All Our Tips
Start a “Thank You” File
Albert Schweitzer once said: “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”
We’re all about thanking people who do nice things for us, whether it’s something simple like helping to facilitate the filing of a document or something more practice-sustaining such as referring a client with a really lucrative case. But that’s not the topic of this post. When we urge you to start a “Thank You” file, we mean that you should open a file folder (paper or electronic, depending on how your office operates) with the name Thank You File. Then, as you receive them, and you will, save the thank you letters from satisfied clients, the good evaluations after speaking engagements, the thanks for supporting the Little League or other organizations – in fact, anything that reflects that you are making a positive difference in the lives of your clients, your colleagues, and your community.
We’ve said over and over that what gets measured gets done. That’s why we think it’s so important that you start measuring all the good you are doing through your (our) profession. Then, when you have one of those days that make you want to pull your hair out and you start to wonder why you’re putting up with all the hassles of practicing law – and you know you’ll be having one again, sooner rather than later – instead pull out this file and let the thanks you’ve received from others remind you of the positive impact you have been to so many people, and how much they really appreciate you and all you’ve done for them. It really is a wonderful life we lawyers have been given the privilege to live. A Thank You File helps you remember this when the winds of life threaten to blow out your own light – and helps rekindle that spark within.
Budget Your Research
Today’s tip is about budgets. For many law firms, fall is budget season. Why not think about budgeting for individual research projects?
Things you can consider:
– what format do you need downloaded cases and materials in? Free and fee sources offer different outputs so do your gathering once.
– how much research time so you have to het an answer? If you only have an hour, spend it (on commentary) wisely.
– have you (or someone you work with) answered this question? Updating work product you have makes for a fast and inexpensive research budget
Happy planning!
Four Tips for Easy Navigation of PowerPoint Slide Deck
Ever seen someone get up to do a PowerPoint with no clue about how to advance (or reverse) the slides. Ouch!!! Here are four neat tricks for navigating through your PowerPoint slides.
First, remember to use the space bar to advance to the next slide – one tap on the space bar will jump you one slide ahead. Of course, you can use PageDown or the right or down cursor keys to do the same thing, but the space bar is a much larger and easier to hit target if you are nervous or your hands are shaking.
And please remember – PageUp or the up or left cursor keys will back you up one slide.
Next up, here’s a great tip for jumping to a specific slide: If you press the Alt key, plus the one, two or three digits that represent the number of the slide you want to jump to, followed by Enter, you will jump to the specified slide. This shortcut is handy if you get to a point in your presentation where there are questions and you need to jump back to a key slide to give an answer. Jumping directly to that slide looks so much better than having to Page Up or Page Down through multiple slides. Make sure you memorize the numbers of the key slides in your presentation or having an outline or a list in front of you.
Lastly, remember the power of a “right click” on your mouse. A right click on the screen while you are in presentation mode pops up a menu with several options. If you select “Go” and then By title, there is a listing of both slide numbers and titles for every slide your presentation. Click on a particular slide in the list and you will jump directly to it.
With the above tips you will be able to navigate your PowerPoint deck like a pro.
Create Feedback Loops for Success
One anonymous person stated: “Pain is only valuable once you know that you’ve learned from it.” A big part of implementing any plan is creating a feedback loop that reports back on how you are doing, thereby allowing you to take corrective action. Building an effective set of feedback loops for your practice is dependent on determining what are the critical success factors for your practice that you need to monitor.
There are financial indicator loops such as:
- Time and Billing actuals vs expectations (by timekeeper)
- Client compliance indicators: retainers, accounts receivable reports, write-off reports
- Cash flow indicators: budgeted vs actual receipts, A/R aging reports
- Trust and general account reconciliation statements
- Profitability indicators: Effective Hourly Rates vs standard hourly billing rates, leakage reports, write-up, write-down reports, line of credit balances
There are non-financial feedback loops such as:
- Staffing indicators: hours of work expectations, compliance with anti-fraud measures and other office policies
- Client satisfaction indicators: referrals by clients, repeat business, client turnover
- Staff satisfaction indicators: staff turnover frequency, sick days taken
Then there are curious feedback loops that are partly financial and partly not, such as:
- Average amount of fee bills (divide the total of all fee bills by the number of bills rendered): Compare this to a prior period (year, month). What has changed and why?
- Unbilled WIP: Ballooning WIP can be an indicator of future cash flow problems. It can also be an early-warning sign of a lawyer facing a personal crises (substance abuse, depression, family problems etc.)
- Average overhead per lawyer: divide your total overhead by the number of lawyers on a FTE basis. Compare this with prior years. What has changed and why?
Without feedback loops on your law firm activity, you will not have any real data to use in determining if you are in fact progressing towards your goals. And this means that you are flying blind (and we all know about what happens when the blind lead the blind…)
Pay Attention to the Privy Council Office
The Privy Council Office, among many other responsibilities, prepares Orders-in-Council and other statutory instruments to give effect to Government decisions.
The PCO website is the first place to look for proclamation dates of federal legislation – proclamations are published in Canada Gazette Part II, but the Gazette publication is sometimes far later than the Order in Council that brings a federal Act in to force. The PCO maintains the .
For example, on October 6, the PCO published Privy Council Order Number: 2011-1164. this is the instrument that says:
Therefore, His Excellency the Governor General in Council, on the recommendation of the Minister of Industry, pursuant to section 372 of the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, chapter 23 of the Statutes of Canada, 2009, hereby fixes October 17, 2011, as the day on which sections 1 to 296, subsections 297(1) and (5), sections 298, 299, 303, 305 to 307 and 309, subsections 311(2) and (5), section 312, paragraphs 313(z.4) and (z.6), sections 314 to 316, subsection 317(1) and sections 318 to 340 of that Act come into force.
That proclamation was published in the October 26, 2011 Canada Gazette
Order Fixing October 17, 2011 as the Day on which Certain Provisions of that Act Come into Force
Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act
SI/2011-87
26/10/11
If you were only watching the Gazette for federal in force dates, you would be weeks behind the news.
This week’s research tip: Pay attention to the Privy Council Office
Google Map Maker Arrives in Canada
As of yesterday, Canadians can use Google’s Map Maker to correct and add details to places in Canada that appear on Google Maps. You can add roads, hiking paths, buildings, businesses and just about any other detail or point of interest that only a local person would know.
Map Maker brings the Wikipedia model the world of online mapping and proves once again that there is order in chaos. People in 188 other countries and regions around the world have had a chance to use Map Maker and the results are amazing. Changes are reviewed by Google staff or other people that are making updates before the general public gets to see them. Learn more about Google Mapmaker and watch timelapse videos of user contributions here.
Get mapping everyone!
Implement Your Plans to Reach Your Goals
Someone wise once said (author unknown) “Promise only what you can deliver. Then deliver more than you promise.“ Your plans are promises for the future..but all the planning in the world will not assist you to turn those promises into achievements if you are not taking active steps to implement your goals.
To implement your plans, you need to do several things. One, effectively communicate your vision; two, lead the change process and three, outline the steps to be taken to take you – and your firm – to your goals. If you want change, you are the one that has to make it happen.
Making it all happen is dependent on bringing people into the process (communication), breaking down the goal(s) into discrete, manageable and measurable tasks (planning) and then creating the team environment that brings everyone along to reach the goals (leading). We think this process is started by having a written statement of your goals, the timeline for their expected attainment, the breakdown of each goal into discrete parts and the delegation of the parts among your team members.
Your business plan is the best example of the goals for your firm, but there are many (smaller) examples of such documents. Your personal or firm marketing plan, your office’s technological plan and your firm’s office policy and procedure manual are all examples of planning documents that are implemented for the benefit of the firm.
Another (growing) example of a planning document that is increasingly being implemented by lawyers and practice groups is a file plan that is jointly developed with the client. This document not only describes the goals of the client for the file (what is success?) but also establishes a budget and a resource allocation (staff, finances etc) and associated timeline for the file. This document demonstrates that the lawyer understands the needs of the client and is leading the file and has thought about how the work required will be implemented by the firm. It helps make the intangible work of the lawyer real to the client and communicates the value the lawyer is bringing to the file.
We all know that it is necessary to send consistent messages to the client; however, firms consistently trip over this by making unrealistic promises to the client – perhaps out of a desire to please the client or lose the file.
For example, these promises could be:
- when a file could be completed (unrealistic timelines),
- how much it will cost (unrealistic budgeting),
- what results could be obtained (unrealistic expectations), and
- that the lawyer will keep the client in the loop (unrealistic expectations on returning telephone calls and emails).
However, we all know that sending inconsistent messages to the client creates dissonance – the client gets a sense that the lawyer fails to ‘walk the talk’ – there is a breakdown in the lawyer’s performance in the areas of planning, leading, communicating and implementing. It would be much preferred if the lawyer sets forth a set of realistic expectations at the outset that are confirmed in the written retainer and reinforced in subsequent communications and dealings with the firm.
Now: If bad news happens – take steps to share this with the client forthwith combined with a plan of how to deal with the bad news in the context of the file. Being on top shows leadership and as we all know, when news is bad, the client is looking for hope.
Lastly when it comes time to implementation, let your work speak the loudest – show that you do great work and communicate this to the client – in other words, overdeliver on your promises. By continually meeting your client’s expectations and fulfilling the plans that you set together for their file, as well as gradually implementing your overall plans for the firm, you will be taking discrete steps that will take you to your goals.
Mobile Offline Law
I am the kind of law librarian who likes to read legislation. I know, it is weird. It is particularly nice to have frequently needed legislation sources in my pocket. I have posted before about the keeping your rules of court handy on your eReader. Today’s Tip includes steps for putting statutes on your mobile device.
John Papadoupoulos wrote about the Canadian Law app that is available through Apple’s App Store. This app sounds neat, and it might work very well for you. I prefer law from the source and thought it would be good to outline the alternative for getting offline law for this Tip.
Using your mobile device online, navigate to the Justice Laws website. The site has a new PDF page layout that makes downloading PDFs very simple.
Navigate to the pdf of act you want access to offline. If you are viewing this on your iPhone or iPad, touch the screen at the top until you see the black download bar. Choose your pdf viewer, and voila, PDF downloaded to your device. I like iAnnotate ($9.99) for marking up PDFs, but iBooks is free and works great too.
On a Blackberry, BeamReader gets decent reviews as a PDF viewer. eReaders like the Kindle, Kobo, and Sony Reader will store PDFs as well, though you may need to do the original download on your desktop and connect from there.
My favourite download from the DOJ Laws website is the Table of Public Statutes.
Turning the Tables
Sometimes data just demand to be presented in the form of a table. Besides, there’s something pleasing about lining things up this way and that way; it seems to make whatever is in the table cells clearer and your sense of control firmer.
While creating tables in Word isn’t all that hard, it does require going up to the menu and fishing around for the right buttons to push. If all you want is a series of compartments — cells — for confining a set of thoughts in a single row, you can whip up a table right from the keyboard.
Type the plus sign + followed by a tab and then another plus sign. Repeat as many times as you like to create more cells. When you’re finished, press Return after the last plus sign and presto! a simple table appears. What you see below would create a 5 cell table, for example.
+ + + + + +
Listen…in Order to Lead
“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it” according to Dwight Eisenhower.
A leader rarely exists in a vacuum. Leaders have to interact with those whom they wish to influence in order to achieve results. That involves effectively communicating with those with whom you wish to interact.
There are so many aspects of the practice of law that are dependent on effective communication that it is difficult to know where to start. Accordingly, perhaps the most important quality of communication is listening. Lawyers often assume that in taking the lead on a file, that they must do most of the talking. Actually we believe the opposite is actually the case.
The most effective lawyers know when to stop talking and to actively listen to the client and absorb not only the verbal messages being delivered by the client but the non-verbal ones as well. By making the client feel truly understood, the lawyer could start out with a strong personal relationship with the client that is the keystone to a successful legal resolution (see Plan above). Once the client feels truly understood they, in turn, will be willing to listen to how you will take the lead and establish the goals for the file.
Communication extends far beyond just the lawyer – client relationship. Good communication is necessary on a daily basis with your partners, your associates, your staff and with others.
Your retainer agreement is an exercise in communication – it should not only lay out the necessary legal boilerplate but it should also shape client expectations, it should establish your roadmap for the file (the anticipated legal steps to be taken) and it should reinforce the subtle message to your client that there are expectations for them to meet to keep the file moving.
Your fee invoice and letters to your client are all communication tools – do you clearly set forth the results that you have achieved for your client and your value as a lawyer? Do you bill promptly and often – indicating that you are working constantly on the file and have your client’s needs and goals in mind?
Does your compensation agreement with your partners communicate the goals that are to be met by rewarding the right behaviour? Many firms do not reward knowledge sharing, mentoring or firm governance in their compensation agreements – reinforcing the negative message that these goals are not important to the firm.
Of course, exactly the opposite is true – young lawyers grow into successful partners quicker if they are properly mentored and nurtured. Knowledge sharing (vs knowledge hoarding) benefits the overall profitability of the firm. Proper firm governance allows the firm to be professionally and responsibly run – which benefits everyone in the firm.
Communication is at the heart of the marketing of the firm and of any particular practice. Your web page, blog, twitter posts, facebook or LinkedIn presence all communicate volumes about your practice and your firm.
Take a moment and look at the web page of a very successful firm that practices in your target market and critically compare it to yours. Look for underlying messages – particularly ones related to leadership, planning and communication. Chances are you will see one or more of these messages being expressed in subtle ways that positively reinforce a client’s comfort level in choosing this firm.
