Last week-end, I was attending a Vintage Airstream rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as mentioned in a previous post.
Because our “new” vintage Airstream is still being built and our “old” vintage Airstream was totaled from our December accident, we could not stay at the rally, but had sleeping quarters about 10 miles away, a short car ride. To get there, we had a short stint on Highway 550, a heavily trafficked thoroughfare in the area, so I’m told. As we got close to our destination, I noticed the highway was streaming with police. It looked like a major car accident; as I got closer, it looked like a disaster. I could tell the roadway had been narrowed by cones and police cars into one lane. And as I approached the head of the line, a policeman approached me. Suddenly, I realized that I was in the middle of a road block!
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A wonderful example of how Web 2.0 interaction generates ideas came from my blog post on adopting, and adapting to, online social networking sites like LinkedIn. In that post I speculated that such sites will increasingly become part of lawyers’ marketing efforts, but added that personal contact at meetings, on the phone and through hand-written notes will remain effective outreach tools.
Professor Alan Childress of Tulane Law School promptly picked up my theme and extended it on his own Legal Profession Blog. Professor Childress noted a truth that “seems to be lost” on law school students and younger lawyers: “Handwritten thank-you notes and other traditional communications are becoming even rarer in light of technology — and will surely catch the recipient’s eye a lot more than they used to, given the effort that seems to be required compared to emails and mass digital means.” (more…)
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Have you ever heard of giving a war and no one came?
How about going to a Vintage Airstream Rally with no Airstream? (more…)
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There’s LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, and …. other social networks.
In a recent article by Larry Bodine, he cited the following statistics: Less than 8% surveyed believe social networking is important to them; 91% said they spend less than 25% of their online time working with social networks. Still, these are rather large numbers to be devoting to a networking process that is relatively new … As with other technologies, we will have to wait and see if this takes hold.
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Don’t bill for time spent by first year associates, increase dramatically the time spent on educating young associates and bill only by fixed or flat fees … these are three different approaches to providing more value to clients and greater certainty to the cost of legal services for clients that are highlighted in a current article in the ABA Journal.
Does any or all of these new approaches increase the cost of doing business? Possibly. Do they increase satisfaction of your clients. Definitely. Do they increase your revenue? Quite probably.
These approaches are worth considering and perhaps adopting for your practice.
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In Law Firm Fees & Compensation: A LawBiz® Special Report, I discuss several formats for billing legal services. Jeff Bleich, President of the State Bar of California, discusses one of these formats, the billable hour in his April column of the California Bar Journal. He raises the specter of the “billable hour trap.” He maintains that the profession must change its fee structure and move away from the current policy of billing by time. He reflects the thinking of many lawyers who are feeling the pressure of working long hours.
Because of his comments, I began to think about this subject in a way different than I have ever done in the past. I want to share some of my revelations as, perhaps, a catalyst for your further consideration on what clearly is a very important issue.
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The April 8th edition of LawBiz® Tips is now “on the stands” for review.
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The season is over for 2 elite basketball programs. But, for neither, was this a losing season. Both won more than 30 games this year, against some very good teams … and all of the Final Four teams, for the first time in NCAA history, were ranked #1 in their respective regions.
Are there any lessons to be learned from this excitement for lawyers and law firms?
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The current edition of LawBiz® Tips is now posted
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Our new book is now available. See the comments of Carolyn Elefant, Allison Shields and Bruce MacEwen.
Learn why legal fees and compensation are integral components of the same dynamic!
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