Law Firm Coach Blog

Image building reaps rewards. Contact your local community college and find out the cost of one semester of education (or one year). Depending on what state you live in this can be as cheap as $300 per semester or $750 for the college year. Create a firm scholarship that supports one student.

Notify the school of the scholarship program. Our personal opinion is the goal is to get people to commit to one semester of college no matter what their financial situation. Create a scholarship application and request that they write a essay on why they should be given the scholarship. Make it easy. Don't insist on the best grades. Our greatest leaders were terrible students. Let the public pick the winner.

Put in this marketing guide:

1. School is notified of scholarship at beginning of school year for all seniors
2. Contact all newspapers within your county and have them write article called "Helping others help themselves.
3. In January write a letter to all seniors reminding them to apply and send it to their homes.
4. In March ask the newspaper to give publicity by publishing the 3 best essays and letting the community decide who gets the free semester.
5. In April announce the winner.
6. At graduation ask if someone from the firm can appear to give the scholarship.

And we always believe the scholarship is paid directly to the college. What becomes somewhat more interesting is if your firm will personally help the student with cost of books or other needs. Staff enjoy pitching in to get someone successful.

Finally, measure the results by putting in a statistical code that sees if any new clients are generated. At the most you made your firm look good and if you get new clients as a result all the better.

Dad was an Ohio State Highway Patrolman. To move from one post to another would require a group of patrolman to show up to the house, help load up the household goods, dogs, cats, etc. onto a rental truck. Dad would then drive the truck with family following to the new house. At that house would be the troopers from the new post who would cheerfully unload everything.

We arrived at a new post with the entire family and animal collection and Dad sent us three girls down to the basement with all the animals and told to stay out of trouble. After some slow boring hours, we suddenly saw two big strong troopers start down the basement steps with the washing machine. Trooper # 1 was coming backwards supporting the weight of the machine and Trooper # 2 was coming forward to help guide and hold up the other end.

At that moment in time, when they were at the point of no return, for some strange reason our pet skunk, Pepi Le' Peu, got away from us and sauntered over to the stairs. Trooper # 1 screamed and yelled skunk and started pushing forward to get out of the basement. Trooper # 2 thought he was yelling stuck' and pushed downward to get the machine down the steps. For a few glorious minutes we three sisters hysterically watched while our big burly troopers pushed and shoved trying to move an inanimate object out of fear.

My dad taught me many things but one of my favorite lessons was the skunk lesson. Sooner or later when there is no solution someone has to simply let go and let the other have their way and let the chips fall where they may. It is better to be skunked than stuck in life.

It is not surprising to hear the same question over and over again; i.e. How can we recession proof the firm. Our response is this. First of all you probably should have been thinking this a couple of years ago and definitely last year. However like all of us, most kept thinking it couldn't get that bad and it did. Law firms are no exception.

Creative thinking has to be taking place in law firms to allow the firm to keep stabilize, maintain its staff, and still provide quality service. The worst thing in the world is to make rash decisions and cut staff or strong supportive overhead needed such as marketing, technology or critical supplies.

Written on our office door are the words IT IS A WANT OR A NEED? What we are doing (both personally and professionally) is assessing when we feel we need something to ask ourselves are we just in our "want stage" (instant gratification) or is it an actual need that will make us more secure, stable or successful.

We looked at our budget both at home and at work and did a line item review. Frankly we cut out things that are not true needs right now. We also held the line on things that we think are crucial to our long term goals.

We are strongly encouraging law firms to immediately do firm assessments and examine ever nook and cranny. Do a line item review of every expenditure for the past year and create a budget based on sound need not wants. If you are a high performance firm you have already figured out that your staff is part of the solution not the problem.

Our test of want v need is simple. Try it.