the [non]billable hour

(Nearly) Free Sarbucks Wi-Fi

If you are on the road a lot, and find yourself in the occasional Starbucks, you can get (nearly) free daily Wi-Fi for the cost of a single cup of coffee each month. Get a Starbucks Card, register it online, and use it at least once a month, and you'll get two consecutive hours a day of complimentary Wi-Fi.

Of course, if you've got an iPhone, or want to pretend you do, you get the free access anyway.

Managing Partners, Report to the LAB

My friend Patrick McKenna has been working hard on a Leadership Advisory Board (LAB) for Managing Partner magazine. Though populated with large firm lawyers, the LAB is shaping up as a pretty amazing resource for managing partners for all sized law firms. Here's a description:

The LAB was formed as a resource to provide pragmatic advice to assist new managing partners with their critical burning issues and help them succeed. The LAB is comprised of the following distinguished current and former law firm leaders: Angelo Arcadipane (Dickstein Shapiro LLP); John Bouma (Snell & Wilmer LLP); Brian K. Burke (Baker & Daniels LLP); Ben F. Johnson, III (Alston & Bird LLP); John R. Sapp (Michael Best & Friedrich LLP); Keith B. Simmons (Bass Berry & Sims PLC); William J. Strickland (McGuire Woods LLP); Harry P. Trueheart, III (Nixon Peabody LLP); together with Patrick J. McKenna (Edge International).

Check it out, and keep on eye on Managing Partner Magazine for more.

LMA Senior Marketers' Program

I'm please to announce that I'll be helping out at the LMA Senior Marketers' Program: Thought Leadership Amidst Relentless Change. I'm going to be doing a new presentation, titled "The Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing," as well as facilitating several collaborative brainstorming sessions for the entire group. It takes place June 19 and 20 in Washington D.C., and is shaping up to be a pretty cool event. If you are interested (and an LMA Member), check it out.

My Upcoming Travel

I've got lots of stuff coming up for work and fun, and would love to meet some readers of this blog when I'm on the road. Here's where I'll be over the next several weeks:

Dallas, TX: April 23-25.
Orlando,FL: May 16-19.
Washington DC: June 18-22.

Also on the "tentative" horizon:

Herndon, VA
Irving, CA
Atlanta, GA

If you're in the neighborhood and would like to meet, drop me a line and we'll see if we can connect.

Matt

Charge $297 per hour and not $300.

Here's a fascinating article in Scientific American titled Why Things Cost $19.95 that discusses the psychological impact certain prices have over others. If you've always wondered why we see odd prices so often ($19.95 vs. $20.00), the article gives the answer. Two University of Florida marketing professors studied how consumers relate a ticketed price to the perceived wholesale "cost" of a good or service:

There were three scenarios involving different retail prices: one group of buyers was given a price of $5,000, another was given a price of $4,988, and the third was told $5,012. When all the buyers were asked to estimate the wholesale price, those with the $5,000 price tag in their head guessed much lower than those contemplating the more precise retail prices. That is, they moved farther away from the mental anchor. What is more, those who started with the round number as their mental anchor were much more likely to guess a wholesale price that was also in round numbers. The scientists ran this experiment again and again with different scenarios and always got the same result.

Why would this happen? As Janiszewski and Uy explain in the February issue of Psychological Science, people appear to create mental measuring sticks that run in increments away from any opening bid, and the size of the increments depends on the opening bid. That is, if we see a $20 toaster, we might wonder whether it is worth $19 or $18 or $21; we are thinking in round numbers. But if the starting point is $19.95, the mental measuring stick would look different. We might still think it is wrongly priced, but in our minds we are thinking about nickels and dimes instead of dollars, so a fair comeback might be $19.75 or $19.50.

I'd really recommend you read the entire article, but the initial takeaway for me is this: If you want clients to believe your rate (or set price for a given service) is close to your actual cost, price in odd numbers.

Three Things Wrong? Move On!

Saw this tip about buying antiques on the Rules of Thumb Blog, and thought it applied even more to potential clients:

Don't buy a piece of antique furniture if you can find three things wrong with it.

So, if you've just finished your first interview with a potential client, and there are three (or more) things about that person or their case that don't seem right, take a pass.  You'll be glad you did.

Bill before the 'moneymoon' is over.

The Urban Dictionary's Word of the Day today is Moneymoon, defined as:

The time after your purchase of a good or service and before 'buyer's remorse' happens. "The moneymoon is over, I realzie now that buying that boat was a waste of money."

Made me think of the number one rule of small business cash flow: Bill your clients before the moneymoon is over.

Pick up the phone!

Just a reminder to call your clients every week:

Each week, no matter the condition of the weather, the color of Ethan's mood ring, or the extra hours it will take to meet our deadlines, we call each of our clients. We check in, ask how they're doing, and give them an update on the activities surrounding their project. We call every week throughout the project, and even two to three weeks past the time we've delivered our work—all to make sure the client doesn't have any last-minute needs, or has run into any problems.

That's how we roll. We care like that.

May I have your attention?

Watch this video:



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.

You Gotta Try PicLens

Trust me on this one. If you EVER view photos or other images in the web, you've got to try PicLens. Easily the coolest thing you'll see on your computer this year. Don't believe me? Check out this demo. I love it!

Are your customers, or your employees, always right?

For another worthwhile read this morning, check out the Top 5 Reasons Why "The Customer is Always Right" is Wrong from the Chief Happiness Officer Blog.  Reason Number 4, it results in worse customer service:

[W]hen you put the employees first, they put the customers first. Put employees first, and they will be happy at work. Employees who are happy at work give better customer service because:

• They care more about other people, including customers
• They have more energy
• They are happy, meaning they are more fun to talk to and interact with
• They are more motivated

On the other hand, when the company and management consistently side with customers instead of with employees, it sends a clear message that:

• Employees are not valued
• That treating employees fairly is not important
• That employees have no right to respect from customers
• That employees have to put up with everything from customers

When this attitude prevails, employees stop caring about service. At that point, real good service is almost impossible - the best customers can hope for is fake good service. You know the kind I mean: courteous on the surface only.

Do you put your customers first, or your employees?

Need a Vacation?

Brad Feld has a great recap of the ways he takes time off to recharge, including a quarterly, week-long vacation and semi-regular weekend getaway:

Go Dark Weekend: When I find myself feeling burned out, I do a go dark weekend. I turn off my computer and cell phone at 6pm on Friday night and don't turn it back on until 5am Monday morning. I cancel anything that is scheduled for the weekend and just do whatever I feel like doing. This is usually a once a quarter event; occasionally more frequently depending on how busy I am. I'm considering doing this around each of my marathon weekends also.

Anyone reading this feeling burned out? How about "going dark" this weekend and reconnecting with your kids?

Your Brain Rules!

Want to learn more about what's going on inside your own head? Check out Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School by John Medina. The site (linked to above) has lots of pretty cool, short videos explaining why our brains work the way they do. Working for XPLANE, I especially liked Rule # 10: Vision Trumps All Other Senses, and it contains this rule of thumb for presenters:

You'll get 3x better recall for visual information than for oral. And you'll get 6x better recall for information that's simultaneously oral and visual.

Here's why:

• We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you'll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you'll remember 65%.
• Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time.
• Why is vision such a big deal to us? Perhaps because it's how we've always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity.
• Toss your PowerPoint presentations. It’s text-based (nearly 40 words per slide), with six hierarchical levels of chapters and subheads—all words. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images. Burn your current PowerPoint presentations and make new ones.

Wow!

Got Anxious Clients?

Think about it. Every client who enters a lawyer's office is anxious. In fact, they'd probably prefer going to the dentist. That's why this article on How to Deal with Anxious People is important reading. It sets out some research, with some valuable tips for deciphering visual cues, that every lawyer should know. Here's why:

The more you talk over or at anxious people, the more pressure you put on their middle brain and the more they will close their minds to what you are saying.

Alternatively, the more you talk to an anxious person -- or even better yet, with them -- the more you alleviate that pressure and the easier it is to access their upper brain and open their minds to you. Here's a critical point, though: the approach you may think you are taking in a conversation with an anxious person may not be the approach the other person perceives.

Also worth remembering when you are confronted with that big guy in the bar who accuses you of cheating at pool.

Size Matters

If you are still tooling around with a small computer monitor (or worse, your staff is), check out this post from the WSJ's Business Technology Blog. It is time to supersize:

Researchers at the University of Utah tested how quickly people performed tasks like editing a document and copying numbers between spreadsheets while using different computer configurations: one with an 18-inch monitor, one with a 24-inch monitor and with two 20-inch monitors. Their finding: People using the 24-inch screen completed the tasks 52% faster than people who used the 18-inch monitor; people who used the two 20-inch monitors were 44% faster than those with the 18-inch ones. There is an upper limit, however: Productivity dropped off again when people used a 26-inch screen.