links for 2006-09-13
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"Now I just put a piece of tape on the battery cover and write down what size batteries are in there. Now I don't have to bother taking it apart just to realize that I need to go find 4 D's."
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A Chair that's a Library!
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All the web buzz in one place.
Great Gift Tip for Children of Clients
Here’s another Parent Hack that could work just as easily in your professional office:
As the party came to an end, each pint-sized guest (and sibling, if there was one) received a wrapped party favor with his or her name written on it. Turns out the birthday boy's mom, Mary Wells, had gone to our local library's used bookstore and hand-picked a book for each kid. It doesn't get better than that!
Stock your waiting room with a bookcase full of used books, which cost (at my local library, at least) between twenty-five cents and a dollar. If a client, or a client’s child, likes a particular book, let them take it home with them.
links for 2006-09-12
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I couldn't agree more.
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Deserves a longer blog post, but no time today.
Harold W. Homann, Rest In Peace
My Grandfather, Harold W. Homann died yesterday. He was an amazing man.
Wanna Blow Stuff (Photos) Up?
If you need to blow up some digital photos for use at trial (or just because you want some really big photos), check out Pictopia. (Via Cool Tools)
links for 2006-09-08
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I'll be checking this out in more detail, but looks like another addition to the Lawyer's Web 2.0 Toolkit.
Web Two Point What?
Here’s a great introduction to the much-hyped, often overused term “Web2.0” that’s worth a read.
A Lawyer's Blog Should ...
It has been a while since I’ve pointed you towards my friend Yvonne DiVita’s blog. If it isn’t in your rotation of regular reads, it should be. If you want to know why, check out her recent post, A Business Blog Should …
Open an Art Gallery -- In Your Office
I just stumbled across Parent Hacks today, and found this post about an “Art Gallery” Sara Brumfield found in a neighbor’s garage:
Out running in my neighborhood, I nosily noticed a neighbor's garage open with the lights on. When I glanced in, I saw that the entire back wall was covered with a child's artwork, and big letters spelled out what I assume is the artist's name -- "Caleb." I thought this was a great idea -- after all, how many pieces of art can a refrigerator hold? I can imagine kids getting a big kick out of having their own art gallery, and taking vistitors out to see it.
I think this is a phenomenal idea. I’m going to set up something similar for my daughter’s work.
If you have an office, take it to another level. Ask your employees to bring in the artwork of their children/grandchildren/nephews/neices/etc. and hang it in your firm’s “Gallery.” Every year, have an art show, where all the kids are invited (with parents, of course) to see their work.
And if you are a divorce lawyer/mediator, I’d even think about hosting your client meetings or mediations in the room with all of the kids’ art work. It would make it a heck of a lot easier to remind your clients to focus on their children during their divorce, without having to tell them over and over. Heck, I’d even invite your clients to add some of their children’s work to the Gallery.
links for 2006-09-06
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Cool pictures of lightning.
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Sorry real estate brokers, you are going down.
Set Expectations Via E-Mail
Here’s a great tip via Email Overloaded: In your e-mail signature, include something like Bob Walsh does:
(I usually check email every few hours during the day.)
links for 2006-09-02
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I love Kayak.com for airline fare searching, but Farecast is an interesting competitor. Worth looking at.
Total Information Awareness, for Lawyers AND Clients
Pronet Advertising has a great list of 10 Things You Should Be Monitoring online. Other bloggers have jumped in with numbers 11–17 and 18–23. The first ten:
- Company name
- Company URL
- Public facing figures
- Product names
- Product URLs
- The industry “hang outs”
- Employee activity/blogs
- Conversations
- Brand image
- Competitors
Good advice, but I’d take it a bit further. You should absolutely be monitoring these things for all your clients, too.
Reebok Rules for Lawyers Serving Entrepreneurial Clients
Sun General Counsel Michael Dillon, who’s now blogging, points to a fascinating article (pdf) titled “Reebok Rules” from former Reebok GC John B. Douglas, III. The “Rules” contain “important lessons about lawyering in an entrepreneurial environment.” If you serve businesses of any size, it is a must read.
Fire Us, Please!
Joel Spolsky has noticed that FAQ pages for online services almost never include instructions for how to cancel your account, then talks about making it easy for his clients to “fire” his company. And about their moneyback guarantee?
Since we started the company in 2000, the moneyback guarantee has cost us precisely 2% of revenues, which also includes chargebacks, credit card fraud, and people who accidentally ordered twice. That figure that has remained remarkably stable through the years and which I think is well worth it, but then again, I'm only measuring the cost, because the benefit is too hard to measure!
Do you have instructions how your clients can fire you? And about that guarantee….
Going to Get Really Sick? Follow These Rules
Gretchen Rubin is trying to find happiness. Her blog, The Happiness Project, chronicles her year-long journey, in which she tests “every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study [she] can find, whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah” to help her become happier.
Lately, she has been reading dozens of memoirs about illness. Here are the lessons she’s gleaned from them about dealing with doctors and hospitals (though they could just as easily be applied to dealing with lawyers and law firms):
You need to educate yourself as much as possible. Doctors don’t have the time or the emotional energy to explain all the possibilities to patients and their families.
Write everything down. It’s hard to take in information the first time you hear it. And keep thorough records for insurance purposes, too.
Every additional course of action carries pitfalls: side effects, pain, the difficulty of recovery from surgery, subsequent infections, time in the hospital, the real possibility of medical mistakes. So resist the impulse to “do everything.”
Double-check everything you can. When my father was in the hospital, his doctor told him not to drink anything, then a nurse urged him to take a pill with water—which would have been disastrous, if he’d done it. A friend who went through chemo had a special notebook where she wrote down her prescriptions, and checked her notes against the chemo bags before she allowed each treatment to proceed.
Before following a course of treatment, press as hard as you can—is this procedure absolutely necessary (e.g., do you really have to have that enema)? How painful will it be? How invasive is it? What other options exist, and are any of them less invasive, painful, etc? What will happen if the procedure isn’t done? Arthur Frank refused to sign a consent form when his doctor didn’t explain an operation to his satisfaction—and then ended up not having it at all.
Note that the medical staff often minimizes the discomfort and difficulty of treatments. Perhaps this arises from a desire not to be discouraging, but the effect is often to make it difficult to plan (will it really be possible to go back to work within a few days?) or to make patients feel that they’re complaining unreasonably.
Stay with the patient as much as possible. I don’t know what the visiting rules are in hospitals, but having read these books, I don’t think I’d leave a patient alone there, ever, if I could help it.
Insist on understanding the true prognosis. In several accounts I’ve read, people reflect sadly that they didn’t really understand that the patient was going to die. And so they made choices they regretted—for instance, resisting using methadone, despite its effectiveness in fighting pain, because of its addictive properties. A ridiculous concern to someone who will die in three months! Terrible news is hard to hear, and it’s hard to give, so if you want to know, you need to push. Stan Mack recalls that Janet’s doctors’ talk was “ambiguous.” He recalled a doctor saying, “You don’t have a curable cancer anymore, but with medication there is a subset of women who…” They didn't understand what they were being told.