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RJon Robins

One More Good Reason NOT To Take Your Clients To Lunch!!!

As everyone knows who has heard the How To Market A Small Law Firm audio program, I’m a big advocate of NOT taking your clients and potential referral sources to lunch.  In fact this bad advice is one of the biggest mistakes solos make when trying to make it rain for their law firms.  I’ll spare you the details why – if you don’t know either download the free e-book or review your audio program.

This posting is to share yet another example of why public restaurants are BAD PLACES TO MAKE SALES CALLS!  As I sit here on this beautiful Sunday morning, I’ve brought my laptop to the little restaurant around the corner where I often start my day – free internet access, someone to bring my coffee and eggs an electical outlet next to the table in the back where I always sit and the staff brings me “the regular” without me even having to say a word.

Anyway, the point is that as I sit here typing this to you I am busy eavesdropping on the whole campaign voter-management strategy for a local politician.  From what I can gather, the morons sitting next to me include the campaign manager and her two lieutenants.  And they’re happily (obliviously) planning out which polling locations to staff based on expected turnout, their limited resources and which of their candidates’ relatives will be able to fly into town to help at the polling location.  His sister can make it.  But his mother can’t be counted on because of her health. 

They are going to go heavy at the library but the Senior Center will be left unsupervised because they think they have that demographic locked-up already.

They walked the (name deleted) neighborhood yesterday but they don’t have enough volunteers to hit it again between now and the day of the vote.  One of the doors they knocked on was the de-facto neighborhood leader because of all the volunteer work she does and all the nice things she’s always doing for her neighbors, and her sons are both into water polo so they lieutenant thinks she bonded with her over that since the lieutenant’s own son played water polo.  And they both have the same kind of dog – Huskies.  I’m just typing this to you as sit here and listen.  I’m just in total shock.  I’m a total stranger sitting not three feet away listening to their whole strategy.  They are going to make their after party a cash-bar because they’re out of money.  If I knew the opponent I could easily impact the outcome of this election by sharing all of his opponent’s strategies.  Now they’re talking about a bunch of households whose doors they knocked on in a different neighborhood with “split” votes.  The wives are voting for their candidate, the husbands for their opponent for some reasons that have to do with the businesses those husbands are involved in. 

I’m just speechless.  I’ve been telling my Rainmaking Clients for years of all the reasons not to make sales calls in public places, and I’ve assembled a nice collection of cautionary tales.  But nothing like this.  Ohmygd- they just mentioned the name of their leading fundraiser and the fact that he’s currently out of work.

If you don’t get how huge this is, do yourself a favor and at least read the free e-book!

They’re going to hit the neighborhood around the elementary school early the day of the election and encourage the parents to take their kids to vote since apparently that’s given them a bump in the past.  OK, I have to stop now because I may lose control and slap these idiots. .  .make sales calls in your client’s office, or in your office.  Don’t waste your time, money and potentially embarass yourself and your clients and referral sources by asking them to air their dirty laundy out in public.

The Golden Rule – when it comes to law firm management

I have been teaching lawyers for years, who want to leave jobs at
big firms to “fly solo” that being out on your own vs. flying solo
inside the establishment of a larger organization is mostly a state of
mind.

But just like Neo in The Matrix who took the red pill and suddenly
woke-up and could see clearly how everything really works, lawyers who
finally wake up and understand “The Golden Rule” when it comes to law
firm management, can adjust their own “M Theory” and set themselves
free to earn alot more money for law firm’s profit growth, have alot more free time, greater career
satisfaction and alot more fun!

And the results can even be kind of scary (in a good way), when lawyers who are already out on their own finally “get it” and improve their lawyer’s code of conduct.

Large Law Firm Economics 101

Everyone knows I founded How To Make It Rain.com specifically to help solos and lawyers in small firms with five or fewer attorneys.  I don’t like to speak of it often – and I like to think of it even less frequently – but I actually have a bit of experience consulting with larger firms too (20-70 lawyers).  And there is an economic formula that gets discussed behind closed doors amongst decision-makers in large firms.  I think it was Hildebrandt consulting that was the first to coin the phrase “The Rule Of Three”.  It means that across a wide range of practice areas, in markets all over the country most law firms divvy-up the loot like this: 

1/3 – Current Year Overhead

1/3 – Associate Salaries

1/3 – Profit For Equity Owners.

By applying “The Golden Rule” which I coined myself and states that “He or She who controls the clients in a law firm large or small, rules the law firm” to either the above formula or a similar economic formula for small firms (50/25/25) it becomes pretty clear that if you learn how to generate business you can get control over your destiny pretty quickly since there will always be associates who are only too happy to have work fed to them like housepets.  But only a precious few who koow how to make it rain.

Most Lawyers Are Dinosaurs – Are you one of them?

In a recent post over at My Shingle (one of my favorite blogs) Carolyn Elefant  writes about a franchise called Dinner My Way where you pay to cook your own meals to take home and freeze for meals throughout the next few weeks.  As she explains, “Dinner My Way pre-cuts all of the ingredients, provides recipes and utensils, but you still do the work.”   Carolyn says, “The apparent appeal of this set up is that you retain control over the food, you prepare all your meals at once.”

Carolyn’s take on Dinner My Way is that it’s insane for someone to actually pay to do their own work.  I disagree one two points:

  1. The appeal is NOT that you get control over your food.  What you pay for is the experience of cooking without the hassles.  And the experience of being around other like-minded people in this busy, busy world.
  2. It’s not insane to pay to do work.  You and your clients pay to do work all the time.  Think about the last time you paid a gym membership, or paid to participate in any kind of sport.

As Carolyn correctly recognizes, it’s all in the packaging. A great book that anyone who is serious about growing a law firm should consider to be mandatory reading is “The Experience Economy”.  Basically, the gist is that over the past 30 years our present Service Economy displaced the previous economy based on goods.

In other words, it became less important to have a better mousetrap, than to be able to just catch the mice for your customers, who began to think of themselves as clients.

And what we’re beginning to see are signs of our Service Economy being replaced by one where a person’s Experience with a product or service is of tantamount importance.  In other words, it’s no longer good enough to catch the mouse faster & cheaper & more reliably.  Now you have to give the customer/client an interesting Experience, not just the expected result.

We’re already seeing this happen throughout the legal industry where so many legal services are percieved to be commodities.  The authors of The Experience Economy write,  “Those businesses that relegate themselves to the diminishing world of goods and services will be rendered irrelevant. To
avoid this fate, you must learn to stage a rich, compelling experience.”

I know it’s scary to think that when you went to law school, all you were told you had to do was learn how to be a great lawyer and everything else would take care of itself.  Then, reality hit you in the face and you begrudgingly accepted that not only did you have to be a great lawyer, but you had to give great service – fast, valuable and predictable service – which law school never taught you anything about.

And now here I am telling you even THAT is not enough!  Not if you want to grow your practice and prevent clients from being poached by all your competitors.

So, the question you are faced with, if you want to make more money and have a better life, is how can you package your services to deliver an EXPERIENCE clients will pay for?

Best Formula For Long-Term Financial Success And Happiness At The Practice Of Law

Q – Do you know what you get when you worry too much about making the average person happy? 
A –  Average results! 

4 Part Formula For Financial Success & Happiness As A Lawyer: 

1. Find an area of the law or a group of clients that you genuinely
give a crap about.  Forget about going into any practice area(s) you
don’t know or care about, just because someone says you can make money
at it.  You can make a ton of money in any area of the law if you know
anything about marketing and how to manage a law firm.

2. Run your law firm like a business, not a hobby or a higher calling.
Take an honest inventory of the skills you find yourself lacking in. 

  • If you’re struggling to get the work in, you need to learn more about marketing. 
     
  • If you’re struggling to keep up with the work you already have, you need to learn more about  practice management. 
     
  • If you’re struggling with a/r, unpaid client bills, or
    unpredictable cash flow, you need to learn more about financial
    management. 
     

A law firm is a relatively simple business to run profitably.  And
there are plenty of cost-effective resources to help you, including a
bunch created by me.  Don’t just sit around waiting for things to
happen for you, like a houseplant waiting to be watered.  DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

3. Ignore 99% of your critics.  If you’re doing things that are
extraordinary and above-average most of the other lawyers in your
market will hate you for it.  That’s just a sad fact of life.  If you
have no critics you’re not doing enough to push the envelope for the
benefit of the only people who matter. . . paying clients, productive
referral sources, and YOURSELF!

4. Laugh all the way to the bank.  Attend every school play for your
kids.  Make it home in time for dinner most nights.  Turn-down clients
you don’t like.  Celebrate milestones with your staff.  And, get
control of your law firm business so it doesn’t control you!

Undercover Insights: Is It Time To Send In A Secret Shopper?

You know, everyone goes around talking about the importance of customer/client service.  There are whole books, in fact entire industries built around the notion taht consumers today have choices and if you don’t make things easy for them, your competition will.  Less charitable books and experts speak of the consumer’s lack of “loyalty”.

Anyway, I just got the 90-day warning on my complimentary virus protection software that came with my new laptop.  Of course when I clicked on it, I was sent into the Circle of Hell.  Here I am ready, willing and able with law firm credit card in hand and I cannot figure out how to give them my money!  Their process is THAT screwed-up (McCaffee, by the way)

What’s it like for YOUR clients to try and do business with you?  Is it time to send in a secret shopper to find out?

Why EVERY Lawyer Should Learn How To Make It Rain!!!

Even though HowToMakeItRain.com is geared specifically for solos & lawyers in firms with five or fewer attorneys, an associate who claims to be on the law firm partnership track at a mid-size regional firm recently sent me an e-mail asking why I feel so strongly that every lawyer should learn how to make it rain. Below is part of my answer:

Big law firm economics depend on the associates or non-rainmaking partners to NOT NOTICE OR NOT MIND the fact that they will bill dozens, maybe hundreds of hours doing the substantive legal work while the Rainmaker enjoys an equal slice of the profits from that client’s fee.

All because the Rainmaker knew how to get the client in the door, identify their priority problem or opportunity, propose a course of action and reach agreement as to the value of the services.

So the Rainmaker gets paid about the same amount to help the client identify and figure out a logical plan of action to solve their problems and maximize their opportunities, which the clients appreciate; And the house pet has to spend countless hours executing the Rainmaker’s plan.

But they both share about equally from that client’s fee. And which one do you think the client appreciates more and will call the next time they themselves or one of their friends, family members or clients have a problem or an opportunity? (Rhetorical question)