Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog

Technology Competence for the Family Lawyer

Some lawyers were concerned when the Model Rules of Professional Conduct were changed to include a comment that competence as a lawyer included an appreciation of “the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.”

Now 31 states have adopted some version of this language in comment 8 to Rule 1.1, according to legal technology journalist Robert Ambrogi who maintains regularly updated information about the comment adoption on his blog.

Many of the legal technology community thought this comment was so obvious in today's times that it was difficult to understand those who object to the comment.

Reading an article in The New York Times this summer titled Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse made me think about how the lawyer who works in the family law arena faces a vastly different set of technology concerns (and competencies) about client safety and privacy compared to just a few years ago when few were familiar with the Internet of Things. But there's more to this than just telling a client to change their WiFi password.

So I wrote Technology Competence for the Family Lawyer as both a thought exercise and a guide for family lawyers. The question I attempted to answer is broad: What do you need to tell today's family law client about what that should be done to digitally protect oneself in the event of a separation or divorce, especially when the client may not have set up or be very familiar with the technology they are using? I'm sure I missed something but am pleased with the result. And while asking for social media shares sometimes comes across as self-promoting, I believe that there are many family lawyers that would like to read this column. So feel free to share or ask us about reprint rights.

Collaboration Tools for Lawyers

It has been Collaboration Week for lawyers. It's not like the ABA or Congress designated it as such, but that still seems to be the case.

The "week" actually started last Friday when Attorney At Work published Tech Tips: Collaborating Well With Others. The post noted:

For this edition of Friday Tech Tips, we asked the practice management technology experts: “What’s your best tech tip for collaborating well with others?” Here’s good advice from Jim Calloway, Andrea Cannavina, Jared Correia, Darla Jackson, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, Catherine Sanders Reach, Deborah Savadra and John Simek.

There is some good content in that post. And wisdom from two Oklahomans. 😊 What more could you want?

But wait, there is more!

This week our Digital Edge podcast was released. The topic is The Case for Collaboration and our guests were Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. They co-authored The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, Second Edition, which was recently released by the ABA. Since Dennis and Tom also have their own long-running podcast, the Kennedy-Mighell Report, no one will be surprised that our end result was a fun and easy-to-listen to podcast.

Today's collaboration tools provide new opportunities for lawyers--if they take the time to learn about them.

Keeping the Customer Satisfied

Keeping the customer satisfied should be an important of every business today. This includes law firms, even though we refer to our customers as clients.

My column in the Oklahoma Bar Journal, Keeping the Customer Satisfied, outlines some ideas to do just that. One of the first rules is to not do things that aggravate the customer, like having them waste time in the the law firm's waiting area for a long time after their scheduled appointment.

With some clients the challenge is helping them understand clearly the challenges they faced and benefits they received. As I noted in the column: 

"With medical services, a sick patient can become well or a broken bone will heal. With legal services, successful delivery of the services is often couched in terms that were previously not familiar to the client like decrees, court orders, injunctions, closings and the like."

Take this opportunity to read these ideas and then think about what you can do to improve client satisfaction.

As an additional bonus today, here is some appropriate music for your inspiration as you consider how to make your current clients "clients for life."

Growing Your Law Practice by Publishing Content

I often have lawyers tell me that they know they should be doing social media marketing or maybe blogging, but they really don’t know how or what they talk about and how to target it to impact their practice. And no one believes that they have the time.

I’ve known Nancy Myrland for a fairly long time, although not extremely well.  We occasionally have visited at conferences, but she’s a law firm marketing expert and generally goes to different conferences than I do. But let repeat. She’s an expert. I’m fairly certain when we first met in person we both already felt we knew each other because of reading each other’s online articles and social media posts. That’s how social media marketing should work.

Today she published Lawyers, Can You Grow Your Practice By Publishing Content? You should read it. You should also feel free to click on the link to download her simple worksheet for content creation. You’ll have to give her your email address and she may reach out to you again in the future. That’s how the world works.

Nancy doesn’t know I’m going to do this blog post. But her worksheet is a nice way to collect your thoughts for your law firm marketing and so I am sharing it with you. Again, that is how social media marketing works.

Kevin O’Keefe, CEO of LexBlog, writes frequently on his Real Lawyers Have Blogs blog about developing connections and relationships through social media. That is his business, but also his passion.  If you haven’t visited his blog, today is a good day for reading his content.

Marketing by content sharing involves sharing your expertise with others without counting an immediate and direct return from any particular content. But the content you share should be thoughtfully targeted to highlight the services you provide to an interested audience. But share great content regularly and something good will happen in return.

Client Portals: Why Attorneys are Flocking to Them

Client Portals: Why Attorneys are Flocking to Them is the subject for a live webinar this week (April 12) from the ABA Law Practice Division. It features two Oklahomans, Jim Calloway, Director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program and Darla Jackson, OBA Practice Management Advisor.

It is not exaggerating to say that for most lawyers, this is a critically important topic. The idea of using a client portal to better serve your clients involves more than better client service. This involves “best practices” for security of client information. Setting up a portal allows your firm to set up comprehensive processes for electronic transmission of confidential (and nonconfidential) information and it is generally a more user-friendly process than training a client on the use of encrypted email. It is an internal time-saving practice.

Client portals demonstrate to your clients that you are on top of recent technology trends regarding how confidential information should be treated and secure client portals help you ensure that you are observing your ethical obligations about handling sensitive material.

Many lawyers already have the technical capability for client portals provided within their practice management software solutions, but they haven’t taken the time to implement a firm-wide comprehensive policy on how these portals are used.

Others may use dedicated portal solutions provided by third parties. We will show examples of  both types of solutions. This practice obviously works differently for a large firm with an IT department versus a solo practitioner. We will focus on tools for medium-sized and small law firms, but the discussion of how to use client portals and why applies to every lawyer.

The genesis for this program was my most linked and most reprinted column of last year Email Attachments vs. Client Portals. Take a few moments to read that now if you missed it the first time to remind you of why you should attend this CLE program.

For more information and to register, visit the webinar’s registration page. We hope you can attend.

Suggested Articles and Posts from January and February in the Reading Room

Our monthly Reading Room features reading suggestions for you from January and February, 2017 which cover a wide range of topics for the forward-thinking lawyer. Topics include "white dwarf law firms," the Smart Person's Guide to Apple's iCloud Keychain, the ABC's of Marketing and Business Development for Lawyers, dictation methods on the iPhone, blockchain for lawyers, a  new JP Morgan AI software program that saves 360,000 hours of staff and lawyer time,  Six Fundamentals For Handling Client Confidences, the Top Twenty-Two Most Interesting e-Discovery Opinions of 2016 and How An Introvert Can Build A Thriving Practice.

Visit our January 2017 Reading Room and our February 2017 Reading Room.

Why Lawyers Don't Run Startups (or Don't Tell Me I Can't, Tell Me How I Can.)

I would like for every one of my regular readers to read Why Lawyers Don’t Run Startups. It is a bit unfair to lawyers and even includes a sentence about entrepreneurs hating lawyers. But we’re tough and we can take it.

This is important for you to read even if you never intend to advise a startup. It highlights the challenges of our profession’s traditions versus today’s business climate of often risky entrepreneurship. Lawyers are trained to deliver perfect “bulletproof” legal work to their clients. It is our goal to eliminate all risks. When new challenges occur or new risks are identified, we try to protect our clients against those risks. That is how standard business agreements that used to be four or five pages have now evolved to agreements of fifteen or twenty pages. It is not uncommon to see a “simple” thirty page contract. But there’s a cost to all of that fine tuning. Clients and their counsel have to spend more time reviewing these longer documents and time is money.

Entrepreneurs and startups are like home run hitters at the plate swinging for the fence. Many entrepreneurs have several previous failures on their resumes. But if you hit the home run, you could be set for life.

A law firm that “hits” a .325 success rate would likely soon be out of business.

So we have this conflict. In the real world and in our personal lives we all constantly make decisions that have a 70% chance of success. A lawyer sees that as 3 out of 10 clients achieving a bad result and then firing the firm, bad mouthing it or perhaps even suing their lawyers. So the understandable reaction is to tell the client to avoid the risk entirely ("don't do the deal") or to prepare onerous provisions for a document that hopefully reduce the risk.

Many lawyers who advise startups have internalized and deal with these challenges. For lawyers who are concerned about too much risk, clear communication and documentation is very important. Avoiding risk is why many civil litigation cases settle on the eve of trial or, as we lawyers say, “on the courthouse steps.” We may have to re-examine some of our traditions and appreciate that a five-page contract with a 10% risk is a better client service than a forty page contract with a 9.5% risk. This is easy for a blogger to discuss in a blog post and much harder for a law firm to put into action, especially when all of those percentages of risk are educated guesses to begin with.

Email Attachments vs Client Portals

So which is more secure- an unencrypted email attachment or a client portal? Well, that is sort of a trick question because most everything is more secure than an unencrypted email attachment. And normally one would use the phrase "secure client portal" because by definition, client portals should be secure.

In this recent Oklahoma Bar Journal column, Email Attachments vs Client Portals, I discussed the differences between providing clients documents by sending them as email attachments versus providing the documents through a client portal. Some readers may be surprised at how easy and affordable providing a client portal is today. Some readers may have already used similar portals for a HIPAA-protected medical information provided by a health care provider.

Spoiler Alert: I think client portals are the best practice and unencrypted email attachments should be reserved for those situations where you would send a post card if you were using the U.S. Mail.

On Law Firm Profitability and Being a Jetson

Law firms are businesses. Businesses should have the goal of being profitable. The September/October 2016 issue of Law Practice Magazine is the annual finance issue. The cover story is Increasing Law Firm Profitability by Instilling Values by Katy Goshtasbi. This is a well-written “must read” piece which takes a bit of a different look at law firm profitability. Other articles include law firm budgeting, tips for getting paid ethically, alternative fee billing, managing debt for the new lawyer, creating a positive client experience and changes in banking relationships.

Every Law Firm Is a Technology Business is the title of my column on practice management advice in this issue. This column was actually inspired by the Wall Street Journal as I noted in the opening paragraph:

In early 2015 the Wall Street Journal, on the occasion of changing the name of its business section from "Marketplace" to "Business &Tech," stated that “[e]very business is a technology business.” Further, the newspaper noted that whether the business was taxicabs or taco delivery, it was nonetheless a technology business. Few doubted that the change in the name of the “B Section,” as it had always been called, was significant.

It is hard for many lawyers to appreciate that changes in the way business operates today force them to view their law firm as a technology business. But that is true today and will be increasingly true in the future. I hope this column (and this concept) provides valuable guidance for lawyers as they wrestle with everything from e-discovery to data analytics on their road to embracing being a technology business.

My conclusion is perhaps my favorite ending for anything I’ve ever written.

A general counsel addressing a group of lawyers stated that she still saw a lot of Flintstones versus Jetsons when addressing technology in firms she has dealt with. Be a Jetson.

Poor business practices will embarrass your law firm

This observation hopefully does not apply to you or your law firm. But the recent blog post Why Your Clients Will Thank You For Investing In Law Practice Management Software from Susan Cartier Liebel really struck a nerve with me. Her husband is a client of a law firm that they believe does great work, but they probably will not use them again or refer anyone else to them because their business practices are stuck in the 1980's and they don't use practice management software. You might think not using practice management software is a back office thing and a client wouldn't know the difference. If you think that, then you really need to read Susan's post. It started with a billing error, but then the fact they couldn't respond to a billing error without days of delay and over an hour of research revealed their billing practices were way behind the times. The embarrassment multiplied with their representation that only one person in the entire firm, a busy partner, could correct the billing error. Seriously? The standard today is your billing records should be on a dashboard accessible by at least every lawyer in the firm, if not every employee. The days of a client inquiring about their balance and being told "We will have to get back with you on that" should definitely be in the past.

At our upcoming Oklahoma Bar Association Solo & Small Firm Conference we have ten, yes TEN, sponsors who will be there offering practice management solutions. Oklahoma lawyers who are not yet using these tools will have a great opportunity to shop for their practice management solution. If you are not an OBA member, there is likely a similar conference near you and all practice management providers have online resources to help you have a purchasing decision.

The tale of poor client services that Susan encountered didn't end with the need for more modern tools for this law firm. When they received their next statement, not only had the credit for the mistake not been applied (guess the partner was very busy that month) but they had been billed another $145 for the paralegal researching the billing error and reporting back on it. The idea that we rectify any mistakes at no charge to the client isn't a 1980's concept. It should be a timeless one!