the [non]billable hour

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.

Using Facebook Ads to Find Legal Work

Attention Law Students:  There's a great post over at One Day One Job abut Using Facebook Ads to Make Employers Hunt You Down that's definitely worth a read. It recaps an experiment where job seekers used targeted Facebook ads to reach people who worked for companies they admired.  For Katelyn Hill (below), here's what happened:

Katelyn Hill recently graduated from Abilene Christian University with a degree in Electronic Media. She loves television and movies and hopes to work in the entertainment industry, so she targeted the Walt Disney Company with her Facebook advertising campaign. Her ad received 685 clicks, which garnered 21 e-mails and 4 Facebook messages. She was offered one job interview, but wasn’t quite qualified for the position, so she declined. She also had several e-mails from individuals who offered to forward her resume to their supervisors. Many others offered her general advice on finding a job with Disney or commented on how creative they thought her ad campaign was.

I think this is a brilliant idea.  It isn't a reach to take this approach and target attorneys and staff at specific firms you'd like to work for. 

It could (though your malpractice carrier may disagree) also work for lawyers targeting specific clients or types of work as well.

One Thousand Dollars an Hour is Dumb.

If you must compete on price, here's a McDonald's billboard that might give your marketing people some inspiration:


Found on Billboardom.  Full Story Here.

Blocked? Stop Typing!

The title of this short post from the 37 Signals Blog says it all: Writer's Block is Sometimes Just Typer's Block. If you're having trouble writing, try this:

Record the conversation where you get it out right. When you speak an idea, it engages a different part of your brain than when you write it. You often say it clearer when you’re just riffing aloud. And you get to more gut-level stuff too. You bypass that “should I say this?” filter. You get it straight from your gut/brain instead of your fingers.

As someone who used to dictate all the time, I've gotten away from the think first, type later model of writing, but am going to break out my digital recorder and give it another try.

Your Firm, R.I.P.

Patti Digh talks about Living an Irresistible Obituary, and just started a site she's dedicated to sharing "living obits" sent in by readers. Patti challenges us to live a life that, when recounted in the inevitable obituary, makes people say "wow!" As an exercise, she suggests writing an obituary for yourself of the life you hope to lead before you die. This can be a powerful exercise for us individually, to be sure, but I'm quite certain it would pay some really significant dividends for law firms as well.

If you had to write your firm's "obituary" today, would it be about a firm you're proud to have served? Would your firm be mourned by its clients and employees? Would your local legal community miss the firm's contributions? Would former clients even notice the firm had gone?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no," what can you do to turn your firm into one that matters? Perhaps writing an "irrestible obituary" would be a good start.

What Do Your Clients Think About You?

Here's an exercise I'm working on for a Client Service Workbook that's been an on-and-off project of mine for a while.

There will be several comic strip-like panels depicting scenes of a client interacting with you and your staff. Each will be on a worksheet you can give to yourself and your staff. Everyone will fill in the empty thought-bubbles with what they believe the "client" is thinking in situations like when:

They're in the reception area waiting for their appointment:


They're listening to you give them advice:


They just received their bill:

Once the thoughts are filled in, you compare and discuss the similarities and differences. To make the exercise even more valuable, ask your current and former clients to complete the same exercise.

Let me know what you think. I'm committed to finishing the Workbook by the end of the year, and will be testing similar exercises with my consulting and coaching clients 'til then.

100 Ways to Be More Creative

I found this great list of 100 Simple, Low-Cost, Soulful Ways to Be More Creative on the Job and wanted to share it with you.  Next time you're stuck, pick a few off the list at random and give them a shot.

A Social Media What-To-Do

Lots of folks are talking about using Social Media for business, including me. When I speak to lawyers, after the "What the heck is ..." questions come the "How much time will this take me?" ones. Last week, my friend Chris Brogan published his 19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day post on his fantastic blog. In it, he shares 19 "chores" one could do every day (or at least every week) to keep one's online presence alive and kicking on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Blogs.

Here are his LinkedIn tips:

11. Enter any recent business cards to invite them to LinkedIn (if you’re growing your network).
12. Drop into Q&A and see if you can volunteer 2-3 answers.
13. Provide 1 recommendation every few days for people you can honestly and fully recommend.
14. Add any relevant slide decks to the Slideshare app there, or books to the Amazon bookshelf.

Nobody knows this growing world of "Presence Management" better than Chris, and I'd highly recommend you not only read his full post, but add some (or all) of his suggested "to-do's" to your list.

A Legal Blogging Roundtable

Last month, I participated in a legal blogging roundtable for the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis that was published in their subscription-only newsletter.  My partners in crime were Dennis Kennedy (DennisKennedy.Blog), George Lenard (George's Employment Blawg), and Evan Schaeffer (Trial Practice Tips and The Legal Underground).  Together, we have combined for more than 20 years of blogging experience.

Dennis took our contributions and republished them to his blog as A Blogging Guide for St. Louis (and Other) Lawyers (and Others).  Here's one of our takes on the future of blogging:

Matt Homann: I think we'll see the continued adoption of blogs by legal professionals as much by choice as necessity. The next generation of law firm clients have lived their entire lives online, interact with Twitter and Facebook constantly, and read blogs everyday. They may have never used the Yellow Pages, and instead look to the web before making any major purchasing decision. They'll expect a robust online presence from the professionals they hire, and a blog is one of the easiest and most effective ways to build that presence.

George Lenard: Integration with the surviving remnants of mainstream media into enriched, customized streams of information in manageable chunks for busy readers, plus continuing contributions to the wealth of information available to web users through ever-more-sophisticated search technologies. I was recently told by a web-content distribution company that my posts now have the potential of appearing in a news stream on the Wall Street Journal's law pages amidst conventional sources such as the ABA Journal, if they match the WSJ search criteria, with no distinction in appearance that would suggest that my content is in any way inferior or less professional than that written by professional journalists.

Evan Schaeffer: I don't have any predictions about the future of blogging. If you think of blogging as merely a means of publishing one's writing, which it is, you don't have to be too worried about the future. Get into the habit of writing, and if you like it, you can always migrate to the next technological platform, if and when there is one.

Dennis Kennedy: Among bloggers, Twitter and microblogging is all the rage. That will continue to affect blogging, but blogging still has great potential, especially to cover niche topics. I remain bullish on blogging. As for predicting the future, I still like what Ernest "Ernie the Attorney" Svenson said in an article on the future of blogging from four years ago in Law Practice Magazine: "Perhaps the biggest question that remains is: How quickly will law firms move to develop blogs? It depends on a lot of internal and external factors. But the clock is certainly ticking. For some firms that sound is just loud and annoying, while for others it is stirring and prompting them to act. So when will your firm create a blog? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick . . . ."

Twelve Truths About Time

In early August, I'm headed to Duluth, Minnesota to speak at the Strategic Solutions for Solo and Small Firms conference. One of the presentations I'm giving is called the Twelve Truths About Time. In it, I share twelve reasons why attorneys should abandon the billable hour. Here's the slide deck for that presentation. 

Twelve Truths About Time

View more presentations from mhomann.

It is still in "draft" form, and I expect to tweak it a bit before I use it live, so please let me know what you think. My friend and artist/designer, M. Jason Robards, drew the clocks. We're working next on a "Real Innovation for Real Lawyers" slide deck.  I'll share that as soon as it is done. Thanks!