Page 28 - Social Media Musings

Social Media Musings – Part III My Reflections on the Practice and Life
The Practice
Maturity as a lawyer comes when you learn bad things will happen and how you respond is what matters.
Summer is always a good time to catch up on your reading. I usually have several leadership and self improvement books in the queue. If you’re a young lawyer, read books outside the law that will help you with your practice - books on leadership, marketing, customer service, public speaking, and writing.
Zoom has taught us that any of us can prepare, sponsor and push out an online presentation, webinar or forum from
our office. Zoom is a great tool to market yourself, your practice and your firm through online marketing forums, virtual happy hours, virtual book clubs and other avenues to meet and connect with lawyers from around the world.
Repetition, repetition, repetition. You get better at writing by writing more. You get better at public speaking by speaking more. You get better at networking by networking more. It wasn’t until I had 100 articles under my belt that I felt good about my articles. It wasn’t until a few dozen presentations, that I felt good about presenting. The more you do, the better you will get.
An observation I have made sitting through countless of meetings is that often there is an inverse correlation between talking and doing. Those who monopolize everyone’s
time at meetings are generally the last to volunteer to bring to fruition the ideas they discussed ad nauseam. Getting a group to define a problem, define a solution, define a plan to achieve the solution, assign tasks to achieve the solution and create deadlines and accountability takes a lot of time. Keeping your team focused, on task, keeping digressions to a minimum and getting everyone to share their thoughts in the most direct and efficient way possible is a skill
set that will make the difference between winning and treading water.
Try to find the time to do pro bono.
Make sure your contacts know your specialty and your firm’s practice areas. I handle commercial, products, and general liability matters and our firm handles these as well as employment matters. Contacts won’t refer you matters if they don’t know you handle the types of cases they refer.
The Client Centered Law Firm is one of
the best books I have read about running a successful law firm. Jack Newton has written the quintessential book on meeting and serving clients where they are at and building long term relationships with them.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the Socratic method. I thought it was annoying, and often overused, in law school. But the constant questioning, the verbal pushing and shoving, getting to the nub of an issue, is helpful to hone case themes and theories.
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