I have the pleasure of giving three presentations in the next week, two in Denver for the American Bar Association’s General Practice Solo and Small Firm Conference on October 21st, and one for the Boston Bar Association on October 26th. 

My two presentations in Denver are titled “Setting Up a Law Office: Do It Right and Ethically the First Time, “ and “Social Networking for Lawyers 201,” while the presentation for the Boston Bar Association is entitled “Managing Client Expectations.”

In preparing for these three, I realized there was a common thread running through the programs that many attorneys don’t realize as they are starting a new venture, be it a lateral move or a move straight from law school.  With competition for business at such a high level, lawyers should be marketing their value and not their service.

Before you scream “blasphemy,” let me try to explain.  I’m certain that you are more than qualified to handle that real estate transaction, that sophisticated merger and acquisition, or divorce.  I trust your will can’t be beat.  But neither can your competition’s and, if you’re starting out a new practice, even if you have been practicing for years, it’s never easy to beat out the competition.

So how do we compete?  The answer is simple:

Market your value. Your value is your knowledge.

Marketing and promoting your value requires a different philosophical approach than marketing your services.  Think Starbucks.  Why do people pay $5.00 for a cup of coffee?  Because Starbucks offers a coffee bar.  Competitors such as Dunkin Donuts doesn’t.  Starbucks’ product?  A cup of coffee. While competition has entered Starbucks’ value-driven domain, Starbucks still remains the top coffeehouse in the country.  Think JetBlue.  How did this start-up corner the market in the early part of this decade?  They hired non-union employees, flew to secondary markets, was one of the first carriers to have in-seat entertainment systems, and focused on customer service.  Their product?  A plane flight.  And while we now have direct competition to Jet Blue in the form of Spirit, Southwest and Air Tran, none of those providers have equipment with in-seat televisions in economy class, so Jet Blue remains at the forefront of value-based travel.

That brings us back to starting your practice.  If your competitor in a neighboring suite, or even down the street, provides the same service as you, do you have a plan in place to compete?  There are several ways to quantify your value to your potential client base, but I would start with a six-minute presentation my good friend Jay Shepherd made at this years’ Techshow in Chicago for IgniteLaw.  Essentially, Jay is explaining to the audience that, as lawyers, we should stop focusing on selling our legal services and shift your focus on how you value and price your knowledge.

Once you’ve watched Jay’s video, think of it this way.  Your client doesn’t care about how you do their will, or how you prepare their contract.  Your client wants results.  And if you convince your client that you have the knowledge and the most effective means to get those results, they will retain you.  So it’s up to you to shift your focus from the areas of law which you practice, to aggressively market your knowledge in those areas of law, and the value you will bring to your potential client.  And how do we do this?  All three of my presentations will be webcast, and I hope you will have an opportunity to see the presentations, either live or be electronic feed.

With the introduction of the Data Privacy Act, I often get asked for the easiest way to email documents as an encrypted email.  Office 2007 has a simple, three-step process in doing so.  But first, a small discussion about passwords. 

• 1. Make your password complex and make certain it contains both characters and numbers.  Consider adding a special character as well ($, %, &, etc…)
• 2. DO NOT EMAIL THE PASSWORD, EITHER WITH THE ENCRYPTED DOCUMENT, OR EVEN IN A SEPARATE EMAIL.  A simple phone call will do the trick just fine.
• 3. Consider the recipient – make certain the recipient will not forget the password, and make certain the recipient doesn’t share the password with those who should not have it. 

In my practice, the password I use will likely be some combination of my client’s and opposing client’s name (either first, last or combination), as well as some identifying feature about the matter, such as part of the docket number, DIA Board number, year of the loss, etc… I then call either the adjuster or counsel and let them know that this will be the password to use when receiving any documents from me. 

Now, for the good stuff.  And remember, this is for use with any document in Office 2007 (Word, Excel, etc…) 

• 1. Open the document you wish to encrypt. 
• 2. Click the “Office” button at the upper left corner of the page 
• 3. Select “Prepare” 
• 4.  Click “Encrypt Document” 

• 5. The “Encrypt Document” dialog box will open, and this is where you type in your password.  After you have typed in your password, click “OK.” 

• 6. After you click “OK,” click the Office button at the top right, select “Save As,” as if you were saving any document, and save where you want the document to be saved. Just note that Office 2007 will not automatically save the document.  Once you have selected a password, it must be re-saved in order to encrypt it.

When the recipient receives the document, a box will appear requesting the recipient to enter a password to open the document.

Voila!  Pretty simple and something you can accomplish in about 30 seconds after a few attempts.You can also change the password by doing the following:

1.     Click the “Office” button, then go to “Save As”

2.     Select “Tools,” then “General Options”

3.     It will ask for the password to open, then ask you to type in the new password That’s it.  Easy and painless.  Next time we will talk Office 2003. 

I have been emailed, written, called, and conversed with ad nauseum about the Data Privacy Act and what it means to Massachusetts attorneys.  Having read, re-read, and slept with both G.L. c. 93H and 201 CMR 17.00 under my pillow, I still cannot comprehend fully why the entire Act applies to attorneys, how attorneys are to fully comply with the Act (except we need our maintenance people to sign papers by 2012), and how the OCABR would learn of a breach and enforce the Act against non-compliant attorneys.

There are many articles and blogs written about how the Act applies to attorneys and how attorneys, in turn, can comply with the Act and, should you wish to educate yourself more about the Act I suggest you start with the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program’s (“LOMAP”) “Law Practice Advisor” blog, where there are several in-depth articles written about the Act. 

However, if you are like me, a “show me” kind of person, I recommend that you attend the Data Privacy Act plenary session at the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Annual Conference on Thursday, March 11 at the Westin Copley Place. Beginning at 9:00 A.M., the topics will include “What is the Data Privacy Act?” presented by David Felper, Esq. of Bowditch and Dewey, followed by “It’s Lost – Now What?” by attorney Scott Schafer of the Office of the Attorney General, and finally “Key Tools to Prevent a Breach,” presented by Blake Martin, IT Director of Sten-Tel in Springfield.  The session will conclude with a panel discussion featuring the speakers, along with attorney Daniel C. Crane and Kurt Baumgarten, VP of Information Security at Pentus Security in East Longmeadow.  You may notice that several of the speakers are from Western Massachusetts.  That’s because this very same program was attended by close to 600 people in Springfield last month!

 Knowing the content of what will be discussed, I guarantee you that you will come out of that session understanding what you need to do to comply with the Act.

To register for the conference, click here.  Hope to see you all next week.

I welcome you to attend this year’s MBA Annual Conference, scheduled for March 11^th and 12^th at the Copley Westin inBoston.  Having spoken at several of these events and attended many more, I don’t kid when I tell you that this year’s conference will be the best one put on by the MBA.

The Conference will kick off Thursday at 9:00 with a three-hour plenary session on the Data Privacy Act, including discussions on “What is the Data Privacy Act,” “It’s Lost, Now What,” as well as “Key Tools to Prevent a Breach.”  This same session was attended by approximately 600 participants last month in Springfield.

There will be a lunchtime session on “Social Media For Lawyers: How to Boost Your Practice and Avoid Pitfalls,” chaired by my good friend Bob Ambrogi.

In the afternoon, Dustin Cole, President of Attorneys Master Class based out of Florida, as well as my mentor, will provide a three hour session on “Building Your Business in the Post-Crash Economy.”  If you have never heard Dustin speak, now is the time, as his advice has been the cornerstone of both my private practice as well as Law Practice Strategies since 2000.

Thursday will also feature one-hour sessions on Recent Developments in Bankruptcy Law, Real Estate Law, and Employment Law.

Friday promises to be equally exciting with two tracks, one a “Recent Developments” track featuring some of the finest attorneys in Massachusetts, as well as a full-day Law Practice Management Track. 

Allison Shields of Legal Ease Consulting, based out of New York, will be speaking on “Avoiding Lawyer Meltdown,” along with Lisa Terrizzi and Gina Walcott, Executive Director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers.

Ross Kodner, President of MicroLaw, and based out of Milwaukee, will be giving a tremendously-received discussion titled “From Paper to Pixels: The Paper LESS Office Works, Paperless Doesn’t.”  Local ABA Blog Top 100 attorneys Gabriel Cheong, Leanna Hamill and Andrea Goldman will be discussing how to get the best bang for your buck with technology.

The Law Practice Management track will conclude with the ever-popular and always enjoyable “60 Sites in Sixty Minutes,” presented by Rodney Dowell, Bob Ambrogi, Ross Kodner and myself.  Having seen the sites, I promise you that you will not want to leave the conference early.

The entire lineup of the conference can be found here.  You may register online here.

The MBA has turned up the heat on bringing Massachusetts Attorneys the best national speakers, speaking on their specific area of expertise.  At some point in my legal career, I have been influenced by each of these individuals.  The price of admission will pale in comparison to the amount of information you will receive and bring back to your practice.  I promise you that you will be changed person after this conference.

I hope to see you there.

If you are an Acrobat user and was wondering why there were bugs when using the redaction function or renaming the page range when using the Bates Numbering tool, there was a reason – bugs.  Rick Borstein recently posted that an update is available to rid your Acrobat of these critters.  Click here to get your update now.

I know its been some time since I last posted, and I apologize.   While there is no good excuse to not keep one’s blog updated, even a short paragraph to say you still exist, the past 5 months have been interesting, which is a diplomatic way of saying it’s been crazy, and not always in a good way.  I’ve taken my life experiences, both good and not-so-good, the past few months and have prepared outlines for some articles, hopefully to be published by the American Bar Association and my friends at Total Attorneys, depending on whether or not I can write about my life with a deadline looming. 

Last week, I recently hopped back on the wagon to attend some meetings at the ABA’s General Practice Small and Solo Conference in Los Angeles.  I must first confess that I don’t like Los Angeles.  Most of my paranoia is from preconceived notions about losing hubcaps within blocks after having rented your car, smog, crowd, and the Lakers.  I was pleasantly surprised when the smog lifted the day I arrived to reveal blue skies, but I still hate the Lakers. 

The 3 day conference, while filled primarily with marketing and strategy meetings, featured several tracks regarding law practice management and, while the name of the section implies the sessions were focused on small firms and solo practitioners, this was not the case.  The first session I attended featured my friends Lisa Solomon and Nicole Black discussing “Six Important Principles for Effective Participation in Social Media Platforms”  The materials may be found here.  If, however, there are a few pearls from that session which I can impart to you immediately, it is that you cannot just join a site such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook and just start posting away.  You need to first set your goals for participation, then create an identity for yourself and be consistent with your message.  This is a major reason why I do not accept a client’s friend request on my Facebook account.  My Facebook account is, and will always be, a personal social media platform for me, while you will regularly find my legal content on my Twitter and LinkedIn pages. 

I then attended back-to-back presentations from friend and baseball purist Ross Kodner.  Other than having an affinity for some of the finer foods containing chili and carbohydrates, Ross is one of the finest legal tech minds I know.  He is generous with his time and knowledge (he shares his CLE powerpoints here)  Ross’ first presentation dealt specifically with top Word, WordPerfect, Outlook and Acrobat tips, my favorite for Acrobat being the Ctrl-B shortcut to create a bookmark, as well as creating Auto Text entries in Word.  His second presentation focused on creating proper “naming conventions” for your firm (isn’t it easier to find a document titled “2009.10.14 letter to Bill Clinton re: TRO,” rather than “ltr to Bill Clinton?”)  He also discussed document management systems, Worldox specifically, and their benefits for a legal practice of any size. 

My friend and Acrobat guru and mentor David Masters discussed Acrobat tips and how to get the most out of it.  David discussed how all attorneys should be doing their document management in Acrobat because of its sheer power, from processes as easy as converting a Word file to Acrobat by just hitting the Adobe PDF button on the top of Word, to combining files of any type by just hitting the “Combine” button on Acrobat, to more advanced functions such as Bates Stamping, which is essentially a three-keystroke process (Advanced-Document Processing-Bates Stamping) 

While I am a contingency attorney, many of my clients are not, so my last session was “Fees, Finance & Frugality), presented by Allison Shields of Legal Ease Consulting and Kevin Chern, President of Total Attorneys.  Allison and Kevin presented a smart and informative session on how to 1) discuss billing issues with your clients, and 2) how to bill your clients.  For the former, the two noted that many attorneys they speak to are apprehensive about discussing billing with their clients.  Allison and Kevin stated that discussing fees as early as possible in the relationship not only gets it out of the way, but it 1) establishes boundaries in the attorney-client relationship and 2) sets out goals by discussing billing levels for certain aspects of the scope of later work potentially contracted.  Kevin also mentioned that a client whose first question is “how much do you charge” is most likely a tire kicker and will be speaking with other attorneys as well.  With respect to how to bill your clients, the two agreed that it is imperative to bill often and regularly.  A client is more likely to pay a $500.00 bill every two weeks than a $2,000.00 bill received every two months.  Lastly, the two mentioned that it is beneficial to bill soon after a good result or good news, an obvious yet rarely-considered point.  In my opinion, this panel was one of the highlights of the weekend and I strongly urge that you download the materials.

Prior to my departing for the flight from LAX to Boston, I stopped by the Staples Center to give the Lakers another chance.  While it didn’t, I left Los Angeles with some solid morsels which I am passing on to you as well as my clients.  If you are not a member of the ABA, I suggest you do, as this conference was excellent, and I presume all future ones will be as well.  As stated before, as an added feature, you can download all the materials from the GP Solo and Small Firm Conference here.  While still not a fan of LA, I have become a bigger fan of the ABA General Practice Solo and Small Firm Section, its leaders and volunteers, and hope to provide you with additional law practice management tips and tricks in the months ahead.  Until then, look for me at www.twitter.com/AlanKlevan, where I will be spreading the gospel in 140 characters or less.

If you don’t already know, ABA TECHSHOW, held annually in Chicago, is the world’s premier legal technology CLE conference and Expo.  For three days in the spring,  hundreds of attendees get a choice of over 60 programs to attend spread out over multiple sessions, while over one hundred vendors display for us their latest products.

This year’s TECHSHOW, which wrapped up on April 4th, was filled with powerful tips, tricks, practical advice and everything else a lawyer or firm would want in learning how to make his or her practice more efficient and profitable.  The enitre weekend was Tweeted extensively and you can click here and enter #techshow for a complete recap, as well as finding out what others are still saying about the event.

I was fascinated by this year’s keynote speaker, Richard Susskind, who captivated the audience by discussing his latest book The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. Susskind is a technology advisor to legal practices worldwide and has written several books on the changing legal world. 

During his keynote, Susskind described that, while attorneys are experts at reacting to certain situations and clients’ demands, attorneys rarely focus on providing proactive legal services.  He describes that lawyering is moving away from terrestrial methods, and the legal profession will soon be under “one virtual roof,” driven by online collaborative tools.  For the less venturous attorney, the legal profession will soon have changed completely and left him or her behind.  For the progressive attorney willing to venture out to cyberspace, opportunities abound.

Throughout the year I will hope to focus on and review some of the products offered by the vendors.  While too numerous to mention here, I invite you to peruse the vendor list on the TECHSHOW website.  Contact them, as they will be more than willing to discuss your situation and determine of their products are right for your practice.  These are the tools to which was Susskind was referring in making us all “procative” attorneys.

We are clearly seeing a paradigm shift in the way law is practiced.  Susskind tells us that clients want more services for less money.  Attorneys need to convince their prospective clients that they can provide more value than the competitor. Attorneys need to display this value to their clients so their clients will pay promptly and in full.  When it comes to the delivery of quality legal services, we must embrace existing and emerging technologies and use them efficiently in order to not just succeed, but thrive.

The list of legal programs from TECHSHOW 2009 can be found here.  I presume that many of these sessions, as well as new and exciting ones, are already being considered for TECHSHOW 2010, scheduled for March 25-27, 2010.  Hope to see you there!

My friend David Bilinsky is the Practice Management Advisor and staff lawyer for the Law Society of British Columbia.  I read his Thoughtful Legal Management blog religiously, perhaps because he always incorporates some obscure lyrics and/or songs into each blog.  All kidding aside, his posts are informative and provocative while easy to understand.  His recent blog “The Paper-less Practice of Law in BC,” actually rings true for why attorneys across the country should embrace the notion of a “Less Paper” law practice.

Tomorrow is going to be great. It’s my type of seminar.  I, along with many of my colleagues, will be presenting at tomorrow’s Legal Tech seminar at the Sheraton Framingham, just off of Exit 12 on the Mass Pike.  It’s my type of seminar because we’re giving this to you in 15 minute spurts, not hour-long talking head presentations.  On the menu?

Rodney Dowell will be speaking on naming conventions for your files.

I will be speaking on the best PDF tricks for lawyers. I’m throwing in scanning tips as well.

Jared Correia will be speaking on Outlook tricks. Think OHIO (Only Handle It Once)

Chris Perruzzi will be speaking about Dragon Naturally Speaking

Andrea Goldman and David Harlow will be speaking on social networking

Rodney, Jared and Mark Kupsc will be speaking about the new Data Privacy Act

Then LexisNexis is providing a free hour on search engine marketing.

There are going to be lots of vendors showcasing lots of cool toys and stuff.

The best part?  This is all free.

Come on down and say hello.  This is gonna rock.

And don’t forget to listen to WBZ 1030 AM on your way over.  You may hear a familiar voice discussing the Tech Fair during the business news portion of the news…

If you are at Techshow Boston tomorrow, or even if you’re not, get connected!  My friend, Jared Correia of LOMAP will be blogging live all day long.  Also, we will be Tweeting, so follow that as well by following www.twitter.com/TechshowBoston.  You can participate by adding the hashtag #techbos.  Or, go to www.search.twitter.com and enter the hashtag and you will see all posts regarding Techshow Boston.  Either way, stay connected and stay informed!