Search Results for: getting things done

Are you a finicky lawyer?

June 23, 2017 by
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I told you about a program I saw profiling a 20-year-old woman with a strange and dangerous addiction to sugar. She drinks 30 cans of cola a day and is on the fast track to a major illness.

The program is called “Finicky Eaters”. My wife found replays on YouTube. We’ve since seen episodes about a guy who has eaten nothing but cheeseburgers for the last 25 years (yep, three meals a day), the gal who eats nothing but french fries, and another about a man who likes to eat raw meat and little else.

As far as I’m concerned, this is more than finicky eating, it’s a sickness. Had these folks not received professional help, they would no doubt be looking at debilitating illness or death.

I was thinking about these poor souls on my walk this morning. It made me think about how many lawyers also have unhealthy habits with respect to their practices. Although usually not fatal, these habits prevent them from reaching their potential.

Many lawyers steadfastly refuse to delegate, for example. Doing all the work themselves can add stress and lead to burnout. It also limits their income. (I know, there’s a trade-off. If you’re not careful, delegating can lead to other problems. Note to self: delegate, but be careful.)

When it comes to marketing, many lawyers also have bad habits. They get set in their ways, refusing to try new strategies, or update old ones, and find themselves falling behind the competition.

How about you? Do you have any bad habits about how you manage your practice? Things you do that you shouldn’t, or things you should do but don’t?

Do you continue doing something a certain way because that’s how you’ve always done it, or because that’s how everyone else does it?

Do you stay in a bad partnership out of habit or fear that the alternative might be worse?

Do you continue paying for products or services you no longer need or could replace with lower-cost or better alternatives?

Start a new habit today of regularly examining what you do and how you do it. Pay attention to your habits, routines, and go-to strategies and consider what you might change or improve.

If you decide that you’re doing fine and no changes are necessary, I have one last suggestion for you: get someone else to take a look. Ask a friend, or hire a professional, to examine your ways and tell you what they see.

Because most of those finicky eaters didn’t realize they had a problem until someone else pointed it out to them.

Are you getting all of the referrals you want? 

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Filed Under: Law office management, Marketing legal services, Personal development Tagged With:

When is good enough good enough?

May 18, 2017 by
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When is the document you drafted good enough to file? When is the letter you wrote good enough to mail? When is your case prepared enough to take to trial?

I don’t know but you do.

Maybe not consciously, more like a feeling in your gut. You know something isn’t perfect but you know, somehow, that it’s good enough.

One thing’s for sure, when you have a deadline, the notion of what’s good enough gets hazier. You’ve got to get it done or there will be consequences so you get it done. It is deemed good enough because it has to be.

In a pleasant bit of irony, the pressure of a deadline doesn’t necessarily cause more errors. Instead, it often allows you to cut through the fog and quickly find the right path. When you don’t have time for minutia, it’s easier to zero in on what’s important.

So good enough is a relative term. It means different things under different circumstances. How do you get comfortable with this murkiness? I think it comes down to understanding a few things:

  • Good enough really is good enough. You will get most things right most of the time. Most of what you fear will never happen.
  • While many errors are embarrassing, most aren’t fatal. If you can’t fix something, you’ve got insurance to protect you from the worst case scenario.
  • You can minimize problems with checklists, forms, templates, and boilerplate language, and by having another set of eyes edit or at least look at your work product.
  • You’ll get better over time. Experience will help you minimize errors and improve your ability to make decisions. You’ll also get things done faster because you’ve done the same thing so often.

Ultimately, the best way to find out if something is good enough is to release it into the world. The world (your clients, your opposition, your target market) will tell you if something is good enough. Most of the time, the answer will be in the affirmative.

Are you getting paid for all of your work? This can help

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Filed Under: Law office management, Productivity, Writing

Don’t fall for this email scam!

May 15, 2017 by
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AT & T is my wireless carrier. Last night they sent me an email asking me to take a survey. I usually decline these things because I’ve been burned before by survey requests that promised to take only a few minutes but went on endlessly, but in a moment of weakness, I clicked and answered the first (easy) question.

Things quickly got real.

If you get the same email, don’t open it.

It’s a trap.

They’ll ensnare you in a bottomless pit of questions, asking you to decide between a four and a five, a six or a seven, and you’ll wind up clicking anything just to get to the next question, and you’ll swear you’ve already answered that question twice, but no, they’ll ask it a third time, and after what seems like twenty minutes, you’ll either give up and close your browser or berate yourself for getting suckered yet again.

They’ll tempt you to play their insidious game. They’ll tell you they depend on you, they’ll offer to enter you in a drawing, they’ll make you curious about what they might reveal.

Resist. Start another Netflix episode. Or close up shop and go to bed.

I can’t imagine that the companies that conduct these surveys get much useful information out of them. I suspect that most people who start them never finish, and the ones who go all the way do so because they’re not crazy about the company and want to vent.

They do these surveys, I suspect, because they think it will make them look good to shareholders.

There’s nothing wrong with surveys, per se. They can provide valuable feedback and you might put one together for your clients. If you do, remember that a survey is as much an opportunity to engage with your clients as it is a way to guide your next move. So if you do it, don’t alienate them with one of these monstrosities, make your survey short and sweet.

Promise it will only take 30 seconds, a minute or two. And keep that promise.

Ask a few questions, not every question you can think of.

Make it easy for them to choose by asking things like, “Of these two options, which one do you prefer?”

And when the survey is done and you tally up the results, share those results with your clients and subscribers. Let them see that you really do value their feedback and appreciate them for taking the time to help. They’ll feel good about responding and be more likely to do it again the next time you ask.

Because a survey is as much an opportunity to engage with your clients as it is a way to guide your next move.

Where is your next referral coming from?

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Filed Under: Client relations Tagged With:

Better routines help you earn more without working more

April 28, 2017 by
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What’s the first thing you do when you get to the office in the morning? After you hang up your jacket and grab another cup of coffee, do you check your phone messages next? Take a look at the calendar? Dig through the mail?

One thing I tried to do as soon as I got to the office was review and sign letters and documents and give them back to my secretary. I wanted to keep her busy because I knew she would be back with another pile of things for me to review before the day was done.

So what’s your routine?

You have one, you know. Just as you have routines for interviewing new clients, writing demand letters, and getting ready for trial. You have routines for writing articles, cleaning up your desk at the end of the day, and preparing to go out of town.

The question is, do your routines serve you?

Are they efficient, helping you to get more done in less time? Do they make your staff’s job easier? Do they help you minimize errors? Do they give your clients the right impression?

Better routines help you streamline your work flow so you can earn more without working more.

Think about what you do throughout the day and how you might improve your routines. Consider preparing checklists, forms, and form letters or templates, or updating the ones you already have.

After you’ve gotten another cup of coffee, of course.

Earn more by delegating more

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Filed Under: Productivity

Satisfied clients are a dime a dozen

April 5, 2017 by
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Do you have satisfied clients? That’s a shame. You could do so much better.

You don’t want clients to be merely satisfied. You want them to have a big smile on their face and be excited (or relieved) they found you. You want them enthusiastically singing your praises to anyone who will listen.

You don’t want satisfied clients. You want fans.

A satisfied client will recommend you to friends and neighbors if they are asked for a recommendation. A fan will go out of their way to talk you up and pass out your cards.

In building your practice, one of your primary objectives should be to make your clients fall in love with you and your firm. One way to do this is to surprise and delight them by giving them more value and service than they expect.

Clients expect competent work, good customer service, and reasonable fees. If this is what you deliver, you’re probably not getting as many referrals as you could.

We just had some minor repairs done on the exterior of our house. Cracks patched, trim painted, a new side door, and so on. Although I know we got a good deal on the work, I couldn’t believe how much we had to spend for “minor” repairs.

When the job was done, the workers showed us some “extras” they had done at no additional charge, things we had originally passed on because they weren’t absolutely necessary and because we were already spending more than we had intended.

The dollar value of these extras couldn’t have been more than a few hundred dollars, but the gesture made a huge impression on us.

We got more than we expected. We felt better about how much we had spent and we were eager to tell others about the company.

Sure enough, as we were taking another look at the work, our neighbor from across the street came over. He said he needed to get his house painted and wanted to know if we were happy with this company’s work.

What do you think we said?

We said they did a GREAT job and we would DEFINITELY recommend them.

He asked for the contractor’s card.

We would no doubt have recommended them without the extra “surprises” they provided. But we went a step further and “sold” our neighbor on “our guy”.

If anyone else asks us for a recommendation, we’ll recommend them. But we’ll do more than that. When we hear that someone needs work on their house, we won’t wait for them to ask if we know anyone, we’ll make sure to tell them about our guy.

That’s the difference between a satisfied client and a fan.

Now, here’s what I want to know. I want to know if the contractor instructs his employees to “find” extras that need doing and do them, gratis. Is this his standard policy, because he knows the value of giving clients more than they expect?

If it is, that might explain why our guy has hundreds of five-star reviews and his competitors have so few.

Here’s how attorneys can get more five-star reviews and more referrals

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Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations, Referrals Tagged With:

A simple way to get rid of clutter

February 23, 2017 by
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I know someone who’s computer desktop perpetually looks like it was the site of a bombing run. Every inch is covered with shortcuts, downloads, documents, and set-up files. She has multiple copies of jpegs and pdfs, because she wasn’t sure if the original downloaded properly, or she couldn’t find it.

I don’t know about you but I couldn’t function that way. I’m not a clean freak. I just find it easier to get things done when my work space is reasonably uncluttered and organized.

And yet there are times when my desktop gets messy. When that happens, the first thing I do is gather up everything and put it in a new folder.

Out of sight, out of mind.

The next step is to clean out the folder and put things where they belong. I might do this right away but I usually do it later, when I have some downtime.

Doing it this way allows me to quickly get back to work. When I’m ready to tackle the folder, I’m able to take my time and make better decisions about what to keep and where to put it.

Okay, maybe I do have some issues.

Anyway, if you find clutter distracting or it impairs your productivity, you might give this method a try.

You can do the same thing in the physical world. When you have too much clutter on your desk–papers, files, books–put everything into one or two piles and when you’re ready, chop those files down to size.

If you have a messy closet, put everything into boxes as the first step. Later, go through the boxes deliberately, putting away the things you know you need and getting rid of everything else.

You can do the same thing on your smartphone. If you have too many apps, put them all into digital folders or push them to another screen. Or delete everything. Only put back (or re-download) the apps you know you will use.

De-clutter first. Organize second.

I keep my digital world organized with Evernote

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With:

How to overcome procrastination and train your brain to resist distractions

February 22, 2017 by
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I was watching a video about how to overcome procrastination. The presenter talked about the Pomodoro technique which I sometimes use to help me focus, particularly on tasks I’m avoiding.

Basically, you set a timer for 25 minutes (or whatever you choose) and work until the timer goes off. You then take a break for five minutes and go at it again. If you’re still not done after three or four sessions, you take a longer break and then get back to work.

The idea is to get ourselves to focus with the promise that we only have to do it for a short period of time. It gets you started, which is the hardest and most important part of getting anything done.

Anyway, if you ever find yourself procrastinating on certain tasks, get yourself a Pomodoro app or use your kitchen timer and give it a whirl.

But here’s the thing.

Even though you have promised yourself to keep working until the timer sounds, if you’re like most people, you will be tempted to stray. You’ll feel the urge to check your email or take a peak at social media. Or you’ll realize you need another cup of coffee. Or the phone will ring and you’ll feel compelled to at least see who is calling.

You know you must resist these urges but sometimes they get the better of you.

The video presented a simple technique for conquering these urges and resisting distractions. Have a sheet of paper handy, or open a text file, and whenever you feel tempted by the urge to do something else, write it down.

Writing it down allows you to acknowledge the urge and postpone it until your next break. It helps to dissipate the urge and release its hold over you.

It also allows you to identify things that typically distract you. You can then take steps to eliminate them before they can distract you by doing things like turning off your phone or closing browser tabs that don’t relate to your work.

Write down (and postpone) your urges and you will become their master instead of their servant.

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: , ,

Winning is great but so is losing

January 16, 2017 by
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Everyone loves a big win. Settling a big case, being named “Lawyer of the Year,” tripling the number of new clients this year over last.

Break out the champagne. There’s nothing better than the sweet taste of success.

If you want to win big, however, you have to do something you may not want to do. You have to take more risks and thus accept more losses.

Babe Ruth set records for hitting the most home runs. He also set records for the most strikeouts. He hit more home runs, he said, because nearly every time he was at bat, he swung for a home run.

If you want to have more success this year than last, you have to take more chances this year. Do more things that might fail. And bigger things that might fail big.

This year, take some cases that are big risk/big reward. Open that second office you’ve been thinking about. Double your advertising budget.

Do something that might turn out to be a big, fat, embarrassing loss but might also turn out to be a colossal win.

If you don’t do things you’ve never done before, you’ll never grow. You’ll stay in your comfort zone where very little changes.

This year, go for more home runs. Yes, you’ll strike out more. But who knows, you might just win “Lawyer of the Year”.

Take a chance on getting (a lot) more referrals

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Filed Under: success

Know, like, trust, rinse, repeat

December 9, 2016 by
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You’ve heard it before: “All things being equal, clients prefer to hire attorneys they know, like, and trust”.

You need all three but let’s take a minute and talk about “know”.

In a sense, it is the easiest of the three because it is the simplest. The more people who know you, the more clients you are likely to get. Assuming you are reasonably likable and trustworthy, getting more people to know you is the 20% activity that brings you 80% of your results.

Note that it’s not necessarily how many people you know, it’s how many people know you. How many recognize your name? How many people who go looking for an attorney will find you?

It’s called exposure.

One of the best ways to get more exposure is to leverage the contacts of influential people in your target market.

Centers of interest in your community. Professionals, executives, business owners. People who run blogs and video channels. Authors, consultants, and sales people who write for, sell to, or advise people in your target market.

They can give you direct referrals. They can publish your guest post on their blog or in their newsletter. They can interview you for their podcast or video channel. They can promote your seminar, become an affiliate for your book or course, and promote your free report to their subscribers.

They can give you exposure to a large number of prospective clients. Even better, they can influence them to follow you and hire you. When they promote you, or even just mention you to their clients, readers, and contacts, they are impliedly endorsing you.

That’s the best kind of exposure you can get.

Do yourself a favor and get to know more people like that. Start by asking your existing professional contacts to introduce you to other professionals in their line of work.

You still have work to do with these new contacts but the most important part is done. Thanks to your mutual friend, they now know you. They’ll take your call and reply to your email. You’re on your way to getting their contacts to know, like, and trust you.

How to get referrals and other help from attorneys and other professionals: here

 

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Filed Under: Leverage, Referrals Tagged With:

Commit first. Figure out the details later

November 11, 2016 by
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You have a new project or idea. If you’re like a lot of people, especially lawyers, your natural tendency is to research it, ponder it, and worry about it, to the point that you talk yourself out of doing it.

How many great ideas have you abandoned in their cradle?

You’re smart. No doubt you have lots of ideas, some of which could transform your practice, your life, or the world. Most of your ideas never see the light of day, however, because you feel the need to figure out everything in advance.

You over-plan. Better to under-plan and figure things out as you go along. Grant Cardone, author of, The 10X Rule, says, “Commit first. Figure out the details later.”

Successful entrepreneurs don’t charge forward blindly, mind you. They do their homework before they invest a lot of time or resources. What they don’t do is insist on preparing for every contingency before they take the first step.

Yeah, that means taking risks. And failing. But also learning from the failures and using what you learn to do it better the next time.

It also means getting a lot of “at bats,” which leads to more hits and more home runs.

When you see something you’d like to do but that little voice in your head nags at you and points out what could go wrong, note what that voice is saying (because it might be right) and come back to consider it later, after you have made some progress and have more context. Don’t let your fears stop you. If you are to be stopped, let reality do it.

You don’t need to know everything before you start. If you like an idea, commit to it, start it, and figure out the details as you go along.

Referral rock. If you want more, here’s how to get them

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Filed Under: Personal development Tagged With: ,
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