Being a lawyer by degree, articled and called to the bar and having spent my fair share of time in and around law firms I can say that the words digital or social do not really enter the marketing of most law firms. Of course every firm has a web presence and a few have even taken a leading role with iPhone apps, but the foray into real digital or social marketing has been slow if at all. Given that so much of today’s modern digital marketing is about creating content you would think that law firms which do this incredibly well would be all over blogs and sharing links across the social web but there is little activity. So my small piece of advice to law firms is this, start small and start with Facebook for recruiting. You really cannot go wrong and the effort while not large in scale will pay dividends in the form of a connection with top notch law school talent.  Continue Reading…

I had a couple of different themes in mind when I decided I was going to write this post, in my head it started as a debate between customer loyalty versus customer satisfaction and then turned to a discussion of the types of clients people in professional services come across and finally wound up as what it will be, a discussion of when it is time to tell a client you can no longer do their work (essentially fire them) and how to bow out of it gracefully. So from here on out I will stick to the topic of just when and how you should fire a client.

Upfront I will say that the phrase “fire your client” has some distinctly negative connotations but it got your attention or you wouldn’t be here so remember it’s just a headline.

When To Fire A Client

If you work in a service related business and specifically one where you charge your clients based on time invested or where you have given a flat fee but have only budget “x” number of hours, then you will know that inevitably you will come across clients who are just so difficult to deal with that either the work you are doing for them or the work you are doing for someone else suffers. I am not talking about the client who is a day or two late with payments (though be wary of those as well), rather I am talking about one of several different types of clients who can actually hamper your overall business if you are not careful. You have probably dealt with these types of clients before but see if any of these ring a bell Continue Reading…

As I have written about previously, I have the good fortune of being educated as a lawyer and being called to the Bar in Ontario which means that I have spent a little bit of time practicing law as well. During that time and due to the fact that my father is one of the most respectable lawyers in his field I have learned a few of the tricks of the trade and have been able to apply those to my business life. One of those lessons that I have often shared with my colleagues or those who I completed my MBA with is this: Be Careful What You Say On Voice mail.

Seems like a simple enough piece of advice and for the most part one that you would suspect intelligent business people are already cognizant of. The fact of the matter is that what you say in your voice mail is quotable, it is your direct words and sometimes even gives binding directions (e.g. you tell your lawyer to settle a case) to the party you are leaving the message for. Yet somehow or for some reason people decide to ramble when leaving voice mail messages. They say things that they have no business saying or that have no real relevance to the message they are leaving and literally the minute they hang up the phone they have no real recollection of exactly what they said. This opens the door to large potential problems or at least a “gotcha” type moment.

Think about it. How many times do you read an email before sending it off to a potential customer, partner or someone you are negotiating with? You have the chance to proof it and those who are truly prudent will often have someone else take a read before sending it off just to ensure the message is clear. Further to that, you have a permanent record of exactly what you wrote, it sits there in your sent messages folder and there is no disputing what was sent, to whom and at what time.

Now let me turn back to voice mail. I do not know why, but people feel the need to say every single thing that is on their mind in a voice mail message. It is a rare case that (prior to the call) someone actually takes the time to methodically think about what they want to say and exactly what the point of their phone call is. When that call gets picked up by voice mail they end up rambling on about multiple topics and (as stated earlier) at the end of the call they probably could not tell you exactly what they said, only that they covered this or that topic (most likely forgetting some).

So why is this important? What is it that I know that you should too? It is actually so simple yet pretty brilliant from the lawyer’s side. Ready…

They take your voice mail and have it transcribed! Yes word for word everything you said is then right there in black and white. Take it one step further and you get the 3rd party (most likely the lawyer’s admin) to swear an affidavit that the words in the transcript are exactly what was left on voice mail and now you have a legally binding sworn statement referencing your voice mail.

With the fact that your entire message will be transcribed, now think about those same rambling messages that you leave where you don’t really realize what you have committed yourself to until it is presented to you right there in black and white. It becomes pretty hard to argue “I didn’t say that” when there is a legally sworn document saying you absolutely did “say that”.

So all this is to say that my advice is simple: Choose your words carefully the next time you hear an answering machine’s beep.

Most people who read this will not have had the experience of working within a large corporate law office, so I will tell you as someone with that experience it is much the same as any large corporation though I think there is obviously less emphasis on anything other than traditional marketing and now blogging – though I would argue that blogging previously was just a law firm’s paper newsletter, turned e-newsletter, turned blog.

The thing you need to understand about a law firm and the ability to use Yammer before I tell you why I think there is a real business case for it. First you need to understand that in a law firm there would need to be the ability to set permissions, not necessarily hierarchies, but there are times when two lawyers in the same firm (or two groups for that matter) are working on files for two firms that may not be legally combative but are competitive and so you the groups of lawyers are “firewalled” from talking to one another about either case. So in that scenario you need the ability to set a subject line that immediately stopped the other group of lawyers from seeing your Yammer. Seems pretty simple.

The other thing that you need to realize is that the legal community as a whole is facing perhaps the biggest recruiting and retention challenge of the last 50+ years. Young lawyers are leaving big corporate firms for government or in-house jobs that allow them to have a work-life balance. Law firms make their money as a partnership where the senior most lawyers are partners and share in the profits. In order to make these large profits there needs to be a healthy (3-1) ratio of junior lawyers to partners. As the junior lawyers leave the ratio becomes smaller and smaller, squeezing the profits of the firm further and further.

So my business case for Yammer in mid-large corporate law firms (say 70 lawyers or more).

As A Recruiting & Retention Tool

Just because the senior lawyers at most firms do not have the first clue about most technologies, you can bet your bacon that the students at every law school and the junior lawyers all are on some social networking site. Further many students are starting to Twitter so it is completely natural for them to communicate in a short and to the point manner. They also appreciate the ability to drop a quick line even when the reason has nothing to do with work. For the most part they want to use new technology to communicate and law firms are the essence of the walled garden. Everything is priviledged so a private Yammer network would open the lines of communication between young lawyers at the same firm, sharing everything from the latest decision on their motion to a case they recently researched (more on that below). It can also serve as a mechanism to bridge the gap between older more senior partners and the young lawyers at their firm. Many partners can be tough to approach face to face but if there is an ability to approach them in a less formal setting first, knowledge can be shared and a bridge built. Starting a Yammer network is not going to change the fact that you need to work 80+ hours a week, but it might make young lawyers feel like their firm is at least in tune with how they like to work.

As A Knowledge Sharing Tool

The law is built on precedents. Never do you go into a case without having done a ton of research on every possible decision at every court level to ensure that you know which ones you will argue and as importantly which ones to be prepared for the other side to argue. In a law firm there are often large libraries and often several librarians to help with your research. However it is that invaluable tidbit that comes from a more senior lawyer who has had a similar case or simply knows the law that much better that he/she can be more strategic within it that makes all the difference quite often. So being able to shoot a company wide Yammer about a specific angle of the law or asking about how to interpret a court’s decision would be an invaluable knowledge sharing tool for law firms. Many firms have been and continue to invest heavily in knowledge management databases storing everything from research memos to court decisions (though everyone uses Westlaw or Quicklaw for those), in my opinion Yammer would be a very cheap complimentary tool.