Cost-Effective Law Practice Management

Last week I was a guest on the Lawyer2Lawyer podcast.  Here's their description: "As law firms slowly climb out of this recession, have their legal practice management skills changed? Lawyer2Lawyer co-host and attorney J. Craig Williams welcomes Rudy Bazelmans, Regional Director of Expense Reduction Analysts and Jim Calloway, Director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program, to explain the current state of the legal industry, new law practice management skills, what attorneys have done to cut costs and how to keep costs down in the future."

It is certainly an interesting and timely topic. So take a few minutes to use this link to listen to a discussion of Cost-Effective Law Practice Management.

Great Free Trust Accounting and Legal Ethics Information from Minnesota

Setting up a lawyer's trust accounting procedures in Quickbooks is certainly doable. But if you are not an accounting whiz, you might be worried you missed something. There are other tools like GnuCash (free) or Microsoft Office Accounting 2006 or 2007. Earler this year, the Minnesota Bar Association announced the release of its Trust Accounting Guides that have previously only been available to Minnesota Bar lawyers. In the spirit of public service, all lawyers can now benefit from their step-by-step instructions contained in:

• Keeping Client Trust Accounts with GnuCash 2.2.4;
• Keeping Records for Client Trust Accounts Using Microsoft Office Accounting 2006 or 2007;
• Using QuickBooks 6.0 for Lawyers’ Trust Accounting;
• Trust Accounting with QuickBooks 2005 Professional;
• Keeping Clients’ Trust Accounts with QuickBooks 2010 Professional

This blog post from the MSBA Practice Blog contains all of the details and a link to the download site. You do have to furnish an e-mail address so you can be notified of updates or changes. This is truly a great public service. So thanks to the MSBA!!

But that is not all! As noted in the blog post linked above, they are also giving away Minnesota Legal Ethics, a 400 page ebook treatise by William J. Wernz. You read correctly. They are giving it away for free for you to download. So let's all show the Minnesota State Bar Association our thanks by taking them up on their offer to download these great free resources.

Your Future as a Lawyer

Thinking about your future can bring forth many emotions, especially if the future looks challenging and uncertain. That's why it may be easy for time-challenged lawyers to avoid the exercise. If you are going to retire in the next few years, skip this blog post. Otherwise, invest thirty minutes this week reading the articles I have linked here. If you need inspiration to think about this, just start with the following feature story from the July 2011 ABA Journal Law Job Stagnation May Have Started Before the Recession—And It May Be a Sign of Lasting Change. Quite a few observers of the legal industry have drawn some of the same conclusions. Just to make certain you click on the link to the story, here's the "money quote" from the article:

• "For most lawyers, survival will depend upon their ability to harness technology to deliver greater value to clients at a cost that declines—yes, declines—over time. The biggest challenge for law firms will be transitioning away from internal firm metrics that reward billable hours and discourage or prohibit the crucial trial-and-error experimentation needed to create, refine and market more innovative work processes that do more with less." Id.

So go read the article to see how the authors reached that conclusion.

But the future brings promise as well as challenges. Maybe none of us will see that future where one can make a living as a "Space Lawyer," but it is not hard to see new and emerging areas of law practice.

But a good opportunity to chart your future appears this month in another ABA publication, the "Careers" issue of Law Practice magazine (July/August 2011.) The Time to Take a Leap feature begins with an important story by a good friend of mine. Lawyers Join the Free Agent Nation by Stephen P. Gallagher charts how career paths have changed for lawyers just as the idea of life-long employment with a single company has changed for the majority of the American work force. The is followed by 10 Steps to Prepare Yourself for a Graceful Launch by John H. Snyder. Although this is written for a hypothetical associate about to leave the big firm, it is good reading for anyone taking stock of your career. The feature then focuses on several lawyers and their successful career changes.

But, wait, you might say, "I really am my law practice at  this point and there's really nowhere to leap." (Joke in poor taste omitted.)  It is certainly true that for many lawyers, from solo/small firm lawyers to partners in larger law frims that they could change their address or their partners, but the clients that they serve are their law practice. Absent taking a salaried job and shuttering a private practice, they may feel  certain that they are not looking at career change.

As suggested by the ABA Journal article on stagnation, you may have the choice of reinventing your practice or watching while others reinvent it for you. So continue your tour of the Careers edition of Law Practice magazine by reading Make the Right Move: Career Assessment Tools by Wendy L. Werner for some ideas on learning about yourself, Optimizing Your Online Shingle: On-Page and Off-Page Best Practices by Bob Ambrogi and Steve Matthews and enjoy the fun of Sharon Nelson and John Simek discussing using an iPad in your law practice. In the Ask Bill column, Bill Gibson talks with me and Tom Mighell about social media for lawyers.

Whether you are a new lawyer or law student entering the job market, who should read the entire Careers edition of Law Practice magazine or you want to pick and choose, there's a lot in Law Practice magazine, this month and every month and I'd say that even if I wasn't on the magazine's editorial board.

Jay Shepherd's Rules for a Successful Law Practice

After 13 years of running his law practice, Jay Shepherd is taking his career in another direction.

You will find the rules for success in his blog post Small Firms, Big Lawyers: Reflections on Thirteen Years to be very valuable. He has 13 rules for his thirteen years. The first 12 rules are great and the last one humorous. I am presumptuous enough to clarify his rule #8 Pay yourself first. I know for certain he doesn't mean pay yourself before you pay your staff. As an employer, paying your staff on time is a business and ethical duty. They have to be paid on payday. With automatic debits, even a day late could be a disaster. But I do agree with the point Jay was making. A law practice can appear very viable when it is not if you do not include paying the lawyer. I assume any business can look great if you do not pay the workers.

But Jay has great rules that reflect the reality of today's environment. That reality is very different today than when many of us first started practicing law. I wish every lawyer starting a law practice could read them. In fact, every lawyer in private practice should.

Supercharge Your Law Practice

During my almost fourteen years with the Oklahoma Bar Association as the practice management advisor, I have planned or helped to plan quite a few CLE programs, including our OBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. (This year's Solo & Small Firm Conference will be held June 9-11, 2011.)  But today I want to direct your attention to what I think is an extremely important OBA CLE program this week with lots of information about your future.

Supercharge Your Law Practice will be held this week- on May 18, 2011 at the Oklahoma Bar Center and May 19, 2011 at the Renaissance Hotel in Tulsa. The May 18^th program will also feature a live webcast. The live webcast will be a bit more expensive, but all of your staff can sit in and watch it with you.

There is a lot of change ahead for lawyers who want to be successful. It is not just about technology or even hard work. One of our “Supercharge” speakers, Tim Green, gave me this interesting quote from "Making It All Work," a sequel to "Getting Things Done" by David Allen:

            "[S]tudies have proven that the vast majority of all performance improvement is systemic. Additional motivation and intelligence make only a negligible difference in the long run."

Given that observation, we are going to spend some time talking about designing efficient law office systems. We’re going to talk about future trends impacting the legal profession. Some of these trends are quite scary. You don’t have to take my word for it. Read this article from this month’s The Economist- A less gilded future: The legal business has undergone not only recession but also structural change. Ever-growing profits are no longer guaranteed. Nor, for some firms, is survival.

We are going to discuss digital law practice and digital client files. We’re going to demonstrate some tools to use for document assembly in the law office. Law firms need to incorporate document assembly tools to be effective, but that impacts billing and other business matters. I will demonstrate a document assembly tool that a solo practitioner with no staff support and no technology skill can use to automate his or her own forms. This is particularly significant to estate planners. In fact the demo documents in this document assembly program are estate planning documents.

Here is the link for more information and to register for Supercharge Your Law Practice. I hope to see you there, or at least for you to see us via the Internet.

If you cannot make the scheduled dates, the program will be archived for future viewing later. But why wait? Summer is a good time to make some changes.

Deep Thoughts on the Future of Law Practice

There was a great symposium in recent days on the future of law practice. Didn't you get your invitation? Well, that is because it just happened online without apparent advance planning or coordination.  While I was attending my son's high school basketball banquet last night, Jordan Furlong was writing the blog post I intended to write about this. He published his post The Stratified Legal Market and its Implications this morning. While I could feel "scooped," I primarily feel like Jordan saved me an hour or so and probably created a finer product. Here's his lead:

"An extraordinary conversation has emerged among multiple authors in the blawgosphere over the past few days. It revolves around a pressing question: in light of the huge changes in the marketplace, what will become of law firms? ... No fewer than seven articles by six writers have explored this subject so far, and I recommend you take 10-15 minutes and go read these pieces."

Please take the time to read Jordan's post. My criticism is that Jordan must be a speed reader if he thinks anyone can find, read and digest all of those fine posts in 10-15 minutes.

Well, actually, I have another criticism  of Jordan. He failed to note that this week also saw the release of the Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology podcast 41st Edition where Sharon Nelson and Jim Calloway "discuss a number of trends that impact the future of the legal profession. They outline several challenges and then give strategies and tips for dealing with these challenges. As Yogi Berra once said, 'The future ain't what it used to be.' A resource list is included in the show notes." The podcast and show notes home page is here.  (Note: Those of you who usually get the podcast on iTunes may not be able to due to the aftermath of the launch of the new ABA website. So visit the link instead.)

Of course, this was recorded before any of the articles noted above were posted. It is very interesting how many people are thinking similar things at about the same time.

I have put together an Oklahoma Bar CLE on this topic that many of you may find of interest. It is called Supercharge Your Law Practice and will be held May 18, 2011 in Oklahoma City and May 19th in Tulsa. But everyone reading this post is invited to attend via the live webcast on May 18. Put it on your calendar now. You can always register for a webcast at the last minute. (Although you should just register now. We know what happens to those open days on a lawyer's calendar.)  Webcast info.

I have been thinking about this program for a long time and then I met a solo practitioner from  Guthrie, Oklahoma, Tim Green, who has given me some great insight into designing law office production systems. I am so glad Tim has offered to share his knowledge with all of you. We're going to go in depth on systems, methods and tools.

So, read the articles noted about, listen to the podcast and enroll in our OBA CLE. Don't let the future sneak up on your practice and your livelihood.

Great CLE in The Big Easy

Later this week I'll be heading south to New Orleans for the Louisiana Bar's 4th Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference.  Here's the schedule of programming. I think it is beneficial for small firm lawyers to review schedules for these conferences and see what the hot topics are, even if you cannot attend. I've got quite an exciting personal opportunity as I open the first day of the conference with remarks on The Future of Solo Practice. Needless to say, I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of our profession and I sense some major sea changes ahead.

I'm also doing a presentation on the Perils of Metadata with Catherine Sanders Reach, Director of the Legal Technology Resource Center at the American Bar Association. I'm also doing programs on "Keeping 'em Happy: The Secrets of Client Satisfaction" and "Billing Strategies in a Changing Economy." Sixty Tech Tips in Sixty Minutes will conclude the conference. My friend, Ernest Svenson, will join me and Catherine for the tips program. There are also a couple of sessions that I want to attend.

I'm very excited about the opportunity to make new friends and renew some relationships in the Big Easy. I've done programs in Louisiana several times; most memorably, the disaster recovery programs after Katrina. I know many law firms in Oklahoma and around the world updated their backup procedures and disaster recovery plans after Katrina. Ernie Svenson took me on a tour of the Lower Ninth Ward before there was much in the way of rebuilding and recovery. I hope to see more signs of recovery this trip. But mainly I look forward to enjoying the hospitality of people who know how to entertain well.

Portrait of a Little Big Firm

Many of you are familiar with my friend, Ernie the Attorney, because of his well-known blog. But this week he posted a lengthy piece about his law firm called Little Big Firm. This should be required reading for every recent law school graduate contemplating opening a law practice because for many of them this may well be their road to success. Ernie's style of law practice may not be for everyone, but it looks like a strong model for a solo practitioner to me.

I've been thinking a lot about one of the aspects of what Ernie discusses. That is the ability for small firm lawyers to plan in advance to ramp up and ramp down their support services as needed, allowing them to keep overhead low during slower times while still being positioned to take on major matters. This requires advanced planning. It is like adage of the swamp and the alligators. When you are in the middle of an emergency, you are too busy to plan. Reviewing your options in advance allows you to step up to Level 2 or Level 3 when the need arises.

But Ernie and many other members of the Louisiana Bar Association will get a chance to hear me discuss some of these issues in two weeks when I speak at the bar's 4th Annual Solo & Small Firm  Conference.  I'm going to do the opening plenary session on The Future of Solo Practice and there is a great schedule of speakers and presentations. Hope to see some old friends there and make some new ones.

Lawyers, Miles Traveled and the IRS

The IRS has announced that the mileage rate for 2011 is 51 cents per mile for business miles driven. This is a slight increase over 50 cents last year and perhaps not as easy to calculate in your head.

Your law practice tip today is that you should get a mileage log book now to record your business mileage if you haven't been doing so. I am told you cannot deduct your commute from  home to work, but other miles driven for business reasons can be deductable. I am sure most lawyers record and deduct out-of-town trips, but small trips like going to the local courthouse, dropping off the deposit at the bank, going by the post office or going to the office supply store can add up over a year. You need contemporaneous records of those miles so you do not miss these shorter trips. In addition the CPA types tell me that if you are ever audited and deducted any business mileage, one of first things the auditor will do is to request your log book and, if you do not have contemporaneous records, the deduction can be disallowed, which would also generate penalities and interest.

As I was considering the concept of the paper mileage log book, I searched and learned that, yes, there is an app for that. The Tap2Track Mileage is from Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Quicken. It can be used three ways:

• Automatic - Calculate your mileage automatically using GPS
• Manual - Enter or adjust trip mileage manually
• Copy - Duplicate frequent trips and recent locations

It is not the cheapest app at $3.99, but I like the idea of using one from the makers of TurboTax. Searching will locate other apps, like MileBug at $1.99 or this free one for the Motorola Droid. I think most lawyers would appreciate one with the GPS automatic feature option. But whether you use a paper log book or an app, start the new year off right by recording your business mileage every working day this year.

OBA's Opening Your Law Practice Program

I'll be spending the day tomorrow speaking to impressionable young lawyers, along with some more experienced lawyers. The Oklahoma Bar Association is putting on our free program Opening Your Law Practice in Tulsa, with the Oklahoma City session scheduled next week. We do one program in the spring and these two in the fall. (We renamed our New Lawyer Experience Program to this more accurate title as about 1/3rd of the attendees were veteran lawyers, retiring judges and the like.) You can read more about the program here and see the complete schedule here. To my fellow bar association executives, you really need to offer one of these programs if you do not. In these economic times, many young lawyers are opening a law office directly out of law school, whether they intended to or not. If you help them with this major challenge, they will not forget it in the future.