Global Leader in Legal Marketing & Management
With profit margins spiraling downward, lawyers are looking for ways to reduce costs and to optimize revenue. Part of that effort is to identify alternative sources of revenue, such as internal organ sales, profit-skimming, or Ponzi scheming. One overlooked source of revenue is lawyer merchandising. We’ve recently surveyed lawyer merchandising efforts and can now report back on some of the top choices for merchandising in the coming year. [Read more...]
As a resident futurist, I’m paid a paltry sum to predict things. But I typically do better than the schleps over at legal marketing and technology blog Lawyerist, who posed this question recently: Lawyers, Is It Time to Toss Your Business Cards? First of all, the answer is yes. Just yes, and most competent lawyers already knew this. But, unlike the novitiates over at Lawyerist, it’s not because of AOL, MySpace, and other more passe social media like Twitter and Quora. It’s because of a recent shift in focusing on “uber” social media, which combines the sensuality of human skin with a conscious desire for too much information. The future of lawyer business cards? The tattoo. [Read more...]
Blawgging and trolling are similar to war and warfare, though without weapons, combat, battleships, air strikes, refugees, camouflauge, injuries, and casualties. Often, on account of the need to maintain a degree of anonymity and intimidation, blawggers adopt a nom de guerre, a clever French phrase that looks sophisticated when italicized but generally means “war name.” Great blawgging nom de guerres have burnished reputations (Chank Peters is a prime example). But others have ruined careers. Here are five nom de guerres to avoid. [Read more...]
A number of attorneys have thought about having a law firm web site. For those that do not yet have a web site, or for those thinking about enhancing their current site on Yahoo, deciding on appropriate images can be an initial stumbling block. It doesn’t have to be, especially with the wealth of information and millions of stock images available. If you are stumped by picking an image for your site, here are four key image categories that can provide that oft-missing Wow factor from many law firm websites today. [Read more...]
Attorneys are high powered people with dull clothes and dark shoes. They are also considered successful. But with that success comes stress, anxiety, and expensive dark shoes. While booze and a high-cap credit limit can tamper down problems with success, they are not always good choices nor do they generally lead to positive change. Merely shifting your perpective, however, and adopting a “limited success” model can pay a modicum of dividends. If you are suffering from success, reconsider your approach and adopt these few key strategies to help you achieve more limited success. [Read more...]
As Big Legal Brain’s resident futurist, I am often asked about the future. People have recently asked me about Shpoonkle, the new Yiddish-language lawyer matching and bidding service. While even mentioning Shpoonkle can risk an attorney getting tarred, feathered and immediately disbarred, some shmoe out there needed to take a closer look at this thing and report back about it. Lucky for you, I’m that shmoe. [Read more...]
News last week about attorneys in New York charging more than $1,000 an hour came as no surprise to many lawyers. After all, most of us already charge in the lower five-figure range. While ridiculously lucrative (I’m actually writing this from Belize, a country I purchased last week), it does present serious billing challenges. For instance, how best do you represent your time when each minute is worth about $167.00? Instead of describing how I manage to do this successfully, here is one of my more recent bills, with sensitive client data removed. [Read more...]
Everyone loves a trophy, and your clients are no exception. A well-appointed trophy at the right time can cement the attorney-client relationship, remind the client about your awesomeness, and make most clients feel like they did something significant. And with the cost of plaques and trophies diminishing rapidly, it’s a great time to implement a trophy-based rewards program. But when should you give out trophies to clients? And for what? Here’s what our field research shows.
[Read more...]
You are listed in an online lawyer directory known as Avvo. Yes, you are. What’s Avvo? We recently explained it as “a site that uses fancy wind and solar powered proprietary algorithms to rate attorneys from 1-10. #manbehindcurtain.” Though Avvo’s counsel responded to clarify that Avvo uses only fossil fuels, the core of Avvo remains its ten-point rating system. Our own @gregoryluce is rated a 10, though he got that by adding all of his social media badges and answering an ERISA law question. Idiot.
But a super duper Avvo rating creates a big problem: future unrealistic expectations of clients, who essentially believe you are an astronaut. With a super duper rating, how can you deliver top-notch work for every client, every day? After all, everyone knows that attorneys do a mediocre job on their run-of-the-mill cases so as to finance their high-profile ERISA cases. But what if you are expected to provide astronaut-level service when you actually hobby in the law at Starbucks? It can be unnecessarily exhausting.
[Read more...]
Advertising and marketing your law firm’s services can be dicey and expensive. It can also be confusing, given the choices between Yellow Pages, late night television, or autotweeting about car accidents. On top of that, you often must comply with state disciplinary rules, which typically involve complex manipulations of the First Amendment.
[Read more...]
C. Hank Peters is Big Legal Brain's SuperMayor and a world-renowned legal marketing guru. Raised in the era of IBM mainframes and staplers, he knows how to make your firm efficient and completely awesome. He does not speak or write Chinese.
From the Disgruntled