Because Your Law Firm Is A Business, Not A Charity
You look around you and realize it’s time to move on. But the status quo is comfortable, so you stick around for awhile longer.
You get tired, things get dusty, and eventually the status quo isn’t so comfortable anymore. It’s just … tired.
You’ve got two choices – keep on banging your head against the wall or quit and start over.
I’ve opted for the latter. [Read more...]
My first post to this site was in August 2006. Over the 6 1/2 years that followed I’ve tried my best to inform, enlighten and (from time to time) entertain you.
In return, you’ve been very good to me. You’ve given me your time, your feedback, and your attention. You’ve reached out to me in friendship and you’ve given me a reason to continue learning.
But there are only so many hours in a day. The flow of new information has quickened, and it’s more difficult than ever the keep pace with the pace of change. More frustrating is the fact that there’s only so much you can possibly learn from a tutorial published online.
A blog, I’ve come to see, imparts information rather than knowledge. No matter how useful, information is just that – facts and figures without context. [Read more...]
Recent statistics show that over 85% of the photos used online are subject of copyright infringement.
Are you sure you’re not a thief?
How many of you have ever grabbed a photo from a Google Image search to use on your website?
Don’t look now, but odds are you just accidentally committed an act of theft – in the USA, almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not.
Soooooo…Google Images is out, so where on earth can you find cool photos that are safe to use without going broke? [Read more...]
Two lawyers in a room, sitting side by side. Technically, each one is just as competent as the other.
Then one of them stands up, takes the stage and speaks for an hour in front of a crowd of people hungry for information. This is the expert.
The other attorney, however, isn’t an expert. He’s just a lawyer. Perhaps a very good one, but not an expert.
What makes one the expert and the other a bystander?
Public opinion makes the expert. Get enough people who agree that you’re the bee’s knees and suddenly … you are.
Look around you and find those who are the recognized experts in their chosen fields. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, pundits, teachers and more. Each one is an expert because they have been anointed by a group large or small.
In order to be anointed, you’re going to need to impress people one by one. And to do that, you’ve got to get out of your shell and be where the people are.
It’s a slow build, a relentless march that many of your colleagues don’t care to undertake. That difficulty is precisely why there are so few recognized experts in any given field, and why the stage is clear for you to make your move.
Step forward.
You’re right.
Ten years ago it was easier to get your message heard by those you want to reach. Less noise, less competition, less complexity.
Say it next year and you’ll be right again.
The noise is getting louder, the competition bolder, and stakes higher.
Which means it’s easier today than it will ever be in the future.
You’ve got a decision to make – stand on the sidelines and lament the past, or get in the game now and figure out how to win.
What’s your choice?
Once upon a time, someone defined a blog post as being a link to someone else’s story with a few bits of your own commentary built in. That worked pretty well for awhile.
Then people realized that by adding comments to the blog posts, you could have a conversation with other people who read the same piece and had something to add to it. So blogging was redefined as being something weighty.
Smart people, after all, seldom use fewer than 400 words to get to a point.
But what if you’re simply answering a question? Do you take 400 words to respond to a simple query?
Do your clients even want such a long-winded response?
Do they have the time or inclination to read it?
Probably not. Consider that next time you set your hand the the keyboard.
Sometimes, shorter is smarter.
We look at the most successful people in our field and aspire to be just like them. Except, we don’t.
Our aspirations are to be the current version of the most successful person – the one who gets quoted by the press, the lawyer who wins all the toughest cases, and rock star of the field.
To become successful, the experts say, it is important to model success. Do what the successful do and you, too, will be in reach of the brass ring.
The problem, however, is that we are being told to model the wrong thing.
To model success, you need to model the person who ultimately became successful – not the current version of the rock star.
The broke entrepreneur who slept in his mom’s basement well into his 30s as he sweated over every punctuation mark before handing in the manuscript.
The single parent on welfare who went to law school at night, worked like a dog and can now afford her family the finer things in life.
The brash kid who started a company on his own and learned how to market his whiz-bang product because couldn’t afford to hire someone to do it for him.
The consumer protection attorney who came up with a crazy new idea, lost dozens of cases and was ridiculed, nearly lost his house, and finally turned it around after he finally convinced his judge of the logic of his position.
That’s who you’ve got to model.
And because that’s just not much fun, most people are unwilling to do that modeling.
Good news for those of us who are, though.
There’s an old saying – you can never be too rich or too thin.
Yet when it comes to desserts, there’s such a thing as too rich.
And if you’ve got too much on your plate, you’re stretched too thin.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
Think about that next time you meet with a client.
