Your Law Firm - Lee Rosen Of Rosen Institute

Maybe there was a time when hanging an "Attorney at Law" sign above your courthouse-adjacent office door worked to get clients. But, if there was such a time and place I missed it. I started practicing law a long time ago and even then we were beyond the hanging out a shingle days of yore. You need to take action if you want people to start looking for you, and no matter what you do to create awareness, it'll be more effective if you target your efforts at a small group of people. That's true because it takes a while for people to notice and remember you. They need more than one interaction. You're going to have to hammer your existence home by repeatedly interacting with the same group of humans.

If you're saying things in your marketing that another firm could say, you might as well not bother. Those things are invisible. Your pages filled with "excellent, experienced, and affordable" are blank to the reader. You might as well leave in the "lorem ipsum" text and stock photos that came with the theme. In fact, you might as well just leave in the fake address and "Business name here" in the title bar. There's no there there. They say nothing. They are erased in the minds of prospective clients.

Maybe I'm just paranoid because I travel constantly. I worry about our technology and data getting lost or stolen. I've spent considerable time thinking through what would happen if we left our things in a taxi or circumstances resulted in our losing our devices.

If a customer vomits in your restaurant, you'd better clean it up as fast as physically possible. There's zero chance you're selling another sushi platter until the sight, sound, and smell of the vomit are gone.

These publications aren't a scam. I don't think they lie to us or cheat us - they just prey on our egos. They're transparent about what they're doing, how they're doing it, and who they're doing it too. Super Lawyers is part of Thomson Reuters so I'm sure they've got great lawyers keeping them out scam territory and firmly in the poking lawyer egos into pulling out credit card territory. They take your money and they massage your ego. I like a good ego massage. It's like flying business class. The flight attendant knows my name, offers me slippers, and gives me hot nuts. What's not to like?

There are plenty of things partners can do together. They can each contribute to the hiring process providing candidate insight and observations. Some partners are better at supervising the accounting. Some are great with technology. Everyone should contribute, but the decision-maker should decide. Contributing is different than deciding.

The law practice of your dreams is a realistic option. Look around and you'll see that some already have it. It's your turn if you'll step up and take it. There's room for more than one law firm just like the one you want to build. There's no reason it can't happen fast - if you take action, set the right pace, and contribute a sufficient amount of energy.

In the United States, over the past 100 years, there have been seventeen periods defined as recessions. Unfortunately, a recession is the U.S. often impacts the rest of the world — sorry. Typically a recession is “technically” over fairly quickly. But the effects linger — sometimes for years. Large firms lay off associates who end up competing with smaller firms. Medium-sized firms reduce prices and impact smaller firms who lose business. Clients reduce legal spend and take a long time to ramp back up. It gets ugly quickly and it stays ugly for longer than hoped. Listen in Browser | Download MP3 | Subscribe in iTunes Imagine the impact of losing your laptop and your phone in a tsunami. Both of them gone, in one horrible moment. Seriously, imagine it: that's where we're going today. Things are going to get destructive and wet. Most of us now keep our information--client files, notes, data, financial information, and the rest--in the cloud. Generally, it's safe there. Sure there's the occasional Russian hacker,

The temptation is to do all the marketing. There are so many options that we risk doing things pushed sales reps and skipping the essentials. Cover the essentials first. Today lets talk about the bare minimum. These are the things every firm should do. Use these to stand out from the crowd. Differentiate yourself. Be unique. Be a little weird. Tell your story and, more importantly, demonstrate understanding and empathy for your prospective client with the words you use with each of these tactics. Getting known requires standing out from the crowd. Being liked requires being human with normal flaws, struggles, and shortcomings. Being trusted requires listening like it matters. Your marketing gives you a chance to connect with the right people, offer the right kind of help, and build the law firm you've always wanted to build. Make sure you've got these essentials covered. Convertkit is one of the tools I've used to make millions of dollars. I used it in the law firm, and I've used it to build Rosen Institute.

I meet so many lawyers looking for the new, new thing. Sometimes it's a practice area change or turning their practice into a membership site or a workshop or going virtual. Sometimes it's a technology change. Systematically managing your practice, aggressively pursuing new clients, using great technology, and implementing modern financial approaches is sensible. Changing these things with frequency is not sensible. Don't stop being curious, don't stop reading, don't stop talking to people about significant innovations - but, stick to your vision. Make it real. Go faster if you need to get on to the next thing, but make this thing happen first. There's plenty of time for your big idea to be part of the next vision you create.

It's not the big things that turn the vision into reality. It's the little things. It's the daily, weekly, monthly things we do that matter. Joining the gym feels like big progress. But, real progress is going for a vigorous walk each morning for fifty years. Buying practice management software feels like big progress. But, real progress comes from a weekly management meeting with your team. We're pretty good at ignoring the things we already know in order to try something different.

Lawyer marketing is a self-love fest. We're all beyond amazing when we look at our websites, advertisements, and business cards. We emphasize what we perceive as a positive and we don't even mention anything we think might be seen as a negative. Marketing is about putting our best foot forward so we want to demonstrate our credibility and trustworthiness. We believe that we need to puff ourselves up, appear strong, invulnerable, and demonstrate our mastery of the universe. But think of a time when someone came to you with an admission of a problem. You listen harder, you lean in, you quickly move into helper mode. That's true whether it's a client or a friend. We pay attention, we're open to hearing what's being said, and we're automatically more interested.

I plead guilty to being a delegation fanatic. Some say I'm lazy. I claim that I'm leveraging myself into greater efficiency. I hand things off to employees, delegate to anyone I can find, and outsource work to countries most of us can't find on a map. But as much as I love letting go of tasks, projects, and responsibilities so that I can skinny-dip in a lake in Guatemala, there is one thing I'd never let go. All of my delegating and outsourcing would come to an end if I let go of this one thing because it's the key driver or all of our success.

When you need advice, you should, of course, ask the person most qualified to give you advice. But instead, we ask someone with barely any experience. We ask the associate in the next office or the friend from law school who's always willing to share an uninformed opinion, or the courier who doesn't really have a clue. Why?

I hate renting cars. The rates aren't always what I've been told, they pressure me to buy insurance, they add-on fees for tolls, they want me to rent a GPS, and I have to sign their lengthy contract in eleven places. After all that they run a huge deposit on my credit card and then I get to worry about what will happen if I scrape the car up on dumpster while trying to park behind a restaurant. I can't help but think it's much like the way clients feel when they decide to hire a lawyer. They jump through hoops to get an appointment which sometimes doesn't happen for a week or more. They tell their story only to be confronted by a long-winded explanation of the process, the work that needs to be done, the stages and phases of the case, and then they get hit with a multi-page, legalese-filled, fee agreement which they don't really understand.

We get stressed about money so we buy ads, SEO, and leads when we have no data-driven basis to do so. We have no evidence that what we’re buying will work, nor are we even certain that we need more business. We hire staff members or associates when we feel busy, even if we lack numbers demonstrating that we’re doing profitable work or that we’re really as busy as we think we are. We fire staff because we’re convinced they’re unproductive and lazy when we spot them killing time on Instagram, but we lack simple records to see how they’re performing financially, so we react when they push our buttons. Over and over we’re hit by emotions and we believe they mean something. Unfortunately, an emotional response is nearly always half-baked, short-sighted, and inconsistent with the vision we’ve created of the business we’re building.

She’s sharp. She’s motivated. She’s excited. She’s exactly the kind of employee you’d been hoping to find. But she needs to know what kind of advancement she can expect at your practice. You may not have the 'bigger and better' to offer -- that’s the state of affairs in most small law firms. In large part, small firms stay small. That’s a feature, not a bug for many of us. If you don't offer the candidate a chance for advancement then don't expect your offer to be accepted. You need a solid answer to this tough question.

When the economy turns against you, it's very difficult to fight the larger forces at work. We're swimming against the tide. We're fighting nature. A rising tide lifts all boats. A falling tide sinks many ships. Of course, you don't need my permission. But, I wanted to give it to you. Sometimes having someone, anyone really, tell you that it's okay makes it easier. In times like this, we get a free pass to quit. Everyone understands. No one thinks less of you.

You’re taking nothing other than a laptop, a cell phone, and a legal education and turning it into money. It’s incredibly difficult to turn nothing into something. You’ve got to see it in your mind, believe it’s real, and then convince others to see it as well. It’s great until you think about it, and then it’s overwhelming.

The theory behind a partnership seems sound - that bringing in a partner shares the risk, creates synergy, and doubles the odds of success. The reality is that many law firm partners spend all their energy fighting for a bigger share of a pathetic little pie. Instead of synergy, they get misery when the relationship unravels and the partnership fails. The business relationship has failed, and more often than not, the personal relationship has soured as well.