Total Attorneys

Join Total Attorneys this Friday at 12:00pm Central on Total Expert Radio for an informative interview with Alan Klevan on ways to manage your law firm when you are out of the office.

Klevan is a principal at Klevan & Klevan, LLP, and he is the creator of Law Practice Strategies, a legal consulting firm dedicated to assisting attorneys move towards building a more efficient and profitable law practice. In August of 2009, the American Bar Association’s General Practice, Solo & Small Firm Division awarded him the “Solo and Small Firm Trainer of the Year Award.”

During this free broadcast, callers will have the opportunity to speak to Klevan live on-air and get answers to their questions. Call in by dialing (347) 857-1419 or visit the show online here. For more information on this show and others visit the Total Expert Radio page.

Last week I handed the reins over to Chelsey Lambert to host an episode of Total Expert Radio. While I didn’t get to listen in live, I did get a chance to enjoy the archived recording. This episode was on Holiday Law Practice Strategies, and it featured Donna Seyle, an expert in freelance lawyering, virtual practice and law practice management. This was a great episode for Chelsey to host since she is Total Attorney’s Virtual Law Office Enabler, and she and Donna were able to give our listeners many tips on how to balance the practice of law with other obligations during the holiday season.

Holidays provide one of the rare times of the year when attorneys in traditional practices get to leave their offices, but they need the tools to allow them to walk out of the office without feeling business will collapse while they are enjoying a child’s holiday pageant or visiting friends at a party.

According to Donna Seyle, attorneys can practice law anywhere they have access to a secure internet connection. At Total Attorneys, we agree and often help attorneys create virtual office solutions for their entire practice, but brick-and-mortar attorneys can also benefit from virtual solutions during the holidays.

Here are some of the other tools and tips suggested during the show:

• Use a virtual receptionist to manage calls and messages while the office is empty.
• Set up auto-responses to notify clients when you will be responding to emails and phone calls.
• Manage your time in short increments to get both work and holiday tasks. Chelsey suggested using the Pomodoro technique.
• Use your down time during the holidays to research ways to make your business more efficient. Generally there is a technology out there that can help you streamline your business.
• Give your clients reasonable expectations during the holidays by sending them a proactive email that explains how and when you will be working during the holidays.
• Avoid scheduling court dates and meetings on days when you have holiday plans with friends and family.
• Take advantage of opportunities to grow your practice by networking and making connections at parties. You just might find a new referral standing under the mistletoe in that Santa hat.

For more great tips, listen to the full show here, and join us this Monday and Tuesday for a Power Chat on Security in the Cloud, featuring Total Attorneys’ David Dahl and Clio’s Jack Newton.

When you were in law school, your teachers and advisors probably told you how important it is to find good mentors to help you through various stages of your legal career. You also followed all the tips and tricks on where to meet good mentors: You attend the bar association events, engage in dialogue on LinkedIN, and pay attention to who’s who and what’s what in your practice area. You exchanged business cards, you emailed, you sent in your resume and you even included a few potential mentors on your holiday greeting card list. So, why hasn’t anyone jumped at the opportunity to become your personal source of guidance? After all, you know you would be an excellent protégé.

Maybe it is time to stop thinking of ways other people can help you get what you want out of your career. Instead of reaching out to people to ask them what they can do for you, try offering them something valuable in return. While you may not be an expert in foreclosure defense cases, maybe you can offer your expertise in bankruptcy law. If you are just starting out, maybe you have some sort of non-legal experience that would be useful to an attorney who is new to technology, web-based services or social networks.

With more and more graduates entering the legal field each year, you might not be the only attorney looking for a mentor. Find ways to stand out and make it worthwhile for people to take you under their wings. For more tips on how to get experience as a new or transitioning lawyer, check out this recent post on Law.com.

When talking to attorneys who are just starting their own law firm or solo practice, I often suggest ways to define their niche markets and focus their practice areas to develop areas of expertise. While this is often good advice, it does not mean that attorneys should narrow every aspect of their life to fit one law firm model or practice area mold.

Instead, it is also important to pursue a few interests that may be seemingly unrelated to your niche practice or specific goals for your law firm. Instead of sticking to a rigid step-by-step plan to build your practice, make room for diversions, impulses and offbeat experiences. By broadening your horizons and taking advantage of a diverse range of opportunities, you can take on your work with a fresh and creative perspective.

In a recent interview with @22twts, self-proclaimed “mumpreneur” Melanie Hatton referred to a quote attributed to Steve Jobs: You can’t join the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future.”

You can take a look at her recap of the interview here. What interests do you maintain out of work and how have they helped you connect the dots?

Last week, a colleague of mine shared a story about the importance of maintaining records from past cases. In this particular story, the attorney had represented a client during her case many years ago. Recently, the client contacted the attorney looking for the settlement money that was awarded to her during that case. Almost 20 years later, this attorney was able to prove that the client had already received her settlement reward because he had all of the documentation provided by the client, third parties and certified mail receipts in an off-site storage facility.

On one hand, this attorney told a great story about how he was able to avoid a potential conflict because he had saved his files in a secure storage facility. On the other hand, it took this attorney about three to four weeks to get the file from the storage facility after he called the company to request the files. Sometimes we need answers faster than three to four weeks. Instead of relying on someone sifting through boxes in a warehouse in search of a long-forgotten case file, it might be much easier to avoid a bad situation if the story goes like this:

One day, an old client called her attorney to inquire about a settlement check she claimed she never received. The attorney logged into his virtual law office, typed the client’s name into the search bar, and pulled up the client’s file, which included scanned copies of all of documents, correspondence and postage receipts related to that file. The attorney found a document, signed by the former client, stating that she had received her settlement check, and he emailed it to his former client. This process took less than 10 minutes, and the former client never called back in search of her “missing” check.

Legal technology, such as virtual law offices, cloud-based services and paperless office systems, are making it easier for attorneys to maintain their files and communicate with clients efficiently.  In what ways have you used new technology in your office to improve your old office management procedures, save time and quickly resolve issues?

Yesterday on Total Expert Radio, we discussed Security in Cloud Computing with two IT experts, Clio’s Jack Newton and Total Attorney’s Dave Dahl. When I host these shows, I try to keep things laid back and off the cuff so that our listeners will get the opportunity to hear candid discussions on a variety of legal industry topics. While the show always features many great experts, some shows really stand out above others for those golden bits of information that pop up during our conversations on air. Yesterday proved to be one of those golden shows. If you didn’t have time to join us yesterday, you can still listen to the show by visiting the Total Expert Radio page, but here are a few highlights from the show:

• What is cloud computing? It’s a broad term used in a lot of contexts, but for the purposes of the show, it’s any situation where you are hosting your software and data with an off-site provider and accessing that data through a web browser rather than keeping all of your data on your own servers in your office.
• Is cloud computing too advanced for my law firm? Every attorney is probably already using at least one cloud-based service: online banking, email, online shopping are all examples.
• Can cloud-based service providers do an adequate job of maintaining security and privacy for my files? If your office burns down, you fire a disgruntled employee or your computer crashes, your office may not be equipped to protect your data, but good cloud service providers will store servers in highly-regulated facilities, perform frequent security audits, and create built-in redundancy to maintain integrity and security of your data.
• How do I pick a service provider? While there is no official “stamp of approval” to certify cloud service providers, you can do background research and ask questions to determine whether a service provider uses all of the proper means of keeping data secure.
• Isn’t it easier to just use the software I already have installed on my computer instead of uploading my data to a web-based application? Cloud-based legal applications and services offer a lot of benefits: they cut down the time and cost of managing your own IT resources; updates, improvements and security patches are ongoing so no need to download new software or reboot; software constantly matures on a 24/7 basis so that you never have to learn a new program all at once or buy a new version of software after the old one becomes outdated; you have the freedom to work from anywhere and on any operating system as long as you can access the internet; plus, there are many other benefits.

After talking to Jack and Dave yesterday, I agree with something our CEO, Ed Scanlan, once said to me: “The term cloud computing will someday go away; it will just be called computing.” Check out the full show here, and join us next month on Total Expert Radio for a discussion on Contract Lawyering.

By now, you have probably heard the news about Chicago’s “Mayor for Life” and his announcement that he will not be running for a seventh term in office. You may love Mayor Richard M. Daley, hate him or have no opinion of him, but we can all learn something from the statements he made yesterday: “I’ve always believed that every person, especially public officials, must understand when it’s time to move on. For me, that time is now.”

For many attorneys and other professionals, we become accustomed to the status quo in our jobs and we often identify ourselves and our lives with what we’ve “always done” or what has become familiar to us. It is hard to think of someone more identified with his job and a particular role than Daley, but longtime political figures are not the only people who need to assess their lives, jobs and priorities on a regular basis. When we have done something for a long time, it can become easy to just continue and feel like we need to make it work, but sometimes we need to renovate our lives, practices, staff or whatever could be holding us back from other priorities. It is important to determine whether we are being healthy, doing what we really want to do, looking out for what’s best for our families and ourselves, and acting positively for our communities and the world.

For some attorneys, this could mean letting go of a troublesome client, delegating some of your work, retiring or setting up a part-time VLO to have more time with family, giving up the big firm 80-hour job for solo practice or a smaller, slower-paced firm, or making other career and lifestyle changes.

Can you think of something that you have “always done” that you could do without? What are some of those things and how can you change your life and improve your law practice for the best?

Today, I read an interesting Op-Ed on the history of the work/life balance movement that charted how Americans have approached work over time: from family-oriented jobs such as farms and small shops; to isolated jobs in factories and offices; to remote-based jobs and small-business entrepreneurship.

In the first period, people had jobs that defined their lives, and they had very little time or energy to think of anything outside of those jobs. Outside of work, family activities and personal interests were limited by “the call of nature and the needs of the community.”

With the introduction of mass-production and specialization, factories and large offices allowed owners to ensure efficiency and focus by isolating employees from their homes to work together in centralized locations. The writer suggested that the concept of work/life balance developed during the boom of factory and corporate jobs to encourage mandatory time to fit in family and personal life.

Now, instead of a job that defines our lives or a job separate from life, many people are finding ways to use their life, passions and hobbies to define their jobs. This third segment of people includes many of the attorneys who read this blog and use our services. At Total Attorneys, it is our goal to help attorneys build successful law practices that adapt to the kind of life you want to live, and that goal was inspired by people like you: the solo practitioners with entrepreneurial spirits; the virtual lawyers with desires to make work fit into life, not the other way around; and the small firm attorneys who decided to leave big law to pursue niche markets that coincided with personal passions and values.

What are some of the ways you have used your own passions and interests to shape your career? What are some of the tools you use to make life and work co-exist?

Cloud computing offers convenient and lower-cost solutions to many of the challenges small firm and solo attorneys face today, but it also raises questions for conscientious lawyers. Is cloud computing secure? Can attorneys ethically entrust their client data to shared servers and third-party providers? Join Jack Newton, Co-Founder of Clio, and Total Attorneys Chief Technology Officer David Dahl as they discuss security in the cloud next week on Total Expert Radio at 12:00 p.m. Central. Access the show here or call-in at 347-857-1419. Callers will have the opportunity to join guests on the show and ask questions on the air. To see a list of our past shows, please visit the Total Expert Radio page.

If you read any reviews from the ABA Annual Conference, you may have noticed that social media is prevalent among legal professionals as a way to network with other attorneys, market their practices and share ideas in the legal community. As Donna Seyle recently wrote on her Legal Practice Strategy blog, “…technology, economics, social media and the legal marketplace has rolled over professional traditional like a tsunami over beach tents.” She also pointed out that many attorneys today use technology and social media to align their professional selves with their authentic selves.

While social media does allow attorneys to share their personal side online, whereas a simple website might not, social media was also created so that professionals can build relationships that extend beyond the confines of the Internet. While many of your professional relationships are suited well for strictly web-only relationships, there may be times when you want to take those relationships offline to create partnerships or solidify good relationships. Here are a few ways to move your social media relationships from the virtual world to the physical world.

1. Engage in real dialogue online. If you want to meet your online friend in the real world, you need to give that person a reason to take the time to meet you face-to-face. You could be Facebook or LinkedIN friends, but if you are one out of thousand, your online “friend” may not even notice you if all you do is "like" or "retweet" their comments and follow their status updates.
2. Once you have established some common ground online, send your online friend a message to give that person your contact information and to request his or her contact info.
3. Try to find more than just common ground with your online contact. Is there something that this person does well that you would like to learn more about? Do you do something that correlates to your online contact’s current projects? In other words, give your contact a reason to talk to you.
4. Take the next step by making a connection. Give your online contact a call to chat (about the idea I mentioned in step 3) or shoot them an email to set up an appointment to talk over coffee or lunch
5. Follow up with your new friend. In addition to keeping up your relationship the way it began, through social media, add your new contact to your holiday card mailing list, invite him or her to networking events, shoot them an email when you see an article that may interest that person.

While social networking can boost your presence online, attract new clients and generate referrals, it can also become a valuable tool for creating and strengthening your professional relationships offline.