Reid My Blog!

What's Hot in 2005

Long-time Law Practice magazine columnist and strategic marketing guru, Robert Denney, shares his 16th annual report on the pulse of the legal services market in the current issue of Law Practice magazine.  His “What’s Hot and What’s Not” is always worth a read.  So what’s hot, according to Denney?  Employment law, IP, and contingency litigation are “red hot”, while white collar crime, real estate, corporate, immigration, education & school law, and Indian & gaming law are among the hottest areas.  There are some areas starting to heat up including mergers and acquisitions, media law, health-care mediation, and pharmaceutical work.  Cooling off are bankruptcy, personal injury, and environmental work.   As for marketing trends, seminars are still a great way to attract attention, according to Denney. Extranets are cooling fast, and “branding” is cooling too.  Finally, Denney adds in a few trends in law firm management and governance, including the fact that many firms remain undercapitalized, firms are not sufficiently dealing with culture issues, and law firm leaders are still not receiving sufficient management and leadership training.  Can I get an “Amen?”

Go West, Young Man!

My good friend Jim Calloway of the Oklahoma Bar Association and I are pleased to present a noontime CLE program at the Utah State Bar on Friday, February 11, 2005, in conjunction with the ABA Mid-Year Meeting in Salt Lake City.  The two-hour seminar will cover marketing and management issues that confront many solo and small firm practitioners.  We will be joined by the Utah Bar's Communications Director and resident tech guru, Toby Brown.  Join us if you can!

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.