The Productive Attorney

What does exercise mean to a lawyer? Most people don't want to hear about what workouts you completed. What I have realized is that you are the main character in your play, but you are an extra in everybody else's play. The most important part of working out is to figure out what you find enjoyable, but even more important is to realize what you are not good at. This episode is all about tips on how and why you should exercise.

One of the most important points I can make is that the money in your firm's trust account is not your money. That money is not yours until you earned it, and it's not yours until it clears in your operating account. This episode talks about the kind of problems a firm can make when mishandling money from the trust account.

As an attorney your life is consumed with work and sometimes its difficult to keep up with the social media outlet. I remember there was a time when Myspace and Facebook were the two social media sites that competed against each other. Today we have so many social media platforms it's hard to keep up with it all. When you are marketing on social media it's important to know your perfect client, because some platforms may be better than others to speak to your perfect client. This episode is about how I use social media for the firm.

This episode is all about real life marketing, which turns your attention to existing and new relationships. Real life marketing is about developing relationships because you never know who will ask you for help, but more importantly you never know when you will meet your perfect client. My "war story" is about how I ended up getting a case from a salesman who sold me a printer.

Emails may seem pretty straight forward, but listen to this episode if you are curious about tips on how to have zero emails in your inbox. Typically you can get a good understanding on how people read emails by how they read their text messages. Do you know people that have more than 10 unread text messages? If you are that person with more than 10 unread emails then you are also the same person with many unread emails. Give a listen and see if you have the same problems I had when organizing my emails.

A potential new client has called you and is wanting to discuss a legal matter. How do you evaluate a case? I became an attorney to help my community, but sometimes I feel like my bleeding heart can hurt me when doing a case evaluation. At my firm we have learned to be selective on the cases we take on, and we did this by understanding the types of cases we do not handle, and more importantly the types of clients we will not take on. Listen to this episode if you want to know the criteria that we look for in our firm.

Work balance was a turning point in my career. When I first became an attorney I worked hard and neglected the things that really matter in life. I spent most of the time in the office and failed to be there for my family and to enjoy life in general. Work Balance for me means three things: Academics, Athletic, and Social. In my opinion if you spend more time on one, then the other two will suffer. This episode is a special one for me because it helped me in my career and my personal life.

What software do you want to use to help you run your law firm? We have come a long way from paper documents filling up "red ropes". Back in my day, which was a world filled with typewriters and dictaphones, we could possibly lose documents and sometimes files all together. Since now we live in an electronic world, I will show you important things to consider when finding your case management software.

Lawyers not being able to do their practice the way they want to. A lot of businesses have been affected by decisions made by the legislator adding restrictions on cases. The legislator disrupted the way cases were being handled such as, giving economical caps on the amount of damages a case could be worth. In this episode I will share with you my personal thoughts on how our entire industry will be disrupted.