Legal Ease Blog

Client is Questioning a Legal Bill - Can This Relationship Be Saved?

When a client begins questioning your bills, is it the beginning of the end of the client relationship?

A lawyer recently told me, “If the client is questioning my bills, it means the client doesn’t trust me, and the relationship deteriorates from there. The relationship will end badly. It’s inevitable. It has nothing to do with me and there is nothing I can do about it.”

Is this really true?

Maybe, but then again, maybe not.

If a client is questioning a bill, it is not a foregone conclusion that the client doesn’t trust you; nor is it accurate to say that there is nothing that you can do about it.

Why do clients question lawyers’ bills?

There are many reasons why a client may question your bills. These might include:

• The client doesn’t understand what was done or why it was necessary
• The client doesn’t understand the process involved
• The client doesn’t understand your billing process
• The bill doesn’t fully describe the work performed or the effort expended on the client’s behalf
• The bill contains work that was not anticipated by the client
• The bill was much higher than the client expected

Many of these factors are within your control, and may be limited or eliminated with good billing and intake practices.

Good practices get bills paid

Use the initial client meeting to fully explain the scope of work to be performed and the fees associated with that work. Take advantage of this opportunity to fully explain all potential variables. Give the client the chance to ask questions. Many clients are reluctant to admit their ignorance of the law or the legal process and will be afraid to ask questions, but encouraging questions at the beginning can avoid headaches – and unpaid bills – later.

Avoid “surprise” bills that include unanticipated work or a higher fee than expected. No client likes to receive those kinds of bills. Communicate with the client about the work to be performed before undertaking that work. When unanticipated circumstances arise, get the client’s agreement on any new work before moving forward and explain why it must be performed and how it relates to the client’s goals and expectations. And use each bill as an opportunity to demonstrate and reinforce the value that you provide to the client.

Although there are rare occasions when it may not be possible to discuss work with the client before the work is done, the client’s first notification about unanticipated work or charges should not come when the client receives the bill. In all circumstances you should discuss the unanticipated events with the client and explain the effect on the fee before the bill is sent to the client. These conversations should take place by telephone or in person, and should not be communicated only by email in all but the most extreme circumstances.

What to do when a client questions your bill

When a client questions your bill, it is imperative that you investigate what is behind the client’s questions. What is motivating the inquiry?

There will always be some clients who will not value lawyers or the work they do, no matter how well you explain it. Others simply cannot afford your fees, and are just trying to get the bill as low as they can. But it is your responsibility to determine whether that is the case, or whether the client has legitimate questions about the work that was done and why or the amount of time expended.

When a client questions a bill, it is a good opportunity for you to reinforce value – to return the discussion you had with the client during the initial intake and to revisit the client’s goals and expectations for the engagement. If this conversation did not occur at intake, now is the time for you to explore these issues with the client to ensure that you and your client are working together toward a common goal.

Old clients, new matters

On occasion, billing questions arise when you are performing ongoing work for an existing client or the client requests new or additional work after completion of the matter for which you were originally engaged.

For example, assume a client hires you to negotiate a lease agreement at $250/hour. Once that contract has been negotiated and the lease has been signed, the client asks you to negotiate a contract with a vendor at the same $250/hour rate. Although you may have discussed the intricacies of negotiating a lease agreement with the client at the beginning of the engagement, the same may not be true for the second contract. If the vendor negotiation is more complicated or the other party is less responsive, the bill may be higher than the client expects, giving rise to questions when the client receives the bill.

Ideally, you would discuss the client’s objectives and expectations with each new item of work you undertake, and provide the client with the variables that might affect the fee, but many lawyers neglect this step with ongoing client relationships.

Hourly billing only complicates the matter, since it can be difficult to determine up front exactly how many hours will be expended on a client’s matter, particularly if the matter involves litigation or otherwise relies upon compliance or cooperation from other parties and/or their counsel. But variables and potential complications should be discussed with the client up front, and any delays or other complications should be communicated during the engagement as they occur, before the client is billed.

Billing write-offs

Another lawyer asks, “I have some clients for whom I write off a lot of time. Should I take that as a sign that I should eliminate the client? Should I itemize no-charge items on client bills? It’s time-consuming to keep track of these items, but later, the same client will question charges or skimp on necessary work to save money.”

First, explore the reasons why you are writing off time. Is it at the client’s request, or are you undercutting yourself by writing off legitimate time spent on the client’s matter before the client receives the bill? Are you writing off time because you believe the value of the services provided to the client is less than what you have billed? If so, you may need to examine the kinds of matters you are undertaking or how you are handling them.

If the client is asking for the write-off, have you adequately established the value of the work you have performed? Have you firmly established your billing practices and boundaries with the client?

While it is time-consuming, if you are going to bill based on hours, you should always keep track of all of the time you spend working for a client and always reflect it on the bill, even if (and perhaps especially if) you are not going to charge for that time. This may reduce or even eliminate instances of clients asking for a reduction for work that was necessary.

When you bill hourly, clients tend to focus on just hours, rather than on the actual work you are doing or the value you are providing to them and their business. It is especially important to show those kinds of clients that you are providing value and to show them that you are not nickel and diming them or charging them for every minute you’re working for them. It is likely that you are tracking this time to some extent anyway, so taking the few seconds it should take to create a no-charge billing entry is well worth it in client goodwill.

Keep in mind that the clients who are most focused on hours (to the exclusion of other factors) are usually not your ideal clients. You may want to use time write-offs or repeated billing questions as a way to help identify and eliminate lower value clients who are more demanding and do not value your services – but only after you’ve explored how you might salvage the relationship, set better billing practices and standards and communicate more effectively with clients about your services and your fees.

Update: This post was picked as a Technolawyer SmallLaw Pick of the Week!

The First Two Rules of Marketing: Know Your Purpose and Your Audience

 

Marketing Basics: Who's Your Audience?

Two of the most basic rules of marketing are: (1) know your purpose and (2) know your audience. But as basic as these rules are, they are violated surprisingly frequently. Take, for example, the frequent emails I receive from individuals seeking to write guest posts on this blog or on my lawyermeltdown.com site. Here's one I received this week (names and other details removed to protect the writer's identity):

Hello,

My name is [name]; I run a blog at [blog url], a network of experienced criminal defense attorneys across [state]. We write a lot of quality content on legal defense, assault charges, domestic violence, misdemeanors, property crimes and other criminal defense topics, something I noticed you also love to publish on your esteemed website :)

I know you’re incredibly busy, so I’ll be quick. I have an article that I’d like to contribute to your site. It’s about Bail and why it is inherently excessive, which I know you and your readers have expressed interest in, and I think they’d like what I have to say. Naturally, if you choose to run the piece, we’ll tell our readers about and promote on social media, so you’d get a traffic boost (and hopefully some new readers, as well). Let me know if you’re interested and we can talk about the next steps.

One way or another, thanks for your time, and keep up the awesome work!

Take care,

[name]

How well did this email work? Let's examine these two basic rules of marketing. 

Any marketing endeavor should begin with an examination of purpose. Why are you undertaking this particular project or marketing initiative? What do you hope to accomplish? Is your chosen method the best method for accomplishing this purpose?

Next, you need to spend some time thinking about your audience. Given your intended purpose, who is the most appropriate audience for your marketing message? Where is the best place to reach that audience? What is the best method for reaching them? Does this audience have likes, dislikes, preferences or biases that might affect your marketing message, your approach, or the method you choose to reach them? If you don't know the answers to these questions, it might be time to do some homework.

Going back to our example above, let's look at each of these basics in turn. 

Know Your Purpose

First, is marketing the purpose of this email? Of course it is! He's using guest posting as a way to gain more visibility for his blog and for the lawyers in his criminal defense network. He is marketing himself to bloggers and websites as a guest writer. The purpose of this email is to have me agree to post his contribution about excessive bail on my blog or site.

Looking at purpose alone, this writer did a decent job of marketing his guest post - he provided me with the url to his blog so that I could go there and see the post topics and the quality of the writing. He gave me a good idea of his market and the kinds of topics his blog covers. And he made a suggestion of a specific topic for his proposed guest post on my blog.

There were some negatives, though. For example, he doesn't tell me whether the piece he is proposing would be unique content provided only to me. Is this content he's shopping to many others? If so, it might result in me posting duplicate content that appears in other places on the internet, which is something I'd want to avoid.

He also doesn't say exactly who will be writing the post he proposes. His email says he runs a blog that is a network of criminal defense attorneys, which makes me wonder who is actually creating the content. If I were to accept a guest post, I'd want to know who was writing it and whether that person had a perspective or something to say that would resonate with my readers. 

And that brings us to the next marketing basic:

Know Your Audience

This is where this email, and the writer's whole pitch, falls apart. It is glaringly obvious that the person who sent me this email knows nothing about my blog or my website, the market I serve, or the topics that would fit into my site. What makes it even worse is that the writer says things like, "something I noticed you also love to publish on your esteemed website :)" and "which I know you and your readers have expressed interest in, and I think they’d like what I have to say."

The email makes it sound as if this writer is actually familiar with my blog or website and what my readers want, even though it is clear from the topics he talks about and the piece he proposes that he hasn't read my blog or site at all. If he had spent some time looking at my blog or website, he would know that criminal law topics are not the right fit for me.

This was a complete failure to identify the appropriate audience for the writer's marketing pitch; in this case, the audience should have been limited to blogs or websites that post on criminal law issues or target audiences with an interest in criminal law topics. 

Not only did this writer waste my time and his (although, in fairness, he did provide me with a blog post topic), but the net effect of contacting me with this pitch was not only not positive (he didn't accomplish his purpose) or even neutral, but it was, in fact, negative.

It is clear to me that the writer didn't do his homework, didn't tailor his email messages, and is only pretending to be familiar with my audience, my site and its contents. What does that say about how he - or the lawyers he represents - does business?

It is likely that this same email pitch was sent, word for word, to many other websites or blogs. Perhaps he wouldl get lucky and some of them would be the right fit. But is that the most effective way to go about marketing yourself, your firm, or your practice? Is that the way you want others to go about marketing you or your firm? Is it professional? Is getting one yes worth the potential negative effect of the impression left on the others for whom this pitch wasn't appropriate?

What do you think?

Related articles

New York Social Media Ethics Guidelines

New ABA Ethics Opinion on Confidentiality, Security of Client Data in Electronic Communications

Last week (May 11, 2017), the ABA issued a new ethics opinion, Formal Opinion 477, dealing with the security of communication of protected client information. Several excellent posts have already been written about the opinion, including a summary by the ABA Journal, and an article by Bob Ambrogi on his Law Sites blog, among others. The opinion is getting a lot of attention, since it updates the ABA's Formal Opinion 99-413, issued in March 1999, on protecting the confidentiality of unencrypted email. That opinion concluded that, 

Opinion 477 is getting a lot of attention, since it updates the ABA's Formal Opinion 99-413, issued in March 1999, on protecting the confidentiality of unencrypted email. That opinion concluded that, 

A lawyer may transmit information relating to the representation of a client by unencrypted e-mail sent over the Internet without violating the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (1998) because the mode of transmission affords a reasonable expectation of privacy from a technological and legal standpoint. The same privacy accorded U.S. and commercial mail, land-line telephonic transmissions, and facsimiles applies to Internet e-mail. A lawyer should consult with the client and follow her instructions, however, as to the mode of transmitting highly sensitive information relating to the client's representation.

But much has changed since 1999; email and other forms of electronic communication have become much more prevalent, and hacking has become a daily occurrence. In addition, since 1999, the ABA has adopted the 2012 "technology amendments" to the Rules of Professional Conduct, including Comments to Rule 1.1 regarding technology competence and 1.6 regarding the lawyer's obligation use reasonable measures to prevent inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of confidential information.

As noted in Opinion 477,

Comment [18] to Model Rule 1.6(c) includes nonexclusive factors to guide lawyers in making a “reasonable efforts” determination. Those factors include:

• the sensitivity of the information,
• the likelihood of disclosure if additional safeguards are not employed,
• the cost of employing additional safeguards,
• the difficulty of implementing the safeguards, and
• the extent to which the safeguards adversely affect the lawyer’s ability to represent clients (e.g., by making a device or important piece of software excessively difficult to use).

Opinion 477 still reinforces the "reasonableness under the circumstances" standard to determine what measures a lawyer must take to protect confidential client information, but provides some guidance in the form of seven factors lawyers should consider when determining what level of security is appropriate and what measures are reasonable under the circumstances. I recommend that all lawyers read the complete opinion, but I've listed the seven factors here, along with a list of questions under each factor that lawyers might use to help them decide what security measures should be employed.

1. Understand the Nature of the Threat

• How sensitive is the client's information? Does the matter involve trade secrets or other proprietary information that might be valuable to hackers or competitors?
• Is the client in a highly sensitive industry, such as banking or healthcare?
• Is this a high profile case or client which might increase the risk of a cyber-attack or attempt to intercept the client's data?

The more sensitive the client's data, the more stringent your security measures may need to be to be considered "reasonable."

2. Understand How Client Confidential Information is Transmitted and Where it is Stored

• Is client data stored onsite or off (or both)?
• Where are the data servers located? 
• What security is in place for servers storing client data?
• How are your electronic communications generated?
• How is client data accessed?
• Who can access client data?
• What devices are used to access client data? How many devices, and how many different types of devices, access client data?
• Are firm employees accessing client data from home? On the road? 
• Where is client data being accessed from? How many different potential locations? 

Once you know the answers to these questions you can begin to evaluate what security measures should be considered.

3. Understand and Use Reasonable Electronic Security Measures

As Opinion 477 states, 

Making reasonable efforts to protect against unauthorized disclosure in client communications thus includes analysis of security measures applied to both disclosure and access to a law firm’s technology system and transmissions.

Lawyers have many different options when it comes to data security, but not all options make sense in all circumstances. Some are more costly or complicated to implement, and may not be necessary in all circumstances. But lawyers must understand what is available in order to evaluate what is reasonable. Options include strong passwords, two-factor authentication, device security, and encryption, as well as the security of the networks over which client electronic data is being accessed or communicated.

• How secure is our network within the office?
• Are firewalls and anti-virus software up to date on all devices within the office?
• How are other networks that are used to transmit client data secured (ie are home wifi networks used by lawyers secured?)
• Are firewalls and anti-virus software up to date and being used on any networks or devices outside of our office that access our network and client data?
• How are the devices that access our network and client data secured? Are they password protected? Are all devices that access our network and client data locked? Can they be remotely disabled and wiped if lost or stolen?

4. Determine How Electronic Communication About Clients Matters Should be Protected

Now that you know how sensitive your client data is, how that data is accessed and communicated, where the potential points of intrusion are, and what security measures are available, you need to determine which available security methods (or combination of methods) is reasonable given the sensitivity of your clients' data.

In addition to asking questions globally for the firm as a whole, you must also consider each client and matter individually and discuss security and protection of data and confidentiality with the client.

• What kinds of communication will be sent in this matter? Will they be routine or highly sensitive?
• Who will we be communicating with in this matter and how will that communication take place?
• How confident are we in (or how much control do we have over) the security measures put in place by those with whom we will be communicating?
• What technology is available to the client (or third party) with whom we will be communicating?
• How tech-savvy is the client (or third party) with whom we will be communicating?
• Who has control over and access to the devices which the client will use to communicate with us electronically, and how will this affect attorney-client privilege?
• What methods of communication are appropriate for this client or matter? Is there especially sensitive information that should not be transmitted by email?
• Is there especially sensitive information that should not be transmitted by email?
• What other, secure methods are available to communicate with clients and third parties in this matter?

The opinion even suggests that "well vetted and secure third-party cloud-based file storage systems" might be a secure alternative to communicating and exchanging documents with clients than email.

 5. Label Client Confidential Information

The opinion suggests that labeling client confidential information to alert others that the information was intended to be privileged. While this may be a good routine practice in some circumstances, and may trigger a lawyer's obligation under Model Rule 4.4(b) to notify another lawyer if they "know or reasonably should know" that the information was intended to be privileged, it is likely not a reliable method of protection.

• Are privileged documents prominently labeled "privileged and confidential?"
• Are appropriate disclaimers used based on the circumstances and the content of the communication?

6. Train Lawyers and Nonlawyer Assistants in Technology and Information Security

Managing partners and supervising lawyers are required to take measures to ensure that the firm and its lawyers comply with the Rules of Professional Conduct, and those who supervise nonlawyers, including outside vendors who have contact with or access to client data, must ensure that those nonlawyers are acting in a manner compatible with the ethical rules. This includes rules regarding security of electronic communications and data.

• Do we have a security policy in place that covers electronic data and communication? Has that policy been provided to all employees?
• Has that policy been provided to all employees?
• How often is this policy updated?
• Have we trained our lawyers and staff on appropriate security measures for storage, access, and communication of client data?
• How recently was this training conducted?
• How often do we provide an update or refresher on this training?
• Are all employees required to participate in this training?
• Are the security measures being implemented?
• How often do we assess the security measures in our firm?
• Who is responsible for ensuring that security policies are implemented and followed?
• How recently was this training conducted? How often do we provide an update or refresher? Are all employees required to participate in this training?
• Do lawyers and staff understand how to secure devices that access our network or client data?

7. Conduct Due Diligence on Vendors Providing Communication Technology

• What are the qualifications of the vendors we use, including education, experience, and reputation?
• What services is the vendor providing (are they likely to come into contact with sensitive or privileged information)?
• What hiring practices are employed by our vendors (background and security checks, etc.)?What security measures do our vendors have in place?
• Do we have confidentiality agreements in place with our vendors? Do the vendors have confidentiality agreements in place with employees and others?
• Do vendors use to check for conflicts? If so, what methods do they use?
• What legal forums and remedies are available if the vendor agreement is violated?
• Are the members of our firm qualified to assess these issues, or do we need to hire an outside expert?
• Do the vendors have confidentiality agreements in place with employees and others?
• What security measures do our vendors have in place?

Getting Client Input

Lawyers are also obligated to communicate with clients about security and confidentiality issues and may need to advise clients about potential risks, particularly those involving highly sensitive or confidential information. A client also has input on the security and communication methods to be used in their matter; a client may provide informed consent for the use of a less secure (but possibly less expensive and/or less onerous and complicated) method of communication or may require the lawyer to use more secure methods.

(For more on client confidentiality, specifically with regard to email communication with clients, see my post on attorney-client confidentiality and email here.)

UPDATE: This article was chosen as the SmallLaw Pick of the Week!

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ABA Issues New Ethics Opinion on Encryption of Attorney-Client Email - Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog

Lawyers and Technology - ABA TECHSHOW 2015

How Lawyers Can Get the Most out of Writing Articles

You may have heard the advice that creating content can help you build your practice and the saying, “content is king,” so if you’ve written an article – excellent! But don’t stop there. Now is not the time to take a break.

Whether your article was published on your own website or blog, in another online location, or in a print publication, that article is valuable content that can be leveraged to reach even more readers, potential clients, influencers, referral sources, or even the media.

 If you create great content and nobody knows about it or sees it, it won’t do much for your marketing or business development efforts. The more people who see your article, the more it will help build your reputation, establish you as an expert, boost your credibility and grow your network – all of which can help you build your practice and bring in business.

Get more mileage out of every article you write

Use social media to your advantage

If the article is already online, you’ll want to post the link to all of your social media accounts. These may include: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and even Pinterest or Instagram (good reasons to include images in your article).

LinkedIn

There are several ways that you can get more visibility for your content using LinkedIn. Post an update on your personal Profile and on your firm’s LinkedIn Company Page. Look at the LinkedIn Groups you belong to and use the article as a jumping-off point for a Group discussion (your Groups will likely contain many more – and different- contacts than you will reach by posting an update alone), and don’t forget to include a link to the article in each of these.

You can also add the article to your Profile under the Publications section (now part of Accomplishments on LinkedIn), or as a link or attachment under your Summary, Experience or Education sections on your Profile.

If the article is not already online, you may want to pull one or two points from the article and create a blog post or mini-article from your original article to post online, either on your own site or, if you don’t have one, on LinkedIn, using LinkedIn Publisher. You can also take articles that are already online (for example, an article that is on your firm’s website) and re-purpose that into a LinkedIn article using the Publisher platform, and then link back to the full article on your site.

For example, let’s say you’ve written an article on the five most important things to know before you prepare your estate plan. Pull out the five points – perhaps a sentence or two about each one, write an introductory sentence, a conclusory sentence with a link to the full article on your site, and publish it on LinkedIn Publisher. Or choose just one or two points to include in your LinkedIn article and link to the full article for the remaining points with a read more link (don’t forget to include images here too).

Other social media platforms

In addition to LinkedIn, think about the other social media platforms you participate in or have accounts with. Some of these may be “strictly” personal, and others you may use for mixed business and personal reasons. You may even have separate personal and business accounts on many of these platforms.

As you can see, using social media for this purpose provides a substantial amount of options to help get your article seen by a wide variety of people. Every article may not be appropriate for every platform or for both business and personal accounts, but don’t rule out the possibility of sharing your posts on personal accounts, particularly if the article contains information that is written specifically for the kinds of people who follow your accounts on these platforms and contains information that could be valuable or helpful to them.

Keep in mind that even if you are using a platform mostly for personal reasons and not for business reasons, it makes sense every once in a while to remind friends, family and followers what you do for a living, and posting a link to an article that contains helpful information is a great way to do that – it promotes you without being “promotional.”

Schedule posts wisely

Remember that your social media followers don’t see everything you post all of the time. Post the same link more than once on same social channel; try posting at different times of the day and emphasize different points from the article in your posts to reach different audiences.

If your article content will be relevant for a period of time, while you are creating those initial social media posts immediately after the article’s publication, use a scheduling tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule social media posts into the future. Consider scheduling several posts about your article in the first week or two after publication, and then schedule additional posts for at least several months thereafter.

Use email

If your article is especially relevant to specific clients, referral sources, or to a certain segment of your contact list, send the article link or a PDF of the article in an email. Or include the article in a firm newsletter that goes to your clients or prospects. You may also wish to include links to articles or other related content on your site.

Other ways to re-purpose articles

You can get even more mileage out of articles by taking the content and converting it into other formats. Some ideas for doing this include:

• Create an infographic using the main points in your article – post the infographic on social media sites with a link back to the original article
• Design a slide presentation from your article content
• Animate the slide presentation to create a video (add audio for even more impact)
• Develop a live presentation based on the article to use for speaking engagements or to present to clients
• Turn the article into a script for a podcast

Even if you don't do all of the things suggested here, taking just a few of these suggestions should help to improve the visibility of articles you write in the future - and if you've got some articles that you have already written that didn't get the exposure you wanted, try some of these to breathe new life into old (but still relevant) content.

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5 Tips for Managing Client Expectations: Infographic

Managing clients' expectations is not always easy, but this infographic contains 5 quick steps you can take to manage client expectations better in your legal practice.

Meeting and managing expectations well creates loyal clients. In order to manage expectations well, you need to identify what they are, and to recognize that clients have expectations around both outcome and service.

The client's perception about whether you did a good job as their lawyer will be colored by the expectations they have for the engagement from the moment they walk through your office door. The way you communicate with the client at your first meeting will set the tone for the rest of the engagement.

Clients with "identical" legal problems, may not have identical goals and expectations. Find out the backstory behind the client's matter. Learn about their background, family, business or employment and gauge their emotional reaction to the legal issue at hand and to the discussion as a whole. Each of these factors may influence the client's perception of the matter, as well as the result they would like to achieve.

LISTEN to the client before jumping in with your solution or plan to solve their legal issue or accomplish their goal. Ask questions not only about the client's substantive legal issue, but also about their expectations during the engagement. These might include expectations about how often and in what manner they would prefer to communicate with you about the matter, about the budget and fee, or other non-legal, non-substantive issues that can make or break the attorney-client relationship.

Finally, assess the client's expectations. Are they realistic? Are there potential pitfalls to the course of action the client wishes to take or the result they want to achieve? Provide options and suggest alternatives that might serve the client's overall objectives more effectively.

 

Productivity Tips

The April 2017 Expert Roundtable post on Law Technology Today is a survey of productivity tips. A group of lawyers (including me) were asked to answer five questions about productivity.

Here's a quick list of the tips I shared on the post:

Write everything down

Develop systems for storing the information you save so you can find it easily when you need it

Don't multi-task!

Use your calendar effectively- schedule time to complete work

Use an editorial calendar to schedule marketing and writing projects

Invest in resources, technology and/or people to improve your productivity

Although we were asked to provide only one or two tips in response to each question, it was hard for me to narrow down my responses. 

One of my favorite productivity tips that didn't get mentioned was breaking large projects down into bite-sized pieces; looking at an entire project can be overwhelming, but tackling only one small piece at a time can help build momentum and confidence. And the project is likely to get done much faster.

Some of my other favorite productivity tips were covered by my colleagues in the roundtable. These tips include:

• Never use your email inbox as your to-do list
• Don't use your email inbox as a place to store communications - file or delete messages
• Set a schedule and stick to it
• Know your "power hours"
• Create workflow checklists
• Do the worst first
• Use automation tools available in programs you already use
• Don't check email constantly!

You can get all of the tips in more detail here, and the post also contains a great list of productivity resources.

 

Need Help Choosing Law Practice Management Software?

Practice management software provides advantages for firms of all sizes, whether the firm is a solo practice or a larger firm with employees at all levels: partners, associates, paralegals, legal assistants and others. In this post, I talked about some of the advantages lawyers can expect when using practice management software.

More recently, in this interview with Law Firm Suites, I mentioned practice management software as one of the tools that lawyers can use to make their jobs easier, saying:

Practice management software can help organize each client’s documents and data, and some even include client-facing portals to allow clients to access some of their documents and information on their own. It can also include timers to help with hourly billing and built-in reminders to help calculate deadlines and statutes of limitations.

But knowing your firm needs to employ practice management software is only the first step. Choosing the right platform or program can be a difficult and daunting decision, particularly with new vendors entering the marketplace.

Luckily, the folks at Lawyerist have done some of the work for you. They have put together a directory of 24 law practice management software programs at lawyerist.com.  And if you're really new to practice management software, scroll to the end of the page to see the definitions of the features discussed in the directory.

The directory not only provides information about each program, including Lawyerist's "best fit" judgment for each program, but there is also a downloadable comparison chart showing the key features of each of the programs included in the directory, which can help you to narrow down your choices to those within your budget that have the features you require. Then you can return to the directory for more detailed information by visiting the product page on Lawyerist for each of the programs on your list (by clicking on the name of the program in the alphabetical directory).

 

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LinkedIn's New Interface: A Brief Overview

You may not have seen it yet, but LinkedIn has revamped its user interface recently, in part to make desktop and mobile versions of LinkedIn more consistent. If the new interface hasn't come to your LinkedIn account yet, it will soon. Here's a brief overview of the changes, many of which users apparently don't find positive, based on feedback I've seen on LinkedIn and elsewhere.

Navigation

The navigation bar at the top of every page on LinkedIn has changed; instead of just using words for navigation, LinkedIn has added some icons and has moved some things around, which might make some of your favorite LikedIn features a bit hard to find. In addition, all of the icons now appear to the right of the search box, rather than some appearing below the search box, as in the old interface. 

 

The new basic navigation buttons/menu items are:

• Home
• My Network
• Jobs
• Messaging 
• Notifications
• Me
• There is a bit of a separation, and then a new item, More (Update: 5/17: this item is now "Work")

Only the Me and More menu (which actually says Business in my LinkedIn account, although others have advised that theirs is called Tools) Work menu items have dropdowns that contain sub-items.

Under Me, you'll find your Profile (there are no longer separate links to view and edit your Profile), your account and privacy settings, Manage links to manage your Company Pages and job postings on LinkedIn if you have them, and the sign-out link, as well as the link to the LinkedIn Help Center. 

The More  Work drop-down (which has an icon that looks like a square made up of nine squares) includes items that used to be found under the Interests tab in the old LinkedIn interface, including Groups, Learning (lynda.com courses), Slideshare, Groups, LinkedIn Profinder, Advertising, Post a Job, and LinkedIn Lookup. (More about some of these items in future posts).

Profile

In addition to the design changes noted below, LinkedIn has made several other changes to your Profile. Some of these changes are unwelcome in my opinion, including:

1. Now those viewing your Profile can only see the first few lines (approx. 200 characters) of your Profile Summary, rather than the entire Summary - that means it's even more important than ever to make sure that your Summary provides valuable information right up front so that visitors click on the See More link to see the rest of your Summary.
2. LinkedIn has implemented the "see more" concept on other aspects of your Profile as well; the descriptions under each of your positions other than your current position in the Experience section won't show unless the visitor clicks the view more link, and only three "featured" skills and endorsements show on your Profile without clicking on a similar link. Recommendations are treated similarly.
3. Several of the customized sections that help your Profile stand out, including Honors and Awards, Organizations, and Publications have now been grouped together under Accomplishments, and the new layout places less emphasis on these items.
4. LinkedIn has removed the ability to customize your Profile by rearranging the order of sections.

Home Page

LinkedIn's Home page has also gotten a makeover. A mini-snapshot of your Profile on the left, including your name, photo, professional headline and statistics for Who's Viewed Your Profile and Views of posts. The look of the network update (share an article, photo, or update) and Publisher (write an article) boxes has also been modified.

Design changes 

When you view your LinkedIn Profile now, you'll see that LinkedIn has made a number of design changes to the Profile. These include a change in the dimensions of your header image (if you were using one), and a switch from a square Profile photo to a round one. 

LinkedIn has added a header to some pages (such as Groups, for example), which appears under the black navigation bar. That header, which varies in size depending on the page, still incorporates LinkedIn blue, but appears to have an hombre effect, beginning with the dark blue toward the left of the screen, and moving to more of a teal color to the right of the screen.

Features eliminated

Along with these changes, LinkedIn has eliminated some features, including some features that I found extremely helpful. One of those features was tagging; you no longer have the ability to 'tag' your contacts in order to filter or to send targeted messages with a free account. Now the only options you have for your contacts are to send them a message or to remove them. The elimination of tagging also restricts your ability to easily sort through your contacts; the only remaining options are to sort by first name, last name or recently added.

The How You Rank feature is also no longer available, as is the View Profile As feature, which would allow you to see how your Profile looks to others on LinkedIn. You are also now unable to customize the web links you add to your Profile the way you did in the past - if you had customized them before, visitors to your Profile will now see long URLs with your customized name in parentheses.

Perhaps most disconcerting for power users of LinkedIn is the loss of Advanced Search features, and the Alumni search is no longer there (although you can still find alumni, just not quite as easily).

Temporarily unavailable

As of this writing, some LinkedIn features are listed as "temporarily unavailable," which seems to imply that they'll be returning. These include the ability to export your resume, sort updates in your feed on your Home page, and the Profile Strength feature. (Update, May 2017: Profile Strength is back, but somewhat different now - you can find it under the "top card" information on your Profile (below your Summary). It will walk you through the completion steps until LinkedIn deems your Profile complete, and then you'll receive an "All Star" rating).

Additional Changes
LinkedIn has also made changes to the My Network tab, the Inbox, Notifications, and Company Pages. Stay tuned for future posts that will go into more detail about these and other changes.

Related articles

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LinkedIn's Publishing Platform: A Marketing Opportunity

Productivity Tool Trello Being Acquired - Will It Become Even More Useful?

In my Simple Steps column in the January/February 2017 issue of Law Practice magazine, "Get Your To-Do Lists Under Control with These Productivity Tools," I talk about Trello. Launched five years ago, Trello has already acquired over 19 million users.

Trello is a basic online project management app which is more visual than a traditional to-do list. It uses Boards for projects or categories of information. Within Boards, Lists show the progress of tasks, represented by Cards, within the project. Labels, color-coding, images, checklists and notes can all be added to Cards to help organize information. Trello can be used as an individual productivity tool, but it can also be used by teams of people to easily collaborate, see the progress of projects, and assign tasks (Read my article for more information about how you might use Trello in your practice.)

Earlier this week, Trello announced that it is being acquired by Atlassian, a company who reportedly places a premium on research and development, and whose mission is to develop software to help teams get work done. As a result, additional improvements in the Trello platform are expected. Trello will continue to be operated as a stand-alone product, so existing Trello users will be able to maintain their accounts and Boards.

If you aren't already using Trello, you can learn about all of its features here, or check out the Trello blog for great articles to help boost your productivity in 2017.

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Can Mindfulness and Meditation Make You A Better Lawyer? [Book Review]

The Anxious Lawyer, An 8-Week Guide to a Joyful and Satisfying Law Practice Through Mindfulness and Meditation is a straightforward book which incorporates personal stories, basic introductory information and mindfulness and meditation exercises written specifically for lawyers. *(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of the book from author Jeena Cho in exchange for providing my honest review of the book.)

The authors, Jeena Cho and Karen Gifford, both lawyers themselves, share their experiences with meditation, the different reasons they were each separately drawn to the practice, and how it has helped them in their personal and professional lives, making their lives as lawyers – and as people – more rewarding. Cho is a bankruptcy practitioner in California while Gifford was a litigator and enforcement attorney for the Federal Reserve and is now an investor and advisor on policy and regulatory issues in the financial technology fields.

The legal profession is stressful, and more and more lawyers are suffering. It’s one of the reasons I started my consulting practice, Legal Ease Consulting, Inc., and its corresponding website, Lawyer Meltdown. The phrase, “lawyer meltdown,” resonates with far too many lawyers, who are stricken with the disease of “busyness,” whether it helps themselves, their clients or their firms, or not. (Although this problem is not limited to lawyers—our whole society suffers from busyness—and the lessons and concepts in this book could easily be applied to other professionals).

Meditation and mindfulness are not easy for many lawyers to wrap their heads around, and Cho and Gifford spend time talking about why that might be and how lawyers can challenge the assumptions that may lead to negative or uncomfortable feelings about the practice. I became interested in the book as a way to learn about another set of tools that might be helpful not only to my clients (the majority of whom are lawyers), but to gain a deeper understanding of lawyer meltdown and whether these techniques could help those who occasionally—or often—feel overwhelmed by the stresses of practicing law.

Even if you’ve never considered meditation or mindfulness before, this book is a helpful guide, introducing you to those concepts and taking you through a progression of meditation practices. The authors are adamant that the practice does not need to be long or complicated, particularly for beginners.

Over an eight-week period, the authors explain different meditation and mindfulness types and exercises, including a range of practices, from sitting quietly 10 minutes a day, focusing on the breath, to doing a body scan, or using mantra repetition to spend “less time unconsciously at the mercy of your thoughts and more time in a settled and quieter state.”

Using these practices can help you to connect to the deeper meaning or closely held values in the work you do every day and the reasons you chose the practice of law, rather than listening unconsciously to external forces and judgments which may not reflect your values. Guided meditations can be found on the book’s companion website, theanxiouslawyer.com. The book also provides tips on what the authors call “off the cushion” exercises that anyone can do while going about the business of their daily life and law practice. These tips and strategies may be particularly attractive to lawyers who seek to learn how to cope with everyday stressors of the practice as they arise.

The book is worth reading even if you’re skeptical about mindfulness and meditation in general, or are reasonably certain that you ‘can’t’ do it. The authors dispel some myths about meditation and what meditation really means. For example, it doesn’t mean clearing your mind of all thoughts. And the book cites several studies that show that regular meditation practice is good for your physical, as well as your mental, health. But the parts of the book that may be even more useful to many lawyers than those about “typical” mediation are those that discuss how to translate these practices into your daily life.

One example is recognizing the “moment of choice” – the moment when you become consciously aware of something and have a choice as to how you’re going to react to it. The moment of choice in meditation is the moment when you notice that your mind has wandered or that you’ve gotten caught up in your thoughts; at that moment, you have an opportunity to simply return to your meditation practice and to focus on your breathing. Alternatively, you could choose to beat yourself up for allowing your mind to wander in the first place. Which is more productive?

This concept of the moment of choice can be extended into other areas and other parts of your life outside of meditation. When you recognize that something isn’t going right in your practice, that you’ve taken on a bad client, or that something needs to change, rather than focusing on the negative of where you are, you can choose instead to celebrate the fact that you’ve recognized a problem. This can help free you to focus on finding a solution or determining how best to minimize the damage moving forward, rather than beating yourself up over getting into the situation in the first place. You can choose to dwell on the negative or you can choose to refocus and move forward.

A related concept from the book that sounds simple but is much more difficult in practice is the idea that there are limitations on what lawyers can fix. Accepting that there are aspects of what you do that are out of your control can free you to focus on what you can do to improve a situation, rather than dwelling on the fact that it isn’t how you might like to be. Instead of trying to fix everything, acknowledging that many clients are in crisis and many aspects of their crisis cannot be solved by their legal issue, but might not be so easily separated from it, may result in a better relationship with your clients. Simply allowing them to vent or to tell their story may free them to turn their attention to what is important for the legal case.

Mindfulness and meditation are a form of self-care, which may lawyers are sorely lacking because so much of their focus is on others’ problems and how to solve them. The idea of practicing compassion toward yourself as well as others may be a good solution for constant busyness which may actually reduce productivity. Self-care allows you to refuel your own tank so you are available to give to others.

You may think you don’t have time to meditate – or to read this book – but the authors have broken it down into bite-sized pieces; you only need to read one chapter a week and then follow a daily meditation practice using the techniques or concepts outlined in that chapter. As the holidays approach and another season of hectic, “busy,” activity approaches, it’s an ideal time to start a new habit that will not only help to reduce the stress and anxiety of the holidays, but stand you in good stead in the New Year, possibly offering a new perspective of yourself and your practice. Give meditation – and this book – a try.