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Posted on November 12, 2018
Public Resources

As a solo or small practice attorney, the holiday season can be stressful, and things that normally occupy your attention can get overlooked or put on the back burner. It's a time to connect with family and friends, but it’s also a time to connect with marketing contacts and referrals. You market all year to improve or build your client list, sure, but what is marketing at its essence? It's connections — human connections. The heart of those connections is truth, is authenticity, is honesty. Clients come and go, but good referral sources built on genuine emotion can turn into good friends. During the holiday season I urge you to reach out to those marketing contacts. Send them a card or a note to let them know you’re thinking of them. Thank them for their friendship, professional and personal. We know one attorney who has made it a tradition to send specialty sweet treats each holiday season. Cards can get lost or just ignored once they’re opened, but his contacts look forward all year to seeing the treats box in the mail. It reinforces their connections and makes him stand out. It’s his niche. If your firm has the means, why not try sending...

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Posted on April 19, 2018
Public Resources

Let's face it — we need email. But, we also need a way to control the beast that email can become. It is estimated that almost 30% of our workday is consumed by dealing with email. How do we tame this beast so that it doesn't take over our day? The 80/20 rule applied to your inbox. The Pareto Principle applies to email as it does to so many areas of our lives. Probably only about 20% of the emails you receive require a response from you. This means that as much of 80% of your emails do not need a response. In fact, a large portion of that 80% may not even need to be read by you! Begin to tame the email beast by eliminating the useless and unnecessary messages cluttering your inbox. Our frustration with email often results from how we approach email. All too often we view email as a big box of emergencies requiring our immediate attention. Here are a few tips to begin improving your approach to email. Apply Rules Apply rules so that unnecessary emails are directed to folders rather than your inbox. List serves and enewsletters are prime candidates for this approach. Even necessary emails can be...

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Posted on April 10, 2018
Public Resources

Here are five basic tips for hourly billing attorneys to help maximize your cash flow and realize a profit. Are you uncomfortable discussing fees with your clients? If so, you may be prone to setting lower hourly fees, be too willing to negotiate discounted retainers, and be unmotivated to pursue the money you are owed. Unfortunately, a whole host of issues may arise from your lack of comfort in setting and collecting fees. Our suggestion: if you cannot go through your fee agreement and articulate your arrangements in a clear and concise way, delegate it. Have an office manager or other trusted, responsible person go over the agreement with prospective clients. Others are often less attached and better suited to have these discussions without self-doubt issues clouding the conversation. Are you sending out invoices on a monthly basis? This is incredibly basic, but a problem we constantly encounter in our coaching practice. If you let long periods lapse before billing clients, you are cheating yourself. The chances of being paid in full lessen over time.  Psychologically speaking, clients value your work when their problem is most pressing and less so after it’s resolved. If you don’t send out bills in a...

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Posted on April 10, 2018
Public Resources

How does the average solo and small firm partner think about the profit their firm produces each year? In very simple terms, their mental equation probably looks something like this: Revenue – Expenses = Profit This is the traditional and very rational view of how profit is produced. And the traditional result is that profit is incidental. Basically, what’s surplus after the bills are paid. But, according to the book Profit First: A Simple System to Transform Any Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by former Wall Street Journal columnist Mike Machalowicz, the right equation should look something like this: Revenue – Profit = Expenses This new approach turns the traditional "profit is what’s leftover after overhead and expenses are paid" method on its head. According to Machalowicz, a much more proactive approach is needed to guarantee that a profit will be there at the end of the year. He advocates that when revenues come in a portion is immediately set aside for profit and the rest covers overhead and expenses. To do this successfully means profit is budgeted for in advance.  How is that done? We believe you do this by looking at the last several years of gross revenues and profit percentages to...

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Posted on February 13, 2017
Public Resources

Attorneys whose DISC profiles make them a CS or an SC do not fit the stereotypical image most of us have of law firm leaders. In fact, the very title “Humble Leader” may sound like a contradiction in terms.

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Posted on December 13, 2016
Public Resources

Your initial consultation with a prospective client is critical. When handled well, you will inspire trust and convert a prospective client into a paying client. When handled poorly, the client will seek the services of one of your competitors.

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