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.

Selling Through a Slump E-Book

I had the privilege of contributing the legal chapter in the new Selling Through a Slump:  An Industry by Industry Playbook. 

Oracle and The Customer Collective co-sponsored the guide, which contains great advice for selling in multiple verticals, including accounting and consulting, retail, the public sector, health care, insurance, telecommunications, services, technology, media and manufacturing.  The author list reads like a who's who of industry experts, and I'm honored to be in such great company.

Check it out here.  Registration is required, but the download is free.

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!

Ten Rules for Law Students

Over a year ago, I wrote 15 Thoughts for Law Students.  It was one of my first "Rules" posts, though I wasn't calling them that at the time.  Since then, it has been one of the more popular items on this blog, and was even republished in the Canadian Bar Association magazine. 

I've revised it just a bit, and shortened it to 10 "rules" for the law students out there.  Enjoy.

1.  Law school is a trade school. The only people who don't believe this to be true are the professors and deans.

2.  Being good at writing makes you a good law student. Being good at understanding makes you a good lawyer.  Being good at arguing makes you an ass.

3.  You can learn more about client service by working at Starbucks for three weeks than you can by going to law school for three years.

4. Law school doesn't teach you to think like a lawyer.  Law school teaches you to think like a law professor.  There's a huge difference.

5. The people who will help you the most in your legal career aresitting next to you in class.  Get to know them outside of law school.They are pretty cool people.  They are even cooler when you stop talking about the Rule Against Perpetuities.

6.  Law is a precedent-based profession.  It doesn't have to be a precedent-based business.  Challenge the status quo.  Somebody has to.

7.  When you bill by the hour, getting your work done in half the time as your peers doesn't get you rewarded.  It gets you more work.

8.  Your reputation as a lawyer begins now.  People won't remember your class rank as much as they'll remember how decent and honest you were.  They'll really remember if you were a jerk.

9.  There are plenty of things you don't know.  There are even more things you'll never know.  Get used to it.  Use your ignorance to your benefit.  The most significant advantage you possess over those who've come before you is that you don't believe what they do.

10. People don't tell lawyer jokes just because they think they are funny.  They tell lawyer jokes because they think they are true.  Spend your career proving them wrong.

If you enjoyed these, check out my other posts in the series:  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.

Ten Rules for New Solos

As our economy sours and the legal job market dries up, there are lots of lawyers looking at solo practice for the first time.  As a former solo myself, I’m sharing these ten “rules” for new solos.  There are more to follow, and please share yours in the comments.

1.  The good news:  As a solo, you are your own boss, can do whatever you want and answer only to yourself. That’s also the bad news.

2.  Your solo practice is far more likely to fail because you’re a bad business person than because you’re a bad lawyer. 

3.  If you are a bad procrastinator, you’ll be a terrible solo.  Nothingwill impact your ability to succeed as much as your inability to manageyour time.  It is unimportant how great you are at lawyering when youdon’t send your bills out on time.

4.  Never underestimate the value of the water cooler.  You can find many "co-workers" online in Solosez, Blogs, Twitter, etc.  Just don’t spend all your time there.

5.  Would you let your plumber appear in court for you?  Remember your answer next time you’re fiddling with your phone system, computer network, etc...  You can’t expect someone to appreciate your expertise if you fail to appreciate theirs.

6.  If you’re looking for a guru, you can have Foonberg.  I’ll take Elefant.

7.  If you’re thinking of opening a “general” practice, remember this: Your clients don’t have “general” legal problems, they have specific ones.  They’ll hire you because you’re able to help them, not everyone else.

8.  Your friends, family and business contacts may hire you eventually, but they’ll rarely do so right away.  They have to need to hire you, not just want to.

9.  Never tell prospective clients that being a solo makes you cheaperto them.  Show them that being a solo makes you better for them. Ifyour clients hire you because your rates are low, they will fire you assoon as your rates are no longer low enough.

10.  There is no shame in going solo.  Your clients don’t care thatthe legal market tanked, that you got laid off from BIGLAW or that you“wanted more time to spend with your family.”  They have their ownproblems, and are looking to you solve them.  When you do, you’ll bothprofit.

If you enjoyed these, check out my other posts in the series: 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.

Looking Back to the Future?

My friend Jordan Furlong writes a great post titled These are the Days of Miracle and Wonder about lessons we can learn from Obama's win.  The great takeaway:

Twenty years ago, our parents would never have believed it. Twenty years from now, our children will take it for granted.

What amazing thing can you do TODAY in your practice that was unfathomable in 1988 but will be commonplace in 2028?  Get to it!

Ten Rules of Legal Technology

For your consideration:  Ten "Rules" of Legal Technology.  Not many are new, and very few apply only to lawyers, but these are a few more nuggets I'm pulling out of previous posts to fill out my portfolio of speeches I've got "in the can."  Enjoy:

1. Since the first PC, legal tech companies have been promising to helplawyers capture more time.  Capturing time isn't the problem, chargingfor it is.

2.  It is more important to get better at working with people than it is to get better working with technology.

3.  You should never have a bigger monitor or more comfortable chair than your secretaries do.

4.  Never brag about implementing technology in your firm that your clients have been using for a decade.

5.  The single piece of technology all lawyers should learn to use betteris their keyboard. 

6.  Sophisticated clients don't demand sophisticated technology, they demand sophisticated lawyers.  They assume the technology is part of the package.

7.  Social Media isn't technology.  It's your Rotary Meeting on steroids -- though there are less lawyers in the room and the clients are better.

8.  Want to invest in an inexpensive communication technology guaranteed toimprove your thinking skills and increase collaboration with clients?Buy a whiteboard for your office.

9.  Belt, meet suspenders: One backup solution is never enough.

10.  The only technology ROI that matters is your clients' return on their investment in you.

Bonus Rule:  The one piece of technology your clients wish you'd get better at using is the telephone.  Call them back!

Also, check out Ten Rules About Hourly Billing and Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing.  If you'd like to hire me to speak, head over to LexThink.

Meet Your Future Clients

The other day, I suggested in my Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing that:

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

Now, I've stumbled across this article from Adweek titled Generation Watch Out that explains better than I ever could what I meant:

Today's young talent represents not-able cultural shifts: They'redigital, message savvy, global and green. (Listen to the Flobots'"Handlebars" and you'll get the picture.) They mark fundamentalchanges from previous grads entering the industry. They're moreassociative, culturally networked, nimble and intuitive. Whilethey're more cynical than cohorts past, they're also more apt tocall BS or volunteer for environmental or political causes. Theyare easy in their gay-or-straight, vegetarian-or-meat,tatted-or-not choices. F-bombs are tossed around like Frisbees.These kids run hard, adapt easily....

It's the shortcut generation. That toolbar up top is forold-timers; these guys learned to Cmd-Option-Shift-A in middleschool because it was cool, not necessary. Desktops areinstitutional holdovers. Everyone has a set of on-the-go tools:camera, laptop, videocam, hard drive, cool bag to tote it all.They're experts early on, manhandling Final Cut or Flash withintuitive authority. They're Idea 2.0, the mashup generation andone with confluence, that place beyond convergence where the oldsloughs off and the new quickly gets morphed into the cultural DNA.

All this makes them, at their best, unbelievably creative andproductive. On the other hand, they also think they have all theanswers. Morley Safer wrote recently of this generation'sentitlement issues: They've grown up with everyone as winners, withinspired birthday parties and planned events, with middle-classprivilege and opportunities at every camp, academy andtake-your-kid-to-work experience. They expect careers, not jobs.And they expect to have their names—very soon—in an annual or thismag. Hell, they know their blog on a good day might get moreeyeballs than the trades.

Get to know them. Understand them.  Because love 'em or hate 'em, they're not just your children, they're your future clients, employees and partners.  Learn to serve them or they'll serve themselves.

Ten Rules About Hourly Billing

After the great response I got to yesterday's Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing post, I've decided to share a few more "Rules" of Hourly Billing I've culled from my blog and my speeches.  Enjoy!

1.  Ask your clients what they buy from you.  If it isn’t time, stop selling it!

2.  Imagine a world where your clients know each month how much your bill will be so they could plan for it.  They do.

3.  If you don’t agree on fees at the beginning of a case, you’ll be begging for them at the end of it.

4.  Sophisticated clients who insist on hourly billing do so because they’re smarter than you are, not because they want you to be paid fairly.

5.  When you bill by the hour, your once-in-a-lifetime flash of brilliant insight that saves your client millions of dollars has the same contribution to your bottom line as the six minutes you just spent opening the mail.

6.  Businesses succeed when their people work better.  Law firms succeed when their people work longer.  Your clients understand this -- and resent you for it.

7.  Every time your clients jokingly ask you, “Are you going to charge me for this?” they aren’t joking -- and they’ll check next month’s bill to be sure.

8.  The hardest thing to measure is talent.  The easiest thing to measure is time.  The two have absolutely no relationship to one another.  Your law firm measures talent, right?

9.  Would you shop at a store where the cost of your purchase isn’t set until after you’ve agreed to buy it? You ask your clients to.

10.  There are 1440 minutes each day.  How many did you make matter?  How many did you bill for?  Were they the same minutes?  Didn't think so.

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

Touch Your Audience with These Touchy-Feely Tips

Here's a must-read post from Laura Bergells with six "touchy-feely" tips that will help when you rehearse your next presentation (you do practice, right?). 

If you ever give presentations to clients, to peers or to juries, you need to be thinking about these practice ideas.  My favorite:

Record your presentation without video. Then, listen to it without watchingthe slides. I like putting my audio on my portable mp3 player -- andtaking a walk. While listening to myself on the ellipse machine at thegym last week, I found an area of my presentation that dragged sodismally, I barely registered a heartbeat while chugging along at ahigh incline! I went back to the office for a rewrite and added morepowerful visuals. Listening to "audio only" helps you spot pace andpitch problems -- but it also helps you later recall the words andinflections that work well.

Looking for the Ugly in Potential Clients

Kevin Kelly writes another insightful essay on The Technium titled "Looking for Ugly."  Using FAA reporting on aircraft maintenance as his main example, he suggests that when we don't penalize minor infractions (the FAA encourages penalty-free reporting of minor safety errors), we reduce major ones.  Put another way, to avoid major catastrophe, it is important to encourage people to look for and report "the ugly:"

Looking for ugly is a great way to describe a precursor-based error detection system. You are not really searching for failure as much as signs failure will begin. These are less like errors and more like deviations. Offcenter in an unhealthy way. 

I think he's right on.  When evaluating new clients, for example, keep track of those things that don't "feel quite right."  It could be something as simple as the fact that they rescheduled three times, showed up late for an appointment, or "forgot" their retainer check.  While many of those prospects will turn into great clients, the handful of them that don't probably have a lot of those little things in common. 

The more you pay attention to those "little things" as they enter your head (as opposed to using your 20/20 hindsight once the relationship has gone sour) the more likely you'll get better at choosing great clients -- and avoiding the "ugly" ones.

Building Banks with Generation-C

James Gardner at Bankervision has been thinking about "future-proofing" banks, and takes inspiration from Linux and Crowdsourcing:

We've been tracking a trend at the bank we call Generation-C, the generation that wants to Create. These are the people who write blogs, who mash up applications to create new ones, who contribute to forums and put themselves out there....

What might the power of crowds create if we let them loose on banking products and services?

Because if these Generation-C folk can create a better operating system for free than the folks at Redmond with billions to spend on R&D, what might fantastic things might Generation-C do for financial services?

Indeed.  I think the same goes for law practice.  What do you think?

Criminal Defendants: What I Learned

Want to know what defendants really think about their experience with the judicial system? Add Courthouse Confessions to your reading list. It is a blog by Steven Hirsch, and he interviews people as they leave the courthouse. In many ways, it reads like a more real-life version of Esquire Magazine's What I've Learned series.

Some gems:

Moral of the story is my friends, hang with people in your caliber. Ifyour a person person hang with good people. That's the moral of thisstory. I'm a good person. I consider myself a good person. On a scaleof one to ten I consider myself an eight.Timothy Jones

I kinda felt better on the sofa than I did feel in jail. 'Cause I don'thave like a violent history, I don't have no crime, I don't have norecord, period. Honestly, I should've stayed at home, it would've beenmore comfortable.Jamali Brockett

I just got out on five hundred dollars bail and I'm stressed out andI'm mad but um this is life, so this is what it is. Come to find outthe marijuana that was supposed to be sold was Lipton tea.Tyrone Carter

I'm here on assault charges which I obviously didn't do. All theassaults that I actually have done, I've never been to court for. Daniel Sbarra

Let me say on the record, I'd like to apologize to the City Of New Yorkfor taking a pee. I'd like to apologize to the garbage man that took mypee away in a garbage truck. There's a reason that garbage man getspaid more then the police. Mark Mark Mark

Never buy phones off the streets. You know, I gotta go to a store anddo like everybody else does. I'm not really interested in phones, longas I can make a call, you know? Cori DeSilva

Actually I'm proud and happy that I hit the cops. They deserve it. I feel better. Now I feel better.Evan Munoz

Graffiti is a part of my life. I start when i was a kid. Its like aspirit, it's my life. I'm a student in graffiti design. Writing on thewall is like I was here, I was in New York, I was in Paris, I was inAmsterdam. It's like a dog make a pee on the wall. I'm animal.Esteban Gonzalez

So she actually gave me a second chance at getting community service.So when I signed up for community service and they gave me the dates toappear I got drunk again and lost the paper work. Ian Jernigan

As long as I don't sell no more weed to uncover cop, I'm good money. Kevin Dorsey

In my opinion drugs, selling drugs in my opinion is not a crime, in myopinion.... I'm not doing a publicservice but in my opinion at the time I was doing more like anentrepreneurship, an opportunist, I saw a large market, decided to gofor it, supplied their demand.Jonathan Sierra

I stole a bra. I did. 'cause I wanted it, and I didn't have enoughmoney.... Sure, I would [do it again.]I had so much fun coming here to court, I met beautiful people, and Isaw that it's not as bad as you think. They were all laughing, thewhole time through, we were laughing, joking. Stay good, don't do badthings, you know? Do good things, don't steal. Janet Braha

I may look like sh*t right now, but when I dress up and do my hair, andeverything, I look very elegant, very classy. But my dream is to keepstudying politics and run for the presidency when I get older.... I'm not gonna say that I'm gonna win, but I can say that I'm gonna trymy hardest, because I have a lot of great ideas on a lot of differentthings, and I think I can make a difference and make a change, a betterchange in the world.... I feel that I'm qualifiedfor that. Judy Guadalupe Schiller Perez Aversa

The Curse of Almost Done

A few days ago, I wrote about how I was suffering from The Curse of Almost Happy. I realized that being "close to" fulfillment in my life and career wasn't close at all. So, as I've spent this past weekend knocking off several things on my "To Do for Too Long" list, it hit me that a cause (companion?) to that Curse is another one: The Curse of Almost Done.

Unless you're a hyper-productive, always-on-top-of-everything person, you know what I'm talking about. The Curse of Almost Done is evident all around you. It manifests itself the moment you put off completing those last few steps of a project that is "almost done." It keeps you from picking those projects up and finishing them now because you've got more important things to start, and since they are, after all, "Almost done."

Well, I've battled the Curse of Almost Done all weekend. I'm finally happy to unveil the new LexThink.com. It isn't done, but it is done enough.

Let me know what you think. Still to come: links to my presentations, a client intranet site, some video, my first e-book, and a top-secret project that will launch in two weeks (I promise).

So what's on your "To Do for Too Long" list? Set aside a day each week where you swear to not start anything new. Use that day just for completing things. "Finish Fridays" anyone?

Napkin Thinking for Your Practice

One thing I learned working for XPLANE, is that everyone (not just artists) can use simple visual tools to think better about almost anything. If you'd like to incorporate more visual thinking into your practicef (and communicate better with your clients), check out Dan Roam's The Back of the Napkin. It is a great book, and if you want an intro, I highly recommend downloading the Visual Thinking Toolkit (pdf), which was just posted this week.

Zen Your Way Out of Bad Meetings

Conflict Zen has become one of my "must reads" lately. Author Tammy Lenski shares Seven Simple Hacks Guaranteed to Improve Your Meetings that collects several of her posts on conflict resolution in groups. I'd recommend her tips to any lawyer who meets with clients regularly, especially this one:

Have you ever been in a meeting where the chair asked somethinglike, "Does that plan sound ok to everyone?" Perhaps there was a briefpause, an assenting remark or two, a couple of nods and silence fromthe rest. "All right, then it’s a go," the chair may have said then.

Silence does not mean "Yes, I agree." Silence can mean: I’m stillthinking about it. I may agree but am not sure yet. Yes, I agree. No, Idon’t agree but I’m not going to say it out loud here. No, I don’tagree but I’ll never admit to it.

If you’re trying to make a wise and effective decision in a group,avoid the "assumed yes" trap. When there’s silence, ask those folkswhat their silence means. Don’t challenge, invite.

Silence usually means I’m thinking.

You Always Have to Say "I'm Sorry."

Want to keep your unhappy clients from suing you? Apologize. Bob Sutton writes about the Virtues of Apologies and shares a NY Times article about how doctors and hospitals are reducing malpractice claims (by a sizable amount) by simply apologizing. Read the article and the post for some of the reasons why you should apologize.

What I want to share, though, is this gem from Bob's post:

[T]he best single diagnostic question fordetermining if an organization is learning and innovating as it movesforward is: What Happens When People Make a Mistake?

What's the answer for your firm?

Title Tips for Better Slides

Want to write better titles for your PowerPoint slides (and nearly anything else for that matter)? Frank Roche gives five tips to help you Write the Best Damn PowerPoint Headlines Ever:

Make it good enough to print on a t-shirt. The word Introductions isn’t good enough for a t-shirt. Say hello to my little friend is. Not every headline has to be t-shirt worthy, but that’s not a bad goal.

Make it fit on one line. Hey, what you lack in quality, you can’t make up for in volume. Read the really great headline writers. I like the New York Times and USA Today, but CNN and the New York Post write the killer headlines. They’re short. Often two words. But two killer words.

Say what’s on the slide. Obscurity is great for the CIA, but we’re talking about PowerPoint and communication. If a single word will do, then please be my guest. Otherwise, write descriptive headlines. (And if you violate the “fit on one line” rule, it had better rock.)

Forget headlines. If you can’t think of a great headline, then maybe you shouldn’t have one. Steve Jobs doesn’t need headlines.

If your slide is filled with bullet points, even a killer headline won’t help. You see that little key on your computer that says DEL? Go ahead, push that one. Watch your presentation magically get better.

How many of your titles would look good on a t-shirt? Open up that last presentation and get to work!

Photo Phorensics

Via Photojojo comes a pointer to this Scientific American article titled Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo. Worth a look if you regularly deal with photographic evidence in your practice.

May I have your attention?

Watch this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4&w=425&h=355]

Remember, what we look for is what we see. It is only when we open our eyes to see everything that we notice what should be obvious.

What are you looking for in your practice? Billable hours? Maybe you should look for something different. You might be surprised at what you'll find.