My Shingle

June 2012

Does It Make Your Heart Sing? A Litmus Test for Law Firm Decisions

June 28, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

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 [...]

Read more MyShingle Solo 7 comments

Is Lawyer Advertising Contract To the Tune of $2680 Per Lead Also A Fee Splitting Arrangement?

June 25, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

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 unpaid fees [...]

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Why Does Having It All Mean Working for Others All The Time?

June 22, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

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 in [...]

Read more Work Life Balance 2 comments

Is the ABA Ethics 2020 Committee Actually Reading the Comments? What’s Wrong With My Proposal on Model Rule 5.5?

June 21, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Granted, I’m not a legal ethics professor or scholar, a marketing guru or an affiliate of a vendor or insurance company that sponsors the ABA.  Still, I expected that because I am practicing lawyer  (albeit not a virtual one) who takes ethics seriously and bears the brunt of any newfangled initiatives, that the ABA Ethics [...]

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Advance Your Practice With FastCase’s FREE Advance Sheets

June 20, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

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 [...]

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Announcing WEBINAR: The Art, Science & Ethics of the 21st Century Retainer Agreement

June 19, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Last week, I posted here  about the Art, Science & Ethics of the 21st Century Retainer Agreement, a new program that I initially rolled out.  I’ve ramped it up even more and the result is a 90 minute webinar, along with a 40+ page ebook with sample clauses, templates, forms and ethics discussions of retainer [...]

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Photos Make the Website So Rock Them; Don’t “Stock” Them

June 14, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

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 [...]

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Why The Best Solo and Small Firm Lawyers Aren’t the Best Entrepreneurs

June 12, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

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 [...]

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Lawyers Aren’t Just Subject to Ethical Advertising Rules, But Platform Terms of Service

June 8, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

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 [...]

Read more Mistakes/What NOT To Do 1 comment

Preliminary Results In: Facebook Ads Don’t Seem to Work

June 8, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

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 might play [...]

Read more New Marketing Ideas 4 comments

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