Chuck Newton

Which Blog Is Your Favorite?

Forget the ABA blog contest.  Which is your favorite blog?  Not certain?  Say that you like a lot of them?  I say ask the almighty Google.  (Or, your other blog reader).  Google Reader has a section called "trends".  Click on it and it will tell you (and only you) which of your subscriptions you read the most, which one you starred at the longest.  Which ones you shared the most, emailed the most and read on your mobile unit.  Also, it will tell you which of your subscriptions are updated most frequently.  And, it will tell you which blogs are the most inactive.  This information will give you an idea of which is your favorite.  I am not sure I knew until I checked, but it was obvious from my stats.  I am not going to tell you which is my favorite (other than my own blogs).  You will just have to guess.  But, it is fun to look.

You Had To Wonder When The D.C. Rules Where Going To Get Somebody In Trouble

As happens all to often in Texas, a group of people, and a none Texas lawyer, are in trouble for running personal injury cases.  I caused one Texas senatorial candidate, and successful personal injury lawyer, to get out of the race.  But, apart from the other unseemly things attributed to the law firm, CGT Law Group International, was allegedly run by non-lawyer named Mauricio Celis.  The "law firm" was apparently successful at finding big dollar personal injury cases and then handing those cases off to highly successful Texas personal injury attorneys for a percentage of the fee.  Texas does not allow non-lawyers to participate in the sharing of legal fees.  What I find interesting, however, is that the law firm is incorporated in Washington, D.C..  I guess the bank accounts are there as well.  The D.C. Rule of Professional Conduct 5.4, allows a nonlawyer to be a partner in a firm and permits lawyers to ethically share fees with non-lawyers.

Nat King Cole - The Christmas Song

Man Steals His Way Into The Christmas Spirit

According to Missoulian.Com, a Wyoming man allegedly stole Christmas trees and wreath-making supplies from a local business and then displayed the holiday decorations outside his home several blocks away from the business.  When the sheriff's deputy arrived they noticed the trees and wreaths and the man was inside his trailer making more wreaths.  The trees still had the tags from the store on them.  You have got to love it.

A House, Some Christmas Lights, Music And Magic. Not Sure What The Neighbors Think.

Are You A Grateful Person?

I am not always successful at it, but I try hard to be grateful and express my gratitude.

Now Sharon Melnick tells us in a post on HuffPo that being grateful and heart filled can make you more money as well.  A psychologist, Sharon writes that "When my clients 'get out of their own way' and increase their ability to be grateful, they report immediate and noticeable increases in positive energy and in the feeling 'life is good'. These changes fuel a rapid turnaround in the flow of their revenue and career effectiveness".

Her point is that when you focus on what you have not accomplished, as opposed to what you have, you get on a head trip that causes stress, while when you are grateful, a feeling that "comes from the heart" you feel warm, uplifted and energized.  As Sharon points out, scientific research not only encourages a practice of gratitude, but has shown that feelings of doubt, shame, guilt and fear does not attract people, interactions, opportunities the same as gratitude does.  And, this affects the bottom line.

It would seem to suggest that if you want to be a more successful attorney, and especially a more successful Third Wave attorney, that you need to intentionally purge the hateful feelings and try to better develop a sense of gratitude in life.

It should also be a warning to those Rambo attorneys that you are not accomplishing what you think by being a total ass all of the time.

A Little Holiday Cheer

Which Law School You Should Attend?

I seem to get asked quite a bit what law school someone should attend.  My immediate answer is always the law school that accepts you.  If more than one law school accepts you, then you have options.  But, I have been through this process with my daughter and I have experienced it with the children of friends and collages, as well as the staff of law firms who decide to go the extra step.  One great resource I have found is the DeLoggio Admissions Achievement Program.  I do not mean to say we have ever employed or paid the DeLoggio group to advise anybody, but the website, although not overly slick, contains very important insider-type of information to help you consider your possibilities.

Let me give you two that I like.  In a section of the website entitled What's Special About...? the program reviews all all of the ABA law schools in the country and provides you the qualities of the school according to the school, the program's thoughts on the law school and comparable law schools to this one.  These ascetics might be important to you.

The site is choked full of useful insider infromation and analysis that can direct your opportunities.  But, my favorite is Where Can I Get In? section.  Most law school select applicants based upon a grade/LSAT ratio or GLR.  This is where the law school takes your GPA, multiplies it by some figure, adds the LSAT score to it, and then based upon its historic applicant pool determines who gets automatically accepted and automatically rejected, with the remainder having some chance.  The site goes down each ABA school and tells you, as best it can estimate, what this GLR is for each school based on 2003 figures, which was a record high year for applications.  So, for example, you can look at South Texas College of Law, where I went to law school, and see that they routinely multiply your college GPA by 9.4 and then add your LSAT score to that figure to get their GLR.  There GLR for automatic admit is likely 185.6 and automatic rejection is 176.2.  From this you can see that if you had a GPA of 3.5 in college you would need to achieve about a 153 on your LSAT to absolutely get accepted.  With this GPA any LSAT below about a 144 would almost guarantee rejection.  If you fall in between there is still a possibility, but the closer you are to a 185.6 the more likely it is you will get accepted.

You can do this with any school and figure out better what your actual chances might be.  I followed this when my daughter applied to a slug of schools and it proved amazingly accurate.  I have followed it when others I have know have applied and it has proved almost as accurate.  So, I would advise your to spend a lot of time on this site.

10 Ways To Avoid Law Firm Marketing Success

I like sarcasm.  I do!  And, that is the reason that I enjoyed the post by Bruce Allen's and his blog Marketing Catalyst of the same title.  Like the book by Ben Stein entitled How To Ruin Your Life, this article tries to make points by demonstrating what you can do to intentionally destroy your practice.  Allen's points are well taken, however.  They are:

See the Herd, Be the Herd: Making choices that feel good and natural could mean you’re creating vanilla programs that look, taste, and feel like your competition.

    

Have Marketing Report to  Sales Leadership:  Marketing is not sales.

    

What Happens in Marketing Stays in Marketing: Are you isolating your marketing people and making sure everyone else in the firm knows that only marketing people deal with marketing stuff.

    

Fads are Fun: Strategy needs to be nudged as it matures and takes shape, not slapped around and beaten with your new, new stick.

    

Market from Afar: Marketers need to know the street scene and participate actively in the community they are marketing too.

    

Make Competition Your Highest Priority: Defensive firms do not grow. They just survive.

    

Keep Secrets: Knowledge is power; but there is no power in keeping knowledge to ourselves.

    

Seek Perfection: Use exhaustive approval procedures; allow no action without committee approval.

    

Speak At Your Audience: The certainty that you already know what others think, need, or want is extremely useful in marketing failure.

    

Relax, You're Ahead: It’s hard to get to the front of the herd. Take a break.

There is a lot of useful information in Allen's post for the solo practitioner, the Third Waver, and you should study his post carefully.

My Blog Makes The Rosa Newton #1 Blog Ever!!!!

I woke up the other day to find that most of the blogs that I read were nominated or included in the ABA Journal's 100 best websites for lawyers.  Then I thought I must be really, really smart because I have picked the same blogs as the ABA to read.  Like all of those nominated for an Oscar, all of my fellow bloggers like to say that they do not really care that they were or were not included, but they are.  And, why should they not be?  Sure the ABA Journal Blog 100 is not the be all and end all, but it nice to mentioned.  It is nice to be recognized for all of your hard work.  I will just go drown my sorrow by eating a big bowl of ice cream or something more potent.  At least I know my mother still loves me and cares about what I blog.  (Or, at least I think she does, although she never submits a comment).  So, I would like to announce that my blog has won the Rosa Newton #1 Blog Ever- again.