What About Paris? : March 25, 2007 - March 31, 2007 Archives

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March 31, 2007

Saturday's Charon QC, and the Brit Blogs.

London's Charon QC is still for Saturdays. My friend Charon is always excellent, delivers and is right on time. The Times loves the guy. And today he has done a Saturday review of the past week. Another British blogger, and a surfer no less, Tim Kevan at The Barrister Blog, has started up a similar weekly review he calls Best of the Blogs. Both Charon and Tim mention US blogs in their reviews. We've posted before about the fine and innovative UK blogs out there.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:55 AM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2007

Asking clients for work: "Why are lawyers so shy?"

Over the years this keeps happening:

I take a General Counsel or non-lawyer executive or CFO of a targeted client to lunch or dinner to ask for work. At some point I briefly say what my firm does and how we can help the client on particular legal issues it has. I ask a few questions. I do a short (very informal) pitch which ends with: "We like [the company] and we'd love to work with you. How can I win/earn your business?"

The client rep laughs and says something like, "That's refreshing--because I can't tell you how many times I have dined, gone to sporting events or played golf with lawyers and they never ask me for my business. Sometimes this goes on for years. I know that's why they are there--but they won't ever get to the point."

"So what's up with that?" he or she continues, often openly amused. "Are most lawyers shy or something? Why would I want to hire a law firm not aggressive enough, direct enough or business-oriented enough to just ask for the work?"

True story: One in-house counsel from a Fortune 100 told me that a partner in a major law firm he saw regularly for years couldn't bring himself to inquire. They lawyer was the in-house guy's next door neighbor.

Is the careful, rational, polite, risk-averse "lawyer personality" to blame? I have no idea.....but I do know that business clients--whether or not they buy the image of the fire-breathing lawyer-AlphaHuman they see on television--expect lawyers to have the business instincts and the stones to ask for the work. So ask. Practice first if you must. Get a pitch and a strategy for each meeting. Don't wait until 30 minutes goes by or the table is cleared. Ask.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:58 AM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2007

EPA fines DOE: Here's something we don't see every day...

From Environmental Protection magazine, EPA Fines U.S. Energy Department $1.1 Million re: violations of agreement to clean up Hanford, Washington nuclear reservation.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2007

Asking for the business.

It sounds easy but lawyers have trouble doing it. In fact, the concept of "asking for the business" is revolutionary thinking for some of us. Not part of the lawyer personality. So for some direction, see my friend Jim Hassett's post "When To Close And 'Ask For The Business'" at his Legal Business Development.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)

Real, inexpensive and "natural" branding ideas.

To me, real branding for a services firm should be cheap, "natural", and not with goofy initials or logos that only work for IBM or Microsoft: just "real look and feel" trade dress branding, the kind associated with workaday letterhead and envelopes, and forged in the customer's overstimulated brain through repetition. Your name, the print style, color--decide, keep it, don't change it. See Michelle Golden's post Fun Branding for a Law Firm.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2007

A client service loo loo.

See from Wellington, New Zealand this shining, clean out-of-sight example of client service ardor and elbow grease in Geoff Sharp's piece "The Extra Mile" at mediator blah...blah.... Take notice, you work-life balancing Gen X and Y weenies--they don't make 'em like Geoff and me any more.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Bluegrass Blawg Review #101

Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in legal blogging, run by some very talented and stalwart people, continues to amaze. This week's host is Diana Skaggs at Divorce Law Journal, based in Louisville, Kentucky, a state where WAC? has more distant kin on the Hull side, in both name and unclaimed DNA, than I generally care to disclose. And dudes, do see the Bong Hits 4 Jesus thing in #101. Dang! Louisville, Hunter Thompson's hometown, apparently grew more colorful and hipper from the days I lived in near-by Cincinnati, the Clean City.