« November 25, 2009 | Main | November 30, 2009 »
November 28, 2009
Got a Little Black Book for you right here. But are you ready to do some work?
Note: Below is review of a very fine new book by Miami's Paula Black we did in August 2009. This holiday season "Black's book" would make an enduring and appreciated gift to savvy clients, to their fancy corporate lawyers, to many other services professionals--and even to certain family dogs. It's quite a book, folks.
Most books on marketing professional services or client service--at WAC? we are asked to review quite a few of them and we usually get around to it--hit us the same way:
You just died and went to Hallmark.
For an instant, it's an immediate signal-sanction from the Cosmos of what kind of life you have led here on Earth--in case you did not understand before. It's physical.
You sag, visibly, like an animal taking a bullet. Your punishment. It came early.
And then you read on. These books tend to end the same way: "nurturing the relationship"--like that notion was revolutionary.
All of the books, to be fair, make sense. And they are all written by nice people. Especially the "marketing" books.
But rarely are any of them crafted to make things "stick." Or even make "sticking" a priority.
Then you wake up--and realize you have to write something nice. You put it off for a few more months, and go back to billing hours. There is simply nothing remarkable about that new nice book.
Well, not so for Paula Black's The Little Black Book: A Lawyer's Guide to Creating a Marketing Habit in 21 Days.
If you read this blog, you know that we think that for those with repeat corporate clients, or for those who would like such a happy component in their business model, you are always marketing when you are working. You work for a client; you are marketing right there. And woe to you and yours if you do not get that.
But we also think that very few of you have the discipline to make marketing, along with client service, a "frame of mind." In fact, we are sure of it. But the Little Black Book handles the discipline of habit-building admirably. And we like it for reasons which range from the critical and important to the purely whimsical and personal:
1. LBB is about getting quality habits--building them. The book takes you through a regimen of three weeks of getting your mind "right." There's an emphasis here on using three built-in sources of work: (a) current and former clients (everyone blows this), (b) marketing within your firm (no one can get this right, either--but Paula Black, again, does), and (c) joining organizations, which she does freshly. On (c), personally, I think of it differently--but mainly it's a matter of perspective and stress: my take is that you should focus your efforts on "influencers"--not so much organizations--who know, control or have the respect of hundreds of others.
2. The book is aesthetically pleasing. Graphically, it's a masterpiece. In fact, it's gorgeous. You might buy it just for its mode and technique of narrative. WAC? is famously shallow--it's no secret that a person who moves from D.C. to southern California just wants to get in touch with his inner cad--and just likes pretty things.
3. The book is literally indestructible. It's pretty heavy--at least a pound--and relatively flat at 155 glossy and quite durable pages. Distinctively and "horizontally" crafted (see above). On a recent trip to Alaska, I threw it four times to the three resident big goofy Labradors outside the lodge as far as I could throw it toward the boats and planes tied up on shore. They chased it, fought over it, and brought it back. All we had to do is hose LBB off. I could still pass it around at dinner. Even the ringed binding was intact. Perfect.
4. We just like the name of the book. There was once a book with a similar name I had written myself when I was in law school and working in D.C. before I was married that changed my life several times a week.
5. It contains actual advice from forty fancy lawyers who "get it"--including the IBLC's Paris member, a first rate management-side employment lawyer, who my law firm both respects and likes very much, and I will see again in October.
6. It is well thought out, easy to read, beautifully written, hard to forget--and worth every penny this blog did not have to pay.
Just buy it. But read it and do what it says. Okay? It can forge a hard-won good habit--if you work at it.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Practice tip: Do timely object to hand grenades.
Diane Arbus, Central Park, 1962
Even without notice, you can let some stuff slide a little when it slips into defense counsel closings: photos, videos, a few power point slides, and maybe blow-ups of handwriting samples. No reason to object. But you never know about those wild cards: firearms, working chain saws, certain munitions, live-looking grenades, those sorts of things. So do pipe up--even if you think you're winning big with the jury in an "I-can't-lose-here" jurisdiction. See at ABA Journal "Lawyer Under Fire for Using Dud Grenade in Closing".
There was no objection and the presiding judge simply asked that Kepfield remove the grenade from the table.
Kepfield's client was convicted following 15 minutes of jury deliberations, according to the Hutchinson News.
The grenade closing prop was used in a demonstration of a "real" imminent threat. A complaining witness claimed that one co-defendant in the case threatened "to kill her dog and harm her daughter" if she would not assist in the forgery of stolen checks. No timely objection to the grenade. But here the winning prosecution apparently could have it both ways:
District Attorney Keith Schroeder intends to also alert the Kansas attorney general's office.
"Clearly, I'm concerned about the situation and the safety of my employees, and I'm concerned about the way the jury's treated," Schroeder said.
Posted by Rob Bodine at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)