A Little Healthy Paranoia

When you add to outside threats the healthy paranoia that your greatest threat is from within, it makes sense to focus on ways to make your law firm data itself secure. To protect yourself and your clients, in simple terms, you want to grant access to those you trust, and ensure their identities remain valid. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Deploy encryption. Data can be encrypted so that it can’t be read unless the proper decryption protocols are also known. Entire hard drives can be encrypted and data transfers performed only under an encryption scheme. Here’s more information from Symantec and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). The most frequently encountered encryption on the Internet is on secure web pages where financial or personal information is submitted. The website will have an address starting off with “httpS://” and will usually have some other security notification such as a padlock or key icon.

2. Install good gatekeepers. This applies mainly to virtual private networks, or VPNs, but I like to think of firewalls as the gatekeepers. VPNs allow a secure communication with them and through them. Firewall systems can limit “surface area exposure,” funneling traffic to certain allowed services—plus, they can point to areas that need further security and help detect when an attack is under way. Firewall vendors (Cisco, Checkpoint, Juniper, Barracuda, SonicWALL) offer VPN software that works with their products. VPN connections and security certificates or tokens can help secure communications between endpoints, allowing prying eyes to view only scrambled information. There are many choices available for VPN software—some proprietary and some open-source (here are LifeHacker’s five)—for every budget and device.

3. Strengthen your permissions and passwords. Typically, we grant individuals access to particular information, done with network permissions secured by handshake in some fashion, often using just a password. But this can be a very weak link. A password works best when it keeps an intruder guessing. But the time it takes to guess a password is shrinking as computers get faster at “brute forcing” a guess. So passwords not only need to be fairly complex, but also changed fairly frequently. The Internet offers many examples for creating strong passwords. You can learn more about password strength from Microsoft and test the strength of passwords with its Secure Password Checker tool.

Two-factor authentication—a form of access best described as providing something we know and providing something we’re expected to have—is becoming more common. Using this method, users can only complete access to a system by using a combination of passwords and passcodes sent via text messaging, physical hardware keys or dongles, biometric confirmations or additional prompts to which answers have been pre-set. Trustwave is one of several vendors offering these services, and many of the big-name Internet services are now rolling out two-factor authentication.

4. Inoculate against viruses. There are many well-known vendors in the antivirus area. To name a few, tools from Symantec-Norton, Kaspersky, Sophos, Vipre, Trend-Micro, Avast and McAfee serve to protect your assets from rogue computer virus infections. An entire class of malevolent infections (malware) emanate primarily through infected and compromised web pages. One product that earns high praise for prevention and remediation here is Malwarebytes.

5. Monitor diligently. Finally, the only way to verify that your law firm data is secure is to monitor the systems. Use logging tactics and scrutinize those logs for things that may seem suspicious. Intrusion detection systems can check files and data against what things are expected to be. When things change unexpectedly, an alert can be triggered, requiring immediate closer examination. There are many tools (such as GFI LANguard Events Log Monitor) and consulting services that can help keep an eye on your systems.

Don Wright is Information Systems Manager for the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA), with 30 years of experience in systems architecture and IT security.

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Of course, every lawyer’s website is different, so spend some time learning about how search engines work and the consequences of various WordPress configuration settings before applying them. Also, while you may not be comfortable making administrator-level changes, these are basic tweaks any WordPress programmer should be able to do easily and quickly.

Permalinks

Search engines use your site’s URLs to understand what your pages are about. Out of the box, as a default setting WordPress uses “postids” to create URLs. For example: http://yourwebsite.com/?p=123. This doesn’t communicate any semantic information to search engines. Instead, to optimize your permalinks, I suggest using http://yourwebsite.com/category/post-name/. To change the WordPress default to follow this structure:

• Navigate to Settings > Permalinks
• Select Custom Structure and enter: /%category%/%postname%/
• Click save changes

Now your URLs will reflect your post categories and post names instead of a random string of numbers.

Yoast SEO Plugin

While WordPress has a lot of “search engine-friendliness” built-in, I encourage you to install Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin.

To install the plugin:

• Navigate to Plugins > Add New
• At the Install Plugins screen, search for “WordPress SEO”
• Look for “WordPress SEO by Yoast” in the results, then click “Install Now”

Once you have the plugin properly installed, you should see “SEO” under Settings in your WordPress administration menu.

I encourage you to set up both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. If you have already set up these accounts, you can verify them from WordPress SEO by navigating to SEO > Dashboard and entering their respective meta values.

Next,  you’ll want to configure your Titles & Metas settings. Under the Titles & Metas General tab, I usually recommend checking the add “noodp” and “noydir” meta robots tags boxes. This will give you more control over your pages’ meta descriptions.

If you’re configuring a blog, under the Home tab, you should configure author highlighting. This will set up authorship across your blog. If you’re configuring a static law firm website, you probably ought not configure authorship as it may violate Google’s Quality Guidelines.

Whether it’s a website or blog, you should also configure your Google Publisher page settings. Under the Post Types tab, you can configure how your post and page titles are generated globally. I usually recommend using:

• Title template: %%title%%
• Meta Description template: %%excerpt%%

Of course, these global settings can be overridden on an individual page or post basis.

Under the Taxonomies tab, you can configure global settings for your categories and tags. How these are configured can vary greatly from one installation to another so I won’t make a general recommendation here.

More Advanced Configuration and Optimization Settings

Fortunately for all of us, Yoast has written a Definitive WordPress SEO Guide, covering a wide variety of additional configuration settings to help your site or blog perform better in search engines. If local search is part of your marketing plan, I also recommend Yoast’s Local SEO WordPress Plugin. And if your site or blog contains video content, the Video SEO for WordPress plugin.

As always, before you implement any major changes (including plugin installation, configuration settings changes, etc.) be sure to have a viable backup of your site files and database before you make the changes.

Don’t break your sites!

Gyi Tsakalakis helps lawyers put their best foot forward online because clients are looking for them there. He is a co-founder of AttorneySync, a digital marketing agency for law firms. You can find more of Gyi’s writing in his “Optimize” column on Attorney at Work, on Lawyerist and on Avvo’s Lawyernomics blog. You can ask him a question (or just say hi) on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.

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The reality is that under a passive management style, no true firm leadership exists, and no one is steering the ship.

This is particularly true in smaller firms for a number of reasons.

• Some managing partners fear being accused of playing favorites, being overly protective or being unduly harsh. Tough decisions are avoided altogether—with the hope that the problem will eventually go away. Inaction is driven by fear of making the wrong decision.
• Some fear jeopardizing the partner-to-partner friendships that originally brought the group together.
• Then, of course, there are those who simply have no idea what to do about the problem at hand.

Even worse, though, are firms that are managed by consensus—the ultimate lack of a ship’s captain. Decisions are made at the speed of molasses, if at all, because consensus can be quite elusive.

Is Passive Management a Malpractice Risk?

Absolutely. Consider a situation where a partner is going through a difficult divorce and seriously depressed. As the divorce drags on, financial pressures mount and the attorney begins to drink. Now personal friendships and even loyalty come into play and this attorney, who may be developing a true impairment, receives support from his peers at the firm. Support through a personal crisis is admirable and quite appropriate. However, failing to manage the professional side of this personal crisis as well means that malpractice claims can arise. For example, should the attorney’s files be reviewed or the calendar checked? That would seem prudent since impaired attorneys often neglect client matters.

This is one real failure of passive management: Firms can fail to proactively address the professional side of a developing crisis. Yes, when faced with a malpractice claim, most of these firms respond by having management—in whatever form it exists—step in; however, it is often too little, too late. Then, the unfortunate outcome is a change in the firm makeup—not always limited to the firm divorcing itself from the problem attorney. Since accountability naturally falls on the managing partner, the result may be a firm split or dissolution.

In contrast, actively managed firms are proactive—they take steps to prevent possible claims from arising. In response to the situation above, an actively managed firm might have conducted the file review at the first sign of trouble, and assigned a mentor or granted a temporary reduction in workload. Any of these actions would professionally support an attorney who is struggling. If substance abuse, as an example of a full-blown impairment, becomes a known and legitimate concern, additional steps—such as requiring successful completion of an addiction treatment program as a condition of remaining with the firm—become essential.

Certainly, that is more difficult. The hoped for result, however, will be the ability to maintain the overall integrity of the firm—and the recovery and retention of a valuable firm asset, the attorney himself.

What Can You Do?

If aspects of a passive management style exist at your firm, consider strengthening your firm’s management and leadership capabilities. Steps that might be taken include:

• Formalizing a management position by creating a job description. Have an open, honest discussion about the degree of authority that will be given to this individual, and then follow through and respect that authority when it is exercised.
• Recognizing the importance of the management position, whether full-time or part-time, with appropriate compensation.
• Training. If no one at the firm has a complete set of management skills, there are resources available at a variety of price ranges, from well-written books to intensive law firm management courses that last several weeks.
• Hiring an experienced manager if no attorney has an interest in managing the firm. Again, make certain to give this individual the necessary authority; otherwise it’s just going to be wasted time, energy and money.

I believe in having strong leadership and effective management within organizations. In law firms, this not only contributes to lowering exposure to malpractice claims, but can also significantly impact a firm’s financial bottom line in the most positive ways.

That said, remember this: According to our ethics rules, we are our partner’s keepers. When it comes to the success or failure of the business, firm attorneys will sink or swim together. Isn’t the better option to put someone in charge of actually steering the ship, and try to avoid ever having to sink or swim together?

Personally, I’d rather be on the ocean than in it. What about you?

Mark Bassingthwaighte is a Risk Manager with Attorney’s Liability Protection Society, Inc. (ALPS). In his tenure with the company, he has conducted over 1,000 law firm risk management assessment visits, presented numerous CLE seminars, and written extensively on risk management and technology. Mark received his J.D. from Drake University Law School. He blogs at ALPS411. Contact him at mbass@alpsnet.com.

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»Simplify your practice with legal practice management in the cloud.

Illustration © iStockPhoto.com/Alex Mathers

Walter H. Sargent

Walter H. Sargent, a Professional Corporation
Colorado Springs, CO
Harvard Law School, J.D., 1987
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, S.B., Philosophy, 1980
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, S.B., Computer Science and Engineering, 1980

Why did you want to be a lawyer?
I don’t recall any lawyers in my life before law school, and I don’t recall having any particular conceptions about the day-to-day life of a lawyer. My interest was primarily in philosophy of law, or jurisprudence, focusing on the creation and application of a body of rules that order society. I can’t honestly say that I wanted to be a lawyer; I simply wanted to study law in the context of analytic philosophy, which was my real passion.

What is the focus of your law practice? How did that happen?
My practice focuses on civil appeals. After law school, I joined a large law firm and was assigned to the litigation department. I was uncomfortable with the open-ended nature of most trial court work, particularly discovery, and preferred the relatively bounded and cloistered practice of appeals. I didn’t actually know anyone who specialized in appeals, but I obtained books about appellate practice and found organizations of appellate practitioners through the American Bar Association. I became heavily involved in the ABA’s appellate practice programs and committees, met a lot of appellate judges and lawyers that I liked, and decided to try to establish a legal practice focused almost entirely on civil appeals. Eventually, informed by the experiences of others, I left the big law firm and set up a solo appellate practice.

What is the “real reason” clients hire you?
I get virtually all of my clients through referrals from other lawyers, who have come to be persuaded of the value of an appellate specialist. If you do a good job, word gets around.

Who was your most important mentor and, briefly, what did he or she teach you?
It’s difficult for me to identify a mentor. There have been people who taught me well or ignited certain intellectual passions—for example, Mr. Freeling, my sixth-grade English teacher, who taught me the logic of language; George Boolos, a wonderfully engaging logician at M.I.T., who sparked my interest in philosophy; and Larry Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, who showed me how to argue from precedent. But there have been many others who have given me opportunities when they didn’t have to, or have offered kind or wise words when I needed them. Those people are too important not to mention, but too numerous to list.

What about practicing law did you learn the hard way?
I’m still learning a lot of things the hard way—for example, how to value and look out for my own interests.

What is unique about an appellate practice?
An appellate practice requires little more than a clear head and access to information. More is not necessarily better, and a single skilled appellate practitioner will often outperform a large team of lawyers.

What is your favorite technology tool?
I am always impressed by a really good stapler.

What is your favorite non-technology tool?
A clear head.

How would you describe the location and décor of your office(s)?
My office is in my home. The decor is Spartan.

How did you come to practice in Colorado Springs? Has location played a role in how your career has played out?
When I was in my second year of law school, I found a runner’s guide to the U.S. that provided a brief overview of the running environment in various cities. Colorado Springs had the Olympic training center, lots of trails and an altitude above 6,000 feet, so I signed up for a law school interview with the only firm from Colorado Springs. In a totally unjustified leap of faith, they offered me a job.

I have no doubt that location has played a huge role in my career. A relatively small legal community can provide opportunities for one’s good work to get noticed, or to set up a practice that is different from anyone else’s in the community. It may, however, also limit opportunities to work on certain kinds of cases for certain types of clients. Like most things in life, there are tradeoffs. I don’t regret my choice.

Why would someone describe you as “enterprising”?
Someone might describe me as enterprising because I started my own appellate practice at a time when it was not at all clear that I could make a living in Colorado doing nothing but appellate work. But I don’t really think of myself as enterprising. I do what I need to do. I try not to screw up.

Where do you think the practice of law is going?
I’m not among those who think that the practice of law is going to change a lot in the next 10 or even 20 years. In certain respects, technology has already lowered barriers to entry and impediments to competition by lowering necessary costs of, for example, information, production, marketing, commuting and office space. Virtual law firms and alliances have become easier to set up. Clients are better able to find information about lawyers and law firms and make direct comparisons. These changes might suggest a more fluid legal market in which exceptional skill is highly rewarded and unexceptional services are commoditized. But based on my own observations of the past 20 years or so, I think the legal market is much “stickier” than that. Technology changes faster than organizations and cultures. In an institutional sense, the market for legal services is rather conservative and evolves slowly.

Where are you going?
I’m not sure. There are too many things that I haven’t done.

What are people most surprised to learn about you?
I suppose it depends on how they’ve come to know me. People who know me as an appellate lawyer may be surprised by my background as an athlete. Technical service personnel would be shocked to learn that I have a degree in computer science and engineering, since I’m generally overwhelmed by any technology more advanced than a pair of scissors. Most people are surprising, in all kinds of ways.

What word do you use altogether too often?
I don’t know. I try to mix ’em up.

What item do you use every single day that you could actually easily do without?
Either the newspaper or the remote control for my television. Lots of things happen every day, and I probably don’t need to know about most of them.

What three things must you always have in your brief bag, desk drawer or refrigerator?
Nothing in my brief bag, desk drawer or refrigerator. But in my pants pocket, I always have at least one pen, a highlighter and a pack of those yellow “stickies,” which I use whenever I read books, magazines and trial court records.

Where do you turn when things go really badly?
I turn to whoever is willing to listen. Sometimes, I call my parents.

What else (if anything) do you think our readers ought to know?
Most things aren’t worth fighting about.

More About Walter H. Sargent

In January 1996, Walter Sargent left the Colorado Springs office of a large Denver-based law firm to start his own solo practice focused entirely on appeals. (The move was unprecedented. A senior lawyer at the big firm told him he’d starve within the first six months.) Walter founded his new firm on the simple premise that there is a need for appellate specialists in Colorado, and that—freed from the encumbrances and constraints of a larger firm—a first-rate appellate practice can offer cost-effective services to a wide range of clients. Walter, a former chess champion and top distance runner (in 1988 he ran three official marathons in the span of 10 weeks, finishing each with a 2:20 or better), has been among the Colorado Super Lawyers since 2006. He lives and works from the Craftsman bungalow he shares with a cat named Alvin in the Old North End neighborhood of Colorado Springs.

We’re Always Looking for Enterprising Lawyers

If you’d like to suggest someone to profile, send information to merrilyn@attorneyatwork.com.

More Enterprising Lawyer Interviews on Attorney at Work

The Enterprising Lawyer: Kelly Phillips Erb
The Enterprising Lawyer: Lynda Hinkle
The Enterprising Lawyer: Rocky Dhir
The Enterprising Lawyer: Lee Rosen

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»Get connected with law firm managers! Check out the Association for Legal Administrators (ALA).
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Illustration ©ImageZoo. Photo courtesy of Walter Sargent.

I find that lawyers often identify wonderful opportunities to position themselves in a particular substantive area, or before a key audience. Unfortunately, the result often misses the mark. To be a thought leader, your message must be heard, and to be heard, you must connect with your audience.

WIIFM: How to Communicate with Your Target Audience

There’s an old marketing acronym, WIIFM: What’s In It For Me? That’s what the recipients of your messages are thinking. You need to put yourself in the shoes of a busy general counsel or human resources manager or patent coordinator—whoever is your audience. What do they want to know? It’s simple.

1. Why is this information important to me?
2. What should I do about it?

The best way to help you see the audience’s perspective is to engage them in your process. Say, for example, you have been asked to write an article for dentists on selling a dental practice. You could:

• Call a few dentists who have sold their practices and ask for their thoughts on the process. What surprised them? What lessons did they learn? What advice do they have for others?
• Call your own dentist and ask what he or she would want to know when the time comes to sell.
• Call the editor of the publication and ask what the readers will be most interested in.

Based on the feedback, you could prepare your article (in layman’s terms) and title it something like, “Five things you should know before selling your dental practice.” Then (you’re not done yet), send a draft to the people you interviewed to get their feedback.

Caveats

There are caveats to this approach. First, you can’t wait until the 11th hour to prepare your materials if you plan to solicit input. Second, you must be open to feedback and constructive criticism.

If you can get past those hurdles and employ this process, however, I guarantee you will be much more likely to hit the mark and connect with your audience.

Sally J. Schmidt is President of Schmidt Marketing, Inc., which offers marketing services to law firms. Sally was a founder and the first President of the Legal Marketing Association, and one of the first inductees into the LMA’s Hall of Fame. She is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and author of Marketing the Law Firm: Business Development Techniques and Business Development for Lawyers. Sally writes Attorney at Work’s “Play to Win” column. Follow her on Twitter @SallySchmidt.

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Illustration ©ImageZoo.

Like what you see? What does it tell clients about you? First impressions color the entire lawyer-client relationship. So for this week’s Friday Five, let’s talk law practice curb appeal.

1. A fresh eye. The path you beat from home to your office chair is so automatic you stop seeing what’s really there, unless the change is monumental. You just don’t see with the fresh eyes others use when they walk into your firm. Even if you’re vigilant about office presentation, things can slip. So, every few month or so, do this little exercise: Put yourself in the client’s shoes and walk through the physical process of locating your law firm and arriving for a first meeting. Check your website’s contact information, find driving directions online (more about that later), then park in the visitor’s parking, read the signage through all public spaces, and enter your firm. Sit in the visitor’s lounge and in your own office’s guest chair. What do you see? What don’t you see? How does it feel? How does it smell? How’s the WiFi? The coffee? Now ask a friend who’s never visited you to do the same. Ask lots of questions and take notes!

2. Weeding the files. You’ve heard the stories about firms with boxes of files piled high all over their office. We’re not saying that’s you, but most of us have piles of stuff we keep moving from desk to chair to floor to desk. Why not schedule an occasional day or weekend for housekeeping and get everybody to pitch in and toss the things you no longer need? While you’re at it, take some notes on what you can do to avoid getting into this mess again. Different systems? Different habits? Why bother, you say? Because poor office housekeeping habits say something about your professionalism, says ALPS’ Mark Bassingthwaighte. Sloppy filing can lead to missed deadlines and disciplinary headaches. Check your firm’s document storage policy (or with your state bar or insurance provider) for timetables on when it’s safe to shred closed client files. (The Law Society of Upper Canada has an excellent guide, here.) Don’t have a policy for what to do with closed files? Best get on that!

3. Clear the virtual entryways, too. When it comes to your online image, things change too fast to “set it and forget it.” The front door (your core website) may be pristine, but check for cobwebs around the other virtual entrances to your firm: entries in branded networks, lawyer review sites, bar association listings and social media profiles—especially Google+.  (You have created your Google+ page, right? Gyi Tsakalakis shows how here.) Make sure your contact information stays up to date, and consistent, in all locations. It’s good for your image and will help your Google search rankings. (Check out Mike Ramsey’s tips on leveraging those lawyer directories and local search, too, along with his guide to local directories where lawyers can list their practices.)

While updating your online profiles, be vigilant about adjusting privacy settings so you know exactly what, and with whom, you are sharing. Pay close attention to your apps, too. (National magazine does a nice job explaining the perils of “frictionless sharing” here.) Bottom line: All your efforts to polish your image are for naught if the apps you download are sharing goofy links with your social media connections.

4. A new coat. You may not be able to change your basic office design or afford new furniture, but an infusion of color can be a fast, budget-friendly way to rejuvenate your space. Color is also a powerful way to change the way you feel and how you are perceived. “Professional” doesn’t have to mean dull and drab, especially if you work in a home office or less-traditional space. Depending on your image and clients, adding color can add personality and flair, or create a sense of serenity. Color can be tricky, sure, and what’s fresh today can become outdated quickly. (Would you prefer Don Draper’s or Roger Sterling’s office today?) Today’s colors are trending away from bold toward muted, natural shades. But all it takes to fix a mistake is another can of paint.

When it comes to color, don’t stop with the office walls. Subtle adjustments to your branding (logo and identity, website color scheme) can help keep you relevant. The new book Drunk Tank Pink: The Power of Color in Marketing is a fascinating look into the way color affects buying decisions, along with this Fast Company piece on the science behind colors, and this color psychology infographic by Kissmetrics.

Speaking of color, let’s talk hair. Your online curb appeal is only as good as your photo. Make it current. (You want clients to be able to recognize you when they meet you in person, right?) Today’s phones take some amazing pictures … of food … but this is your professional image, not your lunch! If you are self-conscious, hire a professional and even a stylist to help capture your best self. Take a look at these examples. See, it’s worth it.

5. A little privacy, please. Okay, back to reality. Your guests are going to want to freshen up at some point. If your office washrooms are disgusting, that reflects on you. If you share a public washroom in your building with other tenants, that’s no excuse. If there’s a problem, get it fixed. Point is, you need to think through, and walk through, the total client experience if you want to keep clients happy. So keep it clean!

Joan Feldman is Partner/Editorial at Attorney at Work and a principal at Feldcomm, a custom publishing and marketing design firm in Chicago. Follow her @JoanHFeldman.

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»Manage my legal practice from anywhere on any device—HoudiniEsq.
»Quality attorney leads. Reach prospects online. 10 free leads.
»Learn more about the easiest way to get paid.
»Simplify your practice with legal practice management in the cloud.
»Get connected with law firm managers: Check out the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA).