When you studied professional responsibility and ethics for the MPRE, you probably ran across a few rules on how to handle your client funds (avoid conflicts of interest, avoid self-dealing, avoid breach of fiduciary duty, and avoid commingling of funds, to name a few). While you may have passed the bar exam fully aware of the rules, the rules only taught you what not to do with client funds. This week, we would like to give you a few tips on what you should do with client funds.

This Wednesday on Total Expert Radio, our featured guest, Rjon Robins, will give you tips on how to properly set up, manage and reconcile your IOLTA Client Property Trust Account. Robins is a law firm marketing and practice management coach who just released a free 4-part series with step-by-step instructions on how to set up and run your client property trust account. During the show, our lively guest will give you tips from his program and answer questions from callers during the show.

Click here or call (347) 857-1419 to join us for the show this Wednesday, August 4 at 12 PM Central. If you can’t listen in during the show, be sure to check out the Total Expert Radio page for more information about upcoming shows, recorded archives and mp3 downloads of our past shows.

Legal process outsourcing and virtual workers have been on the rise in the legal industry for the past few years because they help attorneys increase productivity and cut down on overhead and staffing costs. For many attorneys, however, the phrases “outsourcing” and “virtual” inspire questions about employee oversight and ethics. In 2008, the ABA created a formal opinion to address ethics questions related to outsourcing, and state bar associations are beginning to create their own opinions and rules regarding legal process outsourcing and virtual workers.

Join me this Thursday, July 15, 2010, on Total Expert Radio for a live discussion on ethics, virtual workers and the legal industry, featuring Will Hornsby, staff counsel in the ABA’s Division for Legal Services. Since joining the ABA staff in 1988, Hornsby has provided staff support to the Standing Committee on Professionalism, the Commission on Responsibility in Client Development, the Committee on Research on the Future of Law and the ABA Presidential Commission on Access to Lawyers. In addition, he frequently writes and speaks about access to legal services, the role of technology and legal ethics for law journals and conferences. He is currently a chair of the Illinois ARDC Hearing Panel and an adjunct faculty member of the John Marshall Law School, where he teaches the first law school course on the professional responsibility of a technology-based law practice.

The show starts at 12:00 PM central standard time, and you can get answers to your questions by listening in here, or calling in at (347)-857-1419 during the show.  If you can’t listen in during the show, be sure to check out the Total Expert Radio page for more information about upcoming shows, recorded archives and mp3 downloads of our past shows.

Last Tuesday, I hosted a show on Blog Talk Radio with featured guest, Alexis Martin Neely, and Total Attorney’s own John Mickalovski from our bankruptcy case support team. The show, Insights on Outsourcing, was one of our best shows yet. Alexis is a business and life coach who focuses on changing the way legal services are provided to families and small business owners. She has been a regular commentator for CNBC, Fox, and CNN, and she is the bestselling author of Wear Clean Underwear, a guide to legal planning for busy parents.

In 2003, she built her law firm and used virtual workers to scale down her firm’s overhead costs. Now she runs three separate businesses from her home, using virtual workers and only one on-site employee. During the show, Alexis, John and I had a great discussion on how to utilize virtual workers and legal process outsourcing to generate revenue and save money in your law firm.

You can check out the archived show by visiting our Blog Talk Radio page, but here are a few highlights from the show:

• There is a big difference between working with employees versus independent contractors: It’s harder to manage employees and keep them happy without an HR department. Using virtual workers and outsourced services helps you minimize some of the headaches created by managing large on-site staffs because you do not have to worry about things such as employee benefits, insurance or office space.
• Almost anything that can be delegated to an employee or paralegal can be outsourced, including scheduling meetings, managing phones, performing client intake, managing cases and delivering messages after office hours.
• By hiring a virtual receptionist to answer the phones with a standard, cheerful greeting that is welcoming for prospects, you can free up time for you and your in-house staff for other important tasks, like providing customer service to your current clients or focusing on legal work.
• By utilizing legal process outsourcing, you can increase the value of your time. If your billable rate is $150 an hour, why waste time filling out form documents that can be done at a fraction of the cost? Instead, try sending some of this work to an off-site service provider and use that free time to increase productivity for your billable hours.
• Is it hard to get started with a virtual worker? Not if you take baby steps. Try hiring someone to do just one task, such as answering the phone. After that, take some time to communicate your needs and requirements up front with your outsourced service provider. In the long-run, the time and costs that you take to carefully choose a virtual worker and set up a working relationship with that service provider will be minimal compared to the amount of time and costs that you will save by using a virtual worker.
• Is outsourcing ethical for lawyers? Yes, as long as you supervise the employees you outsource, review work before filing and perform your due diligence to make sure that the virtual worker our outsourced service provider maintains the security and confidentiality of your client files. For more info, check out ABA Formal Opinion 08-451.

Join us on April 20 at noon on Blog Talk Radio when our featured guest, Kevin Houchin, discusses work/life balance and how to become the kind of lawyer you want to be, both in the office and out.

Join Total Attorneys on Blog Talk Radio this Tuesday, March 2, for a new show hosted by Kevin Chern featuring guests Alexis Martin Neely and Max Gardner—Insights on Outsourcing.  Listen in or call while this group of law practice management experts discusses ways to use virtual workers and legal process outsourcing to cut overhead expenses in your law firm.  The show starts at 11 a.m. Central time, and you can get answers to your questions by listening in here or calling in at (347) 857-1419 during the show.  If you can’t listen in during the show, be sure to check out the Total Attorneys Blog Talk Radio page for more information about upcoming shows and recorded archives and mp3 downloads of our past shows.

On February 4, we hosted a Blog Talk Radio show, featuring Larry Bodine and John Remsen. We had a great show, discussing PR strategies for attorneys and law firms on a shoestring budget.   Here are a few highlights from the show:

• You don't need to hire a PR firm to get publicity for your law firm.  While a PR firm can save you time, there are less expensive ways to get publicity on your own: local newspapers, blogs, webinars, internet radio shows, public speaking engagements, social networking, and periodic newsletters, just to name a few.
• If you want to get featured in your local newspaper, try building a relationship with a reporter who works in a beat related to your area of practice.  Don't simply email the reporter a pitch for why your firm deserves to be in the news.  Instead, try setting up a quick meeting over coffee to find out more about the reporter's interests and the stories that reporter would like to cover.  Then, when something comes up at your firm related to the reporter's ideas, you can present yourself as a reliable source that he or she already knows.
• If you do want to pitch a story to a reporter, make sure that your story is newsworthy.  A good way to do this is by having a local spin on a national topic or by telling a story that will relate to the newspaper's readership on a personal level.
• Treat bloggers just like you would reporters.  They may seem less significant than a newspaper or local news channel, but bloggers are in a unique position because their writing is easily accessible on the Internet and they generally have a targeted audience that may fall in line with your own targeted audience for potential clients.
• Another great way to promote your law firm and practice is by creating your own blog.  Blogging can give you a way to position yourself as an expert, and you can promote it through all of the various online social networking sites.  In addition to promoting your blog on sites, such as LinkedIn or Facebook, you should try to get involved in dialogue with other attorneys and professional via group pages and discussion boards.
• Try contacting local organizations, such as Rotary groups or supper clubs, to find out if they need any type of programming for their next meeting.  If you are experienced in a topic that interests that group, try to set up a date to speak to the group on that topic.  If you can't set up an event, create one by setting up a webinar or your own Internet radio show, featuring a topic related to your law practice.
• Create a regularly released newsletter and set up a "subscribe" button on your law firm's website.  Each new subscriber might become your next new client.  Each month, write a short e-newsletter, composed of a headline and a synopsis that links to the main article on your website.

Total Attorneys invites you to join us this Thursday, February 4, on Blog Talk Radio for a new show featuring two leading authorities on law firm management and marketing—PR Strategies on a Shoe String Budget.  Listen or call in while your host, Kevin Chern, talks to John Remsen and Larry Bodine about working with the media to build your reputation as a leading attorney and attract desirable clients.  The show starts at 11 a.m. Central time, and you can get answers to your questions by listening in here or calling in at (347) 857-1419 during the show.  Can’t listen in during showtime this week?  Be sure to check out the Total Attorneys Blog Talk Radio page for more information about upcoming shows and recorded archives of all of our past shows.

Today, I hosted a Blog Talk Radio show on attorney obligations to comply with the rules of professional conduct that govern law firm marketing.  Our featured guests were two experts on ethics and legal marketing: Will Hornsby and Nancy Roberts Linder.

Hornsby is counsel in the American Bar Association’s Division for Legal Services, chair of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission Hearing Panel, a Cook County arbitrator and an adjunct faculty member of the John Marshall Law School.  Hornsby has written several articles and two books on technology, law firm marketing and legal ethics, and he also teaches a class on the professional responsibility of a technology-based law practice.

Nancy Roberts Linder is the Principal of Nancy Roberts Linder Consulting, a LaGrange, Illinois-based marketing consulting practice for professional service entities, primarily law firms.  She consults in a variety of client development and client relationship management areas, including strategic planning, communications development, and attorney skills enhancement.  In addition, Linder has written numerous articles on lawyer marketing; designed and implemented marketing databases; advised on website design, content and usage evaluation; taught HTML to marketing support staff; evaluated marketing-related software for law firm applications; and developed curriculum to teach marketing skills to law students.

Both of my guests gave some great tips, and you can access the entire show here, but here are a few highlights from today’s show:

• The ethics rules that exist now were written in the 20^th century, and many people would argue that they reflect 19^th century values, but now we are dealing with 21^st century technology, so the ability to apply those rules to current opportunities for client development can create a lot of friction.

• Lawyers who use new technology are ahead of the policymakers, so they need to weigh the benefits of using that new technology with the potential risks that their may be issues or unanswered questions under ethics rules.

• Generally, issues with ethics rules will not arise from the technology itself but instead from the way you use that technology to present messages and market your law practice.

• The ethics game is largely played with semantics, and ethics rules can often rest more on how an attorneys says things rather than what the attorney is trying to say.

• There is some subjectivity in the interpretation of rules, but when lawyers understand what the rules say and how they apply they can learn how to use them to their advantage.

• Ethics rules are very nuanced and can vary widely state-by-state.  Attorneys have an obligation to comply with the rules of the states in which they are seeking clients.

• Listen to the full recorded show and learn how to do the following and more: use ethics rules to your advantage; create disclaimers for your website that is seen by people in multiple states; prevent conflicts when potential clients send you unsolicited messages through your website or email; maintain client confidentiality and security when communicating online; and write blog posts that subtly promote your expertise and practice without conflicting with ethics rules regarding advertising and solicitation.

Total Attorneys invites you to join our experts for a live question and answer session on Blog Talk Radio this Thursday, January 21 at 11:00 a.m. CDT.  Call in or listen as Will Hornsby and Nancy Roberts Linder discuss attorneys’ obligations to comply with the rules of professional conduct that govern law firm marketing.  This show will be a follow-up to their session, “The Jeopardy of Marketing Legal Services,” which was featured at the 2009 Get a Life Conference hosted by the Total Practice Management Association.  Categories will include commercial speech, false or misleading communications, advertisements, solicitations and multi-state marketing.  Check out the show here and call in with you questions at (347) 857-1419.