I don’t know about you, but I like to spend as much money as possible on my firm’s phone system while making sure it is as inflexible as Bakelite in winter—and nearly featureless. Wait. I may have reversed that. What I really like is to pay as little as possible for a feature-rich system—and one that reflects my […]

Some years back, I worked in an office where the boss was obsessive about how callers were greeted on the phone. Then a new receptionist was hired who just could not get the phrasing to his liking—no matter how hard she tried or how many well-meaning colleagues tried to coach her through it. It got so bad that the rest of us would jump to beat her to the phones—because that seemed easier than dealing with what had become the proverbial "elephant" in the office. So, how many elephants are hiding in plain sight at your office?

It's the small daily routines that keep you functioning without losing your mind. Besides, if you commit to muscle and mind memory the regular things you must do, you can save your critical thinking for the complex stuff. So this week's Friday Five is dedicated to routinizing your social media visibility, with a checklist to keep you focused. Let's make it mindless and regular, and then just move on.

Great news: You no longer have to spend your time in meetings looking at the top of everyone's notebook computer instead of faces. Now there are iPads, the lid is off and everyone is present once more. But iPads do far more than just improve the view—they are a fantastic tool for engaging your meeting attendees.

It’s become an article of faith that lawyers are poor writers. That isn’t really fair. The problem is not with lawyers’ writing, I think; the problem lies with lawyers’ tendency to overwrite. Ask a lawyer for a tune and she’ll give you a symphony. Ask for a snack and he’ll bring you a three-course meal. Today’s idea will sound summertime-frivolous at best, but I urge you to consider it. Get your lawyers to write poetry. Specifically, get them to write legal poetry.

A person could very quickly lose his mind trying out this or that marketing idea du jour. Is social media the ultimate answer it’s chalked up to be? If you hire a public relations firm to toot your horn for you, can you avoid actually having to sell yourself ... yourself? Well, any marketing expert worth her lengthy contact list will tell you there is no one answer. But there is a surefire way of framing your marketing thinking so that you can create a plan that works—for you.

“I told him right to his face what the deal was. And you know what? That lying scumbag now claims I told him something else! I’m gonna nail him, his client and his client’s mother, if that’s what it takes to teach him not to lie to me!” Once I’d calmed down my partner and […]

It’s easy to feel all alone when you have a [fill in the blank] challenge in your practice. Cash flow slowed to a trickle? Stagnation on the business development front? Ethics scare? Or so burned out you just don't care? You name it and you know you didn’t learn it in law school. So where to go when you need a helping hand?

Law offices tend to be set up quite traditionally. Plenty of lawyers are still users of fax machines and their offices usually contain ancient beasts known as stenographs. It is no surprise that lawyers tend to hire traditionally as well. But there's an alternative route to traditional hires that may benefit your practice: the virtual assistant.

While you probably don't give it much thought, the value of answering your phone properly can be enormous. On the other end of a ringing phone may be a potential client worth thousands of dollars or someone who may be able to refer many new cases to you. How the phone is answered—assuming that someone actually answers!—has a big impact on how many of those calls develop into new business.