the [non]billable hour

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.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day, everyone.  Here's a presentation full of "Lessons Learned" that uses pictures I've taken of my daughter, Gracie.  Enjoy!

Ten Resolutions for the New Year

As 2008 draws to a close, it is natural to think about New Year's resolutions.*  We think about our businesses, our clients and ourselves and resolve to do better next year.  If you'd like some help, or just some inspiration, here are Ten Resolutions for the New Year.  Enjoy:

1.  Resolve to be better to everyone.  Start with yourself.

2.  Resolve to choose your customers as carefully as friends, knowing that you’ll work best when they’re one in the same.

3.  Resolve to know your business better.  Recognize that being good at what you do is unimportant if you’re not good at being in the business you’re in.

4.  Resolve to stop doing the things your customers don’t pay you to do, unless you love doing them so much, you’d do them for free.  Because you are.

5.  Resolve to value your life by the things you experience instead of the things you possess.

6.  Resolve to eliminate the things in your life that wake you up in the middle of the night -- unless you’re married to them, or they need to go outside for a walk.

7.  Resolve to become more useful to your customers.  Stop thinking about what they expect from you, and focus instead on what they don’t expect from you.

8.  Resolve to help the people who work with you (and for you) become better at what they do.  Give them what they need to excel at their jobs, and you’ll find you’re more likely to excel at yours.

9.  Resolve to understand the difference between what you do for clients and how long you take to do it.  They care about the former, and can’t understand why you charge for the latter.

10.  Resolve to do the work you long to do, instead of the work you’ve been doing for too long.  Follow your passions, honor your principles and strive to add value to every relationship you’re in. “Next Year” begins now.  Get started on making it great!

I'd love your input, and feel free to add your resolutions in the comments.  If you enjoyed these, check out my other posts in the series:  Ten Rules for Law Students, Ten Rules for the New Economy, Ten Rules for New Solos, Ten Rules of Legal Innovation,  Ten Rules of Legal Technology, Ten Rules of Hourly Billing and Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing. 

Also, if you'd like to get more ideas like these in real time, follow me on Twitter.

*  Thinking about Resolutions for Lawyers is something I've been doing for quite some time.  Here are my 30+ resolutions from 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Ten Rules About Hourly Billing

After the great response I got to yesterday's Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing post, I've decided to share a few more "Rules" of Hourly Billing I've culled from my blog and my speeches.  Enjoy!

1.  Ask your clients what they buy from you.  If it isn’t time, stop selling it!

2.  Imagine a world where your clients know each month how much your bill will be so they could plan for it.  They do.

3.  If you don’t agree on fees at the beginning of a case, you’ll be begging for them at the end of it.

4.  Sophisticated clients who insist on hourly billing do so because they’re smarter than you are, not because they want you to be paid fairly.

5.  When you bill by the hour, your once-in-a-lifetime flash of brilliant insight that saves your client millions of dollars has the same contribution to your bottom line as the six minutes you just spent opening the mail.

6.  Businesses succeed when their people work better.  Law firms succeed when their people work longer.  Your clients understand this -- and resent you for it.

7.  Every time your clients jokingly ask you, “Are you going to charge me for this?” they aren’t joking -- and they’ll check next month’s bill to be sure.

8.  The hardest thing to measure is talent.  The easiest thing to measure is time.  The two have absolutely no relationship to one another.  Your law firm measures talent, right?

9.  Would you shop at a store where the cost of your purchase isn’t set until after you’ve agreed to buy it? You ask your clients to.

10.  There are 1440 minutes each day.  How many did you make matter?  How many did you bill for?  Were they the same minutes?  Didn't think so.

If you'd like to get more ideas like these in real time, follow me on Twitter.

The Curse of Almost Done

A few days ago, I wrote about how I was suffering from The Curse of Almost Happy. I realized that being "close to" fulfillment in my life and career wasn't close at all. So, as I've spent this past weekend knocking off several things on my "To Do for Too Long" list, it hit me that a cause (companion?) to that Curse is another one: The Curse of Almost Done.

Unless you're a hyper-productive, always-on-top-of-everything person, you know what I'm talking about. The Curse of Almost Done is evident all around you. It manifests itself the moment you put off completing those last few steps of a project that is "almost done." It keeps you from picking those projects up and finishing them now because you've got more important things to start, and since they are, after all, "Almost done."

Well, I've battled the Curse of Almost Done all weekend. I'm finally happy to unveil the new LexThink.com. It isn't done, but it is done enough.

Let me know what you think. Still to come: links to my presentations, a client intranet site, some video, my first e-book, and a top-secret project that will launch in two weeks (I promise).

So what's on your "To Do for Too Long" list? Set aside a day each week where you swear to not start anything new. Use that day just for completing things. "Finish Fridays" anyone?

Lessons learned. Mostly the hard way.

Just entered a presentation to SlideShare's World's Best Presentation Contest that I've been noodling around with for a while.  It uses pictures of my daughter, and is titled, "If I'd only known then ....  Lessons learned.  Mostly the hard way."  Check it out, and give it a vote if you like it.

 

view presentation (tags: creativity advice innovation lessons)

Re-XPLANE-ing XPLANE

In my last post, I promised renewed posting and big news. Well, the news I have is big all right, but it isn't what I was expecting to share. Last week, I was laid off from XPLANE, along with six others. Though I'll continue my relationship with XPLANE as a contractor -- doing about the same amount of work as before -- I'm now free to, ahem...as they say, "Explore new opportunities."

Apart from my continued work for XPLANE, which I love, here's what else is on my plate for the next 30 days:

1. Relaunching LexThink! with a "future of law practice" event in Chicago this fall. Look for more here next week.

2. Rebuilding my legal speaking and retreat facilitation business. I've always been a pseudo-regular on the legal speaking circuit, but I've recently been focusing on big-picture legal innovation topics. I just returned from a retreat I designed, facilitated and keynoted for a practice group of a major international firm and will expand and formalize my offerings (under the LexThink brand) before the end of the month. If you want an "Innovational Speaker" for your event, give me a ring.

3. Reviving the blog. I'm going to re-focus my energies on the [non]billable hour, and finally put together all those long-promised posts that have been living in my Moleskine or my head for the last year. Look for several dozen posts in June, as well as my oft-promised e-book on August 1.

4. Reconnecting with you. I've met so many amazing people through this blog, and I'm sorry for losing touch. Forgive me. It is good to be back.

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?

Notice What's Right Before Fixing What's Wrong

So often, we focus (obsess?) on fixing what's wrong with our selves, our families or our businesses.  For a week, try to focus instead on what's right.  Make a list of the three things that are the "right-est."  Take your three things and do just one thing this week to make them even better.  Challenge your family, friends, staff and even clients to do the same.  You can always go back to worrying next week.

(How) Do You Take Credit?

Here's a great idea for ways to remember the folks who've helped you along the way, from this post on How to Take Credit:

So when the time comes to take the stage, remember that you didn’t get here alone: go ahead, grab the microphone and acknowledge your team. Do it before a crowd and in e-mail. Say it with bonuses and baked goods -- but be sure to say it. No one likes to be left out. By sharing the credit the right way, you won't diminish your own accomplishments, you'll add to them by building a reputation as the kind of person people want to work for and for your focus on developing others.

Not sure whom to credit? In their book, Becoming a Resonant Leader, Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis and Frances Johnston suggest keeping running lists of peers who have helped you along your route to success -- along with notes about what you actually learned from them. Keeping such a list will likely help ensure that you don’t forget them in your acceptance speech.

I really like the idea of keeping a running list of people who've helped you along with a note or two about how they've helped.  This is a pretty powerful way to not only remember how you've gotten to where you are, but to also remind you to give help to others who seek it from you.  More on this in the next post.