Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Friday, January 16, 2015

weekly review for Law Practice Tips

weekly review for Law Practice TipsHere are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Legal Tech: NetDocuments Adds Smart Email Management with Recommind’s Decisiv
Decisiv allows NetDocuments to add email management to its already-great document management. And not just email management, but smart email management.

Read more here

Former NFL Players Advance Claims Over Images in Madden Video Games
Electronic Arts Inc., maker of the Madden NFL video games, lost a bid to dismiss claims by former Los Angeles Rams quarterback Vince Ferragamo and thousands of other retired professional football players that the company owes them money for depicting them in its products.

Read more here

Tech Tips: Five apps for creating timelines
There are many reasons to keep a timeline. You might want to create a chronological map of how a project or company developed, track a family history, or follow your career progress or trajectory. But whatever the reason, you need the right tool to make the timeline easy to work with. You can’t just use a spreadsheet or text document to create a helpful, interactive tool. Instead, you need the right software to do the job.

Read more here

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Friday, January 9, 2015

weekly review for Law Practice Tips

weekly review for Law Practice TipsHere are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Law Practice Management Tips: Can Free Consultations Pay Off for Lawyers?
Smooth or crunchy? Sean Connery or Roger Moore? Free consultations or no? These are the debates that characterize our times. Because this is a legal blog, we’re going to have to save the first two for another blog (although, off the record, the answers are “crunchy” and “Roger Moore”).

Read more here

Law Practice Tips: 20 Law Practice Empowerment Tips
At the American Bar Association’s annual GPSolo National Solo and Small Firm Conference in October, practice management experts Peggy Gruenke and Alan Klevan presented “60 Practice Empowerment Tips in 60 Minutes” — focused on the nuts-and-bolts of running a successful law practice. We asked the pair to zero in on their favorite practice-boosting pointers.

Read more here

Law Practice Tips: How to eliminate 80% of your law firm’s past due accounts
According to a survey by LexisNexis, 73% of law firms report having past due accounts. Lawyers in small firms reported that up to 39% of their total client base is past due. What causes this? And what can be done about it?

Read more here

Florida Debt Collection Defense: Debt Collectors Hound Millions of Retired Americans
It may be hard to imagine Grandma unable to pay her bills or Grandpa being hounded by debt collectors. But for millions of Americans, this is the harsh reality of retirement.

Read more here

Florida Legal News: Finally, the muzzle is off! Bar drops past results restrictions from lawyer advertising
Amounts that clients have won in lawsuits are again permissible for lawyers to use in television, radio, and billboard advertising.

Read more here

Legal Tech Tips: Lawyers Going Google: How to Use and Supercharge Gmail and Calendar
Millions of corporations, small businesses, solo lawyers, large and small law firms, and federal, state, and local governments have “gone Google.”

Read more here

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Monday, December 29, 2014

weekly review for Law Practice Tips

weekly review for Law Practice TipsHere are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Legal Marketing: Top 7 Internet Marketing Mistakes Law Firms Need To Avoid
I’ve worked with dozens of attorneys helping to enhance their online presence and market their firms. I’ve also studied many more and it isn’t uncommon to see lawyers (often busy doing what they do best) miss obvious opportunities for getting more exposure on the internet. Just like in every industry, people make some really basic mistakes when promoting their brand on the web and lawyers are no different.

Read more here

Law Practice Management Tips: Cloud-Based Practice Management: A Comparative Review
Cloud-based practice management is the future of law practice, especially for small firms or solo lawyers. The fact is, practice management software helps lawyers manage their lives, provide competent representation, and control all aspects of their law practices. Many lawyers try to manage their practices with a combination of calendaring, file folders on a server, or even as an Excel spreadsheet. But as I’ve pointed out, practice management and case management systems add much more value, and help minimize conflicts or other issues.

Read more here.. 

Law Practice Management Tips: The Do’s and Don’ts of Creating the Perfect Business Card
We have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to our pursuit of the perfect business card. There are some major #FAILS you want to avoid and major DO’s you want to embrace.

Read more here

Law Practice Tips: 12 Rules for Turning Phone Consultations Into Retainers
Initial consultations are different on the phone.
Recently, I published 12 Rules for Turning Initial Consultations Into Retainers, which inspired some questions from lawyers meeting with clients via phone and online.  The phone is different—very different.

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Law Practice Tips: Soloing With Mindfulness In Mind
Solos always need tools to get ahead. The most obvious tool to help you do that is actually inside your head. You just need some training to understand it, and use it to your best advantage. The training is mindfulness training.

Read more here

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Friday, December 19, 2014

weekly review for Law Practice Tips

weekly review for Law Practice TipsHere are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Reconnecting with Your Passion for the Law
At some point, most lawyers express a sense of meaninglessness in their work. While this is not unique to lawyers, their philosophical and analytical tendencies often seem to make these feelings more acute. And the negative public perception of law can compound these feelings, depriving lawyers of the social adulation and approval that may help buoy those in other highly demanding professions.

Read more here

Reaching the turning point in a legal career
No career is without routine frustrations and even some major hurdles. However, I felt free to really enjoy one of the best parts of my practice — my conversations with clients — because I knew that I could usually offer them immediate valuable feedback.

Read more here

Break The Bonds Of Depression: Be The Happy Lawyer You Were Meant To Be
It’s well known that members of the legal profession are plagued by depression and substance abuse. The causes are many. Lawyering is a contentious, combative line of work. The pressure to bring in new books of business combined with the relentless requirements of the billable hour cause undue stress. It’s a demanding job full of constant and unexpected deadlines. And, sometimes, despite your best efforts, you’re unable to achieve the desired results for your clients.

Read more here

The Happy Lawyer: Change Your Mindset
Great news for lawyers since our profession has the distinct honor of having some of the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide. That’s why we’ve embarked on this 15 post blog series devoted to helping lawyers make choices that increase their levels of happiness. As we discuss in that post, one way to increase happiness is to take steps to change your mindset.

Read more here

Creating a Walk-Away Law Practice
How do you build a law practice you can one day own but no longer run? It starts with wrapping your mind around the concept that you don’t have to do everything yourself, or even closely supervise everything yourself.

Read more here

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Friday, December 12, 2014

weekly review for Law Practice Tips

weekly review for Law Practice TipsHere are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Florida Debt Collection Law: To Collect a Debt or Take a Loss …That is the $Question$
The economy tanked several years ago. There is no way to sugar coat this. A lot of customers, income and sales were lost. And with bad business came bad debts. Often the bad debts had to be ignored as the more pressing problem was operating expenses, rent and payroll.

For those that survived, efficiency and automation were the key to survival. We now see tighter budgets, virtual employees, virtual offices, online stores, outsourcing and streamlined workflows. There are less workers doing more work while wearing more hats. As a consequence, business is stable and growing.

Read more here

Florida Debt Collection Law: Debt collectors target the elderly
For succeeding generations, retirement has been the time when older Americans reaped the benefits of their years in the workplace. Oftentimes at ceremonies, workers would receive a gold watch – a symbol of their entry into retirement and an era of “golden years.”

Today, few if any count on getting a gold watch. And what should have been the proverbial golden years are often tarnished by a struggle to keep pace with rising costs of living. These financial challenges are often worsened by aggressive debt collectors who hound older Americans about debts they may not even owe.

Sometimes, these collectors threaten to garnish their limited benefits.

Read more here

Florida Legal News: Undocumented immigrant to practice law in Florida
It’s never easy to become a lawyer.

But it was a different dimension of difficult for José Godinez-Samperio, whose quest to practice law in Florida took him not only through law school but also through the state Supreme Court and the Legislature.

Godinez-Samperio was sworn into the Florida Bar last week after lawmakers rewrote state law to allow an undocumented immigrant to practice law in the state.
“It was so incredible,” Godinez-Samperio said after taking the oath of admission at a Hispanic Bar Association gala in Tampa. “Everybody was there from so many parts of my life.”

Read more here

Florida Collection Law: Top consumer outrage? Debt collection for medical, other bills
Debt collection is the nation’s No. 1 complaint by consumers, a federal financial agency says — and hounding about medical debt is a big piece of the story.
A new report says consumers complain that their medical bills are often inaccurate or still unresolved with insurers, yet many say debt collectors resort to profanity or derogatory names such as “deadbeat,” “liar” or “fraud.”

One woman said a collector tried to get her to pay the medical bills of her late husband: “After my crying through the whole conversation, he offered for me to pay (three quarters of the balance due) on the doctors’ bills of my husband. No one told me I was not responsible for the debt.”

Read more here

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Friday, November 28, 2014

weekly review for Law Practice Tips

weekly review for Law Practice TipsHere are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

The Do it Yourself Lawyer – is it really a good idea?
The DIY trend is in high gear. Everyone wants to do things on their own to save a few dollars here or there. Hardware stores encourage this activity. I get that. It is one thing to be a weekend warrior around the house. It is an entirely different thing to be a professional with no professional training or experience. Yet, many people these days take that leap and act as their own lawyer. How hard could it be? Looks easy enough on television. Just be confident, brash and yell louder than the other person. And all the required instructions, procedures and legal answers can now be found online. Just Google it. See anything wrong with this picture? If not, I would urge you read on.

Read more here

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Monday, October 13, 2014

weekly review for Law Practice Tips

weekly review for Law Practice TipsHere are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Lawyer Websites & SEO: Getting Indexed Fast in Google
A lot of people seem to think it takes weeks (or even months) to get indexed in Google, but that’s just not true. Almost anyone can get his or her site crawled and indexed in two weeks or less – sometimes you can even be listed in the Google index in as little as a few hours!

There are several ways to get indexed quickly. All of them involve getting links to your site on other sites that have high PageRank, or sites that are updated often and get crawled frequently by search engine spiders.

You don’t have to pay to do this. There are plenty of ways to get these types of links to your site without paying a penny. One of the easiest ways to get indexed quickly is to use WordPress as your web platform. If you don’t have a WordPress site, you can still ping your site at places like pingoat.com or Pingomatic.com.

Read more here

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Monday, September 29, 2014

Weekly review for Law Practice Tips

Weekly review for Law Practice TipsHere are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Law Practice Management: 12 Rules for Turning Initial Consultations Into Retainers
They don’t just happen.

Getting a client into your office for an initial consultation is the culmination of a great deal of effort.
You’ve done your networking, advertising, content creation, and social media, and you’ve finally got someone sitting in the seat across from you.

This is it. The game is on. Everything comes together for this one meeting.Can you feel the pressure?

Now is the time when you convert that marketing energy into money. This is where the rubber meets the road.

Don’t blow it.

Seriously, don’t blow it. You won’t get another chance with your prospects. Make it happen. Be magical. Be amazing. Bring your “A” game.

Read more here

Law Practice Management: Business Development: Save Time and Do Less!
Most lawyers I know jam their calendars each day with more than two people could accomplish in a week. Is this you?

It’s a vicious cycle because we feel terrible not being able to accomplish what’s on the list… instead of feeling great about what was accomplished. We literally sabotage our success and the feeling of accomplishment! Now, how ridiculous is that! Maybe it’s time to start looking at things differently.

Read more here

Legal Marketing & Practice Tips: What to do when people ask you for free advice

Do people ever ask you for free advice? Of course they do. So, what do you do about it?

Do you tell them to make an appointment? Give them the speech about “all a lawyer has to sell is his time and advice”? Or do you answer their question and hope you’re not wasting your time?

I have another suggestion. In fact, if you agree with my suggestion, you will no longer dread calls or emails asking legal questions or seeking free advice, you will encourage them.

The next time someone asks for your advice, don’t answer them over the phone or in an email. Write your answer and turn it into a blog post or newsletter article.

Read more here

Why Successful People Never Bring Smartphones Into Meetings
You are annoying your boss and colleagues any time you take your phone out during meetings, says new research from USC’s Marshall School of Business, and if you work with women and people over forty they’re even more perturbed by it than everyone else.

The researchers conducted a nationwide survey of 554 full-time working professionals earning above $30K and working in companies with at least 50 employees. They asked a variety of questions about smartphone use during meetings and found:

• 86% think it’s inappropriate to answer phone calls during meetings
• 84% think it’s inappropriate to write texts or emails during meetings
• 66% think it’s inappropriate to write texts or emails even during lunches offsite
• The more money people make the less they approve of smartphone use.
The study also found that Millennials are three times more likely than those over 40 to think that smartphone use during meetings is okay, which is ironic considering Millennials are highly dependent upon the opinions of their older colleagues for career advancement.

Read more here

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

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