Professor Alan Childress of Legal Profession Blog emailed me a link to his post on an article by Brenda Bratton Blom entitled Cause Lawyering and Social Movements: Can Solo and Small Firm Practitioners Anchor Social Movements? My answer to the question posed by Blom’s title is that solo and small firm practitioners by our very
Client Relations
Lawyers as the Bearers of Bad News
The recent shootings at a Chicago law firm by Joe Jackson, a disgruntled and crazed client have spawned a search for reasons behind the tragedy. This article, Lawyers balance inventors’ hope (12/17/06) explores one rationale: that Jackson, like other inventors who seek patents, hold an unrealistic hope of success. According to one patent attorney quoted…
The Limits of Managing Client Relationships
More lawyers are focusing on managing client relations, adopting techniques from putting ourselves in our clients’ shoes to soliciting feedback through surveys to treating them with respect. But sometimes, no matter what we do, clients get frustrated and angry – often not with their lawyers but with the inherent limitations of our justice system –…
Twelve Rules of Great Client Service
Dan Hull of What About Clients has rounded up twelve of his past blog posts into a comprehensive Twelve Rules of Client Service. Read it if you want to stay a step ahead of your competitors.
Though Dan’s post addresses client service, it’s actually a great model for great rules for serving your blog…
Lawyers: Do You Eat Your Own Dogfood?
My husband recently started a new position at a technology company that, like many others, eats its own dogfood, i.e., it uses the product that it makes. For lawyers, our dogfood is our advice to our clients. But how many lawyers “eat own dogfood” when we draft retainer agreements for our clients?
This article,…
Client Service and More on Niches
I realize that my posts have been sparse over the past month. The slow postings are explained by a couple of factors: my day job as a practicing solo has been fairly busy lately, a project that I’m close to finishing that I believe will greatly benefit MyShingle readers and my divided loyalties now that…
Flat Fees Are Fine, But Lawyers Can’t Have It Both Ways
Like Chris Marston of Inside the Future of the Law Firm who raves about the benefits of fixed pricing, I’m also a fan of the flat fee or fixed price. Chris focuses on how fixed pricing provides certainty to clients, but from my perspective, it makes my life much easier when I don’t have…
How to politely decline…and avoid a lawsuit
Recently, Allison Shields posted here on the benefits that lawyers can gain from hospitality, which is what excellent client service is all about. But this article Thou Shalt Not… by Steven Lubet (American Lawyer, 7/2006) got me to thinking that hospitality and just plain courtesy have other benefits as well: they can spare you from…
The Paradox of Client Service
There are a number of blogs like Dan Hull’s What About Clients? and In Search of Perfect Client Service that provide excellent advice on how to serve clients. At the same time, for some lawyers, particularly new solos, serving clients isn’t as much of a problem as figuring out how to avoid falling into what…
Telephone Talk
Jim Calloway has a great post on one of the unanswered (pun intended!) questions concerning solo practice: what’s the best system for answering the phone? Jim’s post summarizes the pros and cons of (a) outsourcing to a live answering service (uneven quality and costly); (b) using paid employee (who may be low paid and unmotivated)…