In the competitive world of law, it is not uncommon to feel (consciously or unconsciously) that failure is not an option. However, the quest for perfection is a double-edged sword. While striving toward it can motivate us to improve, perfection is never the goal. For perfection to serve a useful purpose, it must be a direction, not a destination. Having a direction helps us to continually move, grow, learn and improve.

Law firms are under constant pressure to adopt new, improved technology so they can increase productivity and provide better client service. Yet budgets rarely increase with the speed of technology changes. With so many technology needs out there, how do you know which investments will garner the fastest return?

With LawPay, you get the tools you need to manage earnings and cash flow, and track key financial metrics. LawPay’s new reporting dashboard lets you see where your firm’s payments stand at a glance. Quickly and easily see where revenue is coming from, and view key stats that help you assess cash flow.

Because of this widespread use by lawyers and businesspeople, LinkedIn’s potential to create and nurture relationships between lawyers and clients is significant. You need to be there, and you need to focus on creating a profile and presence that accurately represents who you are, and that reinforces your credibility and focuses on how you can help others. There are many ways to do this, but one I am often asked about is what LinkedIn calls the “Skills & Endorsements” section.

You know what feels good? Firing a client. My firm was hired to help a client with multiple applications for registering their intellectual property. We tell every client there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to get them everything they want. This client got upset about the status of one of the applications, and then refused to pay the balance on a project. I explained that their feelings didn’t negate their obligations, and if they didn’t pay, we’d be constrained to withdraw as counsel from all their pending applications. They refused, so I withdrew as the attorney of record and the firm disengaged from all their projects.

Think back 10 or 11 months … remember your New Year’s financial resolutions? Save more, spend less, be smarter with taxes, and construct a succession plan for your practice — we all made them. Then, client demands, partner requests, deal closings, hearings and even the occasional trial helped make 2017 fly by. You'll have to focus, but it’s not too late to make the most of the year financially.

It really doesn't matter how much money and time go into your law practice’s website. You'll likely always be left wondering if it is actually doing the job you need it to do — and if not, what the heck is wrong with it. Like some, you may have overblown expectations for the work a mere website can do. Like others, you may be unwilling to fully invest what it takes to maximize a site's impact. Let’s look at the bare bones of the problem and identify the critical pieces of your firm’s website marketing effort.

A few years ago, I interviewed Mike Dillon, general counsel at Adobe Systems. Dillon chuckled over how, before coming to Adobe, he’d had to sign stacks of documents each week using “wet ink” (his words). During the three months preceding our chat, he told me, he had signed precisely one “wet ink” document.

It's a given that you need to delegate or outsource some tasks if you want to grow as a firm. There are only so many hours in a day, and if you try to do absolutely everything yourself, it will mean limited revenues and likely unbearable hours and stress for you. And you are bound to falter on either administrative duties or client matters because it's impossible to perform all the necessary functions alone day after day. At the same time, whatever work you do delegate must be done in compliance with attorney ethics rules.

It started with the iPod, the iPad and the iPhone. Capital letters appeared in places they never appeared before. Grammar rules call for capitalizing proper names, but now the correct reference to some brands calls for capitalizing in the middle instead of at the beginning. Some people stopped capitalizing “I” because, well, that became the norm. After years of admonition, people have come to accept that, besides being ungrammatical, using all capitals in emails or texts is the equivalent of shouting. Now we have the opposite problem. People send messages all in lowercase.