| Business Strategy and Development |
| 10 Tips for Building a Better Clientele |
The impact of poor client selection and sloppy client service will be magnified in trying economic times. You want to proactively take steps to build and retain a better clientele. Here are pointers to help you meet that goal.
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| 10 Ways to Stretch Your Research Dollars - How to Get the Facts on a Dime |
The current economic climate makes pinching pennies more important than ever. Fortunately, today the Web puts amazing research resources at your fingertips— and many of them are low-to-no cost. Here are some ideas for keeping your research overhead as low as possible by doing it the online way.
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| 15 Recession-Response Tips for Small Firm Lawyers |
Solo and small firm lawyers can’t afford to take a stick-your-head-in-the-sand approach to dealing with this economy. If you’re in denial, you’ll likely perish. If you want to survive—and who doesn’t?—get moving on this to-do list.
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| Bottom-Line Client Development Tips |
Client development ideas - from allocating marketing dollars to putting incentives in your compensation system and more—all filtered through the finance lens, of course.
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| Capital Ideas – Raising Money During a Credit Crunch |
Money is essential to keep a law firm running, and Ed Poll explains some tips for creating capital even during tough economic conditions.
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| Cash and Carry: Cash Management Carries Your Firm Through Tough Times |
Advice on how to insure that your firm will operate successfully in a tight credit market and ways to remain solvent in a troubled economic climate.
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| Developing Your Practice |
Developing a successful practice requires long-term planning and a candid look at where you are now and where you want to be down the road. Here are the basic, but critical, aspects of successful practice development.
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| Economy Renews Billable Hour Debate |
The economic recession has renewed the debate about the billable hour as more litigation clients look for ways to reduce legal expenses. Litigators now are using alternative fee arrangements with varying degrees of success. The most popular seem to be blended hourly rates, contingency fees, and flat or fixed fees.
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| Finding Some Silver in the Financial Clouds: Technology Tips |
While the recession is painful, it truly offers opportunities to revamp your practice, including in the technology area.
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| Get Down to Business: Strategies to Manage in a Down Economy |
Strategies for cutting expenses and enhancing revenue in a down economy are fundamental to “The Business of Law”®. The firms whose attorneys understand these two truths will be able to manage in a down economy successfully while ensuring their long-term future and success.
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| How to Survive in a Down Economy |
Whether you call it a recession, a slump or a slowdown, the economy is clearly in a time of decline. While this especially affects firms with financial institution and real estate practices, most firms will feel the pinch one way or another. In this special roundtable, strategies that firms should take to cope with a downturn are discussed.
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| In A Tough Economy, the Importance of Effective Client Screening |
Making appropriate screening decisions prior to taking on a client’s matter is always important; but even more so in a tough economy. Here are some recommendations that will help you make the critical judgments necessary to determine if potential work is right for you, your potential client, and your bottom line.
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| Is Office Rent Killing Your Bottom Line? Tips For Negotiating a Better Lease |
Next to payroll, the single largest item on a law firm’s monthly balance sheet is usually office rent. In this environment, strong negotiation by law firm tenants is essential.
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| Keeping Your Office-Sharing Arrangements Squeaky Clean Under the Ethics Rules |
Before entering into an office sharing arrangement with another lawyer it is imperative that you know exactly what you can and cannot share, whether it be rent, computers—or even clients.
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| Keeping Your Practice Out of the Hole: Finance Tips |
There are steps you can take immediately to get your finances on more solid ground. Here are some financial tools that you can use today to pave the way to a brighter financial picture tomorrow.
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| Leading Through the Economic Storm |
In addition to the increasing complexity of law as a business, we are facing economic uncertainty, disruptive local and global events, and new leadership in Washington, D.C. Here are six key ways to stay strong despite the economic storm and ready your firm to grab new opportunities
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| Let Your Business Plan Guide You |
A business plan is frequently called “a road map” as it provides much-needed focus and direction for business owners. Having a business plan will help you view yourself as an entrepreneur, attract more clients, and achieve your business goals.
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| Personal Profitability in a Downturn: Tips for Protecting Your Practice in Turbulent Seas |
Predictions look dire for all types of businesses, including law practices, in the coming year. But take heart—industrious and well-prepared law practices can actually thrive. Here are steps that all lawyers can take to protect their personal profitability in the downturn.
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| Pooling Practices |
How law firms are meeting the demands of the current crisis.
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| Prepare Now for Competition Ahead |
What can you do now to actively protect your client base?
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| Protecting Your Bottom Line in Tough Times: Management Tips |
Jobs are evaporating, money is tight, and credit is nearly nonexistent. Firms are feeling the pinch and we’d like to offer some tips for surviving this recession. Read about management, marketing, technology and finance tips—with special emphasis on profitability and your bottom line.
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| Reaching Out to Help Clients Cope with the Economy |
Lawyers have heard that existing clients are their best sources of new revenue. But ironically, in today’s tough market, few are actually bothering to proactively contact their clients simply to find out if they could help them cope with the economic uncertainty. Perhaps it is out of fear of not knowing what to say or do. Try this.
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| Recession 2008: Ten Steps Solos Should Take Right Now |
Ten steps you can take to help soften any blow that your law practice might take if the economy does turn south
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| Recession Advice for Mediators |
When a mediation practice slows, there are three things that mediators can do to make productive use of increased down time. They can increase their marketing efforts, improve or update the administrative infrastructure of their practices, and they can hone their skills
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| Recession-Proof Your Practice |
Implementing a proper business model with cost controls is paramount for any business’ success. Here are 10 strategies that can help your practice thrive while those around you may be sputtering.
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| Retool Your Intake And Convening Process To Survive (And Even Prosper) During Troubling Financial Times |
This article will explore several strategies that might help you survive this downturn and prepare for many years of future profitability.
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| Riding the Economic Roller Coaster: What Not to Do in the Downswing |
Riding the economic cycle as a law firm leader has much the same effect as riding a roller coaster. Whether times are good or bad, it’s hard to imagine them being otherwise.
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| Smart First Steps When Going Solo |
Starting your own law firm can be the best experience in the world; it can also feel like the most daunting task you will ever undertake. Having just started our own firm, we offer the following guidance to consider before diving into your own practice.
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| Survival of the Nimblest: Tips to Help Your Firm Adapt to Financial Change |
Turbulent financial times remind us that the only thing that’s constant is change. So to ease you into a financial frame of mind that will help you be prepared for change here’s some quick advice to incorporate into your planning.
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| Surviving and Thriving in a Tough Economy |
Lawyers and legal administrators should consider these strategies in order to survive, and even thrive, in these turbulent times. Here are seven tips for your firm to remain competitive in a down economy.
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| Surviving the Tsunami: How to Stay High and Dry during Troubled Times |
Read about how we are now forced to either adapt to the changing economic times, or get swept away by the "one in a century credit tsunami."
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| Technology in Trying Times |
Technology can be a saving grace whether you are trying to become more organized, increase productivity, or simply make your professional life a bit easier to manage. However, technology can also be quite costly. Learn some tips for using technology to save money in trying times.
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| Tips for Effective Law Firm Planning |
If your firm still thinks of strategic planning as a "trend," think again. Strategic planning has evolved into a management imperative and can no longer be viewed as "something we ought to get around to someday." It can be a challenge to get started, but many benefits will accrue when you get moving toward shared goals.
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| Twenty Strategies in a Slowdown |
We've all heard lots of advice for the recession, but here are 20 ideas you may not have considered yet.
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| Two Techniques to Dramatically Improve a Law Firm's Net Profit |
Write-downs and ineffective collections practices hurt many law firms’ bottom lines. Understanding these processes and how they work will help your firm increase its net profit.
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| Upside of the Recession |
Overall, for firms that are not leveraged and are willing to be flexible, the times are not as bad as many legal blogs report.
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| What To Do When Your Firm Implodes |
In this difficult economy, attorneys around the country may find themselves wondering—what should we do if our firm falls apart tomorrow? They continue to have ethical duties to the clients and the firm amidst the wind-up of their business concerns.
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| Human Resources |
| Employment Law: To Notice or Not to NoticeTHE WARN ACT |
Some companies are facing the difficult decision of whether to implement mass layoffs or close divisions or departments. As a result, businesses are looking to legal counsel to instruct them about what legal issues may arise when taking such actions.
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| How Can You Cut the Cost of Your Firm's Greatest Asset? |
As firms lose business, many are turning their cost-cutting sights on their greatest asset and biggest expense: their people. But out of serious challenge comes the opportunity to examine the entire spectrum of talent management and compensation—and to restructure the firm’s business model in overdue ways.
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| Leadership After the Layoffs |
If you have been forced to lay off employees due to the economic downturn, the future success of the firm may be determined by how you demonstrate leadership after these decisions have been made. Here is some sage advice for dealing effectively with the staff and attorneys who remain.
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| Ports in the Storm: Lawyer Referral Services Can Anchor Lawyers |
Learn how to build your law practice through lawyer referral services, marketing, reconnecting with dead ends and more.
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| Restoring Optimism |
Read about what firm managers can do to maintain a positive environment in a difficult economic climate.
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| Starting the New Year with Optimism |
Although the current economic situation is daunting, there are still reasons to be optimistic as you look forward in 2009, not the least of which is that your attitude may impact outcomes for you and your firm.
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| The Human Side of Layoffs: Carrying Out the Hard Decision |
Guidance on the painful choice of letting people go, what procedures to follow, and how to communicate your decisions after the fact.
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| Trends in Paying Partners and Associates in Trying Times |
Firms continue to make serial adjustments to their personnel ranks, with layoffs, furloughs, reduced hours, and wage freezes and reductions all part of the arsenal.
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| What Should You Do Now? A Roundtable Discussion on Law Practice in a Time of Great Economic Turmoil |
The economic turmoil rumbling through the land has lawyers facing layoffs, uncertainty and flat-out fear. In this roundtable discussion, our panel of law practice management experts share their expertise, wisdom and practical tips about what you need to do right now.
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| Will the Recession Kill the Billable Hour? |
What follows is a discussion of how lawyers can value and bill their work accurately and appropriately to provide value to their clients and a reasonable fee structure to ensure profitability.
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| With The Economy Slowing Down, It’s Time For Law Firms To Step Up |
During the holidays there is significant public encouragement to donate to not for profit organizations and help the less fortunate. The author makes a case for lawyers to respond to the growing needs of our citizenry all year round.
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| Working with a Virtual Assistant: What Lawyers and Administrators Should Know |
You may not be ready or able to hire a full-time assistant. The emerging industry of virtual assistants may be able to help you in a timely, cost effective way.
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| Marketing |
| Coaching: Making the Leap from the Remedial to the Strategic |
When economic times are tough, there’s a distinct tendency among the affected lawyers: As your practices slow down, so do your marketing efforts. Why not put some of your extra time into low-cost marketing efforts?
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| Effectively Managing a Scaled-down Marketing Team |
With cutbacks affecting your marketing staff, and morale delicate, boost your team's enthusiasm and productivity by fostering a positive work environment.
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| Rethinking Your Marketing Budget |
For law firms, developing a marketing plan can be an excruciating process. And establishing the marketing budget is invariably the most painful part, especially in a slumping economy. Research suggests that businesses should actually increase promotional spending during difficult economic periods.
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| Things to Do in a Slow Economy: Investing for a Turnaround |
Why not put some of your extra time into low-cost marketing efforts?
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