Originally posted in The National Law Journal on September 27, 2012 Life is full of tough decisions. Do I go out with friends or stay home tonight? Do I choose the filet mignon or the lobster? One of life’s other tough questions is: “With whom should I connect on Linkedin?” Whether you have joined Linkedin.com…
Originally posted in The National Law Journal on September 20, 2012 How can you identify spam? Easily enough: It stinks. Spam is unwanted email or online messages sent from people we don’t know with the purpose of selling to us, or worse. Lawyers need to be especially careful of three types of dangerous spam: phishing…
When social media are done right, they allow people to connect on a human level. Talking about your vacations, your sports teams, the victories and triumphs of your children is fair game. Some Facebook and Twitter users like to keep it more professional, only sharing business-related stories and non-contentious discussions about the law. But what…
Originally posted in The National Law Journal on August 16, 2012 Listen to your client. Sounds obvious, and in fact, there’s a trend among law firms toward structured client feedback exercises to formalize the listening process. Still, many firms resist—either because they don’t think their clients want to talk about the relationship or they believe…
Originally posted in The National Law Journal on August 9, 2012 The quickest and most effective way to turn a lawyer into a rainmaker is through business development coaching. So how do you pick the right lawyers to coach? To answer this question, I interviewed one of the top business development coaches in the country,…
Originally posted in The National Law Journal on July 30, 2012 “I tried out Twitter; I’m just not sold on how useful it is,” a lawyer told me recently. “Well, how much effort have you put into it?” I wondered. “I created my profile, uploaded a couple of pictures, followed a bunch of people, and…
Originally posted in The National Law Journal on July 16, 2012 Bringing in big deals, new litigation, or the highly coveted anchor client is kind of like being struck by lightning. As it happens, a 48-year-old New Jersey woman was struck by lightning just the other weekend. A bolt from the blue, just like landing…