Sometimes, the transition from your mom’s basement to a more professional office with hot tub, bar, and a vending machine can be a bit hard to do. Sure, you could coffice sporadically from Starbucks as a transition, but there are better alternatives for the full professional office experience. While many new firms shop at IKEA for furniture and accesssories, most firms stop there and don’t extend the IKEA gestalt to other areas of their practices—including officing at IKEA. That’s too bad.
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Each week about half a dozen lawyers separately ask to meet with me for blawging advice. Typically, they are blawgers who want to write about social media marketing and law practice management, two areas that continue to be curiously absent on the web. Here’s what I tell them.
Make shit up. No one notices. But—and I emphasize this point with aspiring blawgers by looking menacingly out the window—make sure you include a list of things in the title. Because that’s what Mashable does. A top ten this, eleven essential thats, five ways to optimize those. As I think Kevin O’Keefe said recently, “lists are da blawger’s bomb.”
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At Big Legal Brain, we’re big fans of 3 1/4 inch floppy disks, the real workhorse of data storage. Our love of the floppy explains in part why we were saddened by Steve Jobs’s death late last year. To us, Jobs exuded floppy disk like no other.
Like recent purveyors of cassette tapes, however, we get razzed quite a bit by our more tech-inclined lawyer colleagues, especially those who switched to using Zip drives early on. But in the spirit of keeping the floppy disk trade active and growing, here are three top floppy disks we came across in the past year, each worth tracking down at the flea market or ordering through our affiliate link with iOmega.
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When I sit around eating chicken Kiev at banquets with doctors and dentists I typically take away one lesson: pediatrics. As in that kid thing. For too long, doctors, dentists, and day care providers have dominated the pediatric niche, commanding respect and huge incomes simply by serving kids as young as six months. With current law firm revenue stagnant and future revenue hinging on the failure of LegalZoom, it’s time that lawyers consider developing a pediatric niche to build a solid future. Here’s how.
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I have a friend in the business who asked about how best to become a “badass motherfucker.” He uses this phrase whenever we get around to talking about his trial work in the ERISA area, and it’s now something he is aspiring to be. I don’t know why, but it appeals to him to have that tagline on his website and to rebrand himself successfully as the “badass motherfucker” of ERISA litigation.
While I understand the desire to be feared by other litigants, being a badass motherfucker at trial or in practice raises some red flags, particularly ethical red flags. While the model rules of professional conduct do not specifically address being a badass motherfucker attorney, here are some rules to consider before going through the effort of rebranding yourself as one mean hombre.
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Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 5 sometime today. For most technologically-savvy lawyers, this means that you should be live-blogging the event and Tweeting about what you heard about what some guy heard about what another guy saw when he was in a bar in China two months ago. And if you are a blogging lawyer like myself, you also need to weigh in on the key differences between the two phones. While I don’t have an iPhone 4 and don’t have a clue about the new iPhone 5 iPhone 4S, I still write for a law-related blog. Accordingly, here are the key differences between your current shitty iPhone and Apple’s next upgrade.
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Whenever I am in the office and going about my work, I get side comments from staff that loosely translate as “sure, whatever, Old Bone Kenobi.” It generally comes when I ask Greg to fax something for me or if I’m hanging out at the water cooler in the lobby and talking about practicing law out of my car. Over the years, though, I’ve noticed the comments are increasing, so much so that I’m concerned I’ve become what’s well-known in the legal marketing business as “Old Codger Lawyer,” a species of lawyer that is at least two generations behind but still proudly unaware of it. Thankfully, I’ve done some initial research and, thanks to younger associates, have some advice on what to look for and what to avoid.
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Today’s grammar lesson is brought to you by the word “etc.,” short for etcetera and generally signifying “ah, screw it and such.” But are lawyers using etcetera in their practices? You betcha. Sprint’s online terms and conditions have 40 etcetera’s sprinkled throughout the contract. Lawyers for Mail Boxes Etc. use the term liberally throughout most of that company’s legal papers. Should the common lawyer use it in important legal documents? Yes. Here’s how and when you should use this nifty little legal gem.
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I normally don’t go negative. Meaning that, like most of my law practice management colleagues, I like to list all sorts of things you should do and even sprinkle a few exclamation points in my explanations!! Y’know, the whole “Top 5 Things You Should Remember Occasionally.” But theoretically there are things big firms should not do, such as spank clients or add a law firm taco bar. Or at least not do them without having consulted an expert like me. Which gets us back to my thoughts on the worst team-building exercises for law firms. Sure, most team-building exercises work well, like tailgating in a parking lot before a partner’s big ERISA trial. But others are not such a good idea. Here are five.
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Many big firms today take pride from employing well-rounded associates who can fit in at the opera just as easily as at the theatre. But outside of the traditional activities of a highly-paid professional, what are good hobbies for big firm associates? What should they do to burn off the extra half-hour at the end of the week? Competitive eating and reality television show appearances are now passe. Luckily, at Big Legal Brain Analytics, we’ve studied the hobbying habits of law firm associates and have compiled the top five acceptable hobbies for big firm associates.
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