law

How Content Drives Law Firm Marketing

March 9, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Law firm marketing used to be so simple. Slap up a few ads, buy up some television time, and call the Yellow Pages representative to pick up a fat check.

But somewhere along the line it got more difficult. Prospective clients started wising up and asking questions. They realized that there was no early way for them to differentiate between Lawyer A and Lawyer B based on a 30 second commercial spot or a full-page Yellow Pages ad. The problem was that they didn’t know exactly how to tell the difference.

So they did what we all do when we shop for a new car – we peek under the hood.

First they turned to the Better Business Bureau, not realizing that lawyers didn’t utilize that venue. So they moved onto Martindale-Hubbell, the grand-daddy of lawyer rankings. But M-H was stuffed to the gills with huge law firms that looked down on helping people with their problems in favor of billing big corporate entities.

Some lucky few could ask their friends and family members about lawyers, but when it came to things like bankruptcy and divorce it was a little stickier. Who wants to approach their uncle and say, “Hi Uncle Bob. I can’t pay my bills. Do you know a good bankruptcy lawyer?”

So they turned to the Internet. At first there was no way to find a reputable professional, so the public just bumped around in the dark. But eventually lawyers started getting websites, those online brochures with pretty pictures. Lulled into peaceful slumber, people started equating the best website with the best lawyer.

But something happened along the way. Blogging came around, and some folks started thinking that it was a darn easy way to add information to their website. It sure was a lot faster and cheaper than paying the web guru to update the site every month.

Blogging didn’t take off for lawyers for a long time. In fact, there’s a good argument that blogging still hasn’t taken off for lawyers. But with blogging evangelists like Grant Griffiths leading the way, inroads have been made over the past few years.

When you’re talking about blogging, you’re talking about the entire world of online marketing. Every industry has marching orders to get blogging and get it done now. Every media channel has a cadre of super-successful people who also happen to be blogging their brains out. You can’t get away from it.

Consumers have been trained to ask questions online, to query Google and Bing and the rest in an effort to get answers. The answers to their questions float to the top of the search engine results page and, in so doing, the site on which those answers reside gain the most loyal followings.

Follow someone long enough and you come to trust their intellect and insight. You rely upon them for good information. You get to know them to an extent, and feel closer to them. And when you need help, you turn to that person over all others.

Chances are pretty good that you’re not creating content and, in fact, don’t know where you’d put it or what you should do to get people to notice it. If so, you’re not alone. In fact, most of your competition isn’t doing anything either. They’re watching the world pass them by, caught up in the day-to-day grind of being lawyer and entranced by the notion of cutting a fat check to some “SEO Mastermind” to turn their 3-page website into a Google magnet.

Good luck with that.

So here’s what you need to do, right now. Take out a pen and a blank legal pad and start writing. Anything at all.

We’re going to keep talking about this. Because your future depends on it.

Photo courtesy of SPazzo_1493.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: blog, blogging, internet, law, law firm, law firm marketing, lawyer, lawyers, martindale hubbell, new cars, social information processing, technology, yellow page ads, Yellow Pages

Managing The Bankruptcy Practice – Does It Scale?

February 16, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

When you’re setting out to manage your law firm, the one thing you need to ask is whether a particular process or procedure scales. That is, whether the management process you put in place today will still be valid when you’re pushing out 30, 40, 50 or more cases each month. Whether your Chapter 13 case management procedures will still work if you’re doing more above-median income cases (or below-median ones, as the case may be).

For most bankruptcy lawyers, the answer would be a resounding no – their case management system doesn’t exist because they don’t see a need for it to do so. And that’s something that spells potential ruin for your ability to manage your bankruptcy practice as it grows.

When I first started practicing bankruptcy law my case management system was … somewhat extreme in the eyes of the casual onlooker. I instituted a (then) complex filing system with file numbers for all client matters, colored subfolders and forms for action items (mind you, this was before everything could be managed online). My intern (yes, I had an intern even before I had a lot of clients) thought I’d lost my mind – why do so much work if there were only four clients in the entire office?

My logic, however, was simple. If I put the system together before I needed it, it would function when I did need it.

Three years later I was working on 30 bankruptcy cases a month and there was no early way for me to remember everything I needed to recall. The crush of information was too great. But with my system, all went smoothly.

So here’s the thing – when you look at a file, ask yourself whether you can possible remember every aspect of it when you’ve got 100 or more just like it. If the answer is no (and it will be), you need to formulate a way to document the nuances. Intake documents, checklists, cross-referencing and tagging play an important role in keeping the system scalable.

We each have our way of organizing our thoughts, so yours will likely be different from anyone else’s system. Regardless, you need to take action now – before things get out of control.

Photo courtesy of picknjim.

Filed Under: Law Office Management Tagged With: bankruptcy, bankruptcy law firms, business, filing systems, law, managing, practice

Toggl: Track Your Billable Time Easily (And Free!)

February 1, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Managing a bankruptcy law office requires the ability to keep track of where time is being spent, by whom, and on which matters. For many bankruptcy lawyers, however, time tracking is costly and difficult. There are a bunch of programs out there to help lawyers track time, but they’re all cumbersome and cost money.

You already know I hate to spend money unless it’s for an awesome reason.

About two years ago I was looking for a simple and quick way to track my time. I didn’t feel like shelling out a bunch of money for a full-featured case management system (I was using Basecamp at the time for my case management, and it didn’t have a real-time application), and even a program like Time And Chaos seemed like overkill.

All I wanted was something I could click to start and click to stop. I wanted to get reports showing my progress, and I wanted to be able to print out a PDF for my fee applications. It had to be free, too.

Too much to ask, I thought. Then I found Toggl. And over two years later, it’s better than ever.

Toggl is an online time tracker that tracks the number of billable hours you spend on a client project. In real-time.

Once you register (for free), create a new project for a new client, and “toggl” the on button. Toggl starts tracking the time spent in real-time, right in the web browser. You can even download an application to your Mac or PC and the data will automatically sync with the web server. Hit stop when you’re done.

Toggl will put together reports – PDF or CSV – for invoicing your clients. Beyond that, the system lets you look at your time in graphical format. How much time you’ve billed each day, week, month, etc. Which days were most productive, least, and stuff like that.

Bottom line? It’s awesome.

The application is free for up to 5 timekeepers on your team, and the cost is modest for bigger groups. So go check it out and see if it suits your needs.