Nearly two months ago, this article on the financial crisis facing the U.S. Postal Service caught my eye (and do the read the comments):

The U.S. Postal Service wants to raise the price of a first-class stamp by 2 cents to 46 cents to avoid running out of cash next year, officials said.

A sharp decline in mail volume, the recession and increased use of the Internet to pay bills have contributed to a financial crisis.

On Tuesday, postal officials proposed mitigating the problem with an average 5.6% increase on a range of services that include first-class mail, advertising mail, periodicals and packages. The increase, about 13 cents a month for the average household, would go into effect Jan. 2.

“It really comes down to potential financial insolvency,” said Stephen Kearney, the agency’s senior vice president of customer relations. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

Raising prices on first class postage is not the answer to a bad business plan.  This is an example of a business assuming the market would never change and they had the market cornered.  This is an example of a business not reading the tea leaves and now in a desperate attempt to salvage their business they are raising prices when it is the absolute worst thing to do and will only hasten their decline, in my opinion.

The key is this statement:

A sharp decline in mail volume, the recession and increased use of the Internet to pay bills have contributed to a financial crisis.

How is raising the price of first class mail going to help them address these problems?  It is only going to further decrease the volume of mail they handle and encourage those still on the fence to pay their bills via the Internet.

I remember when e-mail was first introduced and took hold cutting into the U.S. Post Office’s profits.  They suggested they were entitled to revenue from each e-mail sent, approximately $.05 – $.10.  This was quickly nixed because how could they lay claim to revenues from internet use?

What the post office has not done is look to see what the demand for their first class mail services is, where their true value lies, and what they have that no other organization has.  What value do they still have for us, the consumer.  They simply seek to address their revenue needs by raising costs of delivery, something most people are relying upon less and less.

Now on to lawyers.  This is a shining example of what not to do simply because you don’t know how to restructure your business, take advantage of technologies designed to cut your costs,  or are carrying significant overhead and must feed the overhead monster before you can feed yourself.  Note: this is very different then raising your fees because your services were undervalued in the first place or doing so because you provide a unique service which is in demand.

I recommend you review your business plan every six months to see if you are on target for your goals.  What? You don’t have one?  Oh, yes, there are many people out there suggesting you fly by the seat of your passion and ‘just do it.’  Well, that’s great for getting off the launch pad – jump in and work out the details as you go along.   But winging it is not great for continued success. You DO have to reassess every aspect of your business – factors within your control such as  goals, costs, ideal clients, marketing, overhead as well as those factors you must respond to such as the economy and technology and practice area changes.

So, will you be the U.S. Post Office in 2011?

Did you start out with a business plan or developed a business plan along the way?

There are clearly two sides to the issue.  Those who are embracing it and running ahead of the pack are recognizing that how we deliver services to clients has to change because of economics. Technology is a vehicle for this change.

Lee makes a few observations on the topic of virtual law offices and by extension, unbundled legal services. First, he doesn’t see the demand by clients for a virtual platform and unbundled legal services…yet.  Second, he believes a percentage of those lawyers buying into the concept of virtual law offices do not get (or are not being told) they still have to market to the consumer and work hard to build a client base. Third, he is comparing unbundled legal services via a virtual law office platform to the offerings of LegalZoom and others. As such, he presumes the average lawyer will be outclassed and outspent in trying to attract this segment of market.

I’m going to challenge these thoughts point by point.

First, if there isn’t a sweeping demand now, there will be.  Why? Economics and the courts. The courts are looking to make changes allowing lawyers  to represent clients in an unbundled way when traditionally they required full representation and accountability. It is much better for the courts to allow potential pro se litigants to have this option available to them.  They understand litigants are facing economic hardships, don’t necessarily qualify for Legal Aid (which is losing resources due to shrinking IOLTA accounts) and if this dramatically increasing segment of the population goes completely pro se the courts will simply be overwhelmed. In Connecticut, I had the good fortune to discuss this with one of our chief justices and they are exploring unbundled services with, shall we say, ‘great enthusiasm.’  Connecticut isn’t alone. Education by the lawyer and encouragement by the courts will create the demand because it addresses a pain point for potential clients – I don’t want to do this completely alone but I can’t afford to pay for A-Z representation.

Second,  Lee believes lawyers who are creating virtual law offices think they are going to get clients without marketing.  I find this ludicrous.  As stated, whether a traditional law office or a virtual one, a lawyer must get clients through marketing, referrals, etc.  I know two of the credible vendors of the virtual law office platform, Stephanie Kimbro and Richard Granat. They are both faculty at Solo Practice University.  NEVER have they EVER suggested the platform does not require good old fashioned marketing strategies.  If there is a lawyer walking around in a daze because s/he created a virtual law office and thought they didn’t have to market, that’s the lawyer’s issue.

Third, the lawyer who chooses the virtual law office platform, in my opinion, is not someone who sees Legal Zoom as their competitor. I believe this assumption by Lee was not accurate.  The lawyer who chooses a virtual law office platform (and generally unbundled legal services) is someone who is looking to address an ever-growing segment of the population – the potential client who would have hired a traditional lawyer and paid the full fare, but economic times have prevented them from making this choice.  These people are not necessarily the Legal Zoom market.  They don’t want to be a DiY’er but they think there are no other options because they haven’t been educated there is another way to work with a lawyer.  They want a safety net, someone to address what they are uncomfortable doing during litigation or they want someone to review their work.  They still want to be referred to a living, breathing counselor at law whom they can still have a relationship with. They have the funds for as-needed representation which can be done via the virtual law office platform because it is cost-effective for the client and the lawyer.

Moreover, the virtual law office platform does not necessarily equate to discounted services or low-end services or even unbundled services. It is a suite of technologies.  How the lawyer utilizes these technologies is up to her.

But, clients are demanding they be serviced differently and they are voting with their wallets.

The key is matching up the right client with the right lawyer.

Please read the posts I referenced and the very thoughtful comments/responses from Richard Granat, Stephanie Kimbro and Donna Seyle.

BSP@SPU Columnist – Debra L. Bruce

Debra L. Bruce is president of Lawyer-Coach LLC , a law practice management coaching and training firm, and author of the Raising the Bar blog. She practiced law for 18 years before becoming the first Texas lawyer credentialed by the International Coach Federation (ICF). She has served as Vice-Chair of the Law Practice Management Committee of the State Bar of Texas and as leader of the Houston chapter of ICF. You can follow her at www.Twitter.com/LawyerCoach or at www.Facebook.com/LawyerCoach.

Got Clients? How Did That Happen?

“I’ve spoken many times at CLE programs, and I never got any business from it.” Rick Albers’ jaw dropped when he heard that. Why was Rick so surprised? A lot of lawyers (and legal marketing experts) say that speaking at CLE programs is a waste of time. It just educates your competition.

Rick was stunned because he himself had referred four different matters to the lawyer who said that. Rick, a Texas real estate lawyer, chose that attorney because he heard him speak at bar association programs, and concluded that he was very knowledgeable. In fact, it was because they both got involved in bar association work that Rick came to know him in the first place. Perhaps the lawyer thought Rick referred the matters to him just because of their acquaintance. If so…he was wrong.

Marketing legal services involves planting a lot of seeds. Some never germinate, and the ones that do can take a long time to harvest. That time lag can distort our perception of what works.

Decades ago when I was a solo, someone asked how I got my clients. For the first time, I realized that I didn’t actually know. That question spurred me to analyze my list of current and former clients. I discovered that 75% of my business came from referrals from other lawyers. A surprising percentage of the best business referrals came from my competitors.

These two stories illustrate a significant flaw in the business development efforts of many lawyers. Man of us don’t have a system to measure which activities produce the outcomes we desire. We just rely on our impressions.

Find What Already Works for You

By analyzing my client list, I stumbled upon an excellent marketing tool. I sometimes invited opposing counsel to join me for lunch or an adult beverage when the legal matter concluded. I didn’t do it for business development. I just wanted to smooth over any rough edges that might have developed from the tensions of adversarial representation.

My analysis revealed that those same lawyers later referred some of my best clients! I realized that my gesture of rapprochement resulted in positive relationships with lawyers who knew the quality of my work first hand. I became the first person they thought of when they needed to make a referral due to a conflict. I decided to make it a habit to extend an invitation to opposing counsel in every matter.

Out of the Blue

Do clients ever call you up “out of the blue”? It may seem that way, but something led them to you, and you need to find out what it was. Once when I asked a new client how they found me, she said, “We’ve been reading your articles for the last 3 years, and we think maybe you can help us.”

Three years! If I weren’t in the habit of inquiring, I might have concluded that writing articles doesn’t bring in business. That incident also highlights two important points. One, ask every new client and every referral source how they found you and why they chose you. Two, to get an accurate picture, you need to keep records over an extended period of time.

Track Your Efforts and Analyze Your Results

Track your activities and your new business in a way that lets you easily review, reconfigure and analyze it. Look for patterns and commonality. Record as much detail as you can get. If the client found you through the Internet, what search terms did they use? If another lawyer referred you, how did the client know that lawyer? If they saw your advertisement, where and when did they see it? If they heard you speak, what did they remember? If they are on your mailing list, did they find what you sent them valuable?

These steps are particularly valuable for new solos. If you are a new lawyer, you’ll be trying lots of different things. How else will you know what worked? If you have been practicing for awhile, but recently went out on your own, you may be surprised to find that some activities that worked before won’t work now. You’ll also get clients you wouldn’t have gotten before. You need data to help you identify what efforts to tweak.

If you have a prospective client you hope to get business from, record every time you “touch” them. A “touch” might be in person, by phone, letter, email, social media, speaking, writing, or advertising. Note the length of time between the first touch and the date they become a client. This data will help you persevere in your business development efforts. When you realize that it took three years and 12 touches to get that most recent new client, you won’t lose heart with the next prospect after only one phone call and a lunch!

Finally, look for evidence of which activities bring in top tier clients, and which tend to attract less desirable ones. That requires you to “grade” your clients so you can recognize the common traits of the more desirable ones. A few years ago, one of my lawyer clients discovered from his records that his Yellow Pages ad attracted more “tire kickers” and his website prospects came in ready to sign up. He also watched over time as the website business increased and the Yellow Pages business declined. He canceled his Yellow Pages ad.

When you get new business and you can uncover how THAT happened, you’ll know how to make it happen again!

It’s worth a read because most people don’t realize they are behaving rudely.  As business people we have to be extra-aware or risk our professional and personal reputations and relationships.

Technological advances give us new freedoms.  But they also come with a whole new set of rules regarding their use. If inappropriately used, those very freedoms can impact our behaviors and destroy our professional and personal relationships.

If I am talking to a friend or colleague and am expecting a call (through call waiting or call forwarding…not a secretary) that I need to take, I let the person I am talking to know in advance that I am expecting that call and to please not be offended if I need to interrupt our conversation.  And it really had better be important. Otherwise, all other calls go into voice mail. Prior to call waiting and call forwarding, this was not a dialogue I would have had to consider.

If I receive a call while I am driving in the car, I will also let people know in advance that our call may be interrupted if I know I am coming to a known dead zone.  If I am initiating the phone call, I don’t even dial until I’ve passed the dead zone.  Prior to cell phones and their use while ‘hands-free’ driving, this was not a dialogue I would have had to contemplate.

Now with text messaging,  Twitter,  Facebook and more, how many of you have sat with friends, family, clients, or colleagues at a presentation and found yourself jumping at the bells, the Twitter bird’s warble, etc. How many of you go to lunch and leave your iPhone or Blackberry or Droid on the table as if it is going to order coffee with you?  Meanwhile your eyes drift down to see if you’ve got a text message? Or you pull it out of your pocket or pocketbook and place it under the table so it can’t be seen by your company while you see if you’ve gotten any e-mail?

We’ve all been there.

We’re either the perpetrator, more engaged with our social media friends and feeling important receiving text messages about silliness than engaging the person we are with in real live conversation, or we’re the victims who are trying to have conversations, being interrupted several times while the person we are with is excusing themselves for phone calls, picking up their phones, reading a text and then saying, ‘let me just answer them quickly.’

Don’t kid yourself.  This behavior is no different and no less offensive than a stranger walking up to your table and saying to your tablemate, ‘Can you bring home a gallon of milk?’ and they respond, ‘Yes, and I’ll buy some Yodels’  then turning back to you and saying, ‘Where were we?’

If you are in these situations and you are truly expecting an important e-mail, text or phone call, let your company know in advance.  Once received, put your ‘technology’ away.  If you are at a conference with others and tweeting the speakers’ comments for your followers, let others know this is what you are doing and invite them to do so as well if they have the technology and give them the #hashtag.  Include them.  If they don’t understand what you are talking about educate them.  It’s a great opportunity. Again, a dialogue we would never have considered before but need to address today.

Technology requires we learn new etiquette based in common courtesy and education. Professional first and foremost.  Therefore, we need to regulate and develop personal policies and dialogue for when dealing with clients, colleagues and even your friends and family.  Poor use of technology can damage all manner of relationships.

Upshot: Failure to do so will have your clients and colleagues deeming your behaviors rude and unprofessional. And your friends and family may distance themselves, too.

The workplace is becoming more and more virtual, with meetings occurring across time zones and organizations and with participants who barely know each other, working on swarms attacking rapidly emerging problems. But the employee will still have a “place” where they work. Many will have neither a company-provided physical office nor a desk, and their work will increasingly happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In this work environment, the lines between personal, professional, social and family matters, along with organization subjects, will disappear. Individuals, of course, need to manage the complexity created by overlapping demands, whether from the new world of work or from external (non-work-related) phenomena. Those that cannot manage the underlying “expectation and interrupt overloads” will suffer performance deficits as these overloads force individuals to operate in an over-stimulated (information-overload) state.

This is just one of the many observations brought to us by the new Gartner Report.

The greatest fear lawyers have is the commoditization of their work product because they have yet to fully understand the value they bring to their clients is their advice, counsel and advocacy.  Gartner supports this statement with the following:

The core value that people add is not in the processes that can be automated, but in non-routine processes, uniquely human, analytical or interactive contributions that result in words such as discovery, innovation, teaming, leading, selling and learning. Non-routine skills are those we cannot automate. For example, we cannot automate the process of selling a life insurance policy to a skeptical buyer, but we can use automation tools to augment the selling process.

Your knowledge, analysis, counsel and advocacy cannot be automated.  Your time management, billing, backend operations and forms generation can. By recognizing the inherent necessity going forward of ‘value pricing’ your services rather than charging time for processes which can be automated, you will be pricing the value of your unique skills for consumption by the client. You will be satisfying the clients’ needs and freeing yourself from the stranglehold of the clock. The sooner you embrace this reality the sooner you can get fully entrenched in the 21st century practice of law and relinquish a very distressing and draining practice.

Learn how to create ’swarms’ to get work done:

Swarming is a work style characterized by a flurry of collective activity by anyone and everyone conceivably available and able to add value. Gartner identifies two phenomena within the collective activity; Teaming (instead of solo performances) will be valued and rewarded more and occur more frequently and a new form of teaming, which Gartner calls swarming, to distinguish it from more historical teaming models, is emerging. Teams have historically consisted of people who have worked together before and who know each other reasonably well, often working in the same organization and for the same manager. Swarms form quickly, attacking a problem or opportunity and then quickly dissipating. Swarming is an agile response to an observed increase in ad hoc action requirements, as ad hoc activities continue to displace structured, bureaucratic situations.

Social Media is Swarm Central.

If you understand how critical social media is today and how even more important it will be tomorrow you will work even harder on establishing your social media presence  in order take advantage of this phenomenon known as ’swarming’.  Swarming will be seen more in solo practice than ‘teaming’ because teaming is traditionally what one sees within an organization of static employees and usually under the direction of a ‘manager.’

If an opportunity presents itself which requires more hands on deck to complete the task, you will need and want to be able to ’swarm.’  This does not necessitate you compromising professionalism or ethics or anything.  It is actually a very interesting phenomenon which allows you to find and work with the best support system you can for that particular client on that particular matter at that particular time. It is highly customized.

Imagine you have the opportunity to work a larger personal injury case.  As a solo it can be daunting as you are just one individual with more than one case but you know you are capable.  You are running a business and realize you need a particular type of team to work the case.  You’re comfortable taking the lead but need unique support which doesn’t require a previous ‘team’.  It requires immediate action, specific skills, people you’ve possibly worked with before and many you have not.  Chances are they are entrepreneurs and/or independent contractors like yourself. Of course, your first inclination is to refer out.  But now you have a chance to rethink this option.  Your social network will provide leads to those who can ’swarm’ to help on this particular project, coming together for just this case and then moving on.

Weak Links Are Your Strength

And interestingly it will be the very people who can’t necessarily swarm with you for a particular matter who will lead you to those most capable.  These critical ‘weak links’ are provided by your networks, personal and professional and through social media channels.

In swarms, if individuals know each other at all, it may be just barely, via weak links. Weak links are the cues people can pick up from people who know the people they have to work with. They are indirect indicators and rely, in part, on the confidence others have in their knowledge of people. Navigating one’s own personal, professional and social networks helps people develop and exploit both strong and weak links and that, in turn, will be crucial to surviving and exploiting swarms for business benefit.

Past Performance is NOT a predictor of Future Performance

The business world is becoming more volatile, affording people working off of linear models based on past performance far less visibility into the future than ever before.

This in many ways is self-explanatory. We live in volatile times where the only constant is disruption.  Working off of business models past will guarantee only one thing  – a solo practice which limps along or dies.  I can’t emphasize this enough.  We are now officially in unchartered waters.  We all have the tools available to us to survive.  Some have the ingenuity and hutspah to utilize these tools.

Are you one of these?  Have you already created swarms to get work done? Have you used a swarm to resolve a non-legal matter?  Please do share!

Seven Ways to Battle Productivity Brain Drain

Too many ideas
at once dig into your mental and physical energy resources just as
credit cards dig into your money. Too much mental spending creates
debt, leaving you with a mess and feeling overwhelmed trying to stay
afloat.

Financial advisors have the perfect solution. These
number-crunching pros have strategies that reduce conventional debt,
and these can also help reduce and eliminate idea debt and brain drain.
You’ll restore some balance in your life and actually get things done
with these seven adapted strategies.

1. Cut up your mental credit cards.
People who want to reduce debt cut up the tools that let them
accumulate more debt. The same applies to entrepreneurs – cut off new,
incoming ideas. Write those ideas on a list you can set aside (you
don’t want to forget them, after all.) Come back to the list when life
is back in order.

2. Uncover the real expense.
You probably have a ton of great ideas. When you put those ideas into
words on a list, it can be surprising to realize just how much work
might be involved. Make a list of each project, all related tasks and
subtasks, and get the big picture of just how much your ideas cost you.

3. Budget your mental spending.
With the big picture and the (long) list of everything each project
requires, it’s easier to see where you need to cut back the unnecessary
expenses that cost you time. Cut the spending, and apply the savings to
your mental debts.

4. Pay more than the minimum.
If the bill comes in and you only pay what’s necessary to stay in good
credit, it takes a long, long time to eliminate the debts – and you
also rack up interest, making the debt harder to pay off. When you work
a little on multiple projects, their progress is slow and you become
more tired plugging away.

5. Reduce one debt at a time.
Financial experts suggest tackling one debt fiercely (usually the one
with the highest interest) to eliminate it before working on
eliminating the next debt. Do the same with your focus and time – pick
one project and work on eliminating all the tasks to reach the goal.
Then move on.

6. Don’t spend what you don’t have.
People wake up when families are a mess, partners are complaining and
kids are neglected. These people suddenly realize they didn’t have the
available time to commit to their ideas in the first place. Know how much
time you have, and don’t commit more than you can invest safely.

7. Pay yourself first.
If all your time goes to your business, you never have a moment to just
relax and do something else. Rest your brain and set aside a chunk of
time for something besides business.

Solo practitioners, entrepreneurs in general, do not ‘pay’ themselves first.  I’m not talking about money, I’m talking about time, attention to health, family and more.

And the most recent phenomenon with progressive solo practitioners:  they are into TOO much, excited by so many potential opportunities the internet has provided, they are like octopi, their hands into so many things they end up with a lot of nothing, at least nothing of real or lasting value.  Great ideas wither and die on the vine from lack of consistent attention because other fanciful ideas distract them from the money-making ones.  Whether it is marketing or a new source of revenue, it doesn’t matter.  We are distracted and wasting time with too many ‘opportunities.’  And worse yet, we defend our actions by categorizing them as necessary.

Step back, assess what is working for you today and what isn’t.  Prioritize your revenue generating (or pleasure generating) activities, shelving those which simply cannot be accommodated today, and then focus on what is most important.  This can’t be overstated. Or done too soon. Look at which activities promise the greatest return or greatest opportunity to leverage to help you achieve your goals and stay focused.

I know I am sometimes a victim of overwhelm and certainly of brain drain.  I have to believe you have been, too.

I know this post is resonating with many of you. What have you done when you feel overwhelmed by too many great ideas and not enough time to fully explore them?  What has it cost you?  How did you fix it?

Complacency and arrogance produce blind spots that delay a response and leave incumbents vulnerable.

I was reading a recent McKinsey report which I wanted to share with you in part because it is totally applicable to Big Law/Organizations and Solos.  And if you really think about it, it’s playing out as we speak.  You connect the dots:

When low-cost competitors appear, one of the toughest decisions facing executives in companies with premium products and brands is whether to respond. Should the company or business unit adjust its strategy to meet the low-cost threat or should it continue business as usual, with no change in strategy or tactics?

As these established companies attempt to define the nature and magnitude of the challenge, they often underestimate it. Sometimes executives are so focused on their traditional competitors, they don’t even recognize the threat developing from low-cost rivals. What executive isn’t familiar with the case of the low-cost airline Ryanair and its hugely successful entry into the European market at the expense of the region’s traditional carriers? Likewise, were the world’s leading telecommunications companies too busy competing with one another to recognize the threat from the Chinese low-cost competitor Huawei, now a leader in fixed-line networks, mobile-telecommunications networks, and Internet switches? Then there was Vizio, a little-known LCD TV supplier that overtook the premium brands in five years to become the North American market leader in large-format TVs. Complacency and arrogance produce blind spots that delay a response and leave incumbents vulnerable.

But our study of low-cost competitors suggests that they also build momentum in slower-moving and more subtle ways—factors that established players might do well to pay closer attention to. At times, low-cost challengers build their presence stealthily by competing in undeveloped segments of a market. Or they can narrow capability gaps by tapping the look, feel, and suppliers of bigger rivals. In other cases, competition between low-cost entrants can produce unintended second-level effects that escape the notice of incumbents until it’s too late to prevent a severe erosion of their market position.

As more solos appear in the market place  fighting for their own livelihoods and presenting viable less expensive alternatives for clients (not necessarily less profitable) and do so more quickly through the use of technology, collaboration, effective use of social media and competitive intelligence available for free on the internet, they will slowly and then more quickly chip away at the market share of big law firms.  It’s inevitable.

This marketplace is presenting opportunities never really available before because of client demand for lower costs without sacrificing quality (although there are clients comfortable with ‘good enough’) and available low-cost tools for solos to provide these services without sacrificing ethics or professionalism.  Big Law has never faced this type of competition before from both colleagues they never really considered competition and clients who are fed up.  And because slow-moving large law firms can’t adjust their corporate philosophies about billable hours, social media and more fast enough even if they wanted to,  solos have a striking competitive edge.

As a result of the dramatically lower prices that companies such as easyJet, Ryanair, and Southwest Airlines have brought to the air travel market, customers have quietly adopted new forms of behavior that in turn rewrite the rules of the market. More people in Europe take weekend breaks in countries that are farther afield; before the rise of the low-cost airlines, these passengers would have traveled locally or regionally. Many workers in one part of Europe take advantage of job opportunities hundreds of miles away. Some doctors who live in continental Europe have part-time practices in the United Kingdom to help meet a practitioner shortage in certain regions. Even people with relatively low incomes, such as construction workers, “commute” between their homes and families in central and eastern Europe and their jobs in western and northern Europe.* As prices fall and new kinds of behavior are established, growth accelerates rapidly.

As more lawyers go home to go to work, establish virtual law offices, utilize SKYPE and other web-based communications to work with clients thereby not limiting their geographic reach AND clients get accustomed to this approach, new kinds of client behavior emerges as do client expectations.  They are choosing how they want to do business with their lawyer and with these changes, the practice of law will never be same. These progressive law firms in partnership with their clients will redefine how business is done. Then what happens to the old model and those who refuse to change?

Some low-cost competitors rise more quickly than premium players anticipate by finding clever ways to overcome capability gaps.

When a solo practitioner can answer the capability gap, the silent inhibitor most clients have because of the solo status or years out, many new solos will have conquered a major hurdle.  It’s not done through fudging experience or claiming skills not had or claiming to be a larger organization than you are.  That’s fraud.  It is, however, done by answering the unspoken question about how your solo status may affect their representation, the use of technology to streamline the practice and keep costs down, your availability because of technology,  co-counsel relationships and other steps you have taken to ensure your client’s representation is not compromised.

Some call this the commoditization of  legal services.  But is it really?  Or is it just a fundamental shift in how legal business is being conducted because of technology and the changing needs of the clients?  Is the legal practitioner being devalued? I don’t think so.  One still needs legal advice no matter how you slice it.  Good legal advice is where the money will always be.  Interpretation of the laws, strong, intelligent advocating for a position can’t be duplicated by filling out a form on line or having the lay person represent themselves.

And this is also why there could be room for the ‘freemium ‘ model in law.

Developing this kind of model can cause clients to become heavily reliant on a particular firm’s expertise and act to generate more bespoke work with higher margins, as clients come to the firm with more complex legal issues.

Lawyers in the future will be paid not to produce ‘boiler plate’ but only when they add their intellectual rigour to a project. As a profession we are going to have to get paid when we add value, not when we have a pen in our hand.

If you believe (as you should) it is the advice and counsel which is really your stock in trade and where your value lies, then you won’t be afraid to provide standardized forms even for free to potential clients while appropriately disclaiming those forms as legal advice.

You should not be afraid to provide handbooks on what to expect from the court system in a landlord/tenant dispute.  Or a personal injury case. Or a DUI. Or a standard no asset, childless estate plan with a list of things one must consider and the consequences of not doing so.

80% of what a client needs to know about what the law says is available on the internet.  What separates one lawyer from the next and where the money is made is in the remaining 20% – effective and individualized counsel on how the law applies to the particular client’s case.

What do you think?

I’ve reached my tipping point. With the worst housing depression, the highest long-term unemployment, and the most chronic credit squeeze ever recorded, these hyenas can smell the fear in your sweat and they are swooping in to offer you ‘the secret’.  And it is starting to really frost my cupcakes.

See, in another life I was educated at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications and went on to work at both large and small advertising agencies.  I understand the psychological pull of phrases like ‘the secret’.  It is emotional and compelling language and we are drawn to it like a moth to its death by the allure of the flame.  So I’m going to use the word now but in a sentence you may not like:

There are no ’secrets’ to a successful solo practice. And if there were…it would be these:

1. You must learn to be a good lawyer
2. You must have tools and support which will increase your productivity
3. You must learn to use these tools for maximum effectiveness

There are no secrets to creating a thriving and healthy solo practice.  The methods are as old as dirt. Only the tools have changed.

But I will use an analogy near and dear to my heart.  Imagine you want a baby.  It is indisputable, undeniable, physiologically impossible to have a healthy baby without the baby being permitted to grow for the required nine months (preferably in a human woman’s womb.)

1. Some people are very fortunate and on the first attempt at conception – Voila! Pregnancy.  Yet there is no shortcut around carrying that baby to term.  They may not have morning sickness and be blessed with a quick and painless labor. But in order to have a healthy baby – nine months.

2. Some will have trouble conceiving, need assistance from fertility doctors, an understanding spouse if one is in the picture, health insurance which will cover the procedure or an equity line of credit. The road will be more difficult and the key to success will be finding the right information, referrals leading to (reputable) assistance.  If and when it happens, the baby still has to be carried those nine months.  Only this mother may have all day sickness for nine months, be on disability and full bed rest and need a c-section and additional recovery time.  But the baby still needs to grow for nine months. The end result, a baby.

3.  Others won’t be able to conceive, may have to hire a surrogate, so someone else will do all the heavy lifting. Some how the wanna be mom finds a way to afford it.  But even with a surrogate, it still takes nine months to produce the baby and this road to parenthood comes with a whole different set of issues.

4. Then there is adoption.  Still nine months but someone else is doing all the work for you. At the end of the process (which can be far longer than nine months from start to finish), a baby.

We can take the analogy all over the place but let’s not.  The circumstances to birth this baby will play out differently for every parent but nothing changes this fact:  in order to bring home a baby it needs to grow for nine months before a parent can see the end result and experience the joy of a child that is theirs.

(And then comes the parenting regardless of how you got the baby.  I’ll stop with the analogies now.)

There is no ’secret’ to building a successful solo practice.

However, it is #2, #3  and #4 which open the door to both reputable people and products that can help you achieve your goals and the not so reputable who will simply tell you what you want to hear while relieving you of your money and possibly more.  And in this economy, if they work it right, your desperation will have you forking over your dollars to anyone who promises you the world and the ’secret.’  The real ’secret’ is the one these people know – it’s called ‘the pain point.’  If they can identify your ‘pain’ they will gain because they will create a compelling message which will resonate with you.  And that message is one that usually plays to your fear, your greed or your sloth.

I am on many a so-called ‘gurus’ e-mail lists to see what happy horses$$t is being peddled because my clients will often ask my opinion. My e-mail is full of these wonderful ‘formulas’ for success asking from $5.00 to $12,000. (The $5.00 one is my favorite because if 1000 people send him $5.00 they’re not going to miss $5.00 but he’ll be $5,000 richer for a mass spamming of lawyers.) And they are usually e-mailing you from their luxury yachts on a break from their vacation or while jetting off to another exotic location where a group of sycophants are impatiently waiting to hand over thousands of dollars to learn ‘the secret.’ God forbid you miss your one and only opportunity to learn from the great one him/herself. And they are the same single endless scrolling page of conversational text with sentences  in yellow because their guru told them that’s the way to get your attention.  (Yes. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You probably have one in your inbox right now!)

There is no getting around the realities of building a solo practice. You must learn to practice law well. Pick your mentors wisely. Select with care the law practice management products and services appropriate in the 21st century, products and services designed to boost your productivity so you can hone your services while helping to  deliver your message. Then make sure you commit to using these tools to their maximum potential.

There are your ’secrets’.  And it didn’t cost you a penny…nor did you have to deal with any highlighted text or a ‘call to action.’

(This post has been published before…but it’s more important than ever to read it, again! Oh, and I do periodically use the word ’secret’ in my headlines, but for fun, not fraud.)

Out of the corner of my eye, I’ve watched the ABA decide the solo was its new favored child, especially when they saw their coffers dwindle after Big Law’s implosion.  I wrote about that here. (And DO read the comments.  They are very interesting). I then read Carolyn’s post going head-to-head with every supposedly new ABA initiative for the solo.

I totally agree with her. It’s simply repackaging with a slightly lower price tag.  As before, some of their efforts are good, but the majority is not…at least for the solo.

But I have to acknowledge I am more amused then offended by the ABA’s  blatant repackaging of their existing CLE programs (which are nothing like Solo Practice University ) and newsletters yet calling it the SmartSolo School as if somehow by imitating the name they will convince others it is like Solo Practice University.  What made me smile even more broadly (actually, I laughed out loud) was they even ‘copied’ Solo Practice University’s color scheme. Of all the colors on the color wheel….

But I thank Carolyn for calling it like she sees it:

–Smart Soloing School, a series of free web-based CLE programs for solo practitioners (The ABA claims that this 3 day virtual program has a sticker price of $1620, but it’s free to solos who are ABA members.)  But what’s worse about this program than the inflated cost is the concept of soloing school , which is a shameless and unattributed knock-off of Solo Practice University.  Considering that SPU’s founder, Susan Cartier Liebel was in fact, an ABA Legal Rebel, she deserves better.;

I fully appreciate Carolyn’s upset because there are a number of professionals outside the ABA umbrella who have championed the solos when it wasn’t fashionable or profitable or even appreciated.  She and I just happen to be most visible at this particular time. And the lack of generosity in acknowledging those who have been doing so and doing so in a way which resonates with solos,  is sadly typical.  There can be more than one resource for solos.  Each compliments the other and in the collective provides a vast resource for solos. And FYI, Solo Practice University offers more than 400 classes online and nearly 300 more Free CLE approved classes through Lawline.com and at half the cost of SmartSolo School!

I’ve also had a series of more outraged e-mails and Twitter DM’s from those who’ve expressed their feelings less ‘kindly’ than she, but the sentiment is the same.

Here’s one:

The ABA can bite me. They offer so little for solos it’s insulting to charge for membership.

Another blog post which went off on the ABA (which I also spotted while on vacation) was  from this new solo:

Smart Soloing School. The ABA is so tired and out of ideas, that they have decided to blatantly rip-off one of their own nominated Legal Rebels, Susan Cartier Liebel, who runs Solo Practice University. The ABA claims their “school” is a $1600 value. Well, guess what? SPU costs a fraction of that, and provides excellent, on-going content and community. Why does the ABA need to re-invent the wheel? So they can focus even more on content I don’t need from them because it’s already being provided by someone else who is doing it well?

Thanks, Dave.

If there are lawyers who find value in the ABA, they don’t need to defend their decision to belong.  It’s a free country full of choice thanks to the energies of a lot of people wanting to help solos. If the ABA is providing value and continues to do so, this will be evidenced by an upswing in membership.  If the upswing comes from solos, then the ABA is providing the value these solos seek for the money they are charging.  It’s a numbers game. Period. Very easy to measure.

My recommendation, however, remains this.  You alone have to determine how you are going to spend your resources which includes both your time and money.  Ask yourself what real help you are getting to build your practice for each and every hard-earned dollar you spend.

From those I’ve talked to, the best dollars spent have been on relevant education, community and hyperlocalized professional associations.

We all know much of the basic practice-building information is free on the internet.   Numerous quality sites provide great information. Others pick it up, recycle  and regurgitate and then it gets picked up by another source and the cycle continues. All this is done in the form of free blog posts, ‘exclusive’ newsletters (sarcasm), magazine articles.  Sort through everything.  Look for what is truly different, proven and recommended.  Be judicious with each dollar. You just have to follow those who ’speak’ to you in the voice and language which resonates with you.  If I were building my practice today, that’s exactly what I would be doing.  Oh, and for those who think my opinion holds some weight for them… my hard-earned solo dollars wouldn’t be spent on a membership to the ABA, even at a discount, not at this time. The value just isn’t there for me.

You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you will be the guy who’ll decide where you’ll go. Oh the places you‘ll go. … Dr. Seuss from ‘Oh, The Places You’ll Go..’

If you are a reader of my blog or new to Build a Solo Practice @ SPU, you have learned or will learn I’m a firm believer in choices, personal responsibility and a ‘no victim’ mentality.  That’s not to say in life those who are personally responsible can’t feel or be victimized. But life is what you do with the cards you are dealt (or deal yourself) and it all turns on the choices you make with the options in hand.

Failure isn’t due to lack of resources, it’s due to lack of resourcefulness. - Anthony Robbins

If you are on the verge of going solo or in the process of making this decision and weighing your options, there are a few exercises  you need to sweat through.  And you need to give serious consideration to the results:

1. Paint Your Future

If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it’s moving you away from your goals. – Brian Tracy

Where do you see yourself five, ten, fifteen years down the road?  What will you have placed in your life? What will you have removed?  What is satisfying?  Not just professionally but personally.  When you are a solo, especially,  your professional and personal lives are intimately entwined. Any friction between the two will create a disruptive tension and either your personal life will suffer, your work life will suffer or most likely both. Worse, your health will deteriorate. Is doing what you are doing now going to move you further towards or away from your vision?

2. How Hard Are You Willing to Work?

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. – Vidal Sassoon

There is no substitute for hard work and discipline.  You can work smarter. Take full advantage of technologies. Get additional support.  But there is no outsourcing of the mental muscle and sweat equity when your name is attached to…your life! Anyone who tells you otherwise has an agenda which is counter to your real best interests.  If your goal is to build a solo practice, to utilize your law license, to service clients and create a way of working and living that satisfies the painting you’ve just painted of your future, you must be fully invested in it.

3. Keep Inspired

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. – Maya Angelou

It is hard to wake up every day fully engaged and enthused about what you are doing.  It is truly the rare person or ’self-actualized’ person who is.  But this is a goal unto itself.  And if you have more days excited and motivated by your decision to be doing what you are doing – operating a solo practice – then you’ve made the right choice.  If it’s the opposite, you have more decisions to make to help you realize #1.  A lawyer functioning as a lawyer, whether solo or in Big Law, who dreads waking up in the morning serves no one, not her client and certainly not herself or her family.  Monitor your inspiration.  If it’s waning, figure out why fast.  True entrepreneurial lawyers will figure out what they need to do to increase those days they are glad to be doing what they are doing – running a solo practice and servicing clients on their terms.

4. Be the Turtle, Not the Hare

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves. - E. Joseph Cossman

There is a chronic, pervasive and unhealthy habit we are all guilty of at one time or another and that is comparing ourselves to everyone around us.  If we’re a certain age or a certain intelligence or a certain sex or a certain ethnicity or come from a certain background or have a certain education or certain skill set everyone has advice about how we are supposed to be performing and doing and at what level and pace.  Others measure us against these markers and we measure ourselves against these markers and most often do so to our detriment. Only you will know if solo practice is right for you.  Only you will know when the time is right to jump in to solo practice…or  jump out.    Only you will know. And when you decide where you are going, travel at your own pace surrounded by those who support your decision. Follow the path that is in alignment with the goals you’ve laid out in #1

Every choice has an end result. - Zig Ziglar

What end result do you want to achieve? Once you’ve done these exercises, committed them to paper, you have a starting point. So, get started!

On that note, I will be taking a blogging break as I continue to pour my energies and enthusiasm in to Solo Practice University.

If you would like a confidence booster and you haven’t listened to Going Solo in a New Economy or received the free 51 page e-book filled with stories from others who have gone solo and you would like to,  click here. If you’ve already listened to it and think a friend might benefit, pay it forward and send them this blog post and link.

Be back soon. Stay cool!