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RJon Robins

How To Build An IP Practice

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From: Jxxxxx X Xxxxx [mailto:jxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 10:24 AM
To: RJon@HowToMakeItRain.com
Subject: Patent Business

Hi RJon:  How do I build a successful Intellectual Property practice. I am a highly experienced patent attorney, litigator and trial lawyer. But,  my business base is very low.  Do you have a course for IP attorneys.  Please see my website:  www.pxxxxxxxxxxx.com.  Thanks. Joe

Jxxxxxx Xxxxx, Esq.
Of Counsel
Oxxxxxxx, Fxxxxx & Sxxx, LLP
xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Nw York, New York xxxxxx

This message originates from the law firm indicated above. It contains information which may be confidential or privileged and is intended only for the individual or entity named above. It is prohibited for anyone else to disclose, copy, distribute or use the contents of this message. All personal messages express views solely of the sender, which are not to be attributed to the law firm, and may not be copied or distributed without this disclaimer. If you received this message in error, please notify us immediately through the above listed contact information.

Hi Jxxx,

I don’t have a course specifically for IP lawyers, but even if I did I’d suggest that based on what you’re telling me perhaps you should begin with the basics anyway.  You know, there are plenty of lawyers generating tons of great business just by mastering the basics and repeating the basic fundamentals over & over again.  Sometimes I think there’s so much excitement for technology or some supposedly “latest & greatest” approach to law firm marketing that we forget that the basics have worked for a hundred years & from what I can tell, it seems they will continue to work for the next hundred years.

What you’ll learn in my How To Market A Small Law Firm program are three basic/fundamental rainmaking skills that lawyers in all different kinds of practices are using quite successfully: 

PR/Advertising – From what I can see on your website you don’t seem to have a clear “message”.  I’m not criticizing or suggesting the solution is a bunch of fancy graphics.  I actually quite like the look & feel of your design.  What I’m talking about is that there’s nothing on your website, and therefore I suspect nothing in any of your other marketing materials or endeavors that really tells a story or captures a prospective client’s attention or interest and therefore distinguishes you from the pack.  So you’re a great IP lawyer?  I wouldn’t even be talking to you if I didn’t think that already.  Now you have to make me feel like I have a connection with you and that you really care about me OR my intellectual property.  Or even that you don’t give a crap about me, but that for some reason that hooks me, you’re just obsessed with protecting people’s IP rights.  But there has to be a hook that lets people get excited about doing business with YOU or else you’re just a commodity.  And don’t worry about offending some people.  If you do anything that excites anyone, there will be someone else who is offended by it.  Excited people hire you and go around telling others about you.  Non-offended people don’t do much but not be offended.

Networking – It is a fundamental marketing principle when it comes to professional services that people don’t buy your services until they have bought you.  Forget about driving traffic to your site or fancy/expensive ads.  My program will teach you how to get out there & make connections with & maintain those connections with people who are in a position to refer business to you.  Stable & profitable practices need stable & dependable networks of referral sources who will give & receive referrals amongst themselves. Otherwise, life is tough.

Sales Calls – At the end of the day, all the advertising & networking in the world isn’t going to do you any good unless you know what to do once you’re face to face with a prospective new client or a potential referral source.  My program teaches you four simple steps that you can screw-up pretty badly & still close every sales call with a better result than without these four steps.  I promise, once you learn & practice a few times you’ll wonder how you ever got through a sales call without this simple framework.

If you’re serious about building your practice, I’d suggest you save yourself $300 and consider joining my Bronze Coaching Program for just $39 per month.  You’ll get the How To Market A Small Law Firm program as a FREE gift and then each week we’ll walk you through implementation of the skills & techniques you’ll learn in the audio program.

Anyway, hope that helps,

RJON

www.HowToMakeItRain.com
Helping Lawyers In Small Firms Make Alot More Money —–Original Message—–

Am I Taking Your Success More Seriously Than YOU Are?

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I received a funny response to a recent email I sent out to readers of my e-zine.  The subject line was “Would You Give Me $1 If I Gave You Back $10?”  The response was clever and pretty funny, but it also gave me cause for some concern that I may be taking the careers and well-being of some of my readers more seriously than they do.

As is my policy, I’ve deleted any identifying information but otherwise the exchange is unchanged.

—–Original Message—–
From: Jamie Sxxxxxx [mailto:jxxxxxx@austin.rr.com]
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 1:57 PM
To: How To Make It Rain
Subject: Re: Would You Give Me $1 If I Gave You Back $10?

Would You Give Me $1 If I Gave You Back $10?

No, but I’ll make you a deal… just send me $8 to start off with…that way you save a buck. Then take that one dollar, and instead of giving me back ten, send me another $8.

Again, you make a dollar. Because you didn’t give me back the whole ten. Rinse and repeat.

My Reply

Very cute, but are you making as much money from your law firm business as you’d hoped back when you decided to open your own office? Are you spending as many hours as you’d like with your friends & family instead of in the office? Have you found a way to develop a practice that has you looking forward to going to work because the work feeds your soul?

As anyone who has listened to any of my programs, or read my free & for-sale e-books, or participated in any of my seminars, or hoisted a beer with me out on the boat can tell you,  I REALLY like to have fun. And I love to joke around. But treating your career like a joke is no laughing

matter in my book. I take the financial and professional success
of my clients very seriously.

I don’t mean to come off like a stick in mud, I really do think your response was very clever. I just worry sometimes that there are tens of thousands of lawyers out there who find it easier to make a dismissive joke, rather than to take action to improve their practices and their lives. 

The POINT of that e-mail was that there is a great business opportunity available to readers of my e-zine. Specifically, the opportunity to make a very small investment that hundreds of lawyers credit for helping them generate tens of thousands of dollars of new business. And as any small business owner can tell you, investing a few dollars to get back a lot is a smart move.

Anyway, thanks at least for the laugh!

 RJON

www.HowToMakeItRain.com

Helping Lawyers In Small Firms Make Alot More Money

How Do I Build A B-2-B Law Firm?

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—–Original Message—–
From: Rxxxxxxxxlaw@aol.com [mailto:Rxxxxxxlaw@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 8:51 PM
To:

rjon@howtomakeitrain.com

Subject: Question

Dear RJon

I’ve been subscribing to your e-list for a while now. It’s great — and congratulations on a great website.

I’m now working full-time at an insurance company in Xxxxxxxxxxxx, but would like to start a solo practice concentrating on legal research and writing and especially appellate practice. I currently do this work for two practitioners, an immigration practitioner who specializes in political asylum cases and a personal injury lawyer, for whom I perform pretty extensive brief-writing and research services.

I’m trying to market to develop more clients (who of course are other solo and small-firm lawyers) but I’m finding it a tough process. I know it’s possible to develop a practice like this, because I know people who are doing it, but I don’t know how to market myself to achieve this goal. I just did a direct mail campaign with a reply card addressed to 200 lawyers, and I have not received a single response. I’m thinking maybe my letter needed work, but I don’t know how to craft a more effective letter.

I’ve also sent ads around on Solosez and on emplawyernet’s network mail and run ads in the Law Journal, but without any success.

Can you think of any things I should be doing? I would appreciate any ideas you might have.

Thanks.

Mxxx Rxxxxxxx

—————————————My Response Below——————————————————

Hello Mxxx,

Thanks for the compliment. I have a question for you though. . . have you listened to any of my programs? Read the e-book?

I agree that it’s very possible and very profitable to develop a B-2-B law firm like the one you’re describing, because I’ve helped several lawyers build them from just an idea into extremely profitable businesses that lend themselves amazingly well to leveraging the efforts of others to generate income for the owners of those businesses.

It seems to me though, from your marketing efforts so far, that your focus has been on trying to make a homerun when instead the way to build your practice is by concentrating on base hits. Sending out an e-mail blast or a direct mail piece doesn’t generally make good economic sense for a business unless you are already in a position to leverage yourself. That’s because, as you have already had a taste of for yourself, there is a tremendous amount of preparation, testing, revising, more preparation, testing, revising etc. required to develop an effective advertising piece. And if all you’re trying to do is keep yourself busy, there are other faster, easier, less expensive ways to do that.

When you’re ready to handle a flood of business, THEN you do the direct mail/e-mail routine. If you’re just trying to get enough work to keep yourself busy, I think you’d be much better off with old-fashioned networking & sales calls. Sorry to disappoint you, but these tried & true methods for building a professional services business are called “tried & true” for a reason. Concentrate on these reliable basics, get enough business to keep yourself busy & THEN experiment with other approaches when your mortgage payment isn’t dependent upon results. That way, you can actually have FUN with your experiments.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I should point out that all of this information and a lot more, including instructions for how to actually execute the tried & true approaches I’ve described here, are all in the programs I sell & you’ll get as much or more by joining the Bronze Attorney Coaching Program, which only cost $39/month. The Silver & Gold groups will be open again in a few months.

Hope this helps,

RJON

www.HowToMakeItRain.com

Helping Lawyers In Small Firms Make Alot More Money

How To Go Solo In A Big Firm

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Here’s another perfectly valid and good reason for lawyers to
consider going to work for a big law firm. . . they’re a GREAT place to
hang out your own shingle. No, I’m not crazy. You read that right, big
law firms are great places to hang out your own shingle. It’s all a
matter of perception. Let me explain. . .

Let’s say you’re just getting out of law school, or maybe you’ve
been out for awhile but your solo law firm hasn’t been performing for
you as well as you might have hoped. Do you struggle out there on your
own, ordering your own office supplies, managing your own IT,
negotiating with your own landlord and managing your staff all by
yourself, all the while trying to find time to practice law and have a
life?

Well, if that’s you then having a life is probably the first thing
that got sacrificed a long time ago. So let’s take that out of the
equation when comparing big vs. solo practice for our hypothetical
lawyer who isn’t able to make enough rain to keep him/herself
comfortably appointed.

Now we need to touch upon an important subject which is often
misunderstood by lawyers. Unfortunately, it’s a subject for which we
don’t have enough space to give justice, here in a short blog posting.
And that’s the subject of what it REALLY means to “own” or be a
“partner” in a law firm? In reality, the only thing the Owner(s) or
Partners of a big law firm actually “own” that is of any value, is the
ignorance of their associates who never learned how to make it rain
enough to be in a position to demand a piece of the pie for themselves.
Oh yeah, and a collection of used furniture, old computer equipment, a
lease obligation for the space, and a collection of accounts
receivables. And what do you suppose each Partners’ slice of all that
is really worth on the open market?

Now once you recognize that the only thing that REALLY separates the
Partners of big law firms from their Associates, is the ability to
generate enough business to cover their own overhead and make a profit
for the firm, it becomes clear that it’s perfectly possible to hang out
your own shingle in a big law firm.

Do you have to sacrifice some of the freedoms of being completely
out on your own? Sure you do. But the trade-offs can be well worth it
if you manage the relationship well and go into it with your eyes open.
And keep in mind that just because you’re bound by someone else’s rules
today, doesn’t mean you will have to still be bound by those rules
tomorrow. If you learn how to generate enough business to have a say in
the matter, that is.

So how does one go about hanging out his/her own shingle in a big
law firm? The Answer: Become a Rainmaker. Were you hoping for a more
complicated answer? Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s it. . . Just
bring in roughly double what you take out of the firm and for all
practical purposes, you’ve achieved “solo” status. That is to say, you
can begin to have a say on the rules of the firm which affect you,
because at that point, the firm needs you as much as you need them.

When you bring in three times what you take out, you can have a say
on the rules of the firm that govern the lawyers who your work is
keeping busy. Because at that point, those lawyers need you more than
you need them. And when you tip the scales and are able to bring in
more than three times what you take out of the firm, that’s when you
make the transition and either become a “Partner” in a big law firm, or
go out on your own and open your own shop because you want to have a
say in the rules of all the lawyers in a law firm, except of course for
the ones who bring in twice what they’re taking out of the place.

So there you have it. Think of working for a big firm as owning your
own shop in a mall. The mall takes care of security, HVAC, basic
insurance, and maintenance of the roof over your head. And in exchange
you agree to run your shop in accordance with mall rules. But inside
your own four walls YOU still get to make all the important rules about
strategy and how you prioritize your finite resources of time, energy
and enthusiasm.

So to any lawyers reading this or any of the other many great blogs
for solos, if you’re ever tempted to feel like bashing (or being
jealous of) lawyers in big law firms, remember that we’re ALL bound by
the same Golden Rule Of Law Firm Management: Whoever Controls The
Golden Clients Rules The Law Firm.

What to look for in malpractice insurance

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Many of the lawyers I have consulted with over the years, have been surprised to learn about some of the unique “twists” when it comes to malpractice insurance:

1. The sooner you get it, the cheaper it is.  That’s right, if you’re thinking about holding off for another year to save some money, it could actually backfire on you when you find the rates are HIGHER in each subsequent year than they might otherwise have been because you waited. 

2. The high cost of “Tail” insurance.  Unlike a typical liability policy that covers you for mistakes made WHILE you were insured, most malpractice policies only cover you if you are STILL insured by the company.  Unless you BUY “tail” coverage. 

In other words, you are covered in January  by Company A, but cancel in February and buy a policy instead with Company B.  Someone comes along in March & sues for something that happened back in January.  Without a tail policy, yours is left swinging in the wind.  Be sure to ask about the cost of tail coverage up-front to avoid finding yourself in a hostage situation with your carrier down the road.

3. Management, not the lack of substantive legal skills is the most common cause of malpractice.  I’m not sure why this always surprises lawyers since they take lots of CLE courses on substantive legal issues, but hardly any on how to manage your law firm.  In any case, taking steps to learn all the things they never bothered to mention to you in law school about how to manage your law firm can not only reduce your stress and increase your profits, but it can also earn you a break on premiums with several malpractice insurance carriers.

4. Not all carriers are rated the same.  Be sure yours is “A” rated.

Hope this doesn’t keep anyone up at night

Where The Web Is Headed . . .

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My technical partner just shared this video about where the web is headed.  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the ramifications it will have on your law practice and your life and just share this data point for you to consider. . . I was a guest speaker at a local law school today on the topic of how to open/market/manage your own law firm when you graduate.  ALL of the students had laptops and the whole entire law school was completely wireless.  That’s your competition next year, especially with guys (and some gals) like me teaching them how to make it rain, even with alot less substantive legal experience than you.  The day is fast approaching – I’d argue it’s already here – when just being a better lawyer isn’t going to give you a competitive advantage in attracting new clients.  Keeping them, sure.  Inspiring them to come back for repeat business and refer their friends, maybe.  But getting the sales call appointment has less & less to do with how great of a lawyer you are every day.  Now watch this video & let me know what you you’re going to do about it. . .

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