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.

A prospective client just called or came into your office, or you want one of your current clients to take a certain action. Are you prepared to convert that prospect into a new client? Do you know how to get your client on board with your plan of action for their case? Check out this video, where Kevin Chern talks to you about asking the right questions to encourage prospective and current clients to take action. Come back next week for the sixth segment of the Total Attorneys Best Practice Series: The Art of Asking Empowering Questions.

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.

Last week, Kevin Chern told you how to track staff conversion rates and talked about the importance of strategically staffing your firm to attract clients. This week, Kevin will discuss the importance of staying in touch with prospective and former clients and building long-term relationships that will result in future opportunities for your practice. Check back next Thursday for segment five of the Best Practice Series: Utilizing Empowering Questions to Convert Prospects into Clients.

Yesterday, I came across a blog post that suggested that attorneys should forego email when they need to communicate bad news or delicate messages to a client because it may be difficult to convey the message properly without facial expressions and voice tone.   But is this really true?

While some people may feel that a phone call or an in-person visit might be the best way to deal with bad news or a touchy matter, some of the most important and delicate moments in history were delivered in writing—the Declaration of Independence, the New York Sun’s letter to 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon about the existence of Santa Claus, and the countless number of Twitter updates that directed aid in Haiti last month, just to name a few.

While I agree that it may be difficult to convey some messages via a text message or casual communication, a well-written email or online message can be as effective if not more effective than spoken communication.  Here are a few reasons why:

• Written communication allows you to edit your thoughts before you communicate the message.  While you may prepare for a meeting or a phone call, you may accidentally say something that you didn’t want to say, but if you write it down, you can read and rewrite your message until is succinctly represents exactly what you want to communicate to your client.

• Written communication forces the client to read everything you wanted your client to know before he or she interrupts you with questions that you had already planned to answer.  This can save a lot of time, anxiety and frustration.

• There is no time limit on writing a letter.  Have you ever tried to call someone only to get his or her voicemail or find that person heading out the door in a rush? Sometimes a 30-second message is not enough, but if you write your message down, your client will have time to read the message when it is most convenient.  That means that your client will be able to get the message, process it and respond to it on his or her own time without being put on the spot with shocking news or a disappointing phone call.

• Letters, email and online communication provide a communication trail.  If you have a virtual law office, you can make sure that all written communication is saved in an organized format, by date, topic, case file or some other labeling system.  This can be useful when you or your client need to recall previous discussions or when you need to relate a pressing matter back to the events and communications that came before it.

• Finally, take a look at almost any well-written novel, article and public announcement.  Authors have been able to pen tone and emotion into their writing since the beginning of print, and many of those authors were attorneys.  As attorneys, we spent four years of college and three years of law school learning how to communicate effectively in writing.  Many attorneys spend more hours creating contracts, briefs, motions and other written documents on a daily basis than they spend speaking.  In other words, as an attorney, you probably qualify as an expert in written communication.  So, before you pick up the phone to call your client or set up a last-minute meeting, ask yourself whether your message would be more effectively communicated through writing.  Many times, an email, online message or a letter will get the job done in a more polite and professional manner.

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.

Welcome back for Week 3 of the Total Attorneys Best Practice Series! This week, Kevin Chern will talk to you about tracking staff members and positioning them in your firm to turn more prospects into clients. In case you missed last week’s episode, we covered Tracking Your Marketing Efforts. And join us next week for more quick tips on generating prospects, getting new clients and getting the most out of your marketing and client communications.

In law school, you probably wrote a few briefs for class.  After finishing, saving and editing, you may have simply saved your brief as a .doc file.  Then, you might have sent your email to your professor in an email.   Whenever you create, open or save a document in Microsoft Word, the document may automatically store information somewhere in an unseen portion of your document.

This information, referred to as “metadata” can include a lot of important and potentially private information, such as your name, company, revisions, hidden text, comments or other file properties.  While you cannot see this information just by opening a document, some metadata can be easily accessed through the user interface of each Office program or by opening the document in a low-level, binary file editor.

In other words, in a moment of frustration, when you typed, “I hate this class,” it is possible that your professor could have seen that information.  This might or might not have been a big deal in law school, but as an attorney, metadata viewed by opposing counsel, clients or non-clients could pose serious risks to your client or your law firm’s privacy.

Luckily, there are a few simple ways to ensure that private information stored as metadata does not get into the wrong hands.

• If you are not concerned with formatting, Copy and Paste Special – Unformatted Text into a new blank document. If you are concerned with formatting, Copy and Paste all text into a new blank document.  This will remove Tracked Changes or Deleted Comments but not all metadata.
• It you are sending out a document that does not require co-editing, send it as a PDF file.  PDF files will contain some metadata but it will not show Tracked Changes or Comments, and the title, subject, author and keyword fields will remain blank unless you submit that information manually.  You can also eliminate all data in a PDF file by saving it as a TIFF file, but this will save each page of your document as a separate file.
• Use a Remove Hidden Data tool or a metadata scrubber.  If you have Microsoft Word 2003, download and install the Remove Hidden Data tool for Office 2003 and Office XP.  If you have Office 2007, Remove Hidden Data tools will be built into Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  Some computer forensics experts, however, suggest that free Microsoft tools are imperfect, so you may consider purchasing a third-party metadata scrubber that will ensure private data is removed (while also allowing you to view metadata saved in other files).

This week, Kevin Chern discusses the importance of tracking your law firm’s marketing efforts and gives you a few tips on how to do just that. This is Part 2 of the Total Attorneys Best Practice Series. Check back next week for Part 3: Tracking Staff Conversion Rates.

I often write about ways to use technology so that you spend less time in the office, do your work more efficiently and access your case files from anywhere in the world.  Sometimes, however, it is important to power down and unplug yourself from constant access to your email, phone, work and other distractions that can pull you away from a true vacation.  Not only is taking a vacation pleasurable, but studies show that taking a vacation reduces stress, promotes creativity, prevents burnout, strengthens relations and helps job performance.  When we are exhausted or stressed, it makes it difficult for us to do the best job we can for out clients, but it can be hard to take a vacation when our work follows us via cell phones and computers out of the office, onto the plane and even sometimes to a far-off sandy beach.

As an attorney, you may fear a weekend away from the office: Who is going to answer the phone when a potential client calls? Who will fill out Form XYZ and have it postmarked by Monday? Is that small pile on my desk going to turn into a big pile if I step away from it for a couple days? However, the same technology and innovation that allows us to work from home can also be used to help us leave work at the office while we are trying to get a little rest and relaxation:

If you are worried about missing out on opportunities, hire someone to answer the phone for you while you are away.  Some phone services will even do initial inquiries, schedule appointments and prioritize contacts so you don’t have to sift through your email inbox and voicemail when you come back to the office.  If you are worried about mounting piles of paperwork, take a look into legal process outsourcing to help you get through your vacation.  You can hand off forms on Friday and have them returned and ready to file or send off by Monday if you choose a professional team to help you get the job done.  If you are worried that your clients will get upset because you seem to be out of reach during the weekend, set up auto-responses in your virtual law office and email that will notify clients of any important status updates or changes.

If you scheduled a tech-free weekend this month, how would you spend your two days of unplugged freedom?