The Greatest American Lawyer

Are Your Kids Allowed at Work?

I had my wife and four year old son, Apollo, stop by the office the other day. My wife needed someone to look after Apollo for a couple of hours, and I had nothing on my calendar. Because I’m high-tech, I have extra computers which can access all the best internet games at nick.com and nickjr.com.   Apollo hung out with me for a couple of hours while I continued to get my work done.

The old saying "it’s the little things that matter" really applies to the life of an independent practitioner. Having my son stop by the office to hang out while I work was simply not a realistic option as a partner at my old law firm. As an independent practitioner owning my own law firm, it happens all the time. There’s nothing better than watching your son play computer games while you run around the office getting stuff done.

Can you bring your kids to the office?

Dan Hull Over at the What About Clients? Blog has a Great Post on Maintaining Focus on Client Service in Your Law Firm.

Dan digs deep into the question of establishing a culture which demands daily excellence. Dan makes the excellent point that discipline is required to create and execute a plan. Too often, lawyers simply drift through their cases. They are billing by the hour so there is no incentive for laser focus and a commitment to execution.

One of the great things about our use of the Basecamp extranet is that all client project benchmarks are defined and executed in a chronological fashion. All to do items are identified. A client can see all of the to do items that will achieve their goal laid out right in front of them. We are completely transparent.

Great job Dan and keep up the great blogging.

GAL Says: Web Dictation Is Very Cool

As someone who does a lot of dictating, I have to say that web dictation is one of the coolest products I have seen.  Why?  Because all you need is a java enabled web browser to start dictating.  No downloads. No configuration. Click here for a free demo provided by UblogWEtype.com

"The (Greatest American) Google"

Our President knows so little about technology that he refers to Google as "The Google."  For those of us in the blogosphere, we all know technology.  We are jaded somewhat by the fact that we all get it. We should remember that in the blogosphere we are often singing to the choir. Good lord, he doesn't even email because he is afraid someone might say he actually did receive information (which presumably he would want to deny)!

His statement reminds me that technology can make people accountable.  Our extranet makes us transparent to our clients, for instance. Many lawyers have the same attitude as the President.  They spend their days insulating themselves from being held accountable.

As far as we have come in  the technology age, there are still many more miles to go ...ogle. 

Why Do Lawyers Wear Suits?

Now that I have been an independent practioner for a year and a half, I forget that most lawyers have to put a suit and tie on every single day they go to work. I wear suits to Court, but beyond that, no way! I’ve never had a client so much as flinch when they walk in my office and see me in jeans and a collared shirt. Since much of my business is over the internet, there are many clients I never meet. They judge me purely by my work product and quality.

I went to a local bar event last week, and I was the only person in the room not wearing a suit. In fact, I was in jeans and a collared shirt. It struck me that all these lawyers were bound by a common rule which mandated wearing a suit. Many of their law firms mandate wearing suits. Regardless, they would never show up to a local bar event without one on.

Why is this? Who are they thinking they are going to impress? Are they going to impress the other lawyers? Do other lawyers even care?

I have concluded that lawyers are so stuck on the status quo, that they can’t even see beyond their own wardrobe. A suit to many lawyers is a validation of worth. A suit says, "look at me, I’m a lawyer." A suit is meant to intimidate. Having a nicer, more expensive suit than the other lawyer, puts you on top. Meeting with a client while wearing a suit immediately tells them how important you are. The right power tie can add an inch to your height and tell everyone that you are the most important person in the room.

A suit is in many ways symbolic of everything that is wrong in the practice of law. We are a profession that has come to value form over substance. Beware the lawyer wearing a suit. That lawyer may just have something to hide. The only thing you might be impressed with at the end of your representation is their wardrobe.

There are Lots of Reasons Not to Use Technology

All of the reasons that are often sited for choosing not to blog seem legitimate on their face. To those people who use those excuses, they are legitimate. Some of those reasons are in fact legitimate.

But for lots of people, blogging makes sense, and many of those people are not blogging. For people who want to invest in themselves, blogging offers the opportunity to say what you think. Not what your company thinks. Not what your profession thinks. Not what is politically correct to think. Good old fashion first amendment say what you think.

Some blogging isn’t for business. Some blogging is revolutionary on a more personal level. For the first time in history, the little guy can speak up and, through the power of his or her ideas, have an impact.

The internet era isn’t an era of privacy. If anything, it is an era where mankind gives up their privacy. The internet takes away our privacy rights by making us more exposed.

But one constitutional principal is purely enhanced by the internet. That principal is the first amendment. The right to say something you want to say.

So, blogging is not for everyone. It certainly isn’t for people who would rather be politically correct all the time and certainly not for people who marshall their words with such precision, fearful of other people’s opinions about their ideas. Blogging often isn’t for people who are really focused on preserving the status quo. Blogging is not for people who have nothing to advocate.

By the way, if you fall into this group of people who have a great excuse not to blog, you will soon be in the minority. It’s just a question of time. Look at the number of people using MySpace or Youtube Look at how many people are blogging, sharing their lives online. Remember that a blog started in many ways as an online journal. It was far more personal in nature. The concept of debating "blogging for business" has only come later in the game. There is a giant wave coming and building. The early adopters will be in a much better position to ride that wave.

Getting Ready for Yoga

I’ve decided I have to take a little bit of a new tact with yoga. Usually, I arrive and I’m so wound that getting into a "focus on your breath" relaxation mode is be extremely difficult. So tonight, I started to get in the right frame of mind from the moment I step out of work. We’ll see if that helps settle my brain a little faster.

Speaking of trying to make our mind "still," did you ever notice that practicing law can sometimes have the opposite affect? If we lose our mental balance, we lose our ability to focus. It’s really that simple. A distracted mind is not one that will make solid, strategic decisions. I’ve now had my firm for over a year and a half. Things have been extremely successful, but I find myself more easily distracted as habits of distraction begin to increase and become habits of their own.

That’s why yoga feels so good. It’s my one opportunity all week to remember that life and the practice of law are merely illusions. It is not the outcome of our practice that’s most important; but how we practice. It is how we practice that defines us as who we are. As lawyers, as mentors to clients, and as family members.

Kiteboarding in My Brain

The most amazing thing has been happening. I lay down in bed and I can picture the kite over my head flying high in the breeze. When you’re learning to kiteboard, the safest place for the kite is directly overhead; it’s where you start and where you, hopefully, finish with the kite. When you’re going to switch the direction, the kite goes back overhead.

There were times when I was kiting last weekend where I would have this tremendous ride all the way to the right. As I approached the shore, I would move the kite back directly overhead and fall back into the water, floating and watching my kite above my head. Now I find myself daydreaming about the kite above my head. I can’t begin to describe how proud I am of my achievement. My decision to learn to kite. My commitment to making it happen. My achievement and actually riding.

Would that day have been possible without the magic of digital dictation?

Why Blogging Matters. Six Degrees of Perspective.

Debbie Weil over at Blogwriteforceo’s blog turned me on to this post from Eric Kintz over at the HP executive blog area.

Since I was outing a couple of HP Executives who are not blogging much, I was extremely pleased to see that Eric Kintz is not only putting a lot of content online, he’s putting great content online. Mr. Kintz is an example of the best that blogging has to offer.

The above post is the brainstorming outcome of a joint conversation between a variety of people in and outside of HP. Here are some of my favorite quotes from this great post:

· "We are living an age where boundaries are collapsing, definitions are changing and roles are combining. Blogging and PR need each other, belong with each other, even though they can sometimes appear to be working against each other."

· "The blogosphere has disrupted the economics of publishing, dramatically lowering the costs of content creation (most bloggers are not paid), content production (free blogging platforms) and circulation development (free links by other bloggers). This has allowed in turn a micro-segmentation of customer markets that was not economically viable in traditional publishing business models and the rise of new influencers, who are closer to those markets and are in the best position to appeal to their specific needs."

· "The utilization of blogs is critical, particularly in a growing world where social currency is more and more important. They are powerful communication and business tools which can connect with a variety of audiences for your brands/products/services. These audiences range from core customers to prospects to influencers to investors."

· "In terms of functionality, the primary differentiation between a blog and a standard site is the ability for the audience to comment and engage. Measuring that engagement on a classic ROI metric is nearly impossible, but some discussion is emerging on the proper ratio of postings to comments. Some bloggers attract more than 100 comments per post, but a ratio of three comments to every post seems healthy for a relatively new blog. That ratio is an excellent measure of engagement, one of the primary benefits held up by advocates of corporate blogging."

Innovative Technology: Web Dictation

I am pretty into dictation. I have never seen web dictation until recently. Web dictation allows you to dictate directly to a Java application access through your web browser. This means you can dictate from anywhere with an internet connection. Check out this free web dictation software here.

The Best Parts About Working From Home

Grant Griffiths over at the Home Office Lawyer invited me to be a guest blogger.  I was happy to do so.  Grant has a great blog and great insights about working from home.

Check out my post concerning the 10 best things about working from home here.

The #1 Reason People Don’t Blog.

At this point in the evolution of blogging, we are over the hump explaining why blogging makes sense for business. There are many companies out there driving tremendous revenue through their blogs. Individuals are providing information on specialized issues and becoming authorities on those issues. Customers, clients and prospects who need information on those issues are finding those blogs and contacting the blog author and sponsor for more information. Those contacts are resulting in new customers and more revenue.

At my law firm, fifty percent of our business comes off of the internet. In 2007, we could do a half a million dollars or more in web business.

CEOs are starting to blog in order to influence markets, establish closer relationships with their employees and their customers and to show their expertise. But there are many people who still say, "I don’t have time to blog." This excuse is by far and away the number one reason why people don’t start blogging, even people who understand the value that it can bring. Personally, I don’t understand the logic. Sales and marketing is part of any business model. If you don’t have customers, you don’t have revenue. If you don’t have revenue, you don’t have a business. If these same people who say that they don’t have time to blog can take folks out to lunch, participate in preparing marketing materials and similar activities, they should be able to find time to blog. But I am not discounting their excuse completely. Many executives don’t type that well. Blogging can be time consuming.

We have been able to generate as much or more blog content than virtually anyone else out there, because I dictate my blog post. I can generate content at a rate 10 to 20 times faster than most people can because I can talk 10 to 20 times faster than I can type. More importantly, I don’t have to log on to TypePad and click through to the post screen so that I can start typing. Even more importantly, I can dictate from anywhere. This means that I am not losing any of my productive time at work. I typically dictate my blog post from the car, the beach or during some other activity which would normally not be devoted to customers and clients. This "downtime" exists everywhere. In fact, much of our day filled with downtime. And most of our best thoughts are had during this downtime. But those thoughts slip away because you’re not at work.

I can’t say enough about digital dictation. It has changed so much about our own business model and has made blogging possible at a level beyond anything else which would have been practical under the circumstances.

There is one new company out there that is working to solve the "I don’t have time to blog" problem. The blogger simply dictates their blog posts which are put online by the Ublog Company. For one penny per word, business people can now find that time to blog which doesn’t interfere with business. People with expertise and niche markets can show the world that expertise. Anyone with an email address and a computer can dictate their posts and outsource the typing and posting of the content. To me, this makes great sense and may increase the number of bloggers who are putting great content online.

Blogging for Business

It has always amazed me that people say you can’t generate business through a blog. Perhaps that was just a couple of years ago and things have changed for others. I would be interested to know whether or not there are people who are seriously blogging out there about their expertise and not generating business as a result. I would guess that 50% of our business is currently off the internet. We have blogs in a variety of niche practice areas from trade secret and noncompetes, to domain name disputes to investigation sites on mass accidents. Our search engines results are phenomenal through our blogs. On many days, I talk to and receive emails from five to ten people who are contacting us through our website. On an average week, we’ll retain five or more new clients on a variety of different matters.

So are the days where people say that blogging is purely a selfish and personal pastime gone? Are other companies besides mine realizing the business benefits of blogging? Please post a comment and weigh in one way or the other. I can’t possibly be the only one whose business model is driven by blogging. (And no, none of my business comes in through this website, which is purely noncommercial).

Race Against The Machine

The fatal flaw of the computer giants is their myopic view of solutions. They tend to see everything in terms of technology solutions. They think that some new gadget will solve the problem. The age of robots is upon us, at least in the minds of those who control the computer-manufacturing infrastructure. Think about how humankind has been reduced since Bill Gates first introduced his operating system. We can’t compete with the computer in math. Virtually every intellectual process is relegated to a software program, which performs its tasks better than any human could.

Humans have been cast as the problem. Computers have been cast as the solution.

I predict the reemergence of the role of the human in the process of computers. I predict the age of assistance. Those people who stand between us and our computer keyboards. Those people who turn our thoughts into reality.

Riddle Me This!

Why are they trying to push a computer down onto a cell phone? The answer is easy. Cell phones are more mobile.

Computer manufacturers have spent billions of dollars trying to make computers smaller, leaner and meaner. In some years, computer manufacturers are trying to make laptops with 17-inch diagonal screens and are hardly portable. This same year, they are pumping out laptops without CD ROM drives in order to decrease the footprint in weight. Pushing email onto a cell phone makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it? Putting a keyboard on a cell phone is inevitable, isn’t it? But cell phones aren’t the answer. They still involve the brutal reality of the keyboard. That arch nemesis of all that is fun in the world. Stretching your fingers over the keys or punching furiously with two fingers on a cell phone.

No, the answer is not mini keyboards smaller than the size of a credit card. There must be something more magical, don’t you think? With all the greatest minds in the entire world churning out new and innovative microchips, haven’t we solved the problem of the keyboard?

HP Doesn’t Have Time to Blog, Why Should You?

I posted recently about two top executives at HP, Dan Socci and David Gee. I hated to call David and Dan out but I found their sites purely by happenstance when I was taking a look at executives who blog. When I found a list which linked to HP’s list of executives blog the first two I came upon where Dan and David. Dan was giving up blogging because he didn’t have time. David was giving it a meager effort posting only a couple of times over several months. It was pretty clear that David didn’t have time to blog either.

Dan and David are perfect examples of the executive who is taking a look at possibly blogging (or the small company that is taking a look at launching a blog in order to drive more web traffic). Who has time? When you are running a business, marketing often comes last anyway. Small businesses have less time to engage in marketing because they have so many of the little things to do everyday. Websites are time intensive.

When blogs first came out, the beauty was the "ease" of putting information online. But that ease was relative. It still involves sitting down at a computer and entering data. It still involved a person sitting at a computer.

It has been amazing to see how willing people are to sit at a computer. Ten years ago, receiving and sending email would occur on a "couple of day" basis. Today, we are obsessive about collecting email. And we are willing to download photos from our digital cameras to our websites and import them into the photo editing software. We’re willing to blaze them to CD. We’re willing to sit there. We’re willing to maneuver the mouse in endless cycles. Our backs are getting tired. But we still sit at the computer. We sit longer than anyone could have imagined two years ago. The computer revolution hasn’t been transformed by an increase in bandwidth. No, the computer revolution that we see occurring around us is born of the simple fact that people are willing to sit at their computers.

The person who discovers how a person can interact with a computer without the person having to be at the computer will truly change the world (and as you probably suspect GAL has solved this riddle!)

Blogging Cynicism

It’s Friday at 5:17 p.m. I’m just getting in the car, ready to head home. Kevin O’Keefe from Lexblog calls to continue a conversation we started several months ago about updating my firm’s websites.

Kevin and I talked about the cynicism which still exists out there in the world about blogging. Those of us in the blogosphere typically evangelize blogging to each other. After all, who else is listening to our blogs?

But for someone like Kevin who is out there in the world talking to firms daily about the value of blogs, he sees a broader spectrum of the business attitude towards blogs. I think we are beyond that stage of early innovators. Many of us were early innovators and a select few were there way before us. The early adopter stage is over.

But, we are still in the transitional stage between early adopters and whatever the next stage will be called. Right now, people are out there dominating vertical content areas. It use to be that you could do first page Google within weeks of putting information on line. Now, it takes months. Bu that is ok because the people who are getting in the space now will, no matter what, be there before the people who start next year or the year after. And the age of a webpage is still a factor for Google. The longer you’ve been online, the better chance you have of great search results over newer pages.

Kevin told a story of a cynical marketing director whose main point seemed to be that they couldn’t possibly be spending $70,000 or whatever the number was on all this marketing, which the experts were telling them they needed to spend, if it weren’t correct.

I said something a long time ago which I think is still true. I hope that not many people will get in the blogosphere. I hope the rate of growth in the legal sector will be slow because the longer the people stay out the better chance I have of extending my blog empire.

So, definitely don’t blog. I wouldn’t if I were you. It doesn’t make sense. It’s just a fad. It won’t last very long. I don’t have time to blog.

What is a Third Wave Law Firm?

What is a Third Wave Law Firm?

I found a link back to my GAL site from the Chuck Newton Blog. His bio line is awesome and reads: "Preaching’s and teachings from my prospective inside a third wave law firm." I was delighted to see his content in arriving at his Blog. There is certainly a push towards attorney blogging (which I agree is very important). Here is Chuck’s description, which I also would suppose describes his "third wave" approach:

                           My law firm and I are different from most law firms you encounter.

My law firm does not maintain a traditional office or offices that most consumers typically associate with law firms. We have no waiting rooms for clients to cool their heals, no reception area in which to be ignored, no meeting rooms for client visits, no file room in which to lose files, no law library, no messy private office for the firm’s attorneys to hide. We have no walls to hang our licenses and diplomas, no rec room to chat with staff over coffee and donuts, and my firm’s shingle hangs from no building. Look in any phone book and you will see no yellow page ad for my firm. If you were not in need of my services you would not even know my firm and I exist. My firm and I go about our business from where we are..whereever we are...everywhere we are. The attorneys in my firm simply refuse to be confined by time, space and the restrictions that a typical law office employs. There are no palace guards keeping you from the attorneys in my firm. I answer my own phones, read and respond to my own email, faxes and mail. I maintain my own schedule.

                          How does my law firm and I accomplish such a thing?

We try to be the king of the Internet. We use email, Internet telephony, Internet faxing, electronic case filing, and Internet research, both to and from computers and other devices. There is virtually no one that cannot be reached, and no document that cannot be received or delivered, by phone, fax, email or (if no other alternative) mail any place in the State of Texas or the world. My law firm and I believe that staying connected allows us to tear down the barriers that keep us from our clients and their objective.

"I love it! No waiting rooms or reception areas in which to be ignored"…"no messy private offices for the firm’s attorneys that hide." Chuck raises an interesting point, one that I have touched on recently, although not as deeply as Chuck. The infrastructure which industrial age companies required is in many ways going the way of the dinosaur. In the industrial age, attorneys had to work in big glass offices with tons of infrastructure. By pooling resources as a partnership, lawyers were able to afford all of the different equipment necessary for law practice and put people in offices close to each other so they can work together in their various roles. Obviously, these things are no longer necessary in a technology age.

Fifty-percent or more of my clients don’t even live in the same state as I do. My law offices are completely irrelevant to them. They test me by work product and intellect. Chuck Newton is riding the "third wave" while most other law firms haven’t even made it down to the beach.

Blawg Review # 78

Take a moment to check out this week's latest Blawg Review here hosted by Justin Patten at Human Law.

Kevin Heller, of Tech Law Advisor, is hosting the next Blawg Review using a format he previously created for his Blawg Review # 58 post, which can be found here.

Executives at Technology Companies Don’t Have Time to Blog?

I HP (Hewlett Packard) has a very coordinated approach to corporate blogging. They have a comment format for their executive blogs. I was looking at some of these executive blogs the other day and noticed that many of them have relatively sparse postings. In fact, at Dan Socci's Blog he reports that he is taking a break from blogging because of time constraints [Since this post, Dan or HP took his blog down.  I wasn't criticizing Dan or mean to 'call him out' but was using his blog as an example of the dilemma faced by busy executive] . Dan states[ed]:

"Time on a keyboard is at a premium and there are always emails to read or send and PowerPoint presentations or spreadsheets to address that compete with blogging time. My commitment to the HP team responsible for our blogging program was to post blogs at a pace I have rarely been able to keep, especially in recent months. After careful consideration I've decided to take a break from blogging for awhile."

I wonder if Dan would have the same problem concerning time constraints if he was able to dictate his blog posts using computer, web-based, or even better, portable dictation device. Continuing down the list of executives at HP, I next came to David Gee’s blog.  I note that the 5 most recent posts date from May 30th to September 19, 2006. It is pretty clear that David Gee, the head of worldwide marketing for HP’s management software business doesn’t appear to have enough time to blog.

Well some bloggers try to make the pitch that blogging doesn’t require much time, the truth is that blogging does take time. Blogging is incredibly important. Blogging can make a difference in many different ways to you personally and your company. It provides you a voice. It provides your company a marketing vehicle when you establish your expertise on the internet. Finding time to blog is a problem that must be solved. Digital dictation offers the best solution. If the blogosphere is going to take it’s next step forward, it must continue to attract the great minds of the world. The barriers to blogging must be reduced. The most significant barrier is that of time.

Corporate Blogging Book

Author and blogger Debbie Weil is getting rave reviews for her new book "The Corporate Blogging Book." There is a free download of the first chapter of the book, which can be viewed by clicking here. In fact, Debbie’s book is being highlighted by my favorite blogging tool TypePad.  I reviewed the table of contents and the first 29 or so pages it is clear that this is a book that every company should read. It not only tells you what blogging is all about, why you should be blogging in business, but how you go about achieving your corporate blogging goals. Debbie makes a great case for corporate blogging and identifies these three opportunities for corporations that enter the blogosphere.

1. Communicate with customers in real time.

2. Get positive and negative feedback from key constituencies.

3. Achieve high search engine rankings without spending a fortune on search engine optimization.

As you know from my blog at the GAL, we continually report about our tremendous results with our corporate blog (not this one but the one we use for our primary legal website). Fifty percent of our business (at least) is now driven through our corporate blog. For $13 per month or so, we are doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in business. You can’t beat that return on investment anywhere.

I look forward to reading Debbie’s book. For more information about Debbie, you can see her "about" page here.

The Problem With Blog Software

In this age of reality TV and real time media, the reading and watching public expects immediacy to both information and entertainment. The recent YouTube is in many ways the next step past blogging. Instead of simply typing in a "post," you speak it and record it. Instead of seeing what someone has to say, you get to see how they say it, the intonation, and expression that go along with it. Blogging has a sense of reality to it. Video has a sense of reality on steroids.

Of course the problem with youtube.com is that there is a lot of work that goes into putting an online video up. There are production activities, including in many cases, editing, that require time.

The advantage of blogging is that it requires less time than video content.

The fundamental change that has occurred in technology is not technology itself. These last two years or so, end-users are now willing to do a lot more than they were willing to do three or more years ago. It used to be that the masses were willing to receive email. Then they were willing to reply to email. Thereafter, they were willing to sit a little longer. They were willing to attach files to email. Today, the users are willing to do a lot more. They are willing to sit at their computers and interact with technology. The transformation, which is occurring in the world today, is the end-users willingness to interact with Technology.

But the problem is still one of time. When an end-user has to sit at their computer, log onto a website, enter information, edit their typing, and thereafter submit the information, precious time is lost. The fact that more and more people are willing to spend the time is interesting indeed. Anyone who is serious about blogging knows it takes time to generate good, interesting content. Those who say they have "no time to blog" raise a valid point. Many people still chose to spend their valuable time elsewhere.

To me the most powerful thing about dictating your blog posts is the dramatic reduction in time that it takes to generate content. Take this post, I am dictating this while waiting for my computer to start-up using my portable Phillips 9350 digital recorder. I am getting my coffee cup ready for coffee. I am not losing a single moment of time from the other activities I would normally engage in. The GAL website has a tremendous amount of content in it. 90% of that content was generated without any loss of family or business time. Having a staff member transcribe and post my dictation may result in an occasional typographic or grammatical error, but the trade off in time saved is well worth any transcription errors that occur.

All of this has gotten me thinking. There has been an explosion in ASP service providers. We use Basecamp Extranet System. We use Leapfile for sending large files encrypted across the internet. We use web mail to send and receive email remotely. But no one has thought to solve the problem of time; the time it takes for the end-user to interface with these technologies.

I used to say that everyone needs a personal assistant, even personal assistants. I believe this statement could not be more true in today’s technology and information world. The outsourcing of tasks is a critical need, which is only on the cusp of being acknowledged, but alone, solved. We need our technology people to focus a little less on cool technology, and a lot more on end-user issues if we are to reach the next stage in the evolution of the information age. (by the way, it took me about 5 minutes to dictate this entire post. It probably would have taken me 20 -30 minutes or more to type it up and post it.)

The Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki

This is a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have business blogs. As of October 2006, there are 40 Fortune 500 companies listed as having blogs. This represents about 8% of the Fortune 500. While some may think the percentage isn’t much, I actually think it’s pretty amazing that 40 of the largest companies of the world have embraced blogging. This is especially true considering that executives at these companies have made a decision to invest the time required to put their intellectual property online. The number of large corporations that are embracing blogging continues to grow every day. There are those who will lead, and those who will be left behind.

Of course, the largest corporations in the world don’t really need much more by way of marketing. The true power of the blog is for small and medium size businesses which are looking to increase their market presence and reach. It is the small and medium size company which stands to benefit the most from business blogging.

By the way, if you want to see a really cool mega-corporation marketing blog, check out the Nike blog here.

Tripling Our Space

The company next door is moving on. We have an opportunity to take over their space and effectively take over the rest of the floor in the building where we are located at the largest renaissance zone in the country. We’ve been a little cramped in our 1000 sq ft for some time now.

Independent Practitioners Balance Work With Play

I would never have taken up kiteboarding or yoga at my old law firm. Who had time? Who could spare those precious minutes which could otherwise be spent billing a client?

As an independent practitioner, I make decisions which make sense. I balance my life between work and play. And I never let "hourly billing" thoughts affect how I work or play. And, no, I never wear a suit except if I am in court.

Is the hourly billing clock keeping you from trying the things that make you smile?

The Most Deadly Weapon in My Technology Quiver

I was thinking the other day about all the ways technology has changed my internal business process. I love Copernic Desktop Search because it brings my emails and files to me in milliseconds. There is no doubt that my Basecamp extranet has been a tremendous success for us internally and in terms of client service and satisfaction.

But there really is only one hands down winner in measuring the impact of any particular technology on our business success. There are no rivals in this category. Digital dictation is the engine that drives our business. Digital dictation has been the difference maker and allows for all the other technology tools to contribute.

It also occurred to me that some people would be surprised that digital dictation could be such a difference maker. After all, there are already numerous ways to dictate assignments, tasks, and correspondence. Even with the old cassette tape method, a good businessperson can get an awful lot done using dictation.

The difference for our firm is that we use dictation to type correspondence, pleadings, and motions just like everyone else. That only comprises of about five to ten percent of all of our dictation. I use digital dictation to dictate emails, email responses, virtually all of the extranet content, instructions to all of our internal staff and virtual workers, blog posts, and instructions to clients. Digital dictation is far more superior to email when it comes to managing and instructing workers and clients. Why? Because I do not have to be sitting at my computer in order to make it all happen. Because I can talk ten to 20 times faster than I can type. Because much of the work I do is while I am standing in my kitchen getting my kids ready for school, or driving in my car. Because, you see, digital dictation is also portable. I carry my Philips 9350 portable dictation device everywhere. When a great thought hits me, I quickly dictate it.

I often tell people that I do the work of three to five attorneys. Digital dictation is what allows that to happen. I have lots of internal staff and virtual workers all executing the tasks and goals that flow through my various dictation systems. Most lawyers share one secretary with one other lawyer. The difference? Digital dictation.

What I am telling you is that there is a lot more behind the technology of digital dictation than a new and improved way to prepare work product and speed up workflow. Digital dictation offers a brand new business process that unplugs the businessperson from both their computer and the office, allowing them to get stuff done during otherwise non-business and non-productive times.

You have heard me say it before; our firm is humming when I am dictating. When I am dictating, the staff is receiving tasks and assignments. When I am dictating, goals are being defined and projects being executed. When I am dictating, I am acting as the Coach and Quarterback rather than the Linemen and Wide Receiver.

Have you considered the impact which digital dictation might have on your blogging?

What Are “Deluxe” Legal Services

I stepped in a bar the other day and reviewed the menu. There was a cheeseburger and a cheeseburger deluxe. But French fries were a side item. It became clear that "deluxe" meant lettuce and tomatoes. In some restaurants, deluxe means French fries. Just what is this concept of "deluxe," anyway?

It seems to me that the bar can sometimes be pretty low under the current iteration of American style capitalism. Many law firms think of themselves as high-end service providers. High-end sometimes means little more than fancy offices and fancy conference rooms. In reality, the high-end of legal services is too often little more than lettuce and tomato.

Return On Your Blogging Investment

One of the most amazing things to me when I launched my vertical blogs in a variety of niche content areas was that my total cost was $13.00 a month through TypePad for unlimited blogs. I designed my blogs a little different from most anyone else. I don’t have one blog where I talk about a variety of different things. I have blogs that are purely niche. Those blogs only talk about narrow issues within that niche. For instance, I have a domain name theft blog. It is a blog which deals exclusively with domain name theft, uniform domain name dispute resolution policy and domain name International Domain Name Arbitration. I have blogs in lots of other niche areas. But my blogs don’t bleed together. They are all independent and stand on their own. I use advanced templates within TypePad to create a standard "website" look for all of my blogs. When navigating between my niche areas, you have no idea you’re actually skipping between blogs. Because my blogs all link to each other, they increase the search engine results between them.

I do a tremendous amount of business off my blogs for $13.00 per month. Contrast the money I pay with TypePad to the money I pay for my Yellow Pages ad. I might get two or three clients a year off my Yellow Pages ad. I took a look the other day and I pay almost 100 times more for my Yellow Pages advertising and get 1/1000th the business.

When it comes to return on an investment, there is no marketing or advertising program I could have launched which is even in the same galaxy as blogging. The return on my blogging investment has been staggering.

I Don’t Understand The “I Don’t Have Time To Blog” excuse.

Many professionals and business executives simply say they have no time to blog. I don’t get this. By saying you don’t have time to blog is almost like saying you don’t have time to generate new customers. If you post your expert knowledge and commentary online within a narrow area of specialization, you in all likelihood dominate all the search engines within that category in six to twelve months. How could you not have time to blog?

Redundant Redundancy

I just realized how nice it is to have two laptop computers with virtually the exact set up on both. Sometimes, one laptop is not working the way it is suppose to. Other times, you have upgrades and tech support dealing with one computer. It is times like these that makes it really nice to be able to hop on your other laptop and still be up and running.

Have you considered having a redundant computer available to you at all times? What would you do if your laptop stopped working?

Is There More Risk In Staying At Your Current Job Rather Than Quitting It?

It always surprises me when I speak to people who are considering their employment alternatives.  The gravity, which holds them in place, is weighty.  Changing jobs or even careers is venturing into the unknown. 

My belief is that talented people are often trapped in situations that don’t make good use of their talents.  The gravity that holds them in place was born of the industrial age.  You remember, the age our parents lived in.  the one where the father went to work and held down the same job for the same company for an entire career. 

Technology has allowed talent to become a more dominate market force.  Longevity and loyalty count for little when considering employment prospects.  This is great news for the silently repressed masses of talented people. 

But talented people have to be willing to step up to the plate to.  Too many talented people feel stuck in their jobs.  They think the risk of leaving is great and the risk of staying is small.

There is risk in staying.  There is tremendous risk.  When you stay in a job that does not utilize and appreciate your talents, you risk living an entire life unfulfilled.  You risk the prospect of failing to fulfill your potential and, in some cases, your destiny.  You risk sending the wrong messages to your family and children about what is important.  Many fail to realize that the information age has already turned the marketplace upside down.  The risks associated with jumping off the cliff has become dramatically less.  The risk of staying put in the wrong job has become much greater. 

Stuck In Your Current Job With No Way Out?

I wonder what percentage of the American Bar Association feels stuck in their job.  There are thousand ways to get stuck in your current position.  I would submit that nearly all of them are psychological barriers. 

You could always come up with a list of reasons to stay at your current job.  If you’ve been there for any length of time, you probably have security.  Its nice not having to be the person who has to pay the bills the following month.  Perhaps something great is about to happen in your new job (although you’ve been waiting for that great thing for a decade).  You have a mortgage and your kids need to go to college.  Whether you admit it to yourself on a regular basis, you know you are stuck.  Sure you would like the creativity and flexibility of running your own show.  Answering to nobody except you and your clients would, you acknowledge, change the entire experience of practicing law.  Testing your wits and your business savvy against the marketplace would add passion and purpose to your work life.  Working from home in the morning while your kids get ready for school using VPN, digital dictation, extranet and cell phone technology without anyone looking over your shoulder would undoubtedly provide a much better sense of work life and family balance. 

But you are stuck in your job.  There’s no way you could just simply take your talents and whichever clients we choose to come with you, under your own shingle.  I mean, you can see how easy it would be to distinguish yourself in the market and develop a business model that would provide a higher degree of client service and satisfaction.  But you’ve got kids now and it wouldn’t be fair to them to risk your financial health at their age.  It is, after all, much more important that the bills get paid money gets saved in normal cp preserved.  It is just not that important that your children see you fulfill your potential, be your own boss, and try to change the world around you without anyone telling you how things should be.  Children respect a parent who they know hates their job.  Right?

So, really, my advice is that you just stay put.  You and your family will be better off staying the course. 

Follow-up on Tech-Show

I posted recently that I was a speaker at a technology show in my part of the state.  It was not focused on lawyers but businesses using technology to win. 

I did a one-hour presentation on “Blogging Your Way To Business Success.”  This was the most well attended presentation of all of the presentations at the show.  It surprised me that blogging would draw so much attention. 

What fascinated people was the ability to use a TypePad blog to generate six to seven figures worth of income as we do on our main website.  We create vertical content in a number of niche practice areas including non-compete contracts, trade secrets, domain name disputes and several other areas.  We sign up on average five to eight clients per week from our blogs. 

Very few law firms have reported similar results with their blogs.  What makes our blogs different?  First of all, we launch a separate blog for each niche practice area.  All the blogs are tied together with custom html so it looks like one seamless commercial website.  In fact, you wouldn’t even know that a website was built with blog software unless you were a blog aficionado. 

I think that is what makes our commercial blogging effort different than most others.  We use blog software to create a professional looking business website.  Perhaps as importantly, we don’t express parental opinions in the way that most bloggers do.  We post relevant content, which is helpful to prospective clients about specialized topics.  Some of the posts have absolutely nothing to do with personal opinions at all.  They are pure marketing and we simply use the blog post to put marketing content online. 

The second presentation we gave was on virtual workers.  This was also a well-attended presentation despite the fact that most of the people in the room were businesspersons and woman, not lawyers.  We showed how virtual workers worked for law students, paralegals, law schools, and law firms.  From each point of view, virtual workers make perfect sense.  I’ll blog more about each perspective in future posts. 

Synchronized to Dancing With Your Laptop

About four months ago, I finally bit the bullet and jumped head first into the file synchronization issue, which had been hanging over my head since I started my law firm a year and a half ago.  Since the beginning of my firm, I struggled with the issue of file synchronization between my server and my laptop.  Typically, I would copy an entire case file onto my laptop when I went on the road.  If I did work from the road, I would create a synch file on my laptop with the newest versions.  However, actually moving those files back onto the server was hit and miss at best.  I knew file synchronization was a piece of the puzzle I had to solve.  Looking back, it is unfortunate that it did not leap up to the top of my priority list sooner.

So what do you do if you are an attorney with a laptop on the go?  You need to be able to work from the road and make sure those files end up back on the server.  We have a VPN in our office, which allows us to reach our server if we are out of the office and have an Internet connection.  However, that does not really solve the synchronization problem.  Anyone who has worked over a VPN knows that you are a slave to the bandwidth where you happen to be sitting at the time.  More often than not, you do not work off of the server version of the file.  You copy it onto your laptop and work on it from your hard drive.  Of course, you then are right back to where you started.  You have the problem of remembering to move that file, which is now the most recent version, back onto the server. 

We did a little bit of research and stumbled across a company called Mobiliti at Mobiliti.com.  They offer for sale software called continuity at work.  Continuity at work provides for seamless and quick file synchronization between your laptop version and the server.  It automatically knows which is the most recent version and overwrites the prior version.  Of course, you can customize these options for synchronization if you wish.  If there is an updated server version and an updated client version, it will apprise you of this conflict and give you several options for resolving the conflict.  This includes creating two versions of the document in case two people where working on it at the same time.  There are lots of bells and whistles to this software.  I have found it to be extremely helpful.  A single user license for continuity at work is $60.00.

Because we have over 25 gigabytes of files on our server, we do not synchronize all files.  For most laptop users working remotely, you typically will not synchronize the entire server with your laptop.  However, I have found that synchronizing the select files, which are active for me during any period, is no problem at all.  I would highly recommend this synchronization product and would be interested if any one else is using other products which our readers should be aware of. 

Are you using a file synchronization program which works well for you?  Let us know…