Cassens Weiss, Debra, How Lawyers at One Small Firm Said Goodbye to the Billable Hour. ABA Journal.

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Welcome to GAL Radio, brought to you by the Greatest American Lawyer Blog, changing the way law is practiced through technology, innovation and creativity.  Turning the business of law on its head and shaking things up to the betterment of clients, lawyers, law firms and society.

"In the long run, the use of alternative fees will grow only if arrangements can be structured in a sustainable way that makes business sense for both sides.  This book analyzes a variety of opinions about what works for alternative fees, and what does not, based on interviews with senior decision makers from 37 AmLaw 100 firms."  

For more information on the LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees, or to purchase a copy, visit their web page.

Want more information about alternative billing?  Check out Jim's alternative billing posts here.

Damien Allen:  Good afternoon, and welcome to GAL Radio.  My name is Damien Allen, and today on the phone we have with us Mr. Jim Hassett.  Jim Hassett founded LegalBizDev.com to help lawyers develop new business by applying the best business practices from other law firms and other professions.  The company specializes in business development and coaching workshops for large and mid-sized law firms.  Before working with lawyers, Jim had 20 years of experience as a sales trainer and consultant to large and small firms, including American Express, The Bank of New York, The Bank of America, TD Waterhouse, State Street, TIA, Kraft, Telamon Insurance and many others.  He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and is Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychology at Boston University.  Jim is also a frequent speaker at national and regional conferences and has written seven books and more than 70 articles and publications ranging from The New York Times Magazine to Law Firm, Inc.  Good afternoon, and welcome to the program, Jim.

Damien Allen:  You’ve been listening to GAL Radio.  My name is Damien Allen.  Everyone have a great afternoon.

Jim's blog LegalBizDev.com was selected at the American Bar Association 2009 TECHSHOW for 60 Sites in 60 Minutes, a review “of the latest and greatest sites on the Internet”...

The Editors of the ABA Journal have chosen this years top 100 legal blogs.  In order to cast your vote, you'll need to login or register first.

See the list of all 100 blawgs here.

We are proud to announce that OverFlow Legal currently has over 3,500 members and has done over 1,000,000 hits on its web pages since we launched at the beginning of the year.  If you would like to submit any of your blog posts to OverFlow Legal, do so by registering here.

If you’re wondering about some of the cool categories which exist on OverFlow Legal, check these out:

• Copyright & Piracy Law
• Domain Name Dispute Law
• E-Commerce Law
• Internet Law
• Non-Compete Law
• Section 230 – Communications Decency Act
• Trademark Law
• Trade Secret Law

William Patry is the chief copyright lawyer for Google and recently authored the book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars.  In this interview concerning copyright wars on Traverse Legal Radio interview, Mr. Patry discusses the controversy concerning the premise of the book that rhetoric is dominating the discussions between copyright owners and those who seek to reuse, build upon and innovate prior works. 

Attorneys can stop being perceived as heartless ambulance chasers who are out to scam people of their money if only they:

• Stop soliciting personal injury cases: It is against the law to actively solicit cases, but attorneys find loopholes to beat this rule. They’re there at the scene of an accident, pressurizing the victims to file suit even before they’ve barely regained their bearings. They don’t value human life and suffering; all they care about is money. If attorneys wait for people to come to them rather than running behind them and hounding them for cases, they would be seen in a better light.
• Stop filing absurd cases: If our judiciary is to be valued more, people have got to stop filing and fighting absurd cases, like the one where the woman sued a fast food giant for spilling hot coffee on herself, successfully. When lawyers discourage people from filing frivolous lawsuits, they do lose out on legal fees. But what they gain is a whole lot more – respect for their entire community.
• Are honest with their clients: Almost every personal injury lawyer you meet will tell you that you have a solid case and that you’re going to win a large settlement and that they are not going to charge you a dime unless you win the case, in which case they get paid a percentage of your monetary settlement. But that is not the whole truth, and every attorney knows this. If they are honest with their clients and tell them that they will incur incidental costs and that they are going to be spending a lot of time and effort on the case, people will soon begin look at them with different eyes.

Personal injury cases are traumatic experiences for the victims, and when attorneys keep this in mind while taking on the case, they become more human and less of a preying monster.

This guest post was contributed by Donna Mitchell , who regularly writes on the topic of online paralegal schools. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address:  donna.mitchell@rediffmail.com

The new regulations also require advertisements that convey a consumer's experience with a product or service as typical when, in reality, it is not, to disclose what the typical results would be.  Advertisers can no longer portray a result and disclaim it with fine print that says, "Results not typical."  The rules for celebrity endorsements under Part 255 have also changed.  Celebrities must disclose their connections with an advertiser and both parties can now be held liable for untruthful or misleading advertising.  Celebrities also must disclose their relationships with advertisers when they promote products outside of traditional commercials or print advertising, such as on talk shows or in interviews.Finally, if an advertisement refers to a scientific study for support, the advertiser must disclose his or her relationship to the researcher or research agency.

There are several other changes in the law that must also be complied with, as well as several new examples to illustrate the application of the pre-existing rules that have been in effect since 1980.  It is important that bloggers understand these rules and examples because they can be held liable for up to $11,000 per post for a violation.  It is a changing blogging world out there, and it seems as if the law is starting to catch up.

Do they wait for a client with that special need to find them before digging deep into that practice area and developing/expanding their expertise? Or do they expand that expertise on their own dime and then go out and try and get the business?

Many lawyers let market forces drive their business.  They wait for a client with a particular problem to come in, they go out and research that particular issue for the client on the client’s dime and then hope the next case on that same niche issue comes through the door.  Many general practice firms operate around the “client pays to educate me” approach. 

While there is no doubt that lawyers are often the beneficiaries of their clients’ problems in terms in terms of developing expertise, many forward thinking lawyers are swapping the chicken for the egg.  These lawyers are using the information on the internet, access sophisticated legal databases such as Westlaw and LexisNexis , and the power of the blogosphere to get involved in new and excited areas of law which are growing on their own time using their own dime.

Although it sounds obvious that learning a niche issue or area would be the best way to enable you to market your services in that area, it is amazing to me how seldom that occurs. 

My own experience has helped me realize how easy and important it is that the area of internet law did not exist before 1995.  Applying contract, jurisdiction, trademark infringement, copyright infringement, and other established legal principles in the internet space was as much function of creating the law as it was applying it.  Internet lawyers had to take pains to go out and learn these principles well before any client showed up at the door but that’s just with a problem. 

I would make several observations from my own experience.  First, the internet makes expertise available.  With a little hard work in your spare time, there’s almost no area of law you can’t gain base experience in.  Further, your chance of getting a case within a practice you’re interested in is no more than random luck, unless you go out and develop an expertise and start talking up that expertise on the web and on the street. Finally, you need to show off your expertise by blogging it on the web so that clients who have specific problems can find your website with a simple Google search.  Of course, the added benefit is that you’ll extend your geographic reach outside whatever town you happen to live in. 

If you have expanded your expertise in practice areas or issues before any client hit your front door, let me know about your experience and thoughts. 

Think about it.  Before the internet, many people were at a severe disadvantage as they began the process of considering which law firms to employ.  Markets were perceived as decidedly local for most legal matters.  In small towns, this left potential clients with little information and few choices where decisions were mostly based on perceived reputations.  In medium sized towns, the choices increase slightly, but, all too often, the law firm with the fanciest lobby and biggest building was believed to be the best by default.  In large cities, law firms, both big and small, were everywhere.  Choosing a law firm for many clients was little more than a dart throw and hope that the choice was the right one. 

If a lawyer doesn’t deliver the value promised, the client most certainly won’t return.

The phenomena of social networking, however, can dramatically increase the number of people you are "connected" with.  Old high school friends, relatives located across the country or in other parts of the world.  New friends of friends - facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and the other social networking platforms make friendships that would never be possible in the real world possible.  In this way, we are now seeing the Internet contribute to our interrelationships with other people, rather than web pages. 

Let's face it.  Social networking isn't going to change the fact that a single person can sit in a crowded room and shop on eBay oblivious to what's happening around them, or choose to stay in to stay in to surf the net as opposed to going out for drinks with friends.  And social networking still puts you square in front of the computer, but it's nice to see technology contributing to human relations rather than insulating us from it. 

It occurred to me the other day that technology makes perseverance much easier.  Instead of a large number of large things that need to be accomplished in order to make things happen, technology makes success much more accessible.  Technology now ties achievement to the accomplishments of a large number of little things made easier.

Except for the contingency fee lawyer who may choose to represent a person without any financial means, America’s civil courtrooms are dominated by wealthy Americans and wealthy companies.  If that were not bad enough, many lawyers simply get paid to play games in court.  Their goal is to keep cases from reaching the merits of the action, even when they’re the plaintiff.  In many instances, the courtroom is simply another business tool to exert economic leverage over a competitor.  Private arbitration has not proved to be much competition to the near-monopoly that federal and state courts have over dispute resolution.  Until true alternatives to the courtroom become available, civil justice will remain a constitutional right primarily for the rich.