Operations

You’ve seen the cartoon and its captions (or some version of it) a thousand times: On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.  And while it’s true that the cloud, the web and social media make it all too easy for a lawyer to throw up a website that conveys the impression of a statewide,…

A few weeks ago, Scott Greenfield bemoaned the demise of quality of continuing legal education (CLE) (if there ever was such a thing). As Scott observes, most CLE today consists either of panels of experienced lawyers who show up prepared with nothing but a bunch of war stories or fluff programs on marketing or ipad…

Editor’s Note: Sometimes solo practice doesn’t work out.  Recently, a member of one of my listserves shared one of the best and most objective post-mortem analyses of a solo practice that didn’t quite make it to the finish line.  Despite increasing momentum towards the end of the second year, the author (who has a family…

Editor’s Note:  In the previous post, the solo lawyer who is transitioning out of his practice mentioned that his online marketing efforts were starting to bear fruit.  In this post, there’s a description of the activities that started the turn-around.  Don’t get the wrong idea – online marketing isn’t a silver bullet since if you…

Talk about value-pricing makes me crabby.  It’s not that I’m a fan of the billable hour or that I fear that flat fees (one type of alternative pricing) put lawyers at risk of under-recovery.  Rather, it’s just that many of the alternative/value-pricing gurus are so darn opaque about how to implement alternative pricing that the…

So what’s the newest start-up trend?  Doing it on the fly.  That’s the conclusion reached by Anthony Tjan as part of the research he’s preparing for a book on successful small businesses, recently reported by Forbes.  According to Tjan: One of our most striking findings was that of the entrepreneurs we surveyed who had a…

Along with several other solo colleagues, I’m quoted in this exhaustive Maryland Daily Record  piece on office rental options here in the D.C. area.  One aspect of the article that surprised me is the wide disparity in rental prices across the region.  One of the attorneys profiled pays $1900 for space in Beltsville, Maryland that…

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported on the changing look of law firm offices. To make more efficient use of space in a down economy, firms are reducing office size, assigning the same sized offices irrespective of seniority and moving lawyers to interior spaces once reserved for administrative staff.  Firms are also shifting…