Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog

Naked and Afraid in the Digital Age: Survival of the Fittest

I didn’t suggest the title. “Naked and Afraid in the Digital Age: Survival of the Fittest” was dreamed up by my Executive Director and some of our creative OBA officers. But I did get to suggest a lot of the content. It embraces some scary, but very useful information for those in our profession.

There is still time for Oklahoma Bar Association members to register for this program presented in Tulsa November 1 in conjunction with our OBA Annual Meeting. Registration for the OBA Annual Meeting is not necessary to register for this continuing legal education program.  You can register for just the CLE program or for the entire Annual Meeting. Register here. There are other options to attend in this multitrack program. So check out the other great CLE programs offered that day.

But for those readers in other jurisdictions who may not be able to attend, I thought I’d share our programming lineup. Don’t be afraid. Just become more engaged and how law practice is evolving and how these changes can impact your law practice.

Naked and Afraid in the Digital Age: Survival of the Fittest

From Limited Scope Services to Artificial Intelligence: Cutting Edge Trends Important to the Practice of Law Jim Calloway, Director of OBA Management Assistance Program

Everything You Need to Know About Time, Billing and Accounting Software with Britt Lorish, Affinity Consulting

Utilizing Client Portals for Increased Security and Better Client Service with Darla Jackson, OBA Practice Management Advisor

The IRS Audit Manual for Law Firms – What You Must Know to Survive with Britt Lorish, Affinity Consulting

Don’t Be Afraid: How You and Your Practice Will Benefit from Digital Client Files with Darla Jackson and Jim Calloway

Like It or Not … Automated Document Assembly Is in Your Future with Jim Calloway

On Thursday morning November 2^nd, there are no fearful topics.

Life. Law. Love. Earn More, Stress Less & Be Awesome will be the topic of Nora Riva Bergman, Attorney Coach and Author of the book, 50 Lessons for Lawyers: Earn More. Stress Less. Be Awesome. I’ve heard Nora speak before at ABA TECHSHOW and this will be an entertaining and valuable presentation.

I’ll be following that up with a program that should be of interest to all lawyers, Marketing Your Practice in a Digital Age. As always there is some great CLE at the OBA Annual Meeting.

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.

Essential Business Skills for Lawyers CLE at OBA Annual Meeting

Essential Business Skills for Lawyers will be offered this week at the Oklahoma Bar Association Annual Meeting. Our special guest is Kevin O’Keefe, CEO of LexBlog, Inc. who will speak on "Client Engagement and Marketing – Everything is Different Today." We are thrilled Kevin is visiting our state to share his expertise on this important topic. I have heard of far too many CLE programs that seem to have the goal of scaring lawyers so they won't use social media and other modern marketing tools. Kevin has great information to share on how to do this effectively and ethically.

But there are many more essential skills lawyers need to run a successful law practice today. For this day-long CLE program, we open with my presentation "The World Has Changed: Running a Successful Law Firm Today and Tomorrow" and continue with presentations on financial literacy for lawyers, cybersecurity, law firm business plans and budgeting, the necessity of using digital client files, practice management software, automation and workflow planning, protecting client confidentiality, succession planning, pricing, billing, attorney fees and attorney-client contracts.

In the afternoon we have breakout sessions with a choice between two topics, but, of course, attendees will receive the written materials on every topic. One does not have to register for OBA Annual Meeting to attend this CLE program.

So if your Wednesday schedule opens up, feel free to be a walk-in attendee at our program. And if you cannot attend, but are interested in the topics, OBA Continuing Legal Education Department is videotaping several of the sessions for later offering as on-demand webinars. Here's a link to the agenda. Hope to see you there.

Lawyers, What's Your Sign?

Lawyers, what is your sign? No, I’m not referring to your astrological sign but rather the signage for your business. Because of my many years working with lawyers, I pay attention to law offices. Whether traveling across Oklahoma or in other states, I sometimes notice lawyers have TERRIBLE signage. Terrible signage is a problem akin to the problem of having a poor receptionist. The issue with poor signage or a poor receptionist is that it creates a bad first impression. Even if you are a solo practitioner practicing in a small town, have had the same location for years and "everyone knows you," you should be concerned about the first impression you are projecting to the people who just moved into town last week and don't know you. Similarly, that kid who just turned 18, who suddenly needs a lawyer and has never paid attention to lawyers before, doesn’t know you. Even people who know you very well will get a nice little reminder when they see your law firm's name every day as they drive by a well-designed and maintained sign. Peeling paint on your signage gives the impression of someone who doesn't pay attention to detail or is perhaps not successful.

Paying a professional to upgrade your signage with new colors and different lettering will grab attention. Maybe it will even remind someone that they have been meaning to make an appointment with a lawyer. Is your law firm’s phone number on your signage and visible from the street? Whether this is a good idea might depend on your style of practice. But the idea of what should be on your signage certainly merits consideration and a business decision instead of just doing things the way they have always been done.

Thoughts on Social Media: Risks, Rewards and Uncertainties

Have you heard of the new mind reading app? It lets you know the thoughts and emotions of others, especially those from your past that you have not seen in a long time. You can use it to find evidence about everything from people are lying about why they really missed work to why they are angry with their spouse. It is the stuff of science fiction. It is called Facebook.

Now that we have experienced several years of everyone being able to publish their thoughts instantly to a world-wide audience at essentially no cost, we have all learned it is a mixed blessing. Most of us have seen social media missteps and mishaps. Some lawyers have already used them as evidence. Some of these are really funny. Like when the CEO of Frito Lay tweeted out a long series of items he meant to type into the Google search bar, ending with these two tweets "who is tweeting my google searches?" and "who's watching me?" The answers were "you are" and "as word spreads, millions using social media are."

In my column for the Oklahoma Bar Journal "Thoughts on Social Media: Risks, Rewards and Uncertainties," I cover several aspects of social media including lawyer marketing via social media and online reviews. This article was a bit stressful to finish as I had done my research weeks earlier and Facebook made a lot of changes as I was finalizing it, including killing the Facebook for Business help pages i was intending to reference. Online reviews are potentially problematic for lawyers. A satisfied client wanting to give you a great review may inadvertently say things that violate the Rules of Professional Conduct and the losing opposing party in litigation may decide to post terrible reviews pretending to be an angry former client.

Here is some back story. Facebook is taking on Yelp with a new local business finder feature that was announced in December. The announcement caused a dip in the price of Yelp stock. Review sites are very popular, but no review site would be worth much if a business could cause any negative reviews to be deleted. (You would end up with the review site equivalent of the Lake Wobegon effect where everyone was above average.) So Facebook only will delete a review on a Facebook business page (to use lawyer language) for good cause. I have concerns about this for lawyers and so have included in my article a workaround to disable reviews entirely, which is more difficult than you might think. Of course, it is Facebook, so that could all change tomorrow.

But I do believe that many lawyers, particularly small firm lawyers, should explore using paid social media campaigns and with Facebook you need some sort of business page to do that.

Enjoy the article, but I will say in advance that there are still changes ahead on  how we use social media, including social media marketing.

 

Toward a Less Stressful Workplace (and More Clients)

Toward a Less Stressful Workplace is my column in the January/February 2015 issue of Law Practice Magazine. Law offices often deal with very high stakes matters under strict time deadlines. It is not news to those in the legal profession that there is a lot of stress associated with being a lawyer. So there may be nothing earth-shattering for you in these tips. But it is the beginning of a new year and aiming for less stress in your life and the lives of your coworkers has to be a good thing. So read and feel free to share.

And the "more clients" part? Well this issue is the marketing issue of Law Practice magazine. Marketing is about getting more clients and better clients. The first feature is a three part discussion on branded legal networks. So if you are not sure what those are or how they relate to you, this may be a great magazine for you to read − virtual cover to virtual cover. Note: If you are an ABA Member, you can join the ABA Law Practice Division to receive the physical magazine or if you are not in the ABA, you can always subscribe to the magazine.

Podcast: The Internet’s Role in Client Development

We have just posted one of our best Digital Edge podcasts of the year. So don't miss it.

The Internet’s Role in Client Development is the topic and we feature Gyi Tsakalakis, who is a non-practicing lawyer and the founder of AttorneySync, an online legal marketing agency. Gyi says it is still true today that people often seek recommendations for products or services from people they know. like and trust. But the difference today is that they are often communicating with those people via social media.

Gyi's advice is not limited to social media. He covers much more, including why the traditional law firm website is still important.

And on the podcast site, Gyi has provided us with many links to great resources. I strongly encourage you to listen to this podcast.

Lawyers can learn about Twitter-- and win a gift card, too!

I really like Twitter. I have volunteered to teach a webcast to help lawyers understand Twitter on Tuesday November 10 (noon CST) and we are calling it Twitter for Lawyers with Jim Calloway. Twitter is probably the most simple and most direct global form of communication. If you want to know what someone is saying on Twitter you check out their Twitter account without them ever knowing or you can follow them to see all of their pearls of wisdom. It reminds me of Jimmy Buffett's Coconut Telegraph. (Here's a YouTube video if you don't get that reference.)

Leading up to our webcast, we are inviting the Twitterverse to have a little fun and have a chance to win a $50 Best Buy gift card. Tweet out how you use Twitter and include both the webinar link and the hashtag:

http://bit.ly/1WgiAhu  #Twitter4Lawyers

You can use another URL shortener if you wish but the hashtag is required, along with a link to the webcast landing page or this blog post. I'd love a good tip about Twitter to add to my program but every individual who tweets with the link and hastag will have an entry no matter what they tweet (within reason and good taste-- my call on that.) The contest ends when the webcast starts and, yes, there will be live tweeting during the presentation. (Employees of the Oklahoma Bar Association are not eligible to win.)

This program will start at a basic level and is perfect for someone who has never tweeted before. Every law firm should have a Twitter account whether they use it frequently or not. Hence the hashtag #Twitter4Lawyers

• So how would a law firm use Twitter?

If your law firm was involved with a matter that became of national public interest and a few hundred thousand people decided to visit your law firm website at once, the site would probably crash and, even if it didn’t, you would receive a large bill from your web hosting service for all of the extra bandwidth. If a million people visit your Twitter feed next week, it costs you nothing and you will have become an Internet sensation.

 

But do you understand how Twitter really works for a lawyer or law firm?  What are hash tags and trending topics? What is a Twitter list? Should I retweet other’s content? How do you engage followers? What are the things a lawyer should not do with Twitter? What about paid Twitter ads?

 

We will cover a lot of territory in this one hour webcast. You may also want to read my blog post earlier this year. Twitter Just Became More Important for Lawyer Marketing

Ambrogi: Is LinkedIn Losing Its Luster for Lawyers?

Blogging about someone else's blog post seems a bit redundant. So I rarely do it. But my friend Bob Ambrogi's post Is LinkedIn Losing Its Luster for Lawyers? struck such a cord with me that I had to note it here.

So many good social sharing ideas get a great start online and then get hijacked by salespeople. I get it. If I was a commissioned salesperson with time on my hands or trying to promote a startup with inadequate marketing budget, I'd be on LinkedIn and every other free social media service sending out invitations to connect. The same idea drove spam email; that you can send out tens of thousands of messages with little effort and expense that the recipients all have to deal with in their inboxes. If only one of every thousand responds as a potential customer, the return on investment can be seen as great, even if the other 999 recipients view you as a morally bankrupt nuisance. 

I hope this trend doesn't destroy LinkedIn, but I already feel slightly negative today every time I think of LinkedIn. I also get too many notifications from LinkedIn. I'm fairly certain many people have no idea they are doing this. Among the most annoying are the ones asking me to congratulate a colleague on a new job when they do not have a new job. They were just tweaking their profile. Don't spam your connections. Go to your LinkedIn privacy setting and turn off activity broadcasts. You will still be able to share anything you intentionally share, but this will limit the unintended sharing.

I'm not dumping LinkedIn yet, although, like others I am much more selective about accepting connection requests from strangers. I automatically send my blog posts to LinkedIn and some people see them there who might have missed them otherwise. I really love the readability and formatting of LinkedIn Pulse.

But LinkedIn was supposed to be a directory-- in my world. It was supposed to facilitate contacts. The idea of seeing someone you might hire who was connected to someone you could trust to give an accurate reference was powerful. Maybe it is too hard to monetize that as rapidly as is wanted today. But I get a lot of digital inflow now and it is hard keeping up. I fear Bob Ambrogi is onto something.

How to Attract Clients in the Digital Era -Digital Edge Podcast

I thought this was a very nice podcast on a timely topic. I'm  just going to repeat much of Legal Talk Network's description of How to Attract Clients in the Digital Era.

On this episode of The Digital Edge, Sharon Nelson and Jim Calloway interview Sona Pancholy, a business development director, about the ways in which the digital age impacts law firm marketing, what mistakes lawyers should avoid making, where busy professionals should start, and some do's and don't's of social media.

Topics include:

 

• Technology leveling the playing field for law firms
• Reduced barrier of entry into new markets
• Increased efficiency in engaging potential clients, preparing pitch materials, etc.
• Website content to help business development
• Updating blogs and videos
• Optimized website for mobile
• Removing the legalese (yes, we know it’s hard)
• Data mining and analytics to target your market
• Bios, LinkedIn, and being familiar with social platforms
• Technology as a tool, not a solution