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I received an email from Chris Monaghan telling me that I needed to check out his billing application Time59.Com. As suggested, it is a web-based, mission-critical business applications suited for lawyers in need of easy and accessible time, expense and billing functions from anywhere. It is right for the Third Wave attorney. It is not free, but it is darn near so. It is only $19.95 per year, after the 30-day trial. The website is pretty informative. Take a look.
There is an interesting interview in the New York Times with Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, a German scocial phychologist, and director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, discussing "intuitive thinking" == or trusting your gut.
Dr. Gigerenzer has written a book entitled, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious.
Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring...banana phone. It grows in bunches ... I've got this feeling. It's so appealing ... I've got my hunches ... It's the best. It beats the rest.
You might be able to say the same thing about the new Google Phone coming out. As pointed out by Rick Georges at Future Lawyer, "It will be cheap, have built-in GPS, and be integrated with GMail, Google Maps, Google Calendar and Google Docs. The best news is that it will have an open architecture, being based on the Linux kernel. This will truly be a phone for everyone".
Sure the Apple iPhone is a sensation, but Apple, although usually a good product, is too often based on design, pizazz, the wow factor that drives sales at a high costs. And, the problem with hype is that the product, no matter how good, cannot live up to it.
Without commenting on Google Phone, in general Third Wavers love Google. It is cheap. It always represents marginal improvements to products and it is easy to use. It levels the playing field.
My wish is that Google will take on the online legal research engines. The case law is free. It can refer to West's key numbers. It will need an expanded search method. If Google can do patent searches for free, this should be a cinch.
Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring...Google Phone!
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing recently said it best -- MARKETING IS A HABIT. What I can add to this is that most solos and Third Wave wannabes suck at it. Law schools do not much teach you how to market or why to market but, if you want to succeed, marketing needs to be inculcated into your every move.
John Jantsch, posting about business in general and not just law firms, says about maketing: "Oh, I’m guessing at the end of the day you’ve concluded it’s pretty important - the problem is that at the end of the day, you’ve not done a thing that you could call marketing".
Continue reading "Marketing Your Law Firm Or Practice Needs To Be A Habit" »
Peter Olson of Solo In Chicago recently blogged about picking up new clients at the courthouse. In his case he ran into a real estate investor lamenting about his frustrations of doing eviction work himself. Peter offered to help.
This is noteworthy for the reason it works. Let me share another situation of how it has worked for me in the past. My cases come from referrals made by bankruptcy attorneys. I am involved in bankruptcy litigation, but not in representing debtors in their underlying bankruptcy. Almost every time I appear in bankruptcy court on a contested matters, especially on emergency hearings, I have bankruptcy lawyers stop me and inquire about some similar problem they are having in their office. Many of these turn into referrals.
So, hanging around the courthouse works. Make yourself known in the clerks office. Make yourself known with the court staff. Always use court time to make introductions and to extend your friendship to the lawyers in the room you have already met. Get to court early, and stay after your case or matter has been heard.
I have gotten referrals even when I did not prevail at the hearing I attended. The other attorneys there have experienced the same thing. They will want to confer with you as to how to prevail in the future. They will inform you of cases or situations they have to see how they may differ. Tell then you would like to look at the case for them. Give them your card. It is really that simple.
And, get their card if you have a favorable conversation. Even lawyers that want to refer a matter to you get busy and forget. Call them in a day or two and remind them, or at least leave them a voice mail message thanking them. Follow up with a gentle email.
More importantly, place the prospective client or referral attorney on your broadcast fax, broadcast email and mailing lists.
Thank you Peter for reminding me.
What is it about the cathartic nature of email writing that makes people lose their inhibitions (and sometimes their good sense)? Is writing just more revealing than speech, or does it reveal those attorneys that just do not have a grasp of reality or their subject matter? I am not sure. Maybe since emails are directly written and sent, there is no trusted adviser, secretary, partner or paralegal reviewing and arguing against what is written. Or, maybe since typing emails is such a quick process lawyers do not have time to think twice about what you have written.
Two things have reminded lead me to write about this subject. One involves email and the other not, but both are equivalent.
We might not be interested in or able to beat you at a lan party, but us older people are out pacing young people online. Sure our kids have to show us how to turn on the computer, get online and how to spell Google, but then they can eat our dust.
According to The Daily Mail we "sliver surfers" our spending more time online than the youngsters. And, I would argue more productive time. According to a study in that paper, us oldsters spent an average of 42 hours a month online, compared with 37.9 hours among 18 to 24-year-olds.
Susan Cartier Liebel of Build A Solo Practice continues to keep me informed. Her tip of the week is Earth Class Mail - of what she calls "remote control mail". What it appears to be is revolutionary to those of us who are desperately trying to live the Third Wave dream to the fullest and who wish to be untethered from the office. This might well be the solution.
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