The hidden costs of pro bono

Posted on April 19, 2013 by

A friend of mine hired a lawyer to help him create a trust in which to put some of his earnings. The lawyer charged $800/hr.

Another friend needed a lawyer to appear with him (for a few hours) at his administrative hearing to help him contest his termination. The fee was $20,000.

The fee for a lawyer to advise a friend on a single provision in his mother’s trust was $1,500.

An attorney in my office once described the sense of guilt she sometimes feels when she looks at the total amount due on the invoice she is about to send out. “Don’t feel guilty!” a colleague told her. “Everyone else charges that much. You deserve it too!” If clients are willing to pay it, why should lawyers charge less?

Legal fees of $1,500 or $20,000 – or even $300 – are so out of touch with the cost of most goods and services in our economy that it’s as if they existed in a different currency.  Legal fees like this equate a few hours of legal services with taking a family vacation, making a down payment on a house, or hiring a home healthcare worker for an elderly parent.

I am not the only one whom it strikes as deeply problematic that legal services are accessible only to those who can afford a private jet or a summer home.  As the “gap” in access to legal services widens, calls for more pro bono commitments by lawyers have grown more strident.  Four years ago the American Bar Association created annual National Pro Bono Week, and states have followed up with their own.  The Chief Justice in Pennsylvania recently called on lawyers to devote more hours to pro bono work.  New York’s 4th Judicial Department is launching an appellate pro bono project.  State bar associations present Pro Bono Service Awards. The letter admitting me to the California bar urged me to do my pro bono bit.

Pro bono is not the answer

To put the access-to-justice problem in perspective, consider that around 83% of Americans have access to the food they need.  Around 84% of Americans have access to healthcare.  These rates are unacceptably low, but they make America look positively utopian next to rates of access to legal services.  Only 20% of poor Americans and a vanishingly small proportion of middle-class Americans have access to legal services. The U.S. ranks 66th out of 98 countries in accessibility of legal services.

Most people in this country have access to the food they need because they don’t need to afford a private chef to be able to eat, and most people in this country have access to medical services because health insurance covers what they cannot pay out of pocket.

Free place to sleep

For some reason, however, (explained in many sources not covered here), the emphasis on solving the access-to-justice problem — at least from bar associations and legal insiders — has not been on lowering legal fees or creating legal insurance schemes or some such solution.  Instead, as noted above, it has been to exhort lawyers to work for FREE.

Problem 1: “Pure” pro bono work is financially unsustainable

Main Street lawyers – primarily solo or small-firm practitioners – . . . consistently express the belief that pro bono is ‘an elitist claim to good works. . . . [They] regard ABA mandates about pro bono to be just another mandate from elite Wall Street attorneys who “feel they can tell all practitioners what to do.”

~ Professor Luz Herrera, “Rethinking Private Attorney Involvement through a Low-Bono Lens”

I cannot afford to work for free. Most lawyers, unless they have a rich spouse or a trust fund, cannot afford to work for free.

“Free” legal work must be subsidized by someone.  Large firms subsidize their pro bono services with fees earned from high-paying clients. Solo and small-firm attorneys – who are far and away the biggest source of legal services for low-income clients – usually do not earn high enough fees on any individual matter to offset purely pro bono services.  They therefore depend on reduced-fee (“low bono”) arrangements to sustain their practice. They may charge only a little, and they may continue to perform legal services after the client has become unable to pay for them, but they can’t operate by charging nothing to anyone at any point.

These subsidies for free legal work are extremely limited.  A small-firm lawyer can only give away so much of her time and resources.  A large firm can give away only so much of its time and resources as it can offset with fee-earning work.  Needless to say, when the economy is bad, their ability to provide free legal services goes down precisely when it is most needed.

Problem 2: The supply of pro bono services does not meet the demand

Again, small-practice attorneys – on whom most of the poor and middle class depend for legal services – are limited in the amount of time they can devote to pro bono work because they must personally subsidize any pro bono services they provide.

Not-for-profit, government-funded legal services offices do not fill the gap. Not only are government funds limited (as we all now know all too well), but, in addition, government funders expressly prohibit their donees from taking on certain kinds of cases. For example, Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the primary funder of legal aid organizations, restricts the organizations it funds from filing class actions, recovering attorneys’ fees, representing undocumented people, and suing government agencies. A friend of mine who works in a non-profit organization that represents victims of domestic violence is prohibited by her organization’s funder from representing anybody against whom the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) has taken any action.

And, of course, one of the principal restrictions on most not-for-profit legal service providers is that they cannot represent anyone earning above a certain very low income threshold (usually between 125 and 200% of the federal poverty line, depending on the location of the organization).

Because of all these limitations, legal aid organizations serve one-third to one-half as many poor people as do private solo and small-firm practitioners.

The end result of all of this is that pro bono services are unavailable for most low-income clients and almost all middle-income clients.

Problem 3: Pro bono services, even when provided by private attorneys, have hidden costs for the public and for clients.

When a big corporate lawyer who does mergers and acquisitions every day takes on a pro bono asylum or death penalty case, she requires training in the new field of law. She requires written training materials and supervision by lawyers with expertise in the new field. Her firm requires a third party to connect it to pro bono clients.

The intermediaries serving these functions – providing the training and supervision, researching and writing the practice manuals, and generating client referrals – are usually independent non-profit organizations. That is, they are organizations subsidized by favorable tax treatment. Currently, the big firm lawyers receiving this training do not finance this infrastructure – the public does.

And the costs do not end there.  A friend of mine who works in a non-profit legal organization told me that her organization preferentially hands cases over to outside pro bono attorneys in big law firms over staff attorneys at the non-profit organization.  Unfortunately, the big firm lawyers – being relatively inexperienced with these kinds of cases – usually make a lot of mistakes that the staff attorneys then have to go back and fix anyway.  This not only greatly increases the time and resources for any particular matter, but also the risks to the client.

To give a sense of just a fraction of the costs involved each time a lawyer is trained in a new area of law (sometimes for the purpose of taking on only one or two cases in that area): Several months ago I participated in a reentry clinic – a clinic providing legal remedies to help those with criminal justice backgrounds obtain jobs, professional licenses, housing, etc.  I met with one client that day.  Because it was my first reentry client ever, two attorneys and a staff person from the organization that had organized the clinic met with me for an hour before I met with the client, and met with me again for one hour after the meeting to debrief and provide guidance about further steps. At the end of the day, five licensed attorneys and one additional staff person had spent three hours (eighteen hours, including fifteen lawyer hours, collectively) basically just on the intake for a client whose legal issues were no more complex than navigating a few administrative agencies and employment applications.  Normally, a client intake takes half an hour for an initial screening; one or two hours for a more thorough assessment of whether to take the case.

Training these big-firm lawyers for occasional dips into different areas of pro bono practice for 40 hours per year is not only expensive, but also inefficient. These recurring training and supervision costs do not exist for solo and small-firm practitioners providing legal services in areas they are already practice on a regular basis as part of their practice.

Free legal services have their place.  But if the law profession’s unique focus on “free” services — as opposed to, say, economies of scale, streamlined procedures, insurance schemes, or other economic solutions — as the principal means of meeting the demand for access to critical legal assistance, seems impractical or puzzling, I recommend reading more about the historical origin of the profession’s pro bono mantra.

Sources:

Luz E. Herrera, “Rethinking Private Attorney Involvement through a Low Bono Lens,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, Vol. 43: 1, September 2009

Debra Cassens Weiss, “Middle-Class Dilemma: Can’t Afford Lawyers, Can’t Qualify for Legal Aid,” ABA Journal, July 22, 2010

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Week 24: Oral argument

Posted on March 21, 2013 by

Today we had oral argument on a motion to dismiss. A beautiful sunny day in a spacious, peaceful courthouse. We arrived early, the partner and I, and waited in one of the corner courtrooms for the judge. After the court reporter and clerk were settled, and the lawyers had presented their business cards so their names could be entered into the minutes, the judge appeared from chambers, took her seat at the bench, and said a curt “Good afternoon” to each of the two lawyers standing at the podiums before her.

Courtroom

The judge directed her first question at us. I could see my partner’s back tense as she prepared to answer, her right heel rocking back and forth like a restless five-year-old’s.

She started to drift. She was spending too much time arguing about what the statute meant. We had agreed this morning that she would instead argue that the facts fit within the defense’s interpretation of the statute — that we could amend the complaint to add more of these facts, if necessary. I struggled to think of how to communicate this in one word to her, wrote “AMEND” on a Post-It, and leaned forward to slip the note to her.

My partner was flustered. In law school the judges who taught my judicial clerkship seminar always said, “Treat oral argument like a conversation with the judge.” But no judge I have ever seen behaves in a very conversational manner. (Doesn’t a conversation entail two-way traffic of questions and answers?) And even if they did, it would be hard to overcome the dynamic set up by the surroundings themselves: the judge seated on high, sheathed in a black robe, with her supplicants standing before her. The formalities. It tends to feel more like an inquisition. This makes lawyers ramble.

After the defense counsel spoke, I started to write another Post-It , but then thought maybe the judge was ready to move on to the next issue. It’s hard to read the judge’s mind — again, I couldn’t just ask her. Maybe I should have gone ahead with the Post-It. Maybe a short rebuttal to the defense would have helped. Ah, the post-mortem of an oral argument.

On the drive back to the office, the partner and I talked about what else she could have said, or what she could have said differently. I suppose if it were truly a conversation with the judge we would have been able to send an email to follow up, to say, “You know, this is something you should probably consider.” But it’s not really a conversation — if you don’t adequately anticipate the question and respond at the hearing itself, the chance to respond is lost forever. At least for purposes of that motion.

I was once at a Q & A with Solicitor General Donald Verilli, hot off the heels of his oral argument before the Supreme Court defending the Affordable Care Act. Someone asked him why the Justices didn’t email their questions to the lawyers in advance. That way the lawyers could prepare to answer those particular questions, rather than try to guess every possible question that might be asked and try to prepare for all of them. Verilli’s answer to this question boiled down to, “Tradition.” Actually, that might be what he said verbatim.

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Week 3: Inside our juvenile justice system

Posted on November 6, 2012 by

Two weeks ago I visited my client at Juvenile Hall. After locking my belongings in a locker in the deserted visitors’ waiting area, I was shepherded through four sets of locked doors by a female voice on the intercom. Inside, the voice told me to freeze until the transfer of one of the youths at the far end of the corridor was completed.

I caught my first glimpse of Julian in Unit 2, where he was sitting among a group of teens in navy blue uniforms in a small room off of a large, empty central space. I walked toward the room and a man sitting outside it gestured toward one of the tables in the room. Two boys stood, hesitantly. “Julian,” the man said to them a second time, and through the glass wall of the room I saw one of the boys point to himself and mouth, “Me?,” in a tentative, earnest gesture.

The boy who peeled himself from the group and walked toward me was slender and below average height. His manner was deferential and polite. He was shy but looked me in the eyes when I spoke. When it was his turn to speak, he seemed very engaged, somewhat nervous. He spoke with a marked stutter.

His background is unremarkable for a place like this: divorced parents, incarcerated father. African-American. Living “couch to couch” for at least the last several years. A passing reference in his record to a diagnosis of several learning disorders in elementary school (which immediately manifested in visible form when I met him). A failing high school transcript. He is here on a five-year sentence for his first offense.

As we sat down to talk, I was very conscious that the next hour we had together might be the only hour of real peer-to-peer interaction with an adult that he has had in a while. So, although I wanted to explain the appeals process to him and talk a little bit about his case, the main purpose of my visit was to (1) learn about his needs or desires (e.g., re: his home placement, schooling) that I may be able to help with and (2) counsel him on the importance of staying on good behavior while in custody — including showing that he has taken responsibility for his actions, establishing a good relationship with his probation officer, and, above all, not reoffending, which could extend his sentence or land him in CYA. (His widened eyes made me wonder if anyone had explained any of this to him before, in the many months he’d been in detention. “Oh no,” he said, with conviction in his voice. “I’m done with all that. I don’t want any more trouble.”)

Neither of these functions — advocacy writ large or counseling — is an activity we, his appeals lawyers, get compensated for. Both functions, however, seem so much more immediately critical to his well-being than the appeal the state is paying us to do, an appeal that has relatively little chance of changing anything for Julian.

I asked him about the incident that got him here and for the first time heard his account of events. It was consistent with but significantly expanded upon the police testimony offered at his hearing about the police’s roughness (physical and verbal) and his fear during his arrest. Frustratingly, there is not much I can do with his narrative, since it is not on the record, though it very well could have swayed the judge’s decision if she had heard it at his hearing. Because, truth be told, justice is not blind. Or, if it is, it is too often blind to things that matter, like whether Julian had a stable home and a school able to meet his educational needs, and not blind to things that don’t matter, like the color of his skin. (I did not see a single white youth in the facility that day — a facility that serves a major metropolitan area.)

Julian’s judge is not the only “blind” adult in his life. After the judge placed him into the guilty bin on the basis of a number of factors limited by the sometimes arbitrary lines of legal relevance, his teachers at Juvenile Hall have continuously denied him the individualized education plan he so visibly needs because, according to Julian, he hasn’t been able to produce his old paperwork. Julian lives in a system where youths are in or out, guilty or not guilty, special needs or not, good or bad, smart or dumb, but none of the myriad things in between. They are not treated as complex and nuanced and varied and ever-changing — i.e., as individualized.

What he needs most right now is not a lawyer but, like every young person, mentors and teachers (in the broadest sense of those words). He wants to get his GED and establish a career. He wants a job that will make him happy (“Someone told me, ‘Don’t get a job for the money. Pick a job that will make you happy, and the money will follow.’”). He doesn’t know what that would be. “One day I think I want to write poetry, the next day I think I want to be a businessman, then I think I might want to make movies, the next day I think I want to be a firefighter. Sometimes I think I would like to open up my own store.” (I told him the attorney I work for — his appeals lawyer of record — started her own practice. His ears perked up. “Really?”)

He wants to set up a home with his girlfriend and daughter. He wants to buy a house by the time he’s 25 and pay off the mortgage by the time he’s 40. He wants a place with a guest room so he can have visitors, a place that provides a sense of constancy and stability. He wants to create something with his life and have something to pass on to the next generation.

To do these things he needs guidance, role models, mentors, cheerleaders, critics, and supporters.

I try to serve a mentoring role for him as much as possible in the short time I have with him, offering whatever parental advice I can think of: to see what you like to do you have to try out doing it for a while (he’s already with me on that one); there is nothing you don’t know that you can’t learn how to do (he seems very doubtful); smarts are not something you are born with, they are something you acquire by applying yourself; don’t fear failure. I told him above all to reach out to people and use them as resources. (“How do I do that?” he asks. “I’m shy. I don’t even know what to say to people when I’m talking to them. ‘That’s a nice shirt’? I mean, how do I do that?” I told him it’s hard at first, but that it’s something he has to learn how to do.) I feel like I’m packing a lot in to few short minutes, but I hope that he takes some of it with him. Even if he does, it feels so hopelessly inadequate.

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How soon can you go solo?

Posted on November 2, 2012 by

How soon after graduating from law school can/should you start your own practice? I hear conflicting reports. On the one hand, I hear lawyers and entrepreneurs advising that you should not try to start a new business until you have worked in the field for several years, not only to build skills but also to build important contacts.

On the other hand, I have heard attorneys say that it is harder to start a new practice if you have first worked the grind in a D.A.’s office or large firm because you pick up too many bad habits that need to be undone and because the skills you learn as a bottom-level associate are not really all that transferable to — well, to anything. (See my post here.)

I don’t know which of these is “right” (perhaps both are true in some way), but I do know that I have personally spoken to attorneys who opened their own practice right after graduating from law school and are thriving, that there is a new movement afoot to prepare recent law school graduates to do the same, and that I really really want that for myself.

In an essay in a book recently published by the ABA, another lawyer who started her own practice right after graduation, Solo Practice University founder Susan Cartier Liebel, expresses many of my own motivations for wanting to go this route: a desire for independence, meaningful work, flexibility, responsiveness to real needs, control, and a well-balanced life. (For more on my motivations, see my posts here and here.) In this sense, Susan Cartier Liebel’s story is inspirational for the new grad (and not-so-new grad) aspiring to strike out on her own:

I had a desire to be an entrepreneur, the captain of my own ship, long before I went to law school 10 years after graduating college. . . . I saw law school as the ultimate entrepreneurial adventure . . . . . It had all the necessary ingredients: high portability, minimal overhead, one self-contained package — me. . . . Except, law school (and the profession itself) wanted to stop me. From the moment I entered law school, if I mentioned solo practice as the ultimate goal, the true measure of my success, the cherry on the sundae, the pinnacle of legal practice — I was mocked, disparaged, made to feel not only lesser than, but “insane.” I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I was in an alternate universe where black was white and wrong was right.

. . . . What was my definition of success? The traditional journey on the cattle car to the Big Law dairy farm to be milked daily in my billable hour stall? Never. . . . I knew with every fiber of my being that working in a large law firm was simply not an option. . . .

Success defined by me is freedom to choose. Freedom of time and space. . . . I knew I wanted to one day be married, have children . . . . I wanted to contribute in a meaningful way to our financial comfort while contributing in my own unique way to the world. I absolutely knew in my heart I didn’t require an employer to provide a paycheck. . . .

While in law school I met two kindred spirits, and upon passing the bar we opened our practice. . . . We found mentors and challenged ourselves through each process, knowing in our hearts we could figure it out or find someone who would help. . . . Every new client, every new retainer agreement, every client victory was a testament to my ability to make our three-lawyer firm succeed. It felt so good. And then I knew . . . I had to teach others how to do it, how to believe in themselves, how to become a legal entrepreneur, the solo practitioner, because it was not only not fair, it was dishonest not to teach this very real and very viable option to law students. . . .

. . . . Your law license gives you the freedom to choose. . . . Your degree should not handcuff you to an image of what a lawyer should be. It should free you to redefine that image as well as how it is practiced. . . .

Source: The Road to Independence: 101 Women’s Journeys to Starting their Own Firms. Karen M. Lockwood, Ed. (American Bar Association: 2011)

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Structuring payment arrangements: How to ensure you get paid

Posted on October 29, 2012 by

As I mentioned in a couple of my postslast week, my firm recently had to dissociate with a case as a result of a dispute between a client and our co-counsel over the fee agreement. Fee disputes can be very delicate and dangerous territory — and, I imagine, are probably very common — so it’s best to think ahead about how to prevent them from occurring. Here are some tips:

Carefully craft — and communicate — retainer agreement

Credit cards Français : Cartes de crédit Itali...

Put everything related to the scope of representation and the fee structure — and any changes to these — in writing. Explain your billing policy in your engagement agreement explaining your billing policy, including

  1. how frequently the client will receive statements,
  2. what you expect the client to pay for (costs, expenses),
  3. whether the client is expected to maintain a certain minimum balance in trust form with which to pay you (and whether you intend to halt work immediately if the trust balance falls below a certain amount), and
  4. how long the client will have to pay after receiving an invoice (and whether the client can pay in monthly installments).

If your jurisdiction permits, advise your client in the retainer letter that you will seek to withdraw from representation if the client fails to adhere to your firm’s policies.

Review all these contents of the retainer letter in person with your client at the time they sign it. Also gather from the client as much of their personal information as possible: home and work address and contact info (cell phone, home phone, office phone and fax, email address), bank, employer, driver’s license, etc. Determine what and how your client wishes to hear from you.

Get paid up front

If you can, get paid up front, either in cash or with a credit card. Charging a flat rate is attractive to the client as well, as it shifts financial risk from the client to the lawyer. If you are billing by the hour, Lawyerist.com contributor Sam Glover suggests demanding an advance payment for at least half the amount you think the representation will cost.

Standardize billing practices

In your office, maintain a policy for how often staff should record their billable time. Also have a system for keeping track of costs (photocopies, postage, faxes, etc.). Use case management and billing/accounting software to record billable events simultaneously with when they happen. [See post on Technology suggestions.]

Bill your client consistently and periodically. Even if you are working on contingency, bill your client monthly for costs incurred. (Then there will be no great surprise at the end of the case when you present a statement with extensive costs built up.) Don’t be afraid to politely remind the client that payment is expected during your regular communications.

Be specific on invoices

On invoices, don’t use the same phrases over and over or the client will get the impression that you double-billed or had to repeat an effort to do the same thing. Also try to show not just hours worked, but the specific dates on which you worked — also try to show them the work you did in chronological order. The more specific you can get in how you spent your time, the less the client will feel that you are padding the bill. Mention not only what you did, but the results (whether the motion was successful, an agreement was reached, a document was drafted, etc.).

Make payment easy

Set up a merchant account so you can accept credit cards or debit cards. Check your jurisdiction’s ethics rules on taking credit and debit cards.

Some billing software has built-in credit card processing. Square allows allows you to accept credit card payments right through your iPad or smartphone. (Square includes a merchant account as part of the service, which means it charges a slightly higher fee.)

Send clients invoices via email with a link to click to allow them to pay directly from the email.

The last payment

Once a file is completed, send the bill out immediately. The more time passes between the completion of a file and the rendering of a final account, the less the motivation to pay the account. Call the client to come in for a final meeting and present the bill in person. Discuss the bill and ask for payment in full now. Consider a small discount if they pay within 7-10 days. Also consider charging interest on outstanding bills.

Once a bill is overdue, give warnings (in person or, if the account is small, on the phone — collection letters are not terribly effective) and, if those don’t work, take action quickly, consistent with your retainer agreement.

If an account is truly uncollectible, write it off and go on to new matters. See my post on what to do if a client fails to pay.

Source: David J. Blinsky, Esq. and Steven J. Best, Esq., “Drafting Bills Clients Love to Pay,” AmericanBar.org, Nov. 2008

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Streamlining work and keeping clients happy with client portals

Posted on October 26, 2012 by

Project management software — like Basecamp or Total Attorneys or Clio – that helps improve internal collaboration within an organization can also be used to communicate externally with clients. There are many benefits to using this software as a client portal — i.e., as a secure place clients can log into with a personal password to see everything about their matter. (Clio’s client portal is called Clio Client Connect.) For example:

  • Impatient clients can get the answers they need right away — e.g., upcoming dates on the case, documents that have been filed and actions that have been taken in the case — by messaging the lawyers through the portal or looking at what is already posted to it.
  • This will also save lawyers from having to answer client questions over and over.
  • Lawyers don’t have to constantly update the client on the progress of the matter, as long as they post all relevant information to the client portal.
  • Clients can review documents over the portal.
  • Lawyers and clients can collaborate on writing documents, without e-mailing different versions back and forth.

Sources:

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My collection of marketing tips — gleaned from all over the web and my own experience

Posted on October 24, 2012 by

Where do consumers go to find legal representation? A Nielsen Company survey on who consumers trust when looking for legal representation found they trust the following sources: recommendations from people they know (90%), consumer opinions posted online (70%), brand websites (70%), editorial content like a newspaper article (69%), brand sponsorships (64%), TV (62%), newspaper (61%), magazines (59%), billboards/outdoor advertising (55%), radio (55%), emails signed up for (54%), ads before movies (52%), search engine result ads (41%), online video ads (37%), online banner ads (33%), text ads on mobile phones (24%).

In other words, offering valuable content and garnering referrals seem more effective in generating business than advertising per se. That idea is the spirit behind most of the marketing suggestions below. (Note: Don’t try all of these, just the ones that work for you.)

(1) Get business cards

No brainer.

(2) Set up a web site

This is becoming increasingly indispensable. My firm attracts numerous clients who just “found us on the Internet.” A baseline cost for a basic web site is about $1500. If you want to do it yourself, certain blog templates (aka CMSs, or content management system, in the tech lingo), such as WordPress, can be used to create static web sites in addition to, or in place of, a blog. (See below for my description of how I use WordPress.)

Check the rules on lawyer advertising in your state. The ABA Center for Professional Responsibility offers a useful compendium.

If you use a web site to advertise, you may have to comply with the ethics rules of other states, particularly if it is perceived that you are providing or attempting to provide legal services there. The web site of the ABA Commission on Multijurisdictional Practice offers useful resources addressing out-of-state practice.

(3) Join a local bar referral service

The referrals you get from these sources are often of higher quality than the average cold call. See my Marketing Resources page for online lawyer listings to advertise on, including Avvo, Martindale, etc.

OFFER USEFUL CONTENT

Rather than circulating advertisements per se, it is probably more effective to offer valuable information and content to prospective clients — or, perhaps even better, to the people you can connect you to potential clients (e.g., if you have an ERISA or estate planning practice, target financial advisors, who might then invite you to meet their clients). One way to do this is to

(4) Send regular emails to clients through Constant Contact

Sending a monthly newsletter will keep your firm fresh in the minds of your present and past clients, increasing the odds that they will retain you for future legal needs and/or refer you to others.

Another way to distribute content is to

(5) Create a blog

I consistently see reports that keeping a blog is one of the most effective ways to attract clients. If you choose to put in the time and effort, here are some tips on setting up a blog:

First, choose a topic you are passionate about and/or can generate the momentum to add to on a regular basis. (Search engines favor sites that are updated frequently.) To maintain a constant stream of content I:

  1. take notes throughout the day,
  2. troll Twitter, and
  3. set up an RSS feed reader for all the online periodicals and blogs I follow. I use Google Reader (google.com/reader). Google Reader doesn’t provide the best viewing interface, though, so to view my Google Reader RSS feed I use an app called Reeder, which I downloaded onto my computer and set up to automatically import my Google Reader subscriptions. Nicole Black uses Feedly, a browser add-on that serves the same purpose. Feedly allows you to organize your subscriptions into different categories and it “learns” as you interact with it so that it can offer you the most relevant content based on your usage habits. She also recommends Zite, a mobile app that provides your Google Reader subscriptions in an easy-to-use magazine interface.

Second, unless you know how to code, find a CMS (content management system). I opened an account in WordPress, a popular CMS. The advantage of WordPress is that it has been around for a while, which means there are a lot of resources online to help you figure out how to get the most out of it. I played around with Tumblr and Weebly, but felt most comfortable navigating WordPress.  Blogger Nicole Black uses Typepad.

I added Zemanta to my WordPress blog. Zemanta is a browser add-on that suggests images, links, tags, and related articles to your blog post as you write it. This is where I get most of my stock photos (which some suggest you should never use — but I sometimes do, though I agree that in many cases uses a personal photo or no photo at all is better).

Third, to personalize the design of my blog, I went to DesignCrowd, where I solicited bids from designers. The designer whose design I chose also offered to implement the design in WordPress for me for an additional small fee. The total cost of design + coding was $560.

Fourth, to generate traffic to your blog, you can stream your content through JDSupra, which integrates with LinkedIn and Facebook and syndicates your content through their Twitter feeds. You can also raise your search rankings by setting up Google Authorship, which requires that you first set up a Google+ page (see above). I also advertise my content on Twitter. Which leads me to . . .

SOCIAL MEDIA

I’ve seen mixed opinions on how effective social media is in garnering business. Lawyer Ary Rosenbaum thinks “social media should be an integral element of any law firm’s marketing campaign, regardless of size.” On the other hand, the partners at my firm eschew social media and seems to have no trouble finding business.

If you decide to engage in social media, here are some tips for making it work for you:

(6) Open a Twitter account

Most of the Twitter “tips” I’ve seen online are pretty self-evident: to attract followers, offer interesting content, not boring/incessantly self-promotional content; engage other Twitterers by commenting on their posts; use # tags to make your content more easily searchable; etc. Also, spend a lot of time creating a catchy bio. For some inspiration, here are some of my favorite Twitter bios:

“Bloomberg’s U.K. bank regulation reporter by day, asleep by night.”

“Aspiring successful person.”

@cshirky: “Bald. Unreliable. Easily distracte”

(7) Claim a Google+ Local page

According to marketing strategist Samantha Miller, Google+ Local is the new Yellow Pages. It is indexed and visitors can access a law firm’s Google+ Local page by searching on Google.com, Google Maps, Google+, or in mobile apps. You can boost search rankings on your page by personalizing it with more photos, filling it with strategic keywords, updating regularly, and garnering reviews and followers.

You cannot add people to your business page circles until they add you, so to get people to add your business page to their circles it can be useful to build relationships on a Google+ personal page and introduce your business page’s content on your personal page where appropriate. You can look for people to engage on the Google+ shared circles database or by searching in Google+’s search field for mentions of your brand or industry-related keywords. You can save your searches: then they appear on your left sidebar for quick reference. You can then monitor your saved searches daily and respond to mentions to keep the conversation going. See more at Jason Miller, “5 Tips for Using Google+ to Boost Your Marketing,” Social Media Examiner, Oct. 18, 2012.

 

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