As a lawyer coach I am all about helping clients develop the habits that contribute to personal and professional success, so I was very excited when an advance copy of Paula Black’s “The Little Black Book: Lawyer’s Guide to Creating a Marketing Habit in 21 Days” arrived in my mail box in May.  Paula has done it again!  Anyone familiar with the books in her Little Black Book Series  knows that she has a gift for providing solid, act-on-it-now resources for lawyers.  Her latest book is perhaps the greatest: A day-to-day guide to getting and sticking with your own marketing habit.  Designed to help lawyers integrate marketing into their daily lives, this book is quick, easy and inspirational.

Paula invited me to take part in her special book launch promotion.  For the next 48 hours Paula Black will be offering an impressive opportunity to anyone who purchases The Little Black Book: A Lawyer’s Guide To Creating A Marketing Habit in 21 Days. Readers who purchase the book will receive The Smart Lawyer’s Toolkit, a compilation of advice from more than 30 of the most sought-after experts in the legal arena (including myself!). Click here for details.

I’m buying a second copy of the book today so that I can get access to all those great bonus resources! 

There’s a lot of talk about goal setting in the new year but there is no better time for really thinking about strengths and goals then while relaxed and unplugged in the summer sunshine with the blue sky above.

This summer why not engage in some quality lawn chair thinking?  Sit back, enjoy some sunshine and with a cold drink in hand allow yourself to contemplate. Start by exploring your strengths.  What have you got going for you? How are you making the most of your strengths in your professional life? Here are some of my favourite strength questions:

• What do you consider to be your greatest abilities and talents?
• How are you employing these gifts at this time?  How could you make the most of them?
• Where do you find yourself most often wanting to help or be of assistance to others?  What are the things that you are most motivated to do?
• What would your closest friends say are your top ten strengths?
• How are you/could you put those strengths to work in your practice?

Next, move on to some goal setting.  What is it you want to make happen in your legal practice?  Do you want to grow your practice?  Bring in new clients?  Move your practice to another firm or in-house?  Here are some questions to lead you in your lawn chair pondering:

• What would count as a really big professional win for you?  This question is a way to explore some of what motivates you at the office.  One client once told me “having a patent client make a huge amount of money from their invention”.  Another client told me “winning the lottery and never having to come back here” which just said loud and clear that a career transition was called for!
• Looking forward five years what do you want to be doing?  This question gives you a chance to think beyond the next twelve months.
• Who are your preferred clients? It’s always good to explore who are the clients you most enjoy working with.  What is it about them?  How can you get more clients like them?
• What are the opportunities right now you are not taking advantage of?  This question is a helpful reminder about the opportunities around you.

And the best questions are quite simply:

• What do you enjoy most about your legal practice?  And the converse, what do you least enjoy? What percentage of your time at work is spent, on a weekly basis, doing what you most enjoy and conversely least enjoy?

These get to the heart of what lightens your life and what weighs you down.  Ultimately whether you are on a job hunt or in a secure position in a law firm, the question always comes down to: “how can you get more of the good stuff on your plate and the bad stuff off?”  When you move out of your comfortable summer seat and into action what can you do to make your work life more enjoyable?

This post is a thank you to Matthew Homann of The Non Billable Hour blog for my aha moment this morning.

I am signed up on Twitter, have attracted a number of followers (thank you to all of you) and have been completely tweetless. For those of you who are not on Twitter to tweet is to communicate in 140 characters or less, not my specialty. I haven’t known what to tweet. Or even how to tweet. The big question I have been struggling with is: what can I share in 140 characters or less that is helpful and not a complete waste of mine and a reader’s time?

The answer came this morning in Homann’s e-book: 100 tweets: Thinking About Law Practice in 140 Characters or Less.

Homann’s elegant e-book demonstrates that the tweet done well is concise. Informative. At times humorous and at others hard hitting. Valuable. A powerful way of sharing insight in just a few moments of time.

Thank you Homann for this valuable e-book and powerful example of how to communicate in the Twitter universe.

As we move deeper into 2009 one thing I know for sure is that many lawyers, law firm staff members and clients are facing deep uncertainty. So many of us feel we have lost control; that larger forces are at work. At this time more then ever it is important to come to grips with what we can influence and impact.

We all have a leadership role to play in our organizations. When we catch ourselves complaining about the system, about how decisions are made and how things are done it is a good time to come to grips with our own responsibility for making a positive contribution. 

Some people might say: I’m not the boss; I have no power to change anything. Certainly at times we all feel that way but this is rarely the whole truth. I had the opportunity to interview leadership effectiveness trainer Robert Gilfoyle to ask him for his thoughts on leadership. He opened with the statement: Leadership is an action not a position. Leadership is not about the role we hold in an organization; rather it is about the action we choose to take.

For more of my interview with Robert Gilfoyle please see the full article on slaw.ca.

What are the qualities of successful law firms whether large or small?  One is that they have leaders who know and capitalise on their fields of strength and recognize the territory beyond. 

President Obama knows this well.  It was one of the strategies he used early on in his political career.  When President Obama first became United States Senator from Illinois in 2005 he courted Washington veteran Pete Rouse to be his Chief of Staff.  In an interview with the CBC’s Passionate Eye Rouse recalled Obama telling him:

I know what I am good at.  I know what I am not good at.  I can give a good speech but I don’t know anything about what it takes to get established in the Senate.

This is the quality we see in the most successful law firms.  These firms recruit the best administrative advisors and then give them the power to lead their departments and advise the firm on strategy, process and management.

In this Sunday’s Globe and Mail, columnist Wallace Immen interviewed Syndey Finkelstein, Professor of Leadership, and one of the authors of  Think Again:  Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You.  Finklestein commented:

It is important that leaders have sounding boards, people who do not have the same pre-judgement and who will push back and challenge and not be afraid of pointing out contradictory facts.

This is where some law firms go wrong.  They invest considerable amounts of money, time and effort into recruiting the top marketing, financial, human resources and administrative directors and then the firm leadership proceeds to ignore the advice of these hand-picked professionals.  It’s a standing joke in the legal profession that for administrative professionals to get a point across to their law firms they must hire expensive consultants to carry the message.

My advice to law firm leaders:  Take a page from President Obama’s book.  Understand that intelligence operates in fields.  Recognize your strengths and learn your weaknesses.  Surround yourself with the best advisors and listen and reflect on what they have to tell you.

After years of long days and nights at the office many associates  are now finding themselves with regular office hours and the time to catch their breath after the marathon.  It’s been a long crazy trip – 17 years of unparalleled prosperity for law firms according to the Hildebrandt/Citi 2009 Client Advisory – and now it’s time to clean house, throw out the dead house plants and get back in touch with family and friends.

I recently spoke with an associate who had just spent the last three years billing over 2100 hours a year.  There was no time for thinking about work processes, about client development, or about how the work was being done.  Instead it was just one long marathon towards a finish line that forever hovered just beyond the horizon.   It was exciting, it was stressful and he and many others were approaching burn-out.

Now that he has caught up on his sleep he wants to take stock of his practice and invest his time in developing solid practice habits that will support him through the next marathon.
 
Follow his lead.  Take advantage of this period of calm to prepare for the opportunities that will arise when the economy improves.  Hone your practice habits.  Polish your business development skills.  And most importantly connect with your clients, contacts and friends to strengthen the relationships that may have frayed.

Here’s my list of things to do if you are an associate with more time on your hands then usual:

• First, allow yourself some time to reflect.   What goals do you have for your practice?   Who are the clients you like best?  What is the work you most enjoy?  Consult with a mentor, friend, or coach.  Write down your long term goals and what you would like to make happen this year.
• Clean up and update your contact list.  Review it and highlight those people you want to get back in touch with this year.  Every week write up a short connect with list of people you will touch base with by email or phone during the week.
• If you are at a stage of your practice where you have clients, reach out to them.  Visit their offices and make sure they know it is off the clock.  Learn about their priorities for 2009.  How can you or others at your firm help them during the challenging year ahead? 
• Do some internal networking.  Your relationships with the partners in your firm are important.  Initiate lunch or coffee meetings with the partners to learn about how they are meeting the current challenges.
• Expand your knowledge base.  Find the publications and associations associated with your practice area and/or industries you serve.  Catch up your reading.  If you come across a useful article, clip it and email it off to your contacts.  Undertake to write an article, present or both.   Look for opportunities to write or present for industry or professional associations, or for legal publications and conferences.
• Get involved with the professional or industry associations associated with your practice.  By attending the meetings consistently and getting involved on boards and committees you will increase your professional network and lay the foundation for business development in the years to come.  I was recently speaking with an entertainment lawyer who as a young associate got involved in one of the key industry associations for women filmmakers.  The contacts she made back in the early days of her practice were a critical component of her success in the years that followed.
• Assess your current legal skills.  What are your strengths?  What are your deficits?  Take advantage of your time to take some courses and hone your skills. 
   

There are so many options to consider.  Just remember to start with your goals and choose the actions that will best support you in moving forward.