The Anti-BlogHer?
This looks like an interesting conference, but wow, only one woman speaker? No thanks.
Law Firm Recruiters, Beware
As Larry Bodine has recently pointed out, a lot of lawyers-to-be don’t care about making partner anymore. For a more up-close look at this phenomenon, read this post from a first-year Indiana University law student:
I’ve found that I’m actually rather happy spending time with people that I like and who like me back, and that friends and family are way more important to me than any traditional notion of success in the legal world. To put it differently, I think it’s fair to say that I want to be a successful person first, and a successful lawyer second.
I think that I now see success in my career as something different than I did when I came to law school. I don’t want to work 80 hours a week and see the people I care about in the few hours in between; I want to work with people who are nice and well balanced and in an environment I like and still have time to have a life outside of my job. Whatever that entails, it’s what I’m interested in, and I think this post from Anonymous Law Student has a lot of insight and really gets to the heart of what matters to me in life these days.
The time is coming where money won’t be the motivator for young lawyers to take your firm’s offer that it used to be. You’ve been warned.
Surprise Your Clients With Lunch
One of the crazier PR stunts I've seen for a while: Cambrian House, an open-source software company, turn up at Google unannounced and feed them 1000 complimentary pizzas .
I love this idea, but if I were a law firm serving any medium to large business, I’d take it in a different direction: I’d surprise my biggest/best clients with enough free pizza to feed all their employees.
If I wanted to create even more buzz, I’d buy pizza for all my business clients’ employees ON THE SAME DAY. You could surely work a pretty good deal with the local pizza places, and think about how much everyone would talk about you.
If I had a few thousand dollars I was thinking about spending on that secondary yellow pages book in my town, I spend my money doing this instead. I’m sure I’d get a much better bang for my buck.
Things I Like
I’m playing around with Amazon’s new “AStore” product. It allows me to build a virtual storefront with products I choose. I’m going to change it every month with new and cool books, magazines, and gear that I personally recommend. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Office Design for Employees
Designing your firm’s new space? Take a look at this post about a printing company in Montana. Some of the unique office features:
Day Care and 'family' is built in; there are no other options! The first thing you see when you come walk the parking lot to the front door are little kiddos playing under the Montana sky. All employees pay a pitance to have their young kids on site with them. It's a fundamental. Andrew made it a key design driver. And the # of Baby Bjorns in the office was an indicator that for many of the employees, a family 'quality of life' decision was made without compromising their careers. And its a spectacular daycare. Small adult/kid ratio. Healthy environment. Kids loved. And obviously very happy teachers and parents on site. It wins all visitors over the second they come into the building. The main floor is designed for humans, not executives or administrators. Andrew had been told by the design team at first that a 'traditional' executive/client floor was needed. Sends the right message. Fits the design. Tradition. Andrew felt that didn't match the company's feel. Instead, the upper floor does have all of those elements -- like a typical 'entry' to a school -- but for any visitor, the real sense is that it's an open series of collaborative spaces that are designed for all team members (regardless of rank) to relax, create, rest, and connect. Every space is a learning space. Man, there just weren't any spaces in the building that didn't suggest learning, collaboration, experiment, and team. Sure, business had to be done and things were divided up by tasks and teams, but the real take-away had to do with energy and collaboration. I'd have given anything for teachers/administrators and school designers alike to have spent time on the bottom floor (ground level, due to the slope that building sits on) where the teams were moving at full speed, serving clients around the nation, and providing rigorous real-time design/printing solutions. Spaces were vibrant. Team members were free to work in a variety of settings. And the place had a learning buzz about it. All workers are humans, learners and team members first. I was struck by one programmer/service expert that had forgone the chair entirely. He used a yoga/exercise ball as his chair -- not only did it help create a different dynamic, but it also had a huge impact on his back problems. I also liked that it allowed him to move. To bounce. To fidget. To shift. Mmmm....imagine if kids were given the same option. Imagine. We talked about this a bit, but what really struck me was that the 'trappings' of professionalism were tossed out the window with a grand investment being made instead to support 'how' people worked, created, succeeded, and collaborated. Every team member looked happy/healthy. And the spaces reflected that -- not choosing expensive design but instead being creative and letting the teams be able to gravitate towards what worked best for them. Solo. Small groups. Large groups. Formal. Informal. Inside. Outside. In other words, every space a learning space. Even hallways. Very little wasted...and a far more vibrant learning organization because of it!
Check out the entire post for more.
Drive Divorce Clients to Your Practice
Are you a divorce lawyer? Here’s a great vehicle for marketing your practice:
Thanks to Klaas Oost for permission to use this photo (flickr link), taken in Cape Town, South Africa.
Be Phone Tree Free
Got an e-mail the other day from Marcin Musiolik, alerting me to his company’s new project called Bringo! Here’s how it works:
- Find the company you'd like to call by category (credit cards, mortgages, loans, health care)
- Enter your phone # (we will never disclose your phone number to anyone, not even your mother!).
- Wait a few seconds while we navigate the phone tree.
- When we call you back, pick up your phone and you're done. No more phone trees.
Looks pretty cool. Try it out and let them know what you think in the comments to this post. And if you think your clients or customers would use this service to contact your firm, it’s time to rethink your telephone answering options.
UPDATE: Marcin tells me they are adding law firms next month. I’d sure not want to see mine on there.
It is never too early to do your client holiday shopping.
Don’t know where you’d find these online, but if you practice criminal law and want a nice gift for your clients, may I suggest this lovely door mat:
(found on a front porch in the Soulard area of St. Louis)
You Can Call Me "Mr. Homann"
I was out for a walk the other day and saw this real estate agent’s magnetic sign on his SUV:
Despite the incredible amount of information on the sign, notice that the one thing it doesn’t have is his first name. If you wanted to contact him, but didn’t remember the phone number, or even the agency, how would you find him? Would you search for “Mr. Johnson” in the Yellow Pages or on Google?
Think about your business or firm name. If someone hears it and wants to contact you later, will they be able to find you?
links for 2006-08-29
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Silly time waster
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Some decent deposition and client interview tips.
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Firefox extension combining GTD with GMail.
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If you speak in public, check out this site.
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If you like Hugh McLeod, you'll like these charts on index cards.
Know When Your Files Go Bad
This nifty little product would be great for lawyers keeping track of deadlines. From the company website:
Timestrips® are single-use, disposable, smart-labels, which automatically monitor lapsed time, ranging from under 1 day to 6 months.
Imagine sticking one to every file, phone slip, or letter. Then you could just look through the piles on your desk to see what’s about to go bad. ;-)
(Seen first at CoolBusinessIdeas.com)
links for 2006-08-24
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If you loved Space Invaders, Asteroids, PacMan, Frogger, etc., you've got to see this.
Advice for "Contact Us" Pages
Here’s some good advice for those “Contact Us” pages on the web:
Problem: Contact options are limited. …
Solution: Give customers more control of how to contact you. Provide plenty of options: phone, form, e-mail, and chat. Let them contact you their way. RADirect offers a telephone number to talk to an engineer, as well as a short form and a chat option when available. The e-mail form guarantees a response in one business day. If you click on "Speak to a System Engineer" in the nav bar, you're guaranteed a response in two hours from the point of action.
Problem: People are left to send and pray. So many contact forms and "thank you for contacting us" pages leave visitors frustrated. They don't provide any information on what to expect when someone contacts the company via form or e-mail. Visitors want to know when and how you'll reply. Some pages won't even give the business hours. …
Solution: Tell visitors exactly what to expect when they reach out to you. Tell them what's happening and what to expect in the future. If they must have information handy when they contact you, be sure to list that on the "contact us" page, too.
There are lots more “Problems” and “Solutions” in the article. Worth a look.
Do All Your Attorneys Talk To Clients Daily?
From Kayak.com’s founder comes this management gem:
At Kayak, I require that every employee talk or email with one or more customers every day. When I've mentioned this to friends-- that we give personal replies to all feedback and require even high-paid engineers spend time talking with customers every day-- they think I'm crazy. They think I should push customer support off to a separate lower-paid team rather than bothering my expensive engineers. But I will tell you a secret:
Having every Kayak employee talking with customers every day has been the best thing we have ever done. It is one thing to (a) have a computer or IVR trying to answer customer emails and phone calls and then (b) having a customer support department trying to address unanswered questions and then (c) raising the ones they can't handle to a quality assurance department who helps out, and who then (d) raises only a tiny subset of those issues to the product engineers.
It is quite another thing to make engineers talk directly to customers, removing layers of communication. Many brilliant engineers are empathetic problem solvers but they are also sometimes lazy and don't like to do anything more than once, including answering the same question over and over. When their software does something stupid, and they are thus required to answer the same customer question about it many times, and they have to look those customers in the eye and see their problem, those engineers then actually take the time to fix the problem.
Do all the attorneys in your firm talk to a client every day? Maybe they should.
Less Work Equals Same Productivity?
Interesting story related by computer company manager:
So we went down to a thirty-two-hour-a-week schedule for everyone furing a down time. We took everybody’s hours and salary down - executives too.
But [the company] discovered two surprises.
First, productivity did not decline. I swear to God we get as much out of them at thirty-two hours as we did at forty. So it’s not a bad business decision. But second, when economic conditions improved, we offered them one hundred percent time again. No one wanted to go back!
Never in our wildest dreams would our managers have designed a four-day week. But it’s endured at the insistence of our employees.
Now, if you could just figure out a way to get your clients on board and let you charge them for that phantom day each week.
Good (Net)Vibrations
Here’s an exercise for today. Check out NetVibes, a really cool customizable home page, with the ability to display multiple types of content in drag-and-drop boxes (read a quick review here). Then think about the kind of RSS-driven content your firm or company could generate (think RSS feed for each case, for example) and imagine giving your clients a home page customized just for them. Oh yeah, the cost of a NetVibes page? Free.
Please Judge Me by the Company I Keep
One of these things is not like the other: David Maister, Sylvia Coulter, Bruce MacEwen, Patrick McKenna, Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, Simon Chester, Dennis Kennedy, Dan Pinnington, Gerry Riskin and me.
We all contributed to the Innovaction E-Magazine (link to pdf), “The online publication celebrating innovation in the practice of law.” I took part in a roundtable on law firm innovation with several of the luminaries mentioned above. The e-zine was put together by the fantastic Jordan Furlong (Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Bar Association’s National magazine). Check it out, I think you’ll find it valuable.
