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.
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?
Yesterday, I saw a somewhat misguided blog post on the risks of moving to a paperless law office. Basically, the author suggested that going paperless would be inherently more risky than sticking with a traditional paper office because you could lose electronic documents in the event of a technological glitch or human error. But running a successful paperless office is not about just scanning all of your case files to your desktop computer, labeling computer files, throwing all of the originals in a recycling bin and crossing your fingers that your server won’t crash or a virus won’t take over your hard drive.
It is important to recognize the risks involved in any document storage system that you use in your law firm, but with the right tools, a paperless office can be as safe as (if not safer than) a paper office for managing your documents and case files. Here are a few ways to set up a successful paperless office:
This one is simple but important: Always back-up your files, and keep your backups somewhere other than in your office next to your main computer. If you lose your laptop or a virus destroys your desktop computer, you will always have another copy that you can easily retrieve. If you are keeping your files strictly in a physical cabinet or in a pile on your desk, there will be no way to retrieve them if something gets lost or destroyed. Better yet, invest in a web-based storage system that allows you and other authorized users to access your files from any computer with an internet connection.
One argument against a paperless office was the fact that some clients may miss emails, but what happens when the post office loses a letter or your client suddenly moves to a new apartment? In both paperless and paper offices, there is always a chance that your client might miss a message, so be sure to follow up with a phone call or request confirmation upon receipt of important messages.
If you are worried about confidentiality, a virtual law office platform can provide you and your client with a secure, central location for sending and receiving messages and storing files, client data and case documents. In addition, some virtual law offices allow you to track any changes to the case file and restore pre-edited documents and forms. Both you and your client can view all of these updates and changes, so sharing a centralized, web-based storage and communication system can facilitate transparency and cooperation in the attorney-client relationship.
Another argument against a paperless office was human error. However, in a paperless office, you can use your search engine to pull up files that have been misplaced. This might not be so easy when you are sifting through boxes in a storage room in your office basement. With a paperless system, you can search files according to dates, names, contents, updates and a variety of other options.
In the end, it is important to choose a document management system that works best for your office and your comfort level, but with the right planning for backups, communication, collaboration and file searches, a paperless office can be secure and beneficial way for attorneys and clients to monitor their case files.
It is already January 6, so it might seem a bit late to talk about New Years Resolutions, but something I ran across on my Twitter feed today made a great point: Winter is the time to start making your goals, but it is not usually a good time to complete your goals. Right now, if you take a look at the gym in the basement of our office building, you would see a crowd of people eagerly trying to reach their 2010 goals, but what will happen when a snow blizzard hits that makes it difficult for people to get to the gym? For whatever reason, no matter where we live, winter can be a tough time for most people and simple things like shorter days, bad weather, and busy times at work can take a toll on personal goals.
We often talk about recession-proofing our businesses, but what can we do to winter-proof our personal goals for the New Year? Here are a few ways to create resolutions that will be a success rather than a disappointment when the silver ball drops on 2011 next year:
Start with planning; then, move on to action. Most people choose their New Years resolutions and start working on those goals on the first day of the year. Instead of jumping right in to your 2010 goals, however, start the year with the planning process. During the months of January and February really dig in and reflect on the lessons you learned last year. Think hard about which goals matter most, and prepare a plan of action that you can stick to when energy picks up in the spring. This will help prevent burnout, and it will give you a chance to make a well-educated decision about which goals matter the most this year.
Prioritize your goals. Does your New Years resolution look something like this: “This year I plan to get in shape, start a new business, quit smoking, pay down all of my debt, find a job and meet the love of my life”? It might make more sense to pick out just one or two top priorities that matter most this year and save the rest for later.
Be realistic. Set goals that can be broken down into smaller parts. If you are planning to pay off debt in 2010, make sure that your goals are reasonable. For example, it may not be feasible to resolve to be debt free by 2011 if you just started a new law firm or finished law school, but you could resolve to pay off a single credit card, organize your expenses or create a ten-year, pay-down plan that you can implement this year.
What other ways do you ensure successful resolutions for the New Year? And what are your top priority goals for 2010?
Total Attorneys is dedicated to helping small firms and solo practitioners grow and manage their law practices. In addition to the technology-enabled services that we provide our clients, our other mission is to provide attorneys with educational resources and a source of support in an ever-changing legal market. The Best Practice Series, presented by Total Attorneys President Kevin Chern, will give you tips on how to market your law practice, manage law firm staff, build client relationships and utilize technology and the web to create a successful legal services business. Take a look at our first video, Understanding the Immediacy of the Web, and check back next Thursday for new tips on how to create your Best Practice.
Do you remember the movie Groundhog Day that came out in 1993? It featured Bill Murray as a burned-out weatherman named Phil Connors who had to cover the annual events in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. In the movie, this was the one job that Connors hated to do most, but when he finished the job and went to sleep on February 2, he woke up then next day only to find himself repeating the same dreaded February 2 day over and over again in a seemingly endless loop.
After numerous suicide attempts and hedonistic indulgences, Connors begins to reexamine his life and priorities in an effort to break the chain. He stops focusing on the monotony of his job and depression, pulls himself away from his autopilot approach to life and uses his vast experience of a single day to help people in his community, strengthen personal relationships and learn how to do a number of new things. After Connors learns to focus more on the things that really matter most—getting involved in his community, spending time with loved ones and working on his personal growth—he is able to wake up the next morning to find that the time loop is broken.
Almost twenty years later, the plot of this movie rings true for many people working in the legal industry. As an attorney, do you see yourself going into the office, dreading the day, and working on autopilot, only to find yourself stuck on a loop that has you missing out on the things that matter most to you in life? If so, I urge you to do take a tip from Bill Murray’s character and find ways to break the loop by making more time for yourself and those around you.
Instead of heading to the office at 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning, have your virtual receptionist forward your calls to your email while you spend the morning volunteering for a cause that inspires you. Are you sick of looking at your office walls during client meetings? Just upload contracts and forms to your virtual law office and let your client sign and fill out these documents from home. Do you find yourself getting stuck late at the office filling out forms and doing paperwork? Why not take off from work early and send non-billable tasks to a reliable case support staff who can get the job done while you have dinner with your spouse or enjoy a card game with friends?
At the end of the day, take a look at your job and find out which parts of it you can streamline or delegate. This will give you more time to do the things that matter most to you. And if you are doing more of the things you love, you will be able to do your work with more energy and optimism rather than feeling the pains of a monotonous loop like the one Bill Murray’s character suffered in Groundhog Day.