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February 28, 2006
It's Fat Tuesday in New Orleans: "Heck of a City There, Brownie!"
It's today--and I almost forgot. I've been in LA "celebrating" my birthday. On the way back, I was thinking that, while Los Angeles is a city where eccentricity is tolerated and even bankable, New Orleans is the real thing. Being different is celebrated daily. So hats off to New Orleans, the last urban Bohemia in America, where oddity is a way of life and today, Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, it's more like a real sport. See Why Have Mardi Gras? at Ray Ward's Minor Wisdom.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:25 PM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2006
Blawg Review #46
Sean Sirrine at De Novo has this week's Blawg Review. Along with a bunch of great links, Sean offers some helpful "tips" on keeping blogs fresh. Nice job, Sean.
Posted by Tom Welshonce at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
Rule 9: Be There For Clients--24/7.
Rule 9: Be There For Clients--24/7.
(See the first 8 rules: 1-6 here, 7 here and 8 here.)
Get used to it. We attorneys, accountants and legions of other professionals with corporate clients--at big firms, boutiques or solos--are no longer royalty. In the future, "returning telephone calls promptly", "keeping your client informed" (like those two items should ever have been a big deal!), blackberries and having effective voice message and paging systems will not be nearly enough--if it ever were enough. Color all that barely adequate. Get a new standard--a new wave-length with your clients and customers. I posted about this recently in "Being There: Availability".
Family will always come first. Rest, time and re-bonding with family and friends is important to nurturing body, mind, soul and spirit. Vacations are important, too. We need all that recharging, and we need lots of it. But we now live in a world (1) that never sleeps, (2) in which delivering services based on problem-solving, know-how and judgment is as important as mass-producing, marketing and distributing widgets, and (3) where competition for good clients--amongst accountants, actuaries, consultants, stockbrokers, lawyers, you name it--is getting stiffer. In the next decade, and even for high-end clients, more and more "cookie cutter" and fungible services will be outsourced and done by very smart and far more cost-effective workers and professionals in Bangalore, Taipei or Mexico City. Just wait. What's left over will be specialty items and things clients need professionals and specialists to do at their highest levels of thinking and problem-solving.
Compete on service. Compete using your best skills delivered with superior service. If you really want "clients for life", and the rewards promised in all those happy themes you see on the shelves of the business sections of Borders and Barnes & Noble, consider being there 24/7--and telling your clients that you already are. No--it won't kill you, diminish your health, ruin your marriage or drive your employees away. Just let your clients know that you are totally accessible--no client worth keeping will abuse the privilege--and then show them. As a practical matter, you can assign two people (as my firm does) to be abreast of each client matter, no matter how small, and never charge for the overlap (it works). You can actively jockey to become the "emergency go-to" provider when a client needs to get something addressed immediately simply by doing the day-to-day work you already have for that client with uncommon enthusiasm and ahead of schedule. How you show them and how you do it is up to you. In order for most of us to be competitive, we have to get into the habit of "being there"--that means both quality time and any time. Good clients deserve this.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:24 AM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2006
Allison Shields: "Do You Know What Your Clients Really Want?"
Allison Shields at Legal Ease Blog has posted on one of my favorite subjects. It follows up on a shorter Seth Godin post. Note in particular what Allison has to say on learning about what the client wants and bringing those wants and expectations into line with what is probable, possible and not possible. It's excellent and it's here.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:58 AM | Comments (1)
February 24, 2006
Jim Hassett: Safeguarding Your Best Clients and Customers.
Jim Hassett at Law Firm Business Development, one of my favorite blogs, has a terrific two-part discussion on "Bulletproofing your crown jewel clients" which is here and here. It's based on a talk Gerry Riskin gave last month at the Marketing Partner Conference in Florida. It's really about risk reduction--and another Hassett analysis we should all read.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:42 AM | Comments (0)
Tag, You're It..."4 things".
Ernie The Attorney (Ernest Svenson) "tagged" me for a chain-mail "4 Things" series of questions. And I'm supposed to "tag" 4 people at the end. So:
4 jobs I've had:
Keebler Co. Cookie Packer
Manager of a Krogers Meat Department
Tennis Teacher in Michigan and North Carolina
Waiter at Hugh Kelly's The Irish Times Bar
4 movies I can watch over and over:
Once Upon a Time in America
The Last Seduction
Blue Velvet
The Ladies' Man
4 TV shows I love to watch:
Any show with Ellen Bry in it
The Sopranos
Boston Legal
Re-runs of St. Elsewhere
4 places I've been on vacation:
Kitzbuhel, Austria
Pointe Aux Barques, Michigan
Uncharted Fishing Camp Near Island of Coiba, Pananma
Hugh Kelly's The Irish Times Bar
4 tunes that play through my head:
The Telephone Song
Voodoo Child
Gimme Shelter
Crossroads (Cream's live version)
4 favorite dishes:
Filet Mignon
Lobster Anything
Anything with peanuts or peanut butter in it.
Adriana Linares
Four websites I visit daily:
WSJ Law Blog
In Search of Perfect Client Service
Wonkette
Stark County Law Library Blog
Four books I'd grab in an earthquake:
Sam Hazo's Stills
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
The Adventure of English
Flaubert's Parrot or The Art of Travel
Four places I'd rather be:
Cluny Abbey, Roman baths level, Left Bank, Paris
Kent or Suffolk, England
Pointe Aux Barques, Michigan
Kelly's Irish Times in Washington, D.C.
Four Bloggers I'm Tagging
Chris Abraham
Patrick Lamb
Michelle Golden
Tom Kane
Posted by JD Hull at 07:21 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2006
Last Call: Western European Legal Weblogs? Or... It's All Happening at the Zoo.
So far I received--mainly from English, Scottish and Swedish lawyers--about 15 names of English-version western European blawgs in response to my posts over the last week. You can see them in the comments here. Any others? The short-term goal is to compile a list of active high quality (even profane and strident is okay--i.e., Brits value oddity now and then) western European blawgs. Next, we'll put calls out for blawgs in Australia/New Zealand, China, Japan, Eastern Europe, South Africa, Russia, the Middle East, Latin America, etc. A few points on all this:
1. The long-term goal is to expand and deepen our running "conversation"--and help link American legal bloggers to lawyers and resources (both "legal" and non-legal) in other countries, other spheres and other on-line communities. Just as many of us would like to know what non-lawyer American bloggers are thinking and doing about the law, business, marketing and the world in general, some of us would also like to know what "foreign" lawyers are thinking and doing.
2. The Problem. American lawyers who blog--and bloggers everywhere for that matter--limit themselves in geography and audience. We tend to "talk to ourselves". That's ironic. Even though we are all in the ideas business--and even though we have this wonderful ability to reach people everywhere in a matter of seconds--we often limit ourselves to insular conversations in this discipline or that one, engaging primarily people "just like us". Well-educated Americans are guilty of this in and out of blogging.
3. Clients. If you have business clients--and even if you have mom-and-pop clients or solely clients which are individuals--you and your clients are likely very soon to be doing business abroad or for interests abroad if you are not already. It's all happening now--even for American litigators. Contact me and I'll give you examples of German and UK clients in our own practice.
4. Language barriers? This is primarily a North American problem. Foreign professionals--German, French, Spanish, Scandinavian and Latin American--are fluently speaking, writing and doing business in American English and "English" English with great skill. They have been for years. And many, many foreign sites now offer English versions as well. We don't need to master new languages.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2006
Adam Smith, Esq: "What P&G Teaches".
Please read this February 19 Adam Smith post. This is lawyer blogging at its best: taking ideas that work for successful businesses which manage and sell outside the bubble of lawyerdom and seeing if they might work for law firms. Adam Smith (Bruce MacEwen) in "What P&G Teaches" makes a daring but on-mark stab at applying consumer products leader Procter & Gamble's simply-stated, flexible and disciplined world view on who it is and what it does to the law firm. Or to any business which takes itself seriously and is willing to change when it must. Accompanying Bruce's post is a recent WSJ piece and a July 2005 McKinsey & Company interview/article covering changes in "dog-eat-dog" P&G brand manager culture, the importance of constantly listening to customers and its current "turn-around" CEO, A.G. Lafley, who breaks ranks with many past P&G chiefs in his nearly Stephen Covey-like leadership style.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:54 PM | Comments (0)
Great Response to "Lawyers As Trusted Advisors"
In response to the post immediately below on Arnie Herz's "Lawyers As Trusted Advisors", I received a great comment from Mr. Moe Levine which is self-explanatory and republished virtually verbatim below:
Unfortunately, clients and markets are smart enough to understand that they don't want lawyers as trusted advisers.
There is a lawyer and sociologist named Mark Suchman, he used to teach at Wisconsin and now is on the West Coast, who has written very extensively on the fact that over time lawyers relationships with clients must deteriorate, because clients learn to do more and more for themselves. His best paper was delivered in about 1992 to a Bar Program in Chicago. The basic idea is that the more clients can do for themselves, the less they need lawyers and the more task specific lawyer client relationships will become. He really paints as excellent picture of what the practice has become and where it is headed.
I agree with 95% of what Moe is saying here. In fact, my firm wants its clients to not need or use us for things they can do themselves. We like that. That's good. When a client can do things on its own, that's an enormously satisfying moment for us--and a lot of what lawyering (and this blog) is all about. Smaller clients and start-ups can be taught to do lots of things on their own; common examples are safe hiring/firing practices, conducting a sexual harassment investigation, self-audits for environmental compliance, trademark and copyright applications and keeping corporate minutes.
You are finally adding value as a lawyer when you teach clients how to do these types of things and teach them when they really need a lawyer. Once "taught" they can bring more difficult matters to you and ones which don't fall under the category of "putting out [unnecessary] fires". The challenge is: (1) getting new businesses to spend money on lawyering in the initial stages of development or when a problem comes up for the first time, (2) teaching clients to do things themselves, or with minimum of our help, and (3) educating them on when they need lawyers and when they don't. You may lose "short-term" money, but you get in return long-term clients, more interesting work in which you are really "helping" and a real relationship with a client where the lawyer is valued as an advisor. And you have trust.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)
"Lawyers As Trusted Advisers"
Clearly, I'm having post-envy here, and wish I had written the above-entitled post but Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity did instead. If you are relationship-driven in your approach to clients--which is just about the only overall model I can come up with--and you seek true partnership and "consigliere" roles with your best clients, you should read Arnie's post "Lawyers As Trusted Advisors". This man not only thinks before he writes, he gets it.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2006
Clean Water Act Argument in SC Today: So What Are "Waters of the U.S." These Days, Anyway?
See today's WSJ Law Blog. If your firm does any environmental law, you may know know that two critical companion cases were argued today on the reach of the 33-year-old federal Clean Water Act in a test of the new U.S. Supreme Court. I almost forgot about this--probably because it was such a strange development (no pun), I was in denial the case even got as far as it did. In the two cases, developers are challenging the federal government's authority to regulate (and protect) wetlands.
Simply put, the question is: will wetlands or any other waterways which you can't float a boat in still fall under the jurisdiction of the federal Clean Water Act? If the answer is "no"--i.e., wetlands and certain smaller tributaries to navigable waters are now suddenly "out"--the Clean Water Act and much of its jurisprudence is changed forever unless Congress steps in. Although the case affects many U.S. businesses and persons from diverse political camps in different ways, it's in many ways a straightforward Environmentalists v. U.S. Business dispute. Also see the Associated Press's coverage of the argument.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)
Revisited: European blawgs anyone?
I'm still compiling a list of active worthwhile European legal blogs--especially those originating from or about the UK, Germany and France (English versions if possible), western Europe generally and the European Union. I've received some good responses (in comments to February 16 post) If anyone else of any nationality can recommend European sites they like and visit frequently, I would appreciate it.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:20 AM | Comments (0)
Abraham & Del Bianco--Two People You Should Get To Know.
No--this is not a multicultural-sounding law firm. It's two very different Washington, D.C. people I know who are both "digitally-advanced", and who I urge everyone to get to know personally and professionaly. Since more than 10 people a day (still mostly relatives and associates paid to view it but it's getting there) finally are visiting and really reading this site, I thought, why not briefly sing Chris's and Mark's praises in a post? I met DC-based Chris Abraham, an expert on corporate blogging and building on-line communities, and a very interesting human (likely because he's not a lawyer), at a Renaissance Weekend a few years back in California. His blog is at www.ChrisAbraham.com .
Another Washingtonian, and a D.C. native, Mark Del Bianco is an uncommonly talented telecom lawyer, lawyer's lawyer and friend who I have known most of my professional life. Mark is also an invitee to Renaissance but is always too busy to go. See Mark's main site at www.MarkDelBianco.com. Both Mark and Chris are in demand these days. Visit their sites and you can quickly figure out why. Very good people to know. And Mark and Chris--whether they know it or not--in different conversations two years ago got me interested in blogging. In fact, both had to explain to me the meaning of "blog". Neither Mark or Chris know about this post and both of them would be embarrassed by it. Well, maybe not Chris--he's got that Steve Jobs thing going.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:06 AM | Comments (0)
Client Interviews Need to Be A Continuing Issue--So Clip and Save this Post.
Three days ago Tom Kane at the The Legal Marketing Blog gave us another useful post on client feedback interviews, which stars a February 9 Small Firm Business article on taking client interviews to the next level. So if you click on Tom's post and then click on this, which collects all of the Michelle Golden-Jim Hassett-Patrick Lamb-Tom Kane multi-blog discussion on client interviews, and then follow the links, you have some great materials and comments on not only the need for client interviews but exactly how to do it. And, for my money, it's hard to improve on Tom's January 30 post on the 3-part formula for correct interviews: (1) Interviews by third party professionals (2) followed promptly by a visit from senior management and (3) assignment of a client service team or liaison to each key client.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:53 AM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2006
Patrick Lamb: Blawg Review #45
My friend and frequent cyber-mentor Patrick Lamb at In Search of Perfect Client Service did the honors this week for Blawg Review #45, which reviewed last week's posts. As usual, Pat does a superb job.
Pat and I are both practicing business litigators approximately the same age. We both were raised in the Midwest, were high-school debater types and have strong dashes of Gaelic DNA. We are both serious students of client service and law practice management. So over a year ago, when I was reviewing blawgs to see if I wanted to launch one myself, I was particularly interested in and struck by Pat's hugely popular blog. Then I thought it was the best legal weblog. I still think it's the best. We are all lucky to have the guy around.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:48 PM | Comments (0)
Being There: Availability.
Three weeks ago Allison Shields at Legal Ease Blog wrote a first-rate and thoughtful piece "How Available Are You?" and it deservedly attracted a lot of attention. About the same time, Tom Collins at MorePartnerIncome had a solid post on the same subject. Read these if you haven't. People noticed Allison's and Jim's posts and responded. These kinds of posts seem to hit a nerve. People want to talk about availability. At the request of a friend and first-rate lawyer, I'm working on a short review of a truly wonderful and needed book called The Essential Little Book of Great Lawyering, by lawyer-author-consultant Jim Durham, formerly managing partner at Ropes & Gray and Law Firm Development Group. It's a fine, fine book--and I'll talk more about it another day. About halfway through the book, Jim talks about the importance of 24-hour "accessibility" and "responsiveness" to clients. Not everyone agrees with that one--but I loved it.
My firm's website has said since day one that we are available to clients 24-hours-a-day. And it's true. However, with planning, no one in our firm has ever been inconvenienced by our policy. Years ago 2 different lawyers with great credentials were asking Hull McGuire for work we couldn't get done without outside help. Each told me point blank in so many words that the "anti-quality-of-life/Rambo" (I'm paraphrasing) tones of our 24-hour promise on the website alone "scared" (now I'm quoting) them. We didn't stay in contact with either one professionally after they made their "quality of life" position clear. Nice guys--but I didn't want our clients anywhere near them.
The 24/7 ethos may be a minority view--old school, or maybe new school. But I think not being available to clients 24/7 (vacations included) is: (1) arrogant, (2) spoiled, and (3) just plain dumb. Nothing radical about this, folks. Attorneys are not royalty. And practicing law is often hard. Our clients deserve a lot. They are often hard-won from much larger firms. Competition is only increasing as we finally realize that "law is a business", and that we now live in a world which never sleeps. My firm wants to be the firm clients or would-be clients think of when they ask themselves: "Who can I get to do this now? Like right now?" With the exception of one German manufacturing client (and I was glad the rep in that case woke me up), in 20 years no one has ever called me at 3:00 in the morning. But if you are trying to discourage a good business client from calling you on the weekends or at odd hours, or during your family vacation, tell them to call me collect. Be glad to take the call. For each client or industry we serve, we always have two people who can take your client's call.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2006
A Little Help From The Canadian Bar Association: "Plain Language Legal Writing".
The Canadian Bar Association's CBA Practice Link, which I check from time to time, has been running a 3-part series on "Plain Language Legal Writing" adopted from articles by Cheryl Stephens. Take a look at Part III - Mastering Modern Legal Correspondence. Previously posted Parts I and II, "Writing as a Process" and "Writing to Be Understood", are now off-limits to non-CBA members but worth obtaining, so I think I'll try. But Part III on correspondence is detailed, generally applicable to any good writing, well-thought out and useful to anyone who shares this goal: put our embarrassingly medieval legal writing tradition out of its present misery (i.e., kill it), lovingly leave it to language and legal historians, and turn it into unpretentious English which clients and other lawyers will actually want to read. Bravo.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:12 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2006
Huh?--Hardly Any of the AUSA's We Know Are Eagle Scouts.
Since this post could make me seem biased about the federal prosecutor "personality", and to be unfairly generalizing, I'll make some preliminary comments. First, I'm an Eagle Scout. I know a real Eagle Scout when I see one. Second, I've defended in lots of federal environmental cases and in a few white-collar criminal and public integrity matters with U.S. Justice Department attorneys--generally an extremely talented bunch--on the other side. Third, DOJ is hands down the best place in the country to learn how to try a case. Finally, any U.S. Attorney's office is also a really good place for us all to get in touch with our inner Machiavelli. Some of my best friends have worked as AUSA's--almost overnight he or she develops the combined sensibilities and morals of a rock, a plant and a hammerhead shark.
Hardly any male AUSA I know is an Eagle Scout. I strongly suspect that an AUSA who is an Eagle Scout and at some point is outed as one is asked to formally repudiate the award in a secret and hopelessly demented "remedial" DOJ hooded ceremony, a Black Mass of sorts, followed by an hour or so of mead drinking and maybe doing the antler dance. So I was surprised but intrigued that the WSJ Law Blog this morning reported that the the president has nominated to the federal trial bench in North Carolina an obviously successful (by DOJ gun notch standards), forthright and talented 45-year-old U.S. Attorney with serious Republican credentials who was/is an Eagle Scout. He is a "tall and stout" one at that, according to The Raleigh News & Observer. And presumably trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and free of creative government witnesses, vindictiveness and Brady violations. Hey, let's hope so. This guy's probably going to be a federal judge.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:42 AM | Comments (0)
Two Great Blogs By Non-lawyers We Can Actually Use.
The first is I [Heart] Tech by Adriana Linares--a Florida-based tech consultant specializing in lawyers, an Earth Mother for the digital age, and clearly one of the sassiest yet most feminine human beings on the planet. Adriana is also CEO of LawTechPartners. And she can write. There were several women like Adriana at Duke when I was a student there. Most of them studied hard, were envied and admired from afar, and studiously avoided me. Adriana is a favorite with Hull McGuire because in exchange for this post she has promised to refer us at least 50 IP projects and Lanham Act cases a year through 2010. She loves lawyers.
The second is Nathan Burke's marketing and branding site lawfirmblogging.com. Based in Boston, Nathan and his company Business Seeds Marketing design web sites for lawyers and mortals, help lawyers market generally and on the web, and are consultants on branding and identity. Earlier this month Nathan had the sand to challenge my writing-off of all logos for all law firms for all time. And he may have gotten me to change my mind. Nathan, too, writes well. He is apparently amused by lawyers but, like Adriana, is compassionate toward us without making us feel bad about ourselves. Nathan promised me nothing in exchange for this post.
Hire these people.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2006
European blawgs anyone?
I'm compiling a list of active worthwhile European legal blogs--especially those originating from or about the UK, Germany and France (English versions if possible), western Europe generally and the European Union. If anyone of any nationality can recommend European sites they like and visit frequently, I would appreciate it.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)
LAW PROFESSION NEGATIVITY IN ALL ITS FORMS, et al., Plaintiffs v. HALF-FULL CUPS, Defendants.
He's right. In our profession, we've lost our mojo--if we ever had one--and we need to get it back. Or maybe get one for the first time. Jon Stein at The Practice just wrote back-to back posts (here and here) on negativity in the profession, from three sources: bloggers, lawyers and non-lawyers. Jon concludes the first post by challenging bloggers to write 2 positive posts the rest of this week. His two are worth reading. Here's a small excerpt, an eloquent one:
And then I go out and read legal blogs. And the negativity comes flowing out like a New York City fire hydrant opened by kids on a hot summer day. There are blogs, which shall remain nameless, which are 99% negative. Post after post after post is negative. There are other blogs which are 50% negative. Why?
You can't write about addressing negativity without getting a little negative. But here goes. On bloggers, I don't see that many negative blogs--in fact, with some glaring exceptions, I think we are an "up" and optimistic lot. We are first and foremost people who feel strongly about something good we have discovered, and want to share that with others. "Hopeful" comes to mind, too. The goals of gaining stature and more clients through blogging is secondary; many of us will blog whether there's money in it or not.
But I agree with Jon that lawyers and non-lawyers alike are negative about the profession, if for different reasons. We lawyers do whine a lot and forget to count our blessings. It's a privilege to work, and a privilege to practice law. Yet our profession is full of (1) ungrateful boomer weenies my vintage with first-rate educations our parents often paid for and who just a few years out of law school started "phoning it in" and treating even the best clients like troublesome peasants, and (2) younger lawyers with marginal work ethics who were told all their lives by their parents that everything they did and would do in life was "just great" and, sorry, dudes, it just wasn't and isn't that great. Practicing law is hard. You have to pay dues. And then you still have to do it right, every day, for years. You do it when you are tired, are sick, just heard the Second Circuit ruled against your client, were dumped two days ago by your girlfriend, had your BMW stolen, just learned a parent is suddenly gravely ill, or are in the middle of an endless divorce--that's the price of the privilege. But all this is obviously my beef and part of why I launched this blog last year. And I'm getting negative.
Non-lawyers? Sorry, everyone, and see above. Generally, I whole-heartedly agree with non-lawyers that we lawyers are clueless and out-to-lunch. In fact, I'd go further. Shoddy client service, cavalier disregard for clients as a necessary evil and outright contempt for our customers are far worse problems than non-lawyers and clients (even GC's) even know. At BigLaw, solos, and everything in between, we don't get it yet. We can get much, much better--but only with a revolution in the lawyer mind. Clients and lawyers can have true partnerships which can make both well-served and even rich.
Anyway, Jon, nice posts. And my first positive contribution for Jon is this: Clients are everything--so start there. If you can think and plan it, you can do it. And attitude is more important than facts. Sweetness, light, and truth, folks.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2006
Lovemarks Update: Catch Lisa Haneberg's Mini-Series.
Management Craft is a blog by Lisa Haneberg. All week long in honor of Valentine's Day Lisa's discussing Kevin Roberts' Lovemarks from a management perspective. Today's post is part 3 of a series she calls "Love and Management--Lovemarks Revisited All Week". Again, thanks to Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity for this one.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2006
2 Very Cool New Things: Blawg/Bob Review #44 and Exemplar Law Partners.
The first is Blawg Review #44 (now a/k/a "Bob Review") by West Virginia-based health care lawyer Bob Coffield at Health Care Law Blog. Very nicely done. And funny. The second is the debut of Exemplar Law Partners: "No hourly bill. No hourly bull." ELP is a new firm delivering a mix of corporate law services internationally and which Robert Ambrogi, Patrick Lamb and Michelle Golden have been bringing to everyone’s attention over the past few days. Guys, we are brothers. I am 100% supportive and curious at a level 11 on a 1-10 scale; just tell me how you do/will do it. Call me, e-mail me, comment or post.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2006
Rule Eight: Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs.
Rule Eight: Think Like The Client--Help Control Costs. (See the first 7 rules 1-6 here and 7 here).
Ask an associate lawyer or paralegal what a "profit" is. You will get two kinds of answers. Both answers are "correct" but neither of them helps anyone in your firm think like the client. The answers will be something like this. (1) "A profit is money remaining after deducting costs from receipts." This is the correct young transactional/tax lawyer answer. Or (2) "it's money left over at the end of the hunt." This is the correct fire-breathing young litigator answer.
The right answer?
A profit is a reward for being efficient. And until a lawyer, paralegal or staffer gets that, she or he will never know how a client--or a law firm partner--thinks.
Rule 8 is really simple. Watch and minimize costs and show the client that you are interested in doing that. Go beyond just avoiding wasteful spending, and think of the client's business as yours. Factor cost (including fees!) into everything you think, say and do. Let the client know that you know that holding down costs is good for both the client and your law firm. You want repeat clients, and a maximum of steady income streams, so let clients know you really care about saving it money because of just that: you want to keep costs down so the client will stay with the firm in the long-term.
Most clients not only get this but appreciate it greatly in time. Two years ago, at the beginning of a fairly intense but short-term lobbying project in DC for a new client (a high-tech company with a fabulous product), I told the client's CEO--by the way, she was brilliant, talented and rich but surprisingly unsophisticated on the use of lawyers--that she had three options on legal paths she could take on the project, and that I wanted her to use the least expensive one on legal fees. She actually said: "Dan, you know we really like you guys. But your goal has got to be to make as many thousands of dollars you can a month from this project. Why a cheap avenue for me that involves fewer lawyer hours? Why should I take this seriously?" My answer: "Because whether you sell this company or not, we want to represent it or whatever company you next develop on a long term basis, and we would rather work for you for years and years than just a few months."
That made sense to her. Everyone in our shop needs (1) to think in terms of holding down client costs--attorney fees and out-of-pocket expenses--at every step and every moment of a client project, (2) to know why, and (3) to be prepared to explain that to the client.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)
February 09, 2006
Law School Applications Trend: Way Down
Interesting, surprising and probably very good news in the WSJ Law Blog from a New York Times piece today on the decline in law school admission applications--and possible reasons. There's a great zen-like quote from David E. Kelley, lawyer-turned-writer and producer of shows like Boston Legal, on why it's actually useful to have more lawyers out there to keep the applications down.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
Back to Work, WJC Phone Home and Searching for Tattoos.
No practice tips today. Interesting IP disputes at work I was asked to help on are draining the how-to-lawyer evangelist in me. My limited blog time is spent wondering (see Patrick Lamb's branding post yesterday about some really serious branding) if a GC or client rep indeed ever went completely around the bend--or more likely stayed way too late at Nathan's in Georgetown or The Irish Times on Capitol Hill--and had tattooed "I [heart] Hull McGuire PC for all my tax, litigation, environmental and IP needs". And no word from WJC on the January 27 help-wanted ad and "invitation to deal" for an of-counsel position. We are testing the blogosphere on this one--and may need another assist from Peter Lattman's heavily-visited WSJ Law Blog, assuming he's still game. But as WJC knows or should know that he might run into me at a future Renaissance weekend smaller and more intimate than the one we met at on January 1, or that I might be involved in fund-raising for a relative in 2008, I thought maybe he'd ring us in Pittsburgh or San Diego by now.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:18 AM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2006
"Lovemarks"
Clever, funny and important post today by Patrick Lamb on the book Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, by Kevin Roberts, CEO of advertising powerhouse Saatchi & Saatchi, and with a foreword by Procter & Gamble chief A.G. Lafley. Like others, I have little time to read--but I am going to read this one. Pat gives a good synopsis of the "Lovemark" concept (think Harley Davidson owners and Macintosh users) in his post. When they have time, Michelle Golden, Tom Kane, Jim Hassett, Arnie Herz and/or anyone else who knows or cares about branding and customer loyalty is welcome to opine and weigh in. More to come.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)
Yanks Abroad Gone Wild--Part 2
Lots of us are interested in geographic growth strategies--for our clients and for our firms. Particularly interesting to me (see recent post) are instincts like "growth for growth's sake" and "if it's there, we must conquer it". In that discussion, the WSJ Law Blog has also picked up on Bruce MacEwen's fine recent post in Adam Smith, Esq on the competency of U.S. law firm global expansion. David Maister noticed the post, too, and left a comment to Bruce's post referring to an article he wrote called Geographic Expansion Strategies which appeared a couple of years ago in some European and Australian papers. These are two fine articles. One notion common to both is the importance of deciding whether expansion even makes sense (at what price glory?) and--if so--devising a winning strategy you can really implement. Or, as David puts it, have you really "made yourself ready to win?"
Geographic expansion of a law firm is really an issue of geographic "coverage" of your clients' needs and activities. Whether your clients' activities are regional, national, global, or one square mile, can you get the work done? Expertly? Efficiently? It's not a matter of your firm's geographic "location", your brick and mortar offices. Location is less and less important. No, I don't think (yet) that that good business clients these days are ready for virtual law firms, or that so-called "flattening" dynamics offered by technology will allow a solo or boutique firm to be competitive with Jones Day or or Clifford Chance in any given niche practice area. Most clients still expect brick and mortar locations, and will use 1000+ lawyer law firms when that makes sense. But the dust has settled enough in the evolving global economy that we can all start asking questions about future geographic expansion in terms of "geographic coverage" and not "law offices locations" to service clients in whatever locations the clients are active. For starters, in a given law practice area for a discrete industry, (1) how big/small and (2) where (brick and mortar) do you have to be to service good business clients no matter where they are active? And (3) what level (if any) of outsourcing will be acceptable to the client?
Posted by JD Hull at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2006
If You Cringe When You Read This One, Read It Again.
Patrick Lamb at In Search of Perfect Client Service has an instructive but disturbing post on "one-bounce marketing" and the start of the once-bounce marketing season. The post is inspired by and based on recent article in The American Lawyer by TAL's editor-in-chief Aric Press. Thanks to Pat, I didn't miss Press's intriguing remarks on this special season of the year. Everyone who thinks that they are really marketing and doing it right should read this one.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:34 AM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2006
Blawg Review #43--And Check Out Act XII, Scene 2...
Bravo! Blawg Review #43 is out--this week by Boston-based and well-read Diane Levin at Online Guide To Mediation. Her theme is Shakespeare. I appreciate any lawyer with a liberal arts degree who can write, especially a literary one who went to Amherst. I now live in Southern California, a part of the country where many of us think Othello is a cologne, Puck a Hollywood agent, Falstaff an imported beer and Amherst a type of expensive German cheese. Can't beat the weather, though.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)
When Things Get Fast and Intense, Invoice the Client Twice a Month--But Ask First.
Hopefully, many of the ideas included in this blog benefit both the client and the firm. For me, one overall theme of true client service is this: we can move from "adversarial" (see this blog's first post) one-night-stand relationships many lawyers have with clients to true partnerships with clients by doing things the right way for clients we like. The result is happier clients and more good work. Everybody wins. Here's one that's unusual but effective. I got this idea from my Super Bowl-celebrating Pittsburgh partner Julie McGuire, who does transactional work, and it really seems to work.
If a new or existing client has litigation or a transaction which is particularly intense and time-consuming--especially in the initial stages--depart from your fee agreement or usual practice with that client and temporarily invoice the client every two weeks. Obviously, you should check with the client and get permission; this could be balked at as an administrative burden or misunderstood as an insult if the client isn't on board. But even a gung-ho sophisticated corporate client or GC you've serviced for years--which is accustomed to seeing over and over again monthly bills for day-to-day work in the, say, $3000 to $5000 range--experiences a kind of sticker shock when the bill goes suddenly to $10,000, $20,000 or higher, even if it's only for a short time.
Billing twice a month does two things: (1) keeps the client more attuned in real-time to the actual economic demands of the project (and lets the client plan) and, (2) assuming that the GC or other client rep is seeing work descriptions on bills that show value, effort and the range of things necessary to perform the litigation or deal, the details and intensity of the work are more present-to-mind, better understood and more fully appreciated. In other words, the invoice becomes more of a tool to impart a running report on what you and the client are doing together--and a better picture of your real value to the client on that project.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2006
WJC Plays It Cool with HMPC...and More Metadata Materials.
Even with a hefty assist two days ago in a post by Peter Lattman at his new but popular WSJ Law Blog, WJC, who I've steadfastly liked and admired since the 1980's, and even after spending 20 great minutes with him on January 1 around noon in Charleston talking about AIDS medicine cost reductions and U.S. energy policy, still hasn't contacted my co-founder corporate tax lawyer Julie McGuire--who, notably, is one of 7 or 8 Republicans said to be living in the Pittsburgh area--or me in response to our ad of January 27. No luck so far in the crusade to bring a true natural to American law. Meanwhile, due to the excitement of the first Steelers Super Bowl in a while, in my first metadata post last week, I overlooked good advice, opinions, insights and materials collected in posts by Dennis Kennedy, the new blog Electronic Discovery Law, by Seattle's Preston Gates, the law firm of the dad of the second most famous American Bill, and writing by Evan Schaeffer, in both his Legal Underground and the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog. Dennis and Evan were among the first to bring metadata issues to public attention.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:16 AM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2006
Law Firm Logos: "Goofy", Essential or Something in Between?--Part 5
Another nice post on firm logos by Patrick Lamb at In Search of Perfect Client Service. Due to recent posts on this, and seeing some good logos around me and in some of the posts, I am still deciding. But Pat's right that I'm not yet sold on logos if you don't already have one. I still think that most of us already have a distinctive and valuable "look" based our letterhead and cards. I realize this issue pales along side themes like metadata, global expansion and "How Jen Is Coping" with the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie thing. But it's still part of attracting and keeping good clients.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)
Yanks Abroad: Too Far, Too Fast the Wrong Way?
I was very interested to read a sober but wonderful post by Adam Smith (Bruce MacEwen) on global expansion by U.S. law firms abroad, especially in Europe, where my boutique firm is increasingly active but careful. It's called New Market Entry and the Cognitive Bias Minefield and worth reading. The post starts out "Global Expansion Junkies: I have bad news." Years ago, as young lawyers, a number of my friends and I in Washington, D.C. labored through "strategic" law firm mergers--all domestic and a couple of them pretty large for back then--which failed to bear lasting fruit. When things fell apart, as they often did, naturally clients and their lawyers alike were put at various types of risk. These were tough times to be service-oriented, and only the best lawyers could prevent the low morale from affecting their work for clients. In the mergers, "culture clash" was one problem, even between U.S. offices only 300 miles a part. The wrong mix of practice areas, inadequate due diligence and failure to analyze markets correctly were others. Lots of firms made mistakes. But the biggest overall problem was the pumping-iron kind of "let's get big--let's get really big!" ethos which is only human and was very 1980's. Lots of yellow ties, Hugo Boss suits and suspenders to go along with the bravado and hubris.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:06 AM | Comments (0)
February 02, 2006
Metadata Primers: Understanding Mysteries, Magic and Pitfalls.
Jim Calloway at his Law Practice Tips Blog has an instructive and important post and Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle has an equally thoughtful post on metadata. These are both an alert and a call to arms of sorts. And Jim and Carolyn are not alone. Jim's in particular collects some great materials. I'm still learning--but it's clear already that understanding and managing "data about data" is important--and important right now--if: (1) you have clients, (2) you work on-line at all, (3) you care about ethics and/or (4) (especially) you do litigation for a living. In other words, most of us.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)
"Law Firm Logos are Goofy, Useless, and a Waste of Time and Money"-Part 3.
The original subtly-titled January 21 post is here with a follow-up collecting some instructive posts I admired here by professional marketers who know about logos and design. So, and once again, now I'm not so sure--no hobgoblins problem at this blog. Here's another solid recent post getting closer to answering the questions of why and how law firm logos can work by Boston-based Nathan Burke at LawFirmBlogging.com called "Debate About Logos".
Posted by JD Hull at 02:49 AM | Comments (0)
February 01, 2006
The Article II, Section 2, Maybe-It's-Just-Me Department.
So Samuel Alito "wins" 58 to 42 with only 5 party "defections" total. Regardless of your politics, and notwithstanding how elastic the Constitution really is or isn't, does anyone out there really believe that the framers anticipated that the president's power to appoint "Judges of the Supreme Court" with "the Advice and Consent of the Senate" would yield the kind of process we've structured 219 years later?
Posted by JD Hull at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)
Sane and Worth Reading--but you read it first...I'll get to it later.
In the first things first department, Arnie Herz and/or whoever is in his winning collection of writers over at Wall Street-based Legal Sanity has a fine post on the subject of what my mother (and yours) would call "you-need-to-slow-down". Arnie's post is entitled "Note to Lawyers: Slow Down and Loosen Up". It mentions some really interesting sources, including a book and a related new ABA Law Practice Management Section article--both called In Praise Of Slowness: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging The Cult Of Speed by Canadian journalist Carl Honore--and another ABA piece entitled "Finding and Keeping the Clients You Like" by Susan Saltonstall Duncan at RainMakingOasis. Arnie's post is both salve and instruction for the legions of us who are bombarded, numb, moving too fast, and never doing anything about it.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)