Chuck Newton

Quark

No, I am not talking about the character in Star Trek Deep Space who ran the bar.

Quarks are the smallest known building blocks of matter.  Protons and neutrons are each made of 3 quarks.  Quarks are never found alone, and are only found in groups of two or more.  They are so powerful together that separating two quarks generates enough energy to create two more.

Marketing a solo law practice or small law firm operates in much the same way.  Marketing should be the smallest building blocks of any practice.  And, you should not rely on one marketing tool, and you should always be consistently working several to achieve the energy necessary to fuel your practice.

The reason that the quark representation is necessary is for the size of the effort itself.  It does not have to be large.  It should be small.  It should not be your only emphasis.  Solos who see their main job as marketing get disbarred all of the time.  Why?  They spend all of their effort bringing business in the front door and, as a result, they have no ability to manage the cases they have acquired.

I would like to suggest to you some of the marketing tools or marketing quarks you can use to constantly and consistently fuel your practice.  Used together these small building blocks work well.

1.  Telephone.  In this day and age it is the most unrecognized marketing tool.  It is something you already have.  You are paying for it anyway.  You are on the phone all of the time, so remember to call referral sources during down moments.  Even if you do not get through to them, you can leave a voice mail message letting them know you are still available.

2.  Email.  Again, you already have this and you are using it regularly.  Importantly, it is quick.  Remember to send private and personal emails to your referrals sources now and then just to let them know you are still around.  If they do not or cannot take your call, follow up with an email.  Just a line or two to let them know they are appreciated by you.

3.  Practice blog.  This should be the hub of your practice.  These are dirt cheap, and it gives you a center point to keep in touch with your referral sources.  When you are talking with people on the phone or in person, on every letter and business card, you refer them to this site for information, including contact information and referral information.  Your URL can almost become a virtual business card your referral sources can pass on to someone else.

4.  Social media. This is basically new to me as well, but there are sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and any number of free or nearly free sites that are easy to set up and to which people refer.  Use these as a means of promoting your blog and contact information.

5.  Paper.  Paper is dying, but online paper (like PDF documents) is not.  If you file a pleading make sure there is a banner at the top that promotes you in the way you need to be promoted.  Then, of course, there are business cards.  They still work, so use them.

6.  Old push technologies.  These are things like broadcast email and faxes.  The idea is always to stay top of the mind with your likely referral sources.  Send out short newsletters that promote your -- what else -- blog, yourself and what you do.

Each of these work if used together like a group of quarks.  Together they generate energy.  Energy will bring clients to you.  They represent some of the building blocks for any practice.  They do not consume all of your time, leaving time for the real work at hand.  Most importantly, even as a group, these marketing quarks are cheap, cheap, cheap.  (Meaning, of course, that they are not low in quality, but that they are extremely cost effective).

Now, in saying all of this, notice I did not suggest that these things along will work.  After all, these marketing quarks are the building blocks of a good practice.  They need one other special ingrediant to bind them together.  That would be you.  You are going to have to get out and meet and greet and collect information, and build your web presence through word of mouth.  Remember, marketing quarks are only the foundation, but they do put you on a solid footing to achieve what you need to achieve -- reputation, attention, cases and cash flow.

Textpectation

We all know by going to movies or renown restaurants and the like that your treatment or experience of the theater, the restaurant or whatever is just as important as the content of the food itself.  Politics is much the same way.  Policy is important, but meeting expectations is critical to success.  The stock market, more than fundamentals, relies more often than not on public traded companies meeting the expectations of Wall Street.

In this way, I have found that technology is creating an expectation of sorts that most lawyers ignore.  It is called textpectation - the anticipation one feels when waiting for a response to a text message.  After all, texting has created a since of immediacy.

Over the years we have weened our clients and potential clients from believing that they can reach us immediately by telephone.  They have come to learn that because of other commitments that we would not be at their beck and call (literally).  We have demonstrated that we would not be waiting by the phone for them anytime they had a concern or a question.  So we have automated PBXs, and we have voicemail, and we have message trees, and we have extensions, and we have failed to give the client our direct phone lines for fear that we would be at the beck and call of their fluctuating affections (or lack thereof).

But, what we have also done is to have learned them in the art of modern communications, namely email and text messages and IMing, that typically bypass the palace guards and lands on our notebook computers and our PDAs.  Our clients comply with our wishes for simpler and mobile text communications that we can deal with in almost any environment, such as emailing or texting while in court, a deposition, traveling in a car, sitting on the john, or (if you are Rick Georges and Grant Griffiths) during the homily in church or mass.

With this, however, comes textpectation on the part of the client.  They email or text you and they are waiting almost immediately for a response.  (God help family lawyers).  When they do not get this response, at least during normal business hours, they feel cheated, bamboozled, disgruntled, dissatisfied, thwarted, disheartened and, maybe the worse of all, overcharged by their lawyer.

The bottom line, as a provider of services, the lawyer can easily lose the expectation game -- or in this case the textpectation game.

And, whose fault is this anyway?

Part of it is undoubtedly societies as a whole.  Technology eliminated the palace guards that use to guard us from direct messages.  That is probably good.  But, by putting us in direct contact with the client we do not have the visible excuses that the wired world provided us.  My children have grown up with the expectation that for the cost of a cell phone and broadband that they should be reasonably able to reach anybody, save maybe the President, with a few moves of the thumbs.

Today, our clients can follow us on our blogs, on Twitter, on MySpace, and any number of IM locations or social networking sites.  Not long ago I had an attorney get a little miffed because while I was ignoring his phone calls that day, I managed to post to a listserv he was following.  Of course, I was drafting a brief that day and did not want to lose a half hour on the phone talking and then making notes, but for a little relief from the pain of it all it did not take much effort to post a small comment to a bankruptcy listserv and move on.  That did not matter to him, and it probably should not.

The point is that we have created textpectations with all of those around us, and especially our clients.  When we do not live up to those textpectations we lose out as assuredly as when not living up to any set of expectation of us.

How to Arrange An Office Desk Ergonomically

This does seem so simple, but straight on is the best way to organize a monitor and keypad.

Sanity After You Lose Your Law Job

I use to run into an attorney named Buddy Britt in court in East Texas.  Buddy was a good 'ol boy.  He was a friend of my father's when I was growing up.  I remember him representing me in a speeding ticket during my speed demon teenage days.  Buddy was a master at East Tex understatement.  Nearly every time I saw him at court I would ask, "how's work"?  Buddy would always answer, "Well, I can tell you that the last time I had some work I really enjoyed it".  He was subtle and kind and self-effacing.  And, I liked that.  For good parts of his life as a lawyer he was a solo practitioner.  At times he worked for firms and government offices, but as time moved on he always headed back to being a solo.

What I think Buddy taught me is that although you ultimately want to work for yourself, and although you enjoy the solo practice of law, sometimes the decision is made for you, or in spite of your other interest.

For me, I ended up in the solo practice of law first because in moving back home no other law firm wanted me.  Later, after constructing a large firm, I thought it was just too much for too little reward.

Leaving a law firm or governmental agency to go out on your own may be a deliberate choice or it might be a Hobson choice.  Whatever the choosing, parting with a paycheck and those with which you work can be problem.  Also, finding work can sometimes be difficult at first.

Email Salutations Must Go!

That is Andrew Flusche's position on the matter.  It is a matter of productivity more than politeness.  Emails are less formal than traditional letters.  Besides, I think it is already clear that when Morgan Freeman gets around to reading emails in some future PBS documentary by Ken Burns in the future, the emails will not have the same stretchiness, lyrical, ornamental, picturesque, or ceremoniousness of the letter writers of the Civil War. 

OMG!  Can you believe I said that?  LOL!

Although, I kind of miss the formality of formal letters, I have got to admit that we respond to and draft too many emails in this day and age to concern ourselves with such formality.  Now, that said, I think we all understand that I am much to verbose to comply with Andrew's five sentence rule, or at least I would need to employ 5 very long sentences.

Welcome To Sustainable Lawyering

I call it Third Wave lawyering.  You can call it what you wish.  One law student planning on entering the field calls it Sustainable Lawyering and you can view his new blog by clicking here.  Jason describes his brand as follows:

Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely.  Lawyering is the work performed by a lawyer ... Therefore, “sustainable lawyering” is performing the work of a lawyer at a certain level for an indefinite period of time.

In introducing me to his take on this concept, Jason emailed me as follows:

Thank you so much for the inspirational website. I am currently a 3L and, even though I work as a law clerk and have a decent offer to stay, I credit your blog and a few others with convincing me to make it on my own as a solo. To that end, I started a blog to help me along over the next year...

It is nice to be appreciate and read.  All I can say to Jason is to do the blog and the blogosphere justice by giving us the detail, unvarnished and original.  The good and the bad.  The mistakes and the struggles.  It is something from which we can all learn.  A blog can be helpful in helping record your progress, to document a bit of history, and to help you crystallize your thoughts as to what you represent.

Best wishes.

What Is It About Email?

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.

Simple FREE Email Encryption

Encryption may be an important tool for many lawyers handling confidential information. Well,  Firefox has a new FREE plug-in called freenigma, which enables you to send and receive encrypted e-mail using browser-based e-mail services such as Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. The plug-in adds a toolbar that appears when you log in to the e-mail service. Draft an e-mail then click the "encrypt" button in the toolbar and then send your message. To decrypt your message, the recipient must also have the plug-in and click "decrypt" on the toolbar. Encryption and decryption occur within your browser.

GOOGLE HAS JUST RE-LAUNCHED WRITELY WHICH COULD BE A THIRD WAVER'S NEW BEST FRIEND

Google has re-lauched Writely , the online word-processor they recently bought, in public beta. Writely does everything Word does, for free -- and saves its output as PDFs and even RSS feeds (subscribe to a word-processor doc!). It features collaborative editing -- multiple editors on the same doc at once -- and can be used as the editor for writing your blog, saving out to a post instead of a file on your machine. This is a great-looking program for people who have always-on Internet, and for so long as you don't worry about the NSA demanding that Google turn over its Writely files as part of some "security" procedure. Also: if I were a Google China user, I'd have some doubts about this, given that Google has shown that when it comes to China, keeping the government happy is more important than delivering the best product it can.