Yesterday I talked with an attorney looking to expand their practice and we discussed an approach to networking that works. First off, no one has the time to network 40 hours a week and practice law. Given that, how to decide where to network strategically?
Five Tips to Decide Where to Network
1. Cast a wide net to start: don’t worry about bar associations or the like. Those are a given and don’t take much thought. Start with chambers, business networking groups, trade and civic organizations.
2. Look at their websites and learn about their members. Some websites provide online directories that are available to the public. Many don’t but typically members are listed as speakers or attendees at events and those are often posted to the website.
3. Pick five of the most promising, make sure its a mix of business (BNI, Provisors), civic (Rotary, Lions) and trade (grocery retailers association etc.) and contact the membership coordinator or directory and ask them to recommend a few people you should talk to about becoming a member.
4. Go to a meeting, set up a 1 to 1 with another member and work out a strategy for making the group work for you.
5. After doing your due diligence, pick one group to join and plan on being active because that is the only way you will make it work for you.
Posted in Networking
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Tagged Linkedin
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Its up to you! This post is the nearest to my own view on this most common question I get from lawyers and others about blogging. The author suggests that bloggers ask themselves two questions:
1. How passionate am I about my topic?
2. How much time can I allocated regularly to my blog?
If the answer to the first question is not very passionate, then either pick a topic that you are passionate about or don’t blog. Do a marketing activity that is more suited to your personality and interests. If you are passionate, then the second question is just a logistical one. You will just have to examine your schedule of figure out how to add blogging into the mix.
WordPress Helps with Scheduling
There are WordPress scheduling plug-ins that allow you to set up a series of blog topics that you can write and edit as you will and then have them published according to your own schedule. This means that you can schedule your writing for a time that works for you and when you aren’t pressured to get something out.
Personally, I like the immediacy of blogging and just make it part of my weekly routine to write my blogs as the first item of work in my morning. But just like blogging frequency differs from blogger to blogger so do logistics. The key is to find a schedule that works for you.
Posted in Blogging
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Tagged Linkedin
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A couple items crossed my desk to make me reflect anew on the issue of attorney competence regarding technology. The first is Kevin O’Keefe’s experience presenting a course of social media to law school graduates who feel like they need more training in how to use the Internet for their legal practice. The second is the ethics symposium held at Hasting School of Law which is looking ethics and legal competency in terms of attorneys’ electronic communication, confidentiality and advertising and in handling electronic discovery.
Too Much Exposure to Ignore New Technologies
Increasingly attorneys are expected to communicate in a timely fashion with their clients. In litigation their clients maybe exposing themselves to unnecessary risks by communicating on Facebook and the like. Attorneys may think they have a safe and private way of managing client files electronically but that maybe based on ignorance. It maybe time for attorneys to include in their policies regarding technology and the practice of law in their fee agreements so that they have established best practice (that they follow) should the issue arise with a client.
California hates to be second in anything but it will be lucky to be the next state to enact legislation prohibiting employers from forcing employees or prospective employees to give up user name and passwords for personal social media accounts. The bill has passed the Assembly and now the CA Senate will take up the bill on May 21nd with a hearing on the matter.
Watch Out California!
But there are a bunch of states not to mention the feds who are jockeying for position on this one.
John Jantsch of Duct Tape marketing, one of my favorite blogger, posted about 5 new marketing trends. Number three is what he calls “visual scanning” which he uses Pinterest to suggest why this is important.
But he doesn’t say that Pinterest is the answer just that its a sign of how people are increasingly scanning websites for content. This means websites need to tell more of their story graphically. One aspect is to show yourself and your business on the website and other is to give visual cues about what you do and how you do it.
Larger more sophisticated photos are needed to make that happen. Less text in shorter paragraphs with larger font and more subheads and checklist are required. Here is the question to ask yourself about your homepage: how long does it take a visitor to figure out who I am (or we are) what I do and for whom? If its longer than a minute, you have some work to do on your website.
Here is a good summary of the recently enacted employer social media restriction law. One thing I hadn’t seen in other discussion of the legislation is this section pertaining to employees:
An employee “may not download unauthorized employer proprietary information or financial data to an employee’s personal web site, an Internet web site, a web-based account, or a similar account.”
Here is a link to the actual law.
Here is a post about legal question and answer websites that does a good job outlining the issues involved. While he mentions the usual suspects in terms of specifically legal question and answer websites, he failed to mention LinkedIn which isn’t just a question and answer website for lawyers but is heavily and successfully used by lawyers.
Are You Paid to Provide Answers?
This is a critical question because ethical concerns are raised when an attorney is paid by third party and not the client for the legal advice provided. Just be aware of who is paying you, whether your answers are going to specific people with the legal issue or whether it is going out to the public at large. And remember it’s your reputation and name that is on the line and not the website that is providing the forum. Here is my post about the South Carolina Bar Association opinion on these types of answer websites.
When I talk to lawyers about social media, I tell them that if they have time for only social media profile, make it LinkedIn. And today, three are three bits of news to confirm that:
- LinkedIn produces four times the business leads as Twitter or Facebook
- LinkedIn quarterly results show surprising growth, revenue doubling year over year
- LinkedIn just bought SlideShare which is a nifty tool to make your presentations publicly viewable from your profile.
Finally, I recommend doing what I do which to spend twenty minutes a week on LinkedIn, looking for missing contacts, adding to your status update, tweaking your profile. Speaking of that, I’m going to spend my twenty minutes on LinkedIn right now….
Posted in LinkedIn
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Tagged Linkedin
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Earlier this year, I pointed out that the Indiana State Bar Association had frowned on the Groupon-Like websites for lawyers. But now North Carolina, South Carolina and New York Bar Associations have all issued opinions that show how these websites could pass ethical muster for attorneys.
Fee-Sharing Biggest Stumbling Block
In the South Carolina Bar Opinion, they find two ways for attorneys get around fee-sharing claim with a non-lawyer. First, they suggest that the website is simply taking its share of advertising expenses so it doesn’t qualify as fee-sharing. The other way is to admit its fee-sharing but that its okay as long the website doesn’t control the delivery and terms of the legal service the lawyer is providing.
Other Issues
In the Indiana Bar opinion, they were concerned about the ability of an attorney could run a conflict check before a coupon-holder had purchased the service. In the South Carolina opinion, they simply state that the attorney must run that conflicts check before the representation and if there is a conflict provide a full refund.
Another other issue is addressed by the New York Bar Association opinion which cautions attorneys to provide “real” discounts to clients and not just illusory ones. And finally the North Carolina Bar states that if the client doesn’t use the legal services, then the attorney is obligated to provide a full refund.
But Does it Make Business Sense?
These websites apply only to attorneys offering standard services to consumers. The two areas that make the most sense are divorce and family law as the costs can be fairly predictable. I don’t see how this would apply to personal injury, particularly since this is an area where the contingency fee rules supreme. The other issue is perception. By discounting your services on the Internet, it seems to suggest you are competing on price rather than on quality. And remember, if you start with price its hard to later convince those clients that you can compete on the quality of services.
A few weeks ago, Facebook publicized its findings that employers were increasingly requiring potential and current job holders to hand over their passwords to their Facebook and other social networking profiles. This created a firestorm of outraged which has now resulted in Congressional legislation being introduced by Eliot Engel and Jan Schakowsky prohibiting this activity.
Freedom to Contract
I can see employers pushing back on such legislation saying that interferes with the freedom to contract. Most employment in most states is “At Will” which means that employers and employees are free to contract with one another about the terms of employment. I can hear employers saying that this legislation interferes with their right to ask and the potential or actual employee to refuse contractual terms.
Furthermore, the employer can say they are only attempting to make sure that the employee or potential employee is a suitable candidate for the position. That if there is some evidence of malfeasance or inappropriate behavior in the employee’s past that is pertinent to their job, they should be free to discover that information.
I will watching what employment attorneys say about this.
