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.

Last week in Atlanta, the College of Law Practice Management's (COLPM) annual Futures Conference, "Running With the Machines," explored the current state of artificial intelligence in law practice — and a glimpse into the future. We asked College Fellows Andy Daws, Susan Hackett, Patrick Lamb, Marc Lauritsen, Sharon Nelson, Mark Tamminga, Courtney Troutman, John Simek and Greg Siskind to share their perspective and top takeaways. Lace up your Asics!

Let's face it, a lot of the text in legal documents has been recycled from previous documents. If you're tired of searching for then copying and pasting common elements like signature blocks or notary acknowledgments from old documents, only to have to correct formatting or reset client-specific data, you're going to love Quick Parts.

The 80/20 rule is so ubiquitous that many of us have lost touch with its origins. Input/output? Sales leads/conversions? Clients/revenue? Greens/grains? Sharing my day/your day? Conceived by Vincent Pareto, the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle, holds that roughly 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. Writ large, it’s widely applicable, and for good reason. It’s a highly valuable indicator of where your focus should be. And that brings us to promoting the content you produce.

Three KPI’s every small law firm should know. Running a small law firm is not easy. Not only do you zealously represent your clients, but you must also run a business. What are you looking at to make sure your business is performing profitably and as efficiently as possible? Do you have insights into your […]