Gerry Oginski is an experienced New York medical malpractice and personal injury who posed this question in a recent blog post
Rather than steal Gerry's thunder I'll suggest that you just follow this link and be sure to scroll down and see my response/comments about the DANGERS of law firm marketing. . .
. . . and if you haven't done so already click here now to receive my FREE Weekly Ezine
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.
– Abraham Lincoln
-Janyce Granoff (my Mom)
Sorry if this comes as a “surprise” to you. But it’s true. And in case you don’t know him, Dan Kennedy has “only” sold something like $50,000,000 of professional services; So you may want to take what he has to say seriously, I know I do.
The GOOD NEWS is that “what it takes” is NOT more work. And it’s NOT harder work. Instead your small law firm will respond surprisingly well and surprisingly quickly if you will STOP doing the wrong things and start doing the right law firm marketing and law firm management things. In fact if you will just stop doing the wrong things you’ll see improvements pretty fast too!
Here’s an easy one to stop doing “wrong”. Stop spending so much time in the office. That’s right, if you want to make more money, get out of the office at a reasonable hour most nights. And get out of the office for a little “mini-vacation” to recharge your batteries at least once every other week. How to take one of these mini-vacations and the benefits of doing so are addressed and even demonstrated for you in several videos throughout this blog so I won’t elaborate here.
I’ve gotten quite a few emails & DM tweets lately about whether or not Twitter is a worthwhile marketing tool for a small law firm. My answer is YES. And if you follow my friend Laura Roeder’s advice it should only take you about 20 minutes a day.
So here’s a case study to demonstrate how it works. . . We met a local artist on a local Twitter group a couple of weeks ago (@MyLifeAndArt). Then we met her for lunch. Turns out she’s an accomplished Emergency Room Doctor, turned PR executive turned Artist/Entertainer who is now in hot pursuit of her passion. And get this. . . she’s making more money, working fewer hours on her own schedule and Having More Fun!
But wait, there’s more! We thought we were just going to take a little break to meet a cool local artist. But the conversation quickly reached a whole new level with a bunch of business and referrals going back & forth.
Plus we came home with a cool little gift which you can see in the 3:45 minute video below:
Don’t forget to sign-up for my FREE Ezine. We’re about to re-launch with some really great new content and features so you won’t want to miss it!
I read alot of Steve’s stuff. He is not a lawyer but I find many of his concepts to be very applicable to our industry. See Exhibit “A” below & ponder. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory so no extra comments from me:
–Steve Siebold
. . . and remember, Happy Lawyers Make More Money!
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Leigh Jones over at NLJ usually gets it right. But this time I have to take exception to an article with the same title as this blog post. And I’ll link to it below but first I want to explain my misgivings.
The fact of the matter is that law firms of all sizes (but especially small firms) have been victims of embezzlement for at least the ten years I have been at the business of law firm management. This is NOT a growing trend. The only thing the economy has done is squeeze cash flow so tight for some law firms that they can no longer hide the problem or sweep it under the rug when an unsupervised employee walks away with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The second thing I feel it is my responsibility to call to your attention, my loyal readers and Members is that you don’t need a forensic accountant to prevent or discover embezzlement. Forensic investigators don’t prevent, they only discover. And all you have to do to discover is pay attention to the six key numbers that I have been standing up here on my soap box ranting about for the past oh, 9 years or so.
You watch those numbers and you are no more likely to miss embezzlement than you are to run out of gas in your car if you’re keeping an eye on the gas gauge.
While we’re on the subject, as any forensic investigator will tell you, the best way to avoid embezzlement in the first place is to demonstrate to employees that you are in fact watching the numbers.
As I have recently shared in this very blog and in Twitter @RJonRobins I myself was a victim of embezzlement. But because I watch my numbers my (former) employee only made off with under $500 before he was caught, the password changed, account closed and his butt kicked-out.
Of course I could have taken more drastic measures to prevent the fraud in the first place, but that would have been a poor use of my time & hamstrung me from being able to delegate certain tasks that are not the highest & best use of my time.
Employees don’t usually just steal a hundred thousand dollars all at once. No, they start by stealing a little. They don’t get caught because you’re not watching the numbers and so they go back for more. This is how it has happened in 99% of all law firm embezzlement cases.
If you’re interested in learning more, post a comment or email MJ@HowToMANAGEaSmallLawFirm.com and let her know you vote for the next teleseminar to be about Fraud Prevention For Small Law Firms and we’ll get it on the calendar.
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