If you are a partner considering a move to another firm, you probably have two main reasons. The first almost always involves money. The second usually concerns personality factors or firm culture. That’s shorthand for “I’m working with a bunch of jerks.” The business side of the consideration is fairly straightforward. For starters, you need to determine how […]

We know you’re interested in learning. Why else would you be here? If your brain merely chews up printed text and spits it out, you’ll especially love this week’s Friday Five. We’re serving up five alternatives to the written word when it comes to practice management know-how. Check out these online audio and video files […]

I got an email from one of the younger partners the other day and, frankly, I couldn’t figure it out: “snicker77: why not? @fiddle @sweaterneck @sideways = Curmudgeon?” Upon investigation, I learned that he had pasted a “tweet” into an email for me, since he knows I don’t use Twitter and wouldn’t otherwise receive it. I resisted the […]

Want to know the single fastest way to speed up your typing? Stop manually correcting your typos as you’re writing. Just stop doing it! Correcting as you type is a surefire way to slow yourself down. It’s a classic illustration of you working for your computer, when it’s supposed to be the other way around. Ignoring your typos […]

Your email signature may be a tiny element in the scheme of your marketing, but it can be the most concise and consistent way to communicate who you are and where to find you. E-signatures have come so far in the past couple of years that email addicts revere and rely on them as much […]

Spring is time for new beginnings and sweet endings. If you’re not choosing a wedding gift for a June bride, you’re writing a check for a graduating nephew or two. There’s just something about this time of year that fills us with a sense of expectation, and casts our thoughts to the inspirational. So today we take a look at graduation, with good resources to get you through it all.

How should you start to map the route to your exit? The answer begins with how you are grooming your practice's assets now, so that you can recoup value later. And the sooner you are conscious of the role your current management practices will play in your ability to exit well, the better you’ll come out. Here are five assets to consider.

When you make a bad hiring decision, it is usually because you don't really know what you are looking for. So, what can you do to make sure the interview accurately reflects the nature of job and reveals the candidate’s suitability?

Thoughtful planning will be the key to making flat-fee billing, or any other billing method, viable and successful. And no matter how you change your billing practices, timekeeping will play a critical role. Yes, clients can perceive the value of flat-fee billing, but you must continue to track how much time it takes to do things. Your timekeeping data will become a powerful planning tool—and you will get better at estimating what fee you need to charge to cover your investment and make a profit. Here are five things to consider when making the shift to flat-fee billing.

Today’s idea, especially for small-firm lawyers, is this: revive your law school study groups. Not literally—your original classmates have long since moved on to other practices and careers. But set up a private study group with between five and 10 other lawyers whose practices overlap, but don’t completely coincide, with yours. They’d be in the same general practice area and the same basic jurisdiction, but their specialties and focuses would differ slightly.