the [non]billable hour

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.

Thanks to The Next 45 Years for the inspiration!

(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.

Six Word Memoirs

If you liked my PowerPoint Haiku exercise, you've got to check out this Six-Word Memoir video (thanks, Magda).  Can you write your memoir in six words? 



My first shot:   Stopped lawyering. Having way more fun.

Kill Your Projects, Not Your Clients

Here's an interesting idea from Scott Young that may just help with your growing to-do list:  Set up a Project Kill Day. In short, you schedule a distraction-free, off-site day to "kill" off one of your projects.  Check out the entire post for his step-by-step guide.

Not sure which projects you have that merit an entire day?  Try writing down the first client-related task you think of in the morning and the last one you think about before bed.  If it is the same one for more than a day or two, kill it before it kills you!

Need More "Work" to Do?

Hugh MacLeod has a great idea for juicing your creativity:

Add 25% to amount of hours you work every week, and fill them with fun, interesting, useful stuff. Google allows its employees 20% of their work time to devote to their own personal projects. If your employer won't allow you to do this, you should unilaterally make the time for yourself, either at the office or at home, hence the extra 25%. Your peers in the office may think you weird at first, but after a while it'll start paying off.

I've been trying to do this for a while now, and it is starting to pay off.  I'm finishing up the e-book and stretching myself to be creative in different ways.  Give it a try!                 

Tags: creativity, gapingvoid, homann

Spending My Vacation on You

Now that I'm at XPLANE, I've got some real, honest-to-goodness vacation time to use.  So, during the next two weeks, instead of catching up on my usual resolution series, I'm going to be putting together an e-book that will capture "The Best Of" this blog.  I've been working on it for a while, and I'm really excited about how it is coming along.  I'll be sharing it with you right after the New Year.  Happy Holidays!

Ideate for the Holidays

Church Marketing Sucks continues a great series on Lessons in Not Sucking with this post on Building an Ideation Team.  There are some absolutely great tips in the post, including: "Invite People You Don't Like," and "Invite People with Unusual Professions."  Read the post, and then think about ways to do a firm-wide ideation session at your holiday party this year.  That's right, gather up some of your people and your clients and spend a bit of time thinking of ways to get better as a firm -- perhaps by focusing on what your top-ten firm resolutions for 2008 should be.  You might be surprised at the result.

15 Thoughts for Law Students: A Mini-Manifesto

I've written a few mini-manifestos for clients and lawyers before and remain quite enamored with the format.  Here's one for law students with some random (semi-related) thoughts on law school and the legal profession.  Let me know what you think, and feel free to add your own in the comments.

1.  Law school is a trade school.  The only people who don't believe this to be true are the professors and deans.

2.  Want to piss off your professors?  Ask them if they've ever run a successful law practice.

3.  Being good at writing makes you a good law student.  Being good at understanding makes you a good lawyer.  Being good at arguing makes you an ass.

4.  You can learn more about client service by working at Starbucks for three weeks than you can by going to law school for three years.

5.  Law school doesn't teach you to think like a lawyer.  Law school teaches you to think like a law professor.  Believe me, there's a huge difference.

6.  You can get through law school without understanding anything about what it is like to be a lawyer.  That is a terrible shame.

7.  The people who will help you the most in your legal career are sitting next to you in class.  Get to know them outside of law school. They are pretty cool people.  They are even cooler when you stop talking about the Rule Against Perpetuities.

8.  Your reputation as a lawyer begins now.  Don't screw it up (and quit bragging on your MySpace page about how drunk you got last night).

9.  Law is a precedent-based profession.  It doesn't have to be a precedent-based business.  Be prepared to challenge the prevailing business model.  Somebody has to.

10. Experienced lawyers work with clients.  Young lawyers work with paper.  You like working with paper, right?

11. You are about to enter a world where getting your work done in half the time as your peers doesn't get you rewarded.  It gets you more work.

12. Except for prosecutors and public defenders, nobody tries cases anymore.  Especially not second year associates.

13. You have a choice:  You can help people and make a decent living, or you can help corporations and make a killing.  Choose wisely. 

14. There are plenty of things you don't know, and even more things you'll never know.  Get used to it.  Use your ignorance to your benefit.  The most significant advantage you possess over those who've come before you is that you don't believe what they do.

15. People don't tell lawyer jokes just because they think they are funny.  They tell lawyer jokes because they think they are true.  Spend your career proving them wrong.

Personal Technology Challenge: 10 Things

I really liked this post in Zen Habits titled The 100 Things Challenge.  The essence is that you cut your personal possessions down to 100 things.  Things that are shared, non-personal stuff, books, and tools don't count.  It got me wondering about our personal technology burden.  How many different programs, web applications, tools, toys and gadgets do we accumulate?  How many of those do we use everyday? 

I'm going to cut my tech burden down to ten items for the next 30 days.  This includes hardware, software and web apps.  Here's my initial list:

1. MacBook Pro
2. iPod
3. Treo
4. Google Reader
5. GMail
6. Google Notebook
7. Entourage
8. MindManager
9. Keynote/Pages
10. ScanR

What's on yours?

An Unreasonable Request

I am a big fan of making Unreasonable Requests -- requests that I don't expect a "Yes" answer to, but that I make nonetheless.

I'm going to be sharing several on this blog over the following months.  Here's the first:

I need someone to redesign my blog.  I've got quite a few projects I'm working on, and need to incorporate them in a new, non-template based site.  I know what I want, but don't have the HTML and CSS chops to do it myself.  In exchange (in addition to ample credit) I will work with you to make your business better -- and I promise you'll find the trade more than fair.

Resolutions III: December 31

Take Lisa Hanneberg’s advice.  Choose one resolution, and each day:

- Tell two people about it.
- Take two actions that support it.
- Make two requests that support it (no matter how unreasonable).

Resolutions III: December 30

Resolve to be your clients’ creative guru. 

You don’t just want to be your clients’ problem solver (though that is better than ‘problem resolver’), you want to be the person they go to when they need to think about ways to grow their business, tackle new challenges, make more money, and be happier. 

Here is an amazing list of almost 200 different creativity techniques that you can use with your clients to help them be more creative.  Who knows, you may just learn to be more creative yourself.

Resolutions III: December 29

Resolve to understand what you sell.  This is pretty straightforward.  Ask your clients what they are buying from you.  If they answer “time,” then by all means continue to sell it.  If they answer something else (and it will be something else), learn to sell that instead.

Just to get you started, here’s one of my favorite posts of 2006:

Having a difficult time “selling” your value as an advisor instead of a tecnician?  Here’s an easy-to-understand way to communicate the differences between Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom, from the Across the Sound podcast (via Howard Kaplan):

Data is "the sun rises at 5:12 AM"

Information is "the sun rises from the East, at 5:12 AM"

Knowledge is "If you're lost in the woods without a compass, follow the direction of the sun to find your direction"

Finally, wisdom is "Don't get lost in the woods"

Having a difficult time “selling” your value as an advisor instead of a tecnician?  Here’s an easy-to-understand way to communicate the differences between Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom, from the Across the Sound podcast (via Howard Kaplan):

Data is "the sun rises at 5:12 AM"

Information is "the sun rises from the East, at 5:12 AM"

Knowledge is "If you're lost in the woods without a compass, follow the direction of the sun to find your direction"

Finally, wisdom is "Don't get lost in the woods"

Resolutions III: December 28

Resolve to rethink your business cards.  In August of 2005, I wrote about my new index card-sized business cards.  Here are the cards I’m using now for realBIGthinking:

I rarely get a negative comment when I hand the card to someone, and the cards almost always begin an interesting conversation.  And isn’t that what a business card is supposed to do?

Lawyers Appreciate ...

Last week Gerry Riskin asked me to write a post that  begins with the words “Lawyers Appreciate”  (the idea was originally conceived here).  Here’s mine:

Lawyers Appreciate Gifts.  Here are three things I’d like to (belatedly) give all my lawyer friends for the holidays:

1.  A family who loves them.

2.  A community who respects them.

3.  Great clients who pay them. 

And if I didn’t spend all my budget on those three things, I’d add four more:

4.  One hour each day to dream about how they’d make their business better.

5.  The courage to try the things they’ve thought up. 

6.  The wisdom to ignore those who say those things can’t be done.

7.  Friends like Gerry to cheer them on.

Resolutions III: December 27

Another favorite tip:  When your clients come to see you, resolve to help them see you.

Ever have clients come by your office who need to read documents?  Get a load of this tip (for waiters and waitresses) from Tricks of the Trade:

Keep a pair of reading glasses at hand. At least once every few days you'll get a customer who forgot their glasses and are unable to read the menu. Produce your spare pair and a good tip is secure.

Reading glasses are cheap at Wal-Mart, Target, etc.  Grab a few pairs and your clients will “see” what a great lawyer you are. 

Ever have clients come by your office who need to read documents?  Get a load of this tip (for waiters and waitresses) from Tricks of the Trade:

Keep a pair of reading glasses at hand. At least once every few days you'll get a customer who forgot their glasses and are unable to read the menu. Produce your spare pair and a good tip is secure.

Reading glasses are cheap at Wal-Mart, Target, etc.  Grab a few pairs and your clients will “see” what a great lawyer you are. 

Resolutions III: December 26

Here is a really simple one.  If you want to get more done (and you don’t dictate everything), resolve to type better.  In fact, I’d be hard pressed to think of a cheaper and better way to improve office-wide productivity, than to get everyone typing faster. 

Of course, if partners responding to their e-mails could get the response off in a “.10” instead of a “.20” clients would benefit as well.

Resolutions III: December 25

Resolve to tell your family and friends how much you love them.

Resolutions III: December 24

Resolve to become aware of news affecting your cients before they do.*

1.  Using Google Blog Search or Google Alerts set up several searches for each of your clients.  Use their names, industry, competitors’ names, products, etc.

2.  Subscribe to the RSS feed for each search.

3.  Notify your clients whenever you see something relevant to them or their industry.

Extra Credit:

4.  If you use Google Reader as your RSS Aggregator, create a “tag” for each of your clients.

5.  For each tag, Google Reader allows you to create a unique URL for that tag that you can share with your clients.

6.  Give each of your clients their tag’s unique URL and everytime they open it in their browser, they’ll see everything you’ve “marked” for them to read.

*  This post will be expanded into a longer how-to in January.

Resolutions III: December 22

Resolve to get less business. 

Step One:  Go through your client list and place a check next to every client who:

• you hate
• treats your staff poorly
• never pays on time
• always complains about everything – including your service
• is never happy with anything
• etc.

Step Two:  Figure out how much of your income comes from these clients.  Fire them.  If too much income comes from clients you hate serving, find a different practice area or a different job.

Step Three:  While you are at it, look at your calendar for the last year.  How many things (like family outings, vacations, and your children’s activities) didn’t you get to do because you had to work?  Add up the amount of money you made by missing these events.

Step Four:  Add the amounts from Steps Two and Three.  Increase your hourly rate (unless you already use value pricing) to make up for the business you are letting go.

Step Five:  Explain your rate increase to clients by telling them you decided to work for fewer clients to deliver the remaining ones better service (and to remain sane). 

Step Six:  Deliver that better service to your remaining clients.  Spend more time with your family.  Be happier. 

Resolutions III: December 21

Resolve to help your clients help each other.

Step One:  In addition to your normal engagement agreement, develop a “Client Promotion Agreement” that your clients sign that permits you to discuss with others what they do (in a most generic sense) and allows you to introduce them to others who can help them/buy from them/sell to them/etc.*

Step Two:  When asking them to sign the Client Promotion Agreement, explain to them that you take their privacy very seriously, but also believe in helping them and their business in any way that you can, and that you have many clients whom they might benefit from being introduced to.

Step Three:  Get to know as much as you can about your clients’ non-legal needs.  Try not to charge for these conversations (and do it at their place of business, if you can).  Ask them questions like these:

 What are the most common problems your customers have that you aren’t able to help them with?

What one thing could you do this year with someone’s help that would have the greatest impact on your business?

Step Four:  Introduce them to others who can help them.

 

* Though you may not ethically need this agreement (or you could cover it in your engagement agreement) it is a good way to reinforce how much you care about them and a nice way to begin the rest of the conversation about how to help them.

Resolutions III: December 20

Resolve to ease the technology burden on your employees.  Here’s how:

1.  Ask everyone in your office to keep track of every computer application and web-based tool they use each week.

2.  Have everyone rate each application/tool on “ease of use” on a scale of 1–5, with 5 being easiest.

3.  Either get rid of the applications that scored a 1, 2 or 3, or invest in training to teach everyone how to use them.

17 Lawyer Tips: A Mini Manifesto

After writing 15 Client Tips: A Mini Manifesto, I figured that turnabout is fair play.  Here are 17 for Lawyers:

1.  Whenever your clients don’t understand what you are doing for them, they think about what you are doing to them.

2.  Many of your clients remain your clients because it is a pain in the ass to find another laywer – not because they love you.

3.  Every time your clients get your bill, they think about how beautiful your office is and about the nice car you drive.  And they wonder if you are worth it. 

4.  If your office is a dump and you drive a wreck, they wonder about that too.

5.  If your client doesn’t pay you, fire them.  Don’t ignore them.

6.  At least once a year, tell a client, “It’s on the house.”

7.  Taking a client to play golf doesn’t show how good a lawyer you are.  It shows how good a golfer you are.

8.  Quit being a pompous, demanding jerk around the office.  If you can’t keep good staff, you don’t deserve good clients.

9.  Your clients will always know their business better than you do.  They may even know the law better than you.  Make sure to seek their advice before giving yours.

10.  A lawyer charging extra for stamps and copies is like a car wash charging extra for water.  Stop it now.

11.  Your clients have wants.  Your clients have needs.  They often don’t know the difference.

12.  Whenever you interrupt a client meeting to take an “important” call, your client thinks about hiring another lawyer.

13.  Imagine a world where your clients knew each month how much their bill from you will be so they could plan for it.  They do.

14.  If you hate being a lawyer, be something else.  You are smart.  You’ll figure it out.

15.  A bill is not communication.  At least not the good kind.

16.  When is the last time you called a client just to thank them for being your client?  That’s what I thought.

17.    People don’t tell lawyer jokes just because they are funny.  They tell lawyer jokes because they think they are true.  Spend your career proving them wrong.

Resolutions III: December 19

Today’s resolution is to do this exercise every week:

Write down your priorities.  Now look at your calendar.  Do the things you spend your time on mirror the things you think you should be doing?  Probably not – and it could be the primary reason you are dissatisfied with what you do.

Either your priorities will change to match your daily routine, or vice versa. 

I think this would be even more powerful if done office-wide, with this additional wrinkle: 

In addition to comparing everyone’s priorities with their calendars, ask everyone in a supervisory role to list the priorities of those they supervise.  Ask the supervised employees to list the priorities they think they are supposed to have.  Compare and discuss. 

Resolutions III: December 18

Distribute a monthly Postcard-Sized Newsletter from your firm.

Resolutions III: December 17

Here’s one of my favorite ideas from 2006:  Have a Trade Your Headache Day in your office:

Unless you are among the small percentage of hyper-motivated and totally focused people out there in the world, you know you have at least one “headache” sitting in a pile on your desk or on your to-do list.  It may be that project you keep putting off, that client you hate dealing with, or that phone call you just don’t want to make.  No matter what it is, imagine how happy you’d be tomorrow if it weren’t your responsibility any longer.

Well, odds are your co-workers have similar “headaches” they face every day too.  Here is a way to cope: 

Every week (or month) get together with your co-workers and bring your number one headache with you.  Identify it, and then trade it with one that someone else brought.  Think of it like kind of a regular white elephant gift exchange.  Just make sure the same headache doesn’t get traded over and over again.

Resolutions III: December 16

The first week of 2007, go buy seven decks of cards. (via Eric Maisel, and this post on Worthwhile):

Get seven decks of cards with similar backs. Lay out all seven decks on your living room rug, backs showing. This is a year of days (give or take). Let the magnitude of a year sink in. Experience this wonderful availability of time. (This is a powerful exercise.)

Carefully count the number of days between two widely-separated holidays, for instance New Year's Day and the Fourth of July. Envision starting a large project on that first holiday (today!) and completing it by the second.

Resolutions III: December 15

Read “The Yes Man” by Danny Wallace – a book about what happens when a guy says “yes” to literally everything for a year.  Scott Ginsberg suggested I read this book about six months ago.  I did, and since then I’ve recommended this book to more people than any other book I’ve ever read.  It can be a real life changer.

Resolutions III: December 14

Here’s a simple resolution for you:

Each week, identify one client and send them a hand-written card thanking them for being your client.

Resolutions III: December 13

Has your accountant told you that you need to spend some money on office things before the end of the year?  Try this:

Let’s say you have $20,000 and ten employees.  Tell everyone that you have $10,000 to spend to make the office better.  Ask each employee what one thing (costing from $1–10K) they’d buy the office to make it a better place to work for everyone.  Put the suggestions up on the wall and let everyone discuss and vote for the winner.  Then buy it.

Now, take the remaining $10,000 and divide it equally among your employees (including yourself).  Don’t pay it to them.  Instead, ask each how they’d spend their $1000 to make the office work better for them.  Then buy it.

I think you’ll be amazed at what a morale booster this will be for your office.  The amount doesn’t have to be $20k either.  Your employees will be happy to know that you not only value their input on making your office a better place to work, you act upon it.

Resolutions III: December 12

Yesterday, I posted about a way to have more ideas by taking a walk with a small camera.  Here’s how to get your entire organization into the habit:

Step One:  Get your office a camera (even better, get everyone in your office a camera).

Step Two:  Take turns choosing a particular object, thing, or shape of the week. 

Step Three:  Ask everyone to take pictures of the subject of the week. 

Step Four:  Upload all of the photos taken to a common location (like Flickr).

Step Five:  Discuss the best photos at a weekly staff meeting. 

Step Six.  Pick the best photos each week, print them out, make the photographers “sign” them, and then frame them. 

Step Seven:  Throw out your store-bought “art” and hang up your new original artwork.

INNOVATION BONUS:  Instead of choosing an object, thing, or shape, identify a challenge your office is facing.  Ask your budding photographers to take pictures like before, but suggest they make each picture relate to the challenge (or its solution) in some way – no matter how tenuous the connection.  At you weekly meeting, have everyone explain how/why their photos relate to either the challenge or the solution.

 

 

Resolutions III: December 11

My favorite quote I found in 2006 is from French philosopher Emile Chartier, who said, “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”  Following this advice, today’s resolution is to be less dangerous by having more ideas.  Here’s one of my favorite ways:

Step One:  Buy a (small) camera.  This is the one I love.

Step Two:  Go for a walk (don’t forget the camera).

Step Three:  Take lots of pictures, focusing (pun intended) on a particular object, thing, or shape.

Step Four:  Upload them to Picassa, Flickr, iPhoto, etc.

Step Five:  After your walk, spend no more than 10 minutes writing down any random ideas rumbling around inside your head.  For extra credit, write the ideas on the label or note section of your photo-organizing tool.

Step Six:  Repeat daily.

Resolutions III: December 10

Do you use Linked In?  More and more of your current and prospective clients do.  If you use it, here’s a LinkedIn-flavored resolution for you:

1.  Update your profile.

2.  Connect with your contacts (the Outlook Plug-In works great!).

3.  Ask trusted contacts to endorse your work.

Taking a bit of my own medicine here, I’m asking anyone who’s in my network already (or who’d like to join) to endorse me.  Check out my LinkedIn profile in a month to see if I’ve been successful.

Resolutions III: December 9

Didn’t get your Christmas cards out on time?  No worries.  While I’m not sure if this is exactly a resolution or not, there is a tremendous opportunity to use your firm resolutions as a marketing tool. 

Once you’ve settled on five or so firm-wide, client-facing resolutions (not things like deploy a new SQL server, or charge more for copies and postage), send a New Year’s card to each client that reads something like this:

Happy New Year from ABC Firm.   While each New Year brings the promise of wealth and happiness, we know how quickly business resolutions made in January can fade by March.  We’d like to help you keep your 2007 business resolutions … and we’d like you to help us keep ours.

In 2007, we resolve to (add your 1–5 resolutions here):

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

How about you?  What do you resolve to do in 2007 to make your business more profitable, more successful and more fun?  Let us know on the card attached and drop it in the mail.  We will set up a time to meet with you (at no charge) and identify things we can do to help you keep your resolutions and grow your business in the next twelve months.  

One last thing:  We are serious about our resolutions and want you to help us keep them.  If you catch us failing to live up to any of ours, or if you see anything we haven’t resolved to do that you think we should, let us know.  We want to make your 2007 – and ours – the best year ever!

Resolutions III: December 8

Here’s an easy one.  Tomorrow, for an hour:

1.  Unplug your office from the internet.

2.  Send your phones to voicemail (and make sure the ringer is off, too).

3.  Have everyone in your office make a list of something, but don’t have them sign it.  Thinks like:

• The things I need most to make my job easier/better/more fun.
• The thing(s) our competitors do WAY better than we do.
• The thing(s) we do WAY better than our competitors.
• Our favorite clients.
• Our least favorite clients.
• The things that I’d change around here, if only I were boss.
• If given $1000, I’d buy ______ for the office.
• My/Our biggest challenge is …

4.  Every 10 minutes, put all the lists in a pile on a table, and have everyone pick another one. 

5.  After the end of the hour, share the lists with everyone.  Leave them somewhere they can be added to.

6.  At your staff meetings, discuss one list each week.

Now, go check your voicemail.

Resolutions III: December 7

Is one of your resolutions to get more business?  Here are some ways to do just that:

1.  Make a list of the one industry you serve best (or that you’d like to serve better). 

2.  Ask someone familiar with the industry what periodicals everyone reads. 

3.  Subscribe to (and read) those magazines.

4.  Leave them in your waiting room when you’re done.   

Extra Credit:

1.  Submit articles to the magazine(s) that demonstrate your legal expertise.

2.  Attend trade shows advertised in the magazines.  Make sure everyone you meet knows the only reason you are there is to learn more about the industry you serve.

3.  Host a quarterly or twice-yearly event highlighting industry trends for local industry members.  If there is some sort of continuing education requirment in the industry, get your event certified.

Extra, Extra Credit:

1.  Compile all of the important materials, books, magazines, etc. for the industry in your office.

2.  Call this an “Industry Lending Library” or something similar.

3.  Make sure everyone in the industry knows they can stop by and borrow what they need (and not have to subscribe to/buy the materials themselves).

4.  Write a “Best Of” Report for each conference you attend.  Mail it to each industry member in your community.  Or blog it.

Extra, Extra, Extra Credit:

1.  Send me $5,000 as soon as someone identifies you as an “Industry Expert.”  ;-) 

Resolutions III: December 6

Resolve to be the place your clients turn to for innovative ideas.  Here's just one way:

First, go to each of your business clients in the next 90 days and ask them this question (taken from this post by Kathy Sierra):  "What is the one thing that you are most afraid of that could put you out of business before the decade's over?"

Second, once all of your clients have answered the question, identify the three or four most common answers and find people who can help the clients with their perceived problems.  Invite clients (5-10 at a time) to meet with these people and brainstorm solutions.  Don't charge for these brainstorming sessions (you will identify enough new business out of them to justify the time).

Third, record the ideas, share them with all your clients, and help clients to implement them.

Finally, plan a hell of a party around New Year's in 2010 and celebrate with the clients who've survived the decade.

 

Resolutions III: December 5

Add this question to your client intake form: 

What is something that you want to accomplish but you need someone else’s help in order to make it happen?

From The Ripple Effect

Resolutions III: December 4

Niche is an amazing new St. Louis restaurant in the Benton Park neighborhood.  After making reservations several weeks ago, I went for the first time Saturday night.  It was fantastic!

The Menu has three main categories:  First Things First, On to Bigger Things, and Sweet Dreams (appetizers/salads, entrees, and desserts).  Though the items listed in each course have individual prices, the restaurant offers diners their choice from each for a flat $35.00.  Not surprisingly, almost everyone chooses the “three for thirty-five” option.

Taking a page from Niche’s menu, here’s the resolution for the day:  Build A Menu for Your Firm.

• Pick a practice area you are very familiar with, and divide the typical representation into three phases.  
• Under each phase, list the kinds of things that you would do for the average client (like initial meetings, fact gathering, pleading preparation, etc.) 
• Now, review old bills to get a sense of how much you really charge for each service, and come up with a price for each.
• Prepare a “Menu” modeled on the one from Niche.

Even if you don’t plan on using the menu, it will force you to think about the attractiveness of the flat rate price.  Still not sure?  Ask your former clients (who’ve previously utilized the services you’ve set forth on the menu) what they think –  and most importantly, what they’d have thought if you’d presented them with the menu before they hired you.

BONUS:  If you are going to adopt the menu pricing model, go to a good restaurant supply store and have your prices printed in actual menus! 

Oh, and one more thing:  while you are developing a menu, don’t forget the “Whine List.”  Make a list of all of the things the typical client complains about.  Try to address those complaints with the client at the beginning of the representation, not at the end.

Bon Appetit!

 

Resolutions III: December 3

Build an office gallery:

Ask your employees to bring in the artwork of their children/grandchildren/nephews/neices/etc. and hang it in your firm’s “Gallery.”  Every year, have an art show, where all the kids are invited (with parents, of course) to see their work.

Resolutions III: December 2

Find your five favorite clients.  Take them to dinner.  Don’t let them leave until they answer this question:  What can I do to get more clients like you?

Resolutions III: December 1

Build a 2007 Resolution Wall.

Find a blank wall in your office where everyone can post as many firm-related “resolutions” as they want on 5x8 inch Post-It Notes.*   

At the beginning of 2007, draw a line ( tape) down the middle of the wall.  Label one side “Someday” and the other side “Now.”  

Ask every staff member to pick JUST ONE resolution they personally commit to achieving and move that Post-It from the Someday side to the Now side.

Every week, review the resolutions and ask everyone for an update on their progress. 

Once a resolution is achieved, place a huge checkmark (or big gold star) on it, and move another over from the Someday side to the Now side.

Repeat as necessary all year long.

* If you are feeling particularly brave, ask your clients to add their resolutions for your firm to the wall, and keep them up-to-date on your firm’s progress.

It is Resolution Time Again! Call for Submissions.

Each of the past two Decembers, in 2004 and 2005, I have posted daily Resolutions for Lawyers.  It is a fun thing for me to do and helps me to revisit some of the cool things I’ve seen and written about that year.  December is here soon, and I thought I’d open it up to everyone this year. 

If you’ve got a great Resolution you’d like to share, you can add it in the comments of this post, or e-mail me (Matt@LexThink.com) and I’ll share as many as I can.

Thanks! 

Only Four Decks of Cards Left

I was going back over some old posts this morning, and found this one.  Seems there are only 209 days left in the year as I write this.  That’s only four decks of cards “worth” of days left of your original seven decks. 

What do you expect to accomplish before year’s end?  Even more importantly, what did you expect to get done by now?  If you are looking for ideas, I’d suggest reviewing my Resolutions for Lawyers series.

For your clients, maybe you could schedule a “mid-year meeting” (at no cost to them) and use the opportunity to ask your clients what they want to get done before the year is over?  Then use the decks of cards as a visual planning tool to help them accomplish their goals.

technorati tags: client+service, resolutions, lawyers

Why Blog?

Christopher Carfi pointed me to this essay by Chris Brogan titled Cavemen at the Fire that captures the essence of the “why” of blogging for so many of us:

But the truth is, I'm getting value. I get value in talking with you. I've met so many engaging people, and every time one of you risks delurking and sending me an email, I meet a new friend….  I feel that every day I post something new is another micro resume. I'm telling people out there what I stand for, how I think, what matters most to me. Some days, that's probably not going to land me a job. Other days, it's something that people might relate to.

A Great Motivational Tip

Jason Womack shares a tip he received when he asked the audience at a recent workshop for their productivity tips.  Jason asked, "How do you stay motivated when the project outcome is a long time off?"  The best tip:

Label the project in terms of what I will receive when I'm done. Make it one I "want to" complete.

The Weekly Reader

Here’s a great management idea I’d never heard before from The Window Manager himself:

One of my tasks when I worked at Texas Instruments was to do a "weekly". For those of you not familiar with this little management tool, this is a bulletized memo that lists the tasks you accomplished for the week, the tasks you are going to do the following week, and what your upcoming schedule looks like, particularly if you're traveling. It also might include short summaries of customer meetings or market data that was picked up in the field.

My manager collected the weeklies of everyone under him, picked the "best" bullet points, and sent a weekly to his manager. His manager collected the weeklies from HIS people, picked the best bullets, and sent a weekly to HIS manager, and so on up the chain. At twenty-two, I thought it was an accomplishment if one of "my bullets" made it into the VP's weekly since it had to percolate up three or four layers of weeklies to make it to that level.

If you work for (or by) yourself, do your “weekly” on Friday, put it in a drawer, and then review it on Monday.   However, instead of listing the tasks you accomplished, think a bit bigger.  List the things you are proud you accomplished, and things you have to do next week that will make you proud and/or happy when they are done.  If you are lucky enough to have a support group, share your weekly accomplishments with one another. 

Take a Minute and Save a Child

At BlawgThink, my friend Doug Sorocco told me something that, the more I think about it, is the single best thing that has happened because of my blog.  Last year, I posted this appeal from Doug, asking for help with a raffle for the Spina Bifida Association of America (SBAA), which Doug chairs.  Doug told me that someone clicked on the link though my site and donated $10,000 anonymously to the SBAA.

First, if that generous person is still reading this blog, THANK YOU! 

Second, in hopes that lightning may strike twice, I’m going to post this request from Doug he sent me today:

Hello friends! 

As many of you know, I am the Chairman of the Spina Bifida Association of America – a national non-profit organization whose mission it is to prevent the occurrence of spina bifida (i.e through education of the benefits of consuming folic acid prior to conception) and promotion of all those affected by spina bifida. 

Although spina bifida is the number one permanently disabling birth defect in the United States, research funding through the NIH is at a woefully inadequate level.  As a result, we as an organization have championed the Center for Disease Prevention’s (CDC) efforts to create a National Spina Bifida Program – a program that has been outstanding in its very limited time of existence and is used as a model by the CDC for public/non-profit cooperation.  The program’s funding is being threatened by cuts in the FY2007 budget.

I strongly support the program at the CDC and can personally vouch for the programs fiscal responsibility, effectiveness and meaning to the individuals living with spina bifida and the 60 million women of childbearing age in the United States.

Please take a few moments and click through the link below to send a message to your Congressional representatives that the National Spina Bifida Program at the CDC is also important to you.  It doesn’t take many responses to truly make a difference.

 It would also be helpful if you could forward this email to a couple of your friends and colleagues.

 Thank you so much for your assistance – it truly means a lot to me.

 Douglas

Here’s a link to the Action Alert from the Spina Bifida Association website, and here’s the link to send an e-mail to your Member of Congress.

Do your calendar and priorities match?

Mark at Manager Tools writes about an exercise he has all of his executive coaching clients do before he begins working with them:  He asks them to list their priorities and then looks at their calendars.  The result?

90% of the time they don’t match.

When I review with my clients what they said their priorities were, versus what their calendars proved they actually were, the primary emotion, once we fight through disbelief and dissembling, is embarrassment. The smart ones get something powerful from this: the disparity between what they know their jobs to be and what they spend their time doing is the primary source of their dissatisfaction in their role.

Such a simple, yet profound exercise.  Try it yourself and see if your calendar and priorites match?

Thanks to Lisa for the tip.

Lisa's Daily Practice

Lisa Haneberg is starting up her 2 Weeks 2 a Breakthrough coaching program again.  She requires her students to do this “Daily Practice” everyday:

Each day:
- Tell two people about your goal.
- Take two actions that support your goal.
- Make two requests that support your goal.

It is a bit late to include this in my resolution series, but think about how it could help you get off to a great 2006.