Good Habits Come to Those Who Change: Reprioritizing Your Life

Tony Schwartz’ “‘No’ is the New ‘Yes’: Four Practices to Reprioritize Your Life” on his blog at the Harvard Business Review's HBR Blog Nework. Are you addicted to saying “yes”? To the rush of adrenaline that comes with taking on more than you can possibly get done in a ten hour day and a sixty hour week? To the high that comes from working late into the night to solve the unsolvable crisis, without losing your stride? Then you’ll benefit from reading this post, and following Schwartz’ advice.

It’s never easy to break bad habits. And when one of those habits is saying “yes” to things that make your life exciting, it’s likely to take more than reading a blog post and adopting Schwartz’ “four simple practices.” But it’s a start, an important step in the right direction. And if you, like Schwartz, can refocus your day, redefine your priorities, and recover time that’s better spent on the things you should be doing, you’ll thank yourself for the trouble.

SWOT's That? You Want To Grow Your Law Firm?

Julian Summerhayes’ “A Good Old Fashioned S.W.O.T. Analysis” on his blog Brand You. Written as a guide for lawyers and firms that are considering branching out into new practice areas, Summerhayes’ post is a useful reminder of the planning and analysis that goes into any successful initiative. Even if that initiative is just business as usual.

Because there’s more to this post than a standard, “good old-fashioned SWOT analysis,” as Summerhayes describes it. The template he’s put together for analyzing practice initiatives is in fact a template for analyzing the firm itself. Yes, you can use it to sort through your firm’s willingness, abilities, and affinities for taking on new expansion efforts. But the questions Summerhayes sets out will guide the analysis you should do (and do often) of the institutional strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that bear on every effort your firm undertakes. Read the post. And have a happy Friday the 13th!

Client Communication: Sometimes It’s Not Just About You

Mark Britton’s “Keeping Clients Through Communication” on the Lawyernomics blog. Britton’s post is based on a premise that you probably already know: the foundation of client service is communication. Meaningful communication, regular communication, open communication. But there’s more to it than picking up the phone to chat about the weather… Communication on its own isn’t worth much when it doesn’t tell your client everything they need to know. Like when you don’t have the expertise they need to solve a particular problem. Or when it would make more sense to bring in someone with more experience. Or even that you represent other clients that occasionally need your attention too.

Good communication is more than a good idea. That much you know. But unless you’re telling your client what they need to hear, the conversation might end sooner than you would like. Britton’s post can help you make sure it doesn’t.

Client Service: The Big Four Secrets of Big Four Success

Tom Kilroy’s “Big 4 a reason” on his blog GC’s Eye View. Let me say this up front: when you discover a blog written by a general counsel, add it to your RSS feed. Whether they’re writing about how the Big Four run client-service circles around law firms (as Kilroy does in today’s post), or biscuits or burgers, general counsel blog about that which is most important to them. And by “that which is important to them” I really mean “that which is important to you.”

Kilroy’s post demonstrates that point. In it, he looks at the ways in which the Big Four approach client service as he isolates what he sees as four secrets behind their success. Not their delivery of legal services secrets, nor their empirical knowledge secrets, but their client service secrets. The way they talk to their clients about the problems those clients are facing. The way they help their clients prepare for future challenges. They way they establish meaningful relationships with the people leading and managing the companies for which they work. Because those are the things that are important to Kilroy and, as he makes it clear in his post, those are the things he’d like his outside lawyers do more.

Shouldn't you be doing them too?

Legal Costs: 5 Ways to Help Your Clients Reduce Their Legal Spend

Ron Friedmann’s “Open Letter to General Counsels: Five Imperatives for 2012” on his blog Strategic Legal Technology. Spoiler alert:  Friedmann’s imperatives for GCs are all about controlling costs. But that’s not particularly surprising, since the cost of legal services is something that 65% of the general counsel surveyed by Corporate Counsel indicated they would like to change in 2012.

So why should an outside lawyer read a post that advises her clients how to save money by spending less on outside lawyers? The cynic would respond: “because she must adapt or die,” but there’s more to it than that. The outside lawyer (let’s call her “you” in this example) should read Friedmann’s post because it describes how you can improve your relationships with your clients, how you can help those clients meet their own personal and professional objectives, and how you can maintain and possibly expand crucial client relationships.

Read the post. Talk to your clients. Help them determine what problems they need to solve, how much law is enough, the legal resources they need for the issues they have to resolve, how they can measure costs (and value), how to get more for less. Because, as Friedmann writes, “if you can’t do that, others can.”

Law Mergers: Is Bigger Better? Or Just Bigger?

Steven Harper’s “Another Day, Another Law Firm Merger” from his blog, The Belly of the Beast. This post is a few months old, but that doesn’t take anything away from Harper’s analysis of the challenges facing large law firms that combine to become, well, larger. And in doing so, he sheds light on some of the myths of success that drive the urge to merge: bigger is better because profits will grow, bigger is better because laterals will find us more attractive, bigger is better because it brings greater value to the partnership. The truth? Bigger may be better, but it’s above all just bigger. And that makes a law firm merger hard to pull off, for a number of reasons (as Harper lays out).

Does this mean firms shouldn’t merge? Harper doesn’t say, at least not in so many words. And why should he when no one would listen to him: firms will keep on merging as long as their leaders and partners keep thinking that bigger is better. But they’d do well to heed one of his lessons as they “take herculean efforts to vindicate” their merger strategy: “beware of that spin-thing.” Come to think of it, that’s a lesson for us all.

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Bob Weber's "Why 'Watson' matters to lawyers" in the National Law Journal. This post, from IBM's General Counsel, imagines a new kind of world, one where Deep QA computers "can analyze hundreds of millions of pages of content and mine them for facts and conclusions — in about the time it takes to answer a question on a quiz show." After watching Watson dominate Jeopardy!'s greatest champions over the past three days, we share that vision. The future is now. What are you going to do? (Hint: sticking your head in the sand isn't the right answer.)

Take your medicine.

Allison Shields' "No Magic Pill for Lawyer Marketing" at Slaw. Looking for a quick fix? You can stop. Really. You're not going to find a silver bullet, because there are none. Marketing a law practice takes work, time, and very often money. And focus, consistency and exceptional client service. Shields' post gives a great lesson in the practical, and along the way lays out a blueprint that will guide you as you identify and implement the marketing efforts that work best for you and your clients.

Strap yourself in. The ride's just beginning.

Jordan Furlong's "The year of the free-agent lawyer" on his blog at Law21.ca. Want to know where the profession is headed? Look where it's been. Furlong's post looks back at 2010, "the year of law firm outsourcing," and provides his usual insightful analysis on last year's most significant developments and what they mean for lawyers and the legal profession going forward. Will 2011 be the year of the freelance lawyer? Only time will tell. But you don't need a crystal ball to prepare yourself for changes in the profession. Just posts like this.

Do as you say. Really

Patrick McKenna's "Signal What You Value as a Leader" at Slaw.ca. This post was written especially for new managing partners and practice heads, but it applies to everyone. You are what you do, and analyzing your actions, where you spend your time, what your activity signals to your colleagues and clients is always a useful exercise. Modifying those actions so that they align with your real objectives - and communicate your real priorities - is even better. Read this and get started.

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Bruce MacEwen's "First in a Series on Strategy in the New Normal" at Adam Smith, Esq. When MacEwen writes about strategy, I sit up and listen. Read this piece and you will too. Especially if you're looking for the "next new thing in strategy." When you're done, read part two: "Second in Our Series on Strategy: Strategic Planning 101." It will energize you:

Strategic planning is nothing less than carefully and unblinkingly assessing what your firm's actual capabilities are and, accordingly, specifying what your firm can actually do better than anyone else. With that premise in hand, you can then decide which markets you most want to reach.

And go after them with a vengeance.

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Stacy West Clark's "20 Free Services Lawyers May Want to Offer to Clients" from The Legal Intelligencer (posted on the lawjobs.com site). There may be 20 suggestions on this site, but they all boil down to one: "add value." Find ways to make sure your client gets more from having you as her lawyer than good solid legal work. She can get that from any number of lawyers. Help her be more successful. Reading this post is a great start.

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Russell Smith's "12 Ways Offshore Legal Outsourcing Could Shake Up the Law World in the New Decade" from his blog, Law Without Borders. This post presents a thoughtful and insightful analysis of not just the issues surrounding outsourcing, but of the global practice of law in the 21st century. This is important stuff, and Smith articulates the challenges facing lawyers and firms -- and the solutions that will shape the profession -- better than most. Put it on your list of required reading.

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Jim Hassett's "Why alternative fee revenues will keep going up" on his blog Legal Business Development. This post is a nice shout-out for Cleveland-based Tucker Ellis & West, which continues to lead the pack in alternative fee arrangements: 60% of their 2010 revenues came from AFAs. Read it for valuable insight into Tucker's methods and why they continue to push for non-hourly fee arrangements. Shouldn't you be doing the same?

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Legal Bizzle's "It’s not about the biscuits" on his blog The Bizzle. Legal Bizzle is an in-house lawyer who tells it like it is. In this post, he answers the question "Do you buy law firms, or lawyers?":

For me, the answer is clear: I buy lawyers. The most important thing for me is having an adviser that understands my business, and in particular its commercial drivers and its appetite for risk.

But that's not the half of it. Read the post to learn why he hires the lawyers he does. Then start doing what those lawyers do.

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Leigh Dance's "How low can you go - clients continue to flex their muscles on costs" in Legal Week. Whether or not you believe that, as Dance argues, price is now "the undisputed heavyweight champion in legal services today," this article should make it clear that client concerns about cost are not going away merely because you want them to. Get out in front of your clients. You know what keeps them awake at night. Work with them to find solutions that will help them sleep better. Reading this article is a good start.

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Heather Morse's "A lawyer is like an iPhone" at The Legal Watercooler. No, this post isn't about technology. Or about lawyers adopting Apple's marketing techniques or innovation or creativity. It's about relationships and fidelity. It's about aligning your service interests with the business interests of your clients. It's about listening to your clients, hearing what they want, and changing the way you provide services to satisfy those objectives. Read it, then take a hard look at what your clients need from their lawyers. Any changes you should make?

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Beth Flynn's "A Relational Rule of Life," written as a guest post on Thoughtful Legal Management. When was the last time you really focused on the relationships that drive your success? Not just the who and the what and the where, but the why and the how? This post lists ten guidelines for "developing leadership by cultivating relationships."  They're really ten steps for improving the value of your relationships by improving your relationship skills. Read them, and get to work.

Jayne Navarre's "social.lawyers: Transforming Business Development"

Websites, Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube: what’s a lawyer to do? Should they blog? Should they be on Twitter? How much does social media cost? How can lawyers control what appears on their Facebook page? Should they even try? What’s SEO? What benefits does a social media presence truly provide? For many lawyers, marketing is at best a necessary evil, something they must do but don’t particularly like or understand. Add in the Internet, technology, and the cute and clever names that abound in the Web 2.0 world, and lawyers have good solid reasons to develop a marketing strategy of sticking their head in the sand until all this “social” stuff goes away.

The good news? There’s ample guidance. But sorting through the mountains of articles, presentations, blog posts and white papers to separate the rare wheat of useful advice from the all-to-common chaff of hype and sales pitches is an unfamiliar and overwhelming task. And one that is virtually impossible to complete: a Google search of the words “social media” and “lawyer” reveals nearly 1.5 million hits today, a number that increases every single day as more and more social media experts turn to the legal profession in search of new client opportunities (and more and more lawyers turn to social media consulting in search of revenue).

It’s against this background that Jayne Navarre has written social.lawyers: Transforming Business Development (Thomson Reuters, 2010), a comprehensive, thoughtful and practical guide to social media that deserves a place on every lawyer’s bookshelf. Full of no-nonsense advice and illustrated by myriad examples, social.lawyers provides an in-depth look at the technologies and strategies of social media and the specific steps lawyers need to take for creating an online presence. It’s an easy read, written not as a legal brief nor as a trendy new book on trendy new technologies, but as a valuable guide for any and all lawyers who have realized that they need to have a social media strategy, one that they can and will execute.

social.lawyers opens with a general discussion of how the Internet continues to change the way in which lawyers and firms market their services, but Navarre quickly moves to the practical: seven “steps for effective change” designed to ease the awkward passage that all lawyers experience when they first engage in social networking. In doing so, she sets the tone for the entire volume: first, a methodical exploration of the “what,” second, a logical point-by-point analysis of the “why,” and finally: a step-by-step description of the “how.” Navarre then neatly wraps up the practical tips with a set of case studies featuring "social lawyers," lawyers who have embraced social media, changed the way they market themselves and their practices, and successfully implemented social marketing strategies that have positively impacted their practice.

Throughout the book, Navarre does a great job of breaking down that which can appear to be insurmountable – like developing and sustaining a legal blog or selling an aggressive social media strategy to a BigLaw firm – into understandable, bite-sized pieces that have a reasonable chance of getting done. Readers will not be disappointed by her skillfully crafted lessons that span the full range of social media and social networking topics, from search engine optimization to privacy to blogging and Facebook and LinkedIn and authenticity and a whole lot more.

I feel like I've known Jayne Navarre for a long time, even though we only met in 2008. That’s probably because I've learned so much from her, from her work as a board member in the Legal Marketing Association, as an in-house law marketing and business development leader, as a blogger and a social media consultant. She gives practical, real world advice, the kind that only comes from someone who has spent enough time in the real world to know what can and should get done. The kind of advice that fills the pages of social.lawyers. Get your copy and see for yourself.

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Disclosure: Jayne references 22 Tweets, the live Twitter interviews of lawyers that I do, a couple of times in the book as she details the marketing habits of social lawyers. Thanks, Jayne!

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Gary Godsey's "The lost art of storytelling" in Smart Business. A great story is a great marketing technique, whatever you're selling. Don't think your client representations can be described as tales of passion and heroes and antagonists and transformation? Sure they can. It won't be easy, of course, but all the elements are already there: you represent people with problems to resolve and obstacles in their way. This post will help you articulate your work as stories, the kind that engage clients and give them a reason to hire you.