The title of this FREE teleseminar is “How To Double The Revenue Of Your Small Law Firm In The Next 12 Months Or Less. . . and STILL have time to play golf every Friday afternoon.” It will begin at 3pm Eastern Standard TODAY July 30th. When I shot this video 30 minutes ago we had just 25 lines open. Three of those are now taken. Watch below a 4:15 mins video for more details
With that said, there’s no reason to ignore the resources available to help you learn from OTHER people’s mistakes!
Lots of lawyers mistakenly believe it has to be exotic or complicated to double (yes I said double) the revenue of a small law firm. To the contrary, some of the "best practices" when it comes to law firm marketing and law practice management and some of the most important things to do if you want to start a law firm are very simple and free.
I learned a thousand different ways to make an extra five, ten even twenty thousand dollars or more when I worked as a Law Practice Management Advisor for The Florida Bar's Law Office Management Assistance Service. But I never did "discover" that one big "holy grail" secret that will bring in a million dollars to a small law firm all by itself. And if it was out there you can be pretty sure I would have found it. Consequently I'd suggest you keep your hand on your wallet when speaking with anyone who says they that have. Sign up for my FREE weekly ezine at www.HowToManageaSmallLawFirm.com
I am looking for a FEW lawyers in Pinellas County, Florida to participate in a big project with some world class PR opportunities and very likely regional and national media exposure in it for you.
I am ESPECIALLY interested in attracting solos & lawyers with small law firms experienced in bankruptcy, family law, immigration, criminal defense, employment law, PI and small business transactional attorneys. I also have one spot open for an attorney who has experience dealing with County officials to obtain permits etc.
I am not able to share the details publicly yet. What I can tell you is that this is part of an ambitious and well-financed National service project that will have some of the most influential names in the Country attached to it. You may pick-up a few paying clients directly but the lawyers I am looking for are those who are smart enough to know that hitching your wagon to a National Star is a smart law firm marketing move to make.
If you are ready, willing and able to commit a total of about 10-20 hours of your time over a series of months beginning in late August, to get a few hundred thousand dollars of media exposure for yourself please send my assistant an email with just three letters KSA in the subject line. In that email please tell me a little bit about yourself that's not obvious from your website and MJ will get in touch to schedule us for a telephone appointment to discuss the details of what's involved.
There will be no cost or fee required from you to participate. Just a little bit of your time and creativity. But I only need a FEW lawyers for this project so email mj@howtomanageasmalllawfirm.com TODAY!
I think between the title and the video below there's really not much more else to say except sign up for my FREE weekly ezine to learn some important law firm management and law firm marketing lessons that will help you be an even more "successful" lawyer.
If you are a happy lawyer sign up for my free weekly ezine today.
If you would like to BECOME a happy lawyer, sign up for my free weekly ezine today.
If you are not a happy lawyer, and you do not want to become a happy lawyer all joking aside, get some mental health counseling. Because not only do happy lawyers make more money and better parents, partners and friends but all other things being equal happy lawyers make better lawyers too. There is no "honor" in suffering for your clients. And the main reason you may be suffering for your law firm is perhaps no-one ever gave you permission not to.
What can I say? I live and breathe this stuff! Have been for more than ten years now. You know how every family has a "topic" they talk about all the time? For some it's politics. For others it's sports. In my family The Topic was our various family business successes and yes, the failures too. I can remember asking what "accounts receivable" meant when I was like 10 years old.
Did that screw me up as a kid? Well, I never went to school carrying a briefcase or anything but I did grow up with an appreciation for the importance of managing and marketing a business. And especially with a keen appreciation for the fact that while the owner has to be willing to be the chief and the cook and even the head dishwasher if necessary. In point of fact though, if you're running your business right it's supposed to work for us, not the other way around.
So why didn't they teach us any of this back in law school?
So why aren't there any decent CLE programs on this? I'll get back on that soap box some other time. But meanwhile here's a short video that is PACKED with law practice management advice that too many lawyers than I can count WISH they had followed. Don't be one of them. It's all here for you:
You like this sort of thing? Be sure to sign up for the newsletter at www.HowToMANAGEaSmallLawFirm.com
OK, so I've been on Twitter for a couple of months now. And admittedly I'm not the most tech-savvy person in the world. And I still don't quite "get" this whole Web 2.0 thing. But I do know how to make money for a small law firm. As far as I'm concerned Twitter is really nothing but another "tool" to use in that pursuit. Needless to say I find it somewhat disappointing whenever I see lawyers who still cannot seem to figure-out how to use this tool to generate new business for their law firms.
Below is a VIDEO demonstrating one of the ways to generate a bunch of business for your solo or small law firm. Even lawyers in the big law firms could and should be doing this. But of course they won't, which leaves the field all-clear for You & Me!
So instead of keep replying one by one in just 140 character to all the requests I get, and to shut the hell up of the doubters I decided to share with you below a few of the ways my Members and I have come up with to make it rain for your small law firm using Twitter.
And oh, by the way if you're interested in learning more you might want to send an email to MJ@HowToMANAGEaSmallLawFirm.com to pre-register for a chance to scoop-up one of the first editions of "Twitter Made EZ 4 Lawyers" due out the end of July. It takes a lawyer through every-single-step-by-step from setting up your Twitter account the "right" way ,to using some of the features of TweetDeck to market your law practice and deliver superior client service. Be sure to write Twitter Made EZ 4 Lawyers in the subject line or I cannot guarantee your email will be read or that you'll be able to get-in on this. Price is eventually going to be $495 but if you pre-register we'll send you the order form when it's ready and you'll save $100. So send MJ that email today.
OK so here are a few ideas to get you going. . .
1. Stalk prospective clients and referral sources. Twitter is so new that Bar Rules don't even contemplate a world where you can "follow" someone, they will "follow" you back and then you can tweet about them and things that are of interest to them until they eventually break-down and contact YOU!
2. Follow prospective referral sources and repeat the same as above. Where else can you type in keywords that are relevant to the industry or category of clients you serve and jump right into the middle of thier world? Hint: Do NOT begin your entrance to that world by announcing all the ways you can help them. And whatever you do, please stop sending boring "updates" on latest cases as if they were editors on the Law Journal staff.
3. Ask relevant and interesting questions. Use hash tags (ex. #URopinion) to enable members of "that world" to continue on with your conversation and "infect" all their followers who will come to think of you as a thoughtful and interested person. Be interested B4 you pummel us with factoids about your practice to show us how interesting you may or may not really be.
4. Use Twitter to bring people back to your website or blog to get more relevant and interesting information. You found this blog by following a line you originally found on Twitter, right? Of course if your law firm's website does a poor job of converting visitors into clients then you might want to figure out how to fix that while you're at it, eh?
5. Offer to give your clients special access to you by creating a Group in Tweetdeck. You'll be pleasantly-surprised how much real and percieved value your clients will get by being able to DM you and get a reply once or twice a day. By having them all lumped into one Group it will be much easier to spot their questions and concerns than scanning a few hundred emails in your inbox. And since you're limited to just 140 characters you have permission 2 B brief, even abrupt.
6. Take it off-line. I have met some valuable contacts by taking my Twitter conversations "off-line" and meeting up in the real world. The video below demonstrates how one guy (not even a lawyer!) organized a Pizza Tweet Up. It attracted more than 60 people who were in networking over-drive. I interviewed the organizer of the event and it turns-out not only did he not have to lay-out a bunch of cash, the owner of the pizza parlor treats his family especially nicely for bringing in 60 drink-buying customers. And the pizza was free!
OK, now go forth and profit with this information 
Brian Tannenbaum over at My Law License exposes the farce that is "Super Lawyers" when the publication listed two currently acting prosecutors as "Super Criminal Defense Lawyers".
My response is as follows. . .
When Bad Lawyer Advertising Happens, It's The Children Who Suffer
Yes,
there is a ton of transparently bad advertising & "fact checking"
out there when it comes to lawyer advertising & law firm marketing.
In my experience, it has alot to do with the fact that law schools
don't teach us anything about how to market a law firm, there are
hardly any decent CLE programs on the subject and most lawyers run
around with a inside-out perspective on marketing. So compared to the
owners of just about any other kind of business too many lawyers
haven't a clue about why & how clients REALLY go about choosing a
lawyer. Especially a criminal defense lawyer!
So the saddest
thing is that instead of being home with their kids too many lawyers
are out there working extra-hours to earn the money to then pour down
the advertising drain. And for the most part (like 80%) DOESN'T EVEN
WORK.
Why? Because contrary to conventional wisdom,
credentials are not at the top of the list of what clients are looking
for when hiring a lawyer. (chorus: ESPECIALLY a criminal defense
lawyer!)
But since so few lawyer ads give clients what they
are REALLY interested in knowing they just settle for the best of bad
and so that's what too many lawyers go around thinking is "good enough."
Watch this 1:45 min video to learn some important law firm financial management concepts that hold alot of lawyers back from ever reaching their full potential. Including the Six Key Law Practice Management Numbers we should all be keeping an eye on each week. These are very easy concepts to understand.And you definitely do NOT have to be “good with numbers” to use this information to your full-advantage.
You like it? Want to get more like it? Go ahead and submit your application for the upcoming Mastermind Meeting in Chicago exclusively for solo lawyers and equity owners of small law firms.
p.s. Click HERE if you missed Parts 1 & 2 in this series.
Back when I was a Practice Management Advisor with The Florida Bar's LOMAS program this subject used to come up so often I could rattle-off a litany of "cautionary tales" about law firm partnerships gone bad. And I mean, REALLY bad. These days, thankfully, I get to be alot more selective so we rarely have to deal with this kind of thing anymore. But the subject has been bantied-about lately in the wake of all the big law firm layoffs. And I've seen it discussed on Twitter so I give you. . .
The 6 Deadly "D's" When It Comes To Law Firm Partnership/Shareholder Agreements
Death. Your law firm partnership or shareholder agreement should address what happens to the firm if one of you dies. Best practices generally call for the firm to maintain "Key Person" insurance so that in the event of the unexpected there are some resources to keep things going when half the income dries-up and the remaining attorney(s) are presumably operating at reduced capacity due to grief. Best practice is also to address the "buy out" so that if you're the unfortunate one in this example your family gets some compensation for your share of the firm's value that you helped to create.
Disability. Suppose you've co-signed on a lease, committed to a few hundred clients each with a statute of limitations and various deadlines attached to their file and of course there are the staff who rely on the salary from operating revenues. Now suppose your partner gets sick. Or injured. It happened to my wife with little warning. So believe me it can happen to you too. If your partner were suddenly out of the picture for a few days it might be a minor inconvenience. But what about a few weeks? A few months? At some point fair is fair and you have to cut him or her loose. Best practice is to cover disability insurance out of firm revenues and document your agreement as to how long a partner can be out on disability before they start to lose equity. Best practice is also to agree ahead of time how the rent is going to get paid if one of you is unable to contribute to revenues through your own personal labor. For example, will the firm hire a temporary replacement attorney to fill in for your equity partner? Remember you both work for the firm.
Divorce. In the absence of any kind of agreement to the contrary your ex's or worse your partner's ex's divorce attorney is going to argue for a portion ownership of his or her businesses and don't be surprised if that includes your law firm because it's happened more than a few times before to some pretty smart lawyers. Best practice is to address right of first refusal and how equity ownership of the firm can be transferred i.e., not without consent of remaining partner/shareholders.
Disbarment. What do you think happens when there are two lawyer who have been practicing together for awhile and all of the sudden one of them gets disbarred? If you guessed that all hell breaks loose you'd be right. Typically the State Bar will give a disbarred attorney some period of time to divest him or herself of ownership in any law firm. But imagine being the lawyer negotiating THAT deal for your recently disbarred client! The phrase "take it or leave it" has been heard uttered a time or two in those scenarios. Best practice is to agree ahead of time on a divestiture formula similar to the one you could use for each of the scenarios discussed here. As an added precaution you may consider adding in a liquidated damages multiplier in the event of disbarment in anticipation of the fact that if an attorney does get him or herself disbarred the firm will probably be made to suffer on the ride down.
Disciplinary Actions. Part of my job for The Florida Bar was to go into firms of attorneys who were on discliplinary suspension in order to investigate the law practice management mistakes that usually contribute to the violation of Bar Rules. 54% of the lawyer disciplinary cases handled by The Florida Bar during my tenure there traced their roots to law practice management problems, not bad lawyers. So how do you want to handle it when you or your partner gets disciplined and cannot practice for 90 or 180 days or even a whole year? Out on your ass or divestiture or. . . ? Best practice is to have the firm pay for defense costs and take it out of equity if the defendant is found guilty of violation of bar rules. If suspended the firm should pay for replacement talent out of the disciplined lawyer's share of proceeds until he or she is fit for duty again.
Dislike. What happens if one day you wake up & decide you simply don't like practicing with your partner anymore? By addressing each of the above scenarios you'll be forced to agree on policies, procedures and formulas and emergency contingency plans that will enable you to manage to go your separate ways without both coming out losers.
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