Law Firm Marketing Plan | Attorney Marketing | Marketing For Lawyers

The Power of Procrastination

I have a confession.

I battle procrastination every single day.  It is terrible.  I constantly feel as though I am up against a deadline.  Actually, that is not correct.  I feel like I am up against a guy with a loaded gun pointed against my head…waiting to pull the trigger.

It is a constant pressure that drives me crazy.  I get frustrated and angry with myself when I wait until the last minute to do things.  I get upset at the people in my office for scheduling the appointments with the clients (like they knew I was going to wait until the last minute to get the work done).  I get depressed when it happens again and again because I feel helpless to stop it. I rarely miss a deadline but I ALWAYS feel uncomfortable.

Well, I used to feel uncomfortable and helpless…

My team and I have developed a system to help me beat this personal deficiency.  In fact, we have learned to use it to our advantage.  My hope is that if I share my little trick with you, you will be able to use it in your law firm. Don’t think of it as time management.  Think of it as activity management.

Here is what we have done:

First:  We set artificial deadlines on all projects.  These internal deadlines are designed to put pressure on me to feel the same pain of procrastination but feel it earlier than the true deadline.  This does not mean the project is completely finished and out the door earlier, it just means that it is STARTED earlier.  I have found that getting started is 90 percent of the problem.

Next:  My assistant asks me how much time is necessary to complete the project.  She then adds an additional 20 percent to my estimate and blocks time on my calendar for completion before the deadline.  (I always underestimate the amount of time it takes to complete a project).

By the way, a critical change in my business life was turning all my appointment scheduling over to someone else. Part of my problem is that I would never say NO to anyone and I would always be overscheduled.  Now I have view only access to my calendar.  I cannot schedule an appointment if I want to.  Everything goes through my assistant.

Finally:  I review my upcoming meetings with my office team one week prior.  It is a staff meeting to hold me accountable.  They do not critique my recommendations to the clients they just make sure I have the work done.

Key point:  We treat internal projects (like marketing initiatives) the same way we treat client projects.

I suspect many people have procrastination issues.  It is human nature.  This little procrastination prevention system has made me much more efficient and effective.  Is there a way you can create something similar in your law practice?

My Big Email Experiment

Can you just shut down your email?  If you do, will the world end?

Earlier this year I made a resolution only to check my email once a week.  Well, that turned out to be a disaster.  By the time I got to my inbox I had over 2,500 messages waiting for me.  My clients began calling and asking if I had passed away and my Blackberry became so overloaded it stopped counting the number of unopened messages in the mailbox.

This has to stop.

Most of the email messages I receive are not from clients.  They are from people who want something.  Usually they want something for nothing.  And they always want to waste my time.

Here’s what I am going to do about this:

I have set up an auto responder that will go out to everyone EXCEPT my clients.  It says that I do not check email any longer and it offers a website with my alternative contact information.

This will go into effect on the first of next month.

Some people may get angry but ultimately, my clients will receive better service.

I will let you know what happens.

Important Marketing Rule for Lawyers: Be On Time

Last week a lawyer invited me to lunch.  He wanted help with the marketing for his firm.  Since helping lawyers with marketing is what I do, and since I like eating lunch, I accepted the invitation.

I am a bit of a fanatic about appointments.  I tend to get everywhere early.  Fifteen minutes early is my standard but it is not unusual for me to get somewhere 30 minutes before the scheduled meeting time.  This is not just because of my obsessive personality.  I always allow extra time for traffic, the need to fill the car up with gas, a meteor crashing into my route to the meeting venue…you get the idea.

So when the day arrived for my lunch with this lawyer, I got to the restaurant about 20 minutes early.  This gave me some time to read the newspaper while I waited.  Not necessarily a bad thing.  When I completely finished reading the front section of the paper I looked up and noticed that I had been sitting in that same spot for about an hour.  This means that the lawyer was already 35 minutes late.

I folded up the paper and was about to leave when my lunch date arrived.  He offered no apology and when I confronted him with the fact that I had been waiting for half an hour he simply replied: “There was a lot of traffic.”

Needless to say, I did not accept this man as a client. Here’s why:

A lack of time integrity is an indication of an irresponsible person.  Being late is a sign that you do not take commitments seriously.  We set a specific time for the meeting.  Honor that commitment.  To account for the traffic, leave early.

If you do not respect my time, you will not respect the advice I give you.  How seriously can you take what I say when you don’t think I am important enough to show up on time?

People who are chronically late lack personal pride.  If you do not care about your image enough to be on time for a meeting, you obviously do not care enough to represent yourself well.  I certainly do not want to work with someone like that.

I realize many people will think this is harsh. I also realize many people will wonder what this has to do with lawyers marketing their law firms.  Unfortunately, the world is a harsh competitive place.  Since marketing for lawyers is all about helping them get the best clients, and time is an essential element of the execution of marketing tactics, a lack of time integrity kills the marketing process before it even begins.

If you think I should “give people a break” because “stuff happens” you are involved with the wrong guy.  My feeling is that smart people anticipate the stuff that is going to happen and they adjust.

Be on time.  It will help you get more clients.

Attorney Marketing and Time Management Go Hand-In-Hand

“I don’t have enough time” is a common reason given for the failure of many attorney marketing initiatives.  Although this is an idea held by many, it is simply not true.  Every attorney has time for marketing.  Let me type that statement again and add emphasis:  Every attorney has time for marketing.

Here are three ways you can make time for marketing and still be a practicing lawyer:

Set your Priorities Properly

Clients should always come first but the growth of your law firm should be a close second.  Here is a way to think about it:  Having more clients than you can handle at one time offers you choices.  You will have the opportunity to pick and choose your clients.  Executing a good attorney marketing plan is the ticket to freedom.

Do A Little Every Day

There are 24 hours in each day and you only need to use one or two of them for marketing.  Some of our clients set aside the first hour of each day for marketing.  Others use an hour right before bedtime to get some marketing work done.  This only happens because marketing is a priority for them.

Carve out a little time each day for the benefit of your law practice.  Dedicate yourself to your firm’s growth.

Reassess Your Value to the Market

Many attorneys don’t focus on marketing because they do not accurately assess their value to the market.  They feel (sometimes subconsciously) that they are not worthy of an abundant law practice full of high-quality clients.  This feeling prevents them for dedicating the time necessary to marketing.

Spend some time thinking about the value you provide to the community and to your clients.  Don’t other potential clients deserve your expertise?

When it comes to attorney marketing, saying you don’t have time is just an excuse.  It’s like saying you don’t have time to make money.

Get a Grip on Administrivia and Make More Money

Do you want to immediately give yourself a productivity boost?

The best way to do this is to remove the trivial administrative tasks that bog you down. I call these things ADMINISTRIVIA.

All of us tend to make things more difficult than they need to be. We use 200 words when 20 will do. We spend too much time analyzing minor issues. We work on mundane tasks that we can/should delegate to others. The administrivia in our firms is the biggest example of time wasted (or at least underutilized).

Here are three things you can do today to dramatically increase your productivity by eliminating administrivia:

One: Never Answer a Ringing Phone

This simple rule has quadrupled my personal productivity and it has (at least) doubled the productivity of my clients immediately upon implementation. In my firm we have a system for handling phone calls.

Here’s how it works:

My main phone number rings directly into voice mail. The voice mail is transcribed and automatically sent to my assistant. She reads the message and either handles it immediately or calls the party back for clarification. If she cannot resolve or dispose of the issue, she schedules a telephone appointment for the caller directly with me. The appointment has a start time and an end time (usually 15 minutes in length) and it has a mini-agenda. Once we resolve the issue, I’m off the phone.

Now you’re probably thinking that your clients have different expectations of you. That’s because you have conditioned them to think you are going to take their calls right away. You can change that perception by having a simple conversation.

It starts like this:

“Mr. Client, you are very important to me. In order to maximize our time together I want to make sure I prepare for every interaction I have with you. From now on, when you call me, I’m going to set aside some dedicated time for us to discuss your issue. Since we are both busy it may take a day or so to get this scheduled but we will both be more productive as a result.”

Second: Stop Checking Email

You really don’t need email. Business was conducted just fine for centuries without it. You especially don’t need to check email constantly. Your productivity will skyrocket when you begin ignoring that stupid inbox on your computer (or Blackberry, PDA, iPhone, etc.).

Here’s how you can conquer this seemingly impossible issue:

Keep your current email address but set up an out of office auto response that states you are no longer checking email. Tell everyone you work with that you are no longer accepting email. Tell them to email your assistant with important documents. Have your assistant schedule a call to review the document with the client/prospective client/opposing attorney. Have your assistant check your email once a day for anything important.

I’ll be the first to admit that I had a tough time with this initially. I used a step down method to get off email. I checked it three times a day at first. Then I moved to once a day, which was almost worse because stuff piled up. After that I went to once a week (at that point I just deleted everything because it was too much to keep up with). Now with my assistant keeping an eye out for important items, I never log into email unless she tells me there is something I need to handle.

Third: Have Someone Manage Your Calendar

There is nothing I do worse than schedule my own appointments. Honestly, I think I have a disability that prevents me from keeping an orderly calendar.

Having someone manage your schedule will make you more efficient and you will be much, much happier. This also helps alleviate the guilt you feel when you have to say NO to an unproductive meeting or event. Someone else says NO for you. It’s beautiful!

Time to Decide

There are about a million reasons not to implement these three changes.  After all, no NORMAL person does this, right?  Well what does NORMAL mean anyway?  Doesn’t NORMAL mean ‘just like everyone else’?

And what do the law firms run by EVERYONE ELSE look like?  Most of them are mediocre.  If you want to be just like everyone else and have a mediocre firm, ignore this article.

But your productivity will suffer if you don’t take charge of your interpersonal interaction.

If you think you can’t do this because you can’t trust your assistant, you need to get a new one (or go into therapy for your trust issues). If you can’t afford an assistant I’m afraid I can’t help you. Virtual assistants are available for $10/hr. and they can handle these tasks in about 10 hours a week. That’s $100. Give me a break.

This article is your call to action. Take control of your productivity immediately.

Time Management Secrets that Actually Work

One day last month I was on the phone with a client and he was going into great detail about his trouble managing his time.

He blamed email, voice mail and his cell phone for his problems.  He said that there were just too many ways to get in touch with him.

We implemented four simple steps that have transformed the way he does business. 

He has saved five hours a week (at minimum).

Here’s what he did:

1). He now responds, deletes or files every email when he reads it.  He only looks at an item one time.  He doesn’t “cherry pick” email messages – meaning he doesn’t go through the list and only respond to the easy ones.  He takes them one at a time and plows through them.

2). He eliminated voice mail.  His assistant fields and screens the calls and SCHEDULES a call back time for him.  This has been transformational because she will schedule calls in fifteen minute increments.  If a client needs something longer than that amount of time they are encouraged to book at telephone APPOINTMENT which is at least an hour in length.

3). He forwarded his cell phone to his assistant during normal business hours and rule 2 applies.  After 7PM and before 8AM he takes calls on his cell phone (for emergencies only).

The final tip is his little secret that he didn’t want me to post.

The biggest time savings came when the attorney switched from hourly billing to flat fees. 

Why?  Isn’t that counter-intuitive?

The truth is that people were trying to catch the attorney off guard with their phone calls (hoping they could get 15 minutes of free advice).  Once this need to try and “sneak a call in” went away, the frequency of the calls went down while the quality of the client interaction improved.

Commonsense Time Management for Attorneys

Whenever I begin working with a new attorney or group of attorneys in a law firm one of the first things I hear is:

“I just don’t seem to have enough time to get everything done.”

Of course there is plenty of time in the day but attorneys are known for not efficiently managing the way they use that time. 

Time management is a misnomer.  Getting things done in an effective and efficient manner is not about managing time.  It is about managing your activity. 

Below are ten things you can do today to help improve the way you use the time you have. They may seem really basic but sometimes the basics are exactly what we need to focus on in order to get back on track. 

Make a List

This one is super simple but not always used to maximum advantage. Most attorneys hate to use a “to-do” list at first.  This is because they have a difficult time designating one client’s matter as more important than another.  As a result they often leave things off the list and that is a mistake.

In creating the list you should write down everything that must be done —down to the last detail.  Get it all down on paper. You will be amazed at how helpful the act of listing the items will be in getting you organized.

Simply having a list where you check off completed items will provide you with significant motivation and a good deal of personal satisfaction.

Prioritize

Obviously, a list loaded with nonessential tasks can easily be completed giving the attorney a nice feeling but still he gets little done as the list lacks real work.

Prioritize your list into four categories.  These include:  Urgent, Important, Significant and Secondary.  You can easily do this by assigning numbers to each category.  Urgent tasks get a number “1”.  Important tasks get a number “2”.  Significant tasks get a number “3” and Secondary tasks get a number “4”. 

The most important factor in assigning numbers to these items is to realize that you are assigning these tasks to a category based upon the task themselves and not based upon your own frame of reference.  Too often attorneys will look at the list and say: “That’s urgent but I just don’t have time to get to it so I’m going to mark it as Secondary”. 

That’s the wrong approach.  You must be objective when assigning your tasks to a category.

Delegate Duties

Many attorneys feel that if they don’t do something themselves it won’t be done properly.

They need to get over that and pass the chore on to the person or people best qualified to handle it.  Almost everything can, at least in part, be delegated.

Assigning even a portion of a task to someone else will help you make progress than if the task sits unaddressed while you work on something else. 

Many attorneys say that if they assign a task to someone else and it is done incorrectly it will take more time to do it over.  While this may be true, if you take a long term view of your law firm, you realize that assigning things to others (sometimes more junior attorneys or paralegals) and having them learn “on the job” is one of the ways your law firm grows and becomes stronger.

Never, ever do something yourself that someone else can do for you.

Handle A Document or File Only Once

This is an old tip that makes a lot of sense.

Every item (documents, email, phone message, etc.) that crosses your desk requires time to deal with. If you don’t manage to dispose of that item or piece of work when you first handle it, you will be required to do so at a later time.

Chunk It Down

How do you eat an elephant?

A lot of elephant sandwiches.

Dividing daunting tasks into chunks or pieces makes overwhelming tasks seem manageable. It can be very disheartening to anticipate tackling tedious tasks but that doesn’t get them done sooner.

Decide that you’re going to devote a certain amount of time to a chore and then attack it.

Often you’ll find that once you get rolling you will want to actually get it finished. If that’s not the case, work on it for the allotted time and come back to it later.  Getting an important task partially done is better than getting a secondary task completely done. 

Set Achievable Goals

One way to get more done is to set a goal and simply stick to it.

It’s important to be realistic about the goal in the first place. Can it really be done in the time you have available?  If not can you quickly get assistance in order to complete it in allotted time frame?

Once you have the goal in place, focus on moving closer to it each and every day. 

Tasks that are linked to goals will always have an additional motivational “kick” to them.  They give you a sense of purpose. 

Learn To Say No

This can be difficult for some people but it is essential for good time management.

We are all responsible for our own work each day. And… from time to time it is absolutely okay to pitch in and help someone with a task other than your own. But that needs to be the exception rather than the rule. Otherwise, you are going to find that your co-worker is completing all of his assigned duties while you’re not. Just say no, politely.

Minimize Interruptions

Some tasks require solitude.

You’re going to need to retreat to a quite place to work on such items. Make it known that you are only to be disturbed during such sessions for emergencies. Of course, once you have sequestered yourself, you’re going to want to get down to business and get the job done.

No Personal Business During Work Hours

This is a critical and at the same time, a very touchy subject. Perhaps the biggest time-waster in the workplace in the Internet. That’s a shame because it is also one of our greatest resources.

Should we check personal email during work hours? Should we check out the sports scores and the photos our family loaded up on their website while we are at work? 

Probably not if maximum efficiency is the goal.

While we also need to be practical—many folks are trying to juggle both work and family—we need to discipline ourselves to get things done during work hours.

Commonsense is Not Common

Most of these items were nothing more than commonsense.

Once you implement them you will be amazed at how your productivity improves.  If you are in doubt about prioritizing an item or about whether or not you need to finish something before moving on, simply apply the commonsense approach. 

If it makes sense, do it.
 
It seems like time management—much like life— is a series of commonsense choices.

Every time you handle a piece of information and put it down – only to pick it back up again and remember what it was or what you were going to do with it – you cost yourself valuable time.  Get into the habit of reading these documents and then addressing them immediately. Either handle them immediately or assign them out.

Don’t deal with them more than once.

Five Ways to Maximize Your Time

Successful attorneys are often revered for their time management skills.  They seem to have a magical ability to get more done in less time.

Their days have but 24 hours, just like everyone else’s, yet they manage to accomplish more than most people. How do they do it?

Here are five ways highly successful attorneys manage their time effectively:

1. They say no to things that aren’t priorities.
Successful attorneys are in control of their lives. They don’t let themselves get sucked into activities that they don’t enjoy, or that don’t contribute to attainment of their goals. If they do participate in events out of obligation, they keep it short and maximize their time. They don’t spend a lot of hours in idle activities that contribute little or nothing to their lives. They make the most of every moment.

2. They say yes to things that are priorities.
Once a successful person has committed himself to a goal, he dives into pursuits that will move him closer to it. Even the menial tasks are not a burden because he has the big picture in view. He knows that a little bit of tedious work right now will lead to greater freedom and enjoyment in the future.

3. They know what they want.
Successful people understand their passions and have figured out how they want to channel them. Hence, they can devote all the energy other people spend wondering, pondering, escaping, and meandering on goal achievement. Having a strong sense of purpose and direction is highly motivating.

4. They prepare.
People for whom everything seems to go right usually have a clear idea of what they want before they even get started. They plan for each interaction, phone call, meeting, and day. They write down their goals and weekly action items and see them through. They think through multiple possibilities and decide how they will deal with any outcome they face. Because successful people know what they want, they can aim for it directly. This makes every interaction more efficient and solid.

5. They know themselves.
Smart time managers know how they work best.  Through their experience, they have learned to identify typical obstacles to their progress. With the knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, they know how to plan and handle most any situation, making the most of the time they have.

Time Management Sucks

It’s true.

It sucks money from your pocket and it sucks all the positive energy right out of your body.

Trying to manage time is stupid. 

Don’t do it. 

In fact, you can’t do it. 

It is impossible.

Go to classes. 

Get an electronic phone/mp3 player/address book/calendar and type your appointments into it religiously.

Buy a watch with an alarm.

Hire an assistant. 

Learn to multitask.

It won’t help.

There’s one thing you can do that will help you become more productive.

That “thing” is to take responsibility for the choices you make in your daily actions.

Unless you are in prison or in the military, you control what you do and when you do it.  Outside forces may influence those decisions but ultimately you make them. They are your decisions. You decide whether or not to go to that meeting.  You decide to go see a movie instead of writing the report that is due to the client.  You decide if you should answer the phone or let it go to voicemail.  These are all choices that you have made – and continue to make – over and over and over.

Once you decide to take responsibility for the decisions you make with your time, you obligate yourself to spend it in a more productive way.

Many people avoid taking responsibility for these decisions precisely for this reason.  It is far easier to blame the client for calling at an inopportune time.  It is easier to blame your partner for the amount of email he sends you.  It is easier to blame the court clerk for the filing deadline.

In reality, you control the actions you take and when you take them.

Action management or activity management is worth studying.  You will achieve a phenomenal return on your investment from working with someone who will help you organize the workflow in your office. Using a system that will help you prioritize and organize your activities is incredibly valuable.

Trying to manage time is not only foolish, it is impossible. 

Manage your activity and you control your destiny.

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