Law Practice Matters

Which internet browser are you using to read this right now?  Chances are that you are using some version of Microsoft Internet Explorer.  It's the one that probably came with the computer you bought (unless you are one of the growing number of lawyers turning to Macs), and if you are like most busy lawyers, you've just probably never thought it made enough of a difference to change.

Well, it does.  And the good news for you is that changing your browser is free, quick and easy.  There is almost no reason left not to make the switch.  I mean seriously, what else in your life would you turn down if somebody offered you something better than what you have for free?

The better, free internet browser is Mozilla Firefox.  At last count (March 2008), Internet Explorer still controlled over 50% of the market, but Firefox is up over a third of the market and headed to 40%.  To give you an idea of the trend line, Firefox market share looks like this:

March 2008:  37%

March 2007:  32%

March 2006:  25% 

Not bad for a browser that doesn't come bundled with the computers folks buy.  So, what is the reason motivating computer users to go out and download a new, different browser when their computers already came loaded with one?

Firefox is better.  Among the many reasons to switch, most people are motivated by Firefox's superior blocking of pop-up ads, its excellent tabbed browsing (if you have not tried tabbed browsing, it is a HUGE improvement over opening multiple windows in Internet Explorer), its more intuitive bookmarks system, and its customizability.  You can read a more complete list of reasons to switch here.  There is also a nice list of frequently asked questions about making the switch here.

If all that is not enough to sway you, here are two more reasons.  First, the technology press has been won over to Firefox in great numbers, meaning Firefox is now a safe choice, not an edgy internet technology.  And second, unlike the pesky Microsoft applications, if you try it and decide you don't like Firefox (though I can not imagine why) it uninstalls cleanly and easily without clogging your machine with a bunch of detritus and junk.

Try it.  You'll like it.  And if you don't, just uninstall it and say that you were just browsing.

This comes to you from the sad but true file.

I like new gadgets, gizmos and doohickeys as much as the next person.  If the next person is a 13 year old Dungeons and Dragons geek.  I like finding new applications on the web, new solutions, new ways of doing things.  I like this stuff a little too much.  My filter for evaluating new technologies has a few holes.  There is precious little that I come across that I don't think, "hmm, that's cool, maybe I should download that..."

(It's probably too late now after that bit of disclosure, but please do NOT tell the NCBA's IT Director about my little proclivity.)

In addition to a general willingness to download and experiment with new things, I also have earmarked certain companies whose upgrades I will automatically download without even thinking about it.  Apple, Microsoft (more out of fear than because I am expecting something cool), Mozilla, Google.  Any time one of these companies sends me a little pop up window that says, "hey Erik, we've made X software even better... don't you want to try it?", my answer is invariably a resounding, "oh yeah!  Where do I click?"

Most of the time this strategy works just fine, but occasionally I get bit, and that is less fun than it sounds.  Google -- my beloved Google -- is the most recent company to remind me that "automatically" is not necessarily a good word to use in evaluating new software versions.  Without digressing too far, you should know that I use a Google app called Google Calendar Sync to sync up my MS Outlook calendar to my Google calendar.

I have reasons why I say I do this (such as Google's far superior notification settings), but fundamentally, I mess around with things like this because I think they're fun.  (In other news, I need to get out more.)  Anyway, I'd been using Google Calendar Sync faithfully for a couple of months with no trouble at all -- at least no trouble that I had been unable to pin on the doings of the Dark Tower of Mordor, Microsoft.

Until now.  Recently, I received an innocuous little pop up box from Google saying, "dude, upgrade calendar sync."  And even though calendar sync was working perfectly, I upgraded.  Without even thinking about it.  Automatically.  The saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it" hung above my head like a thought bubble in a comic strip.

Suddenly, (and perhaps unsurprisingly in this little cautionary blog tale) Google Calendar Sync stopped working.  It would try to connect but just be unable to.  I started getting hideous and obscure error messages with symbols like the "%".  I don't know that much about computers, but I know that ain't good.  After way more research than a saner man would admit to, I finally found a fix.  It involved uninstalling Calendar Sync, navigating to a French Google website, and downloading an older French version of the app.  Which explains why my calendar has started smoking filterless cigarettes and reading Sartre.

(Once again, do not tell the IT Director about this.  I have a feeling downloading stuff from weird French websites is not on the approved list.)

Yeah.  If you have to download stuff from a website in a country where you don't speak the language, that MIGHT be considered a warning sign.  Worst of all, I couldn't even blame this malfunction on Microsoft.  This was clearly Google sticking it to me for upgrading without thinking.  Et tu, Google?

All's well that ends well, and I am happy to report that my little French Google Calendar Sync is working again, but not before becoming a time suck of major proportions.  So let my stupidity serve as a warning to you:  new is not always improved.

File this in the "Physician, heal thyself" category.

I am a big fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done approach to productivity and time management.  I don't always follow his rules (typically to my own detriment), but I know I should.  One of the concepts from Getting Things Done (or GTD, for short) that I believe in and try to follow is limiting your number of in-boxes.

Defined broadly, an in-box is any receptacle through which information enters your life.  Your voicemail, email in-box, your mailbox at home, the seat of your chair (if your colleagues place documents for your review on it), sticky notes on your computer monitor, etc -- these are all in-boxes.  The more of 'em you have, the more places there are for you miss critical incoming information.  Personally, I do reasonably well at limiting my number of in-boxes, and it does work to reduce my anxiety about missing something important coming in.

On a related note -- and a place where I have been a complete disaster lately -- is in calendar management.  Your calendar is really nothing more than an in-box for appointments and meetings.  GTD has lots of good suggestions about how to effectively manage a calendar (if you have not yet read the book, it really is worth a read).  There are no rules about calendar management more important, however, than this:  only keep one calendar.

It makes sense:  you only have one set of 24 hours each day, why would you have multiple places to store appointments, potentially double or triple booking your time?  Not to mention the possibility of missing an appointment because you are looking at the wrong calendar.

For the past few months, I have been the poster boy for doing this wrong.  I had not one, not two, but three calendars that I have been using.  My Outlook calendar at work, my Google calendar online, and my iCal calendar on my MacBook and iPhone.  I'm always looking in three different places to try to make sure I am not missing anything because of this ridiculous technological pile of calendar craziness I've gotten myself into and it is freaking me out.  Just too many in-boxes.

So today was D-Day, or maybe C-Day.  No more Google Calendar, no more iCal.  I have to use my Outlook calendar at work, so that is my one repository, my one calendar in-box for my day.  I don't like it as well as Google calendar, or even iCal, but using those other technologies are just not worth the trouble of managing multiple calendars.

I feel better already.  If you are managing your time across multiple calendars, too, give yourself a break and consolidate them into one master calendar.  You'll be glad you did.

This former colleague of my wife's always used to say the same thing about networking:  just one step away from notworking.  I'm not really sure what that meant, but it is a hideously sticky saying, so I decided to infect share it with you.

I'm not going to sit here and pontificate about how you need to network.  You already know that, you've heard it a million times, and you're either doing it or your not.  The truth is, I hate it as much as anybody, and often have to be dragged kicking and screaming into being social, as one of my former law partners likes to point out.  (Haven't seen her in a while, hmm.)

All I want to say about networking is two things.  The first is that networking absolutely adheres to the old saying, "you've got to dig your well before you're thirsty."  (Stuck in the middle of an historic drought here in North Carolina, that saying cuts a little close to the bone.)  In fact, there is even a whole book about it by a guy named Harvey Mackay.  The book is called, "Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty" and perhaps unsurprisingly, contains the solid advice that -- you guessed it -- you should DIG YOUR WELL BEFORE YOU'RE THIRSTY.  There, you just saved yourself $12.  Sorry, Harvey.

The other thing I want to bring up is that there are tools available to help you in networking.  They're easy to use and remove a lot of the unpleasantness of networking -- that feeling that you are being slimy and just trying to sell your wares.  All of these tools fall under the general heading of social networking (unless you have been locked in the biosphere, I'm sure you've heard that term) and includes offerings like MySpace, FaceBook, etc.

Before you groan about how those sites are for 13 year olds, I am NOT trying to talk you into building a MySpace page.  No, the gateway drug for professionals into social networking (and the best place for you to start) is with LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is a social networking site designed entirely for people with jobs who want to use the site for professional networking.  You're not going to find it populated with 13 year olds and wannabe rockstars.  Just a bunch (and it is a BIG bunch) of folks looking to network professionally.

The great thing about LinkedIn is that everyone who uses it is there for the same reason:  professional networking.  So, there is no feeling of slimy salesiness about connecting up with folks you know.  It really does break down a huge barrier a lot of people (including myself) have with networking.  The technology is easy to learn, and it is not one of those sites where you are too late to join the party.  It's still in the upswing and there are new lawyers (and potential clients) joining everyday.

If you decide to join, you can find me here.  I'll be your first connection.  It's that easy.  And it's only one step from notworking.  Whatever that means.

File this under the heading, "practice what you preach."  Well, what I preach.  Or maybe you preach it, too.  Anyway.  You know what I mean.

Yesterday I hooked up my new Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 scanner.  It's got a tiny footprint and sits on my desk right next to my monitor and docking station.  Now, I'm no newbie to the paperless (or paperLESS, as some folks contend) world.  I've been scanning documents for a long time.  I'm comfortable with the concept and with not keeping things in paper.  I may need to turn in my law degree for that last sentence.  But I digress.

In all the time I've been scanning paper, though, I've always done it through a copier/scanner machine that emails the document to me (or through staff personnel dedicated to scanning stuff).  The copier/scanner/email plan worked fine; I was used to it and it worked.  After attending TECHSHOW 2008, though, and listening to everyone rave about the low cost, yet excellent ScanSnap, I finally decided to take the plunge and buy one for my office.

It was a breeze to set up and is super easy and intuitive to use, just as promised.  It met expectations.  But here is where it exceeded my expectations:  I totally underestimated just how awesome it would be to have it sitting on my desk within arm's reach.

By now, you may have drawn two conclusions:  1) I am lazy as all get out, and 2) I use the word "awesome" more freely than a man in his 30's probably should.  True on both counts.

David Allen keenly observed in his must-read time management book, Getting Things Done, that if you keep your filing supplies (folders, labels, labelmaker, filing cabinet) within arm's reach, you are far more likely to file something when it needs filing than sticking it in yet another pile.  The same is true with scanning.  Having my little Fujitsu buddy sitting right next to me makes the difference between scanning something as soon as I think of it and piling it up for later.  Translation:  more stuff gets done.

Even if you are in a paperless environment now (or just wishing you were), don't wait.  Go out and get yourself a nice little scanner today.  You'll be amazed at what a difference having one right at hand makes.

I came across Drop.io recently.  Like so many of the things I love on the web (can you say Twitter?), it's neat but I'm not entirely sure what I am going to do with it.

Drop.io is, in essence, a really easy to use file sharing site.  You can create a Drop.io drop site without registering or even setting a password.  Instantly, you'll get a little corner of the web where you can upload files, notes or links -- either to store or to transfer to somebody else.  Once the data is uploaded, all you need to do is tell somebody else where to find it (www.drop.io/YOURACCOUNT) and they can head off to grab it.

There are a lot of file transfer sites out there, but two things set Drop.io apart:  first, it is the most hassle-free web 2.0 experience I have had in a long time.  Second, you can add content to the site by uploading, by sending an email or even by leaving a voicemail.  That's pretty cool.

Check it out, and if you come up with some interesting application of Drop.io, shoot me an email and let me know.

Let’s start with the obvious:  talking about belt-tightening is a whole lot less fun than talking about how to spend an unexpected revenue windfall.  We can all agree on that.

Cost containment is an important topic, though, and a lot of the big brains forecasting law firm economics through 2008 agree on one thing:  get ready to tighten your belt a notch.  Ed Poll has written a great article on the topic in Law Practice Today – it’s all about overhead and how to not let it overmaster you.

Ed defines overhead spending as, “that which could be reduced or eliminated if it does not serve a business purpose,” and goes on to demonstrate that a lot more can reduced or eliminated than one might initially think.  The article targets four key areas of overhead for potential reduction:  space, personnel, technology and marketing.  It’s easy to get sucked into the accounting concept of fixed costs, but Ed points out that only three expenses are truly non-discretionary:  debt service, utilities, and taxes.  Everything else has some wiggle room.

The article goes on to suggest several concrete examples for overhead cost containment that you can use in your practice today, from buying refurbished computers to outsourcing work to a virtual assistant in India to replacing costly advertising buys with a lean PR campaign.

It’s an insightful article and worth the couple of minutes to read it.Belt-tightening is not fun but it may be a skill that keeps your firm afloat when others run aground.

When you hand your business card out, what kind of reaction do you get?  Do the recipients take a quick look and stash it in a wallet?  Or do they stop and say, “Wow, this is cool”?

Ernie the Attorney has a great post called “Rethinking Business Cards” on his blog.  (Hat tip:  Dennis Kennedy.)  Ernie tells the story of having created some fun business cards years ago for the purpose of marketing his blog.  The cards had a cool photo on them (you can see a picture on his blog), and he always got a warm reaction when he handed them out.  People remarked on the photo, wondered if he took it and where.  The cards became a conversation piece.  In fact, those fun cards got a far better reaction than the same-old, same-old law firm business cards Ernie also handed out.

Ernie’s post, which is worth the read, implicitly raises the question, “what is a business card?”  They’re so ubiquitous that you probably – that is, after the day you ordered your cards – never gave them another thought.  They likely look just like everybody else’s cards.  White rectangles filled with way more text than anyone needs with a nondescript logo jammed in one corner.  It’s almost like they were specifically designed to be easily forgotten.

The problem is that business cards are a marketing material – and boring, easily forgotten marketing materials are worthless.  The job of your marketing materials is to help you be recognized and remembered.  To help you, as marketing uber-guru Seth Godin implores, be remarkable.  There is so much information available to everyone, all the time, on every subject, that you have to be remarkable if you want to cut through it.

Take a look at your business card.  Is it remarkable, or do you just want to stuff it back in your wallet?

Might be time for a refresh.

By now, unless you have been living in a cave, you have probably at least heard of the wildly popular social networking site Facebook.  If you (like me) are a Facebook newbie, help has arrived.

“A newbie’s guide to Facebook” published on Computerworld.com, concisely delivers all of the basic information about Facebook:  what it is, how it works, and why you should care.  Before you dismiss this as yet another pointless internet time-suck, consider the following:  the fastest growing demographic using Facebook is the 35+ crowd, and author includes in her article several creative business applications for Facebook as well.

So check out the article.  Even if you decide to take a pass on Facebook, at least you will know what your kids are talking about.

Here's another one of those 101 most useful website lists, this one put out by The Telegraph in Britain.  There's too many of these lists to keep up with anymore, but they are always worth a two minute perusal to see what grabs your eye.

Shout out:  #26, Lulu, is a North Carolina based company.  Go Lulu!

Here is a neat web-based tool.  Tiny URL takes all those incredibly long, unwieldy URLs (ever send a product page from Amazon?) and turns them into neat, tidy, tiny, permanent URLs.  It's free and you can check it out here.

Ever wonder why it is so hard to manage lawyers?

Dr. Larry Richard of the professional service consulting firm Hildebrandt authored a great article in LAWPRO Magazine helping to explain why.  The article is titled, “Herding Cats”, if that gives you any hint as to Dr. Richard’s conclusion.  You can check out the article here.

If any part of your job involves managing attorneys you should definitely read this concise four-page article.  It’s not going to instantly solve all your problems with a quick-fix solution, but it will help you draw a bead on why managing a law firm can be so challenging.

Dr. Richard points out that lawyers, as a group, have a set of distinct personality traits that influence the way they work in organizations.  Traits like high autonomy, low sociability, high urgency, and very high skepticism, to name a few.  This cluster of traits hugely affects many aspects of leading a law firm and managing lawyers -- from mentoring to teamwork, practice group leadership to client retention, these traits have an impact on all of it.

Also interesting are the differences that testing revealed between the “rainmakers” (partners excellent at developing new business) and the “service partners” (partners poor at developing new business but otherwise excellent).  In the three traits most correlated with sales success (empathy, ego drive, and ego strength), rainmakers outscored the service partners dramatically.  This finding underscores the folly of trying to jam an attorney in a role for which he/she is not suited.  Round peg, meet square hole.

Forewarned is forearmed.  Now go out and herd those cats.

Here's one to ask yourself:

Should I really be in this meeting?

Sometimes the simplest ideas are still the best.

There are thousands of management books, courses, blogs, podcasts and other resources available to anyone interested in learning the art of management.  Among these thousands of resources are countless ideas and paradigms for how to best manage people – including the insufferable subsection of folks who insist that one does not manage people, but rather one leads people and manages processes.

Amid this riotous jumble of management effluvia are a few clear, intelligent, and valuable tools that should be in the toolbox of every person who has to manage the work of other people.  The single most important of these tools is the one-on-one meeting. 

Different people call the one-on-one different things (heaven knows, if there is one field that rivals law for jargon, it’s management), but the basic idea is always the same:  time set aside for a manager and a direct report to meet alone with no distractions and discuss whatever needs discussion.

Sometimes it’s a formal meeting blocked on calendars, other times it’s a more casual talk over coffee or lunch.  The keys are that the meeting must be:

1. Regular (both manager and report must know when it is)
2. Frequent (once a week, in my opinion, works best)
3. Long enough (both people need ample opportunity to clear issues off their decks – I suggest one hour meetings)
4. Planned (there needs to be an agreed upon agenda or it will just turn into a bull session)
5. Authentic (both people need to feel free to discuss the real issues)
6. Action-oriented (discussion is not enough, issues raised must be resolved and things need to happen as a result of the meeting)

Setting aside time for a one-one-one with each of your direct reports for an hour each week may seem like the mother of all time sucks, but done right it will save time in the long run by resolving and diffusing a lot of the little things before they turn into big things.

Ever have a really great idea, but it occurs to you when you are someplace without your computer or even pen and paper?  It’s such a great idea that you definitely want to remember it, but you just know you’re going to forget it before you get home or back to your office.

Enter Jott.

Jott is one of the cool, free, web-based tools that has completely insinuated itself into my life.  Jott is essentially an easy way to dictate notes using your mobile phone and have them appear transcribed into emails in your in-box.

Once you register for the service and set up your profile, all you need to do is program Jott’s number into your mobile phone’s address book (Jott is on my speed dial) and then when you have something you want to remember and no easy way to enter into your iPhone or Blackberry (or write it down on paper – which some folks in my organization refer to as using their “Blueberry”), you just call Jott.

You’ll get this very posh-sounding voice asking you in a clipped British accent, “Who do you want to Jott?” to which you respond, “myself.”  Then you proceed to speak your message to yourself and hang up.  It’s that easy.  Within a few minutes, you will receive a transcribed version of your spoke message as an email.  The transcription is not perfect; there are often weird, and amusing, mistakes that Jott makes.  But it’s always close enough that I’ve never had a problem trying to figure out what I was leaving myself a message about.  Of course, it could be my garbled diction that is the problem…

Once you get comfortable with Jott, you can expand its utility by Jotting to other Jotters (Jott users) as well as to a growing list of sites on the web.  You can Jott updates to Twitter, Google Calendar, to your blog, and a whole bunch of other neat sites.  Once you figure out which of these options fits into your life, the power of Jott is unlocked for you.  I regularly Jott to Twitter and to my Google Calendar, and I am constantly surprised by how many opportunities I capture by using the service.

For those of you in the market for a new notebook computer, or who are (like me) geeky enough to think this is a cool topic to discuss, CNET TV has posted a great video review pairing the two current top contenders:  Lenovo's ThinkPad X300 vs Apple's MacBook Air. 

In full disclosure, I must confess that my wife works in the legal department of Lenovo.  I've been an Apple loyalist since 1988, though, so I guess it all evens out.

Here is a link to the video review. 

Which one book do you wish you could get your partners, junior attorneys, or staff to read?

Don’t sack your junior associates and staff just because of a revenue slowdown.  That’s the message from professional service firm guru David Maister in this post.

None of us likes to talk or even think about it, but there continue to be signs of a slowing economy and the dreaded R word – recession.  In a recession law firms get hit hard like every other business and revenue shortfalls force belt-tightening and various austerity measures.  These measures often take the form of sackings – or if you prefer pleasant sounding euphemisms, my favorite is reduction in force – of junior associates and staff.

Maister recommends taking the long view and remembering that one of the key competitive issues for all law firms is recruiting and retaining talented people; a job which is made much harder by throwing folks overboard at the first sign of distress.  Instead, Maister suggests a “haircut” – where partners reduce profitability and shift off as much work as possible to keep associates and staff busy and productive.

It’s a sensible long-haul strategy, but I’m guessing a fairly rare one.

Blogs were a hot topic at the recent 2008 ABA TechShow.  Companies are sprouting up everywhere to help lawyers and law firms start blogging.  It’s conventional wisdom at this point to acknowledge that an effective blog can help a lawyer raise his or her profile, enhance his or her credibility and generate new business.  But there is another side to the story brought to you courtesy of the law of unintended consequences.

News.com (hat tip:  Web Worker Daily) posted an interesting story today about a recent libel suit filed against Cisco Systems over one of its employees personal blogs.  Read it here.

The moral of the story:  decide what your law firm’s blogging policy is and make sure all of your employees are aware of it.

Imagine case management software without the constant headaches of installs, upgrades, compatibility problems, etc.  Sound pretty good?  Then Rocket Matter has a product you may want to check out.

Rocket Matter has been gaining a lot of attention recently for its software as a service, or SaaS, case management software.  SaaS, in short, is software that you use entirely over the web and through your browser, rather than installing directly on your machine.  Because there is nothing to install on your machine, you can use a Mac or PC.  Because Rocket Matter hosts the software on its servers, your expenses for IT maintenance and infrastructure are reduced.  All you need is an internet connection.  The trade-off?  You pay a monthly subscription for the software rather than buying it outright, which depending on your needs may cost you more in the long run.

SaaS is here to stay though, so if you are shopping for a case management product, take a look at Rocket Matter.  Let me know what you think after you try it.

That famous bromide is often quoted by marketing and publicity-minded folks.  (Notably, they frequently leave off the end of that quote from Irish author Brendan Behan, who said “there is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.”)  It’s probably cheerier without that addendum.

The point is a good one, though, and important to lawyers in firms of all sizes.  Public relations (PR) are one of the most underutilized and misunderstood arrows in the lawyer’s marketing quiver.  Used properly it offers a lawyer the chance to be quoted or interviewed in the role of an expert in the media (television, radio, newspapers, blogs) to which his/her target client pays attention.

Susan Cartier Liebel has a good post about how two solo lawyers used PR in the case of the pink poodle.  Check it out here.

Hello and welcome to Law Practice Matters.  Law Practice Matters is a law practice management blog written by me, Erik Mazzone.  I am the Director of the North Carolina Bar Association Law Office Management Assistance Program.  Yeah, my business card is about five inches wide to accommodate that title.

I will regularly post to this blog with a whole bunch of stuff related to law practice management, and all of its parts:  marketing, management, technology, and finance.  I hope you find it informative and entertaining.

Thanks for stopping by!