Chuck Newton

Have A Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

My Yellow Pages This Year Went Straight To The Recycling Center

I received a new plastic sack of yellow page directories on my front door the middle of last week, and on Saturday morning I was already dropping them off at the local recycling center.  Oh, how empowered I felt chunking them over my shoulder into the large, green, industrial trash container.  I did not have last years to bring to the recycling center because I had thrown those away a long time ago.  I do not keep phone books in my house or office (except for maybe directors sent home from school of all of the partents and children in the cross-country program or in a math class) because I never every refer to them.  It has reached the point where there is nothing, nobody, and no phone number you cannot find online--quickly. 

The other night my wife and I did not want to cook and we did not want to go out.  Did I grab the yellow pages?  More importantly would I have grabbed the yellow pages, even if I had a set in the house?  No!  I went to Dominos.Com, put in my zip code, found the nearest location and called it.  Yellow pages and phone directories have become a waste of time and space.

It is not that I did not look at the phone books delivered.  I had to take them out of the plastic bag because the recycling center will not accept plastic bags in our area.  Also, I thumbed through and looked at all of the lawyer ads.  Boy howdy, there were a lot of attorneys wasting a whole lot of money, month after month, on yellow pages.  Two page spreads, the back cover, four page spreads, displaying wonderful nicknames like "The Gator", "The Hammer", and slogans like "I'll fight for you!" and "I know how to deal with sharks."  (I bet she does).  I am just not sure these lawyers were referring to themselves or the yellow page salespeople.

In years past I use to practice consumer bankruptcy law and I use to be in a huge number of yellow page and phone books.  Even back then I knew the days for yellow pages were numbered.  I had not heard of blogging, but the cost of yellow page advertising kept climbing dramatically and the results kept falling in direct porportion to the money spent.  (Much like local TV spots now).  More money spent to reach fewer and fewer people.  We use to ask all clients how they heard of us.  Yellow pages starting becoming much less of a factor.  One year I pulled out of all yellow pages and saved myself and my firm at the time many thousands of dollars per month.  My colleagues told me I was crazy.  My business would drop off as a result.  It did not.  Why? Even back in the late 90s phone books and yellow pages were ceasing to be the handy reference source on which households and businesses relied.

Now a post on Search Engine Journal confirms what I suspected all along.  A local survey conducted on behalf of WebVisable.Com found that 70% of those responding had used the Internet to search for a local service business at any point, 46% had used the Internet to search one or more times for a local service in the last 90 days, 89% found searching the Internet to be “somewhat effective” or “very effective” in finding local services in their area, and 68% said they would most likely use the phone number on the website to contact a vendor.  Nary a yellow page directory was opened, and not a yellow page thumbed over.

Last year I really knew there was a problem when Verizon announced it was selling its yellow page business. You do not get out of a business generating billions of dollars in ad revenues a year unless you want to sell that old jalopy before it completely falls apart.  It is perfectly fine to get out of a business.  The problem is that lawyers are not being told the truth about yellow page viewership or readership.  Many are being sold a bill of goods, and the goods are not cheap.

To me it means that yellow pages as a advertising and locating source for attorneys is going the way of the Sears Roebuck catalogue.

Does this mean that nobody uses the yellow pages and phone directories?  No.  However, it does mean the rapidly decreasing use does not justify the pricing placed on this advertising medium.

What it does say is that attorneys had better beef up their Internet and blogging presence.  And, they had better do it quickly.  If not they will only be seeing yellow and no green.  The only ones left looking at the yellow pages will be the attorneys looking at their own ad.

A Third Wave Law Practice Allows You To More Easily Avoid Burnout...Boredum

Be honest.  We have all visited the JDBliss blog from time to time.  We have casually surfed over to Monster.Com just to check out what else might be available in the way of work.  We probably all have this fantasy work we dwell upon for time to time.  Mainly in humor my wife and I joke that we are going to move to a dinky Texas town and make granola and soap as a way of supporting ourselves.  (Truly mindless work).  We do not even much like granola and we certainly are not up to making soap.  Hell, I do not even know how jello works much less trying to figure something like this out.  The point is that we all sometimes get into the JD doldrums.

I recently ran into a post by Jeffrey Lipshaw on the Legal Profession Blog in which he writes "I've concluded after all these years that spending an entire law career, as many do, in the same firm, doing the same kind of work, progressing in the level of oversight and client contact, is still not a natural act.  There was kind of an unwritten rule in the corporate world that three to five years in most jobs was about the time it took to learn the job, do it well, and then begin the slide toward boredom (or in the extreme case, burnout)."

Obviously the situation is more extreme in Big Law where a change of any magnitude would cause you to lose your firm, your support system, and really your way of life in many cases.  In a solo practice the overhead and staffing prevent changes.  The problem is also pronounced in Third Wave practices.  However, in a Third Wave practice there is room to grow and to change and to experiment with other areas of law, or areas related to law.  You are not worried about the care and feeding of staff and infrastructure.  A relaunch, although a little frightening, is not usually life threatening.  The costs of launching a new practice area or changing practice areas you have already learned is minimal.

Over my life I have made a number of changes as to practice areas and office location.  I have stayed challenged and engaged (even if not rich).  I know, for example, I do better in handling projects than in nurturing a firm and its culture.  I am fine with that.  These changes have been like projects that keep me engaged and interested.  It is not easy, but it can be almost impossible if you are trying to drag a firm, organization, staff, and infrastructure along with you.

My Fun Loving Daughter Makes A Film To Teach Shopping In English To Japanese Students

My daughter, Mary Newton, participates in making a film to teach shopping in English to Japanese students.  Despite the frivolity of this film as it appears to us, I think it demonstrates well how we Third Wave attorneys can create, upload and use video to market and explain ourselves to the World cheaply and effortlessly.

Sumo: I Post It Because I Can

My daughter, Mary Newton, posted this video she made about sumo wrestling on her blog, Japan Journal.  It does remind me of us old, fat, sassy lawyers hanging out at the courthouse.

GAL Hits It On The Head--It Is Up To You

The Greatest American Lawyer (GAL) is right on the money.  Starting a Third Wave practice and going out on your own allows you to be yourself, with your values and your sensibilites.  He writes:

Your values are heavily influenced by the firm's values. It's inevitable. Someone else's blue and your red make a new color purple. But it's still not your color...The coolest and hardest part about being an independent practitioner is there are no cop-outs. You decide how you live your life every day. Your values, your creativity, and your passion dominate everything.

Blogging Is Branding..And Branding Is Important For Business

Simply put, blogging is the process of branding, and branding is what you need.

McDonald’s, Blockbuster, Coke, Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and Betty Crocker all represent businesses that have created strong, successful brands.

A brand, however, is more than a single product, or just a company name. It is a shorthand businesses use to connect with customers, or in the case of a law firm with their clients and potential clients.

What I have come to figure out is that these large corporations are not the only ones that need to take advantage of developing such connections with the public. Law firms, and especially Third Wave lawyers, need to do so as well. Having an identity, an image and an expertise that is identifiable, memorable, and projects the image, the reputation and the business description to the client pool you are looking for is indispensable.

Brands create a positive emotional connection with that client's products and services.

The reason that branding is so important to law firms and lawyers is that strong brands typically command higher margins. Clients will pay more for the services they need. Further, if yours is a name the clients’ trusts, like, and remember you will have to spend less in marketing and advertising.

A strong brand builds loyalty for the reason that clients and potential clients feel attached to that brand and stick with that brand.

But what a brand represents above all else is authority. It paints you are the authority in your area and in your region. A sense of authority is built upon information and knowledge and accomplishment.

So how do you build a brand? Well, image is obviously important. Logo, color and design help. But what helps most is getting your thoughts, your ideas, your knowledge, your accomplishments out into the market place.

There is no better way to do this than by creating, and maintaining a well written and updated blog, that projects your image, and illustrates your authority in the field.

It takes time, but by and large it is cheap.

Forget The Argument The Yoke Is Easy...We Do Not Want The Yoke

The Greatest American Lawyer (GAL) in a recent post contended that we are becoming too virtual.  Although I greatly respect GAL and agree with most of what he has posted, I believe the argument is nonsense.  In fact, I would argue that the opposite is true.  As lawyers we are not  becoming more virtual more quickly. 

GAL's post hangs on the premise that not only are attorneys and staff working from home, but that they maintain an outside office that requires their attention.  He argues for face time with staff, partners and colleagues so they know who is boss, what are the objectives, and personal kinsmanship.

This ignores, however, the whole point of gravitating to a Third Wave law practice.  What GAL argues for is a mix of Second Wave and Third Wave practices, or possibly a bridge of sorts between the two until attorneys and firms can adapt and feel more comfortable with the prospect of working without the safty net of outside law offices, staff, partners, and infrastucture.  What this argues for is a continuation of standardization, centralization, concentration, synchonization and bureaucracy that has so contributed to the disatisfaction of lawyers with the practice of law.

The argument ignores diverse lifestyles.  It takes us away from operating the way we should, within adhocracies or fluid organizations in which we as attorneys and firms come together only to work on specific cases or tasks.  Freelancers do not report to work and rally the troops this way.  It too much clings us to these libraries, expensive associates, in-house computer systems, and highrise offices of marble and mahogany, that costs us so much. 

The problem is that GAL suggest that we are loosing sight of the basics.  My argument is that the basics are no longer viable.  I do not want to walk into the office door every morning, hang my hat and coat on the rack, visit the water cooler and tell war stories in between trying to help my clients and pay the overhead.  I do not want the two hour commute each day or staff that has to do the same thing.  Third Wave attorneys want to be away from the things that bind, and that waste our time, and waste our earnings, and keep us from the important things in life.  We do not care if you argue that the yoke is easy.  We do not want the yoke.

We do not need to coddle to the Lawyernista within us.  We need to banish what the Second Wave has wrought.

It is about downshifting.  You simply do not downshift your way back downtown, to the office tower to lord over the troops.  You go home and you prioritize and you remove all of those things (all of the time) that get in the way of your real work (your passion), and your family, and your clients, and your own self interest.  We are talking peace and comfort and harmony, or as close as you can get to this state of being.

Alvin Toffler said it best.  "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn".  

So, are we too virtual?  I say no.  We are not becoming more virtual fast enough.

...And, that should be the rally cry.

Onward Third Wave lawyers!

Third Wave Attorneys Need To Blog For The Long Term

Third Wave lawyers need to blog.  However, they need not get discouraged when there blog is not an instant success.

Steve Rubel in his blog Micro Persuasion writes (persuasively) that the benefits of blogging as a business and marketing tool do not come in the short term, but will benefit those who blog often and use it as a long range tool or objective.  He writes:

A lot of people starting blogs today are looking for quick results...Sometimes, this occurs...However, more often than not, if you're starting a business blog, just as with stocks, you're best off taking a Long Tail and a long term approach...First, you need to focus your blog on the segment of the conversation you care passionately about - and stick to it...Second, and here's where the long-term approach factors in, be patient and blog for search... 

Dog Humor

Third Wave lawyers have dogs at home.  They are a constant source of amusement.  These lawyers blog about the dogs barking at the FedEx truck and the like.  Ours is a beagle named Mandy.  For this reason I found this cartoon amusing.