the nightstand.

I want to be able to add or change drafted articles and start working on new posts.

Beyond this, I don’t want to have to think about moving drafts between systems, I just want them to BE THERE. And that’s where Markdown earns its keep. Since text formatted with Markdown text is just simple plain text you can edit it on a portable device and have it synced to your desktop and other devices. And the formatting is preserved because it is just plaintext. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , ,

How Lawyers Use Twitter Podcast

June 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Gwynne Monahan and Huma Rashid, two of the most prolific and interesting legal tweeters on the net, join me to discuss how solo lawyers, small law firms and attorneys at all experience levels can use Twitter, including personal versus professional balance, mistakes made along the way, using hashtags, whether to worry about followers, how these Twitter superstars choose who to follow, and best practices for covering live events.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With:

Be Controversial! Aw Hell Naw!

June 6, 2011 By 1 Comment

rage

Another topic that came up at the Social Media for lawyers CLE: should you be controversial?

Should you tackle politics, religion, and other controversial topics? Or, should you just steer clear of all this for fear of it biting you on your ass.

It all reminds me of Danny Kaye in The inspector General asking himself whether to be elegant, arrogant, or smart:

The argument against controversial topics

Of course, it will come back and bite you! Nothing on the internet is ever lost. Your diatribe for or against illegal immigration or the current upheaval in the middle east (how’s that for keeping the article evergreen!) may keep you from getting a job or running for office at some point. Prospective clients may reject you because of your strong opinions, or because you have any opinion at all.

Yes, of course that may happen. Worse still, you may be tarred with positions you have staked out in the past – even ones you no longer believe in! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging

Can Lawyers Market Using Fremium Models?

May 31, 2011 By 1 Comment

I like Cory Doctorow. He’s the Che Guevara to the geek set. Cory has proven you can make money by giving away content. If you don’t know, Cory writes science fiction (he also a co-editor of BoingBoing and Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation). Cory makes his books available for free electronically via a creative commons license and also sells dead tree editions.

I know that giving away content can be profitable. I blog about how Social Security disability works and try to demystify the interconnection between regulation. My now generates about 50% of intakes at my Colorado Social Security disability law firm.

I use blogging so people can obtain general information, establish myself as an authority in this area, and let people get to know me so they want to contact me and retain my services. It is generator. You could describe it this way:

General information is free. If you want all the pieces connected and applied to the specific circumstances of your case, hire me.

However, THATS. NOT. THE. SAME. THING. I am not giving away the exact same thing I’m selling. I am not giving away legal services.

However, could I do the same thing with this book? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editorials, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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