Law Firm Management

THE MOST OVERLOOKED CLIENT DEVELOPMENT RESOURCE - is your clients! In our work with law firms, we often oint out that new business only comes from 3 sources - clients, referrals and new prospects. It is amazing how often I then hear, "but how do I ask clients for referrals or repeat business without offending them. Rubbish - that's just an excuse. If your firm's work has been solid and helpful, and you are working on…

The British have a marvelous expression for foolish activities. They call them "a mug's game." Well, prognostication is a mug's game.<p>The reason that predictions are so hard to get right is simple to fathom. In today's dynamic world, any course of action will likely be affected by unforeseeable random events that alter that course. For example, just a few years ago, who could have predicted LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter ' much less the impact the social networks would have on society and business? Many of us remember when blogs were considered to be fads that would ultimately die or fade away. Now, blogs are ubiquitous, and an integral part of the business process. The fascinating thing about these devices is that they impacted the business world so rapidly that there wasn't time to predict them before they became important business tools.

OBSTACLES TO ATTORNEY MARKETING - One of the toughest challenges for business development and marketing professionals is overcoming the excuses we've all heard for not wanting to market. One of the questions I often ask at the beginning of workshops or keynote speeches is what have you heard attorneys use as excuses? * I'm in law, not sales. * It's unprofessional for me to market * Why bother? * I don't have time to market'

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What are reasonable assumptions about the future of the legal profession in this dynamic society? Here, we can surmise ' if not predict ' a future by extrapolating two things from the past.

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Part One of this article, last month, examined the liability involved with social media and e-mail use. Part Two discusses implementing compliant and defensible workplace policies.

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In <i>City of Ontario v. Quon</i>, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a government employer's search of an employee's communications on an employer-issued pager was reasonable under the circumstances and, therefore, did not violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The Court's narrowly tailored decision underscores that cases in the area of employee privacy will continue to be highly fact-sensitive.

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This article ' in two parts ' will deal with the Client Feedback process, specifically the 12 essential steps involved. This first part lists the 12 steps and then describes steps 1 through 4a (pre-interview planning).

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By profiling current clients and looking back over the years of data accumulated, law firms have an abundance of experience to determine what works and what does not when it comes to business development. The key is to set up a systemized approach to extract that data.