A Legal Blogging Roundtable

Last month, I participated in a legal blogging roundtable for the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis that was published in their subscription-only newsletter.  My partners in crime were Dennis Kennedy (DennisKennedy.Blog), George Lenard (George's Employment Blawg), and Evan Schaeffer (Trial Practice Tips and The Legal Underground).  Together, we have combined for more than 20 years of blogging experience.

Dennis took our contributions and republished them to his blog as A Blogging Guide for St. Louis (and Other) Lawyers (and Others).  Here's one of our takes on the future of blogging:

Matt Homann: I think we'll see the continued adoption of blogs by legal professionals as much by choice as necessity. The next generation of law firm clients have lived their entire lives online, interact with Twitter and Facebook constantly, and read blogs everyday. They may have never used the Yellow Pages, and instead look to the web before making any major purchasing decision. They'll expect a robust online presence from the professionals they hire, and a blog is one of the easiest and most effective ways to build that presence.

George Lenard: Integration with the surviving remnants of mainstream media into enriched, customized streams of information in manageable chunks for busy readers, plus continuing contributions to the wealth of information available to web users through ever-more-sophisticated search technologies. I was recently told by a web-content distribution company that my posts now have the potential of appearing in a news stream on the Wall Street Journal's law pages amidst conventional sources such as the ABA Journal, if they match the WSJ search criteria, with no distinction in appearance that would suggest that my content is in any way inferior or less professional than that written by professional journalists.

Evan Schaeffer: I don't have any predictions about the future of blogging. If you think of blogging as merely a means of publishing one's writing, which it is, you don't have to be too worried about the future. Get into the habit of writing, and if you like it, you can always migrate to the next technological platform, if and when there is one.

Dennis Kennedy: Among bloggers, Twitter and microblogging is all the rage. That will continue to affect blogging, but blogging still has great potential, especially to cover niche topics. I remain bullish on blogging. As for predicting the future, I still like what Ernest "Ernie the Attorney" Svenson said in an article on the future of blogging from four years ago in Law Practice Magazine: "Perhaps the biggest question that remains is: How quickly will law firms move to develop blogs? It depends on a lot of internal and external factors. But the clock is certainly ticking. For some firms that sound is just loud and annoying, while for others it is stirring and prompting them to act. So when will your firm create a blog? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick . . . ."

Meet Me in Missouri

I'm headed down to Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks this week for the Missouri Solo and Small Firm Conference to speak about marketing, innovation, technology and the web.  There will be over 900 lawyers there this year -- which makes it the largest solo and small firm conference in the country.

If you'll be there, be certain to say hello.  If you can't make it, I'll be covering as much as I can on Twitter and will be using the hashtag #mossfc

Looking for Cool Ways to Connect with Clients? -(STOP)-

Telegramstop is a company that will send an old-time looking telegram to anyone in the world for under five bucks.  Could be a cool, retro way to connect with some clients or friends.

100 Tweets: Thinking About Law Practice in 140 Characters or Less.

I really like Twitter.  For those who follow me, you know that I try to share lots of legal-themed tips, thoughts and ideas.  In fact, most of my Ten Rules posts started out on Twitter -- where I'll test 15-25 "rules" to see which ones work best before picking the ten favorites.

However, there's lots of stuff that lives on Twitter now that used to live here on the blog.  And since I don't expect everyone reading this to follow me there (or go back and read through my 2000+ Twitter messages), I decided to compile a "Best Of" list of my favorite tweets. 

So, here (in .pdf form) is a little e-book I've titled:  100 Tweets: Thinking about Law Practice in 140 Characters or Less.  It contains my favorite 100 tweets, in no particular order, and should give you a sense of what I share on Twitter that you don't always see here.

If you enjoy it, and would like to follow me on Twitter, I'll see you there.

Talk to Me About...

Instead of using name tags at your next event, try this tip (found at The Kitchn blog) to get conversations started:

The idea is that instead of "Hello my name is..." stickers, you give your guess ones that read "Talk to me about..." Guests can fill in their career specialty, their hobby, their passion of the moment, or their favorite meal (just keeping it foodie, here!).

We picked this suggestion up from SwissMiss, who used it at a talk she was facilitating, and we think it's a brilliant idea for all sorts of social situations. Name tags like these are guaranteed conversation starters!

We think they also take away some of the discomfort factor. Personally, we feel much more comfortable approaching someone who wants to talk about a subject in which we're interested than we would just striking up a random conversation.

I'd take it a bit further, and give each guest 4-5 name tags.  Every 30 minutes or so, have them switch out their "I want to talk about..." tag with a different subject.

Wonder what my friend Scott "The Nametag Guy" Ginsberg would think?

Get a Life -- In Only Two Days

I've been spending some time talking to the organizers of the Get a Life Conference, after connecting at Techshow and on Twitter.  It looks like a great event, and I'm really working hard to figure out a way to make it -- and perhaps do some cool LexThink-like unconference stuff with them if I do.

Lots of great speakers, including the incomparable Gerry Riskin, are on tap.  Expect lots of talk about practical ways to make your law practice a more profitable business.  From their site:

In this two-day workshop, you’ll learn how manage all the moving parts of a successful law practice and still have a life. But there’s one very important thing missing – you! One of the greatest challenges you have is making time for what’s personally important to you – your hobbies, friends and family.

It happens May 27th and 28th in Chicago.  Check it out, and if you'd like to go, here's a link to a 25% discount (Enter INSIDER upon check-out).  I hope to see you there!

Say My Name!

Here's a quick and cool idea from a Smashing Magazine post on building a perfect portfolio website:  Tell your customers how to pronounce your name.  Here's a snippet from designer Chikezie Ejiasi's site:

If you've got a hard-to-pronounce name, tell web visitors how to pronounce it.  You'll make it a lot easier for them to ask for you by name.  I'd think about doing this with business cards, too.

If you're designing a law-firm website, you can do a lot worse than to check out the rest of the article for lots more great ideas.

Ten Rules of Rainmaking

I often quibble with the term “rainmaker” because I think it too often describes lawyers more interested in getting new clients than in keeping current ones.  However, because “10 Rules for Business Development,” and “10 Rules for Keeping Clients So You Don’t Have to Replace Them” don’t have the same nice ring as “ 10 Rules of Rainmaking,” I’ll use the term here.  Let me know what you think:

1. You’ll never be passionate about rainmaking until you start searching for clients you’ll be passionate about serving.  Remember, a great client is one for whom you’d work for free, but one who’d never ask you to.

2.  The best way to get new clients is to impress old ones.  Measure the happiness of your existing clients with the same diligence you measure your time, so you can work less on developing new business and more on deserving it.

3.  While there are hundreds of “strategies” to get new clients, there’s only one strategy to keep them:  serve them well.

4.  When meeting a potential client, don’t sell your competence, sell your compassion.  They must know you care about them before they’ll care about you.

5.  The single best way to get new clients is to ask your best ones, "How do I get more clients like you?"

6.  A client will never be as surprised by great legal work as they will by by good service.  

7.  Your new client’s definition of a “great” lawyer is probably far different from yours.  You must understand their expectations before you’ll ever be able to meet them.

8.  Recognize that while it is usually easier to ask for new business from prospective clients than it is to ask for more business from current ones, it is rarely more profitable.

9.  If your answer to “What kind of clients are you looking for?” is “Ones who pay,” you’ll get paying clients.  Terrible paying clients.

10.  The best thing you can promise a prospective client is more sleep.  Ask what problems keep them up at night, and build your practice to solve them.

I'd love your input, and feel free to add any of your "Rules" in the comments.  If you enjoyed these, check out my other posts in the series:  Ten Tweets about Twitter,  Ten Resolutions for the New Year,  Ten Rules for Law Students, Ten Rules for the New Economy, Ten Rules for New Solos, Ten Rules of Legal Innovation,  Ten Rules of Legal Technology, Ten Rules of Hourly Billing and Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing. 

Also, if you'd like to get more ideas like these in real time, follow me on Twitter.

Use Conferences to Build Your Practice in a Down Economy

If you have a niche practice, you should already be asking your clients what conferences and trade shows are "must attends" in their industry.  If you're not already a regular attendee (or speaker) at these events, you should be -- now more than ever.  Here's three reasons why:

1.  You Can Increase Client Satisfaction:  One of the first things your clients will cut back on in a down economy is attending these events.  Go in their stead, and promise to report back to them on what you learned.  You can do so in a letter, newsletter, blog or even on Twitter (more on that in a second).  They'll appreciate you being their eyes and ears at the event and will always remember how you cared enough about their business and industry to attend when they couldn't.  As a bonus, they'll likely introduce you before the event to their friends/colleagues/peers who'll be there.

2.  You Can Meet Quality Potential Clients:  The attendees who will be there are potential clients (but ones who CAN afford to attend) who will be impressed by your commitment to your existing clients and your desire to increase your expertise in their industry.  You'll also be one of the few lawyers in the room.

3.  You Can Become an Industry Expert:  Your clients aren't the only ones interested in what's happening at the event.  Instead of saving your updates for your clients, broadcast them (along with your expert analysis) to the world via your blog and Twitter -- especially Twitter.  By doing so, you'll not only reach other attendees at the event, but capture the attention of others in the industry watching the conference from home.  Depending on the technological sophistication of the attendees, you may be the ONLY source of real-time conference news to non-attendees.

In short, forget legal conferences (except for LexThink, of course) and go to client conferences instead.  You'll get much more bang for your buck, impress existing clients, meet new ones and establish yourself as an industry expert.

Keep your sandwich to yourself.

Do the tough economic times have you bringing your lunch to work more often than before?  If you're one of those folks who's had that lunch "accidentally" taken by someone else, here's an inspiring design solution to your problem:  Anti-Theft Lunchbags:

Brilliant, don't you think? 

And if you're a legal vendor -- because you knew there had to be some sort of legal angle to this, didn't you -- and you want to engage your customers in a conversation about privacy, data protection, or (yes) even spoilation, I can't imagine a better trade show giveaway.

Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing

Legal Marketing has changed.  It used to be enough to keep an ad in the yellow pages and belong to the Rotary Club.  Not anymore.  Times are tough, so I present to you Ten "New" Rules of Legal Marketing.  Let me know what you think.

1.  "My lawyer can beat up your lawyer" isn't a marketing strategy.  "My lawyer will call me back before yours will" is.

2.  Google tells me there are 337,000 "Full Service Law Firms” out there.  Which one was yours again?

3.  Unless the person who founded your firm 100 years ago is still alive and practicing law, he's completely irrelevant to every client who's thinking of hiring you.

4.  Market to a "want" not to a "need."  By the time your clients realize they "need" you, it's often too late -- for them and for you.

5.  Your “keep great clients happy” budget should exceed your “try to get new clients” budget by at least 3:1.

6.  Thanksgiving cards say you're thankful for your clients' business.  Christmas cards say you're just like everybody else.

7.  Having the scales of justice on your business card says you're a lawyer -- an old, stodgy, unimaginative, do-what-everyone-else-has-done-for-fifty-years lawyer.  Same is true for your yellow pages ad.

8.  Speaking of yellow pages, don’t abdicate your marketing strategy to their salespeople.  They don’t know marketing.  They only know how to sell you a bigger ad each year.

9.  Your future clients have been living their entire lives online and will expect the same from you.  If you’re invisible on the web, you won’t exist to them.

10.  The single best marketing strategy in the world is to find your best clients and ask them, "How do I get more clients like you?"

Look for ten more rules next month.  For hundreds of legal marketing ideas, check out my Marketing Category on this blog.  And if you want to get these in real time, follow me on Twitter.

Pretending to Act Brilliantly

My friend Jim Canterucci interviewed me for his Personal Brilliance Podcast.  He'll be posting portions of the interviews throughout this month and I encourage you to check it out. I'm not sure how much brilliance there is in my interview, but I always enjoy talking with Jim and I think you'll find some interesting things in there. 

I'd also encourage you to check out the rest of the podcasts.  I'm working though them right now, and I've got to say, so far all of them have been worth a listen!

Pack a house with nervous clients?

Your clients are worried about their financial futures more than ever.  If you do divorce, estate planning, real estate or corporate work, you should be preparing a seminar NOW on the impact of the current situation on your clients. 

Make it "invitation only" and give each client the ability to bring another person.  Make it two hours or less.  Have a handout with the "Top 7 Things You Need to Know Now" or something similar.  Give each attendee at least three copies.  Encourage them to share it with people like them.

Tell it like it is.  Don't sell.  Your clients (and their hand-picked referrals) will appreciate the information, and look to you as their advisor in times of need.

If Operators are Busy ..

I've just started Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Robert B. Cialdini, and can already give it my highest recommendation.  It offers fifty short lessons (2-4 pages each) on persuasiveness, along with the empirical evidence to back them.

One quick lesson from the first chapter in the book:  Simply by changing an infomercial's call to action from "Operators are waiting, please call now," to, "If operators are busy, please call again," resulted in a huge increase in products purchased. 

Why?  Instead of people imagining a room full of operators waiting by silent telephones, infomercial viewers imagined those same operators going from call to call without a break, and assumed "if the phone lines are busy, then other people like me who are also watching this infomercial are calling, too."

Very interesting stuff.  A highly recommended book!

Want to Buy a Law Firm Brand?

I came across IncSpring yesterday.  It is a marketplace where designers can sell (and companies can buy) "ready-made brands."  If is a pretty neat concept, and you get to deal directly with the designer.  Not a lot of "legal" brands yet, but if you're a Texas Lawyer, you can do a lot worse than Lone Star Law:

Billboard-ize Your Next Presentation

Another great post from Presentation Zen on learning slide design from IKEA billboards.   The key takeaway:

Goodbillboards and other signage, must:

(1) get noticed,
(2) beread/understood,
(3) be remembered, and
(4) we hope an action is takenor one's thinking is influenced.

The first three in particular apply topresentation slides as well. I am not suggesting that you literallycopy the style of the signs outside an IKEA. But you can incorporatethe same principles for your displays used in your live talks thatdesigners use for billboards and other 'glance media.' 

Most peoplecould not care less about a billboard or the signs outside an IKEAstore, of course. But you're different. So you slow down and you payattention to "the design of it." You notice the elements such as color,size, shape, line, pattern, texture, emptiness, alignment, proximity,contrast, and so on.

Reactivate Past Clients

John Jantsch gives us Seven Tips to Dig Out from a Recession.  The one you should focus on today:

Reactivate past customers - Where did I put thatcustomer anyway, I know they are around here somewhere. Sad but true,sometimes we don’t bother to communicate with current customers unlessthey call with an order. By the time they have decided someone elseappreciates their business more, it’s too late. Reach out to lapsedcustomers and make them an apology, promise to never ignore them again,and make them a smoking hot deal to come back.

Hop on the (VW) Bus and Market Your Practice

From Flickr member Jason B comes this great picture of Oklahoma City attorney Chad Moody's "marketing vehicle." 

Any personal injury lawyers out there using ambulances?  Here's one for cheap.

Advertise, and clean up!

Via Springwise:

GreenGraffiti creates advertising ondirty city streets and walls using the clean, green power of plainwater. Armed with just a template and a high-pressure water sprayer,the company has "cleaned" advertising messages out of the dirt onbehalf of clients including Elle, Telfort and Universal Music. Nopaper, no ink, no printing process—GreenGraffiti's ads are completelycarbon-neutral, it says. They last up to six months, depending on foottraffic, and cost a fraction of the price of traditional outdoor media,the company asserts.

If you are looking to do some advertising, this could be a clean (and fun) way to go. Just make sure they find enough room in the stencil for your disclaimer!

Still Not LinkedIn?

If you're not using LinkedIn (or not using it enough), check out this Common Craft video that explains what LinkedIn does and why it matters.