My first permanent office, a sublet space in a marble-column-ed Class B building down the street from the White House, was hardly the fanciest in Washington D.C., particularly back in the mid-’90s when big law firm partners still tried to impress clients with mahogany conference room tables and ginormous corner offices. Furnished with cast-offs from
Is Lawyer Advertising Contract To the Tune of $2680 Per Lead Also A Fee Splitting Arrangement?
Depending upon where you live, you may have seen William Shatner shilling for law firms like Alabama-based Slocumb Law Firm on television. Poor production quality notwithstanding, Slocumb’s television advertising comes with a hefty price tag. According to the Washington Legal Times, Mike Slocumb is suing solo D.C practitioner, Michael Wilson for $197,000 in
Why Does Having It All Mean Working for Others All The Time?
This month’s issue of the Atlantic brings yet another voice in the endless, evolving discussion of Why Women Still Can’t Have It All, and what can we do about it? Although I appreciated the honesty of the piece, I don’t understand why people as smart as the author, Ann Marie Slaughter, a former honcho
Advance Your Practice With FastCase’s FREE Advance Sheets
With a torrent of information streaming through our email, social media channels and RSS feeds daily, most of us have become regimented in filtering. We eyeball headlines, prioritize links from designated Twitter followers, strain articles without a particular tag or search term and use the delete key without mercy. While our compulsive filtering immunizes us
Photos Make the Website So Rock Them; Don’t “Stock” Them
No, you’re not experiencing a bout of deja vu. You’ve seen these photos or some similar iteration before. The clay figures. The guy or gal sketching business charts on the glass board. The inspirational road signs. Fish jumping from one bowl to another. Perhaps you stumbled across them online while browsing Google Images or in
Why The Best Solo and Small Firm Lawyers Aren’t the Best Entrepreneurs
About a year ago, in response to then- Above the Law columnist Jay Shepard, I asserted that wanting to run a business is NOT the most important characteristic for lawyers wanting to start their own practice. I postulated that lawyers who hang a shingle for the excitement of running a business rather than a passion
Lawyers Aren’t Just Subject to Ethical Advertising Rules, But Platform Terms of Service
Sit in on any CLE on social media these days, and you’ll be privy to the laundry list of ethics issues that crop up when lawyers use social media. But even though lawyers answer to a higher calling, we’re not immune from the rules that govern the masses online. And increasingly, these days, the applicable
Preliminary Results In: Facebook Ads Don’t Seem to Work
Sometimes, a gut check works just as well as, or better than a guru. More than two years ago, when Nolo was a book publisher rather than a content source for an marketing content provider, I blogged about whether lawyers should use Facebook to market a practice. Ultimately, while I suggested that lawyers
Solo Sends His Secretary to Law School
Every time I hear that solos have to be entrepreneurs, I cringe. Yes, we all know that solos won’t stay in business if they work for free or spend thousands of dollars that they don’t have on marketing or websites or branding — but understanding these realities doesn’t require business skills so much as