RJon Robins

Could you be more successful if you weren’t afraid?

August 18, 2006 by RJon Robins

COULD YOU BE MORE SUCCESSFUL IF YOU WEREN’T AFRAID?

If you weren’t afraid of looking stupid, would you take some risks and try to market your practice differently than all of your competitors? Imagine a marketing plan with your current budget but no fear. What would it include? Outrageous ads? Entertaining seminars for prospective clients? Wild parties for prospective referral sources? Articles in which you take unpopular positions? Meetings with people who could refer business to you…should refer business to you, but might just toss you out on your ear instead?

These are not intended to be rhetorical questions. I am genuninely interested in getting a discussion going about what we would all do to make it rain if you weren’t afraid.

From my experience it seems that for most would-be rainmakers the biggest fear that holds them back from earning more money is that it may actually work, and then they’d have to get out of their comfort zone. But that’s a false sense of security. Because staying in your comfort zone really isn’t an option anymore.

The world is changing faster & faster. And if you stand still, your comfort zone will change & leave you all by yourself. Housing prices keep rising & the neighborhood you can afford today will squeeze you out unless you keep up. Children are born & get more expensive so the level of income you are satisfied with today soon won’t be enough to meet your basic needs. And alas, our bodies grow older requiring more rest & more care so the current pace you are comfortable with, will sooner than later require more energy than you can comfortably exert.

So if the world is changing, I ask what are you doing to keep up?

Swimming in new business

August 17, 2006 by RJon Robins

Two days ago Allison Shields posted a great piece on using your hobbies to help market your law firm. She shares a story about a lawyer who swam across the Long Island Sound to raise money & make it rain for his firm.

A number of attorneys I know have thought of marketing in similar ways only to discover they don’t have any hobbies/passions that are so ripe for publicity. Not too many fund raising oppty’s for stamp collecting if you get my drift.

But all of us (hopefully) have a passion for helping people – so even if you can’t swim across the L.I.S., I’d encourage everyone reading this to think about how you can make it rain for your firm simply by doing what the best rainmakers have always done: Become known as a person of integrity in your community who others know they can turn to for help as a trusted advisor, not just for your technical skills as a lawyer.

Why Being an Adequate Lawyer Works

August 16, 2006 by RJon Robins

As you may or may not be aware, a committee appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that calling yourself a “Super” lawyer violates the professional code of conduct. After learning about this decision , fellow Blogger Nathan Burke created a page for “adequate” lawyers in hopes that such a moniker would meet with the appoval of our bretheren in New Jersey.

But there’s a more serious side to all of this that most lawyers fail to consider in their marketing & client servce plans: MOST CLIENTS PREFER ADEQUATE. That’s right, if given the option of paying top dollar for a “super lawyer” vs. a more reasonable amount for legal services that are adequate to solve the problem at hand, the vast majority of your clients would choose the latter. Don’t believe me?

Take the following informal survey to prove that what I am saying is correct:

1. Make a list of all of your clients who are driving around in Bentlys or Rolls Royce’s.

2. The rest prefer adequate.

The upshot is that you can actually get more work from existing clients by being sensitive to the fact that they don’t all want the highest quality legal services available to handle their routine matters. If 100% of your practice is high-stakes / life or death / bet-the-ranch work, then ignore this advice. Otherwise, you’ll close more sales with prospective and current clients by taking pride in offering adequate solutions to their problems.

Where will you be in 12 months?

August 15, 2006 by RJon Robins

Which came first, the succcessful Rainmaker or the Happy Lawyer?

Lots of lawyers out there toil away year-after-year doing work they can tolerate but don’t enjoy for clients they can tolerate but don’t actually care about. They tell themselves that not caring too much about a client keeps them objective and the work is a means to an end. The end being to make enough money so they will be happy.

My experience in my own career and in my deeper-than-average involvement with the careers of many Rainmakers – and the sideline view I’ve had of many unhappy legal careers – has me convinced that the way to BECOME a successful Rainmaker is to do work we enjoy for clients who we do care about. And there’s no lawyer out there who can’t build some happiness into his or her career – THAT’S ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT BEING A RAINMAKER!!!

You see, one of the main causes for lawyer stress in small firms where no-one is feeding you work is the worrry about where the next case is going to come from. In most practice areas the life of a case is less than one year, so whatever cases you’re working on now will in all likelihood be out of your active case roster & probably out of your life within 12 months. That’s stressful if you don’t know where to get more work, but very liberating if you do. Because if you know how to make it rain you can be deliberate about going after the kinds of cases you would prefer to work on and/or for the kinds of clients whom you can say honestly to yourself that you actually care about.

And before you start to make excuses, let me just add one more point of reassurance…in every practice area you can find ways to get cases you will enjoy and/or serve clients you will care about. It doesn’t happen overnight & it may never be 100%. Make your goal perfection & you’ll go nuts. With progress as your mantra you can always make yourself happy.

Overheard in the restaurant. . .

August 12, 2006 by RJon Robins

I often like to eat breakfast out at a little place around the corner by myself. I go there so often they let me take my coffee mug home with me like other places let you take a doggie bag (of course that’s because I always return with the mug after I clean it). Anyway, reason I like to eat alone is because I like to eavesdrop on people eating at tables nearby…

What I overheard yesterday REALLY UPSET ME. Two men were sitting at the table next to me talking about a client they were working for. I never quite figured out if they were lawyers, accountants or some other kind of service but here’s what they said:

“With all of us working on it, that job isn’t going to last much longer.”

Reason(s) that upset me so much are too many to go into here so I’ll write a more in-depth article in the newsletter soon. But the short version was that it was SO DEPRESSING. I wasn’t so much upset for the client who they were talking about, as much as for them! Imagine going through your career worried about a case or matter drawing to a close b/c you don’t know where your next case was going to come from. I felt so bad for them that I almost got up to introduce myself to tell them that I could help them never have to feel that way again, but then my breakfast arrived, so I didn’t. Oh well, maybe they are reading this blog.

Learning from a Law Firm Scam: Valuable Lessons

August 10, 2006 by RJon Robins

Note: My friend J.R. Phelps, Director of The Florida Bar’s Law Office Management Assistance Service (where I used to work as a Practice Management Advisor) shared the following heads-up with me & gave permission to post to the Blog to warn my readers:

Last Friday, I received a telephone call from a bookkeeper for a law firm that had just been scammed by the IRS (or so they thought.) Here is how it worked…

The bookkeeper received a call from the IRS stating that the month end payroll tax had not been received . The caller insinuated that unless the IRS could track the payment electronically from her bank account – today- there would be a significant tax penalty assessed. They then asked her for the account number of the firm’s checking account, the bank’s routing number, and the amount of her payroll tax payment so IRS could track her check.

Of course, it seemed logical to her that IRS would need that information to trace a payment from her bank. Hearing nothing further from the IRS she thought all was okay until she received the following month’s bank statement. She could not balance the firm’s bank account and began looking for a reason why. She then noticed an amount equal to her payroll tax paid to a business she did not know with the notation TIL (Telephone Initiated Entry). AND her payroll tax check to IRS cleared. The firm, it seems, had been scammed.

Making A Payment By Phone With A Check Is NOT The Same Thing As Paying By Credit Card

A key difference between checks and electronic payments is that when funds are electronically debited though the ACH (Automated Clearing House) network the transaction is initiated by the business that is going to receive the funds, not by the person paying the bill. As an example, if you pay your electric bill automatically, each month the electric company, not you, instructs the bank to have money withdrawn from your account and deposited into its account.

The bogus IRS agent utilized a type of electronic payment called a “Telephone Initiated Entry,” which the ACH network accepts. This is different than paying for something over the phone with a credit card, because you provide your banking account information off the bottom of your check. However, unlike other types of ACH transactions, no written approval is required and the potential for fraud is greatly increased.

The company initiating a telephone transfer through the ACH network is required to use “commercially reasonable procedures” to verify the identify of a customer. Businesses are only required to record your verbal authorization or hold off making the transfer until they send you written confirmation that you verbally authorized it. They seldom use written confirmations they just record your phone authorization. In this case the scammer recorded enough of the bookeeper’s conversation to make it seem she authorized the deduction.

SO…how do you protect your firm from this type of activity.

It is up to you to object to a questionable ACH withdrawal on your account. Your bank has NOTHING to do with authorizing these payment and has no way of knowing whether they are legitimate or not, until you complain.

You have 60 days from the time your bank statement is sent to you to contest an ACH debit on your account. Moreover, your bank is not liable for fraudulent ACH activity. Here again, ACH payments are different from other account activity.

Typically your bank is responsible for obtaining proper authorization to access your account – your ID if you visit your bank in person or your signature on a check. But ACH entries are different. By law, it is the merchant’s bank which originates the payment, and not your bank, that bears the final responsibility for any fraudulent entries.

By law you cannot be responsible fraudulent charges IF you report them in time. Your best defense is to review your bank statements regularly, and to protect your checking account information and checkbook as carefully as you protect your credit cards. Even if you have never paid a bill by phone or through automatic deduction, your bank account is vulnerable. Forewarned is forearmed.

The Smell Test

RJon here again…everyone whose attended one of my Trust Account Management programs knows what I mean by “The Smell Test” & knows exactly what steps to take with your trust account to catch this kind of fraudulent activity.

The same simple system & steps will protect your operating account too. If you haven’t attended one of my trust account management programs, they are actually kind of fun & show you how to use your trust account as a profitable business management tool to boost your income, cut down on billing problems & virtually eliminate your a/r headaches.

We turned that live program into a fun & easy Powerpoint presentation that takes about an hour. Working title (still in editing for the audio) is A Simple System For Managing Your Trust Account That Won’t Make You Feel Like A Schmuck

If you want to be notified when the program is available, send me an e-mail.

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