I am flattered by the invitation to join the Lawyerist community as a contributor. I am excited to share what I know about technology and the internet as they relate to practicing law, as well as marketing and managing a law firm.

I am a University of Michigan (go blue!) and Wayne State University Law School graduate. I worked as a plaintiff’s attorney for two years before my business partner, Jeff Berman, approached me about our current endeavor, AttorneySync.

Now my time is mostly spent introducing lawyers to the internet, and vice versa. However, I do miss all the “fun” of being a lawyer. I don’t fancy myself a guru of anything, but I have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to using technology and the internet to market and manage a law firm.

I am passionate about coaching high school football and watching Michigan football.  I also love philosophy, politics, and technology (including gadgetry, the web, and various other forms of “geekdom”).

I aim to provide usable and digestible legal marketing, management, and practice tips. Please check out our Lawyer Internet Marketing Blog and our attorney internet marketing resources.

I am constantly looking to learn more and meet new people and gladly invite you to connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Lawyerist Contributor: Gyi Tsakalakis is a post from: Lawyerist

A variety of recent studies show that employees’ skills are regularly underutilized. By tapping some of these currently-unknown skills, law firms can find new opportunities for business development, cost savings, and added profitability.

For instance, you might—unknowingly—have an associate who could help with online marketing during slow times, or a secretary with a great idea for how to improve your client service.

How can you find out what additional ideas and skills may be lurking in your office?

Consider these five tips to discover hidden talents in your law firm:

1. Imagine your improved practice:

   Think about what areas of your practice are hurting your profitability or holding you back from growing the way you want. How do you measure success in these areas?

2. Learn about your colleagues:

   Take some time to learn the skills of your employees and fit those strengths to their work assignments. The book “Now, Discover Your Strengths” is a great resource for this!

3. Ask for advice:

   Take some time each week or month to ask your co-workers for ideas about how to make your work and their work better. You should also regularly ask your clients how you could improve your service to them.

4. Celebrate your successes:

   After you successfully tap a hidden talent or idea, acknowledge and celebrate it. Have a pizza party. Give the employee a gift card for a nice dinner. Or just thank them in front of the rest of the staff. Do these things for clients that give you good ideas, too.

5. Measure your results:

   For each new skill or idea you use, make sure you find a mechanism to track its success.

Your homework: Let us know what profitable hidden talents or ideas you discover in your firm.

(photo: ag2r)

Tap the Hidden Talent in Your Law Firm is a post from: Lawyerist

Dan Pink, a non-practicing attorney and former speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, just spent the past couple of years studying the science of employee motivation. He is about to publish a new book on the topic, which you can pre-order on Amazon: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Pink demonstrates that traditional thinking about employee motivation is all wrong. He draws three major conclusions about how to rethink the concept of motivation:

1. Contingent motivators—extrinsic rewards for doing a good job—narrow employee focus, improving their work on simple, clear tasks;
2. These contingent motivators, however, restrict creative thinking on complex problems;
3. To motivate people to complete creative or complex activities, employees need intrinsic motivators, including autonomy, the ability to master a subject, and a clear sense of purpose.

Specific examples of this motivation approach in work include Google’s 20% Time, where engineers are given a full day each week to work on any project they want, and BestBuy’s R.O.W.E system, where employees can work wherever and whenever they want so long as they get their work assignments done.

Take a minute to think if there are ways you could add these intrinsic motivators to your firm, then check out the following 18-minute video of Dan Pink discussing motivation at the recent TED Conference:

(photo: nickwheeleroz)

Rethink Motivation in Your Law Firm is a post from: Lawyerist

Blasphemy! I know it sounds crazy, but law firms and lawyers should realize that hourly billing is not always beneficial to the firm or to the client. And in order to shift away from thinking in terms of hours to thinking in terms of value, law firms must stop tracking time whenever possible.

Instead, you must find new ways to measure value.

For example, if it takes 12 hours to draft a contract for one client, but only 3 hours to polish it up for a second client, why would you bill each client by the hour? Considering the value received, the second client should pay more, not less, since you were able to deliver a superior product in less time.

Similarly, if you fight for two years to obtain a $1.5 million jury verdict for one client, and as a result are able to obtain a $1.5 million settlement fairly easily on a similar issue for a second client, which client has received the better value? The second, undoubtedly. Why, then, should the first client pay more?

When considering whether to accept a client, you should consider two things: (1) the value to the client of the requested work; and (2) the value to the firm of the requested work. Few law firms seem to acknowledge the second, but it is incredibly important.

Every client is an opportunity to bring value to the firm; value beyond the fee paid, in the form of institutional knowledge. Institutional knowledge may be reusable forms, more experienced litigation attorneys, impressive verdicts that make future settlements easier to obtain, and stronger client relationships.

Related: Moving Past the Billable Hour—How do you do it? | Legal Ease Blog

Stop tracking your time is a post from: Lawyerist

Description from MCLE:

The Paperless Office
Presented by Sam Glover; moderated by Peter Berge

Friday, June 6, 2008, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. CDT
1.0 law office management credit
Tuition: $75

The “paperless office” concept has created a trendy buzz in law office management circles. With new, reasonably priced hardware and software, it can also be a reality for any size office. What the paperless law office offers is a great key to efficiency. In this webcast, attorney Sam Glover will provide a practical discussion of how a law office can move toward a more paperless existence. Mr. Glover will provide an overview of the technology and procedures needed and practical tips on how to save money and increase efficiency.

Presented by Samuel J. Glover, Attorney at Law, Minneapolis; moderated by Peter H. Berge, Minnesota CLE, St. Paul.

MCLE webcast: The Paperless Office is a post from: Lawyerist

My good friend and financial advisor, David Benning, recently loaned me The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to do About It, by Michael E. Gerber. David is a small business owner, like me, and he said The E-Myth Revisited had changed the way he approached developing his business.

Let me get this out of the way first: the writing is bad. At times, painfully bad. Like this choice passage:

Tears were streaming down Sarah’s cheeks.Tears of something precious lost and then found. There was a radiant smile on her face. The tears also welled up in my eyes, watching her, understanding what this meant to her, and understanding at the same time what this meant to me.

One has to wonder whether Gerber really wanted to write pulp romance novels.

Despite this, I can see why Dave said it changed the way he approached his own business development. Gerber preaches what he calls the “franchise prototype” model of small business. What he means is this: build your business as if you were building the prototype for a franchise, a packaged business model you could sell repeatedly, whether or not you actually intend to do so.

It is an attractive idea. Script every aspect of your business, from the color of your stationery to the sales floor “pickup lines” to the bookkeeping. Create an organizational chart, even if you are fulfilling all the roles. Build an operations manual for everything you do.

But will it work for a law firm? In particular, will it work for a solo practitioner or small law firm?

Yes, if your goal is to grow into a small (or large) firm. No if you want to stay solo. Gerber points out that a sole proprietorship is a recipe for exhaustion and burnout. And I think he is probably right when it comes to “regular” businesses. Professional businesses are a bit different, and I think we can “stay small” without going insane. If you do want to grow, however, there is a lot to learn from the franchise model. Even if you do not want to grow, there is a lot you can learn from this book.

In either case, The E-Myth Revisited is worth reading. It will change the way you think about your business, and it will fill your head with ideas for streamlining and improving your business. That along is worth the cover price.

Book review: The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber is a post from: Lawyerist

Free is better, and open source is superior. There are fantastic free and open source alternatives to the software lawyers use every day. Here are my top 5 most valuable free applications for lawyers:

1. OpenOffice.org

Office 2007 is pretty, but from a user perspective, it is an upgrade hardly worth the pricetag. Plus, Microsoft’s rejection of Open Document Format, which is becoming the world standard (and should be the courts’ standard, if they can de-Microsoft their thinking), is troubling. OpenOffice.org, or OOo, is a fantastic alternative. It is also in wide use worldwide, and sponsored by Sun Microsystems. This is a full replacement for Office, minus Outlook, and attorneys can make the switch and not look back. Among other things, OOo can save to .doc format, and makes it easier than ever to create PDF versions.

2. TrueCrypt

As I have said many times, encryption is no longer optional. Law firms that do not encrypt client data are risking lawsuits if and when client data is stolen. TrueCrypt is a serious piece of encryption software that makes encryption easy and convenient. My favorite feature is the ability to back up the encrypted container so that my backups are encrypted, as well.

3. AVG or Avast anti-virus

It is a bit eerie how much Norton and McAfee resemble the viruses they protect your computer in. Virus-like, they invade every nook and cranny of your operating system, bogging your computer down. Uninstall them and go with a free alternative that protects just as well and doesn’t slow you to a crawl.

4. GnuCash

Looking to move beyond your outdated accounting software? GnuCash is a double-entry accounting package that should do the trick just fine. If you like sending Quicken files to your accountant, you can do that, too will have to make do with printing out HTML reports (see comment, below).

5. UltraVNC

UltraVNC (and numerous other free VNC applications) lets you access your computer remotely from anywhere. Setup takes just a bit of knowhow, but once you are up and running, it is amazingly smooth. Best of all, you can access your computer using any VNC with any operating system for maximum versatility.

Finally, if you do use free, open-source software, support the project by donating.

Top 5 free, open source applications for lawyers is a post from: Lawyerist