Small Town Solo Professional Lawyers and Your Options

Many lawyers are cutting costs due to competition. Yes, even lawyers have competition
these days even though they seem to have an unlimited number of people to sue. This
is because there are so many lawyers each year graduating from Law School and despite
what you think the Bar Exam is really a piece of cake; lawyers just complain about
it to make you think they are smart.

Of course the big law firms have the most clout, political connections and therefore
a small town lawyer maybe way out of his or her league as a solo professional and
can get buried in the process and therefore as a client it might make sense to allow
some of these small town lawyers who cannot make it in the big league to go out
of business on their own without prolonging this by hiring them. Additionally, as
a client if your small town lawyer solo-professional cannot do the job you will
lose your case and therefore wasted all your money fees and still lose.

One thing I love is to watch these solo-professional lawyers get slammed by the
bigger city lawyers. Of course I also love to see the solo-professional lawyers
slam the big lawyers too. As a matter of fact my favorite lawyer is one who sues
other lawyers or is no longer amongst the living. Consider all this in 2006.

Lance Winslow, a retired entrepreneur, adventurer, modern day philosopher and
perpetual tourist.

7 Rainmaking Ideas For Busy Lawyers

The road to rainmaking success for any professional involves communicating your area of expertise to potential clients through writing and speaking. It is rare to find a successful rainmaker who has not made use of one or both of these two communication formats.

Because of this, attorneys have a distinct advantage over other professionals. The very nature of practicing law already involves both writing and speaking.

Although most of a lawyer?s writing is directed toward other lawyers, most of this written material can be easily reframed to address the questions and concerns of non-lawyers. The typical attorney has filing cabinets full of written material he or she has already produced. With minimal effort, briefs, letters, wills, trust agreements and contracts can all be reworked and revised to become information products like tip sheets, articles, booklets, white papers, speeches and even full-length books.

Moreover, an attorney must read a great many cases, statutes, law journals, court opinions, briefs and letters written by opposing attorneys, and continuing legal education materials. Each of these materials can also be used as the foundation for producing information products.

Here are a few ideas to help get the rainmaking process started:

1. Begin with written materials you have already created. How might potential clients benefit from this information? Can you develop a brief you have written to warn business clients of some pitfalls to be aware of when signing a contract? Can you turn a pre-nuptial agreement into a short article on things to consider when entering into such an agreement?

2. Look for ideas that can be turned into tips sheet articles or a frequently asked questions (FAQs) articles. These are not only popular with readers and magazine editors, they are very easy to write/

3. If you are wanting to attract business clients, seek out the trade publications that service those target industries. Trade magazines are very open to articles written by non-professional writers. When your articles appear in these trade publications, you position yourself as an expert in the legal needs of that specific industry group.

4. Start a blog on a legal niche that you want to get more work in. If you only write two or three paragraphs a day, your material will grow quite rapidly. This material can then be revised into publishable articles. And don?t think starting a blog requires any technical skills. If you can send an email, you can start a blog in less than 15 minutes. Check out blogger.com to see just how easy it is.

5. Repackage the same written material you have been turning into articles and now create speech outlines and handouts to give to your audience. Once you have written a single article on a subject, you should be able to get speaking engagements on that same topic.

6. Repackage your written material once again to create press releases. Tip sheets make great inserts in a press package if the topic is of interest to the publication?s readers.

7. As you start to accumulate more and more written material, you may suddenly realize that just a little more effort could turn it all into a full-length book. Blogging (as long as you have been diligent about writing 2-3 paragraphs a day) especially has a way of writing a book for you, almost without your being aware how much material you have been writing.

   A book is the ultimate rainmaking tool. Your topic may be too specialized to make a lot of money on book sales, but as a way to attract new clients, a book has few equals.

Remember, everything you write or ever have written, can be turned into information products. Non-lawyers find the law very interesting. As long as you can write to non-lawyers and remove jargon from your prose, you will find a receptive audience for your articles and other writings.

freelance copywriter, writing web content, copywriting tips, ghost writer

COPYRIGHT(C)2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.

Download your free copy of 99 Ideas For Writing Irresistible Web Content, written by Charles Brown, a Dallas, Texas based freelance copywriter who writes web copy, advertisements, white papers and direct mail. Subscribe to his "Freelance Copywriter Secrets" at http://dynamiccopywriting.blogspot.com or contact him at 817.715.3852 or **charbrow@gmail.com**.

Go East, Young Man - Exporting American Lawyers to China

A few decades ago there hardly any such field as international law - only domestic law representing clients with funny sounding names. Although that situation has changed, the globe is not yet as borderless as the media would have us believe it is. Nevertheless, US lawyers are heading to China in increasing numbers to practice ?cutting edge? foreign investment law, and many of these adventurers are fresh out of law school. Conventional wisdom has it that heading overseas straight out of law school will ruin your career back home should you ever want to relocate stateside.

I beg to differ. I know of a young man who graduated from law school in the mid-nineties with a high GPA, fluency in Mandarin Chinese, and experience as a Summer Associate in the Beijing office of a major international law firm. He had caught the ?Asia bug? and returned so fast that his diploma had to be mailed to him across the Pacific. Around the turn of the millennium he returned to the US to test out the theory that ?you can?t go home again?. With only a few months of effort, he landed a premium position as a delivery driver for Pizza Hut, making a full dollar an hour above minimum wage (plus tips!).

Look in the Mirror: Let?s get serious. Before you take a leap across the Pacific, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself this question: ?Am I an ?international Lawyer?, or am I an ?International lawyer??? (note the differences in capitalization). What?s Plan B in case practicing law in China falls through? Will you be practicing law in the United States, or will you be teaching English in China? What excites you about China law - China, or law? Because when all is said and done, an office is an office, whether it?s in Beijing, New York, or London. And like it or not, the inside of an office is where the average lawyer spends most of his/her waking hours. Likewise, legal work is legal work; there?s not any exciting difference whether you?re consulting with clients and drafting documents in Chinese, English, or Serbo-Croatian.

The Prestige Factor: It?s very stylish these days for medium and large sized law firms to prattle on and on about ?our China Office? - and it allows for the issuance of impressive-looking bilingual business cards. It?s become such a potent status symbol that a many firms (I strongly suspect) are holding on to money-losing offices in China just so they can keep Beijing on the list of cities where their firm has offices. Medium sized law firms in particular like to set up China offices to prove to their clients their status as Big Time International Players ? sort of like the teenager who won?t shave off his peach fuzz because it ?proves I?m a man?.

Better to forget about the prestige factor involved in practicing international law overseas. Holding a prestigious job is like marrying a fashion model ? it?s cool at first, but hey, law is a jealous mistress - after a couple of months the magic wears off and you?re going to have to live with her day after day, for better or for worse.

?Our China Office? Strikes Again: ?Our China Rep Office? is more like it. Keep in mind that in China, Representative Offices may not allowed to engage in profit-generating activities. So how do US law firms get away with it? To be sure, a few of them are mostly engaged in the Western legal side of sophisticated cross-border transactions (and thus not generally in the market for new graduates), but the rest are practicing Chinese law illegally. They get away with this in Beijing (not so often in Shanghai) because the Chinese authorities turn their heads, ignoring the wounded howls of jilted (and well-qualified) Chinese lawyers. The reality is that many foreign investors still feel more comfortable retaining US lawyers even though top Chinese lawyers are far better able to understand legal and linguistic nuances that American lawyers are likely to overlook. In other words, US lawyers are tolerated by the Chinese authorities because they help attract foreign investment. When the English language ability of Chinese lawyers improves enough to inspire greater confidence among foreign investors, the Chinese government may start rolling up the welcome mat for foreign lawyers. And it won?t even take a new law to throw them out ? only enforcement of existing law. Imagine the spectacle of former China investment lawyers returning to the US wearing sandwich boards reading ?Will Litigate for Food?. Don?t get caught in mid-career all dressed up with no place to go.

Lawyers without Borders: Don?t be silly, there is no such thing (is there?). ?Doctors without Borders? makes sense because human anatomy is basically the same everywhere. Not so with legal systems - even in the wake of increasing standardization of cross-border business transactions, there will always be pesky little barriers (like local bar associations) that will stand in the way of the international free flow of legal services. The law is not the best career choice if you want to live overseas. Let?s face it - you should have gone to business school instead.

A Loophole: China allows legal advisors who are not admitted to the local bar association to work in certain jobs that would require bar membership in the US. Included among such positions is corporate counsel ? at their best, 9 to 5 jobs that come with six-figure incomes. In case six figures isn?t enough for you, these positions often provide opportunities for greater wealth as the company grows ? stock options, for example.

Forget the international law firms doing big sexy deals. Grind out 2-4 years of business law experience in the US and look for a job in the legal department of the China office of a Western multinational.

David A. Carnes is a California attorney working for California Industrial City in Zhengzhou, China. His website, Start a Company in China, is at http://www.chinacompanystartupguide.com/48.html and offers free, step-by-step information on how to establish a business presence in China.

Public Relations for Divorce Lawyers

Most people hate lawyers and that is truly unfortunate for the legal profession, although many people say it is their own fault. One type of area of law, which is practiced that often gets people to hate lawyers are those that practiced divorce law.

Since 65% of those who have been married have had at least one divorce, most of them had used a lawyer to get the divorce, so you can understand that half or more of them will be very upset with the deal they got and all will be upset at the amount of money they had to pay the divorce lawyer to represent them.

So what can divorce lawyers do to promote them selves and maintain good public relations? It might be wise for divorce lawyers to get with marriage counselors and put on seminars and try to get people to stay together and work on things amicably.

If the marriage does not work out the divorce lawyers might get some extra business, but perhaps they might also have checklists and meet with both parties together and help them separate without wasting all their money on divorce lawyers.

Why would a divorce lawyer want to do that, because they can make money without destroying people's lives and making people hate lawyers? Perhaps if you are a divorce lawyer you might consider all this in 2006.

Lance Winslow, a retired entrepreneur, adventurer, modern day philosopher and perpetual tourist.

 

Don't Let Lawyers Kill Your Marketing Efforts

J.P. Morgan said it best: ?I don?t want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do; I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.?

Because I serve the varied needs of some diverse and interesting clients, the marketing efforts I produce are reviewed by an equally interesting array of lawyers. Oh, for any downtown lawyers who may be reading this, you guys whose hourly rates are up there at the high end of the pay scale, you can substitute the word ?attorney? for ?lawyer.? It?s a more fitting, upscale name worthy of your fees, right?

But back to my story. With very few exceptions, the lawyers I?m told to work with ? whether paid staffers or third-parties who?ve been retained by my clients ? seem to share a single, frustrating point of view when reviewing sales and marketing copy. And it doesn?t seem to make much difference whether the words are mine or those of other copywriters. Lawyers seem determined to delete every word that?s even remotely liable to improve sales.

It?s not that there?s anything inherently wrong with words that get people to buy. It?s just an attitude common among lawyers when reviewing anything to do with sales or marketing.

As one lawyer described that attitude, ?I won?t approve anything that can even remotely come back and bite me in the ____.? Her fellow attorney added, somewhat defensively, ?Neither of us wants to lose our jobs because we approved a whacko idea dreamed up by some marketing guru.?

?Whacko? is probably not the appropriate word to describe even the most creative marketing effort. It?s also worth noting that most ?marketing gurus? ? whether we?re in-house or outside service-providers ? are paid to generate revenue, revenue that typically results from sales.

We ?gurus? are expected by our clients and employers to jump over, under, around or through whatever limitations we?re presented with ? including those imposed by lawyers. Our job is to transform the seemingly impossible into something that?s both doable and profitable.

However, and with all due respect, neither lawyers nor attorneys have ever been noted as the most imaginative people in the world. Most are quite content to live within ? and be confined by ? the limits of the laws they work with. Think about it. When was the last time you heard a lawyer ? or even an attorney ? encourage anyone to ?think outside the box.??

What prompted my most recent discussion with this ?dynamic duo? of the legal world was their mandate that I delete from the direct mail copy I?d written the two words that were the very essence of the motor club memberships my client was selling ? ?safety? and ?security.?

Their deletions were bad enough, but the air of finality with which these and most other lawyers hand down such mandates is rivaled only by the Almighty when He presented Moses with the 10 Commandments.

From a copywriter?s point of view, too many lawyers seem to fancy themselves the final authority on effective copy. And too many of us ?marketing gurus? ? along with the companies we work for ? allow them to get away with it, even though there are other options.

What kinds of options? These two have worked extremely well with my clients:

1. Share with management, those execs who hire the lawyers, what J. P. Morgan said he expected of a lawyer. Explain to management the benefits that result when the focus of their lawyers shifts from words they want to eliminate to words they consider defensible, words capable of being successfully defended in the unlikely event the matter ends up in court.

2. Ask management to insist that their marketing people, whether hired guns or in-house staffers, meet face to face with reviewing lawyers to discuss whatever changes those lawyers want made. Freedom to discuss is freedom to negotiate. Negotiate what? The substitution of words or phrases with meanings similar to the ones the lawyers want stricken, but words not as likely to be problematic. There are a great many very good words out there for both sides to agree on.

The role of the lawyer should not be to protect the company from every remotely conceivable contingency. It should be to advise management ? and the marketing staff ? whether or not the proposed marketing copy is reasonably defensible.

J.P. Morgan did quite well by letting his attorneys know up front what he expected of them: ??tell me how to do what I want to do.? There?s a lesson there for all to learn.

2006, Philip A. Grisolia, CBC

In addition to his skills as a marketing professional, Phil Grisolia is an accredited Certified Business Communicator (CBC), an author, educator, business coach, and an award-winning copywriter. To learn more about Phil and his professional skills, visit his website: http://PhilGrisolia.com