In Black & White

In Black & White

Common Sense Strategies for Growing Your Legal Practice

Legal Business Development: Are You Earning A Seat At The Table?

Posted on by Paula Black

A book of business gives you power, clout and… a seat at the table. If you want to be a partner in any law firm, big or small, you must have a book of business. It’s as simple as that!

I recently read an article from Altman Weil by James Cotterman… Who Should Be Partner In A Post Recession Profession? Part 1: Earning a Seat at the Table. Cotterman points out that “Law firm partnership carries certain responsibilities. First and foremost partners must generate business. A business development culture, accommodating different roles and styles, will permeate a successful firm.” Let’s face it without business development nothing else matters… you are just a lawyer with a desk.

So why are so many lawyers hesitant to commit to business development? It’s simply out of their comfort zone. But it doesn’t have to remain that way. There have been many things in your career that were not comfortable at first… but you tried different angles, practiced and stuck with it and sooner or later you mastered it. Business development is no different, it’s just a skill to master.

Cotterman goes on to pose some of the questions that should be asked when a lawyers is being considered for partner…

1. Is the individual active in developing a network of contacts and establishing relationships in the community?

2. Does she/he project an understanding of business and legal subject matter that demonstrates experience and expertise through writing and speaking?

3. Does this person seek, hold and successfully handle positions in professional organizations related to her/his area of practice?

4. Does this person seek, hold and successfully handle leadership positions in community (civic, charitable and religious) organizations?

There is no doubt that building relationships is at the core of all this. You can build relationships in a multitude of ways, in your community, among your colleagues and even online. Decide what tools you want to use and be consistent… do something every single day. Move outside your comfort zone and build a book of business… and if you want a seat at the table it can be yours.

Posted in Building Relationships, Business Development, Developing A Strategic Plan, Inspired Thought

Legal Business Development: 8 Ways to Turbo Charge Your Productivity

Posted on by Paula Black

I don’t know a lawyer that isn’t trying to squeeze more out of every single day… maximum productivity. We would all like to find a silver bullet… the answer to the demanding obligations we have in our lives. Jeff Haden contributor to Inc. Magazine wrote… 14 Simple Ways to Get Considerably More Done. It’s an eye-opening list and I think there are 8 tips that will be particularly helpful for lawyers.

1. Craft your “just say no” elevator speech. Entrepreneurs work hard on their elevator speech. They revise, they hone, and they rehearse because their elevator speech is important.

It’s also important to know, with grace and tact, how to say no. Most of us default to “yes” because we don’t want to seem rude or unfriendly or unhelpful. Unfortunately, that also means we default to taking on more than we want or can handle. Maybe your response will be as simple as what I plan to use, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t have time.”

Whatever yours is, rehearse so it comes naturally. That way you won’t say yes simply because you think you should; you’ll say yes because you think it’s right for you.

2. Set limits. Deadlines and time frames establish parameters, but typically not in a good way. We instinctively adjust our effort so our activities take whatever time we let them take. Tasks should only take as long as they need to take–or as long as you decide they should take.

Pick a task, set a time limit, and stick to that time limit. Necessity, even artificial necessity, is the mother of creativity. I promise you’ll figure out how to make it work.

3. Rework your nighttime routine. Every day the first thing you do is the most important thing you will do: It sets the tone for the rest of the day.

Prepare for it the night before. Make a list. Make a few notes. Review information. Prime yourself to hit the ground at an all-out sprint the next day; a body in super-fast motion tends to stay in super-fast motion.

4. Rework your morning routine. Then make sure you can get to that task as smoothly as possible. Pretend you’re an Olympic sprinter and your morning routine is like the warm-up for a race. Don’t dawdle, don’t ease your way into your morning, and don’t make sure you get some “me” time (hey, sleep time is me time). Get up, get cleaned up, get fueled up–and start rolling.

5. Rework one repetitive task. Think of a task you do on a regular basis. Now deconstruct it. Make it faster. Or improve the quality. Pick something you do that has become automatic and actively work to make it better.

Even if you only save five minutes, that’s five minutes every time.

6. Outsource one task. I was raised to think that any job I could do myself was a job I should do myself. Starting next week the kid down the street will cut my grass. He can use the money. I can use the time.

7. Fix that one thing you often screw up. I’m terrible about putting meetings and phone calls on my calendar. I figure I’ll get to it later and then I never do. I spend way too much time, often in a panic, trying to figure out when and where and who…

You probably have at least one thing you tend to mess up. Maybe you don’t file stuff properly. Maybe you put off dealing with certain emails and then forget them. Maybe you regularly find you’re unprepared for a call or meeting. Whatever your “thing” is, fix it. You’ll save time and aggravation.

8. Pick one task during which you won’t multi-task. Plenty of research says multi-tasking doesn’t work. Some research says multi-tasking actually makes you stupid. Maybe you agree. Maybe you don’t. Either way, I feel sure there is at least one thing you do that is so important you should never allow a distraction or a loss of focus.

Choose an important task and when you perform it turn everything else off. Focus solely on that task.

I think there is good sound advice here for lawyers and if you would put each and everyone into practice imagine how productive you could be… it’s likely to be life changing. Why not give it a try? I know I will!

Posted in Building Relationships, Business Development, Inspired Thought, Marketing Time Commitment

Legal Business Development: Your Firm Culture Can Make All The Difference

Posted on by Paula Black

Firm culture… It can foster business development or it can thwart it. Consider all the different aspects of your firm that your culture influences. Jeff Haden, contributor to Inc. Magazine, highlights Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder and CTO of HubSpot who knows exactly how valuable a strong firm culture can be to your success.

1. Culture improves decision-making. Culture helps make a large body of small decisions quicker–and a small body of large decisions easier.

2. Product is to marketing as culture is to recruiting. Just like attracting customers is much easier with a great product, attracting amazing people is much easier with a great culture. The goal is to create a culture that appeals to the rights kinds of people and gets them to self-select.

3. The interest on culture debt is really high. Culture debt is when you take a shortcut and hire people because they have the skills you need and you’re “hurting” for people… but they’re not a good culture fit. You let the “culture bar” down. When you bring on people that aren’t a fit they infect other parts of the organization; even after a culture misfit moves on, their corrosive effects on the company live on.

4. You’re going to have a culture anyway. You can and should influence it–so why not build the one you love?

So where should you start if you want to create a mission statement that actually means something–and that helps you run your business by establishing and codifying goals, practices, and principles you both follow and measure? Shah suggests,  ’Quick hint: You want to build a company that you love working for. The rest will work itself out.’

I realize that it’s not the easiest task to get a room full of lawyers to agree on a vision, but that is exactly what has to happen. What makes your firm different? What makes your firm memorable? What makes working at your firm fulfilling? What’s at the heart of your firm? Find the answers to these questions… then live them on a daily basis. You’ll find that this practice benefits your firm in many different ways… especially when it comes to business development.

Posted in Business Development, Inspired Thought

Legal Business Development: Is It Time To Shake Things Up?

Posted on by Paula Black

The legal profession is evolving… are you? Granted change is tough. But the longer you put it off, the farther behind you fall, and the harder it is to get started. So, make the choice… take the first step! Harvard Business Review offers a great place to start…Three Ways to Help Your Company Snap Out of It.*

Organizations, like people, can get set in their ways. Relying on established ways of working and solving problems not only stifles innovation but can lead to a lack of perspective and moments of delusion. Here are three ways to help your organization snap out of unhelpful patterns:

Challenge rationalizations. Every organization has shared explanations for doing things the way they do. Poke holes in those rationalizations and ask the question: why is this standard practice?

Expose faulty either/or thinking. False dichotomies can set up irrational choices about how to work. Don’t let A or B be the only options, propose C or D as a new way of working.

Focus on the long-term. Emphasis on the short term can trap you into current practice. Help your colleagues pull back, see the big picture, and understand not only short-term gains but long-term consequences.

Look at the way you and your firm develop business and challenge the status quo. Ask the tough questions. Come up with innovative ideas and ask… Why not?

*Adapted from Keeping Your Colleagues Honest by Mary C. Gentile.

Posted in Business Development, Inspired Thought

Legal Business Development: Dare to Dream

Posted on by Paula Black

At the end of April, I was on a panel at the ABA Annual Litigation Conference in Chicago with Laurel Bellows (the ABA President), Sofia Lingos, Damian Thomas, Paul Lehner and practice  management expert Ann Guinn. We spoke to solo and small firm lawyers on the subject of creating a successful practice. I encouraged the audience to… Dare to dream. Redefine your practice in YOUR way. Something unique that will set you apart from the rest.

This week my friend Cordell Parvin had such a powerful blog post that I feel I must share it with every lawyer I know. Cordell writes…

 I love this Oprah Winfrey quote:

‘I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.’

Take a minute. Think about 5 years from now, 10 years from now. Describe what would be your dream law practice. What kind of work are you doing? Who are your clients? I did that in 1978 at a point where I was just doing the work other lawyers handed me.

I realized that my future and happiness practicing law depended on me creating a compelling future-something that would energize me even during the most difficult times.

Many years ago in the early 90s I read Anthony Robbins book: Awaken the Giant Within. I got many ideas from the book that I have used personally and suggest you consider reading it.

If you only have time to read one chapter, read: The Magnificent Obsession-Creating a Compelling Future. In that chapter, Robbins describes many lawyers I know:

Many people (lawyers I know) in life know what (career and client development activities) they should do, but they never do it. The reason is that they’re lacking the drive that only a compelling future can provide.

Later Robbins says:

‘You’re not lazy! You just have impotent goals!’

Describe your compelling future. If, it is indeed, compelling, then you will have the motivation you need to go after it.

Well put Cordell. So often the dream is left out of the equation, when in fact it is the spark that will ignite your vision, your spirit and your enthusiasm. Just because there is no precedent for your dream doesn’t mean that it is invalid. Discover what you love and live it!

Posted in Branding and Positioning, Developing A Strategic Plan, Inspired Thought

Legal Business Development: How a Sense of Humor Can Help

Posted on by Paula Black

Have you ever left a meeting with a smile and thought…”I really like that person?” Chances are the person was witty or even downright funny. Or have you been in an extremely tense meeting and someone cracked a joke and all of a sudden the tension was broken? Humor can be a valuable tool when developing business. Forbes staff writer Jacquelyn Smith looks into the subject in her article… 10 Reasons Why Humor Is A Key To Success At Work. Here are four of the reasons that I think lawyers should take to heart.

People will enjoy working with you. ’People want to work with people they like,’ Vanderkam (author of What the Most Successful People Do at Work, and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast) says. ‘Why wouldn’t you? You spend huge chunks of your waking hours at work, so you don’t want it to be a death march. Humor–deftly employed–is a great way to win friends and influence people. You need to be funny, but not snarky (that’s not good for team building) and you can’t offend anyone.’

Humor is a potent stress buster. ’In fact, it’s a triple whammy,’ Michael Kerr explains (an international business speaker, president of Humor at Work, and author of The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses are Laughing all the Way to the Bank). ‘Humor offers a cognitive shift in how you view your stressors; an emotional response; and a physical response that relaxes you when you laugh.’

Ha + ha = aha! “Humor is a key ingredient in creative thinking,” Kerr says. ‘It helps people play with ideas, lower their internal critic, and see things in new ways.’ Humor and creativity are both about looking at your challenges in novel ways and about making new connections you’ve never thought about before, he adds.

It helps build trust. ’You can build trust with the effective use of humor because humor often reveals the authentic person lurking under the professional mask,’ Kerr says.

So if you are hiding your sense of humor because you think lawyers should always be serious, think again… tasteful humor and great wit could be great assets when it comes to building relationships and landing more clients.

 

Posted in Building Relationships, Inspired Thought, Uncategorized

Legal Business Development: 8 Things You Should NOT Do Every Day

Posted on by Paula Black

If you are a frequent reader of my blog you know that I have a motto for business development… Do Something Every Single Day! Creating a business development habit is key to building a book of business. But along with that we must look at the habits that we have acquired along the way that are counter-productive to building a book of business. Inc. Magazine contributor Jeff Haden writes about those little annoying things and the not-so-productive things we should consider NOT doing. He advises…

Every day, make the commitment not to:

1. Check my phone while I’m talking to someone. You’ve done it. You’ve played the, “Is that your phone? Oh, it must be mine,” game.

Want to stand out? Want to be that person everyone loves because they make you feel, when they’re talking to you, like you’re the most important person in the world? Stop checking your phone.

2. Multitask during a meeting. The easiest way to be the smartest person in the room is to be the person who pays the most attention to the room.

You’ll be amazed by what you can learn, both about the topic of the meeting and about the people in the meeting if you stop multitasking and start paying close attention. You’ll flush out and understand hidden agendas, you’ll spot opportunities to build bridges, and you’ll find ways to make yourself indispensable to the people who matter. It’s easy, because you’ll be the only one trying.

3. Think about people who don’t make any difference in my life. Trust me: The inhabitants of planet Kardashian are okay without you. But your family, your friends, your employees–all the people that really matter to you–are not. Give them your time and attention. They’re the ones who deserve it.

4. Use multiple notifications. You don’t need to know the instant you get an email. Or a text. Or a tweet. Or anything else that pops up on your phone or computer.

If something is important enough for you to do, it’s important enough for you to do without interruptions. Focus totally on what you’re doing. Then, on a schedule you set–instead of a schedule you let everyone else set–play prairie dog and pop your head up to see what’s happening.

5. Let the past dictate the future. Mistakes are valuable. Learn from them. Then let them go.

Easier said than done? It all depends on your perspective. When something goes wrong, turn it into an opportunity to learn something you didn’t know–especially about yourself. When something goes wrong for someone else, turn it into an opportunity to be gracious, forgiving, and understanding.

6. Wait until I’m sure I will succeed. You can never feel sure you will succeed at something new, but you can always feel sure you are committed to giving something your best. And you can always feel sure you will try again if you fail.

Stop waiting. You have a lot less to lose than you think, and everything to gain.

7. Talk behind someone’s back. If only because being the focus of gossip sucks. (And so do the people who gossip.) If you’ve talked to more than one person about something Joe is doing, wouldn’t everyone be better off if you stepped up and actually talked to Joe about it? And if it’s “not your place” to talk to Joe, it’s probably not your place to talk about Joe.

8. Say “yes” when I really mean “no.” Refusing a request from colleagues, customers, or even friends is really hard. But rarely does saying no go as badly as you expect. Most people will understand, and if they don’t, should you care too much about what they think?

When you say no, at least you’ll only feel bad for a few moments. When you say yes to something you really don’t want to do you might feel bad for a long time–or at least as long as it takes you to do what you didn’t want to do in the first place.

Imagine… if you truly committed to NOT doing these 8 things, how much more success you would have building relationships. Not to mention your productivity could go through the roof! Maybe it’s a bit much to ask that you tackle all eight at once. Try one for a week, then the next week add a second and so on. In two months you will have tackled all eight. What’s at stake? Strong relationships and productivity. So give it a shot!

Posted in Building Relationships, Business Development, Marketing Time Commitment

Legal Business Development: Train Your Brain To Stay Positive

Posted on by Paula Black

Training your brain to stay positive is a tall order for lawyers. You are trained to look at the dark side of an issue. But when you are developing business that trait doesn’t serve you well. It blocks progress and inhibits confidence. Entrepreneur magazine contributor Nadia Goodman writes… How to Train Your Brain to Stay Positive. Goodman encourages…

Try these three tips to help you train your brain to stay positive:

1. Express gratitude. Negative events loom large unless you consciously balance them out. ‘When you’re faced with challenges, it’s important to take stock of what’s going well,’ Della Porta, (a positive psychologist and organizational consultant) says. Thinking about the good in your life can help balance that bias, giving your brain the extra time it needs to register and remember a positive event.

 2. Repeat positive affirmations. As any politician or advertiser knows, the more often you hear a message, the more likely you are to believe it. The same goes for messages about who you are and what you are capable of doing. By repeating positive affirmations with conviction several times each morning, you are training your brain to believe them. ‘Over time, you’ll start to internalize them,’ Della Porta says. Repeat your affirmations silently if you feel self-conscious.

3. Challenge negative thoughts. Each time a negative thought arises, we choose how to respond. If left to our own devices, we tend to dwell. Our brains home in on negative events so they seem much bigger and more significant than they are. To combat that, start by imagining the thought as separate from yourself, as something you can observe and deconstruct. ‘Get in the habit of distancing yourself instead of dwelling,’ Della Porta says.

Three simple steps… but certainly easier said than done. Take inventory of the steps you’ve accomplished. Tell yourself that business development is a journey and enjoy it. And most of all don’t listen to the critic in your head.

Posted in Business Development, Inspired Thought

Legal Business Development: Be A Master Relationship Builder

Posted on by Paula Black

Few would argue that the core of legal business development is… relationships. How you build them, nurture them and value them is the difference between lawyers who are serious about building a successful practice and others who just give it lip service. Inc. Magazine contributor Minda Zetlin looks inside the success of Mobile Deluxe, a tremendously successful gaming company, to examine founder, Josh Hartwell’s secrets to becoming a master relationship builder. Zetlin explains…

How did Hartwell launch a successful mobile gaming company–with no outside funding–five years before Apple opened the App Store? Before he launched, he used his connections to get a commitment from the then-largest game publisher.

He made those connections by becoming a master relationship builder. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Never miss a chance to widen your circles. ‘When you’re starting out, the best approach is to do a great job, but don’t limit your interests to what you’re doing,’ Hartwell advises. ‘Every relationship should help form concentric circles around you and further help you expand beyond your comfort zone.’

2. Treat every relationship like it matters–because it does. That means not only customers and bosses but also the people who work for you and the people who are trying to sell you something or are asking for your help. ‘People who are your peers or may be reporting to you today will rise through the ranks and may become decision makers at other companies,’ Hartwell notes.

3. Build relationships with as many different types of people as you can. Learn this skill as fast and as early in your career as possible, Hartwell says. ‘In games, system developers are different from programmers, who are different from artists, who are different from marketing people, and within those groups people are very different. Make it a practice early on not to just focus on the people with whom you’re comfortable. Find out about other types of people and how to have relationships with them.’

4. Be persistent–but not too persistent. ‘Relationship gauging’ is Hartwell’s term for finding that delicate balance between being effectively persistent and obnoxiously pushy. The best way to tell if you’ve gone too far is by watching someone’s body language when you meet in person. Early on, he says, some people he had contacted too often made it clear from their reactions on first meeting him that they were already displeased. ‘That helps you figure out where the line is,’ he says now. On the other hand, it’s important to follow up a first contact attempt. ‘You’re not being persistent enough if you get no reply and don’t follow up,’ he says. ‘Don’t ever assume one message to a person is enough, and there are not many cases where two is too many.’ Past that, it depends on the person and on how long you wait between follow-ups, he says.

Hartwell’s method isn’t “rocket science.” What it is, is a mind-set. Many times I have clients tell me that they can’t start their practice until they have a website. In my book that is never the first step. The first thing to do is start making phone calls and building relationships. And as Hartwell did…make that a habit.

Posted in Building Relationships, Business Development

Legal Business Development: GCs Are Using Social Media to Hire Law Firms

Posted on by Paula Black

GCs are using social media to hire law firms. Could it be? The answer is YES according to John Cory, the founder of GreenTarget. The big takeaway is… blogs are a credible source of information, and Linkedin is a place to connect and create relationships. If you are focused on General Counsel, take the time (8 min.) to watch Lee Pacchia the host of Bloomberg Law, interview Cory.

Posted in Branding and Positioning, Building Relationships, Business Development