Ethics Case for Attorney Retreats
Our own Merrilyn Aston Tarlton recently wrote here about five ways solos can find time for law firm retreats. And on that score, recently I became involved in a lengthy conversation with a large group...
View ArticleHow Effective Communicators Help Clients Understand
I read an article recently called “Marketing Yourself as an Expert: What Clients Look For.” According to the research presented, there are five key factors that clients associate with “visible...
View ArticleProductivity-Boosting Tech Tips for Your Law Practice
Lawyers’ utilization rates and productivity measures have been hot topics since Clio announced it will release its first “Legal Trends Report” later this month. Among the most stunning revelations will...
View ArticlePull It Together: Defining Projects and Next Action Items
You spend the whole day in court, or in meetings and conferences with clients. And what do you have to show for it? A legal pad filled with scribbles, a few random thoughts on sticky notes — and more...
View ArticleWhat Broadway’s Hamilton Teaches about Legal Interpretation
Comma placement matters. Broadway musical Hamilton’s Angelica Schuyler sings in “Take a Break”: In a letter I received from you two weeks ago I noticed a comma in the middle of a phrase It changed the...
View ArticleEmail Is a Second-Class Form of Communication
Email may be good for maintaining a relationship, but it is not good for building one. Both email and texting are fast, convenient and essentially allow nonstop 24/7 communication. The downside is they...
View ArticleFive Tech Tools to Add More Hours to a Lawyer’s Day
Technology continues to raise clients’ expectations. They want improved performance, better communication, accurate billing and quicker results. Lawyers will fail to keep up with those expectations if...
View ArticleFive Legal Marketing Trends to Watch
The Legal Marketing Technology Conference West in San Francisco, produced by the Legal Marketing Association and its Bay Area Chapter, is a forum for product debuts and first looks at new ways of doing...
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Six Fundamental Gaps in Online Marketing for Law Firms
Earlier this month in San Francisco while speaking at the Legal Marketing Technology Conference West, I made a startling observation. Marketing automation in the vast majority of law firms is either...
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Getting the Right Clients
Next month, Merrilyn Astin Tarlton’s new book hits the streets, and we couldn’t be more excited. “Getting Clients: For Lawyers Starting Out or Starting Over” is the best response yet to that age-old...
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Take It to the Wall: Be Organized
“My life sucks.” That’s what I said during the weekly video call with my mastermind group a few weeks ago. My life is actually awesome, but it’s challenging with the amount of work I’ve heaped on my...
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What’s in Your Law Firm’s Profit & Loss Statement?
Most small and solo law firms are working with financial statements that don’t give them the information they need to make informed business decisions. To illustrate what I mean, I’ve created a sample...
View ArticleFive Fitness Trends in 2016: Keep Them or Let Them Go?
Now that we are in the fourth quarter of 2016, we can look back and assess some of the year’s health and fitness trends. Which ones have real staying power? There are always many predictions for what...
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Why Are You at the Office Until 10 p.m.?
The early days of my legal career at a big firm involved lots of late nights at the office. It seemed like I was routinely getting home around 11 p.m. — often later. It was a busy time, so late nights...
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How to Take the Work Out of Your Workflow
A recent study by Clio found that, on average, a mere quarter of an attorney’s working hours are spent on billable tasks — and the percentage is even lower for solo practitioners. Technology can...
View ArticleYour Secret Marketing Weapon
I’ve noticed that the best rainmakers usually have really good legal administrative assistants (LAAs), and these lawyers are generally very good at engaging their LAAs in activities to nurture existing...
View ArticleCtrl+Alt+Repeat: ClariLegal Refines Vendor Management
Consider the many things that make normal life easier. Like buttons. There haven’t always been buttons, you know. What if you had to button your shirt without buttons? Literally impossible. (Button up,...
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Five Questions for Law Tech Entrepreneurs
Recently Attorney at Work asked three legal technology entrepreneurs — all speakers at this fall’s Clio Cloud Conference — for their thoughts on the biggest challenges facing solo attorneys and smaller...
View ArticleDeath of the Billable Hour: A Eulogy
Last month, I participated on a panel at the 2016 Futures Conference. My assigned task was to discuss whether the billable hour would finally be dead by 2026. That got me thinking about the future...
View Article10 Tips to Crank Up Your Law Firm Content
Now that all lawyers and firms are publishers, the demand for quality content has never been greater. And yet serious obstacles remain. How do you feed the publishing beast when you don’t have time to...
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