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Robert C. Dortch, Jr. | Sellers Hinshaw Ayers Dortch & Lyons PA | Charlotte

Camille Stell


Camille Stell is President of Lawyers Mutual Consulting and Services, offering succession planning, business development coaching, keynote presentations and more. Continue this conversation by contacting Camille at camille@lawyersmutualconsulting.com or 800.662.8843.

Building a 21st Century Law Practice

Camille Stel

On September 29, Duke Law School hosted North Carolina’s first Evolve Law Conference. 

Evolve Law was co-founded by Mary Juetten and Jules Miller and bills itself as a community of entrepreneurs, law firms, attorneys, investors and academics working together to accelerate the adoption of new ideas and technology in the legal profession.

The program featured a series of Darwin Talks (five-minute thought leadership presentations) along with product pitches from North Carolina legal technology entrepreneurs presenting to a panel of judges Shark Tank style. Tom Boyle, owner and founder of TrustBooks, a trust accounting software platform designed and priced for solo and small firm practitioners, was the winner of the legal technology pitches.

I was excited to present a Darwin Talk on the topic of “Building a 21st Century Law Firm”.  I’d like to share my remarks with you. 

21st century challenges

There are many challenges for 21st century law firms. Many of those challenges are beyond your control such as increased costs and new methods of competition. But not all of these things have to happen to you, you can be a part of the changing marketplace.

For example, Legal Zoom is a reality. Most lawyers bemoan Legal Zoom, then talk about how their firm can step in to clean up the mess when a client is hurt by a Legal Zoom product.

Legal Zoom isn’t going away. However, I believe many of their clients are ordinary people in your community who would hire you if you would do 4 simple things:

  • educate them about their legal needs
  • show them how you can provide solutions to meet those needs
  • market yourself so that they can find you
  • present them with pricing they can understand – NOT discount pricing just transparent pricing

21st century lawyers want . . .

Recently we ran an interview in the Lawyers Mutual newsletter with associate Chelsea Chapman  of McIlveen Family Law Firm located in Gastonia North Carolina.

In talking with Chelsea, a millennial lawyer, we were able to see first-hand how managing attorney Angela McIlveen’s forward thinking approach has set their firm apart as innovators in the industry. From their transparent management style to their collaborative work space—they are constantly finding ways to move their firm forward.

As Chelsea says, “Innovative thinking is necessary in order to run a successful business.  I’m lucky to be part of a firm that not only embraces technology but seeks out new ways to make our procedures as effective as possible for both employees and clients.  In my experience, a firm that fails to pay attention to technology advances is just asking for a bar complaint. On my first day at McIlveen, I remember being completely in awe of how organized client’s electronic “files” were kept. Personally, I think lack of organization is a problem that many solo firms need to address if they want to stay in business.  Additionally, I absolutely love my firm’s open office space.  The layout of the office enhances productivity and cultivates energy.  Working with a group of forward thinkers makes me excited for the future of the legal world.”

5 things you can do today to build a law firm for the future

  1. Start the conversation in your law firm – with your Long Range Planning Committee or Strategic Planning Committee, or your Marketing / Business Development Committee. Invite Lawyers Mutual over to be a part of these conversations or have coffee with Jeff Ward, organizer of the Evolve Law event and director of the Duke Law School’s Start-Up Ventures Clinic. Join Evolve Law (www.evolvelawnow.com), a community of entrepreneurs, law firms, attorneys, investors and academics working together to serve as a catalyst for legal innovation.
  2. Collaborate with EVERYONE in your firm. Traditionally lawyers believe the practice of law is unique among all professions and they resist the idea that a law practice can or should be managed like a business. I encourage you to continue to love and respect the law, but to recognize that there are those without a J.D. degree who can bring good ideas to better your firm. These conversations should extend beyond the partner meetings and include associates and other legal professionals who currently work with you. Also, as you make hiring decisions, hire for new skill sets. 21st century skills include cultural competency, leadership, project management, business acumen, high risk tolerance, technology, social networking, communication and presentation, teaming and problem solving that includes innovation.
  3. Build a network outside of legal. Talk with your business friends or other professionals and ask what they are seeing and doing to address changes in their professions.
  4. Think like an entrepreneur – Train yourself to think in a new way by exposing yourself to new ideas. Read the Divorce Discourse blog, subscribe to the Legal Talk Network or Startup podcast, read Seth Godin, Malcom Gladwell, Richard Susskind or Jordan Furlong. Hire professionals that enhance the skill set of your lawyers, not just mimic them.
  5. Read, Attend, Study – Congratulations for showing up to an Evolve Law event. Just by being here, you show you are ready to consider a new future. Continue to show up where people are talking about things you don’t typically hear at the local bar meetings. Attend the 2017 Clio Conference Sept. 25 & 26 in New Orleans, or join the Legal Marketing Association where you can attend local and national conferences on legal marketing and technology.

“It’s all happening” is a quote from one of my favorite movie characters, Penny Lane, in one of my favorite movies, Almost Famous. Penny seems to be saying that everything is falling into place, as if fate is bringing destiny to its ultimate fulfillment. You cannot be complacent, the tools are available and the future is here – it’s all happening.

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Watch for it: Your Cyber-Liability Guide is in the Mail

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cyber booksAs a Lawyers Mutual insured, you have seen the articles, alerts and blogs we have posted about our growing concern of cyber threats.

We have partnered with the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability to bring you the book, “Protecting Against Cyber Threats: A Lawyer’s Guide to Choosing a Cyber-Liability Insurance Policy”.

Your firm should have received your copy in the mail or you can expect it to arrive any day.

This 35-page guide provides an overview of cyber-liability insurance for law firms. The guide provides terminology for this specialized area and will assist you in making an informed decision about selecting cyber-liability insurance, as well as provides information about the importance of a breach response.

Adam Pierce with our subsidiary, Lawyers Insurance, is available to talk with you about cyber threats and risks. Adam can help you review your current insurance policies, determine if there are any gaps in coverage, and help you make a decision about additional protection from cyber-liability to crime policies.

You can reach Adam at 800.662.8843 or via email at adam@lawyersmutualnc.com.

 

 

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Why Have a Website?

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Camille StellToday I wanted to hire a lawyer. I looked up 13 lawyers by name and couldn’t find websites for 9 of them. How do you expect people to find you without a website?

For most of the 9 lawyers, I did find a generic listing on a website such as yellowpages.com, lawyers.com or yelp.com, however, I didn’t take those lawyers seriously and many potential clients may not either. For one thing, I was looking for a lawyer with a specific skill set. I’m not sure the yelp review is the best way to determine that you have the skills I need.

What holds lawyers back from creating websites?  The top 3 reasons are lack of technical knowledge, concern about the cost of the website and the time spent learning about the technology and then creating the content for the website.

Let’s address each of the 3 issues.

How do you combat the technology learning curve? First, there are resources available to help you. If you are a member of the NC Bar Association, you can reach out to the Center for Practice Management and talk with practice management advisors Erik Mazzone or Joyce Brafford.  Erik and Joyce serve as practice management consultants for law firms and they have helped many firms with technology issues. They also have a list of preferred technology consultants that they work with and have referred many times.

You can ask fellow lawyers or fellow business people in your community how they went about building their website. Did they “do-it-yourself” on SquareSpace? Did they hire a website company or marketing company? Did they hire a technology consultant to give them advice?

Lee Rosen, North Carolina lawyer and the author of the Divorce Discourse blog has written many blog posts about creating websites. Visit his blog at www.divorcediscourse.com and search the keyword “websites” to read many informative posts about building a website.

How do you budget for a law firm website? That’s a tough question. I know from talking with many lawyers who are hanging out their shingle that they would like to buy a $1000 website. There doesn’t seem to be anyone selling those. However, a $40,000 website isn’t your only option. Keep asking lawyers who built their websites until you find someone who says they can build it for under $10,000. Keep asking and you may find someone great who will build it for under $5000.

How do you budget your time to develop a website? I’ve developed several websites, both in law firms where I’ve worked and at Lawyers Mutual. I can tell you that I always underestimate the time needed to create content. While your website company can create your design or build a template, you have to decide what your message will be. The default for most lawyers is to build a site that talks about them, where they attended school, their accolades and their areas of practice often in terms that only other lawyers understand. Instead, think about building a website that is client focused and answers the questions that clients have. This takes time. From the beginning of a conversation with a website designer to the launch of a new website, you are probably talking 3 – 8 months, depending on how much content you put on your website.

Spend time viewing lawyer websites and then viewing websites of companies that you frequent online or websites that you love to get ideas of what to avoid and what to do.

Additional questions will arise during the building of the website. If you don’t have a firm logo, do you want to create one? How much of the back-end work do you want to be able to do on your website? Do you want to have to pay a company for every change that is made or do you want the ability to manage some of the changes yourself?

This is also a good time to consider writing a blog and including it on your website or participating in social media and sharing that on your website.

Some lawyers would say websites are optional. Only if you don’t care whether clients can find you.

 

 We would love to hear from you! If you’re interested in being a guest blogger please contact Camille Stell, camille@lawyersmutualnc.com or Monisha Yowell, monisha@lawyersmutualnc.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

 

 

 

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Give Your Clients What They Want

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give your clients what they wantClients are more aggressive about speaking out for what they want than ever before. Many times, our clients may have been unhappy, but they were using the only lawyer in town or the only lawyer who specialized in the field where they had legal needs. Today, there is seemingly a lawyer on every corner. More than ever, we need to hear our clients and be responsive to their needs. Here are a few tips.

  1. Develop a rapport with your client. Understand what brings them to your office. People desire to be heard and understood. Even if you can’t get the financial result the client wanted, there is often some satisfaction for people who feel they have had their chance to speak out and be heard.
  2. Develop a “partner” mentality. Not in the law firm setting sense of the word, but the idea that you are on the same team. As a consumer, I appreciate the services that I use where I’m made to feel as though I matter and that my ideas and input are important. If you are handling a case for a client, you want to know what their goals are and what they are trying to accomplish. How will they measure success in this case? If your client’s only measure of success is a six figure settlement and you know that you can’t accomplish that for them, you are setting yourself and your client up for failure. Involve the client early in the process and help them to set measures of success that are reasonable. This will help you secure an outcome that is good for the client and good for you in that you have a satisfied client.
  3. Discuss methods and timing of communications with your client. Take your client’s lead and communicate as they desire or adjust their expectations to fit your office norms. If your office can be flexible and communicate as needed for each client, that’s great. Some clients will prefer phone calls with updates, followed by snail mail letters that outline the communication and gives them something to refer to. Others may want everything electronically. If you’ve decided that your procedures are important to how you practice, let the client know what to expect and let them know why. You may explain to them, it’s not that you don’t want to be responsive to their needs, but you have found that your method of communication fits your practice. The key is to have this conversation up front so there are no unmet expectations and to remember that documenting your client communications is good risk management advice.
  4. Deliver bad news with honesty and directness. It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid, it’s going to hurt, but you can’t avoid the pain. In reviewing bar grievances and malpractice cases, you can often see the fork in the road – rather than deal with the bad news (we lost the case, we’re not going to get the settlement you want, I blew the deadline) the lawyer begins to avoid the client or worse, to cover-up the event with a lie. Constantly adjusting your client’s expectations throughout the proceedings helps ensure that the bad news you need to deliver doesn’t seem so shocking.
  5. Are there any “red flags” you need to be aware of with this client? During a down economy, we need every client we can get, but avoiding some clients up front ends up saving you money, as well as heartache. Is this the client who isn’t interested in the money, but the “principle”? Or the client who has an unreasonable expectation about outcomes – whether financial or otherwise? Or the client who is searching for results you can’t provide – good health, a successful marriage, or fairness in the workplace?
  6. To make sure you are meeting your promises to your clients, end each conversation with these two questions: “What have I agreed to do, and when do you expect me to do it?” and “What have I promised (or predicted) will happen and when do you expect it to happen?” When the client leaves, put deadlines in your docket system to remind you that these tasks are due and respond to your client as promised.
  7. To get an idea of how well your clients think you are doing your job, seek their feedback through a survey. This can be a questionnaire you send them in the mail with your final bill and dis-engagement letter or you can use a free electronic service such as surveymonkey.com. Keep in mind, its better not to ask your clients how you can improve service than to ask and not make changes. Use your client input to constantly refresh and fine tune your practice.

You can’t Google good client service, you must experience it. Keep your practice vibrant by providing excellent client service.

This post is based on an article previously published in the Greensboro Bar Association newsletter

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Successful Succession Planning

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Retired lawyer Chris Crowley, author of Younger Next Year has this to say about his career path before retirement, “It was nuts to immerse myself so completely in my old professional life before retirement. In particular, it was foolish not to have other hobbies, communities and commitments – things I cared about and people who cared about me – when my work life ended. If you’re going to do well in this country, you have to make a massive commitment to your job. No questions about it. But don’t make your job your only commitment, because it will go away. You need to get a life that will last a lifetime. It makes sense to start on that project as early as you can. Today would be good.”

I talk with many lawyers who are contemplating retirement and they express the same concerns. I have no hobbies, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself, how will my firm or my clients get along without me?

Crowley has an answer for that as well, “. . . maybe you go to the office a bit. But it doesn’t matter, you’re history. They’ll mourn you for about 30 seconds and then get on with their lives. All gone in an instant. We should foster commitments and communities that will last a lifetime.”

Planning for retirement is not something that we are trained to do in our culture. Lawyers Mutual would like to help change that. Camille Stell leads the discussion below.

LM: Why should I develop a plan for retirement?

CS: Many lawyers plan to work at their desk until they are no longer able to do anything else. This helps to avoid making decisions about what life looks like on the other side of work. There are so many factors that may get in the way of working until you are 90. Your health, your mental acuity, your desire to stare down the same difficult clients and problems for another 30 years and finally, perhaps a family that includes a patient spouse who is ready to enjoy the next stage of your relationship filled with travel or grandkids.

LM: What are the goals of successful succession planning?

CS: Creating a law firm culture that embraces succession planning, opening dialogue around retirement, and assisting lawyers in your firm to plan for retirement by addressing financial implications such as retirement funds, insurance, Medicare and Social Security and for the individual lawyer to imagine what life after retirement will look like. For a solo attorney, the goals are to think about how to sell or wind down your practice, transition your clients and to make decisions for what your life after retirement will look like.

LM: Can a lawyer sell their law practice on their own?

CS: Just as your potential client may be able to resolve their legal issue on their own with forms from the courthouse, a lawyer can sell their practice on their own. However, the optimum way to consider sale of a law practice would involve planning for the sale a year or two in advance, getting financial advice on the value of the practice and working with a broker to find the best match.

LM: What if a lawyer wants to transition their law firm by bringing in a young lawyer?

CS: While this is often the best approach, I have spoken with lawyers who complain about being able to retain the young lawyers they hire. When I talk with the young associate, they often say things like “I was hired to take over the firm in 5 years, but that was 8 years ago.” Or the senior lawyer will complain that the associate doesn’t have the right work ethic or they are not fully vested in the ownership of the firm. What often happens is unrealistic expectations on both sides, no clear expectations from the outset and no communication about what the ongoing problems are. Recruiting new attorneys and retaining them for a successful succession is time consuming on the front end, but the process can be managed effectively. Consider talking with the Career Services Office of your law school or the law school in your community for advice on how to manage recruitment and retention.

LM: Putting aside the business aspect of selling a practice, what should lawyers consider for themselves during retirement planning?

CS: Crowley says, “I treated retirement as if it were a sabbatical or a long vacation instead of a new life. That was no way to treat life that’s going to last 20 or 30 years.” Crowley calls retirement the Next Third.

When Crowley asked a fellow lawyer what he did during retirement, he told Crowley he worked with Hospice patients. When asked what he did for them, he replied “Hold them. You mostly just hold them. And read. They like that too.” Can you imagine after years of managing corporate clients and running deals to find yourself in Hospice 3 days each week holding people who are dying? The corporate lawyer found it “nourishing”.

The idea is that you find something that nourishes your soul. Maybe it’s gardening or golfing or volunteering in the schools, find a way to connect with those in your community.

And finally, make exercise your new job. Our bodies and minds are designed for movement. Crowley and co-author Dr. Henry S. Lodge make the argument in Younger Next Year that exercise is what will keep our bodies from decaying. Dr. Lodge has 7 rules to live by:

  1. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.
  2. Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life.
  3. Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.
  4. Spend less money than you make.
  5. Quit eating crap.
  6. Care.
  7. Connect and commit.

LM: Let’s say I listen to you and start planning. What’s next?

CS: Let’s end with a few more words from Chris Crowley, “When you finally do retire and it’s a bit bumpy despite all your efforts, don’t be too tough on yourself. Just as sure as there is a biological tide that sets against you at (age) 50, there’s a weird social tide that sets against you almost simultaneously, stupid though that may be. So you can be proud of any success you have – including the serious job of just trying. Trying counts. Connections counts. Commitment counts.”

Buy yourself a copy of Younger Next Year or check out a copy in our Lending Library. Good luck!

Please join us on February 11 from 1:00 – 4:30 p.m. at the Holiday Inn in Wrightsville Beach for a timely CLE “Law Firm Succession: Secrets to a Successful Transition or Sale of a Law Practice”.

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