Showing Liz Mohler the Power of Blogs
I’m showing Liz Mohler, a tremendous speaker and meeting facilitator, how easy it is to write a blog post.
Get Good in a Room
I’m at the National Speakers Association’s event in Palm Springs. It is one of the best events I’ve ever attended, and I’ll be posting my thoughts in a few days. One of the best things about going to a conference a bit outside your comfort zone is the number of amazing people you meet you’d have never met otherwise.
One person who fits that description is Stephanie Palmer, a former Hollywood executive who “teaches creative professionals how to present themselves and their ideas so their projects get purchased and produced .”
We’ve just spent a tremendous hour talking and she is definitely the kind of person who should be blogging. Until I twist her arm some more tomorrow to share some of her great tips with everyone, check out her website, Good in a Room.
Horrible Food, Funnily Described
Did you ever find a site that was so funny, so incapable of description, so twisted and disgusting (in a good way) that you just had to share it? WARNING, not work safe if you’ll get in trouble for laughing out loud and wasting 30 minutes of your day! Don’t blame me, Steve Nipper made me share it. Here’s one of the more tame quotes (about trying a “potted meat” product):
Inside is a smooth, oddly pink meat paste. So smooth, in fact, I dare call it "creamy." (I actually got a little gaggy just typing that.) Surprisingly, it was a little spicier than I expected. Although, that sensation may have been a by-product of my tastebuds dying.
As much as I love good writing about important things, I love great writing about totally disgusting food products even more.
Irrelevant Home Pages and the Value of Non-Directed Research
Mark Hurst, writing in the Good Experience Blog, shares some interesting insight into how web surfers really use the web. Mark talks about a recent study his company did where they observed “dozens of customers using dozens of websites.” The difference in his study, was that when asked to evaluate a company’s web site, the customers were not told where to start (such as a site’s home page) but were instead told to get there any way they wanted. The big conclusion: “Google has made home pages virtually irrelevant.”
Stated another way: many users, when not directed how to start, begin their sessions by going to Google and searching for what they want. (A small minority use Yahoo, and almost no one uses any other search engine.) Some companies, depending on their size and popularity, also have a fair percentage of users who do type the Web address directly into the browser…. Often the search results link pointed to a destination page in the middle of the website, which caused the customer to miss the home page altogether.
Why is this significant, you ask? What does your website look like once you get past the first page? If a potential customer or client gets jumps to the middle of your site via Google, can they find their way out? Do they even know where they are to begin with? Mark continues:
Customer experience is mainly about understanding, and serving, the key unmet needs of the customer. This is a strategic issue that's poorly addressed with a tactical research method. You simply can't find out the customers' priorities if you give them a list of pre-written tasks; there are too many assumptions built in. Instead, why not just ask them to show their experience?
Read the entire post. Show it to your web designer and think about it when preparing your next client survey. Yet another way Google is changing the rules.
Full Text Feeds, Please
Google’s new Blog Search engine only indexes RSS feeds. So if you want to be found, publish a full-text feed. Please.
Worker Blind for Big Law Associates
A few years ago, I visited one of my law school classmates at his BigLaw job in Chicago. When we ducked out for happy hour, he threw his coat over his chair, turned on his desk lamp, and opened a book on his desk so anyone who stopped by would think he was still working, but had just stepped out for a few minutes. If he’d only had this. Thanks to B2Day for the link.
I'm never chewing gum again.
Kevin points to a bad blog. Boy is it awful. Take a look if you must: JuicyFruit Blog. But you’ve been warned.
Watch Out for the Monkey and Shark Forest!
My daughter and I were playing today in our apartment, and as I approached the couch, she warned me to “Watch out for the monkey and shark forest.” Not certain about what she was referring to, I sat down on the couch and she screamed at me to get out of the “forest” because the monkeys and sharks were in there. Instead of arguing with her (and risking a two-year old moment), I immediately complied and thanked her for saving me. We continued to play, and when I sat down on the couch five minutes later, everything was fine in her world.
The point? There are many things your clients are afraid of. Even though some of those things may sound absurd to you, acknowledge them just the same, because they are very real to your clients. If the issues are truly insignificant or unimportant, you’ll get points both for understanding them and for making them go away.
On Being Remarkable
Zane Safrit shares some remarkablisms. As always, Zane is right on the mark.
Quote of the Week
I know I don’t post one every week, but I found this quote by Robert T. Allen on one of my new favorite blogs 37 Days:
The truth is that everything that can be accomplished by showing a person when he's wrong, ten times as much can be accomplished by showing him where he is right. The reason we don't do it so often is that it's more fun to throw a rock through a window than to put in a pane of glass. - Robert T. Allen
While you're at it, check out Always Rent the (Red) Convertible.
Advise vs. Serve
Via AdPulp comes this link to Neil French’s Communication Arts Column. The best piece:
Next time you see the agency credentials PowerPoint, strike out every “serve” you see, and substitute “advise.” You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes to your own self-worth, for a start.
Take a look at your marketing materials and try this change yourself. I think you’ll notice a positive change.
Being Part of the Solution: If Blawggers Ran Law Schools
So here’s my question: If you could improve legal education in this country today, how would you do it?
Last November, I asked five law student bloggers for their responses (find them here, they really are worth reading). Since I’ve been doing a bunch of complaining, here are a few things I’d change if I ran a law school:
1. Institute four core curriculum areas. Here they are, along with the bloggers I’d recruit in each:
Legal Knowledge: I’d leave this to the law professors already in the business, because they’ve already got their lesson plans done. I’d put Sabrina Pacifici in charge of them all, though.
Client Service: I’d split the task for developing this curriculum between Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, Zane Safrit, Kathy Sierra, and the CEO’s of Ritz-Carlton and Nordstrom— not a lawyer among them. That’s on purpose. I’d also bring in Ben Cowgill to teach legal ethics.
Law Firm Management and Marketing: This one is tough — only because there are so many choices. Bruce MacEwen gets tenure right away as do Gerry Riskin, Ed Poll and Kevin O’Keefe. I’d also add Rosa Say and Lisa Haneberg to teach the art of management, and, if they’re ready for the cushy life of academia, Tom Peters and Seth Godin to shake it up from time to time. I’d also add Larry Bodine and Ross Fishman to the mix.
Practical Skills: There are so many great practice-area specific blawggers out there, I’d have a hard time chosing the right ones. Instead, I’d leave that task to Tom Mighell who has the biggest “blawg of the day” rolodex in the country. My only requirement? Find room for Evan Schaeffer to teach trial skills, and Denise Howell and Ernie the Attorney to teach whatever the hell they want. I’d also farm out the entire Intellectual Property department to the ReThink(IP) guys (who’d find a way to deliver their grades via RSS).
2. Bring in Bar/Bri as a curriculum consultant. If Richard Conviser can teach you everything you need to pass the bar in two months, imagine what he’d be able to teach in three years! And while I’m at it, I’d negotiate a discount with Bar/Bri and make the bar review course free to the students (or included in their tuition).
3. Develop a three-way mentorship program. Assign every incoming 1L a lawyer and a client as mentors. Make the client someone who is in the practice area the student wants to enter after school (though this may pose some liability problems for students wanting to practice criminal law). Learning the old way of doing things from practicing lawyers is important, but the client contact would give a distinctive boost to the program. I’m convinced that client contact is what law students crave — because after all, if they join a big firm, they won’t see another real client in the flesh for several years.
4. Auction off legal research access to West or Lexis. For the privilege of exclusive access to the law students, I’d make the company promise to give five years of free service to graduating students.
5. Deliver lectures via podcasts. I’d encourage students to attend class with attendance bonuses (an added 1–2% to their final grade), but wouldn’t require them to attend class. Law students are adults, after all. Let them decide how important listening to that boring professor’s lecture is to them. Which leads me to …
6. Teach the professors to speak. I’d bring in Bert Decker and pay him double what he asks for to work with the professors on their presentation skills. This may be the single most cost-effective way to improve class attendance and student satisfaction.
7. Stop blowing smoke up students’ a**** about job placement. Admit right off that some students will be lousy lawyers and give them a way out of school with grace and dignity (see number 11). Also, I’d bring in lawyers who’ve either failed as lawyers or chosen another field to help students understand that law practice is really, really hard. I’d also make Curt Rosengren my Dean of Career Services.
8. Reach out to small firms. Seriously. Carolyn Elefant gets the nod here as my Director of Outreach to Real Lawyers. I wouldn’t ignore solo and small firm lawyers just because I want to get my school’s ranking in U.S. News and World Report up with the bucks the big firms pay. Solo and small firm lawyers can help law schools. I’d seek out successful small firm lawyers and give them an opportunity to share their mistakes and advice. I’d also make sure to give them something in return: access to student help, great CLE’s, free food and beer.
9. Ignore big firms. Seriously. (As an aside, if other schools are taking any of these suggestions seriously, then big law firms don’t care about their graduates anyway.) I’d make your students understand how miserable life can be for many big firm associates. Let students chose that path if they want to , but for God’s sake, don’t push them into it.
10. Partner with other schools. I’d partner with business schools, design schools, or schools of social work. I’d teach my school’s students to work with (and learn from ) the kinds of people they’ll interact with in the real world. Hell, I’d even partner with/adopt local elementary and high schools.
11. Guarantee student satisfaction. If I couldn’t deliver a satisfying scholastic experience, then I’d figure out how. One idea: Give the first semester of law school to students for free. If students don’t want to stay, I’ve given them a way to do what they want to do, and not feel trapped in school for another 2.5 years. Everyone will be happier. Students will be in school because they want to be. Professors will be teaching motivated students. And think of the positive publicity! Admission applications would go through the roof.
12. Remember, the law is not rocket science. I once proposed a class on small firm management to a St. Louis law school. One professor rejected the idea because he didn’t think it would be “academically rigorous enough.” That’s like refusing to teach doctors to give patients aspirin when the patient is having a heart attack because it’s not as rigorous as teaching open heart surgery. Law school, like law practice, can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be hard for the sake of being hard.
13. Remember, your students are your clients. If you actually run a law school, remember, your best source for ideas and inspiration are under your roof. Ask your students how they’d make law school better. You’ll get much better ideas than these. And one more thing, don’t be invisible. Your students want to know who you are and what makes you tick. I shared about five words with the Dean of my law school when I was at Washington University. I never had much to say to him, and he never introduced himself to me, or asked me a single question. Know how much cash I’ve given to my school? Less than I made from law.com’s sponsorship of my blog.
Well, that’s it. If you want to chime in on changing law school, feel free to do so in the comments to this post. I look forward to your suggestions.
Thinking Like Law Professors
Bruce MacEwen continues my rant from last week. In his post Name the Missing Law School Course, Bruce takes on (much better than I did, I’m sad to admit) the systematic failure of law schools to prepare their students for real-world law practice. As much as I hate to pull the bulk of his post into mine, I’m going to do it anyway (please don’t sue me, Bruce):
Far meatier and insightful is an article I stumbled across from July 2002 pointing out the existence, and the consequences, of a deplorable gap in law school education: The all but complete absence of courses on law firms as businesses.* This leaves associates starting out utterly in the dark about the fundamental dynamics that drive what they cost and what they're worth to their firms. Note that we're not talking about weighty strategic choices, the long-term impact of market positioning, the dilemmas facing mid-tier full-service firms, or any other advanced management issues: We're talking about billing, realization rates, the relative profitability of different practice areas, and other "low-hanging fruit."
To recur to my own experience, I had no clue at what point the firm might "break even" on me (and the firm, as you might expect, would have been the last to tell me).
Ignorance can lead associates into an attitude of entitlement—always an endearing trait to partners!—because they are simply clueless about how the money behind their salary check is generated. Associates with at least a modicum of savvy about the business realities of a firm are far less likely to fall into that trap.
Why are there virtually no such courses? This is an example of microeconomics trumping macroeconomics, as it were. (I'm somewhat contorting these terms, but bear with me.) From the "macro" perspective, the profession would be far better off, immediately and at very little cost, if law school graduates had been exposed to Firm Economics 101. On this I hope all readers of "Adam Smith, Esq." can agree.
But from the "micro" perspective of law school faculty or deans designing curricula, firm economics is an orphan: It isn't "academic," in the conventional sense; it doesn't have anything to do with training one to "think like a lawyer," it bears no connection to either substantive or procedural law; and it's a safe generalization to say that personality types attracted to the career of law professor don't think like businesspeople or economists.
Well, there you have it. Two leading legal bloggers agree that law schools suck at making lawyers. Anyone else out there?
What if I want to get to 11?
Steve Pavlina has another thought-provoking personal improvement post titled How to Get From a 7 to a 10. Steve opines on what it takes to make meaningful changes in your life and overcome personal or career stagnation. I liked this quote the best:
In physics terms I’m saying that what matters is not your position but your velocity. Velocity is a vector which has both a direction and a speed. Where you’re headed and how quickly is more important than where you are.
There's Shrimp Creole, Shrimp Gumbo, Pineapple Shrimp, Lemon Shrimp, Shrimp Soup ...
Bubba (from Forest Gump) would be proud. Microsoft is reportedly taking a page from Procter and Gamble as it names the entire Windows Vista family:
- Vista Starter
- Vista Home Basic
- Vista Home Premium
- Vista Pro
- Vista Small Business
- Vista Enterprise
- Vista Ultimate
Which version is for me? Where’s Small Business Premium? How about Enterprise Pro? Why can’t I have Ultimate Starter? I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. Is Microsoft worried about getting crowded out by Apple’s OS boxes on the shelves of Best Buy? Microsoft has just added, collectively, hundreds of thousands of hours to the time computer buyers will spend buying their next computer. How’s that a good thing?
According to this article, it’s not.
When choosing to expand product offerings it is as important to recognize the parameters of competition where variety is an advantage and when it merely overwhelms the consumer. (From the Drakeview blog)
As a professional service provider, how many “choices” do you offer? How many options do you give your clients? Are your clients often overwhelmed by the decisions they have to make? Not sure? Ask them.
And if you still believe more choice is better, go to Wal Mart and spend an hour trying to figure out what toothpaste to buy (and then decide upon the flavor).
Pandora is Awesome
I know I’m not the first to jump on this bandwagon, but I really, really like Pandora. Input a song you like and it gives you a stream of music that shares similar qualities. You can build multiple “stations” and share them with others. The first ten hours are free, and I’ve already been exposed to music I love by artists I’d never heard before. Check it out!
Onederwear that's Fun to Wear
Don't Talk About It, Be About It
New York City is so big and so dense that you don’t have to be terribly successful to be terribly successful.
This one time, in Brand Camp ...
I’m linking to this book because I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to use the title of this post.
Say Backpack
This fits in the “I can’t believe nobody thought of this before” department: a backpack that has a light inside. I want my next briefcase to have this feature. As for the post title, you Dora fans know what I’m talking about.