3 Niche Audiences of Clients to Pursue

You've taken our advice and expanded your practice to niche areas, but what are the corners of these practice areas? You can take your niche practice the next level by becoming specialized in a highly esoteric type of action inside...

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Gun Trusts: Valuable Estate Planning Tool or Doomed Loophole?

After wills, trusts might be one of the most commonly used estate planning tools. You can set up a trust for your children, for charity -- and for your gun? Gun trusts are growing and increasingly common way to...

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Can Legal Marketing Be Both Funny and Effective?

If you've turned on a TV lately, you may have seen the new advertising campaign for Apartments.com. In the ads, comedian Jeff Goldblum plays a Steve Jobs-like, Silicon Valley guru. In the first ad of the campaign, he stands...

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5 Law Office Management Tips From Jon Snow

This article contains spoilers aplenty. If you're not up to date on the TV version of "Game of Thrones" as of April 29, 2015, go watch that before you get any advice. Jon Snow may know nothing when it comes...

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5 Easy Ways to Make Your Office Look More Professional

You want your office to be tailored to your work style and needs. But don't forget that your office is also a calling card -- it lets people who walk in know a bit about you and who you...

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5 Legal Marketing Myths

Lawyers are still relatively new to marketing. While Sears and Coca-Cola have been reaching out to the public since the pioneer days, attorneys have had just a few decades to refine their marketing craft. Yet, even in such a...

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3 Mistakes Lawyers Make: Hiring a Legal Secretary

The legal secretary is the backbone of any law office, handling a lot of the logistical functions like taking calls, mailing, and scheduling. Because the legal secretary's work is the foundation for the business side of the law firm, hiring...

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I'm Drowning Here: What to Do When You Have Too Much Business

In terms of First World Problems, complaining about having too much work is almost as bad as worrying that you have too much money. But, as any lawyer knows, work is work and having too much of it can...

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No Stone Unturned -- 5 Unusual but Effective Places to Advertise

Many lawyers get new clients from traditional word of mouth, supplemented by business cards, websites, online marketing, and maybe some T.V. or radio commercials. Lawyers more committed to marketing may take their strategy a step further, setting up billboards...

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Should You Ask if Your Client Did It?

On a recent episode of "How to Get Away with Murder," Professor Keating posits a question to her murder class: Should you ask the client if he committed the crime? Keating suggests that a defense attorney has to "lie" to...

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How Casual Does Your Office Need to Be?

Gone are the "Mad Men"-esque days where everyone wore suits to the office. While many offices still have "dress down" or "casual" Fridays, reportedly invented by Dockers in 1992 (though possibly going back to Hewlett Packard in the 1950s, claims...

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Share Space, Not Risk: 3 Ways to Avoid Liability in a Shared Office

For a solo attorney or small firm, a shared office space can provide the benefits of a larger practice, without the cost of setting up shop all on your own. A nice conference room and some shared staff can...

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5 Last-Minute Gifts for Administrative Professional's Day

Uh oh. You forgot that tomorrow was Administrative Professional's Day (again)? You've probably missed out on the chance to get your admin something meaningful, like that Napa Valley wine gift basket, or that spa day. Don't worry, though: There's still...

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Ill. Lawyer Suspended for Six Months for Insulting Colleagues

Litigation can make us mad, it's true. But the key is not to let your anger take over. That, as Yoda knows all too well, leads to the Dark Side. David Novoselsky, a lawyer from Illinois, apparently didn't watch any...

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How to Ethically Ignore Your Clients on Weekends

It's Friday! You've worked all day and most of the nights for the past few weeks. You've come into the office on Saturday and worked through to Sunday morning. It's time for a break. Your sanity, or your marriage,...



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Handling a Client With a JD from Google School of Law

It's supremely frustrating when potential clients (or worse, current clients) think they know more about the law than you do. Usually it's because a friend of a friend (not a lawyer) gave them legal advice, and hey, why aren't you...



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3 Things You Know Are Obvious -- But Your Clients Won't

Most lawyers have had clients who complained when they were billed for a phone call, or who were shocked when their call wasn't answered at 11pm on a Saturday. Yes, some clients are clueless, but that's not just their...



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How Do You Determine a Marketing Budget for Your Law Firm?

So you know that you need some marketing, right? Web sites, business cards, maybe a TV commercial or a radio jingle. That much is clear. What isn't so clear is how much you should spend on marketing. You want to...



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How Much Does it Cost to Hire a New Employee? Lots.

If you're looking to hire a new employee, be aware that salary is just the start of the costs. There are plenty of associated, non-wage costs to bringing someone new to your firm. From taxes and insurance, to simply finding...



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IRS Ethics Lawyer Disbarred -- for Ethics Violations, Of Course

Here's some schadenfreude for tax day: Former IRS ethics lawyer Takisha Brown has been disbarred by the D.C. Court of Appeals (not the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals) for ethics violations and misappropriating client funds. Brown withdrew money from a settlement...



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TR Products Win in National Law Journal Survey

Big Orange is the winner! Earlier this month, The National Law Journal published its fourth annual readers' best of rankings. Westlaw, one of our sister companies under the Thomson Reuters umbrella, took home the top "Legal Research Provider" designation, while...



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3 Mistakes Lawyers Make When Responding to Demand Letters

Cease-and-desists letters, demands for personal injury payments, claims of defamation, slander and libel -- these are the bread and butter of the demand letter. And boy are they demanding, always full of requests that must be met "immediately" and...



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What to Do When Clients Lie

No one likes clients who lie -- at least, not one the ones who lie to their lawyer. When clients lie or fail to disclose necessary information, they make it hard for lawyers to do their job. When a...



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Get Off My Lawn -- and Into my Firm? How to Interview Millenials

Kids these days -- try as you might, there's no escaping them. In the U.S., there's more than 70 million Millenials, people born from the early eighties through to the new millennium. They're the largest generation outside of baby...



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Yes, You Can Practice Law and Still Have a Soul

In addition to being on TV for most of the 1990s, and providing a platform for a post-"Bill and Ted" but pre-"Matrix" Keanu Reeves, "The Devil's Advocate" confirmed for the world that lawyers are evil. Al Pacino's character was literally...



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5 Things to Know About Answering Questions Online

Many attorneys frequent Internet message boards (like FindLaw Answers) to answer legal questions from anonymous strangers. It can actually be useful to drum up business, provided you post using your real name and contact information. Even though it's the Internet,...



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3 Mistakes Lawyers Make when Hiring an Admin

Hiring support staff is always a risky endeavor, something which requires you to place faith in absolute strangers and hope they can deliver. When hiring an admin, the risks can be even greater, as a firm administrator is often...



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What to Cover in a Consult (and What Can Wait)

The consult -- whether it's free or costs some kind of money -- is like a first date. Not much substantive happens; you and your potential new client are getting to know each other, to see if you really like...



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Do You Still Need to Research on Paper?

Back in law school, we did a cursory class or two -- by which I mean, we spent a day or two of class -- on using paper research materials. You know the ones: federal reporters, state reporters, and those...



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Can LinkedIn Endorsements Violate Ethics Rules?

LinkedIn endorsements are pretty easy to come by. People you've never met will rush to endorse your skills in the hope that you will do the same. On the professional's Facebook, an endorsement is the equivalent of a like...



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Top 5 Ethical Issues With Attorney Advertising

Complying with attorney advertising rules is more than just a couple questions on the MPRE and a headache for the rest of your life. It's an ethical obligation just like any of those other rules that our profession is governed...



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Mental Health Courts: A Continuing Trend

As if regular courts weren't enough, South Carolina has voted to expand the state's mental health courts, reported the South Carolina newspaper The State. Since their inception in the late 1990s, various states have implemented mental health courts, with great...



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Not Worth It: 5 Kinds of Clients to Avoid

We've all had difficult clients, be they the kind who refuse to pay up or who, after an hour on Wikipedia, decide they know the law better than you. But what if we could get rid of them altogether?...



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Lawyer-to-Lawyer Marketing: Are Direct Mailers Worth It?

Among the most important ways that attorneys get new clients is through referrals from other attorneys. Having a solid base of referrals ensures a fairly steady stream of business, and it doesn't hurt to know other lawyers, either. Of course,...



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Don't Phone it in -- 3 Tips for Conducting Great Phone Interviews

Phone interviews are about as fun as flu shots. And like shots, they're painful, sometimes nauseating, but a necessary part of life. Deprived of the many cues afforded by a face to face meeting -- the types of visual...



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