Reid My Blog!

Working 94 Hour Days

As lawyers we often face ethical dilemmas.  Some are easy to resolve, others can cause us to research and analyze to make sure we stay within the Rules of Professional Conduct.  Then there are some crazy stories where you just say "What the hell were they thinkin'?"  Hence the catagory on my blog--EthX Gone Wild!  Here is the first installment, thanks to Law.com, and a solo lawyer in Connecticut. I could not find the case listed on their web site, but I betting the Connecticut Grievance Committee is closely following the matter.

Being a Law Practice Entrepreneur

One of my favorite business books for lawyers is Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. Written in 1995 as a follow-up to his first book, The E-Myth, it has sold over 1 million copies, and was recently released on audio CD. (Available at most larger bookstores.) It might be slightly dated in some circles, but still very applicable to the slowly-evolving legal profession. 

Gerber’s main thesis is that many people go into business for themselves because they are good technicians, meaning they are good plumbers, accountants, or whatever, so they decide to go out on their own. This includes lawyers too. They reason that if they do good work, then clients will beat a path to their door. However, many of these businesses fail, according to Gerber, because the technician fails to wear the other two other hats needed to run a business: In addition to being a good “technician”, you must also be a manager and an entrepreneur.

I see this with lawyers all the time. We think that if we provide good legal work, then people will tell their friends, and the clients and money will roll in. The fallacy is that without wearing the entrepreneur “hat” these law practices or small firms will never generate enough clients and income to build a successful business. Sometimes the opposite happens: The business comes in so fast, but the systems and procedures are not in place to handle the flow of clients. The lack of management eventually turns off clients who take their business elsewhere.

Even when a lawyer understands the need to wear all three hats, the hard part is wearing them in the right balance. This almost always means that the lawyer must rein in the desire to do legal work and spend more time on management and being an entrepreneur. Not a welcome commitment because most lawyers still bill by the hour, but it is a commitment that needs to be made nonetheless.

Even if you have run your firm or practice for a while, it will be worth a few hours of your non-billable time to see what Mr. Gerber has to say to improve the success of your business.

One Small Step for Man...

I don't usually kick and scream when adopting new technology, but it has taken me a while to warm up to this thing called blogging.  Sure, I talked to Dennis Kennedy after he started his blog. I even met blawg pioneer Ernie the Attorney in New Orleans last year.  I watched as Matt Homann launched his, and achieved almost instant notoriety from his posts about LegalMatch. Then I received an e-mail from AmLaw's Monica Bay announcing her blog, The Common Scold. Now how could I ever compete with that? (I ain't that good a writer!)  Still, my good friend, Jim Calloway, kept feeding me information and encouraging me to join the blogosphere after he launched his blog. OK, so I took a peek at the blogs often first reported by Bob Ambrogi. Hmmmm. Finally, I attended LegalTech where I sat next to Carolyn Elefant at Larry Bodine's seminar, and my final reservations vanished. I didn't have to compete with anyone except myself. There is room out here for good ideas, and even more room for better ideas. I hope to provide useful and practical news and comment on issues effecting lawyers in the day-to-day practice of law--to help my fellow lawyers find and implement solutions to improve the business side of the legal profession.  Because, quite frankly, that's what I enjoy.