The Greatest American Lawyer

Who Are the Entrepreneurs of the Legal Realm?

An entrepreneur is defined as: "someone who organizes a business venture and assumes the risk for it" by Princeton's WordNet, but the definition of an entrepreneur is much more encompassing than that. An entrepreneur is someone who is always looking for ways to innovate, scouting for new opportunities and ready to mobilize resources at a moment's notice, according to Dr. Michael Gordon.

The question that arose while reading through his article, was whether or not traditional firms still fit into either definition. Yes, they may have taken a risk back when they were first formed, but now, are they innovating? Are they still scouting for new opportunities?

It is fairly easy to see the line between the vibrant entrepreneurs of today, and those from generations long gone when you survey the field of law. Traditional firms have stopped achieving, stopped exploring, and are content with their own idea of "what works". On the other hand, tech-age firms are continually exploring, testing, and accepting new ways to conduct their business; never tied down by the constraints of tradition.

Throwing off the constraints of tradition is the only way to maintain the title of "entrepreneur" in this new century. In order to call yourself an entrepreneur within the field of law, you have to forsake the chains of the traditional model because it is inherently static, and thus, inherently contrary to entrepreneurship.

A true tech-age firm is anything but static - they are always looking for ways to enhance their business, always renewing how much they deserve the dual-title of "entrepreneur" and "high-tech". We who found and lead tech-age firms are the new entrepreneurs of the legal realm; we are the ones who are carrying this service into the 21st century.

Referenced: "Entrepreneurship Defined", by Dr. Michael Gordon

Sharing Details is Important if You Want to Change the Way Law is Practiced

As many of you know, I started out this blog talking a lot about my day-to-day experiences. It’s kind of like reality blog. I gave you the blow-by-blow. My emotions were worn on my cuff.

Recently, I have been blogging more about generic issues. I’ve talked a lot about digital dictation.

I blogged a lot about law firm marketing.

Other topics have included:

1. "Greatest Philosophy" If you ever wanted to know what my philosophical approach was to the practice of law, you would find it in this category.

2. "Problems with the Michigan Supreme Court" can be found here.

3. And of course, "extranets".

My brother is an attorney with 20 years experience. He is a partner with the firm he started out with right out of law school. He makes a good living and has been at his firm long enough to have escaped many of the pressures that drive attorneys early in their careers (being seen at your desk at the right times, working Saturdays, giving up vacations because of a "more important" legal research project or trial). He’s got a 3,000 sq ft house on the Black River and 39’ sail boat. He and his wife have been married something on the order of 15 years. They have 3 boys, 13, 11, and 9.

Two weeks ago my brother, Mark, gave notice to his firm that he was quitting his partnership and moving his family 300 miles north to start his practice all over again at our firm.

I’ll be blogging about Mark and my firm’s transition in the coming weeks. Yes, there will be issues that are personal to me (having a family member directly involved in my life for perhaps the very first time), practical issues related to integrating him into our process and philosophical issues (why Mark jumped and why you should too).

So stay tuned. It’s going to be an exciting time. Don’t forget that the Greatest American Blogger will be exposed on February 10, 2007.

Webmail as a Secondary Tool

We have been posting and receiving comments on a variety of email issues over the last 30 days. It is interesting to me that many of you are finding the topic interesting and commenting on the posts. A list of all of the posts in the email issue category can be found here.

Many people extol the virtues of gmail. Gmail has a unique way of tracking discussions so that emails, their responses and replies thereto occur in a threaded and organized manner. This is similar to what is accomplished in a bulletin board system.

We like gmail and use it for a variety of purposes. We also have webmail accounts that go with our primary email addresses through our webpost, but everyone at our office still uses Microsoft Outlook as the primary email tool. The ability to get your email offline, functionality of a client-side application, and the speed of Outlook functionality given significant advantages. When used with a desktop search tool like Copernic or Google Desktop Search, Outlook works better than webmail.

We use webmail as a supplement for our email service. Obviously, I can get webmail from any computer. I have my assistants type in dictated emails into webmail for sending. This allows me to generate emails using my portable Phillips Dictation System. I don't have to be sitting at my computer to compose email and make sure it gets sent.

I have my webmail set up so that the inbox empties when email is pulled into Outlook. This way, my webmail only shows those emails since my last connection to the internet through Outlook.

I can see how bulletin board systems such as encompassed in the basecamp extranet will be important steps forward in controlling and threading email discussions. But web based applications are still slower and clunkier than client-side applications. If I was not dictating bulletin board posts and emails, I would be significantly limited in my ability to generate information. Just because lawyers are willing to sit at their computers for hours on end, doesn't make it right!

At our law firm, we love technology and we use it as aggressively as anyone. The more aggressive you are with technology, the more you find yourself face-to-face with your computer screen. I cannot emphasize enough how important digital dictation and adequate staffing are to our business model. Without assistants sitting at the computer for me and executing my dictated tasks and content, the technology we use would be of much less value.

This illustrates the double-edged sword of technology. Increasing communication and capturing information are all worthy goals. But sitting at your computer in order to engage in communication and data capture are not valuable uses of attorney time. Clients certainly don't want to pay for an attorney to launch their web-browser, find their extranet site, log in, find the project they are looking for, click on the project, find the bulletin board area they want to comment on, click on the bulletin board, type in a subject, type in the body, edit for content and grammar, and hit "enter".

Both Plaintiffs and Defense Counsel Believe the Michigan Supreme Court is Biased

Here is the link to a very interesting article written by Attorney Robert F. Garvey and published at Michigan Lawyers Weekly. Mr. Garvey Follows up a headline from the January 8, 2007 cover of Business Week magazine called "How Business Trounced the Trial Lawyers." Essentially, Mr. Garvey correctly notes that the only for businesses to have trounced lawyers is to accomplish their goal their legislators and judges seeking a pro-business political agenda.

There is a lot of interesting stuff in this article. You should definitely read it. To me, the most amazing content it that a bi-partisan blind survey was done of plaintiffs’ and defendants’ attorneys throughout Michigan. The results point to a politically biased judiciary in Michigan essentially being run by insurance and corporate interests. Here are the stats:

Question 1: Do you generally agree that the decisions and opinions of the Michigan Supreme Court majority are the result of an agenda that is better left to the legislative branch?

Yes 83.7 percent

No 16.3 percent

Question 2: Do you generally agree that the decisions and opinions of the Michigan Supreme Court majority suggest a pattern of bias that favors insurance companies and large corporate interests over those of ordinary citizens in civil litigation matters?

Yes 79.3 percent

No 20.7 percent

Question 3: Do you generally agree that the decisions and opinions of the Michigan Supreme Court majority have resulted in a pattern of denial of the right to trial by jury in the State of Michigan?

Yes 80.5 percent

No 19.5 percent

Question 4: Would you generally support the concept of an analysis of the decisions of the Michigan Supreme Court majority as they relate to the denial of the right to trial by jury in civil cases?

Yes 83.5 percent

No 16.5 percent

The Required Mindset

The mindset of the successful tech-age entrepreneur is one of exploration and revolution. The successful tech-age entrepreneur is always keeping both his mind and eyes open to find new and exciting ways to enhance and maintain his advantage.

However, this mindset can sometimes be corrupted by getting more interested in closing the doors of the competition - in this case the traditional-style law firms - rather than simply seeking to best them. The danger with this mindset is that you lose sight of the key aspect of the business equation - the customers.

While this mindset of destruction is very dangerous for your own entrepreneurial goals because your customers do become subsidiary to the competition, seeking to drive your competition crazy, according to Guy Kawasaki, can be yield great benefits. Kawasaki's list of techniques are much more all-encompassing, but specifically, the idea of knowing what your business represents, and turning your "customers into evangelists", are ones of special significance to firms like ours.

In general, it is what tech-age firms represent, that gives them the competitive edge against our bigger competitors. This is because the basic identity of technology itself is of efficiency and ease, and to dedicate your business to that identity is to adopt technology's positive traits for your own; and in a world in which efficiency and ease is what everyone is looking for, providing it in legal service allows you supply the consumers with exactly what it is that they want.

The idea of turning "customers into evangelists" is also of interest to tech-age firms because of both the ease and necessity of doing so. I say it is "easy" because after you have shown your client the huge competitive advantage you hold over the box-firm down the road, it is totally illogical for them to return to the inefficient and more expensive service being offered by our competitors. We all know the necessity of getting these dedicated clients, but it is important for all entrepreneurs to keep that necessity in the back of their mind every time they are dealing with any of their clients; because after all, those are the clients that keep your business in the black.

Check out Kawasaki's post, "The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy" for his full list of techniques.

The Advantage of Bulletin Boards Over Email

I have posted recently on challenges posed by the email inbox here and here. One of the advantages of our extranet system is that it contains a bulletin board system (BBS) inside the application. While not all of our clients communicate exclusively through the bulletin board, over 50% of the communication goes through there.

The advantage of the BBS is that it threads discussions much like Google’s gmail. There is no danger of a message or a comment to a message getting lost within the extranet. Everything is preserved in a single place and sorted by client and matter. Everyone on the team can see the communication, drastically reducing the chance that something will get lost in the mix. The problem with email is that it is typically uncategorized. Sure, people create folder systems in their email inbox and work diligently to put ingoing and outgoing emails into the appropriate folder. That approach is foolhardy. It takes way too much time to file emails by folder. Further, the risk that you’ll miss an important email makes the approach incredibly high-risk. By working through the extranet, emails are automatically sorted and categorized. This is one of the many advantages which an extranet has to offer.

Don’t Bother Trying to Sort Your Email

Anyone who is trying to find email within their Outlook inbox knows the difficulty and challenges which exist finding important information. The search functions of the Outlook inbox is-well-a joke. Watching that little magnifying glass go in circles is a pathetic waste of time.

Some people highlight an email from a person and then sort their inbox by that person’s name. This allows you to see all of the email from that particular person. But it won’t show you your responses to that person which are in your outbox or sent mail folder. And sometimes people use multiple email addresses.

If you are stumbling around in your email inbox trying to find information then you are failing to take advantage of some of the great technology which exist there to help you. Copernic Desktop search is a much better tool to look for email. This is a free tool which you can synchronize with Microsoft Outlook. It constantly searches and indexes your email folders. This includes your inbox, outbox and all data in between. When you want to find a particular email from a particular person, you could just search by that person’s name. There are advanced searches and there are basic searches. The key, however, is that you can pull up that information in less than a second. Unlike the Outlook search mechanism, Copernic search results are virtually instantaneous.

So what are you waiting for? Download Copernic now or tryout the Google Desktop Search Tool. Not only will they save you time, they will make you much more productive. And when was the last time that someone offered to reduce your malpractice risk for free?

There’s a Hole in Your Email

Think about it. When a piece of mail comes into your office, you have a whole system for dealing with that paper. This system that you’ve developed ensures that things get calendared appropriately, routed to the right people, and filed in the right place. I don’t know what percentage of information now comes into most law offices by email, but it has to be greater than 50%. In my office, I would estimate that 80% of the information that comes in is through our extranet or by email.

Do you have a system to deal with email information that arrives in your inbox?

For all of the blessings of email, email is fraught with problems. Most firms don’t have any system in place to standardize the processing of information which arrives by email. What happens if your spam filter accidentally pulls an email out of your inbox which contains important information?

I received an email this morning from a potential injury client less than a week before the statute of limitations runs. I knew enough to send a reply immediately telling them to seek other representation. Of course, it took me until late this afternoon to realize that that email reply was stuck in my outbox. What if I simply flagged that email for handling later? Yes, malpractice is lurking in your inbox everyday.

I suspect that lawyers will wake up to the downside of email over the next many months. This is not to say that email is ever going away. And I am certainly not suggesting that we attempt to limit or do away with email. What I am saying is this. We must find ways to develop a process around our email inbox, just as we have developed different processes for handling non-digital information which arrives at our office. I don’t have the answer. I suspect some smart technology whiz will help solve the problem. Here’s hoping…

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR AN ATTORNEY WHO WANTS TO START HIS OWN FIRM.

START BY WORKING WITH THE EXISTING SOLO ATTORNEY THRU A MONTH OR SO TRANSITION PERIOD THEN ASSUME THE LEASE ON A 4 YEAR OLD  BUILDING, COMPLETE WITH ALL FIXTURES , READY TO PRACTICE DOWN TO A LIBRARY,CURRENTLY REPRESENTING 2 SMALL TOWNS AND SEVERAL CLIENTS YOU MAY ALSO ASSUME !  A MERE $500.00 A MONTH PLUS DEPOSIT WILL GET YOU STARTED ON A YRS LEASE, PAY ATTENTION, HOW CAN YOU GO WRONG, PRESENT ATTORNEY IS LEAVING FOR PERSONAL REASONS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH THE PRACTICE NOW IN PLACE !!!!! CONTACT; LELAND HOYLE, 309-772-3760

What happens when we turn over our courts to politicians disguised as judges?

Here is a post on a blog on the miblawg blog, which posts commentary on the Michigan Supreme Court.

The Michigan Supreme Court has been in the news a lot lately. It has been labeled as an extremist court dominated by neoconservatives. It has been labeled as a court run by politicians appointed to the bench by a governor who many believe was the most morally corrupt Governor in state history. Michigan Lawyers and Judges were recently polled by Michigan Trial Lawyers Weekly and overwhelmingly disagreed with the Wall Street Journal article, which had portrayed the Michigan Supreme Court in a positive light. 

There is little question that average citizens don’t pay much attention to third branch of government. Lawyers and many judges knows how dysfunctional the court system has become. And it is not because of jury trials. It’s because of courts and procedures and the infiltration of politicians onto the bench.

Miblawg raises some interesting issues concerning the Michigan Supreme Court. Do real people ever know that their rights have been taken away until after it’s too late?

The Urge To Undress and Unmask.

Robert Ambrogi over at the law.com blog network recently posted about the apparent trend of unmasking by anonymous lawyers. Here is his post in total (there was too much great information here to edit or summarize) which can be found here.

"As trends among lawyers go, the urge to unmask online is far less disturbing than the urge to undress in public buildings. The latter trend apparently got its start in Ohio, when a prosecutor was caught walking naked through a government office building. Now comes the Philadelphia lawyer who yesterday inexplicably decided to disrobe in a courthouse conference room -- in the presence of a 14-year-old girl, no less.

Equally inexplicable but far more preferable is the apparent trend among lawyers who blog anonymously to unmask themselves. We all know the story of David Lat's coming out. A trailblazer in telling all, he toils now, no longer in obscurity, at the legal-gossip blog Above the Law. But that was late in 2005. Other anonymous legal bloggers seemed content to stay safely behind their masks. Until recently, that is.

Maybe The Wired GC is to blame. As reported here in December, this hitherto anonymous blogger announced that he would unmask himself sometime in January. (We're waitinggg ...) Soon after, also as reported here, the anonymous editor of Blawg Review challenged readers to unmask his identity. (They failed.) Now, as that same anonymous editor reports, another unmasking is in the offing. This time, it is the anonymous author of The Greatest American Lawyer, who has launched a contest, Who's that GAL? to guess his true identity.

We welcome lawyers to remove their masks. We urge them, however, to keep their clothes on -- at least in public."

Robert also hosts the Robert Ambrogi’s Lawsites blog and is the author of the book "The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web." He also writes the Media Law blog and co-writes Legal Blog Watch. Incredibly, he also co-hosts the Legal Affairs podcast coast to coast.

Wasting Marketing Dollars

Studies have shown that marketing is significantly more effective when specifically tailored to the client group that you are attempting to bring in. This means that an advertisement that calls out to specific legal issues would see more return on the investment compared to one that simply summarizes your firm. In order for tech-age firms like ours to take advantage of this knowledge, you need to know the composition of the client group that you are trying to reach, which than allows you to derive marketing strategies that would most appeal to that group.

Discovering that composition can be a little more interesting for tech-age firms. While our technologies allow us to better accommodate all sorts of different clients, there is a large group of clients who are not able to fully appreciate our comparative advantage, and will never come through our doors. This group is apprehensive about our break-through models , and will always be more interested in the traditional, and "proven", method of legal services, no matter how much you spend trying to show them the better way.

The clients that are going to realize, and fully embrace, what tech-age firms can do are a little different than their traditional counterparts. These clients are ones with a basic understanding of technology, have the ability to utilize the Internet, and are free of the old mindsets of how legal work is "supposed" to be done.

This means that there are camps of loyal clients who correspond to the different camps within the legal field, and firms who are looking to make the most of their marketing dollars will find the greatest returns by targeting their own camp of clients. While the camp for the traditional firm is larger than ours, this doesn't mean that there are those who cannot be saved from the chains of our outdated counterparts. This is because there are so many technologically savvy clients that go to their local A, B & Associates simply because they don't know another way. Marketing targeted towards these clients, and those mentioned above, can be an extremely effective use of resources, but it is important to realize that there are those clients that will simply never be interested in our capabilities. In doing so, we can save those precious marketing resources and avoid wasting them on endeavors that would not bring returns.

“Who’s that GAL” contest update.

For those of you who have been around for any length of time, you know that the most famous anonymous blogger in the legal field is someone named "Ed" over at Blawgreview.com. No one (and I mean literally no one) knows who "Ed" really is. I have always assumed that Ed was short for "Editor." I have traded many emails with Ed through the years. In fact, it was Ed who suggested that I grab the URL GreatestAmericanLawyer.com, which I now use as a mapped domain.

Thanks to this post over at Blawg Review, I can now share with you the introduction to the Greatest American Hero T.V. Show. As you know, I received my divine inspiration for this website because of the song I couldn’t get out of my head the day I decided to quit my old firm. That song is one I had not heard in a decade and I have no idea why it popped in my head in the first place. I do know why it stuck. The lyrics were perfect…check it out.

Of course, if you want to check out the last edition of the Blawg Review, it was hosted by the Public Defender Stuff blog. The Blawg Review post by Public Defender was awesome, in honorary format of Martin Luther King Day. You should check it out and check out the blog. I am certainly adding it to my Blog Roll.

'Who's That GAL?' Contest Rules

Learn more about the contest HERE.

Here are are the contest rules:

1. Do a little internet research and see if you can figure who the author of The Greatest American Lawyer Blog really is. Send submissions to greatest.american@gmail.com.
2. Contest applicants must be 18 years or older to participate.
3. Yes, if you in fact know who The Greatest American Lawyer is, you can still enter the contest.
4. The contest will close at midnight on February 9, 2007. Contest winners will be drawn at random on February 10, 2007 and announced on-line.
5. The more contest applicants we have, the greater chance for sponsorships and great prizes so feel free to post this contest on your blog.

Read more about entries on the contest here.

The Importance of the Test-Drive

I little while back I posted about a the importance of remaining dedicated to the title "technologically advanced" (see "Staying Ontop of the Wave"). It is pretty universally accepted that those who work with this type of firm are always competing to discover and adopt the latest in technological advances that have the potential to make their work even easier and more efficient.

However, for many firms, saying you are dedicated to high-tech is much easier than remaining that way. Once you launch your Basecamp project management account, or purchase those new dictation devices, and than go through the hassle of training your staff in the use of all those things, it becomes extremely easy to stamp it as "high-tech" and leave it all alone.

Don't let yourself get caught in that trap. Stay abreast of the latest in breakthroughs, and when something comes up, don't be afraid to test-drive the technology. Test-driving is the most important thing that your firm can do to remain technologically advanced. Try different things out, even if you think your system is everything you need. Engineers across the globe are making breakthroughs upon breakthroughs, combining devices, making them faster, or creating something totally new in itself; and what you have today could very well be old news tomorrow. So, if something new and flashy comes around - give it a shot (perhaps in a small capacity) and see if it just might be of use to your office.

And don't feel like this is something that you need to be doing yourself. For a majority of new technologies, the time it would take for anyone to sift through the different options and commands is time you could better spend generating revenue. So if you hear about something, don't hesitate to ask a staff member to check it out themselves.

Who is that GAL? Contest Update.

I have been trying to think of a clever name for our contest asking readers to guess the identity of GAL by sending an email to greatest.american @gmail.com. We have received a significant number of guesses thus far, most of them completely accurate. There are lots of hints out there and trails for you to follow.  Put on your Google thinking cap and it won't take long for you the figure out WHO I really am.

I also asked for ideas about a contest name. one of our avid readers David Carson from the Pelud & Carson Law firm. David suggested "Name that GAL." I have tweaked the submission slightly to rename the contest "Who’s that GAL?"

So welcome to the "Who’s that GAL" contest where readers are invited to guess who the Greatest American Lawyer author really is. We have contacted a couple of companies about potential sponsorships for our contest. In the meantime, you should know that prizes will include a week long stay at a condominium located at The Homestead Freshwater Resort in Glen Arbor, Michigan ($1,000 value, limits on availability), an iPod nano and miscellaneous other prizes. More prizes will be added as we go.

   

In the meantime, here are the contest rules:

1. Do a little internet research and see if you can figure who the author of The Greatest American Lawyer Blog really is. Send submissions to greatest.american@gmail.com.
2. Contest applicants must be 18 years or older to participate.
3. Yes, if you in fact know who The Greatest American Lawyer is, you can still enter the contest.
4. The contest will close at midnight on February 9, 2007. Contest winners will be drawn at random on February 10, 2007 and announced on-line.
5. The more contest applicants we have, the greater chance for sponsorships and great prizes so feel free to post this contest on your blog.

Read more about entries on the contest here.

The Age Beyond the 9 to 5

With how quickly technology turned tiny and hand-held, many people became trapped by their cellphones and blackberries; devices that were accomplishing what they were intended - too well. The problem that many professionals were, and still are, running into was determining how "connected" they should be.

The internet, cellphones, blackberries and laptops have revolutionized not only how we do work, but also how - and how often - we contact other people. This revolution has given rise to a great question regarding how often and when we should make ourselves available for communication to those we work with, and has seen proponents arise on both sides. The ensuing debate has become one most pressing to those of us working in the service market as we struggle to find a balance most amicable to our personal and professional lives.

The answer to this debate is simple, not easy, but simple. Ours is a service industry, and as connectedness becomes more and more the norm, those who we serve are going to demand the same from us. If you want your firm to succeed in the 21st century - the age of unparalleled communication - you need to make yourself available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For if you don't you will be left in the dust of the 9 to 5, watching as other attorney's offer full-time availability to their clients and reap the benefits.

For further thoughts regarding this subject, please check out this post titled: "Ball and Chain? Key to Freedom?" by Patrick J. Lamb. Patrick hits the issue right on the head: "Those who put clients in second place are going to find out that they don't have to worry about that problem any more."

To Be or Not to Be…Anonymous

As you know, I have been posting a bit recently being anonymous. My last post drew a lot of comments from folks who poked around a little bit and easily discovered who I am. The truth is that there are quite a few other bloggers who I have met at events who know I am. The reality is it is time to come out of the closet.

ENTER THE "WHO'S THAT GAL?" CONTEST HERE -->

After all, why should I be ashamed of my red cape and my spandex pants. The Greatest American Hero wasn’t ashamed. Those of you who have been around for a while know that this site was inspired by a song which filled my brain the day I decided to quit my old firm. That song was the theme song from the Greatest American Hero television show. You know the one. "Believe it or not, I’m walking on air, I never thought it could feel so free…"

The song seemed incredibly appropriate. And I thought it was important to create an "ideal" which I myself could aspire to.

So here’s the deal. The Greatest American Lawyer website is going to sponsor a contest. Put on your internet sleuth hat and see if you can figure out who the Greatest American Lawyer really is. Submit your guesses to greatest.american@gmail.com. Include your name, street address, phone, email address and blog (if you have one). Submissions will be included in a drawing for prizes (I promise they will be great) which I will identify later. The winner will be announced on the anniversary date of my law firm, the last day of employment at my old firm. The date that I became an independent practitioner was February 10, 2005. So the winner will be announced February 10, 2007.

By the way, I think this contest needs a name. Any ideas?

Read more about entries on the contest here.

Updating our Blawg Roll, Please Tell Us Who You Are

We are in the process of updating our blog roll. We are going to create categories and try hard to put together a great listing of fellow bloggers.

We also appreciate all the good folks who have linked to The Greatest American website. We have over 50,000 incoming links over the last two years.

So if you are a regular reader and want to be listed on our blog roll, post a comment to this entry. Let us know who you are and the URL of your blog. Don’t forget to tell us what category you would like to be listed in. And don’t forget to add us to your blog roll if you’ve not already done so.

An Email Emergency

We recently posted here about the explosion going on inside your email inbox. Virtually everyone is seeing the steady increase in the number of emails that arrive each day from clients, spammers, friends, family, staff, and a variety of listservs that we all subscribe to. The post generated a number of comments, telling me that the email inbox is becoming mission critical for lawyers. If we don’t gain control of our email inbox, our ability to provide client service will be compromised and we could be looking at increased malpractice risk.

Virtually every email inbox has an ability to tag or flag emails. Microsoft Outlook has a flagging system, which allows lawyers to activate a red (or other colored) flag to the right of each email. Of course, the dilemma for every lawyer is whether to stop, read and deal with each email as it comes in or let it go by and come back to it later. Do you let emails pile up in your inbox before going back and reviewing them on a schedule basis?

I use Microsoft Outlook for my email and flag each email that requires action. This allows me to skim emails on a regular basis and flag those that I need to come back to. Microsoft Outlook has a folder called "follow up," which contains all the flag emails. When things are working well, I go back to the follow up folder on a regular basis and deal with all the emails that still require some form of action.

How do you control your email inbox? Give us your thoughts. I will be posting regularly about the email emergency we all face over the next couple of weeks. Other issues that I will talk about include:

· What if you are a lawyer who doesn’t type well? How in the world will you survive in the technology age where email is the most pervasive form of communication?

· Dealing with remote email.

· The advantages of web mail and making sure all your email ends up in single searchable database.

· Are you really going to type an email on your Blackberry keyboard?

Things I hate about voicemail

Many people have commented over the last few years about the positives and negatives of voicemail. Some people don’t like having to speak to a recorder as opposed to a live body. I’ve always thought that was nonsense. The ability to provide a voice message to someone on an important issue is a huge step forward.

My problem with voicemail is that it takes forever to get to the message if you are on the receiving end. Why do you have to punch codes five levels deep in order to listen to your message? If I touch the "messages" button on my phone, that should be indication enough that I want to hear my voicemail messages. I shouldn’t have to enter my extension number. It should know my extension. I shouldn’t have to enter a password. I lock my offices and control who comes in and out. I don’t need a password to protect voicemail messages. I don’t need someone whether or not I want to listen to the message. Why should I have to press "0" to listen to my messages?

In the age of technology, speed is everything. Voicemail vendors need to get smart. They need to design systems that allow someone to grab voicemail with a single touch of the button and immediate access. My voicemail system, and most of the ones I’ve dealt with over the years, are exercises in overkill.

Does anyone know of a system out there that works better?

The "Mavericks" of our Field

Even with the explosion of popularity in blogs among professionals (specifically those in the legal field), the sheer mass of the internet makes it very difficult to find those who are innovating alongside of us in this field. However, Merrilyn Tarlton from the American Bar Association recently wrote a great piece on our line of work and highlighted some specific firms who are doing what she rightly calls "business innovation" (see it here).

Ms. Tarlton hits the nail right on the head when she says "its not just about improving. Its about reinventing". That is exactly what firms who take the plunge into the tech-age are doing. We aren't trying to improve the old-style firm model - we are leaving it in the dust. What we are doing now is reinventing the entire way legal services are given.

I also sincerely enjoy Ms. Tarlton's commentary on the mindset that too many in our field hold, this idea that somehow the legal field is immune to the need to grow into the 21st century - as she says: "[they] believe that this honorable and centuries-old profession transcends the need to innovate". However, the great thing is that there are so many fantastic attorneys who have realized the need, broken from the chains of stability and taken many risks to bring clients a service miles ahead of what was available ten years ago.

One of these firms is this Hardcore Superstar Legal Management Corporation, founded by Joseph Briante and Theresa Holiday James. The firm offers very unique services that combine to form a sort of management firm for clients who are dealing with other attorneys. They offer a "Legal Services Audit" that keeps tabs on a client's legal team and than creates a report card for them, so the client can most efficiently utilize their legal dollars. Hardcore Superstar also offers a "Legal Valet" whereby they manage the work done by legal teams for high-value clients. According to the article, the tag-line for the program is "You don't carry your own bags, so why do you still deal with your lawyers?".

There are two firms who are cited in this article as having actually ended the hourly billing model and fully embracing the flat-fee model. A Boston firm Exemplar Law Partners has finally relinquished the hourly model for a more "customer friendly" path with both flat-fees and guaranteed client satisfaction. Another unique firm that is pushing the envelope in our field is Convergent GC out of Beverly, Massachusetts. Convergent tries to take client satisfaction one step further by offering small businesses the legal services that have until now been reserved for those in the boardroom. Convergent is creating this new form of outside general counsel that specifically tailored to the starting-out entrepreneur, and it appears to be doing quite well.

The final firm highlighted by Ms. Tarlton in her article is a Seattle based one by the name of Summit Law Group. This firm has totally eliminated the traditional hierarchy system of its predecessors by eliminating the partner-associate distinctions, spotlighting each and every member of the firm on the website, giving everyone the same sized office and making compensation and finance numbers made common knowledge which are discussed at weekly meetings. Summit Law also offers its clients a "value adjustment line" on their bill whereby the client's fee can be reduced in order to compensate for low quality service.

Great things are coming from across the country. Lawyers who are sick and tired of wasting their lives stuck in the models of old are finally breaking out to create firms that are providing a better service to clients and increasing the quality of life for those who are finding better uses of their time than hours behind a desk. Congratulations to the firms Ms. Tarlton wrote of, I think you guys are doing great things for our field of work.

GAL Exposed?

The Greatest American Lawyer blog has now been going strong for over two years. I have kept myself largely anonymous for a variety of reasons. One of them is that I didn’t want the local attorneys whom I practice with to read my blog. In a medium sized town, it is often best not to stand out. Since seventy percent of my client base is from outside my home state, I’ve been able to enjoy the independence from local bar politics.

The other day, I was at court and heard a couple lawyers talking about blogging. I knew one of the lawyers and so I moved in to join the conversation. Blogging is, after all, one of my favorite topics. I listened while they talked about a variety of different blogs, which they found entertaining, amusing, or informative. Then my acquaintances mentioned the Greatest American Lawyer blog. My heart stopped and my eyes immediately went to his, looking for a sign that he knew I ran The Greatest American Lawyer Blog. His eyes did meet mine and looked at me squarely and smiled. He made some comments about innovation and the practice of law and then turned to speak with his client who entered the room.

My gut tells me that he does know. How could he not? I have posted about my fight with my old law firm, one that everyone in town knows about. I’ve posted about my business model, which anyone with even a little knowledge about my firm would guess is me.

I am feeling my anonymity slip away. Perhaps it is time for the Greatest American Lawyer to come out of the closet. Perhaps I am beyond the point of caring what the local Bar Association thinks of my all out attack on the traditional law firm model. Perhaps I am beyond the point of feeling that my opinions might be tempered by accountability.

Stay tuned…

The Difference Between Solo Practitioners and Independent Practitioners

My Firm has expanded beyond the point of no return.  I have a Virtual Case Manager, Virtual Lawyer, Several Virtual Law Clerks, three internal Practice Assistants/Paralegals and we cannot handle the work that is coming through the door.  To suggest that our two-year experiment with innovative approaches to the practice of law has succeeded would be an understatement.  Practicing in a state where over forty percent of the practitioners reported a decline in business in 2006, with most of those thinking that things will be worse in 2007, our firm has grown steadily. 

There will be two new lawyers joining the firm in 2007.  The first is a Virtual Law Clerk who has been with me since the very beginning.  He has shunned big law in favor of our innovative billing model.  We will be paying him a salary higher than any other new lawyer in our region of the state. 

I have also extended an offer to another attorney who has almost 20 years experience across a variety of practice areas.  It is my hope that he will accept our offer and join the firm in the next month or two. 

Does the addition of more lawyers mean that I am no longer an independent practitioner?  Will our firm suffer the same fate as all the other firms who have too many cooks in the kitchen?  Will innovation give way to compromise and mediocrity? 

I don't think that we will lose a step with the additions we are making to our lawyer staff.  Why?  Because we are setting up our firm with all the right incentives.  We are pooling our resources but we will continue to reward innovation and efficiency.  The lawyers who are joining us are doing so because they have already bought into the business model and commitment to innovation. 

Over the next few weeks, we will be working on a formula, which identifies all of the most important metrics, which we believe will drive our firm forward.  In most firms, the single metric is billable hours.  You might add "origination" to the important metrics in a traditional law firm.  I will be posting about this more in the future, but I am anticipating in excess of fifty separate metrics by which we will measure ourselves.  These metrics will create all the right incentives.  Most of the metrics will encourage activity beyond sitting in your chair and billing the client. 

Stay tuned.  We are about to create a new "partnership formula."

100,000 page loads / 50,000 unique vistors

For those of you who follow this website, you know that my firm uses blog software for its primary website. We do well into six figures in revenue each year in clients obtained over the web. In mass tort cases, we are currently representing thirty-five victims of a mass tort accident, which occurred thousands of miles from our office, all clients who found us through our blog. These cases represent seven figures in liability to the defendant who has admitted negligence.

In 2006, our firm did one hundred thousand page loads and fifty thousand unique visitors. I don’t know how that stacks up with other firms who monitor their web traffic, but I do know this. Many of these visitors came to our site to obtain representation. We brought the right kind of visitor to our website and turned a good number of those visitors into clients. Blogging and blog software has created a foundation upon which our firm grows each day. These tools have allowed us to develop a national client base. We are now perceived as experts across numerous practice areas.

It is also interesting to note that over eighty percent of our traffic comes from Google. The other search engines break down like this. Yahoo provides approximately ten percent and MSN approximately three percent of all of our traffic.

You would think this means that we do better in the Google search engine than in the other engines in terms of search engine results. Actually, the opposite is true. Yahoo and MSN put us on page one more often than Google. What this tells us is that Google is the dominate search engine by which our clients search for legal services.

I would be interested to hear from other attorneys who’ve successfully turned web traffic into clients. What has your experience been?