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.

I'm sure you read the story about the blogger in a defamation case who got hit with a $2.5 million judgment because, the judge said, she is not a journalist and was not protected by the state's shield laws.

Interesting story. Important subject.

You read the story but did you make any money with it?

Attorneys can easily leverage a story like this to get more media attention, more traffic to their web site, more prospects, more referral sources, and more clients. And I'm not talking about the attorneys who handled the case itself, I'm talking about you.

Interested? Here's all you have to do.

First, write a two or three page report summarizing defamation laws in your jurisdiction. You don't have to practice in this area to do this, Uncle Google will help you, or you can ask an attorney friend who does (and tell him about this idea so he can do it, too).

In your report, mention the case about the blogger. Offer your opinion. Include a few citations, maybe a few resources.

Now, go back to Uncle Google and ask him to give you a list of bloggers in your target market(s) who are in your state or province.

Next, contact these bloggers (a personal email will do) and tell them you wrote a report for bloggers about how they can protect themselves against lawsuits like the one in the news. Offer to send it to them, free of charge. Tell them they are welcome to send it other bloggers they know and care about. (If you know the blogger, you could just send them the report in your first email).

In one day, you can get your report into the hands of dozens of people who every day write and influence the people you are targeting for your services. You have provided value to the blogger on a personal level, and asked nothing in return.

Where can this lead? Interviews, hosted webinars for their readers, guest posts, referrals, introductions, you name it.

It doesn't matter if you don't practice tort law. If you do, that's an added benefit, but the point of this effort isn't to show these bloggers you can help them in this particular area of the law, it's to meet them.

Now, what else could you do with your report? Here are a few ideas:

• Send it to local media with a cover letter letting them know you are available for interviews.
• Call or email your clients and contacts: Who do you know in (your area) who writes a blog? Tell them you have a report that can help them.
• Offer it through social media; post a video on youtube, opining on the story and linking to your report; offer it via forums, chat groups, listserves, and other areas where bloggers and people who know bloggers congregate.
• Contact local blogger groups, business groups (anyone who has a blog), and offer a lunch talk.
• Write about it on your blog or in your newsletter.
• Take out ads and offer the report, as a "public service".
• Send it to lawyers in your practice area in states or provinces where you don't practice. Tell them what you're doing with the report in your area, invite them to do the same in theirs. (If you have to ask how this could help you, forget about this idea.)
• Do a presentation at your bar group's next function on how you used a news story to market your services.

You get the idea.

Oh, and you don't need a news story to do this, you can write about anything that affects people in your target market or they people who influence them.

It's about providing value in a leveraged way. It's simple and it works. And if your report goes viral, it could help you take a quantum leap in the growth of your practice.

For many attorneys and law firms, newsletters bring in a lot of business. If you don't have a newsletter, here are ten reasons you should:

1. To get more business from current clients. A newsletter is an effective way to let clients know about your other services and show them how they can benefit from those services, without being "salesy".
2. To get repeat business from former clients. People who hired you once will hire you again–when they're ready. A newsletter is a great way to stay in touch with them until they are.
3. To add value to your services. A newsletter can provide an added benefit for clients. Give clients "subscriptions". Put a price tag on the newsletter but send it free to current clients.
4. To educate prospects. A newsletter that provides prospective clients with valuable information helps them make better decisions, allows you to demonstrate your expertise, and provides a mechanism for staying in touch with them until they are ready to hire you.
5. To generate word-of-mouth referrals. Newsletters have pass-along value. A good newsletter will be shared with an average of three other people, even more online.
6. To build your contact list. You can offer visitors to your web site a subscription to your newsletter in return for providing their email (and other contact information). When speaking or networking, you can offer to send your newsletter to people who provide you with their business card.
7. To establish expertise and credibility. Your writing helps prospects, publishers, reporters, meeting planners, and referral sources see you as the expert you are.
8. To provide content for, and traffic to, your web site. Your newsletter can drive traffic to your web site or blog. Your newsletter content can be re-used as content on your web site or blog, generating additional traffic from search engines and social media.
9. To shorten the sales process. People who respond to your newsletter are better informed about what you do and pre-sold on your ability to do it, in contrast to people who come to you via advertising.
10. To serve as a networking tool. Your newsletter is a tool to reach out to other professionals. You can interview them for an article, conduct a survey, ask them to write an article, or ask permission to put them on your mailing list.

A newsletter requires an investment of time, and possibly some capital, but the return on that investment can be substantial. If you want to grow your practice, a newsletter is one of the most highly leveraged marketing activities you can do.

Earlier today, I reported the news about one of my posts being chosen Pick of the Week by SmallLaw, a Technolawyer email publication. It is an honor to be recognized by one's peers and I hope you are being similarly recognized.

From a marketing standpoint, awards and other mentions, particularly from a peer, are an endorsement of your character or abilities, providing a form of "social proof" to the market that what you do has value and can be trusted. This kind of approbation is even more valuable when it comes, as did this award, unsolicited.

Attorneys should have both endorsements and testimonials in their marketing tool box and leverage them to get new clients and build their reputation.

Testimonials are words of praise from satisfied clients attesting to your manner and abilities. They hired you, they were happy with what you did for them, and they recommend your services to others.

Endorsements are words of praise from peers or other highly regarded individuals attesting to your character or some aspect of your abilities with which they are familiar. Awards from peers are a form of endorsement. A letter from a judge you have appeared before, photos of you with heads of state, or a letter of thanks from the head of a charitable committee you served on are other forms of endorsements.

Testimonials and endorsements can be used throughout your marketing materials to convince people to hire you, to send you referrals, or to otherwise engage with you (e.g., booking you to speak). Their power lies in the value of "third party." When you say you are good, you risk sounding arrogant (even if it's true) and your words may be doubted. When a third party sings your praises, it is accepted and far more persuasive.

From this day forward, I encourage you to not only collect and use testimonials and endorsements, but to actively seek them.

You will get them without asking, just as I did my Pick of the Week award. But don't limit yourself to what may come to you unexpectedly.

When a client says something nice about you, write it down. Send their words to them and ask if you can use those words in a testimonial. Yes, write your own testimonial, based on what your client says.

Or, call your best clients and ask them for a favor: "You've been happy with my services, haven't you? Would you mind providing me with a testimonial letter I can use in my marketing?" When they agree, tell them you want to make it easy for them and ask them to say a few words about your services. Write them down and send them to the client for approval.

You can also solicit endorsements. Call an attorney you know who respects you and ask them. Tell them it's for marketing purposes and offer to reciprocate.

Another type of endorsement can be had by volunteering on a Bar committee, community group, or other "good work". You may not get an award for your efforts, but you will get the implied endorsement of the group by simply including your participation in your bio.

Clients often don't understand what you do and are usually poor judges of your ability to do it. Third party testimonials and endorsements bridge the gap and convince them that you can help them because you helped someone "just like them" or because someone important says you can.

To be productive, a farm needs acres and acres of land. Rich top soil,  seeds planted a few inches under the surface, within reach of the sun's rays, regular water, and the loving care of the farmer. The farmer knows that each seed can yield only so much, so he plants lots of them. More seeds, bigger harvest.

A farm is "an inch deep and a mile wide." Unfortunately, so are many law firms. They plant a lot of seeds, going wide instead of deep, collecting fees and moving from new client to new client. But while a seed planted in the Earth can only yield so much, clients can yield far more than the fees they initially pay.

Each client can also:

• Hire you again
• Hire you for other services
• Provide referrals
• Introduce you to prospects, referral sources
• Promote you via social media
• Send traffic to your web site
• Recommend your newsletter, ezine, blog
• Distribute information by and about you
• Invite their colleagues to your seminars
• Provide information to you about their industry and/or key people
• Give you testimonials and endorsements
• Provide feedback about your marketing

The big money in a law practice is not the initial harvest, the fees earned on front end. The big money is earned on the back end. You may earn $10,000 from a client today, but $100,000 over their lifetime.

To bring in his big crop, the farmer must nurture his seedlings. So must you nurture your clients. Communicate with them. Appreciate them. Acknowledge them. Give to them. Build strong relationships with your clients and they will bear much fruit and continue to blossom for many seasons.

A farm is an inch deep and a mile wide; a law firm should be an inch wide and a mile deep.

Most lawyers go from case to case, client to client, never stopping to use the successful outcomes they create as marketing leverage for bringing in more clients. That's because they're thinking like a lawyer, not a rainmaker.

Instead of rushing from one case to the next, take a few minutes to think about how you can use the successful outcome (verdict, settlement, closing the deal, estate plan, etc.) to get the story told to the people who can bring you more business.

Here are five ways you could do that.

1. Your client. The best time to talk to clients about referrals is right after a successful outcome. When you hand them a check, sign papers, or otherwise bring things to a climax, it's prime time to ask for referrals, for a testimonial, or for other help.

   Ask consumer clients to refer you to their friends and family or to other professionals they know. Ask your business clients to introduce you to their vendors or distributors, to write about the case in their newsletter or blog, or submit an article to their local paper. (You can write the article for them).

   The favor you ask your client doesn't have to be related to their case. They're happy and willing to help, so ask them to distribute your new report, "like" your new blog post, or invite their friends to your upcoming seminar. And ask them to ask their friends to do the same.

2. Your other clients and prospects. Write about your successful outcome in your blog and newsletter. Post it on your web site. Do a little bragging on social media channels. Take advantage of the win to let others see you doing what you do, helping others "just like them" achieve the same benefits they seek.
3. Other parties/witnesses. Send a quick note to the other parties and/or their counsel, thanking them for their professionalism. Send a thank you note to experts and other witnesses, for a job well done. It's not uncommon to see the losing side hiring the winning attorney or sending referrals or opposing counsel referring clients when they have a conflict. By the way, do the same thing when you lose a case or settle for less than hoped.
4. Your colleagues. Tell other lawyers you know about your case. Send a letter, speak about it at Bar functions, write an article, point them to your blog post. Tell the story and share the legal nuances, give them tips about the judge or arbitrator or experts. Help them do better on their next case and they will appreciate you, reciprocate with good information on their next case, and send business your way when they have a conflict.
5. The media. Find something newsworthy or otherwise interesting about the case, your clients or their company and issue a press release or write an article for publication in their trade journal or home town paper. The media are starved for good stories; don't assume there's no news value to preparing a living trust for your blue collar client. In the hands of a good writer, there's always a story to be told.

Leverage means getting more results from the same effort. From now on, leverage your successful outcomes to get more publicity, more speaking engagements, more traffic to your web site, and more new clients.

Attorneys read a lot. Still, there's always more we want to read, if only we had the time.

I was reading an article, yesterday, "7  Tips for becoming well-read," and it has some good tips for reading more, things like starting small (e.g., 15 minutes during lunch) and minimizing distractions. But I didn't think the tips went far enough so I came up with my own:

• Be ruthless in what you select to read. Spend a few minutes with a book candidate and decide whether or not it is worth your time. Read reviews, the book's cover, excerpts, and ask the person who recommended it. A few minutes spent in this process could save you hours of wasted time.
• Skim. You don't have to read the entire book, cover to cover. The 80/20 principle tells us that 80% of the value of a book is contained in 20% of its content so look for that.
• You don't have to finish it. If you don't like it, stop reading it. Don't waste time on books that don't resonate with you.
• Learn to speed read. Why spend five hours reading something you could read in 30 minutes?
• Subscribe to book summaries services. Their editors summarize the books for you. For most books, that's all you'll need but if you like what you see in the summary, you can put that book on your list to read in its entirety.
• Delegate. An employee can read for you, present a summary, and/or bring to your attention those books or articles he thinks you would want to read.

This will allow you to read more by eliminating a lot of marginal choices. You'll have more time to read the "best of the best". When you do, here's how to get more out of what read:

• If a book is truly high value, you may want to read it more than once. When I was in high school, I read, "How to Read a Book," by Mortimer Adler. He presents a process for reading a book several times, each time with a different purpose. I don't think every book qualifies for several readings but when you find one that does, a second or third reading could have immeasurable value.
• Highlight. If you think you might read the book again, highlighting passages will make the second reading faster because you can, if you choose, read only the highlighted passages. (If you don't think you will read the book again, or use it as a reference, there's not much point in highlighting). For the record, I use a yellow highlighter on my first read and, usually, a red or blue pen on the second read.
• Take notes. You'll learn more about what you're reading if you think about the words while you are reading them. Put the ideas in context, ask yourself questions, speculate on the options, and write it all down. It takes longer but you'll get more value out of what you read. You'll remember it better, too.
• Read (and take notes) as though you had to teach the subject tomorrow. This will force you to zero in on the essence of the material, and master it.

So those are my tips for reading more and getting more out of what you read. By the way, none of this applies to fiction. We read fiction to escape, to learn about exotic places, to solve a mystery, to feel emotions, to have fun, or to learn about the human condition. Not something you want to speed up or delegate.

Attorneys, especially sole practitioners, are often poor at delegating. "Nobody can do it as well as I can," they say, and that's not ego talking, it's usually true.

There is risk in giving a task to someone who might not do it as well as you or might not get it done on time, but delegating is essential to the growth of a law practice. Delegating gives you leverage and leverage helps you to earn more and work less.

To get better results when you delegate, follow these seven steps:

1. Give specific instructions. Describe what you want done in sufficient detail, in writing if possible. If instructions are given orally, ask them to be repeated back to you. Tell them to ask questions if they don't understand.
2. Give objectives, not procedures. Tell them what you want done, not how. If you've chosen the right person for the job, trust them to get the job done. Guide them, don't micro-manage them.
3. Tell them why. They'll do a better job when they are invested in the outcome instead of just carrying out orders so explain why the task is important. And, if you give them more than one task at a time, tell them the relative importance of each.
4. Give a due date (and time). Due dates help them to know what is expected and allow them to prioritize their work flow.
5. Equip and empower them. Make sure they have what they need to get the job done–tools, a budget, assistance–and the authority to decide what to do. Don't make them come back to you with every little decision.
6. Offer incentives. If you have an especially valuable project, you might want to offer something for getting it done early or with a better outcome. A day off, dinner for two for them and their spouse, a cash bonus, all work well.
7. Give praise. When they do a good job, thank them (even though they were doing their job) and praise them. Let them know you are pleased and they'll want to do a good job for you next time.

I was reading an article on how to create an emergency chain of command for your business and while it's only a brief overview, I thought it had some good points. I realized that not only is this something I can use in my business, it's something attorneys (and their business clients) need to know and I should post it on this blog.

When you find something you find interesting and useful, why not share it with your clients and subscribers? It's a great way to create content for a blog or newsletter with very little effort. You can deliver value to your readers by leveraging what you're already doing.

If you represent businesses and you find an article that shows you how to do something better or faster or cheaper, how to get more clients or customers, how to avoid trouble with the IRS, or how to create an emergency chain of command for your business, your clients will want to know this, too.

If you represent consumers, are you not also a consumer? If you find some tips on buying insurance or protecting your credit or refinancing your home loan and you think it's good information, you can be sure your clients will, too.

So, finding content is as simple as doing what you're already doing (reading, listening to what others recommend via social media, basically, paying attention) and sharing it. If it's good enough to tweet, it should be good enough to post on your blog or in your newsletter.

But you can't just copy and paste the article or a link. Well, you can, and that's better than not sharing at all, but what your subscribers want is your take on that information. That's what search engines want, too. (If your blog is perceived as having little or no original content, it will not rank well and could be penalized.)

Fortunately, you don't have to do much to take someone else's content and turn it into an article that will keep people and search engines "Liking" it.

Follow these guidelines for creating original content:

• Change the title. It can be almost the same but not exactly the same.
• Link to the original article. Don't take credit for someone else's work, write about what they wrote and send readers to their article to read the original.
• Write something about the article: what you like about it, agree with, what you would add, results you got as a result of the information, or what misses the point.
• Write something about the site and/or the author. If you're linking to a post by someone you read often or to a site that consistently delivers good value, say something about that.
• Link to and comment on other articles: contrasting viewpoints, additional facts, a more niched angle. This will give your article contour and your readers more value.
• You only need a few paragraphs. 100-150 words is enough and should take you no more than a few minutes.

Creating original content can be as simple as sharing information you find interesting and useful and adding a few comments to validate, augment, or distinguish that information.

Yesterday, I wrote about blogging; I got the idea from a few articles I read over the weekend. The articles validated the results I am experiencing from blogging regularly again and I wanted to share that with you because it could help you decide whether or not you want to start (or re-start) a blog. I shared with you something I found interesting and useful and I got a blog post out of it.

And I'm doing it again today.

Kiyosaki (see previous post) says leverage is "doing more and more with less and less". One way to accomplish this is by making the time you spend in Continuing Legal Education do "double duty" for you, as the following letter from one of our subscribers attests:

"I then added a quick blurb about how this is precisely what we do proactively for our business clients to keep them on the cutting edge of their field.
   
"This practice keeps me alert to my client's needs, motivates me to stay on top of "hands-on" CLE information, and lets the client know about my concern, competency and desire to excel."