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February 04, 2006

WJC Plays It Cool with HMPC...and More Metadata Materials.

Even with a hefty assist two days ago in a post by Peter Lattman at his new but popular WSJ Law Blog, WJC, who I've steadfastly liked and admired since the 1980's, and even after spending 20 great minutes with him on January 1 around noon in Charleston talking about AIDS medicine cost reductions and U.S. energy policy, still hasn't contacted my co-founder corporate tax lawyer Julie McGuire--who, notably, is one of 7 or 8 Republicans said to be living in the Pittsburgh area--or me in response to our ad of January 27. No luck so far in the crusade to bring a true natural to American law. Meanwhile, due to the excitement of the first Steelers Super Bowl in a while, in my first metadata post last week, I overlooked good advice, opinions, insights and materials collected in posts by Dennis Kennedy, the new blog Electronic Discovery Law, by Seattle's Preston Gates, the law firm of the dad of the second most famous American Bill, and writing by Evan Schaeffer, in both his Legal Underground and the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog. Dennis and Evan were among the first to bring metadata issues to public attention.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:16 AM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2006

Law Firm Logos: "Goofy", Essential or Something in Between?--Part 5

Another nice post on firm logos by Patrick Lamb at In Search of Perfect Client Service. Due to recent posts on this, and seeing some good logos around me and in some of the posts, I am still deciding. But Pat's right that I'm not yet sold on logos if you don't already have one. I still think that most of us already have a distinctive and valuable "look" based our letterhead and cards. I realize this issue pales along side themes like metadata, global expansion and "How Jen Is Coping" with the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie thing. But it's still part of attracting and keeping good clients.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

Yanks Abroad: Too Far, Too Fast the Wrong Way?

I was very interested to read a sober but wonderful post by Adam Smith (Bruce MacEwen) on global expansion by U.S. law firms abroad, especially in Europe, where my boutique firm is increasingly active but careful. It's called New Market Entry and the Cognitive Bias Minefield and worth reading. The post starts out "Global Expansion Junkies: I have bad news." Years ago, as young lawyers, a number of my friends and I in Washington, D.C. labored through "strategic" law firm mergers--all domestic and a couple of them pretty large for back then--which failed to bear lasting fruit. When things fell apart, as they often did, naturally clients and their lawyers alike were put at various types of risk. These were tough times to be service-oriented, and only the best lawyers could prevent the low morale from affecting their work for clients. In the mergers, "culture clash" was one problem, even between U.S. offices only 300 miles a part. The wrong mix of practice areas, inadequate due diligence and failure to analyze markets correctly were others. Lots of firms made mistakes. But the biggest overall problem was the pumping-iron kind of "let's get big--let's get really big!" ethos which is only human and was very 1980's. Lots of yellow ties, Hugo Boss suits and suspenders to go along with the bravado and hubris.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:06 AM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2006

Metadata Primers: Understanding Mysteries, Magic and Pitfalls.

Jim Calloway at his Law Practice Tips Blog has an instructive and important post and Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle has an equally thoughtful post on metadata. These are both an alert and a call to arms of sorts. And Jim and Carolyn are not alone. Jim's in particular collects some great materials. I'm still learning--but it's clear already that understanding and managing "data about data" is important--and important right now--if: (1) you have clients, (2) you work on-line at all, (3) you care about ethics and/or (4) (especially) you do litigation for a living. In other words, most of us.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)

"Law Firm Logos are Goofy, Useless, and a Waste of Time and Money"-Part 3.

The original subtly-titled January 21 post is here with a follow-up collecting some instructive posts I admired here by professional marketers who know about logos and design. So, and once again, now I'm not so sure--no hobgoblins problem at this blog. Here's another solid recent post getting closer to answering the questions of why and how law firm logos can work by Boston-based Nathan Burke at LawFirmBlogging.com called "Debate About Logos".

Posted by JD Hull at 02:49 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2006

The Article II, Section 2, Maybe-It's-Just-Me Department.

So Samuel Alito "wins" 58 to 42 with only 5 party "defections" total. Regardless of your politics, and notwithstanding how elastic the Constitution really is or isn't, does anyone out there really believe that the framers anticipated that the president's power to appoint "Judges of the Supreme Court" with "the Advice and Consent of the Senate" would yield the kind of process we've structured 219 years later?

Posted by JD Hull at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)

Sane and Worth Reading--but you read it first...I'll get to it later.

In the first things first department, Arnie Herz and/or whoever is in his winning collection of writers over at Wall Street-based Legal Sanity has a fine post on the subject of what my mother (and yours) would call "you-need-to-slow-down". Arnie's post is entitled "Note to Lawyers: Slow Down and Loosen Up". It mentions some really interesting sources, including a book and a related new ABA Law Practice Management Section article--both called In Praise Of Slowness: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging The Cult Of Speed by Canadian journalist Carl Honore--and another ABA piece entitled "Finding and Keeping the Clients You Like" by Susan Saltonstall Duncan at RainMakingOasis. Arnie's post is both salve and instruction for the legions of us who are bombarded, numb, moving too fast, and never doing anything about it.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2006

Polling the Real Jury--Tom Kane's 3-part Approach to Client Interviews Makes Great Sense.

As others like Patrick Lamb have already noticed, Tom Kane at The Legal Marketing Blog has a short but excellent summary of a best practice 3-step approach to client interviews. Tom's formula nicely balances the need for honest answers from the client being interviewed against the importance of lawyer participation in the process. Why didn't I think of this? It's right here--and it's very good. Jim Hassett, Michelle Golden, Pat Lamb and me (although I got frustrated by conflicting good advices and un-valiantly checked out of the discussion at one point) have been having a lively and useful multi-blog discussion over the past week-and-a-half on this. Nice work. I learned something. And it was fun.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)

Writing For Clients--Just Say It-Part 5. "Write Like You Talk"!

In December I tried to write four posts on saner writing: parts One, Two, Three--and finally Part Four, which set out the same 8 rules for sane writing which appears in our firm's Practice Guide for associates and paralegals. At the time I was flattered that Ray Ward at Minor Wisdom and Patrick Lamb at In Search of Perfect Client Service commented on these posts favorably because I know they both care about straightforward and sane legal writing. Long after finishing these posts, I noticed a wonderful post on marketing by Michelle Golden last October at her Golden Practices site. One of her writing rules: "Write Like You Talk. That's how people like to read. Even if you are writing to the most educated target market - keep it simple. The best test of writing is how it sounds when you read it out loud." I liked that.

Much writing by even the most talented lawyers, and especially by those just starting to practice, is characterized by an awkward and often wordy stream-of-consciousness quality in which the lawyer-writer is apparently "talking to himself/herself." This happens--especially on briefs or longer documents--because the writer is so familiar with the topic that he or she lapses into an archaic "code" and starts, in effect, to mutter on paper. If you just say "it" out loud in "people" language, often right away you'll hear a clearer and shorter sentence you can use. And you'll have a sentence an unwashed reader can pick up on and understand quickly and appreciatively. "Writing like you talk" is an effective way to get yourself back into gear when you're writing and you've lost your path. Thank you, Michelle.

Posted by JD Hull at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2006

"Can Lawyers Be Taught To Market?"

Ellen Freedman at Law Practice Management has a thoughtful and fairly extensive post about whether marketing can be taught to lawyers, including the vast majority who may not be naturals. Her answer is clearly "yes". Her post follows recent commentary, including posts by Arnie Herz, Larry Bodine and Patrick Lamb, over the past few days in reaction to Dr. Larry Richard's comments to the Marketing Partners Forum in Florida noting that about 80% of lawyers aren't marketers by nature. (I chimed in, too.) Ellen starts out talking about developing networking skills early in a lawyer's career--and she's specific about how to do that. She promises more on learning to market in future posts. She seems to support the notion of some of us practicing law (including me) that everyone in a firm can effectively lend a strong hand to market--if not to "sell".

Posted by JD Hull at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)