Some clients are better than others. You know the ones I'm talking about. They have more work for you (or bigger cases), they pay on time, and they don't call you every other day to ask the same questions you already answered three times before.

I'm sure you have your own list of what constitutes a better client.

Better clients are worth more to us and we should acknowledge this. We shouldn't feel guilty about treating some clients better than others or trying to treat everyone the same because it's fair or politically correct.

Look, if someone is paying me $150,000 a year, I'm going to give him more attention than someone who pays me $1,000 for a one time transaction. That's just the way it is.

Of course today's $1,000 client could refer tomorrow's $10,000 client who could, in turn, refer next year's $100,000 client. And so the notion of treating some clients better than others does not imply that it's okay to treat some clients below a minimum standard of care. In fact, we should strive to exceed that minimum whenever possible. But let's face it, not all clients deserve the same treatment.

Seth Godin agrees.

So does Richard Koch, the author of The 80/20 Principle:

"Marketing, and the whole firm, should devote extraordinary endeavour towards delighting, keeping for ever and expanding the sales to the 20 per cent of customers who provide 80 per cent."

Make a list of your "twenty percent" clients, the ones who provide the bulk of your income. Start paying more attention to them, acknowledging them and strengthening your relationship with them. Give them more of your (non-billable) time, spend more on their Christmas gifts, and do whatever you can do to convert them from being merely "satisfied" clients to raving fans.

And while you're at it, make a similar list for your referral sources.

By the way, the same idea applies to prospects. Some are better than others. You should have a plan in place to give more to those who are worth more.

I suspect that as much as one third of the mail and email messages you send each week are routine responses or messages. Inquires are answered, new clients information is transmitted, newsletters are mailed. You probably have some of these saved as form letters. You may also store snippets of text you use frequently, ready to copy and paste into your outgoing messages.

If you're not doing this, now is the time to begin assembling a library of form letters, just as I'm sure you have for pleadings, discovery, and agreements.

If you do use form letters, it's a good idea to review them to see how you can make them better.

Not only do form letters save the time otherwise spent drafting an original letter, they also save time spent instructing others who respond on your behalf. After all, it's a lot quicker to tell your assistant to "send letter 3-B" rather than explain what you want them to say (or dictate the letter yourself).

Form letters also reduce mistakes. You won't forget to tell someone something that is already in your letter.

Form letters also reduce the number of incoming calls seeking additional information or clarification. Clients and prospects will like seeing that you are prepared and thorough.

The first step to improving your form letter library is to make extra copies of every letter and email you send over the next week or two. If you use Evernote, you can send everything into a temporary notebook for this purpose or assign a "form_letters" tag. You might also want to go through your sent email folder for the last few months and selectively forward emails to your Evernote email account. You can do the same with digital copies of letters sent by regular mail.

Also, go through your incoming mail. You may be getting letters sent to you that are (a) answered by phone or in person (i.e., at the consultation or meeting), (b) not being sufficiently answered, or (c) not being answered at all. Send these to your email account, too.

(For more ways to use Evernote in your law practice, check out my Evernote for Lawyers eBook.)

Once you have assembled a sampling of letters and emails, the next step is go through them and ask yourself,

• How often do I send all or part of this information?
• Is there anything in here that I could save and use?
• Is there anything here that could be improved? Expanded? Clarified?
• Is there anything here that could be put into a form letter?

Take the time to create or expand your library of form letters and get in the habit of using them. And every time you dictate an original letter, ask yourself if some or all of it could be added to your library.

If five percent of your current messages today are form letters, and you could increase this to just ten percent, you should see a significant time savings.

I've been conducting free consultations with attorneys who want to earn more and/or work less. I'm pretty quick at getting to the heart of the matter, but since we have just a few minutes together, I've asked each attorney to answer a few questions before we speak. One of those questions is, "What are your strengths?"

Most of the attorneys say pretty much the same thing. They're good at what they do, they provide good service, and their clients seem to like them.

Good stuff. But is it true?

How do you know you provide good service? How do you know your clients like you? This is your perception, after all, and let's face it, you are just a little biased.

Do you ever ask your clients for feedback, through surveys, questionnaires, or interviews?

Do you ever have a "mystery shopper" sit in your waiting room and watch the way clients are greeted? Does your staff greet them with a smile and make them feel welcome? Are they offered something to drink? How long do they have to wait?

Have you ever listened in on phone conversations between your staff and your clients? Have you ever recorded yourself speaking with clients and listened to the conversation?

No matter how well you're doing you can always do better. But you have to put some energy into it. Start by looking at what your firm does through the eyes of your clients. Take inventory of what you do and how well you do it.

Your clients like you but that's not enough. You want them to love you, to be so enamored with the way you treat them that they are not only willing to refer clients to you, they go out of their way to look for people they can refer.

Commit to making superlative service a fundamental part of your firm's culture. Conduct meetings, trainings and weekend retreats with your staff, focused on improving client relations. Recognize and reward your employees who treat clients right.

If you regularly receive referrals, testimonial letters and thank you notes from your clients, that's good. But don't settle for good when you can be great.

I like the idea of going paperless. I think most people do. Millions of people have opted for paperless billing and banking, reducing the paper and clutter in their lives and saving on postage and fees. Millions more are investing in scanners to eliminate paper that resides in their closets and file cabinets.

Lawyers in particular, who have more than their fair share of paper, are coming to understand the benefits of a paperless law practice:

• Saving money. A paperless practice saves the not inconsiderable costs of paper, copy machines, toner, file cabinets, office space, and storage space, not to mention the wages of staff members responsible for creating, storing, and retrieving all that paper
• Increasing productivity. Digital information can be retrieved, and therefore, utilized, much more readily than paper files. And having information in the cloud means it is available to you anywhere–from home, office, the courtroom, in a meeting.

Converting a law practice to paperless, or even "paper-lite," is not a simple task for most lawyers. First, there is the process of converting thousands of closed files to their digital equivalents. Then there is the issue of working with current files and open cases using a laptop or iPad instead of a manila folder. How do you get the information in, and how do you get it out? All of this has to be thought through before the first page is scanned. Finally, lawyers must consider the security of client data, both on their hard drive and in "the cloud".

The larger your practice, the more complicated these issues become. A big practice will probably hire a consulting firm to advise them on the process of going paperless and selecting the tools for doing so. A smaller practice must address the same issues as the big firm but they have more options, many of which are free or low cost.

I wrote about "going paperless" and "data security" in my new eBook, Evernote for Lawyers: A Guide for Getting Organized & Increasing Productivity. If you want to eliminate or reduce the use of paper in your law practice, Evernote is a great tool for doing so. If you are a small firm, it could be all you need.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know how much I love Evernote. I use it for everything: notes, documents, writing, task management, you name it. Today, I'm proud to announce the release of a new eBook, "Evernote for Lawyers: A Guide to Getting Organized & Increasing Productivity".

Lawyers manage an incredible amount of information and finding that information quickly is imperative. More and more attorneys use Evernote for capturing notes and web clips, and initially, that's all I used it for. I've since discovered many other ways Evernote can be used to organize the information in my life, and that's what this book reveals.

Topics include using Evernote for research and writing, time and billing support, marketing and career development, and managing client files and documents. Other chapters include, "going paperless," "data security," "working with email," and "working with your calendar".

Attorneys who use David Allen's Getting Things Done® methodology (or want to), will want to read Chapter 4, which covers this subject at length. I've written before about my Evernote/GTD system. Evernote for Lawyers presents my latest thinking on this subject, as well as the latest updates to my gtd system and work flow.

Evernote currently has 20 million users world wide and was recently honored as Inc. Magazine's 2011 Company of the Year.

Evernote is free and is available for Windows, Mac, on the web, and all major mobile platforms. A premium version with enhanced features is also available.

Evernote for Lawyers: A Guide to Getting Organized & Increasing Productivity is available for immediate download for just $4.99 at OrganizedLawyer.com

There's a natural rhythm to building a law practice. You start out from a dead stop, try a lot of things to see what works, and you keep doing what's working. Eventually, you have some momentum. Things start happening a bit more often. They last a bit longer. They get a little easier.

Before you know it, you're on a roll.

The same pattern occurs throughout your career, and if you're smart, you'll capitalize on your momentum, pouring gasoline on the sparks and fanning the flames until you have a raging inferno of success.

Leveraging your positive results and momentum to build things bigger is not only a smart move, it is essential. How many times have you seen people you know get off to a good start in a project but fail to finish big? How many times have you seen this happen to you?

Momentum is one of the hardest things to achieve and one of the easiest things to lose. The good news is that once you have some momentum, things do get easier. But that doesn't mean you can stop.

It's like pushing a car from a dead stop–very difficult at first, but once it's rolling, it doesn't take much to keep it moving. If you stop pushing, however, the car will eventually come to a dead stop.

I read a thoughtful article this morning that makes this point in the context of taking vacations. In "The Absolute WORST Day to Take a Vacation (It's Not What You Think!)" the author says that the worst day to take time off is just after you've achieved a goal. When things are starting to happen for you, you shouldn't take a break, you should double your efforts.

It's not that you don't deserve a reward for your hard work. But your reward, says the author, should be your results:

For an entrepreneur (or anyone who is in charge of their own income),vacations don’t come when projects are complete. On the contrary – they should come when the projects are still in progress, but you’re tired, and need to recharge to carry the ball the rest of the way.

Give some thought to this as you plan out the coming year. I know it's difficult to find time on your calendar for family trips, especially when you must coordinate school and work schedules. At least be aware of the rhythm of your practice and do your best to start projects after a vacation, not before.

In his report, "What's Hot and What's Not in the Legal Profession," posted last week, Bob Denney said that one of the trends that was heating up in the marketing and business development area is "client interviews and audits". He said, "More firms are recognizing, however slowly, that the feedback and information obtained from them–particularly when they are conducted by knowledgeable outside consultants–are critical in strategic planning and development of growth strategies."

Asking your clients how you're doing and what you can do better is the best market research you can get, and it's free. Not counting the cost of the outside consultant.

There's no better "intel" than that from someone who actually paid money to hire you.

Using outside professionals to do the surveys is also good advice. A firm that specializes in this kind of research will ask the right questions and they will know how to critically evaluate the answers. And using an outside service instead of doing it yourself will undoubtedly provide more honest feedback.

If you don't want to hire an outside firm, interview your clients anyway. The feedback may not be as accurate but it's better feedback than you're getting right now.

Client interviews can help you learn what you are doing well and what you can do better. They can help you improve client relations and communications. And they can help you discover new marketing opportunities. All you have to do is ask.

Surveys are an easy alternative to interviews. You can post them on your web site, using free sites like www.surveymonkey.com and www.polldaddy.com. By providing anonymity, clients will be more likely to respond honestly. Open-ended questions can lead to some surprising discoveries. Multiple choice questions can help you identify patterns that deserve your attention. If 70% of your clients say you need to communicate with them more often, that's something you cannot ignore.

At the very least, call a client today and ask them how you're doing. You never know what you might learn and what you learn could earn you a fortune.

What's hot right now in the legal industry and what trends can we expect to play out in 2012? For 23 years, Bob Denney has made that call in his report, "What Hot and What's Not in the Legal Profession." Here in its entirety is his latest report.

This is our 23rd annual report on what’s going on in the legal profession, not only in the United States but also in other parts of the world. Like all our previous reports it is based on information we compile throughout the year from many sources, including discussions with leaders in the profession. As always, some of our findings are obvious but they still must be included. Others are surprising and some are contrary to the Conventional Wisdom. Nevertheless, this is the picture at the beginning of 2012, a year which may well hold both economic and political surprises.

PRACTICE AREAS

RED HOT:

• Banking. Perhaps the hottest area in Financial Services due to uncertainty if the “Volker Rule” will be implemented this coming July when regulations that are part of Dodd-Frank take effect.
• Health care. A broad area that includes regulatory, finance, M&A, real estate, labor & employment and professional liability. Regulatory may become red, red hot. The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, expected by June 30, will be a legal, as well as political, flashpoint.
• Energy. Oil, coal and gas in certain parts of the U.S. as well as Canada. Regulatory, land use and litigation are particularly hot in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania because of Marcellus Shale. Nuclear power is getting hot due to safety concerns in the U.S. but alternate energy may be cooling somewhat.
• Intellectual property. Due to patent reform (“First-to-file”) but mostly for start-ups and smaller companies since large companies were already on a FTF system because of their global operations. Patent Litigation is becoming red hot for most firms while rate-sensitive patent prosecution work is being reduced and even eliminated in larger firms.

HOT:

• White collar crime. Internal investigations due to fraud continue to increase. Adding fuel to the fire are new issues relating to the disclosure of inside information on social media.
• Regulatory. Many states are passing laws in opposition to federal regulations, particularly in health care, energy, banking and environmental. Constitutional issues are beginning to arise.
• Financial services. Mergers and acquisitions. Venture capital. Private equity. As a result, IPOs are really red hot right now—since about 200 companies have filed this year, the largest backlog in more than a decade. However, some experts say new issues will cool down in 2012.
• Cyber crime. Due to growing hacking and security issues at computer networks.
• Labor and employment. On both the labor and management sides. Violations of wage-and-hour laws are increasing. Collective bargaining is a hot issue. Right-to-Work is heating up. Some L&E departments have added immigration lawyers.
• Commercial litigation. In addition to patents and white collar crime, regulatory, insurance, health care and retail/wholesale cases are hot. Some experts and GCs report a big increase in “bread-and-butter” cases—some call it “law factory work”—and a steady decline in “bet the farm” cases. The decline in cases going to trial continues, resulting in more Alternative Dispute Resolution. Also see “Online ADR” under “Other Trends and Issues,” below.
• Immigration. With some exceptions, BigLaw and even MidLaw firms leave this to firms that specialize in it.

GETTING HOT:

• Commercial real estate. Some investors are buying individual loans and real estate owned (REO) properties taken back by the lender after foreclosure. Others are buying or building multi-family residences to capitalize on the booming rental market.

GEOGRAPHIC MARKETS

• Washington, DC. “The British are coming! The British are coming!” Four and perhaps all of the U.K.’s top five firms – the so-called “Magic Circle” – are opening offices here in an attempt to build U.S.-based regulatory practices. This is part of their broader strategy to enter the U.S. market in a big way.
• Texas, particularly Houston. The British aren’t coming – at least not yet – but the energy business continues to attract more U.S. firms to open offices here.
• BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). As we stated in last year’s report, they continue to be regarded by global firms as major growth opportunities. But see “Challenges to Globalization” under “Other Trends and Issues” below.

MARKETING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

HOT:

• Social media. Hotter than ever. As Deborah McMurray pointed out in her recent blog, it “is driving business and influencing it.” Legal marketing expert Larry Bodine sees huge potential for Google+ in marketing. However, some firms are starting to encourage more in-person relationship building instead. Also more firms continue to develop social media polices to prevent ethical as well as legal violations.
• Experience databases and KM. Also hotter than ever. This is why Content Pilot, McMurray’s strategy and technology company, developed Velocity, a mobile app to quickly provide information on a firm’s experience and expertise.
• RFPs. In the words of one CMO, “They are pouring in to big firms.” As a result, proposal automation apps that automate the RFP process continue to be hot.

GETTING HOT:

• Educational online video. In his post on Attorney at Work, Bob Weiss says these are an excellent opportunity to build a practice.
• Return on investment. Firms are paying increasing attention to this. One example: Susan Greene, Marketing Director at Becker & Poliakoff, constantly evaluates goals and spending to measure the marketing ROI.
• Recruiting and marketing. Recognizing the relationship of the two functions, Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff has elevated CMO Jeanne Hammerstrom to be in charge of recruiting as well.
• Client interviews and audits. More firms are recognizing, however slowly, that the feedback and information obtained from them—particularly when they are conducted by knowledgeable outside consultants—are critical in strategic planning and development of growth strategies.

OTHER TRENDS AND ISSUES

• Firm management. As discussed in our November Legal Communique, in addition to DLA Piper’s bringing in an outsider to co-chair, some MidLaw firms are bringing in non-lawyer business professionals as advisors—an interesting and encouraging trend.
• Revenues and profitability. According to various reports, since 2008 total revenues as well as revenues per lawyer (RPL) have been flat or even down for many firms in the AmLaw 100. This may be one reason for their reporting profits per partner (PPP) instead. Now CitiBank recently reported that revenues and profits will be down this year for a high percentage of AmLaw 200 firms. However, in most . . .
• MidLaw firms revenues as well as RPL continue to increase and their PPP are on budget if not exceeding it. As we have been reporting, these firms are growing by attracting work from large clients who won’t pay BigLaw rates, even with AFAs.
• Fewer partners. BigLaw firms in particular are promoting fewer associates to partner. They are also making the partnership track longer and the requirements tougher. Legal pundits say this is probably a permanent change that will continue even after the economy recovers.
• Fewer entry level associates. Although summer associate hiring has generally increased for 2012, some BigLaw and also MidLaw firms plan to hire fewer first-year associates than they did before the recession. Instead, in addition to recruiting lateral partners, they are recruiting two- and three-year associates who don’t need several years of development before they are profitable. However, a few MidLaw firms report that, despite offering lower salaries, they are now able to attract high-quality 3Ls who would have gone to BigLaw firms in the past.
• The new leverage. The age-old principle of leverage, a high ratio of associates to partners, is steadily dying out. As I discussed in the September/October 2011 issue of Law Practice, it is being replaced by a “New Leverage” based, not only on associates, but also on other forms of leverage—temporary or contract lawyers, paralegals, process management specialists and by the outsourcing of functions such as legal research, e-discovery and document management. This trend is not restricted to law firms. Many corporate legal departments, faced with senior management directives to reduce costs, are doing the same.
• Non-lawyer competition and deregulation. A mid-year post on the Kowalski and Associates blog stated that “non-lawyers and corporate entities not owned by lawyers are actively delivering almost $2,500,000 in legal services through LPOs and Internet providers of legal services.” New model firms such as NovusLaw and Legal Zoom are just two examples. This trend is resulting in a groundswell of cries for deregulation. However, in a letter to the editor of the New York Times after it ran an op-ed supporting this trend, ABA President Bill Robinson, stated that “A rush to open the practice of law to unschooled, unregulated non-lawyers … would cause grave harm to clients.” Stay tuned. This battle over deregulating the practice of law will continue. The Jacoby & Meyers suits were just one example. Keep in mind that other professions, such as accounting, architecture and medicine, have already found answers to this issue.
• Globalization. Continues but is getting more complex. In a recent Ark Report, Leigh Dance, President of ELD International, describes a “multi-polar world” in which a growing range of legal services must be delivered to multiple geographic markets. But she says there are alternatives to opening offices everywhere and also that emerging markets are growing faster than mature markets, i.e., the U.S. and Western Europe, and will continue to grow, particularly in Asia.
• More on globalization. Global growth is not limited to BigLaw firms. Liaisons, affiliations and networks offer opportunities for MidLaw and even SmallLaw firms to grow internationally. Also the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 has posted draft proposals to make it easier for U.S. lawyers to engage in cross-border practice. But there are also . . .
• Challenges to globalization. As reported by Anna Stolley Persky in the NovemberABA Journal, “U.S. law firms face an increasingly competitive—and often protectionist—legal environment when they seek to extend their operations overseas.” Some countries, such as Canada and potentially the U.K. and Australia, have few restrictions on foreign lawyers practicing. But others, including the BRIC countries, have significant restrictions. For U.S. firms there may also be another challenge to globalization which is …
• Capital. Since growth requires capital and, except in Washington D.C., U.S. firms may not have outside investors, will even the largest firms have sufficient capital to fund global growth? Historically, compared to other businesses (yes, a law firm is a business!), law firms have needed relatively little working capital which, in most cases, they have been able to obtain through short-term line-of-credit loans or off-balance sheet leases. However, for BigLaw firms this may change in the future as a result of their emphasis on growth and the resulting need for capital. Adding to the pressure are the U.S. growth plans of U.K. firms, which now have access to outside capital as a result of the Legal Services Act. This issue of non-lawyers having ownership in U.S. law firms will continue to heat up.
• Mergers. After declining in 2010, mergers have increased substantially as firms shift from a survival mode to a growth mode. Most legal experts expect this to continue. However, in the past as many as 50 percent of the mergers fail because, as I discussed in the October, 2011 issue of Law Firm Partnership & Benefits Report, there are many challenges and adjustments that need to be made if a merger is to succeed.
• Alternative fee arrangements. Lots of talk and some interesting action. Pfizer’s program with 17 selected firms is noteworthy, including its mandate that neither in-house nor outside lawyers are permitted to mention hours. But there is . . .
• More on AFAs. According to Fulbright & Jaworski’s Annual Litigation Trends Report, “Despite the growing use of AFAs … more than half of the larger companies [surveyed] and about two-thirds of the mid-size companies estimate they use AFAs for less than 20 percent of outside legal spend.” Furthermore, according to many firm leaders, the benefits and workability of AFAs are being questioned by clients as well as by firms.
• Client satisfaction. The Fulbright Report also said respondents’ satisfaction with how well outside counsel meet their litigation needs in four key areas was between 17 percent and 21 percent for U.S. companies but over 50 percent for U.K. companies. Furthermore, in all four areas, “the figures are lower than they were in last year’s survey.” In view of all the emphasis firms are supposedly placing on client service, these figures, particularly for U.S. firms, are alarming.
• Legal project management. More firms continue to retain outside consultants to help design and install LPM programs to deliver more value to clients and more profit to the firm.
• E-Discovery. It is now becoming a necessity in many smaller cases which could well add cost and complexity to litigation.
• Online ADR. General Electric’s oil-and-gas division is testing online dispute resolution by requiring thousands of suppliers to agree to cyrbersettlements in simple disputes. Right now the approach is being tested mostly in Italy. It will be interesting to learn the results and if GE expands the approach to other countries including, of course, the U.S.
• Law school admissions. Responding to a poll by Kaplan Test Prep, 37 percent of 128 law school admission officers said they looked up an applicant on Facebook or other social media sites, and 32 percent said they had found something online that hurt an applicant’s chances of admission.
• Law school job placement statistics. Last year, Villanova Law School admitted inflating the figures in its reports of jobs obtained by graduates. Now Michigan’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School, the largest in the country, and New York Law School have been sued on behalf of students and graduates demanding tuition refunds “and other remedies” for inflating post-graduation legal employment and salary statistics. Are these the only schools guilty of this? The lawyer representing the plaintiffs says “… this problem is not just confined to those two schools.” This could become a disturbing trend.
• Associate training. Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy is taking it to a new level. Harvard Law and Business School faculties, with assistance from firm partners, conduct a program for third- to seven-year associates. Subjects include business, finance, personal development and leadership.
• Succession planning. Although a growing number of firms are addressing the issue, it is becoming even more of a challenge. Some older partners are not retiring because they need to continue working for obvious economic reasons.
• Legal services corporation. A subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee has recommended a cut from the $404 million LSC received this year to $300 million in 2012. ABA President Robinson stated this is a “draconian cut” because one out of every two people seeking legal services is now turned away by LSC.
• Medical-Legal partnerships. According to CNN Money, MLPs provide legal services to patients in 200 hospitals and clinics throughout the U.S. In what is considered a major commitment to expand free critical services to more patients, Wal-Mart’s legal department is now providing free legal services for patients at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital. This is described as the first such partnership between a large corporate legal department and a major hospital. In view of the situation at LSC, we hope this trend continues.
• Mothers-in-the-Law. Since it was founded in Seattle in 2006 to address the home-work conflict that exists for mothers in law firms, the Mother Attorneys Mentoring Association (MAMA) has grown to more than 550 members in six cities. Another 25 chapters are now being developed.

There has been much talk about the “New Normal” in the legal profession. Yet some of these trends and issues, such as pressure to kill the billable hour and replace it with AFAs, are not new. Others, such as involving outsiders and non-lawyer businesspeople in firm management, are new. But, whether old or new, will they really become “normal?” That remains to be seen.

Bob Denney is President of Robert Denney Associates, Inc. He says “it seems like forever” that he has been providing counsel on management and growth strategy to firms throughout the United States and parts of Canada. The complete annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in the Legal Profession” is available as a download on his firm’s website, www.robertdenney.com. Contact Bob atbob@robertdenney.com if you’d like to be added to his mailing list and receive quarterly trends updates.

Most attorneys say they want to get more clients but if they're not ready for more clients, it can actually cost them.

If you can't serve your clients, they aren't going to stay. You must have the staff and other resources in place to do the legal work and support functions or new clients will leave as quickly as they came.

What about "one time" clients? You're going to handle their divorce or bankruptcy or injury claim, do their estate plan or handle their closing, and you'll probably never see them again. Can you have too many of them?

Yes. These clients may not themselves return but if you treat them well, they can and will send you referrals. If you don't, not only will they not send you new business, they'll tell everyone they know that you are sloppy or slow and did not do a good job for them.

Taking on too many clients is especially a problem for firms that grow quickly. Legal services do not scale in the same way selling widgets does. We are in a personal service business and we need people to provide that service. It takes time to find the right people, hire and train them. Unbridled growth can cause serious financial problems, inordinate stress, and an increased risk of malpractice for the firm that is unprepared.

Rapid law firm growth is not uncommon. A dramatic upsurge in "intakes" can occur for a variety of reasons. Every firm needs to have a plan in place now, before that growth occurs.

If your practice tripled in the next 90 days, where will you go to find the personnel, the technology, and the other resources you need to accommodate that growth?

Will you partner with another firm? Turn away the smaller business to handle the bigger cases or clients? Will you hire a head hunting firm or consultant?

Start thinking about these things right now, and not just because you need to be prepared. Think about these things because in doing so, you will send a message to your subconscious mind that you are ready for and expecting that growth. You will then start seeing things you need to see and attracting the information and the contacts you need to make that growth a reality.

Too many clients? A nice problem when you're ready for it.

So you need a web designer or a new logo. Maybe you want to build a Facebook fan page and don't know how. Or you don't have time to write articles for your newsletter or posts for your blog.

Whatever you need, someone else is available for hire.

The best way to find web designers, graphic artists, copy writers, or anyone else is, of course, through referrals. Ask someone you know and trust who they used and if they were happy with the work. If they don't know anyone, ask "Who do you know who might be able to give me a referral?" And, don't hesitate to ask me for a referral.

For technical tasks, however, don't assume that because your friend was happy with the company or individual they hired that they are the best choice. Your friend may have grossly overpaid. Or, they might have gotten lucky. Ask several people for referrals and compare. You'll learn a lot about the questions to ask, pricing, and how to work with outside talent.

The second best way to find outside talent is by using online services like www.elance.com, www.Odesk.com, or www.guru.com. These, and other services like them, match up talent with need and provide information that can smooth out the process. They also provide escrow services, to ensure that you pay only when you are satisfied.

In video below, Scott Fox shows you how this process works and offers some good tips on finding and working with outsourced talent:

[mc src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THii3WL3rGg" type="youtube"]Outsourcing tips for web design and other tasks[/mc]

Have you used outsourced talent? Where do you find them? What advice can you offer for finding and hiring outsourced talent? Tell us about your experience in the comments.