Here are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!
Be “Offensive” to Succeed
In my experience, the best defense usually prevails over the best offense. The Seattle Seahawks, ostensibly the better defender, prevailed over the Denver Broncos, ostensibly the better offense, in the recent Super Bowl by bringing its best defensive skills into play.
However, the playing field is different in the practice of law. Unlike football players, lawyers need to be offensive, not defensive. In this case, offensive doesn’t mean hurting someone’s feelings, which is never a good thing to do in the business of law. Rather, offensive means being proactive.
In particular, lawyers must be proactive to develop effective client relations, which will always win the day. Effective client relations will create loyal clients who will sing your praises far and wide. What are some of the best practices that you might consider?
Read more here…
One Simple Ingredient for a Happier Workplace
Sandra asked the team of legal support staff she manages what would contribute to their motivation at work. They all told her “appreciation – being thanked when we do a good job.”
Mark , a young associate, is unhappy at his firm. One of the things bothering him about the culture is the lack of appreciation for people’s efforts.
Chelsea and her close colleagues laugh at themselves for being foolish: after all their years of practice they still hanker after an appreciative word from their partners for taking on some of the essential but non-billable work critical to the firm’s business. The word of thanks never comes.
Over the past few weeks numerous lawyers from law firms around the country have shared the same thought about appreciation with me – it goes something like this:
I don’t work for the money. Yes, money is essential, but the real satisfaction comes from helping people. And what I long for are a few words of appreciation when I go the extra mile for someone.
In law firms around the country it seems that one of the hardest things to come by is a kind word from someone for a job well done.
Read more here…
Responsive websites may not be the way forward for firms
A well-promoted solution for the wide variety of screen sizes law firm websites must accommodate can end up being more trouble than it’s worth.
Responsive websites, which automatically sense a device’s screen size and respond by reconfiguring text and graphics to fit, can render desktop PCs with ridiculously large text and other overblown features that are tedious to wade through.
“The trouble with responsive is I haven’t seen enough thought go into the user experience,” says Rustin Kretz, CEO of Scorpion Design, a Valencia, Calif., firm that does work for law firms. “It’s more ‘technical’ and less ‘design.’ I know of many businesses that spent an enormous amount of money to have a responsive design, only to have it create a worse user experience.”
Proponents of responsive design counter that bad responsive websites are the fault of the designer, not the method.
Read more here…
Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!
Photo credit: insider.rymaxinc.com
