practice (redux)

There isn't much about this infographic we didn't already know. Of course law school is becoming more expensive and riskier all the time; but as long as the number of applicants increases year over year - and it always has - and as long as there is money to be made from the aspirations of the young and desperate, law schools will continue to grind us out like link sausages. Ironically, we lawyers have only ourselves to blame for that result as well as the current crater in the legal market.

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Open Plea to Legal Marketers ... little help?

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 09:31:00 -0700

Being the Practicehacker doesn’t mean that I know everything. Take law firm marketing for instance. In real life I run a 3-lawyer suburban Chicago practice engaged in what I call "Small Business" law; i.e. we do pretty much everything a small business or its owners need their lawyer to do, including:

+Business start-ups, incorporation, organization

+Contracts: drafting, review, enforcement, terms

+Hiring and firing of employees and contractors

+Commercial litigation, collections, and defense

+Real estate transaction, liens and construction

+Business, stock and asset, sale and purchase

+Divorce and estate planning for entrepreneurs

+Bankruptcy, reorganization, crisis management

I can't think of any aspect of practice organization,management, or marketing that I couldn’t improve. In fact, I am absolutely certain that I must learn to do a lot of things better. Of course, if I had to single out one thing for attention at the moment, it would have to be our law firm marketing.

Full disclosure: I've never been satisfied with my firm's online or social media presence. I mean, my name is out there, but the picture that emerges of my firm seems fragmented and weak. Then again, my off-line presence is no better. I’ve prepared and delivered seminars, given talks both locally and nationally, and have had articles published all over. But to what end?

The worst part of the problem is that it feels like my office is being severely underutilized. After a harrowing couple of years in this see-saw economy, I finally have a stable team of trained lawyers and staff, with more becoming available all the time. But if what we have to offer does not reach the right Clients, it’s wasted. That’s the hardest part of the problem: matching the right skills with the right Clients and keeping the process going.

There is one final caveat: I need new marketing initiatives to have a measurable ROI so we can decide whether to stay with it, pivot, or abandon it and start over. If anyone thinks they can take a crack at evaluating our situation, or knows someone else who can, please get in touch.

Thanks to everyone who thinks they can help.

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Instant Law Clerk

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:23:44 -0700

Instant Law Clerk is the newest tool for the legal community. Using law students, Instant Law Clerk provides a research resource to attorneys that benefits everyone. Would you rather spend more time with clients or searching through cases and statutes? Attorneys need more time in their day; law students need practical experience. Why spend hours finding cases when your skills can be put to better use? Instant Law Clerk is what you've been waiting for! Our team is comprised of second and third year law students from top schools around the country. Let us perform the time-consuming searches, so you can better spend your time analyzing and reviewing the results. Free your time to focus on cases, not keyword searches! Just come to the site, enter your question, and our clerks will provide you with on-point cases or statutory authority in your jurisdiction or across the country. Whether your firm is large or small, Instant Law Clerk is the solution for you! Increase your efficiency by reducing the time you spend slogging through Lexis and Westlaw.

Visit http://www.instantlawclerk.com and enter your question now! We find research. Fast!

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What do you call 100 unemployed lawyers?

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:54:00 -0700

A good start!

But seriously: according to this piece in the Wall Street Journal new law grads continue to enter the workforce faster than Starbucks can hire them. To quote the article:

According to jobs site SimplyHired.com... the hardest-to-place industry [is the] the legal field. Unemployed lawyers now find themselves in the country's most cutthroat race for a job, with less than one opening for every 100 working attorneys.

But what makes us so hard to employ? Maybe the answer can be found in the 50 (and counting) comments to the ABA Journal's anemic coverage of the topic, which is all of a paragraph long and is no more than a rehash of the original mention in Above the Law. Or maybe the answer is written into the Economist's riotously off-target piece Not Enough Lawyers, which posits that we have uh, too few lawyers. But after all is said and done the truth is that lawyers are hard to employ for the same reasons we've known about for a good 20 years:

Law school costs too much and does not teach practical skills
Grads need to make a lot right away to pay their school loans
Big Law only hires a faction of grads; the rest are on their own

For the great mass of new lawyers in the market and those displaced due to the systemic shakeup in the law, the odds are lower than newly hatched turtles trying to make it out to sea. And it just breaks my heart to see that happen to such a nice bunch of baby turtles.

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Develop, track and accomplish | accompl.sh

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 21:35:07 -0700

Social life-goals, anyone? If so, then http://accompl.sh/ is for you!

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e-LEGAL Group News | LinkedIn

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 17:54:30 -0700

http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=753553448&gid=1320117&typ...

Mazyar M. Hedayat, Esq.
Sent from my iPhone

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Bringing Order to Twitter Chaos: Twylah's Topic Tracker

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 17:53:52 -0700

http://m.readwriteweb.com/archives/twylah_topic_tracker.php?utm_source=ReadWr...

Mazyar M. Hedayat, Esq.
Sent from my iPhone

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Seriousy, ABA? Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 13:01:00 -0700

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

- Kaiser Soze

2 years ago the ABA Journal rolled out its Legal Rebels Project in an effort to convince lawyers that the American Bar Association, was no longer just a superfluous, self-congratulatory institution and lapdog to the AmLaw 100. The first Legal Rebels chosen in 2009 included

a lawyer-turned-consultant (I guess those who can't do, teach)
a lawyer-mommy, who blogged about food and recipes too!, and
a coffee-shop owner dispensing Espresso with advice on the side.

In fairness, that initial list of 50 honorees also included people that had contributed to the national dialogue about the profession by blogging, starting an innovative company, or finding a better way to do things. But they were too few and far between to give the project much credibility. As far as I could see, the ABA was still trying to curry favor with BigLaw partners and associates using bite-sized, cutesy profiles of lawyers doing their own breezy thing. Whee!

So how has the project fared in 2011? Let's just say that the Journal has stuck to what it does best - sucking up to BigLaw - by focusing on the unsung heroes trying to change the system from within. The BigLaw rebels. Which makes total sense, because real change only comes from people who bill 3000 hours a year and are driven by an insatiable urge to make partner. Way to go ABA Journal. It takes guts to swallow what BigLaw is dishing out, then ask for seconds... but you pulled it off.

There's nothing more I can add; just watch the Staff of the ABA Journal descirbe the Legal Rebels Project in their own words and feel the rebellion welling up in your throat.

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Use Google Spreadsheets as your CRM System

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:32:28 -0700

I've tried to make Practicehacker the #1 place to find tools, tips, techniques, and technology for small firms and solo's; but how often do I feature a true practice hack? That is, how often can I point readers to a better, smarter, faster, or cheaper way of getting things done? Not often enough, if you ask me. But this is the real deal. A genuine practice hack born out of the need to track people, contact information, and matters - known as contract relationship management or CRM - using a freely available tool that at first glance isn't built for the job - in this case Google Spreadsheets. You can find the full hack outlined here.

It should be noted that I've been using this particular hack for years, but not in the CRM context. Instead I've used it to track the progress of my cases and keep my staff informed by having the spreadsheet send them automatic updates each time something changes. Simple, free, awesome. Now that's practice hacking!

If you have any hacks of your own or know of anything that does, please encourage them to contact me at mhedayat@mha-law.com or just add their comment to this post. I'd love to be able to feature one of these hacks every week (or more often if I can). You'll get full credit of course, and you'll be helping your fellow lawyers and legal professionals to do things that much better. :)

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iPhone Information Domination

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:42:14 -0700

The rich get richer, and Apple gets stronger.

Hat Tip: Fast Company

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LegalZoom ...can't ...be ...stopped

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:38:00 -0700

As highlighted recently on Shatterbox and in my discussions with Richard Granat of DirectLaw back at the 2011 ABA Tech Show, LegalZoom is coming into its own big time.

Then again, what else would LegealZoom do with the money raised in its IPO but siphon business from competitors; lawyers? And that's exactly what it's been doing and what it continues to do.

Even the bell-weather Missouri class action that some thought might slow the LZ juggernaught has fizzled and instead, as Shatterbox points out, LZ is probably even savvier for the experience.

All of which begs the question: Is LegalZoom unstoppable? Is it inevitable? Is it the future of law practice? Is it the end of sole practitioners? Not that I know. I'm just putting it out there. Before you answer think about this it looks as if we lawyers are in the pot while the water is getting hotter, but we refuse to acknowledge that our collective goose is being cooked... and probably won't until it's too late.

That sounds just like a lawyer's reaction to and impending calamity: waiting until it's over to react, conduct a post-mortem, and find someone else to blame.

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LegalZoom ...can't ...be ...stopped

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:38:00 -0700

As highlighted recently on Shatterbox and in my discussions with Richard Granat of DirectLaw back at the 2011 ABA Tech Show, LegalZoom is coming into its own big time.

Then again, what else would LegealZoom do with the money raised in its IPO but siphon business from competitors; lawyers? And that's exactly what it's been doing and what it continues to do.

Even the bell-weather Missouri class action that some thought might slow the LZ juggernaught has fizzled and instead, as Shatterbox points out, LZ is probably even savvier for the experience.

That sounds just like a lawyer's reaction to and impending calamity: waiting until it's over to react, conduct a post-mortem, and find someone else to blame.

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A Very Yahoo! Timeline

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:20:51 -0700

The Rise and Fall of Yahoo.pdf Download this file

As we all know by now thanks to articles like this one, Yahoo -! that stalwart pioneer of the World Wide Web and harbinger of search engines to come - has fired it's CEO and put itself up for sale. Which raises the question: How did Yahoo! go from Hero to Zero in just over a decade? Funny you should ask ... I've put together this handy chart to answer that very question.

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Aderant's Buying Spree

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:38:00 -0700

Aderant has acquired Compulaw, Client Profiles, and CRM4Legal in a move that might actually shake things up a little in the legal software business. I've reproduced the first part of the Press Release below and linked to the official page on the Aderant website.

Props to Jobst Elster of Inside Legal for turning me onto this. Nice catch. – MH

ATLANTA–Aug. 22, 2011– ADERANT, a comprehensive business management software provider for law and professional services firms, today announced that it has acquired CompuLaw and Client Profiles, including its CRM4Legal division, creating the world’s largest independent legal software company, giving clients worldwide access to a suite of products and services that will help them manage, grow, and protect their businesses.

The company’s offerings will be the industry’s most complete suite of firm management software and services including: business development, client relationship management (CRM), practice and financial management, time and billing, case management, document management, automated court rules-based calendaring, and business intelligence. <<Read the Full Release>>

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