Legal Ease Blog

Summer Reading for Lawyers

While the weather outside on Long Island isn't exactly balmy yet (at least not consistently), my calendar tells me that summer is approaching, and for many, that means it's time to find some great books to read, whether you prefer the paper and ink kind or reading on your Kindle or other electronic device.

Last week, I attended the Amercian Bar Association combined Spring Meeting for the Law Practice Management Section and the Young Lawyers Division, and the theme from one of our business meetings was books. That, coupled with several recent conversations with lawyers about books prompted me to write this post. The following is a list of book suggestions compiled from my own lists, last week's meeting, and those multiple conversations.

While some of the books on this list are books you'd expect to see on a reading list for lawyers, others are rather unconventional suggestions. This list is by no means exhaustive, but I hope you find at least one book that you hadn't considered before.

My recommendations:

The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, by Richard Susskind There's been a lot of 'buzz' in the legal world about this book, which is a bit more optimistic than its title implies. Susskind opines that the nature of legal services, and the delivery of those services, will change dramatically over the next several years. I recommend the book to every lawyer, regardless of practice area or stage of your career. If you want a bit of a preview about the concepts in the book, you can hear Susskind's keynote speech that was given at this year's American Bar Association Techshow earlier this year at the ABA Techshow home page. 

Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It, by Peggy Klaus
Some may say that lawyers brag too much and focus too much on themselves, but do they sell themselves well? Whether you're a lawyer looking for a job, trying to impress the partners in your firm with your accomplishments or seeking ways to differentiate yourself and get your message out to clients, this book can help. Learn creative ways to talk about your skills and accomplishments to showcase what is unique about you without sounding like you're a pompous jerk.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini
As a lawyer, much of what you do involves persuasion, from persuading a jury to find in favor of your client, to persuading a potential client that you're the lawyer they should work with to persuading counsel to adopt your version of the contract provision or persuading an employee to take on a new project or responsibility. This book will provide insight into how people make decisions and identifies the most effective methods you can use to convince others.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
Another book about how people make decisions, Gladwell's Blink focuses on split-second decisionmaking and how you can train yourself to focus on the most important information, and make faster - and possibly more valuable - decisions. This is an especially interesting read for lawyers, who are prone to 'analysis paralysis' and often have difficulty identifying when to stop researching or planning and make a decision.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell
Are you a "Connector" a "Maven" a "Salesman," or none of the above - and what does that mean for your practice? What methods can be employed to affect real change?

What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Business, by Harry Beckwith
Beckwith's books are easy to read, and the chapters are short, making them ideal reads for waiting in court or for a 15 minute break during the day. This book puts the focus back where it belongs - on the client. If you want to attract and keep clients, this volume will give you practical, strategic and humorous tips to do just that.

Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing, by Harry Beckwith
I already wrote about this book in December in my post, "Good is Better than Best When it Comes to Planning," but the book has much more to offer than I wrote about in that post. Law is a service profession, which, by definition means that it's a relationship profession. In this book, Beckwith demonstrates how best to market a service business. This book demonstrates one of the core principles I discuss with clients on a daily basis - marketing is inextricably intertwined with the way you run your practice - your marketing will fall flat if you don't deliver the client experience.

The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron
Whether you consider yourself an 'artist' or not, the fact of the matter is that as a lawyer, you're in a creative profession. And the more creative and innovative you can be, the better the client experience you can deliver. But it's easly to lose that creative edge when you're mired in the day to day business of law. Cameron's program can help you unblock that creativity, and it includes one of the exercises clients have found universally helpful - the daily writing habit. 

The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life, by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
Another 'non-traditional' recommendation for lawyers, but one that's sure to provide inspiration and a new way of looking at your practice, motivating your employees and creating the results you want in your practice. It includes some techniques and practices that you may have seen before, but with a bit of a twist. In a time of economic downturn, it's especially useful for learning to look for possibilities and opportunities rather than seeing the world through a scarcity mindset.

(For more of my recommendations, see my recommended reading list in the sidebar of this blog)

Recommendations from others (that I look forward to reading):

Leading Change, by John P. Kotter

Aligning the Stars: How To Succeed When Professionals Drive Results, by Jay William Lorsch and Thomas J. Tierney

The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action, by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton

Spin Selling, by Neil Rackham

Small is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants and Remarkable Business Ideas, by Seth Godin

World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories, by David Meerman Scott

10-10-10: A Life Transorming Idea, by Suzy Welch

And I got a great tip at the meeting from Tom Grella, partner and chair of the Management Committeer at McGuire, Wood & Bissette, P.A.: You can find books at great prices at www.alibris.com.

Special thanks to Jennifer Ator and John Remsen for their suggestions as well!

Please share your book suggestions by leaving a comment!

Law Practice Today - A Great Resource for Lawyers

The Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association publishes Law Practice Today, an online magazine specifically targeted toward the business issues involved in the practice of law in four core areas: Management, Marketing, Finance and Technology.

Law Practice Today is a FREE resource for attorneys - you don't have to be a member of the LPM Section, or even a member of the ABA, in order to access the magazine and its articles. The May issue was just posted. It focuses on the issues encountered by lawyers starting or re-starting their own practices.

Here's what you'll find in this issue:

Finance
Two of the questions most frequently asked by lawyers are: “How much money do I need in order to open my own practice?” and “What do I do about clients who want me to reduce my fees?” This month’s issue addresses both. Erik Mazzone’s article, “How Much Money Do You Need to Start a Law Firm” providing tips for lawyers to help them determine whether they’re ready to go out on their own.

 

It’s no secret that the recession is hitting the legal profession hard. Ed Poll addresses the ways law firms can retain income and clients by demonstrating value, managing knowledge appropriately, unbundling services and more in Legal Fees: How to Address the Client Pressure to Lower Fees.

Technology
Technology can give lawyers an advantage by helping them to be more productive, but it has its downside, too. In this month’s The Legal Mac Column, David Sparks discusses Using Windows on Your Mac, eliminating one more obstacle for those seeking to switch from PCs to Macs, whether you want to use Windows exclusively or Windows and OS X on the same machine. In BlackBerry Behavior: Is It Ruining Your Reputation? the darker side of technology rears its ugly head when BlackBerry users forget to be considerate of those around them (this article previously appeared as a post on this blog).

 

It’s tough keeping up with the latest technology, but Dennis Kennedy’s article, Legal Technology Trends for 2009: The Year of Hunkering Down identifies trends and provides tips for what lawyers can do now to stay ahead of the curve – even if they’re on a budget.

Speaking of budgets – most lawyers are looking for ways to cut expenses during the downturn. Joseph Kashi identifies Low-Cost Computer Fixes for Tough Times. And our own Rodney Dowell reviews Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Legal and tells of his personal experience installing and using the software across multiple platforms.

Marketing Yourself and Your Firm
Can small firms compete with big firms for business? Davis C. Bae shows how small firms can do just that in The Illusion of Size (And Other Ways to Compete with the Big Competition).  Looking for a job? If so, you’re marketing YOU. Meri J. Kahan shows law students how their performance at a summer job or internship is an important first step to landing a full time position in Alchemy in a Down Economy: Turning a 2L Summer Associate Job into a Golden Full-Time One.

In Make Giving Part of Your Business Strategy, Andrea Malone shows lawyers how they can contribute to charity, even in tough times, and to do so strategically to benefit the firm as well as the charity. And Mister Thorne provides A Formula for Shy Attorneys, demonstrating how even shy attorneys can attract business, and learn successful rainmaking tips from Rainmaker Linda J. Ravdin in an interview by Beverly A. Loder.  

Management
One of the decisions lawyers need to make when opening their own practices is about where to establish an office. Home office? Executive suite? Office share? The Essentials of Office Sharing and Executive Suites, an excerpt from Flying Solo provides tips to help lawyers make this all-important decision.

 You’ve probably heard about the swine flu even if you haven’t been directly affected by it yet – but how will an outbreak affect your firm or your clients? Read Swine Flu – Some Employment Issues by Bernard Jacques to find out.

Podcast – Productivity Tips
This month’s installment of The Digital Edge Technology Podcast by Jim Calloway and Sharon Nelson is a discussion with Reid Trautz and Dan Pinnington about their new book, The Busy Lawyer’s Guide to Success: Essential Tips to Power Your Practice. 

These articles and more are available at no cost to you and your readers on the LPM website. This month’s issue can be found at: http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/home.shtml.

NY judge rules matrimonial lawyer forfeits fees since bills were not timely

Billing requirements in New York matrimonial cases are very strict. The strict rules were put into place in order to avoid abuses. One of those rules, which can be found in New York 22 NYCRR 1400 et seq, requires matrimonial lawyers to bill their clients at least every 60 days (1400.3). The bills must be written and itemized.

Recently, a Long Island, NY lawyer who handled a matrimonial action for a client in Suffolk County was denied the right to recover legal fees earned due to her failure to follow these rules.

The lawyer took a retainer from the client and sent bills in December and then in February. At the time of the Februrary bill, the client had a credit balance of over $2,000. However, the attorney failed to provide the client with another itemized bill until June - more than 120 days since the date of the previous bill.

Although the lawyer claimed that she had several conversations with the client during the months between February and June, and that she advised the client that the retainer had been exhasted and that additional charges were accruing, at no time did she provide the client with a written, itemized bill.

The client claimed not only that he did not receive a bill, but also that he was never told by the attorney that he owed additional legal fees. Further, he claimed that he had advised the attorney that he was financially unable to pay additional legal fees, a fact he claimed the attorney was well aware of, as the attorney was working on a modification of the separatin agreement with the client's wife due to changed financial circumstances.

Nassau County Supreme Court judge William LaMarca, in Verkowtiz v. Torres held that the attorney, Charlene Verkowitz, failed to follow the rules set forth for matrimonial attorneys and therefore, held that she was not entitled to recover the legal fees contained in the June bill. [Verkowitz was discharged by Torres in July]. However, the court also held that she did not have to return the balance of the retainer which had not yet been earned at the time of the February bill, since those fees were properly earned.

The message for attorneys is twofold: 

Be mindful of the rules of your jurisdiction regarding legal fees, and read them very carefully. Follow the rules to the letter. Where a bright line rule such as this one exists, there is no room for error. There is no reason to forfeit an earned legal fee by failing to timely send a bill to the client.

Where a client indicates an unwillingness or inability to pay for legal services, or where the representation makes clear that the client is experiencing financial difficulty, do everything in your power to safeguard your fees. Put everything in writing as often as you can. Unless you're willing to work for free, get additional retainer funds up front and monitor billing and collections closely.

Whether specifically advised by the client that he was unable to pay or not, the attorney should have been aware of the client's financial situation, since she was requesting a modification of the separation agreement on that grounds. Not only should the attorney have been extra vigilant about timely billing, but she should have taken steps to ascertain whether the client was able to pay, or taken steps to withdraw to avoid performing legal work for which she couldn't be compensated. While the court may not have granted the request to withdraw, at least the lawyer would have made a record with respect to the legal fee issues.

Under any circumstances, 120 days is far too long between legal bills, particularly when you are dealing with clients in financial distress. Rather than failing to send the bill in 60 days, this attorney should have considered sending bills every 30 days if she suspected that the client would not be able to pay, or if significant legal work was being performed.

According to the court's decision, as of February, the client had a credit totaling over $2,000, and yet the attorney sued for almost $8,000 on the June bill. That means that between February and June, over $10,000 in legal work was performed for a client who was in financial difficulty, and yet the attorney failed to put anything in writing to document the work performed or to bill the client for the work during that 120 day period.

This situation is more common than it might seem. Lawyers are focused on performing the legal work that their clients require, but they often neglect the business side of their practice, failing to send bills timely, failing to follow up on accounts receivable, and taking little, if any action to collect until it's too late.

While it's important to do good work for your clients and to keep up with your obligations to them, you must also pay attention to your bottom line.

If you need help developing an effective billing, A/R and collections procedure, or any other systems and procedures in your office, visit my website, www.LawyerMeltdown.com to see how I might be able to help.

Do Something! Attend the Total PMA "Get a Life" (TM) Conference

I'll be participating in the Total PMA's "Get a Life" (TM) Conference next month,  Wednesday, May 27 and Thursday, May 28, 2009 in Chicago. I'm honored to have been asked to participate in the conference, which will focus on ways attorneys can create a successful law practice without losing themselves in the process. 

"Work-life balance" has been a big issue for lawyers in the past several years, and this conference will provide attendees with specific tips, tools and techniques from some of the leading experts in the legal world. 

Speakers who will be presenting at the conference include Gerry Riskin of Edge International, Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog, Nancy Roberts Linder of Nancy Roberts Linder Consulting, Larry Bodine of Larry Bodine Marketing, Stephen Fairley of the Rainmaker Institute, and Alexis Martin Neely of Law Business Revolution, among others.

Topics that will be covered at the conference include:

• The importance of work/life balance;

• Creating and maintaining professional online relationships;

• The use of blogging and social media to enhance your practice;

• Building effective business development plans;

• Achieving fast, effective results from your marketing efforts;

• Effective and innovative billing practices;

• Getting the most of out on-demand document management;

• Insights on outsourcing;

And more.

In addition to the conference sessions themselves, there will be networking opportunities and great social events.

I'm looking forward to the conference, and I hope that you'll be able to join me. For a two day conference with this many great speakers, the Get a Life (TM) conference is already a great value -- but here's an insider's tip for Legal Ease blog readers:

You can get 25% off of the registration fee for the program here:

Link:  http://www.gifttool.com/registrar/ShowEventDetails?ID=1789&EID=4032

Promo Code: Enter INSIDER upon check-out

Want more information? Check out the Total PMA Get A Life (TM) Conference site.

Are you brave enough to let your clients set your fees?

The April/May 2009 Law Practice magazine, a publication of the American Bar Association, focuses on innovation. "Running Ahead of the Pack: Trailblazers in the Law Firm World," by Steven Taylor, profiles law firms taking new approaches to client service, partnerships, hiring and more. The first two firms profiled in the piece, Summit Law Group of Seattle, Washington and Exemplar Law Partners each provide service guarantees to clients in the form of fee adjustments.

Summit Law Group's contracts with clients include a 'value-adjustment line' encouraging clients to adjust the bills either up or down as the client sees fit, based upon the client's perception of the value of the legal work performed for them. Exemplar Law Partners uses a value based billing model and provides clients with a guarantee; if clients feel they did not receive value commensurate with the fee paid, Exemplar's guarantee ensures that a fair price will be negotiated with the client.

Both of these firms have used guarantees for a number of years and report that clients rarely or never take advantage of them.

Lawyers: Are you prepared to offer a similar guarantee to your clients, essentially allowing them to set the fee for the services you provide, or to adjust the fee based upon their perception of the value of the services that you provided to them? And if not, why not? 

Lawyers that are not prepared to offer such guarantees may not be confident in the value they provide to clients. Alternatively, they may not be confident that their clients see the value in the services they provide - particularly when the outcome is outside of the control of the lawyer or is not what the client was hoping for. But if you're not confident that your client sees the value of the services you provide, where is the disconnect? Are you failing to articulate value to the client in terms the client can understand, or are you working with the wrong clients?

Billable Hour Buzz - Is Change Really Coming?

As many of you already know, in a recent piece on Forbes.com, a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore commented that it's time for lawyers to let go of the billable hour. The article makes mention of many of the problems with the billable hour that you've probably read or heard about both here and elsewhere. But coming from a BigLaw trial attorney, the exhortation to move to "a rational system that puts the incentives where they should be" may signal real change.

One of the biggest advantages solos and small firms have is their ability to be more flexible, to innovate quickly and to offer alternatives that big firms traditionally haven't offered or couldn't offer. Many large firm lawyers don't have the ability to alter fee structures or provide alternative services without navigating a large firm bureaucracy and their entrenched way of doing business. Solos and smaller firms, by virtue of their size and their decisionmaking have traditionally been able to experiment more and to work more closely with clients to provide individualized solutions. But large and small firms alike have been slow to adopt billable hour alternatives, particularly in a litigation setting.

If BigLaw is willing to embrace non-hourly billing alternatives for litigation, solos and small firms will have to move quickly and think even more seriously about changing their fee structures to stay ahead of the curve.

Melody Kramer, writing for the National Association of Freelance Legal Professionals (Quality vs. Quantity - the billable hour mousetrap) reiterates the refrain of many alternative billing proponents when she says, "The amount of time spent on a project is not an accurate reflection of the end product’s value. Lawyers have forgotten that basic truth." But she also points out the complicity of clients in the fee trap, noting that the 'best' law firms are often considered to be those firms with the highest profit per partner, rather than those that have demonstrated efficiency, creative thinking or legal insight.

Even the New York Times ran a piece last week about the billable hour system and the potential changes on the horizon.

As regular readers of this blog know, I am a proponent of alternative fee arrangments because I believe that the billable hour system does a disservice to both lawyers and clients. The variations on pricing are limited only by the rules of ethics and the innovation of the lawyers and clients willing to look at pricing legal services differently. As Tom Kane pointed out in a post last week entitled, Now is the Time to Consider Alternative Fees, blended contingency agreements and multi-phased fee agreements are only two such alternatives.

Interested in exploring alternatives to your fee structure? Want to know more about billing alternatives? Take a look at the posts in my Legal Fees and Billing category. If you want to discuss ways in which your firm can explore alternatives to the billable hour, feel free to contact me for a consultation.

Will Lawyers Move to Value Pricing?

Late last year, I engaged in a bit of a debate with David Giacalone of f/k/a about value pricing and alternative billing for lawyers. Ron Baker, a well-known proponent of value pricing, didn't join the debate directly, but he did post some comments on the Vera Sage website about the continuation of the debate over value pricing for lawyers.

Baker opines that two factors may push lawyers toward value pricing, neither of which is the current economic crisis. Instead, Baker believes that the unsustainability of the billable hour model and the competition for legal talent will be the driving force behind a switch to fixed fee pricing for law firms. His post, and indeed the whole Vera Sage site are recommended reading for any lawyer or professional services firm seeking information about switching to fixed fees.

Do clients really care what it costs you to produce your service?

This week has been a bit slow for me on posts, but that doesn't mean I've been slacking off. I've been participating in an online discussion over at f/k/a that has to do with clients, cost of production, associate bonuses and value pricing - sort of.

David Giacalone at f/k/a penned (can we still say 'penned' even though it's electronic?) a post entitled, "smart clients care about bonuses and marketplace 'value.'" My comments to the post were extensive, so I won't reiterate them here, but I hope you'll read them at f/k/a. Suffice it to say that my comments focused on whether clients really care about your costs (i.e. what salaries or bonuses you pay to staff or how many hours you expend working on their matter), or whether those things become client concerns only when and if the client perceives them to be directly tied to the fee the client pays for your service.

As usual, I'd like to thank all of those involved in these discussions - not just about value pricing, but about what clients want, need and expect. I firmly believe that the more dialog on these issues, the better our solutions will be - for lawyers and for clients. Join the conversation!

Law Practice Today - a great resource for your practice

The latest edition of the American Bar Association Law Practice Management section's webzine, Law Practice Today, is live today. This month's issue focuses on what's foremost in everyone's mind these days - the economy.

LPT is available to everyone on the web, even if you aren't an LPM section member (or even an ABA member), and many of the articles are written by well-known authors in the practice management arena, so take advantage of this resource!

Here's a sample of the articles available this month:

David Maister on restoring optimism in the office even in this economy;

Carly Sproul on marketing and maintaining client relationships in difficult times;

Deborah Gillis on proper screening of clients (a topic near and dear to my heart);

A roundtable discussion moderated by Dennis Kennedy on how to practice during economic turmoil (including my own comments).

New this month
Ben Stevens (the MacLawyer) has a new column in the Webzine debuting this month – he’s talking about why Macs are suited for lawyers.

Another new column is Your Practice Management Advisor. This month’s installment covers the frequently asked questions encountered by PMAs

Finally, and especially for you solos -- Bill Gibson's got a new column, Flying Solo, and this month he's talking about whether you're cut out for solo practice.

Can Matrimonial Lawyer in New York Use Alternative Billing and Fixed Fees?

During a recent speaking engagement discussing alternative billing and using fixed fees rather than billing by the hour, a spirited discussion sprang up about the ability of matrimonial lawyers in New York to use fixed fees.

As I've written before, sometimes it's difficult for lawyers to use fixed fees in their practices if the courts will be reviewing their retainer agreements or their fee structure and basing a determination of fees on the hourly rate and length of time invested, as is sometimes the case when a fee dispute arises, when fee-shifting applies or when the courts have the ability to set the lawyer's fee. But it occurred to me -- are the courts basing their decisions on billable hours because billable hours is the only thing they can base it on, given the circumstances?

In other words, if the lawyers involved in the case bill their clients using an hourly billing system, can the court base a fee determination on anything other than the reasonableness of the hours expended and the rate charged? Do we really know for sure that the courts would reject fixed fee arrangements if they were presented properly to the court and fully explained in the retainer agreement?

As I've written in the past, the Model Rules cite a number of factors to be considered when determining reasonableness of attorneys' fees. Included among those factors are the time and labor required. But those are certainly not the ONLY factors.

In New York 22 NYCRR 1400 regulates fees in matrimonial actions.The New York rules require matrimonial lawyers to provide clients with a written retainer agreement which must be written in plain language and include the nature of the relationship and the details of the fee arrangement. The client is entitled to request that the lawyer clarify any of the terms of the retainer agreement in writing.

Matrimonial clients are not required to enter into a fee arrangement that is contingent on the securing of a divorce or on the amount of money or property that may be obtained.

Matrimonial lawyers may not request a retainer fee that is nonrefundable. In other words, if the lawyer withdraws or is discharged, they are entitled to be paid for work performed and may not automatically keep the entire amount of the retainer.

It does not appear to me that any of the rules prohibit matrimonial lawyers in New York State from entering into fixed fee arrangements with clients, or from using staged or other alternative billing methods. In fact, the rules even state that a New York matrimonial attorney may enter into a minimum fee arrangement that provides for the payment of a specific amount below which the fee will not fall based upon the handling of the case to its conclusion.

Indeed the rules would seem to favor fixed fee arrangements and the use of supplemental services agreements, as the rules state that, after the attorney has had a reasonable opportunity to investigate the case, the client is entitled to be given an estimate of approximate future costs of the case, which estimate shall be made in good faith but may be subject to change due to facts and circumstances affecting the case.

If the scope of the work is outlined well and the attorney follows the other rules, perhaps it isn't as impossible as you may think.