This post represents the second, and final, guest appearance by LOMAP summer intern, Michael Pirrello. Mike is done carrying this program, and has returned to school as of this past Monday. Mike begins his third year at Suffolk University Law School, and is ready (and well-prepared, incidentally) to move onto bigger and better things. We have very much enjoyed having Mike here this summer, and appreciate all his help. We wish him the best of luck in all of his future endeavors. And, now, for his final gift to you, Mike writes on Lawyer Referral Services:
Over the past few months here at LOMAP, I have had the privilege of meeting with a number of solo attorneys and small firm lawyers. These meetings have given me a better understanding of the amount of work that goes into running a law practice. Solo and small firm lawyers have to manage not only the legal aspects of a case (going to court, drafting motions, researching, holding client meetings, etc.), but must also manage the administrative aspects of running a law practice (scheduling appointments, billing clients, answering clients’ emails, returning phone calls, etc.), as well. Solo/small firm attorneys are required to handle all of this while, of course, trying to find the time to market themselves. I am continually impressed by how well these attorneys manage to juggle all the demands that their jobs place upon them.
One common question posed to us is: How can a busy lawyer reach out to more clients? Most practicing attorneys, particularly in this economy, would undoubtedly benefit from having more clients. In order to get more clients, then, you should consider joining a bar-associated lawyer referral service, or two. There are many bar-affiliated lawyer referral services right here in Massachusetts; in fact, I was pleasantly surprised by just how many local, regional, and state bar-affiliated lawyer referral services there are. And, what that means is that we, as attorneys, have more options, and opportunities for reaching new clients.
A lawyer referral service is an organization that is designed to match up clients with attorneys. The services market themselves to clients as middlemen for the finding of lawyers. Have you ever seen this ad? Some of your potential clients probably have. When a potential client calls the lawyer referral service, the lawyer referral service then performs a basic inquiry about the client and what the case is about. Using this information, the lawyer referral service refers the case to a lawyer on their list who practices in the appropriate field.
There are several advantages to becoming a member of a lawyer referral service. First, by joining, you have found another means by which you can obtain more clients. By getting more clients, you will earn more money. Additionally, by joining a lawyer referral service, you may reduce some of your own marketing efforts (or at least feel less marketing pressure), so that you will have more time available to address the administrative requirements of running your law firm. The lawyer referral service will also save you time because they will usually perform a basic client intake for you (so that you don't have to). That intake will lead to your ultimate referral out, when you come up on the list within your speciality. And, increasing client intake for your specialty will allow you to gain valuable experience within your specialty, so that you will better be able to market yourself as a niche practitioner, and so grow your brand. Finally, joining a lawyer referral service may be particularly beneficial for those of you who are opening up a new practice and, as a consequence, have not yet established a firm client base.
Of course, one must always take into account the drawbacks and limitations of lawyer referral services, as well. The first thing you must remember is that, even though you have been referred a case and a client intake had been performed, you must still vet your clients for quality, and refuse a referral, if you know that you will be taking on a serious problem client. New attorneys may not feel as though they have the luxury of refusing any client, but a bad client is a bad client; and, the time you will lose on a bad client is real, and will affect your ability to invest in marketing yourself appropriately, in order to get the good clients within your specialty that you really want. Keep in mind that clients calling a lawyer referral service have sometimes been through several attorneys before you, and sometimes because they are so difficult to handle. The second drawback to these services is that you must be a member of the bar association with which the lawyer referral service is affiliated; that membership will cost you money. On top of the bar association membership fees, the lawyer referral service itself will usually charge a fee, too. Oftentimes, you must also sign an agreement in order to join one of these services. That agreement may limit how you may handle the case and bill the client. Most agreements also include a fee remittance provision, whereby you will return a portion of your collected fee to the lawyer referral service, for their referral fee. Make sure that you read the agreement that you sign carefully, and that you know exactly what it is that you are agreeing to.
If you want to join a lawyer referral service, or two, after taking stock of both the benefits and the drawbacks, you may click here for a list that I have compiled of all of the bar-affiliated lawyer referral services in Massachusetts, and that includes contact and other general information for each service. Whatever you decide, thanks for reading. And, best of luck to you all!
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Thursday, August 27, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
RECAPture the Public Domain: Access PACER Documents for Free
Accessing appellate, district and bankruptcy court records via the Federal Judiciary’s PACER system is clunky, to the point that it gets difficult to determine whether this PACER or this Pacer is the more inefficient use. Plus, PACER charges for documents: 8 cents per page accessed; there's even an 8 cent charge for a search that yields no results! Now, while 8 cents per page appears cheap on face, and is less than what many law libraries charge for copying, the fact is that multiples of searches add up, especially for attorneys who frequently use PACER. But, if you’re hungry for a break, there is some relief available, if not for the clunkiness, at least for the pricing.
There is a new web plug-in that can get you most of your PACER documents for free.
The system, known as RECAP (“pacer” reversed), was created under the auspices of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy by Harlan Yu, Steve Schultze and Timothy B. Lee, under the supervision of Professor Edward W. Felten. Aside from the fact that it was co-created by someone named Harlan (likely the first “Harlan”d in popular circulation since the immortal Colonel Sanders himself, whose Wikipedia page is criminally brief), RECAP has much to recommend it.
Here’s how it works: PACER users operating the RECAP add-on will have each document they access downloaded to an online repository. Each document so accessed and archived will then be free to every other PACER/RECAP user, via RECAP’s repository, rather than through PACER’s paywall.
The Washington Post has put together a decently bite-sized, informative article on the RECAP system, if you want a quick read. But, if you’d like to Discover Further, the best place to do so, at this point, really, is the source. Our friend Harlan(d) Yu, friend of the little man, has posted, at the Freedom to Tinker blog, one of the better introductions to the service. And, the RECAP homepage has a great deal of information on it, which information is really quite straightforward and easy to follow. There’s a sharp, quick video tutorial (“Watch RECAP in Action”) on the use of the product at the frontpage. And, in addition to basic descriptions covering how the product works, and why the product works, and a link for installing, there is a series of blog-style posts covering discrete topics relating to the RECAP program.
I have found the debate respecting RECAP to be interesting, and have discovered some good back and forth in the comments to blog posts on the topic, especially at Yu’s post. I have, also, found the creators of the system, as represented by their blog posts at the RECAP homepage, and elsewhere, to be refreshingly honest and open with respect not only to the advantages of RECAP, but also with respect to its disadvantages, and potential problems.
What are those, you may ask? Well, here is a list (not exhaustive):
Plug-in. The RECAP system operates by use of a plug-in; but, that plug-in is only available through the Firexfox browser. So you’ll need to use Firefox to access RECAP. Of course, that’s probably for the best, anyway. Firefox is the best browser.
Ex PACER Access. Although you don’t have to log-in to PACER to access RECAP, other access points are, at this point, cumbersome, and intentionally so, due to a desire on the part of the creators of RECAP to protect the privacy of litigants. So, you’ll have to wait until the RECAP team feels as though its security house is in order before you can expect to find an officially supported mechanism for browsing RECAP’s repository.
Is it legal? This is an open question; but, it appears to be. Now, I am not an intellectual property attorney. And, I don’t even practice anymore, at all, for that matter. But, the PACER website itself indicates toward the obvious conclusion that the government works within the PACER database are public record and not copyrighted, and so may be reproduced without permission, which, one could argue, is just what the RECAP program does: reproduces the documents at an alternate archive, for access . . . Of course, one could also argue that, nevertheless, the judiciary/government could prosecute for data collection that avoids billing, based on another indication upon their site; but, that part sounds to me more like the presaging of a crackdown on RECAP (the use of “collect data” rather than ”access data”, whispering so to me), rather than a potential crackdown on users of RECAP, who I think would be safe, under such a scenario. And, although this is likely not the end of the story, the judiciary has released an initial response to RECAP, emanating out of the District of New Mexico Bankruptcy Court (yes, certainly, this is only one district), stating that users, save for exempt users, cannot be prohibited from using RECAP, which does not, as the RECAP site assumes, mean that the use of RECAP is consistent with the law, but which really means that there is nothing the courts can do about it, or are willing to do about it, for now. Implicitly, then, users seem to be protected, for now; of course, the release is silent on whether or not the creators of RECAP have done anything which, to the minds of the judiciary, is untoward; but, that's not your problem. Although the court warns users rather generically that they may be "posting" private information, like social security numbers, to the web, this seems like tortured logic, and not likely to stand: (1) providing documents to the court, which the court then posts on PACER, is not generally releasing private information to the web--if anyone is posting private information to the web, then, it's the court; (2) most RECAP users (save for, potentially, those first ones, who have accessed materials that they have, in essence, "donated" to the free archive) are not posting anything to the internet; those users are merely accessing information from the internet; and, (3) it would seem to be difficult to say that even those initial donating users are posting anything to the web; they are merely accessing documents: RECAP takes those documents and reposts them. So, again, this appears as a RECAP challenge, not a user challenge. I don't think that this saber rattling over data privacy concerns will come to anything, or long stand. In any event, I don't see it as a winning argument against the users of RECAP, at least.
Certainly, then, but in any event, really, the government could seek to shut RECAP down. So, the question of Whether RECAP will remain apparently legal or viable?, is another question, all together. Unless or until then, I’ll say, it appears safe enough to use, so: use it until you lose it, and don’t worry about the popo for now.
Beyond the question of whether the use of RECAP is legal, Is the question of whether RECAP can be trusted. To the extent that the RECAP program derives its archive directly from PACER, the answer is "yes". To the extent that RECAP is open source, and to the extent that the key to the kingdom lays exposed, there is the potential for malicious persons to add to RECAP's archive unofficial documents purporting to be official documents; so, the answer then becomes, "probably". The issue is raised, but not effectively addressed, at a RECAP blog post, where it is classified only as a challenge that the RECAP team will have to deal with. Well, that's not exactly stirring. In the blog, however, a couple of quoted solutions are applied, one user-based (download important files direct from PACER), the other government-based (the courts should employ government signatures--probably a good idea anyway). Although I'd like to see a more aggressive response here, because the issue could become a large one (wait for the first malpractice claim against an attorney who downloaded a false document purporting to be official from the RECAP archive), I do think that this issues is resolvable, and likely will be resolved. The RECAP team, being led by eminent computer scientist Ed Felten, likely understands that pulling documents is not enough, that their repository must also represent a true collection of official documents to be really usable. My guess, given the RECAP team's obvious interest in privacy and security, and their other responses to those questions, is that this issue, if it ever comes up, is resolved in the short term. And, in an age when more and more, and already most, people place ever-increasing amounts of private information out on the cloud, archived to some server somewhere, there must be some level of trust between the people and the internet (as represented by vetted, reputable, certifiable programmers with apparent integrity, like Ed Felten and his team). The method to salve the madness is to use your head. You'll go crazy worrying over what is truly protected and what is not, and, especially, how; and, you'll be driven to distraction once you realize that every system, no matter how secure, or seemingly unsinkable, can be compromised or breached: see Titanic. But, at some point, you will have done your discovery and due diligence to the best of your ability; and, if you're then satisfied, you have done all that you can do, and you just have to let it go. My impression remains that there is greater folly in not using RECAP based on this concern than in using it.
Will the free access that RECAP offers and the consequent reduction in PACER revenues end up killing the PACER system? I don’t think anyone can rightly say for sure, and there are vociferous arguments on both sides. Turning to the comments for Harlan Yu’s introductory blog post, there appears some evidence that the judiciary takes in more revenue from PACER than it needs to run PACER, such that, a decrease in revenue, to a certain level, could be handled, PACER then running on a not-for-profit basis. Even if PACER begins to run at a loss, though, the judiciary could still support it by allocating affirmative funding (and, yes, I understand that the courts may use that money in other, perhaps more important, ways, but here I am only discussing the continuing viability of PACER, not the efficacy of that continuing existence), if it determines the program is important enough to maintain. If the government should shut down PACER because it has become too costly to maintain, then there’ll be the RECAP archive for the then-existing documents, and the judiciary would likely still find it an important objective to publish PACER-style documents (especially with government transparency being today’s watchword), and will probably farm out the publication to a third party . . . like RECAP. I guess that, in the final analysis, I can’t see access disappearing, just the mode of access changing, and changing, if it does, to one that is less costly for attorneys, and that’s a good thing. But, RECAP, through Timothy Lee, has answered most of this question already, and in its own way.
Will RECAP always remain free? Maybe not. Maybe RECAP goes to a per page charge (less than what PACER charges if PACER is still around; some other, settled number if PACER dies). But, for now, Who cares? It’s a forward-looking argument, and one that would have ramifications for attorneys down the line who come to rely on RECAP; but, this program will move forward regardless of those folks attempting to stopper the dike with their fingers. “Free” (even if just "free for now") is too hard to resist. Making a theoretical argument, and griping upon the conclusions of same is one thing; not using the program based on that argument will just be an added business cost for you that your competitors are not accruing. And, they’d say go-ahead. This is sort of like refusing to purchase $5 footlongs from Subway based on the fact that they may raise the price one day. I don’t know; I’ll save money today, though.
So, go ahead, take the top down, and try out RECAP. It’s party time. Like it’s 1975. Excellent.
It may not make this PACER that Pacer, but RECAP is a great way to keep pace, while keeping expenses down.
P.S.--There are so many great AMC Pacer pictures on Google images, it’s redonculous.
. . .
Johnny Cash probably would have used a program like RECAP if he were a lawyer without a second thought. But, fortunately, Johnny Cash wasn’t a lawyer. He was the man (in black) instead. My affinity for Johnny Cash is well-known; just ask the Mass Bar’s Joe Caci.
Now, when you’re talking J.R. Cash, you’re talking just a mammoth corpus, including 96 albums, 153 singles, one feature length biopic (with an award-winning performance by the brilliant Reese Witherspoon (and by “brilliant”, I mean, just outrageously hot)) and one famous photo that I can’t rightly link off this blog, but which an industrious Google search will yield for the curious and curioser.
Johnny Cash is an American icon, and his songs are iconic. “I Walk the Line”, “Ring of Fire” and “Folsom Prison Blues” are parts of the very stitching of the large quilt of Americana including apple pie. And, there are so many other Cash hits and history that I could go on and on . . . but I won’t, I’ll just go on, and leave a large amount of stuff out in the process. Suffice it to say that Cash was probably the coolest musician ever, and the fact that he’s getting posthumous shout outs from Snoop Dogg as “a real American gangsta”, as part of Snoop’s country foray, just sort of seals the deal.
Cash’s recording career covered almost 50 years of continuous production from Sun Records to American Recordings to sunset. The breadth of his catalogue is staggering. And, I like to wander around, about it, to pick up some of my favorites from time to time, like “Wanted Man”, At San Quentin, co-written with Bob Dylan, “Cocaine Blues”, At Folsom, “The One on the Right is on the Left”, “Jackson” (the movie version’s pretty darn good, too; and, yes, that is really Joaquin Phoenix, one of my all-time favorite actors, singing with Reese) and “Long-Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man” the last two with wife June Carter Cash, and “Committed to Parkview” (that one’s for you, Lottie--should you ever walk by the LCL-LOMAP offices, only to hear the strains of Johnny Cash, you'll know it's just me and Lottie in the office).
Particularly stunning, I think, though, is the depth of feeling present (whether in rockabilly numbers or on more morbid fare) on the American Recordings (isn’t that appropriate) Cash made near the end of his life. His “Hurt” cover is well-known. But, there are lesser-known treasures, also, including a duet with Carl Perkins on a sweet, re-done version of Brown-Eyed Handsome Man", a strange, wild duet with Fiona Apple on Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son”, with Tom Petty on Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” (Petty on background vocals), covering Neil Young‘s “Heart of Gold” with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist, John Frusciante, and Johnny solo on “The Man Comes Around”, “Solitary Man”, “Like the 309”, and others.
And, How about Eric Clapton, Cash and Perkins doing “Matchbox” together! Yeah, here it is. Alright, I have to stop, otherwise I’ll be watching clips from The Johnny Cash Show until 2 am.
You might think I’d feel bad about using an ostensibly legal blog to pawn off upon you my thoughts on music from time to time; but, I really don’t. And neither would Johnny Cash.
P.S.--Merry Christmas from Johnny Cash.
There is a new web plug-in that can get you most of your PACER documents for free.
The system, known as RECAP (“pacer” reversed), was created under the auspices of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy by Harlan Yu, Steve Schultze and Timothy B. Lee, under the supervision of Professor Edward W. Felten. Aside from the fact that it was co-created by someone named Harlan (likely the first “Harlan”d in popular circulation since the immortal Colonel Sanders himself, whose Wikipedia page is criminally brief), RECAP has much to recommend it.
Here’s how it works: PACER users operating the RECAP add-on will have each document they access downloaded to an online repository. Each document so accessed and archived will then be free to every other PACER/RECAP user, via RECAP’s repository, rather than through PACER’s paywall.
The Washington Post has put together a decently bite-sized, informative article on the RECAP system, if you want a quick read. But, if you’d like to Discover Further, the best place to do so, at this point, really, is the source. Our friend Harlan(d) Yu, friend of the little man, has posted, at the Freedom to Tinker blog, one of the better introductions to the service. And, the RECAP homepage has a great deal of information on it, which information is really quite straightforward and easy to follow. There’s a sharp, quick video tutorial (“Watch RECAP in Action”) on the use of the product at the frontpage. And, in addition to basic descriptions covering how the product works, and why the product works, and a link for installing, there is a series of blog-style posts covering discrete topics relating to the RECAP program.
I have found the debate respecting RECAP to be interesting, and have discovered some good back and forth in the comments to blog posts on the topic, especially at Yu’s post. I have, also, found the creators of the system, as represented by their blog posts at the RECAP homepage, and elsewhere, to be refreshingly honest and open with respect not only to the advantages of RECAP, but also with respect to its disadvantages, and potential problems.
What are those, you may ask? Well, here is a list (not exhaustive):
Plug-in. The RECAP system operates by use of a plug-in; but, that plug-in is only available through the Firexfox browser. So you’ll need to use Firefox to access RECAP. Of course, that’s probably for the best, anyway. Firefox is the best browser.
Ex PACER Access. Although you don’t have to log-in to PACER to access RECAP, other access points are, at this point, cumbersome, and intentionally so, due to a desire on the part of the creators of RECAP to protect the privacy of litigants. So, you’ll have to wait until the RECAP team feels as though its security house is in order before you can expect to find an officially supported mechanism for browsing RECAP’s repository.
Is it legal? This is an open question; but, it appears to be. Now, I am not an intellectual property attorney. And, I don’t even practice anymore, at all, for that matter. But, the PACER website itself indicates toward the obvious conclusion that the government works within the PACER database are public record and not copyrighted, and so may be reproduced without permission, which, one could argue, is just what the RECAP program does: reproduces the documents at an alternate archive, for access . . . Of course, one could also argue that, nevertheless, the judiciary/government could prosecute for data collection that avoids billing, based on another indication upon their site; but, that part sounds to me more like the presaging of a crackdown on RECAP (the use of “collect data” rather than ”access data”, whispering so to me), rather than a potential crackdown on users of RECAP, who I think would be safe, under such a scenario. And, although this is likely not the end of the story, the judiciary has released an initial response to RECAP, emanating out of the District of New Mexico Bankruptcy Court (yes, certainly, this is only one district), stating that users, save for exempt users, cannot be prohibited from using RECAP, which does not, as the RECAP site assumes, mean that the use of RECAP is consistent with the law, but which really means that there is nothing the courts can do about it, or are willing to do about it, for now. Implicitly, then, users seem to be protected, for now; of course, the release is silent on whether or not the creators of RECAP have done anything which, to the minds of the judiciary, is untoward; but, that's not your problem. Although the court warns users rather generically that they may be "posting" private information, like social security numbers, to the web, this seems like tortured logic, and not likely to stand: (1) providing documents to the court, which the court then posts on PACER, is not generally releasing private information to the web--if anyone is posting private information to the web, then, it's the court; (2) most RECAP users (save for, potentially, those first ones, who have accessed materials that they have, in essence, "donated" to the free archive) are not posting anything to the internet; those users are merely accessing information from the internet; and, (3) it would seem to be difficult to say that even those initial donating users are posting anything to the web; they are merely accessing documents: RECAP takes those documents and reposts them. So, again, this appears as a RECAP challenge, not a user challenge. I don't think that this saber rattling over data privacy concerns will come to anything, or long stand. In any event, I don't see it as a winning argument against the users of RECAP, at least.
Certainly, then, but in any event, really, the government could seek to shut RECAP down. So, the question of Whether RECAP will remain apparently legal or viable?, is another question, all together. Unless or until then, I’ll say, it appears safe enough to use, so: use it until you lose it, and don’t worry about the popo for now.
Beyond the question of whether the use of RECAP is legal, Is the question of whether RECAP can be trusted. To the extent that the RECAP program derives its archive directly from PACER, the answer is "yes". To the extent that RECAP is open source, and to the extent that the key to the kingdom lays exposed, there is the potential for malicious persons to add to RECAP's archive unofficial documents purporting to be official documents; so, the answer then becomes, "probably". The issue is raised, but not effectively addressed, at a RECAP blog post, where it is classified only as a challenge that the RECAP team will have to deal with. Well, that's not exactly stirring. In the blog, however, a couple of quoted solutions are applied, one user-based (download important files direct from PACER), the other government-based (the courts should employ government signatures--probably a good idea anyway). Although I'd like to see a more aggressive response here, because the issue could become a large one (wait for the first malpractice claim against an attorney who downloaded a false document purporting to be official from the RECAP archive), I do think that this issues is resolvable, and likely will be resolved. The RECAP team, being led by eminent computer scientist Ed Felten, likely understands that pulling documents is not enough, that their repository must also represent a true collection of official documents to be really usable. My guess, given the RECAP team's obvious interest in privacy and security, and their other responses to those questions, is that this issue, if it ever comes up, is resolved in the short term. And, in an age when more and more, and already most, people place ever-increasing amounts of private information out on the cloud, archived to some server somewhere, there must be some level of trust between the people and the internet (as represented by vetted, reputable, certifiable programmers with apparent integrity, like Ed Felten and his team). The method to salve the madness is to use your head. You'll go crazy worrying over what is truly protected and what is not, and, especially, how; and, you'll be driven to distraction once you realize that every system, no matter how secure, or seemingly unsinkable, can be compromised or breached: see Titanic. But, at some point, you will have done your discovery and due diligence to the best of your ability; and, if you're then satisfied, you have done all that you can do, and you just have to let it go. My impression remains that there is greater folly in not using RECAP based on this concern than in using it.
Will the free access that RECAP offers and the consequent reduction in PACER revenues end up killing the PACER system? I don’t think anyone can rightly say for sure, and there are vociferous arguments on both sides. Turning to the comments for Harlan Yu’s introductory blog post, there appears some evidence that the judiciary takes in more revenue from PACER than it needs to run PACER, such that, a decrease in revenue, to a certain level, could be handled, PACER then running on a not-for-profit basis. Even if PACER begins to run at a loss, though, the judiciary could still support it by allocating affirmative funding (and, yes, I understand that the courts may use that money in other, perhaps more important, ways, but here I am only discussing the continuing viability of PACER, not the efficacy of that continuing existence), if it determines the program is important enough to maintain. If the government should shut down PACER because it has become too costly to maintain, then there’ll be the RECAP archive for the then-existing documents, and the judiciary would likely still find it an important objective to publish PACER-style documents (especially with government transparency being today’s watchword), and will probably farm out the publication to a third party . . . like RECAP. I guess that, in the final analysis, I can’t see access disappearing, just the mode of access changing, and changing, if it does, to one that is less costly for attorneys, and that’s a good thing. But, RECAP, through Timothy Lee, has answered most of this question already, and in its own way.
Will RECAP always remain free? Maybe not. Maybe RECAP goes to a per page charge (less than what PACER charges if PACER is still around; some other, settled number if PACER dies). But, for now, Who cares? It’s a forward-looking argument, and one that would have ramifications for attorneys down the line who come to rely on RECAP; but, this program will move forward regardless of those folks attempting to stopper the dike with their fingers. “Free” (even if just "free for now") is too hard to resist. Making a theoretical argument, and griping upon the conclusions of same is one thing; not using the program based on that argument will just be an added business cost for you that your competitors are not accruing. And, they’d say go-ahead. This is sort of like refusing to purchase $5 footlongs from Subway based on the fact that they may raise the price one day. I don’t know; I’ll save money today, though.
So, go ahead, take the top down, and try out RECAP. It’s party time. Like it’s 1975. Excellent.
It may not make this PACER that Pacer, but RECAP is a great way to keep pace, while keeping expenses down.
P.S.--There are so many great AMC Pacer pictures on Google images, it’s redonculous.
. . .
Johnny Cash probably would have used a program like RECAP if he were a lawyer without a second thought. But, fortunately, Johnny Cash wasn’t a lawyer. He was the man (in black) instead. My affinity for Johnny Cash is well-known; just ask the Mass Bar’s Joe Caci.
Now, when you’re talking J.R. Cash, you’re talking just a mammoth corpus, including 96 albums, 153 singles, one feature length biopic (with an award-winning performance by the brilliant Reese Witherspoon (and by “brilliant”, I mean, just outrageously hot)) and one famous photo that I can’t rightly link off this blog, but which an industrious Google search will yield for the curious and curioser.
Johnny Cash is an American icon, and his songs are iconic. “I Walk the Line”, “Ring of Fire” and “Folsom Prison Blues” are parts of the very stitching of the large quilt of Americana including apple pie. And, there are so many other Cash hits and history that I could go on and on . . . but I won’t, I’ll just go on, and leave a large amount of stuff out in the process. Suffice it to say that Cash was probably the coolest musician ever, and the fact that he’s getting posthumous shout outs from Snoop Dogg as “a real American gangsta”, as part of Snoop’s country foray, just sort of seals the deal.
Cash’s recording career covered almost 50 years of continuous production from Sun Records to American Recordings to sunset. The breadth of his catalogue is staggering. And, I like to wander around, about it, to pick up some of my favorites from time to time, like “Wanted Man”, At San Quentin, co-written with Bob Dylan, “Cocaine Blues”, At Folsom, “The One on the Right is on the Left”, “Jackson” (the movie version’s pretty darn good, too; and, yes, that is really Joaquin Phoenix, one of my all-time favorite actors, singing with Reese) and “Long-Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man” the last two with wife June Carter Cash, and “Committed to Parkview” (that one’s for you, Lottie--should you ever walk by the LCL-LOMAP offices, only to hear the strains of Johnny Cash, you'll know it's just me and Lottie in the office).
Particularly stunning, I think, though, is the depth of feeling present (whether in rockabilly numbers or on more morbid fare) on the American Recordings (isn’t that appropriate) Cash made near the end of his life. His “Hurt” cover is well-known. But, there are lesser-known treasures, also, including a duet with Carl Perkins on a sweet, re-done version of Brown-Eyed Handsome Man", a strange, wild duet with Fiona Apple on Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son”, with Tom Petty on Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” (Petty on background vocals), covering Neil Young‘s “Heart of Gold” with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist, John Frusciante, and Johnny solo on “The Man Comes Around”, “Solitary Man”, “Like the 309”, and others.
And, How about Eric Clapton, Cash and Perkins doing “Matchbox” together! Yeah, here it is. Alright, I have to stop, otherwise I’ll be watching clips from The Johnny Cash Show until 2 am.
You might think I’d feel bad about using an ostensibly legal blog to pawn off upon you my thoughts on music from time to time; but, I really don’t. And neither would Johnny Cash.
P.S.--Merry Christmas from Johnny Cash.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Get Buy-In Before You Buy In: Build Consensus for Internal Change
Whether attempting to break in new software, instituting a new protocol or changing an existing office arrangement, you’re almost guaranteed to find that not everyone is immediately on the same page.
A familiar chorus may repeat itself, in internal discussions:
“Well, Phyllis has done it this way forever, and she’s been our office manager for forever, and we can’t really get her to change.”
“Bob’s been with us for over twenty years, he still bills a ton of hours, and he just doesn’t like technology. We won’t be able to get him to come around.”
The problem is symptomatic of attorney management generally: there is an avoidance of potential confrontation, before the point is even addressed, for fear of what might occur; there is very little in the way of proactive consensus building, or effort made towards that end, in the application of an important change. If a plan settled on is adopted, it is often done without consultation of the majority of effected parties, such that, rather than providing an opportunity for discussion and intelligent amalgamation, an email broadcast is the first, and often only, shot across the bow, producing the result that everyone is now even more entrenched in their views than ever before. Those unsympathetic then become only more unsympathetic, and those inclined to be sympathetic will now begin to doubt your motives, stemming from your methods.
It has been a shared point of common human knowledge for the better part of several thousand years that others are more likely to show you respect when you show them respect. So, when you have determined to institute a new product, service or method, be certain to share with your co-workers and colleagues, not just the decision, but the decisionmaking process.
In order for your new system to become the efficient improvement you hope it will be, you will need investment from others, as well as from yourself. Multiple systems for multiple persons is per se inefficient; and, you’re much more likely to achieve full participation, i.e.--full buy-in, if you have previously empowered your staffpersons and co-workers by introducing them into the embrace of your formerly private decisionmaking process. It might even happen that your initial idea was not the best method, but that meetings involving your co-workers led you in a more fruitful direction.
Of course, you may never be able to achieve full and complete buy-in from your employees and co-workers; but, by meaningfully involving them in the decisionmaking process, you have done all that you can do; and, for the implementation of a particular program or process, you have the final trump card: you’re the boss. Such that, in the end, your staff serves at your pleasure, and must, eventually, conform to the practices of your firm, or risk the penalties of intransigence. An employee flatly refusing and absolutely unwilling to comport with a final decision has the opportunity of seeking work elsewhere, or may be told to do so.
A familiar chorus may repeat itself, in internal discussions:
“Well, Phyllis has done it this way forever, and she’s been our office manager for forever, and we can’t really get her to change.”
“Bob’s been with us for over twenty years, he still bills a ton of hours, and he just doesn’t like technology. We won’t be able to get him to come around.”
The problem is symptomatic of attorney management generally: there is an avoidance of potential confrontation, before the point is even addressed, for fear of what might occur; there is very little in the way of proactive consensus building, or effort made towards that end, in the application of an important change. If a plan settled on is adopted, it is often done without consultation of the majority of effected parties, such that, rather than providing an opportunity for discussion and intelligent amalgamation, an email broadcast is the first, and often only, shot across the bow, producing the result that everyone is now even more entrenched in their views than ever before. Those unsympathetic then become only more unsympathetic, and those inclined to be sympathetic will now begin to doubt your motives, stemming from your methods.
It has been a shared point of common human knowledge for the better part of several thousand years that others are more likely to show you respect when you show them respect. So, when you have determined to institute a new product, service or method, be certain to share with your co-workers and colleagues, not just the decision, but the decisionmaking process.
In order for your new system to become the efficient improvement you hope it will be, you will need investment from others, as well as from yourself. Multiple systems for multiple persons is per se inefficient; and, you’re much more likely to achieve full participation, i.e.--full buy-in, if you have previously empowered your staffpersons and co-workers by introducing them into the embrace of your formerly private decisionmaking process. It might even happen that your initial idea was not the best method, but that meetings involving your co-workers led you in a more fruitful direction.
Of course, you may never be able to achieve full and complete buy-in from your employees and co-workers; but, by meaningfully involving them in the decisionmaking process, you have done all that you can do; and, for the implementation of a particular program or process, you have the final trump card: you’re the boss. Such that, in the end, your staff serves at your pleasure, and must, eventually, conform to the practices of your firm, or risk the penalties of intransigence. An employee flatly refusing and absolutely unwilling to comport with a final decision has the opportunity of seeking work elsewhere, or may be told to do so.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Gauging Your Efforts for Effect: Return to the Nature of Your Investments, in Reviewing Your Marketing Plan(ning)
The last session of the LOMAP Marketing Group was held just under a month ago, giving rise to the occasion of the writing of this, the second to last post in the LOMAP Marketing Group Marketing series, from the Department of Redundancy Department. I say that this is the second to last post, because we will be holding a class reunion, of sorts, sometime this fall, for the LOMAP Marketing Group, Class of ’09. At that event, I am certain of gleaning some and enlightening, further marketing tips, which I will, then, faithfully, pass along to you. Because that’s what I do.
The topic of our final Marketing Group session was “Putting Your Marketing Plan to Work for You”, the thesis being that it is not good enough to draft a marketing plan, and to let it sit. You’ll have wasted your time unless you make your marketing plan work for you, monitoring it for current effectiveness, from time to time.
If you’ve been following along with the group here (perhaps you have worked up your own marketing plan along the way), you know the importance of crafting clear, measurable, realistic objectives, for the guidance of your marketing efforts, through your marketing plan. You’ve also learned the importance of tying deadlines, and unique time pressers and pressures, to your marketing plan. Asserting real (yet manageable) deadlines under your marketing plan will help you to know when you are off task, and so will help you figure out why you got off track, such that you can determine how to get back on task. Deadlines also help you to answer questions relating to your progress from time to time. An appropriately-established tracking system will allow you to reach for the answer to the question of what you are doing today, and how you are doing so, one month from now, or three months or six months from now, or even a year from now. One helpful way to stay on track is to put pen to paper (or, finger to keystroke) again, and to use your marketing deadlines to create a marketing calendar, at the beginning of each new calendar or fiscal year. This will force you to calendar reminders, adding to them heft; for, it is far easier to ignore unreminded deadlines--and then there’s the fact that you could have a massive construction paper sort of marketing calendar hanging above your desk everyday, like some perverse modern-day version of a Damoclean Sword, that is, if you truly fear the crush of such deadlines, which you should not, but which you should view as yet another opportunity for growth.
Besides calendaring for completion and review, another way to make sure that your marketing plan is working is to stay with it, to keep your nose to the grindstone, and to make your illustrated efforts happen, in point of actual fact. On an associated note, you should be certain to allow your marketing efforts some ample time to breathe, to determine whether or not they are really working (more on this later). Part of staying the course is realizing that you do not live, or work, in a vacuum. You should endeavor to create accountability for yourself, to motivate yourself forward. Beyond your calendaring of deadlines, and establishing of sometime pressures, you should consider other factors that might motivate you. We work for money; but, we also work for other people. Who can you answer to? Who do you endeavor to support? Your children? Your life partner? Your law partner? Your poker buddies? Your networking friends? Determine who it is that you “answer” to, and who it is that you really work for, and find motivation for your efforts in some of these other, less usual, or less easily discoverable, ways. In addition to providing a nitro boost of motivation, your family, friends and colleagues are not just some abstraction, existing spectral, as some signposts for your aspiration. If you engage your family, friends and colleagues, you will likely find renewed (and renewing) focus, fresh ideas and an important, added drop of humility, like Alice’s small potion, from time to time. Most of my good ideas I steal from my wife.
Once you have decided that you are pretty well keeping your marketing endeavors on tracks, rails one and two, and now that you feel sufficiently motivated, the most important remaining, and continuing, task is to make certain that you are monitoring your marketing plan for success. The true success of your marketing efforts will be determined by your return on investment, whether you track what your return on investment is or not. But, it is far better to track your return. If you do not, you’re operating blind, and will have no idea whether your particular marketing efforts are working as you think they are, or as you hope they will. The only way you can truly know whether your efforts are worth your time is to determine that you will track your time and efforts against whatever measurable return you seek. And, unless you determine to make regular checks on your return on investment, that that will be something you stick to doing, as a recurring task, there is no point to go wringing your hands over how to collect your return.
But, if you do decide that you will track your return on investment, the primary concern will be just how to do it. As we’ve gone over many times, in many ways, this becomes a difficult problem for attorneys who have had no formal marketing training. At base, though, the concept is simple enough that you can format it for your purposes without major difficulty. Running a return on investment is really just figuring out what your “cost” is, and measuring that derived cost against that what your return is. Your cost includes not only the traditional factoring of money. Your cost also includes, for example, time spent (time away from billing, that is). You should endeavor to watch soft costs, little demands on your time, which can add up, if you do not manage your time well, and put caps upon time spent. Soft time costs can include a number of things that, if not checked, or reduced to processes, can serve to greatly slow you--administrative tasks, like non-essential follow-up, initial client interviews and file closing opportunities (which double as marketing forays) and social networking and social media promotion can eat up your time just as easily as more defined costs, which is why you have to define each cost, in some intelligible way. Your return is most often reduced to money, some dollar figure arrived at. But, your return can also be viewed as a conversion, in which X efforts may lead to Y numbers of clients or client or attorney referrals.
Figuring out exactly how to calculate your return on investment, though, is up to you. And, it is mostly a question of what you value. As long as cost and return is the base comparison, you will find what you need in the end when you apply your value ranking. There are even return on investment calculators available online, with some of the work having been done for you. And, you could certainly create your own system, including your own calculator, chart or graphic representation of what you see. For my money, though, and we are talking business, I think that the best and easiest conversion is based on money outputs and returns. Advertising costs money; so, that’s an easy one. You paid $50 for a telephone book ad. The drafting of the ad, the design of same and editing and tweaking, if you are a solo, are likely all attributable to you, your hours spent. And, the good thing about time is that time is pliable. There’s an easy conversion to money. You bill your hours all day. Keep track, also, of the hours you spend marketing, then. Figure out how many hours you miss out on billing, and multiply that number by your hourly rate. That’s the money cost of your soft time, and other, marketing efforts. Now you have a direct comparison of your return on investment, which is now not just how-many-prospects-came-through-the-door, but how many hours were billed to those prospects who became paying clients. You have achieved a direct comparison. Now, the trick is a little, um, tricki-er, when you use alternative billing. Of course, that’s just another challenge to overcome; but, the key to making these sorts of comparisons is to develop a one-to-one, apple-to-apple relationship to be analyzed. And, once you have figured out your formula, you’ll never have to do it again, unless you decide to tweak it.
Regardless of the particular formula you choose, the key is that you choose one, and apply it. Just (make sure that you) do it. The only way that you will know whether and which of your marketing endeavors are working is by determining the true measure of their effectiveness. The true measure of the effectiveness of marketing advances is return on investment.
For Further Reading. There are a couple of resources, discovered, once again, by LOMAP summer intern Michael Pirello, and consulted by me, for the creation of this blog post. Those resources are as follows:
For more on creating a calendar and timeline, see this Canadian article, eh, from Susan Ward, and this article from Website Marketing Plan, by Bobette Kelly. I don’t think enough people are named Bobette.
. . .
I generally use this blog for the purposes of maintaining a long-running secret tribute to Nelson and Spike Wilbury. Oh, yes. And, I also dispense law practice management advice from time to time. In any event, I thought I might move slightly off-topic for the finishing stroke for this post, and offer up some weekending footage of Sir Paul McCartney, in honor of his recent concert performance at Boston’s historic Fenway Park. Of course, there are already a plethora of bootleg videos on YouTube, until, that is, MPL Communications has same removed for copyright violations. And, that wasn’t the footage I was referring to anyway; far be it from me to aid in any copyright infringements; and, besides, I am still trying to figure out how I feel about the current tour, since CitiField is certainly not Shea Stadium. Now, everybody knows Lennon-McCartney; but, McCartney’s solo career might be viewed merely as the retelling of the same silly love songs over and over again. McCartney, although an excellent one, has not been solely a balladeer since he left the Beatles, though; and, the really impressive work he has done as the second best solo Beatle is too often ignored in favor of his Beatles output, and in the fear of finding just another one of those silly love songs. But, lest we forget: the walrus was Paul; and, the walrus is good.
Although less primal, certainly, than Lennon’s screaming and avant garde productions, Paul’s solo efforts could be brilliant. From his tremendous solo debut, “McCartney”, which included the big hit “Maybe I’m Amazed”, and other extremely cool tunes like “The Lovely Linda” (in the tradition of “Her Majesty”), “Oo You” and “That Would Be Something”, there have been a string of great solo and Wings songs that rival some of the Beatles’ best stuff. Some obvious inclusions to that catalogue are the sublime “Band on the Run” and “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, as well as the epic “Jet” and “Live and Let Die” (you know you did/you know you did/you know you diiid); but, there are some lesser known gems that are just as good, like my treadmill songs “Venus and Mars” and “Rock Show”, and “Another Day” (Jeff Dino's jam), “Let Me Roll It”, “Helen Wheels” and "Daytime Nighttime Suffering". Also, McCartney’s 1997 album, “Flaming Pie”, is (although it was a commercial and critical success), still, exceedingly underrated, including, as it does, a great duet with Steve Miller, a Ringo collaboration, “Beautiful Night” (one of my Dad's favorite songs), “Calico Skies” and “Great Day” (Jeff Dino's other jam), now featured in the new movie “Funny People”, which doesn’t look funny at all, but which soundtrack also features James Taylor, John Lennon and Warren Zevon, as well--so that part of it is good. All this, and people forget that, although the Beatles had some great beards, Paul’s, in all its flowing glory and sheer ridiculousness, may have been the best, as it was exhibited on the rooftop. Get back indeed. And, stay back.
The topic of our final Marketing Group session was “Putting Your Marketing Plan to Work for You”, the thesis being that it is not good enough to draft a marketing plan, and to let it sit. You’ll have wasted your time unless you make your marketing plan work for you, monitoring it for current effectiveness, from time to time.
If you’ve been following along with the group here (perhaps you have worked up your own marketing plan along the way), you know the importance of crafting clear, measurable, realistic objectives, for the guidance of your marketing efforts, through your marketing plan. You’ve also learned the importance of tying deadlines, and unique time pressers and pressures, to your marketing plan. Asserting real (yet manageable) deadlines under your marketing plan will help you to know when you are off task, and so will help you figure out why you got off track, such that you can determine how to get back on task. Deadlines also help you to answer questions relating to your progress from time to time. An appropriately-established tracking system will allow you to reach for the answer to the question of what you are doing today, and how you are doing so, one month from now, or three months or six months from now, or even a year from now. One helpful way to stay on track is to put pen to paper (or, finger to keystroke) again, and to use your marketing deadlines to create a marketing calendar, at the beginning of each new calendar or fiscal year. This will force you to calendar reminders, adding to them heft; for, it is far easier to ignore unreminded deadlines--and then there’s the fact that you could have a massive construction paper sort of marketing calendar hanging above your desk everyday, like some perverse modern-day version of a Damoclean Sword, that is, if you truly fear the crush of such deadlines, which you should not, but which you should view as yet another opportunity for growth.
Besides calendaring for completion and review, another way to make sure that your marketing plan is working is to stay with it, to keep your nose to the grindstone, and to make your illustrated efforts happen, in point of actual fact. On an associated note, you should be certain to allow your marketing efforts some ample time to breathe, to determine whether or not they are really working (more on this later). Part of staying the course is realizing that you do not live, or work, in a vacuum. You should endeavor to create accountability for yourself, to motivate yourself forward. Beyond your calendaring of deadlines, and establishing of sometime pressures, you should consider other factors that might motivate you. We work for money; but, we also work for other people. Who can you answer to? Who do you endeavor to support? Your children? Your life partner? Your law partner? Your poker buddies? Your networking friends? Determine who it is that you “answer” to, and who it is that you really work for, and find motivation for your efforts in some of these other, less usual, or less easily discoverable, ways. In addition to providing a nitro boost of motivation, your family, friends and colleagues are not just some abstraction, existing spectral, as some signposts for your aspiration. If you engage your family, friends and colleagues, you will likely find renewed (and renewing) focus, fresh ideas and an important, added drop of humility, like Alice’s small potion, from time to time. Most of my good ideas I steal from my wife.
Once you have decided that you are pretty well keeping your marketing endeavors on tracks, rails one and two, and now that you feel sufficiently motivated, the most important remaining, and continuing, task is to make certain that you are monitoring your marketing plan for success. The true success of your marketing efforts will be determined by your return on investment, whether you track what your return on investment is or not. But, it is far better to track your return. If you do not, you’re operating blind, and will have no idea whether your particular marketing efforts are working as you think they are, or as you hope they will. The only way you can truly know whether your efforts are worth your time is to determine that you will track your time and efforts against whatever measurable return you seek. And, unless you determine to make regular checks on your return on investment, that that will be something you stick to doing, as a recurring task, there is no point to go wringing your hands over how to collect your return.
But, if you do decide that you will track your return on investment, the primary concern will be just how to do it. As we’ve gone over many times, in many ways, this becomes a difficult problem for attorneys who have had no formal marketing training. At base, though, the concept is simple enough that you can format it for your purposes without major difficulty. Running a return on investment is really just figuring out what your “cost” is, and measuring that derived cost against that what your return is. Your cost includes not only the traditional factoring of money. Your cost also includes, for example, time spent (time away from billing, that is). You should endeavor to watch soft costs, little demands on your time, which can add up, if you do not manage your time well, and put caps upon time spent. Soft time costs can include a number of things that, if not checked, or reduced to processes, can serve to greatly slow you--administrative tasks, like non-essential follow-up, initial client interviews and file closing opportunities (which double as marketing forays) and social networking and social media promotion can eat up your time just as easily as more defined costs, which is why you have to define each cost, in some intelligible way. Your return is most often reduced to money, some dollar figure arrived at. But, your return can also be viewed as a conversion, in which X efforts may lead to Y numbers of clients or client or attorney referrals.
Figuring out exactly how to calculate your return on investment, though, is up to you. And, it is mostly a question of what you value. As long as cost and return is the base comparison, you will find what you need in the end when you apply your value ranking. There are even return on investment calculators available online, with some of the work having been done for you. And, you could certainly create your own system, including your own calculator, chart or graphic representation of what you see. For my money, though, and we are talking business, I think that the best and easiest conversion is based on money outputs and returns. Advertising costs money; so, that’s an easy one. You paid $50 for a telephone book ad. The drafting of the ad, the design of same and editing and tweaking, if you are a solo, are likely all attributable to you, your hours spent. And, the good thing about time is that time is pliable. There’s an easy conversion to money. You bill your hours all day. Keep track, also, of the hours you spend marketing, then. Figure out how many hours you miss out on billing, and multiply that number by your hourly rate. That’s the money cost of your soft time, and other, marketing efforts. Now you have a direct comparison of your return on investment, which is now not just how-many-prospects-came-through-the-door, but how many hours were billed to those prospects who became paying clients. You have achieved a direct comparison. Now, the trick is a little, um, tricki-er, when you use alternative billing. Of course, that’s just another challenge to overcome; but, the key to making these sorts of comparisons is to develop a one-to-one, apple-to-apple relationship to be analyzed. And, once you have figured out your formula, you’ll never have to do it again, unless you decide to tweak it.
Regardless of the particular formula you choose, the key is that you choose one, and apply it. Just (make sure that you) do it. The only way that you will know whether and which of your marketing endeavors are working is by determining the true measure of their effectiveness. The true measure of the effectiveness of marketing advances is return on investment.
For Further Reading. There are a couple of resources, discovered, once again, by LOMAP summer intern Michael Pirello, and consulted by me, for the creation of this blog post. Those resources are as follows:
For more on creating a calendar and timeline, see this Canadian article, eh, from Susan Ward, and this article from Website Marketing Plan, by Bobette Kelly. I don’t think enough people are named Bobette.
. . .
I generally use this blog for the purposes of maintaining a long-running secret tribute to Nelson and Spike Wilbury. Oh, yes. And, I also dispense law practice management advice from time to time. In any event, I thought I might move slightly off-topic for the finishing stroke for this post, and offer up some weekending footage of Sir Paul McCartney, in honor of his recent concert performance at Boston’s historic Fenway Park. Of course, there are already a plethora of bootleg videos on YouTube, until, that is, MPL Communications has same removed for copyright violations. And, that wasn’t the footage I was referring to anyway; far be it from me to aid in any copyright infringements; and, besides, I am still trying to figure out how I feel about the current tour, since CitiField is certainly not Shea Stadium. Now, everybody knows Lennon-McCartney; but, McCartney’s solo career might be viewed merely as the retelling of the same silly love songs over and over again. McCartney, although an excellent one, has not been solely a balladeer since he left the Beatles, though; and, the really impressive work he has done as the second best solo Beatle is too often ignored in favor of his Beatles output, and in the fear of finding just another one of those silly love songs. But, lest we forget: the walrus was Paul; and, the walrus is good.
Although less primal, certainly, than Lennon’s screaming and avant garde productions, Paul’s solo efforts could be brilliant. From his tremendous solo debut, “McCartney”, which included the big hit “Maybe I’m Amazed”, and other extremely cool tunes like “The Lovely Linda” (in the tradition of “Her Majesty”), “Oo You” and “That Would Be Something”, there have been a string of great solo and Wings songs that rival some of the Beatles’ best stuff. Some obvious inclusions to that catalogue are the sublime “Band on the Run” and “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, as well as the epic “Jet” and “Live and Let Die” (you know you did/you know you did/you know you diiid); but, there are some lesser known gems that are just as good, like my treadmill songs “Venus and Mars” and “Rock Show”, and “Another Day” (Jeff Dino's jam), “Let Me Roll It”, “Helen Wheels” and "Daytime Nighttime Suffering". Also, McCartney’s 1997 album, “Flaming Pie”, is (although it was a commercial and critical success), still, exceedingly underrated, including, as it does, a great duet with Steve Miller, a Ringo collaboration, “Beautiful Night” (one of my Dad's favorite songs), “Calico Skies” and “Great Day” (Jeff Dino's other jam), now featured in the new movie “Funny People”, which doesn’t look funny at all, but which soundtrack also features James Taylor, John Lennon and Warren Zevon, as well--so that part of it is good. All this, and people forget that, although the Beatles had some great beards, Paul’s, in all its flowing glory and sheer ridiculousness, may have been the best, as it was exhibited on the rooftop. Get back indeed. And, stay back.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Web Address, In a Larger Sense
Are you tired of paying beaucoup bucks to have someone else create and maintain your website for you? Perhaps you have tried to design and maintain your own website, but have instead only learned to hate html, or a clunky production and maintenance program, with the fire of a thousand suns? Or, maybe you just won’t meet your kid’s allowance increase demands were he to create your website for you. If you have experienced these, or other similar frustrations, maybe it’s time for a change. Reconsider what your online presence means.
Rather than aiming for the creation, or purchase, of the top-shelf law firm website, featuring all of the information, pages and expense you can cram, try an alternative course. Instead of optimizing your website, optimize your online presence across websites. Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a website, or that your website shouldn’t be nice, nor, even, am I saying that you should endeavor to design a website without having in mind the goal of producing the “best” (the strictest meaning for “optimized”) website that you can produce. Nay, I am only saying that, when creating your website, you should consider what the best website is for your firm, in the context of what you wish to achieve through your online marketing. Your website may still serve as the anchor of your online presence; however, it should not represent the entirety of your online presence. And, those who seek to optimize “the firm website” too often see the achievement of that elusive goal as the end of the line, with respect to their online marketing efforts; but, in 2009, the trick is to continually add new content, to remain relevant and to get as viral as possible, in getting your message out, in as many unique ways as you can. One of the dirty little secrets is that website editing is difficult; that’s why people get paid so much to do it. But, how easy is it to update your Facebook page, or your LinkedIn account? C’mon. Everybody does it.
Alright, though, now. I’m giving myself away, the farm. Before we get too far ahead here, before I too swiftly reveal my conclusions, and end some of the suspense, let’s reconsider what a website does for you, again, in 2009. For, to understand the utility of optimizing a web presence, rather than a website, we must understand what the purpose of a firm website is, or should be, to begin with. A website serves a two-fold purpose: to give you an online profile (some marker that you are, indeed, on the web, and so have arrived, and are reputable) and to get you noticed through the search engine (really, these days, Google, despite the encroaching, best efforts of Bing) rankings (such that your website will have been designed with higher result rankings in mind, so that people, clients or referrers, I mean, will find you). Yet, both of these objects can be achieved through the use of a well-constructed, simple placeholder (which serves to claim an important url, as well) website (that acts as your online business card) coupled with the use of social media marketing.
The social media toolbox is rather vast; and, you can certainly lose yourself in looking after the numbers and numbers of options available for the promotion of your firm and for the challenge to your time management skills. But, there are some proven winners that you may exploit, like these: Blogs and blogging; Twitter and tweeting; the use of LinkedIn and Facebook for the creation of alternate, additional firm or individual attorney pages; video posting with YouTube and claiming your profile on Avvo. You may never move beyond activity on these websites; yet, if these are the only social media websites that you come to use, you will find, if you have promoted yourself professionally and effectively, that, in time, you will have developed a rich web presence, without having had to hire anyone to create it for you, using solely your own initiative, unique, specialized legal knowledge and mix of savvy and wit.
The use of all of these available resources (and other available resources that you may choose to fit into your marketing schedule) can create for you an online presence across several platforms, increase your visibility on search services, help (you) to target your marketing, give you access to a thriving online community of attorneys flocking to these same websites and give you some incentive to update and add content consistently, to keep yourself top of mind.
Now, if this all feels overwhelmingly, and you feel, too, like you’re a DOS disciple living in a Windows world, fear not. I assure you. Scout’s Honor. These websites are easy to use, and sometimes, yes, fun, too. That’s why so many people use them. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, and close study being the prerequisite of imitation, should you have difficulty respecting the understanding of the concept of a particular site, or should you just want some ideas on how to post, and what to post, your best bet is to look after the people who do it well. To that end, some exemplars are as follows:
For a good example of a Blog (well, really, a blog/website), check Leanna Hamill’s.
I’ve included a listing of some prolific legal Twitterers in a prior post.
Check the LinkedIn Lawyer, David Barrett, for a good example of the set up of a LinkedIn profile.
For a Facebook page template, check The Lanier Law Firm’s. (Also first in the Google rankings (of firm pages) for “facebook law firms”).
And, How would you use YouTube to promote your practice? Watch Gabriel Cheong do it at his Infinity Law TV Channel.
Your complete and robust Avvo profile could one day look something like Marc Breakstone’s perfect 10.
All of this may seem like a tremendous amount of work; and, absolutely, as in any endeavor, you must work exceptionally hard to achieve exceptional results. However, accessing and assessing these sites and establishing your profiles will be easier tasks than you think. And, adding to your profiles, and growing your profiles, and therefore your reputation, over time, is merely a matter of stick-to-it-iveness, rather than the application of any specific computer skill set (remember, these sites are easy to use). But, the first step is always: to get started.
Now, for the best part (which is why I have saved it for the end): all of these web resources that I reference above (and many others, too) are free to use. That’s right, free. And, if you’re too cheap, even, to buy a placeholding website, allow your blog to double as your internet business card, as Leanna does, by adding your contact and other important information to the static background site. And, that makes a good, final tip, to leave you with: It is a good idea, with any of these websites, to include as much relevant contact information and background information as possible (without overcrowding) on the static profile pages that many sites offer. (When I say “static profile page”, I mean that, although your tweets roll as do your Facebook wall posts, the background remains static: your personal or professional information, so arrayed.) In this way, potential clients and referrers will always have additional ways and means to contact you, no matter where they happen to find you.
Now, just make sure that you keep this all underneath your respective chapeaus: After all, you wouldn’t want your competition to find out . . .
Rather than aiming for the creation, or purchase, of the top-shelf law firm website, featuring all of the information, pages and expense you can cram, try an alternative course. Instead of optimizing your website, optimize your online presence across websites. Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a website, or that your website shouldn’t be nice, nor, even, am I saying that you should endeavor to design a website without having in mind the goal of producing the “best” (the strictest meaning for “optimized”) website that you can produce. Nay, I am only saying that, when creating your website, you should consider what the best website is for your firm, in the context of what you wish to achieve through your online marketing. Your website may still serve as the anchor of your online presence; however, it should not represent the entirety of your online presence. And, those who seek to optimize “the firm website” too often see the achievement of that elusive goal as the end of the line, with respect to their online marketing efforts; but, in 2009, the trick is to continually add new content, to remain relevant and to get as viral as possible, in getting your message out, in as many unique ways as you can. One of the dirty little secrets is that website editing is difficult; that’s why people get paid so much to do it. But, how easy is it to update your Facebook page, or your LinkedIn account? C’mon. Everybody does it.
Alright, though, now. I’m giving myself away, the farm. Before we get too far ahead here, before I too swiftly reveal my conclusions, and end some of the suspense, let’s reconsider what a website does for you, again, in 2009. For, to understand the utility of optimizing a web presence, rather than a website, we must understand what the purpose of a firm website is, or should be, to begin with. A website serves a two-fold purpose: to give you an online profile (some marker that you are, indeed, on the web, and so have arrived, and are reputable) and to get you noticed through the search engine (really, these days, Google, despite the encroaching, best efforts of Bing) rankings (such that your website will have been designed with higher result rankings in mind, so that people, clients or referrers, I mean, will find you). Yet, both of these objects can be achieved through the use of a well-constructed, simple placeholder (which serves to claim an important url, as well) website (that acts as your online business card) coupled with the use of social media marketing.
The social media toolbox is rather vast; and, you can certainly lose yourself in looking after the numbers and numbers of options available for the promotion of your firm and for the challenge to your time management skills. But, there are some proven winners that you may exploit, like these: Blogs and blogging; Twitter and tweeting; the use of LinkedIn and Facebook for the creation of alternate, additional firm or individual attorney pages; video posting with YouTube and claiming your profile on Avvo. You may never move beyond activity on these websites; yet, if these are the only social media websites that you come to use, you will find, if you have promoted yourself professionally and effectively, that, in time, you will have developed a rich web presence, without having had to hire anyone to create it for you, using solely your own initiative, unique, specialized legal knowledge and mix of savvy and wit.
The use of all of these available resources (and other available resources that you may choose to fit into your marketing schedule) can create for you an online presence across several platforms, increase your visibility on search services, help (you) to target your marketing, give you access to a thriving online community of attorneys flocking to these same websites and give you some incentive to update and add content consistently, to keep yourself top of mind.
Now, if this all feels overwhelmingly, and you feel, too, like you’re a DOS disciple living in a Windows world, fear not. I assure you. Scout’s Honor. These websites are easy to use, and sometimes, yes, fun, too. That’s why so many people use them. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, and close study being the prerequisite of imitation, should you have difficulty respecting the understanding of the concept of a particular site, or should you just want some ideas on how to post, and what to post, your best bet is to look after the people who do it well. To that end, some exemplars are as follows:
For a good example of a Blog (well, really, a blog/website), check Leanna Hamill’s.
I’ve included a listing of some prolific legal Twitterers in a prior post.
Check the LinkedIn Lawyer, David Barrett, for a good example of the set up of a LinkedIn profile.
For a Facebook page template, check The Lanier Law Firm’s. (Also first in the Google rankings (of firm pages) for “facebook law firms”).
And, How would you use YouTube to promote your practice? Watch Gabriel Cheong do it at his Infinity Law TV Channel.
Your complete and robust Avvo profile could one day look something like Marc Breakstone’s perfect 10.
All of this may seem like a tremendous amount of work; and, absolutely, as in any endeavor, you must work exceptionally hard to achieve exceptional results. However, accessing and assessing these sites and establishing your profiles will be easier tasks than you think. And, adding to your profiles, and growing your profiles, and therefore your reputation, over time, is merely a matter of stick-to-it-iveness, rather than the application of any specific computer skill set (remember, these sites are easy to use). But, the first step is always: to get started.
Now, for the best part (which is why I have saved it for the end): all of these web resources that I reference above (and many others, too) are free to use. That’s right, free. And, if you’re too cheap, even, to buy a placeholding website, allow your blog to double as your internet business card, as Leanna does, by adding your contact and other important information to the static background site. And, that makes a good, final tip, to leave you with: It is a good idea, with any of these websites, to include as much relevant contact information and background information as possible (without overcrowding) on the static profile pages that many sites offer. (When I say “static profile page”, I mean that, although your tweets roll as do your Facebook wall posts, the background remains static: your personal or professional information, so arrayed.) In this way, potential clients and referrers will always have additional ways and means to contact you, no matter where they happen to find you.
Now, just make sure that you keep this all underneath your respective chapeaus: After all, you wouldn’t want your competition to find out . . .
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