I'm in the Spotlight
Friend and colleague JoAnna Forshee interviewed me for InsideLegal's "Legal Innovators Spotlight" a few weeks ago. The interview is up here, and is mostly about LexThink and the services I offer the legal industry.
However, there's one question (along with my answer) that I wanted to share here:
What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the legal industry now and in the upcoming year?
Most lawyers are focused on returning their practices to profitability -- which is a near term problem for many of us. However, I think a far greater challenge is looming in the distance, and that is irrelevance.
For far too long, lawyers have taken their clients and customers for granted. Quietly, real alternatives are emerging that are making lawyers less necessary to clients. In just the last five years, we’ve seen more and more consumers turn first to the web as they draft their will, start their LLC, etc. This is a trend that will only continue, and lawyers must begin thinking about a day when the least valuable thing they have to offer their clients is advice.
I'd love your feedback here.
Advertise What Matters (to Clients)
If you're wondering what to put on your website (or in that next yellow pages ad), take a cue from the Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford, Florida. Instead of trumpeting just how great their doctors are, they're using a nearby billboard to display a real-time statistic that lots of people care about: ER wait times.
From the Orlando Sentinel:
To find out how long the wait is in the emergency room at Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford, you can check its Web site, send a text, or, now, cruise past a billboard on Interstate 4.The hospital this week started posting its ER wait times on the billboard, on the eastbound side near State Road 46. It's part of a campaign to use technology to spread the word about decreasing the wait.
"Putting our wait times to see a physician in real time on a billboard is just one more step in educating the community about our service," said Wendy Brandon, the hospital's chief executive officer. The wait times to see a physician are updated every 30 minutes and reflect an average from the previous four hours.
What do your clients want to know about you? Do they see the answer in your advertising? They should.
LexThink Labs
Here's another image from the new LexThink site (coming really soon). It will be on the "LexThink Labs" page, which will include lots of fun, interesting and unique exercises, retreat ideas, and more.
Sell Me This Pencil
Here's a list of 100 Great Interview Questions, that includes most of the obvious ones, such as "What are your weaknesses?" and "What's your ideal company?" etc.
However, there was one "question" that stood out to me above all others:
Sell me this pencil.
Think about that for a moment. The question doesn't require an answer, it requires a performance. I wonder how it might impact hiring by law firms if their interviewers asked it just once in a while...
Prepare Better for High-Stakes Meetings
Here's a checklist from The Eloquent Woman that she uses to prepare herself for every presentation she gives. As I was reading it, I realized that her list isn't just for presenters. Instead, it is the perfect preparation for nearly every client meeting, negotiation and court appearance.
My favorite section are the questions about intent:
- Do I know what the audience wants from me?
- Is that what I'm going to give them? Do my goals match theirs? If not, why am I speaking to them? How will I reach them?
- What do I want to get out of this speaking experience?
- What do I need to learn from the audience? How will I find out?
- Do I intend to engage the audience? Do I just want them to listen? Do I intend to get them to act on something?
Before your next high-stakes meeting, answer each question, first replacing "Audience" with Client, Judge or even Opposing Counsel. I suspect you'll gain answers that make asking the questions worthwhile.
Test for Toxic Clients
Not sure whether to take that client? Here's a great test from Milton Glaser he uses to avoid toxic people:
[T]here is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.
Perhaps something to think about after every initial consultation?
(via Kareem Mayan's Weblog)
Bonus Your Staff Before Your Attorneys
In this great TED talk by author Dan Pink, he argues that while incentives improve people's performance on routine tasks, just the opposite is true when creativity or problem solving is involved. Incentives not only fail to improve performance on creative tasks, they diminish it. What's more, the larger the reward, the worse the performance. Might be something to think about when deciding just how to motivate lawyers.
Watch the entire talk (it is roughly 18 minutes), it is worth your time.
Want cooperation? Think reciprocation.
If you struggle to get prospects to fill out a lengthy form before meeting with you, perhaps some new research will change your mind.
In a study summarized here in the Nuromarketing blog, rearchers compared the effectiveness of two strategies often employed by websites to collect personal data from visitors: requiring the visitor's info before allowing them to access specific content (a reward strategy), or requesting it after they've already seen the content (a reciprocity strategy). The result:
It turns out that a reciprocity strategy works better – give them the info they want, and then ask for their information. In the impressively titled Embedded Persuasive Strategies to Obtain Visitors’ Data: Comparing Reward and Reciprocity in an Amateur, Knowledge-Based Website, Gamberini et al found that twice as many visitors gave up their information if they were able to access the information first. It’s counterintuitive, perhaps, but even though these visitors were under no obligation to complete the form, they converted at double the rate of visitors seeing the “mandatory” form.
What does this mean? Whenever you ask prospects to do something, work with reciprocity in mind. Instead of demanding their cooperation before meeting you, ask for it after they do. You'll likely get more cooperation and better information from them, while starting the representation off on the right foot.
Focus Wins
From Seth Godin:
When you have someone who is willing to accomplish A without worrying about B and C, they will almost always defeat you in accomplishing A.
Clients Care About Price, Not Cost
Last week, I posted a Q & A on Flat Fee Pricing. Just as I've finally found the time to respond to the comments, Jay Shepherd does me one better in this thoughtful piece titled Hourly Billing: The End of the Beginning. Please read the entire piece, but I'll share here Jay's response to lawyers who argue that time determines price (even in flat-fee models) and should be tracked:
The price depends on only one thing: the amount the customer will pay at that time. You can prattle on all you want about costs and budgets and efficiencies and inefficiencies, but it doesn't matter a whit. It's up to you to set a price that is less than or equal to the value the client places on your service. If you do, you'll be hired for the job. If the value to the client is high enough, you should be able to charge enough so that your revenue exceeds your costs, giving you a profit. But don't expect your client to care about your costs or your profits — that's not their job.
Introduce Your Staff to Your Clients
Here's a great idea from the London Underground (subway) via the U.K.'s Creative Review. The Underground hired photographer Maria Cox to visit each of the London Underground's 264 stations and take a picture of someone who worked there.
The photographs are combined with some information about each person, and then displayed at the station where he or she works. Here's the profile of John Osborne, a customer services assistant at the Shepherd's Bush Line station:
It makes me wonder how many businesses here in the states could benefit from a similar approach. I think many clients would be more apt to hire a firm that cared enough about their employees to feature them in this way. What do you think?
Free Photos for Great Presentations
I use my own photos in almost all of my presentations. If you're not up to taking your own pics, but still want to avoid cheesy clip art, check out this resource: 37 Places to Get Free Stock Images. I really like (and use) Every Stock Photo and Stock Exchange.
Q and A on Flat Fee Pricing
I was recently interviewed by the Minnesota Lawyer newspaper for an article on flat fees that grew out of my Twelve Truths of Time presentation in Duluth, MN. We did the interview as a series of questions, which I'm reproducing below. Once I get a link to the actual article (if it isn't behind a subscription firewall), I'll post that here, too.
In what types of cases does flat fee billing work best?
There's no one type of case where it works best, but there are certainly cases where it works easiest: ones with a certain beginning and ending that fall squarely within the lawyer's expertise. However, any case can be priced on a flat fee basis provided the attorney has the experience to properly evaluate the matter and has the systems in place to handle it economically.
The key thing to remember is that a lawyer doesn't need to make the same money on each case as they'd have made by billing hourly. Instead, so long as lawyers price right on average, they'll win in the aggregate.
Is it possible to do flat fee billing in litigation matters? If so, how does that work?
Litigation is really no different than other complex transactions -- such as building a sky scraper -- that are handled on a fixed-price basis every day. The key is to enter into a mutual understanding with the client that accounts for the unexpected. Much like "change orders" are used by contractors, lawyers, too can utilize them to account for a case that takes an unexpected turn. The key is to define ahead of time the kinds of things that are truly out of the ordinary and make certain the client understands that when circumstances change dramatically, so too can the price.
Another simpler way to begin down the road of fixed-fee pricing is to assign a price to each discrete service (such as depositions, interrogatories, days in court, etc.) that the client agrees to before the representation begins. Then, in partnership with the client, a lawyer can map out a strategy for litigating the case and give the client a pretty accurate picture of the costs before they are incurred.
Can/are large law firms also using flat fee billing? If so, in what kinds of cases?
Large firms should have an advantage in flat fee pricing, because they're not only able to absorb better the "one bad guess" on price, but should have a far greater amount of date from which to accurately estimate what their costs are in each matter. The irony is that while large firms have a significant advantage in doing flat fee work, they are the least likely to adopt it as a primary method of pricing their services.
What are the advantages of flat fee billing?
There are so many, but the principal one -- and the one clients embrace, too -- is that the lawyer's and client's interests are now aligned. Both now desire to handle the case in the most expeditious way, and law firms are now driven to embrace client-friendly innovative practices instead of eschewing them.
What are the disadvantages?
The key challenge in implementing flat fee pricing is that because so many lawyers don't have accurate records of their cost per case or client, they often guess wrong on price.
Are clients demanding other options to “billing by the hour”?
Not all clients are demanding options, because many don't know options exist. I do know from personal experience that my lawyer clients who are introducing flat fees to their customers are receiving an enthusiastic response.
Any final thoughts/tips for practitioners when it comes to flat fees?
Don't be afraid of flat fees or other alternative pricing methods. So long as you know your business and know your clients, you can implement alternative ways of pricing your services that can make you more money and satisfy your clients. And if you're not sure about how to go about developing a flat fee pricing model, ask your clients. They'll love to give you some advice for a change.
Some Tips for the Suddenly Solo
The fellas at Lawyerist caught up with me in Duluth after one of my presentations at Minnesota CLE's "Strategic Solutions for Solo and Small Firms" conference. Sam Glover asked me to share some tips for the "Suddenly Solo" lawyers out there. Here's the video:
Interview with Matt Homann from Lawyerist Media on Vimeo.
Because You Can Do It Doesn't Mean You Should
A quick tip that popped into my head while speaking in Minnesota earlier this week:
Tape the telephone number of your IT/Tech professional under your desk near the tangle of cords coming from your PC (and on your server, router, etc.) so you see it when you're most likely to try to work on your tech stuff yourself.Still tempted? Next to the number, write your billable rate and write theirs.
Culture Lessons from NetFlix
Netflix recently released a "Reference Guide" titled "Culture" on Slideshare, giving everyone a chance to peek "behind the curtain" at the values the innovative company expects from its employees. There are some real nuggets in the presentation. Here are a few of my favorites:
The "Keeper Test" for managers:
Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving in two months for a similar job at a peer company, whould I fight hard to keep..."
The irrelevance of "hard" work:
It is about effectiveness -- not effort -- even though effectiveness is harder to asses than effort. We don't measure people by how many evenings or weekends they are in their cube. We do try to measure peole by how much, how quickly and how well they get work done -- especially under deadline.
The refusal to tolerate "Brilliant Jerks" in the workplace:
For us, the cost to teamwork is too high.
The preference of "Rapid Recovery" from vs. Preventing error:
You may have heard preventing error is cheaper than fixing it ... not so in creative environments.
The entire policy for expensing, entertainment, gifts and travel:
Act in Netflix's Best Interests.
Please read the whole thing, and while you do, imagine how a law firm would thrive (or fail) if it adopted a similar culture as Netflix's.
Thanks to the Emerging Leadership Circle blog for the pointer to the presentation!
Get Your Writing to Flow
Want some great tips to get your writing to flow? Check out How to Add Flow to Your Writing from Men With Pens. The author suggests you read your writing aloud with a pen or marker in hand -- not to find grammatical errors, but to evaluate flow. Here's why:
When you read aloud, you’ll find certain sentences don’t sound right. Your tongue trips over them. You lose track of what you were trying to say. You find that the comma you inserted in the middle there makes you sound like you have a mild speech disorder.
Great advice!
Minnesota Strategic Solutions for Solos & Small Firms
If you're in Duluth next week (or anywhere in Minnesota), come on by the Strategic Solutions for Solo & Small Firm Conference presented by Minnesota CLE. I'm delivering two speeches and participating in four workshops, including the debut of my "Real Innovation for Real Lawyers" talk, and another based upon my Twelve Truths of Time (slides below). I hope to see you there!
Join LexThink on Facebook
I just started a LexThink business page on Facebook. I've got big changes in store for LexThink, including a complete website redesign, but wanted an easy place to post news, events, upcoming speaking gigs, etc. Head on over there, and please become a fan.
Business Card or Brochure? Both.
I'm headed to the ACLEA conference in Salt Lake City this week. I'm a new member of the Association of Continuing Legal Education professionals (I know, the acronym needs some help) and am looking forward to my first ACLEA event -- especially because I'm doing lots more speaking about innovation, creativity, marketing, alternative billing, etc. to lawyers, firms and at CLE's.
Since I'm working on a website redesign (live in August) that helps show visually what I do, I thought I'd use some of the images we've created for the web on new 3" x 5" business cards that double as a kind of brochure. (I'm using a 6" x 5" card folded in half).
Here's the inside of the folded card:
And here's the back and front:
And here are the LexThink cards I've been using. Let me know what you think! Here's the card in pdf format.
