Smallfirmville

By Warren Redlich, guest blogger

I'm honored to be asked to write a guest post for Smallfirmville. I run a small law firm in the Albany area.

One thing is on my mind at the moment about small firm practice: What does it mean to be successful?

On first hearing that question, many will think of hard work, long hours, studiousness, intelligence, and perhaps passion. These are helpful for those who want to be successful, and they are very important in order to be a good lawyer. But there are plenty of good lawyers who are not successful.

The general public thinks we're all rich. Those of us in the world of solos and small firms know that's far from true. We all know solid attorneys who work long hours but may never crack $75K in annual income. Breaking that down to hourly pay for the amount of time worked, they could probably make more in a variety of trade jobs that wouldn't require a six-figure student loan debt.

So what's the secret of success? It comes down to one word: Revenue.

Revenue drives the practice of law. You can be the best lawyer in the world, but your skills and experience are meaningless without clients to help. And if you don't have clients, you don't have revenue. Perhaps you can have clients without revenue, but that only works for a few trust-fund beneficiaries.

A lawyer who controls the revenue is in control. Lawyers who do not bring in revenue depend on those who do.

When revenue is hard to come by, firms panic. In the current economic meltdown we've even seen them vanish.

If you accept that revenue is important, that brings us to the next question: How do successful lawyers generate revenue?

The generally accepted wisdom is that if you do good work for your clients, then in the long run there's a good chance you'll get more work from them and they'll refer other business to you. And then you'll have steady long-term revenue. That's true to an extent. But for many areas of practice it is difficult for clients to determine the quality of the lawyer's work. The best criminal defense lawyers see many of their clients go to prison. The finest divorce attorneys will have many angry clients.

The real truth about that pearl of wisdom is customer service. If you talk to your clients, keep them informed, listen to them, return their phone calls and answer their questions, they will appreciate that you pay attention to them.

Unfortunately, that still assumes you had clients to start with. There's a chicken and egg problem. You can't do good work for your clients, nor provide them with good customer service, unless you have clients.

Maybe in the good old days you'd catch on with a firm and work for a partner who had steady revenue. You'd work hard and learn from the partner, and one day he'd ride off into the sunset leaving you with the practice. Except that doesn't happen much any more, and maybe it didn't happen all that much then.

So where does revenue come from? The first and most obvious answer is luck. I lucked into the revenue that sustains our firm. Having little work to do, and knowing something about the Internet, I started a fairly basic Web site for my budding solo practice. About two years later, after I had started looking for jobs, I suddenly Web site, calling, and then hiring me. I had revenue.

Others luck into revenue in different ways. Maybe it's some kind of networking or political connections. Or just stumbling into the right niche at the right time.

The second step, after you've lucked into a source of revenue, is maintaining and expanding it.

I did a fairly good job with what you're supposed to do - doing good work for the clients as well as providing good customer service. That may be enough for some kinds of luck. We get some repeat business and client referrals, but our areas of practice and client base are not going to generate enough business on their own. So we depend on the magic Web site.

It was important to understand where the revenue was coming from and why. Fortunately - luck again - I had the computer skills to analyze our Web site's traffic. We were getting a lot of visits to our Web site from people searching Google and Yahoo for phrases related to what we do. Over the past several years I have applied some of the keys to being a good lawyer toward being a successful lawyer. You may remember these from above: hard work, long hours, studiousness, and passion. I poured all of that into understanding "search engine optimization" and putting it to work for my law firm Web site. In doing so, I found other ways to generate more traffic to my Web site, and to turn more of that traffic into paying clients. And that turned a struggling solo practice into a growing small law firm.

One lawyer I know has lectured to lawyers and other relevant professionals consistently in his field for many years. He also writes "the book" in his field. I'm just guessing, but it probably all started for him with some luck - landing the right job, helping him develop the right skills, and then being asked to lecture once or twice. That luck was only the beginning. He's put countless hours into writing and lecturing. That seems to work for him, generating referrals from those who attend his seminars.

This is one critical break between good and successful. Many lawyers do not want to put the same time and effort into developing revenue that they put into doing good legal work. I sympathize with that attitude. I remember the early days of my legal career. I had a job where I just focused on doing good work for the clients. The company I worked for generated all the work and I didn't have to worry about revenue. It was bliss to an extent, but eventually I learned the hard way about the connection between revenue and power.

When I tell lawyers about building Web site, they don't want to put the time in. They want someone else to take care of it for them. It seems like lawyers feel that way about marketing in general. We try the Yellow Pages because someone tells us it will work, and we see others doing it. But it stinks. We hear about "Top of Mind Awareness" and try doing TV, radio or print ads. That might work for some, but for most of us it's just another waste of money.

You can't expect that revenue will just fall in your lap if you do good legal work. You have to work to generate revenue. And that's the secret of success. Hopefully I'll remember that.

By Elissa Hecker, guest blogger

The beauty of being a solo practitioner or part of a small firm is that one has more freedom to work with clients on a personal basis, and foster relationships. Unfortunately when working in a large firm, many attorneys do work for clients who they never meet.

An attorney’s job is to zealously advocate for her client. However, in addition, it is the solo or small firm attorney who can add the personal touch, both as lawyer and counselor.

It is important to know how to listen to clients, and what to listen for; ask the right questions, probe, and counsel through frustrations, ambivalence, anger, hopes and dreams.

It is crucial to listen and be a guide of sorts to help clients find their inner strengths. In effect, our legal guidance and experience should be able to help our clients become better advocates in their business dealings, while we help with legal and business strategies. What many people don’t realize is that the mere act of listening can help alleviate pressures that exist in our clients’ worlds, which will then lead to clearer heads and better decision making. Often clients may be afraid or concerned to challenge an agreement, potential dealmaker or an adversary. It is our job to use our legal problem solving skills, so that clients can maintain their good, and avoid the bad, relationships. We do our jobs so that our clients can do theirs. At the end of the day, we are a significant part of their support systems.

I believe in always trying to negotiate well so that every party walks away with something, obviously with favorable results for my clients. Rarely will there be an exchange where, though terse some discussions may be, both sides (and their attorneys) continue to respect and appreciate each other. That leads to continued business relationships, which benefits everyone.

By Lenny Sienko, guest blogger

When I was a young lawyer thirty-one years ago, I showed up at "Motion Term" one Monday morning at the Delaware County Courthouse in Delhi, New York, the county seat some forty miles from my new office. While I waited, I was treated to an invaluable, free CLE session as I watched and listened to the senior lawyers appear on their matters and argue before the Judge.

When the session ended, I was invited to join all of the other lawyers for lunch at the modest restaurant across the square from the courthouse. The back room was fully occupied by tables and chairs pushed together into one long table, filled on both sides by lawyers who had appeared in court and others who had been title searching at the County Clerk's Office. That luncheon was the first of many over the years during which we questioned, answered, argued, shouted, laughed, and carried on as lawyers are wont to do. It was great fun. I made friends and learned about the practical aspects of the business of law. We settled cases. We plea bargained. We exchanged tips and forms. We complained about the latest depredation by the legislature, designed to make our practice more difficult. We looked forward to our weekly Monday lawyers' luncheon. I learned that this tradition had been carried on since lawyers traveled to the county seat by horseback and steam locomotive. At least we no longer had to share the beds at the boarding house.

As the years passed, many of the senior lawyers passed on and were not replaced. The luncheon tradition finally fell by the wayside a few years ago, diminished by the "new" individual assignment of Judges to cases and the rescheduling of the Monday motion term. Young lawyers no longer had the opportunity on Monday mornings to sit in those old, high-backed wicker chairs and learn as others argued. I was disappointed that the friendly interaction amongst colleagues young and old we once shared seemed to disappear. I missed our friendly rivalry and needed something to take it place.

What does any of this nostalgia have to do with innovation?

I have found that lawyers' use of so-called "social media" has helped fill the gap left by the loss of "Motion Term" and Monday luncheon. These days, when I have a question for my peers, I post it on the NYSBA General Practice Section listserve and wait for the dozens of responses. Lawyers young and old from across the state ask and answer questions, share forms, refer cases, and discuss the "latest and greatest" from the Legislature. We discuss cases with names redacted and recommend tactics and strategies, just as we once did. The audience is scattered through the ether; but the discussion is familiar.

If I want to talk to other lawyers, day or night, across the country and around the world, I can get an answer from my "followers" on Twitter. As I did years ago, I have accepted invitations from other lawyers to join them on Linkedin, Plaxo, FaceBook, and FriendFeed. I get to "talk" to my classmates from law school, young alums from other law schools, solo practitioners, and associates and senior partners from larger firms. We are voluntarily enjoying a great dialog, which I find mentally invigorating and professionally stimulating. My circle of friends upon whom I can call for advice and guidance has expanded from a dozen or so regulars at Monday lunch to hundreds.

I read an enormous amount of material each day and night, coming to me in e-newsletters and RSS feeds, but also on legal blogs and Twitter. I read quickly and do a kind of "mental triage". I save links to the items, sites, etc, which interest me AND will interest other lawyers. This is a very broad spectrum of possibilities. I choose 4 or 5 a week and post them to the General Practice Blawg. Sometimes I just can't help myself and the number increases to as many as 10 posts for the week. Sometimes at Monday Lunch I was the last one talking as the bills were handed out to the diners.

Every Friday night, I go to the General Practice Blawg site and click on the site's RSS feed, which gives me the material for a weekly e-zine, "wEbrief", in quickly convertible form. I update any of the "blurbs", short paragraphs, which may be outdated. These are the content of wEbrief. The General Practice Blawg serves a few hundred readers. wEbrief gets sent as a "blast email" to a couple of thousand Section members. I also "repurpose" the posts for my own blawg, which is linked to a feed to Twitter, Friendfeed, and FaceBook. My conversations go on day and night, seven days a week--not just Mondays.

Does all of this innovative interaction profit me? Did my ersatz Monday luncheon tutorials profit me? I won't get rich; but the answer is "yes" to both questions. More importantly, the new social media keep me from being socially and professionally isolated, just as the old luncheons did.

Personal Web site
http://www.hancock.net/~lennyesq/

Office Blog
http://lennyesq.wordpress.com/