SmallLaw: The Secret to Leveraging Twitter for Client Development

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Originally published on September 26, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

"What's happening?" That one little prompt on Twitter spurs thousands of tweets every single second. It has given way to country-defining revolutions, some of the biggest reporting scoops of our generation, and life-saving warnings of natural disasters.

But for busy professionals at small law firms like yours, that prompt prevents so many lawyers and other professionals from using Twitter, which has an onboarding problem. Onboarding refers the process of enabling new users to quickly benefit from a service. For example, when you signed up for SmallLaw, you knew you'd start receiving newsletters like today's issue.

Regarding Twitter, why would prospective clients want to know what you ate for breakfast? How could that possibly make you money? They don't. And it won't.

Leveraging Twitter by Curating Information

What many lawyers don't realize is that Twitter isn't for mundane updates on one's day-to-day life. It isn't for anything specific. Twitter provides you with a ball and a field. What and how you want to play is up to you.

For lawyers seeking an effective client development strategy through Twitter, acting as a curator of information and active intelligence agent is the best game to play.

Instead of starting by figuring out what to say, lawyers must instead begin by deciding to whom they should listen.

By drawing on information from a wealth of credible sources and monitoring keywords relevant to your practice (client names, articles, cases, and the like) and then passing the best content along through Twitter, you can effectively establish yourself as a knowledgeable source of information within your desired niche. Twitter's limit of 140 characters per tweet is a blessing because no one expects a detailed treatise when you link to an interesting resource (including your own blog posts and articles).

Every morning before work I spend almost the entirety of the 35-minute ferry ride from my home on Bainbridge Island across the Puget Sound to LexBlog's offices in Seattle perusing the content in my RSS newsreader — a collection of feeds from sources I find credible and keywords relevant to my expertise — and passing along 10 to 12 headlines and my own short comments by way of Twitter.

Not only do I learn by skimming the latest news, but my brand as a thought-leader in my niche is going through the roof — all because I spend a half hour every morning using Twitter. All of the following metrics have increased as a result of my tweets:

• Traffic to my blog.
• Comments on my blog.
• Speaking engagements.
• Calls from reporters.
• Calls from law firms asking me to speak.
• Employee morale and our ability to recruit talent.
• And most importantly, our bottom-line.

Why Twitter Works So Well

These 35 minutes probably produce a higher return on investment (ROI) than any of my other client development work. Why? How could something so basic and seemingly impersonal work for client development?

Pause and think about how people get their best clients not just in the legal profession but in almost every single field — relationships and word of mouth reputation.

I have over 11,600 people following me on Twitter. While this group includes clients and potential clients — lawyers other legal professionals (managing partners, CMOs, CKOs, CIOs) and marketing and communications professionals — it's also comprised of the individuals who influence them — conference coordinators, editors, publishers, reporters, and the like.

These folks have come to rely on me for news and commentary about client development for lawyers, online networking, social media, and other relevant subjects. I'm their trusted intelligence agent.

This is the type of audience a public relations professional craves. A tool that puts me in touch with my target audience on a daily basis? Previously impossible.

And as an added kicker I'm nurturing and making meaningful relationships with people I want to get to know. We're becoming friends with one other.

Whether you work in employment law, estate planning, intellectual property, personal injury, or any other practice area, Twitter can be an effective client development tool. I have watched numerous lawyers connect with clients, prospective clients, and their influencers on Twitter. Those who follow them on Twitter aren't simply reading and digesting the information the lawyers highlight — they're passing it along to friends, business associates, reporters, and association leaders all the while keeping the originating source in mind.

Start Small and Think Big

Start small. You are not going to gain 1,500 valuable followers overnight. Growing an audience interested in news related to your niche area of the law from 50 to 100 to 500 followers can take time.

That's okay. You're strengthening your brand as a reliable and trusted authority in your specialty and creating relationships with your target audience.

Call Twitter mindless babble and beneath lawyers if you like. Smart lawyers and law firms will ignore such short-sighted rhetoric and use Twitter as a high ROI relationship-building tool.

Written by Kevin O'Keefe is CEO and Publisher of LexBlog, the leading provider of social media solutions and strategies to law firms.

How to Receive SmallLaw
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SmallLaw: Being Jay Shepherd: Advice to a Would-Be Consultant

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Originally published on September 6, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

I have a confession to make. Since covering the 2011 ABA TechShow for TechnoFeature, I've been wrestling with a vexing question …

Who the hell is Jay Shepherd and how will he earn a living?

Let me explain. On the eve of TechShow, a veritable Who's Who of legal pundits took the stage at Ignite Law 2011: Tom Mighell, Dennis Kennedy, Kevin O'Keefe, Carolyn Elefant, Marc Lauritsen, Jim Calloway, and of course Jay Shepherd. Wait a minute! Jay who?

Well whoever he was, he considered it appropriate to announce during his six minutes on stage that he would close his employment law practice to start Prefix, a consulting firm to help law firms abandon the billable hour.

My first thought was: Who cares? My next were: Too much imbibing at the cash bar? An attempt at free advertising? A cry for help? Still, I let go of the issue and chalked it up to a lawyer's ego (plenty of that to go around). So imagine my surprise when none other than the ABA Journal covered Jay's announcement.

Whoa. This guy's career move was national news? The whole episode got me wondering — why would anyone abandon a successful law practice to become a consultant? Not that it's unheard of. After all, a few years ago I did just that, only to be drawn back to the law once and for all.

While this SmallLaw column might arrive too late for Jay, let me explain to those of you still managing small law firms what will likely happen to Jay since I have traveled this path.

Commanding Attention Versus Begging for It …

Not long after I slipped the surly bonds of law practice in 2006 to live the jet-setting life of a legal practice consultant, I found out that lawyers don't think they need advice, and certainly won't pay for it.

Even free advice was of no interest to most lawyers. After all, if they had to change anything to make the advice work then it really wasn't "free" was it? Change is hard, new hardware and software costs money, and clients hire people, not technology. To the vast majority of lawyers, one good afternoon on the links and a vintage IBM PC (circa 1999) was more important than all the consulting in the world.

Of course, sometimes I would get a prospect to agree to a meeting. Inevitably however, I found myself talking to someone from IT with no grasp of the legal process, or explaining things to a partner who had already decided to cut out the middle man and have his teenage kids throw together a Facebook page. Ultimately, the process was more like selling encyclopedias than delivering professional services. And at no time did I feel as if I were selling "knowledge," a recurring theme in Jay Shepherd's promotional materials. On the contrary, I frequently had to beg for attention instead of command it, as I had when I was a lawyer.

Even if Jay manages to avoid such obstacles and get hired, how will his new business compare to his old business? We lawyers adhere to a simple principal — clients pay to cure pain, ward off fear, or have us deal with unpleasantness. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the law is utterly opaque, attorneys and courts have little patience for lay people, and the legislature and courts throttle competition from out-of-jurisdiction lawyers while keeping the barriers to entry high for recent law school graduates. All in all, you might say that clients have to hire us to get anything done.

By comparison, being a consultant is like playing Vegas. The field is clogged because any mope can call himself a consultant. Even when consultants get hired payment is still at the customer's mercy. Worst of all, consultants must span the credibility gap with prospects by selling themselves around the clock. That doesn't leave much time in which to sell knowledge — or help lawyers sell knowledge instead of hours.

Room for One More?

So, is there room for one more practice consultant in an unregulated field crowded with tireless self-promoters? After my experience a few years ago, I recommend that Jay keep one toe in the legal practice tide pool for now. And for all we know, that might be his game plan. When Jay also used his Above the Law column to announce his plans, one commenter sarcastically quipped that: "he said he was closing his law business, not necessarily quitting law practice. I expect that he will work out of his (mom's?) basement … as a solo practitioner doing legal work for several of his existing clients, but without having to carry the risks and costs of employees."

But practice consultants who try to wear both hats are often lousy lawyers. What's more, skills become dull surprisingly quickly, learning new tricks is never easy, and having the confidence of courts, colleagues, and clients is as important as making a good argument. Being a lawyer is as much about relationships as anything else, and those relationships rely on seeing and being seen by the right people every day.

What's a would-be consultant to do when he's too busy selling himself to be at the closing table, in the office, or in court? Does Jay understand what he's getting himself into?

Here's a lawyer about my age and experience level, with an established practice in a major metropolitan area, strong academic and peer credentials, several blogs and a popular column who experienced his share of wins and notoriety, and who by all accounts could have continued to practice.

Why the sudden zeal to fix our industry's broken billing model? Is it because he's a fellow at the Verasage Institute, an organization so inscrutable its name isn't even a real word? Or is it because the Institute taught him to "bury the billable hour and timesheets" as it boasts on its web site? Or is it because, as Jay writes in his biography on the Verasage web site, he is on a "mission to save the world from lawyers, and to save lawyers (and other professionals) from themselves"?

Or Has Jay Simply Painted Himself Into a Corner?

I guess what I'm saying is that Jay Shepherd might want to take a lesson from my experience, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. He might also want to refrain from predicting the future at national events just in case things don't work out. And in the unlikely event that he's forced to take up law practice again, he might want to keep certain skills honed so he doesn't have to re-learn how to maintain credibility with his peers, acquire clients, try cases, hire good employees, and most importantly, fire bad ones.

I mean, look at me. As critical as I am of our profession and its broken systems, I still practice law and keep track of hours, expenses, and other business minutiae. Why? Because to paraphrase Churchill (and channel Tocqueville), the legal business is terrible … but consulting is far worse.

Written by Will County bankruptcy lawyer Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

SmallLaw: The Day After: Top Five Tips for Preventing Unthinkable Disasters From Crippling Your Small Law Firm

Friday, December 23, 2011

Originally published on August 30, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

With Hurricane Irene just recently having rumbled her way through my adopted home state of North Carolina — including making a mess of our beautiful Outer Banks and eastern regions — disaster preparedness (or business continuity to use a popular euphemism) is on my mind. Watching Irene's progression up the east coast and the trouble she wrought en route, I imagine it must be on some of your minds too.

When we talk about technology, we often engage in a facile and glib debate over operating systems, Angry Birds, and coolness. God knows, I'm a card-carrying member of that club — new and cool is my red meat as regular readers of my SmallLaw columns well know.

But in deference to all the law firms who are digging out from Irene, I want to use this issue of SmallLaw to address how to get your firm as ready as possible for the next Irene Mother Nature throws your way. Below you'll find my top five tips.

1. Go Paperless

The discussion over going paperless in a small law firm often centers on efficiency, collaboration, ethics and mobility, all of which are important facets of the decision.

However, it's not until you wake up one day, however, and your entire office suite is under six feet of water and your paper files have turned to pulp that paperless' importance as a disaster preparedness measure become clear.

Sure, you may only need offsite digital copies of everything once in a career — but the day you need it, you really need it. Offsite backup is a good start, but if only 25% of your key data is digital, you are still sunk when the high waters arrive.

2. Sever Your Servers With Hosted Communications

Floods and natural disasters are good reasons to consider embracing hosted communications — meaning both your email and your phone system. If your communication hubs run out of server boxes in your office and they're under water, they're useless. Sure, some backup strategies can help mitigate this porblem, but if I were running a small firm today, I'd get rid of all my servers — applications, email, documents, telephone — the whole shebang. With Hosted Exchange, Google Apps, and VoIP phone systems, it has never been easier.

3. Centralized Document and Practice Management

According to the ABA's 2011 Legal Technology Survey, the adoption rate of document and practice management software in small law offices remains dismal.

Anecdotally, in my work, I find that law firms regard this software as somewhere between an unnecessary expense and a "nice to have." Much like the decision to go paperless and host your communications, if you imagine having to run your firm the day after a disaster (with all of your employees working remotely from their homes), the decision to centralize document and practice management is not a luxury, but a necessity.

Frequency of need is not the same as degree. You only need an emergency room once in a while, too, but if you didn't have one nearby the day you needed it, you'd be in big trouble.

4. Laptops Over Desktops Plus Smartphones and iPads

I frequently talk with lawyers who debate whether to buy their staff laptop or desktop computers, citing that desktops are cheaper and more powerful. A disaster should convince you that mobility trumps the marginal cost savings and power of desktops.

Laptops have another advantage. When the power goes out, they continue running for a few hours. But even laptops have their limits. Smartphones (and 3G iPads) tend to have a much longer battery life, and can access the Internet via your carrier. Some smartphones can even serve as a mobile hotspot. Law firms have issued smartphones to their lawyers for many years. Some have begun to issue iPads as well.

5. Home Office Essentials

For your lawyers and staff to be productive working from home while your office is underwater, in addition to a laptop they will need an internet connection robust enough to run their VoIP phones, a headset with a microphone, a printer, and a scanner.

Whether you provide this equipment for your staff or require that they provide it for themselves is a matter of your compensation and training systems. Either way, if you want your staff to work rather than just watch Sports Center until your office reopens, they will need the tools to perform their work.

Conclusion

I hope you and your firm survived Hurricane Irene with nary a puddle. But I also hope this article prompts you to prepare for the unthinkable.

Written by Erik Mazzone of Law Practice Matters.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

SmallLaw: How Three Virtual Services Saved My Non-Virtual Law Firm

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Originally published on August 23, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

2011 dropped a bomb on me. This year just plain stinks. It has tested my solo practice, my confidence, even my faith. On May 21st, my mother suffered a massive stroke. According to some interpretations of the Bible, the Rapture was supposed to occur on May 21, 2011. My father had planned to play a joke on my mother by piling up his clothes in the living room and hiding in a closet. Deciding against it, he went to let Mom in on the joke. She didn't laugh. She was too nauseous, and couldn't see or stand. After a 120 MPH drive to UAB Hospital, I was fortunate enough to see her smile one last time. She remained in a vegetative state for two more months before passing away on her 68th birthday.

My father, brother (also a lawyer), and I, with the help of my wonderful wife, sat by Mom's side day and night. I continued to work on existing cases, and decline new clients. To make matters worse it was the summer time — when the court system all but shuts down. I would have lost my business, let alone my mind, if not for virtual services.

We all read about virtual law firms and the virtual services they use such as receptionists, typists, and remote control applications. However, this summer I learned that these services provide an important safety net even in a traditional law practice like mine with office space. In this issue of SmallLaw, I'll tell you about three virtual services that literally saved my law firm.

You Can't Avoid the Phone Forever

After word got out that I was having a hard time, a friend relayed my troubles to Jill Nelson, the the top dog at Ruby Receptionists, a virtual receptionist service in Oregon gaining momentum among lawyers. Sympathetic to my plight, Ruby offered to answer my phones until I got back on my feet. A few email messages later I had a system in place. A warm, professional group of receptionists greeted callers, knew what to ask, and knew the people with whom I needed to talk. With Ruby I was able to concentrate on simply surviving the loss of a parent, instead of playing phone tag.

Making the benefits of Ruby even more obvious is my ability to review all calls from my iPhone via the Ruby Receptionist app. It displays who called, lets you know if they left a message (transcribed by the Ruby staff) or a voicemail, and enables you to create a new contact entry. Even cooler is the app's ability to notify Ruby of my whereabouts so that my phone doesn't ring during hearings. I can even message Ruby from the app to give them special instructions such as returning a call to a client for me.

You Can't Think of Everything

While sitting helpless in the hospital, I tried to get some work done. While I could accomplish more than I thought possible with my iPad (read my previous SmallLaw column, Using the iPad 2 in the Field in a Wrongful Death Case), there were times when I needed to access my desktop computer.

For example, the day I had to make a mad rush back from the hospital to the courthouse for a hearing I had forgotten a document I needed to present to the court in hardcopy form. Its residing in my Dropbox account was of little use since I couldn't print reliably from the iPad. I spent the hour drive to my hometown tracking down buddies who could print the document for me.

How much simpler it would have been to have a remote desktop server in place! Enter iTeleport for iPad, which I now have thanks to the efforts of TechnoLawyer. Now when I'm out of the office and need access to my desktop it's only a click away. iTeleport leverages the iPad's beautiful touchscreen to recreate my desktop computer. It perfectly implements the touch controls so that I can print documents, run non-iOS programs like Microsoft Word, and even stream music and movies from the office to my mobile location.

You Won't Have Time to Type

On another occasion, I again found myself in my least favorite place — under the gun. I had a brief due that couldn't be put off any longer without detriment to my client, so there I was resembling a trained bear on a motorcycle in a hospital waiting room pecking away at the iPad's virtual keyboard (sometimes virtual is not a virtue). This document needed some serious appellate formatting that made blood drip from my ears. If I'd only had somebody to type it for me.

Now that I'm enjoying 20/20 hindsight, I've started using LegalTypist. Unlike a virtual paralegal, which I suspect would be overkill for most of us, LegalTypist is simply that — an administrative assistant who optimizes your workflow. I can email a recorded dictation file or just dictate using a telephone. Within 24 hours, I received the document formatted properly for my jurisdiction. The best thing is I don't have to train anybody, implement weird proprietary software, or have a monthly contract for services I don't use often. The company is just there when I need them without a commitment to justify when bookkeeping.

The Bottom Line on Preserving Your Bottom Line: Plan Ahead

Life is unkind to everyone at times. However, a large law firm can keep rolling along if one of its lawyers becomes unavailable. Small law firms — solo practices in particular — don't have a deep bench or any bench at all. My mother's death crippled me emotionally and nearly crippled my law practice too. Had I known then what I know now I could have had services like Ruby, iTeleport, and LegalTypist in place to ease my stress during my time of need. These services are more affordable than ever, even on a rookie solo's nonexistent budget. You'll never be fully prepared for the unthinkable. Fires, natural disasters, and even death are very real threats to our legal careers. Plan ahead SmallLaw subscribers, plan ahead.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

SmallLaw: The Most Effective Type of Blog for Law Firms

Monday, December 19, 2011

Originally published on August 16, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

Sitting in the audience at the Legal Marketing Association annual conference this spring, I heard an "Internet marketing expert" advise that blogs were only for lawyers who had a lot of time on their hands.

She warned that publishing a blog requires posting three or four times a week, constant moderating of comments, and thinking of original stories and updates to cover. She's wrong.

Quality, Not Quantity

If blogging were that hard, I would never started publishing a blog eight years ago.

Can you publish a law blog that enhances your reputation, grows your network, establishes you as a domain expert, and brings in not just clients, but quality clients, without it consuming all of your time? Yes.

Seattle lawyer Dan Harris of Harris & Moure publishes the China Law Blog, one of the more influential law blogs.

He spends 15 to 45 minutes to write a blog post with 25 minutes being the average. Harris characterizes his blog as very successful in generating new business.

Quality over content is key. About one-half of the law blogs on our LexBlog Network are updated once per week. About 75% are updated once every two weeks. That's a far cry from 3-4 times per week.

Those who don't talk all the time command attention when they do talk if they have something interesting to say. That's especially true for law blogs focused on a niche area of the law or geographic region.

The Share-and-Comment Blog Post

Like this and other columns in SmallLaw, blog posts should be short and cover only one point. Actually, shorter — 200 to 500 words is sufficient.

Think of blogging as sharing what you read. Blogging to share not only takes less time, but also works much better for business development. With your blog, you can create and participate in a rich, ongoing conversation regarding matters relevant to your area of practice and the industries or consumer groups you represent.

Here's how it works:

1. Follow what is being written in relevant blogs and news stories. Use Google News and Google Blog Search to track key words and key phrases germane to your practice areas. You can subscribe to these searches via email or with Google Reader.

2. Share a story or blog post you find interesting and which you believe prospective clients and others who read your blog would find of interest as well. Offer your insight and commentary.

Think of it as clipping out an article, highlighting a paragraph, and dropping a note to a client as to why you thought the story would be of interest to them. But don't just say, "I saw this, here's the link." Instead:

• Link to the source material. For example, linking the title of the article on which you're commenting will create a consistent style across your blog. If you prefer, link keywords that describe the article.

• Link to the author or reporter's LinkedIn profile or Web site bio. They'll notice and appreciate the link.

• Share a fair use block quote or two that brings home the salient points you want to share.

• Offer your insight in a paragraph or two.

For example:

John Schwartz, the National Legal Correspondent for the New York Times, wrote an interesting story last week, Florida: Drug Laws Ruled Unconstitutional.

Judge Scriven's 43-page opinion is noteworthy for the following reasons.…

The Advantages of This Style of Blogging

Sharing and commenting on articles:

• Demonstrates to your clients, prospective clients, referral sources, industry leaders, bloggers, and reporters that you stay up to speed in your niche. You see things your competitors are not following or at least not blogging about.

• Enables you to learn about developments in the law as well as the industries and groups you serve.

• Engages the influencers and amplifiers — the 5% of people who influence 95%. You need to engage and build relationships with bloggers, reporters, association leaders and conference coordinators who your clients, prospective clients, and referral sources follow. Do this and you will be cited and quoted by influential bloggers and reporters. You will be speaking at conferences led by the association leaders you've engaged.

• Creates a strong online identity and reputation for you. The most important Google search for you, as a good lawyer, is not one based what you do and where you are located (e.g., Seattle real estate lawyer). Instead, the most important search is on your name. People turn to a trusted source for the name of lawyer. They'll then Google the lawyer's name. A search returning citations of what you have blogged, reporters quoting you, conferences where you have spoken, and people sharing your blog posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook beats the heck out of results returning just your Web site and LinkedIn bio.

Don't Let Any "Experts" Dissuade You From Blogging

You can publish a law blog that enhances your reputation, grows your network, establishes you as a domain expert, and brings in quality clients without it consuming your life. Think quality over quantity, brevity, listening to relevant conversations, and sharing your insight and commentary.

Written by Kevin O'Keefe, CEO and Publisher of LexBlog, the leading provider of social media solutions and strategies to law firms.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.