Don’t Compete for Attention
Have you ever been to Times Square in New York? It’s the busiest intersection in America’s busiest city. Thousands of people stream through, minute by minute, 24 hours a day. It’s a hurricane of human...
View ArticleThree Updates for Your Digital Marketing List
Your big-picture digital marketing goal is likely straightforward and logical: Convert the prospects who find you online into clients. Achieving this goal requires time, attention and money. You just...
View ArticleNotes from the ABA TECHSHOW 2018 Startup Alley
Year after year, I refer to ABA TECHSHOW as the “relationship” conference. It’s where you spend time with old friends, make new ones, provide and receive mentorship, and come away energized with lots...
View ArticleRiding a Wave of Business
When discussing business development, we often talk in terms of strategies — identifying top prospects, building niche practices or targeting selected referral sources, for example. But every now and...
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Looking for More Profit in All the Right Places
Back in January 2017, I was having breakfast with a local lawyer when he said, “I think I need to raise my rates this year. I am just not making enough money, and raising my rates should make the year...
View ArticleFinancial Tips for Attorneys a Few Years Out of Law School
In an earlier post, “Money Management Tips for New Associates,” we focused on how freshly minted lawyers can start their financial life on the right foot. Now let’s fast-forward a few years and...
View Article10 Things I Hate About the Little Things Lawyers Do
Whenever you spend a bunch of time with a group of people (like your family … ahem), you’re bound to become annoyed with them, at least some of the time. I have worked closely with solo and small firm...
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Steps for Promoting Law Firm Videos
Videos have proved to be an effective online marketing tool for attorneys. Not only is a video 50 times more likely to be picked up by a Google search than text, video provides an emotional element of...
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Scott Sigler’s Productivity Secrets: Creating a System
Being a lawyer and an entrepreneur can be two full-time jobs in one. While we’re zealously representing clients, we also have to market ourselves to keep new clients coming in the door and manage the...
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More Rainmaking Advice for New Associates: Earning Partner Preference
My last post, “Advice to New Associates on Becoming a Rainmaker,” prompted a number of responses along the lines of, “Step one was helpful, but you don’t really think you can get away without giving us...
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Client Communications Checklist for Law Firms
Every day offers opportunities to build trust with a client or prospect, thereby setting your firm apart from the competition. Here are eight easy ways to do just that in your communications. Eight...
View ArticleThree Marketing Best Practices for Lawyers Who Hate Marketing
When it comes to their skill in the courtroom, or their mastery when engaging clients, lawyers are mostly a confident bunch. When the conversation switches to marketing, however, that happy feeling is...
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Ant Text Makes Your Email Work Smarter
Most states have rules of professional conduct for lawyers to inform clients of the status of their cases and to promptly reply to their reasonable requests for information. An efficient and timely way...
View ArticleAwards Season: Building a Body of Work for “Best of” Lists
When awards season and Chambers nominations roll around, some firms find themselves scrambling to cobble together nomination applications. It’s understandable. I’ve been on both sides: crafting...
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Lawyers’ Struggle for Work-Life Balance: Managing Your Business
In “Why Lawyers Really Struggle with Work-Life Balance,” I listed six steps to building a practice that runs smoothly and allows you to have a life: 1) acquire better management skills; 2) implement...
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A Young Lawyer’s Path to Prosperity: Build a Powerful Personal Brand
To borrow a phrase from Charles Dickens, for young lawyers in today’s legal market, it’s both the best of times and the worst of times. Worst of times because there’s no place to hide. Clients are less...
View ArticleDo Lawyers Have an Ethical Responsibility to Use AI?
Lawyers are well aware of their ethical responsibilities. Those responsibilities permeate relationships with clients and extend to every aspect of lawyers’ professional lives — including the technology...
View ArticleFive Steps to Make It Rain: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It
Let me tell you a story about a brainy brief writer. She was smart, hardworking and loved practicing law. But she had few clients of her own. This made her beholden to others at her firm. Over the...
View ArticleHandwritten Notes Help Build Real Relationships
I got a handwritten note in the mail the other day from a colleague. We live in the same neighborhood in Chicago, text about 30 times a week, and see each other at least once a month. However, we play...
View ArticleYour Emotions Rule How Effectively You Communicate
Did you know that how you feel affects how you communicate with clients, colleagues and everyone else? An example most people are familiar with is email: Have you ever sent an email when you were angry...
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