2007-2008
Solo and Small Firm
Section Council

Chairperson
Aaron J. Kozloski
803-748-1320
aaron@capitolcounsel.us

Chairperson-Elect
William Nettles
803-779-9966
billn@billnettles.com

Section Delegate
William E. Booth III
803-343-2895
boothlaw@bellsouth.net

Council Members

James E. Smith Jr.
803-933-9800
jes@seslaw.com
(Expires 2008)

Däna Wilkinson
864-577-0603
danawilkinson@charter.net
(Expires 2008)

Nancy E. Johnson
803-256-6400
njohnson@rbmcc.com
(Expires 2009)

Ken H. Lester
803-252-4700
klester33@aol.com
(Expires 2009)

Letter from the Staff Liaison
Courtney Kennaday
pmap@scbar.org

Solo or small, but definitely not alone
In October, I attended the 2nd Annual National Solo and Small Firm Conference in Philadelphia. Hosted by the ABA GP Solo Division, the large gathering of small firm lawyers had an air of excitement and camaraderie, since many of the attendees were also members of SoloSez (the electronic mailing list from GP Solo).

SoloSez (pronounced 'so-low-says') is made up of about two thousand solo and small firm lawyers all around the globe, but mostly licensed in the U.S. On a daily basis, questions can range from pleas for assistance with a practice question, legal form or personnel matter to “water cooler” topics, which are indicated by [WC] in the subject line. The list is hosted by the ABA GP Solo Division but is open to anyone.  For more information, click here.

The two-day conference was heavy on law practice management and technology presentations. Speakers were all top-notch, with many of the best speakers from ABA Annual meeting, TECHSHOW and LegalTech appearing. Stay tuned: the next National SSF Conference is tentatively scheduled for fall 2008 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago
Make plans now to attend TECHSHOW 2008 in Chicago from March 13th to 15th.  2008 is the year of the solo and small firm at TECHSHOW, so expect many “hands on” practical programs.  In 2007, more SC Bar members attended ABA TECHSHOW than at any time in the past decade – discovering that Chicago is a short plane ride from S.C.  Bar members can once again register at a deep discount to the country’s premiere legal technology conference – the one that is designed by lawyers, for lawyers. To receive the $100 registration discount, visit the ABA TECHSHOW website at www.techshow.com.  Choose Association Discount Code Registration and enter Program Promoter Code PP816 where indicated.  Register early and receive an additional $200 Early Bird Discount to save a total of $300 in registration fees. A limited number of rooms are available at a special rate at the Hilton Chicago. See you there!

Send us your ideas
The Solo & Small Firm Section Council wants to hear from you! Tell us how you would like to improve the Section.  For example:

• What sort of CLE topics interest you?
• Would you attend a statewide solo conference?
• Where should a solo conference be held?

Just email pmap@scbar.org with your suggestions.

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Technology & Staffing: Panacea or Poison Pill?
By Lee D. Cumbie

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There are many aspects to adding new technology to a law firm. Return on investment, increased efficiency, change, psychological turmoil, higher quality service, lower overhead in staff salaries, greater peace of mind, systematization.

Note that many of the above items conflict with others in the same list. This is because we, as attorneys, tend to become so focused on our goals for the technology that we forget about the impact on others in the firm – specifically, our staff.

In my travels around the state, looking at various sizes and types of law firms, I have noted some common detrimental approaches to managing the small and mid-size law firm. One is the ‘hands-off’ approach and another is the ‘control’ approach.

The hands-off approach is utilized where the attorney really doesn’t want to manage the business side of the law firm anyway and thus delegates it to a senior staff person. In this scenario, the lawyers are ‘out of the loop’ as to what is being done by others in the day to day operation of the law firm.

I am not referring to ordering paper for the copier or selecting a new model of computer monitor. This refers to the specifics of how clients are dealt with, how things are filed at the courthouse, who are the key people outside the firm, etc. Essentially, it includes everything about representing a client except for what the attorney typically does.

This management (or should I say ‘non-management’) method typically results in the attorney being hostage to their staff. Fearful and intimidated by the prospect that technology changes will not be acceptable to their key staff, the attorneys will not act to streamline their business operation if it risks upsetting them. You could also call this the ‘tail wagging the dog approach’.

The control approach works a little differently. The attorney fixes the agenda he or she is interested in pursuing in their mind and ignores the effect on the staff. While this mindset doesn’t generally result in the same reticence to improve business operations the hands-off approach usually engenders, it typically ignores the business as a whole with a disproportionate focus on the lawyer’s role and his interests or desires.

This narrow focus can thwart the best efforts of the attorney to improve his law firm efficiency because it alienates key staff and causes them to ‘dig in their heels’ and undermine attempts to make the desired change. This is generally exhibited by various complaints about the new approach versus the old way.

A different management approach is to find a middle ground by better understanding how new technology, and the change it necessitates, affects the entire firm. In this discussion I will use generalities. Recognize when the generality applies and when it doesn’t and make adjustments. In other words, ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’ just because a particular generalization does not apply to your situation.

Staff members in any organization generally dislike change – specifically, change in what is expected of them and the methods in which they carry it out. Technology inherently mandates change in these methods. What is less obvious is that it should also bring about change in what is expected of everyone else as well.

For instance, case management software is designed to accomplish many of the administrative tasks historically performed using paper systems. If the software simply mimicked the paper system, there would be little benefit to moving to a computerized system. But it doesn’t. It streamlines administrative tasks beyond the capability of a paper based system.

Paper versus Software
Contacts in the rolodex portion of case management software are used for a variety of purposes. Let’s use some paper system equivalents to illustrate. I can use contacts to look up a telephone number to make a call, or attach a contact to a folder (instead of Xeroxing a rolodex card and stapling to the inside of the paper file folder), or cross indexing the contact in the rolodex with the file allowing the attorney to easily find the case associated with the person on the phone (instead of writing the name of the file on the rolodex card), or checking all contacts on all users lists for conflicts of interest (equivalent to keeping a duplicative index of clients and adverse parties), among many other capabilities.

Less obvious to staff are the ways software moves beyond paper capabilities. Everyone’s rolodex can be instantly synchronized without any duplication of effort. The contact can be linked to time entries, phone notes, phone messages and file notes without ever re-entering or re-writing the contacts name and information. Mass mailings can easily be performed on desired categories of contacts. Eliminating duplication of effort benefits the staff directly. New capabilities benefit the firm.

Taking advantage of these benefits mandates a change in the way staff handles these administrative tasks. If the attorney is not attuned to staff concerns then they will sabotage, directly or indirectly, the implementation of the new computerized system. The result, in most firms, is unnecessary turnover of staff personnel or failure of the desired change.

By making the effort to show concern for staff responsibilities and supporting their efforts while learning the new system, law firms can avoid this very inefficient loss of experienced personnel and the expensive cost of implementing a technology that no one will use.

Another aspect is that staff members can feel threatened by the software. Everyone wants, and needs, to feel they are valuable to the organization. The manner in which they are valuable is subject to viewpoint. The attorney may feel the staff member is valuable for very different reasons than does the staff member.

When many of the tasks the staff member places value upon are supplanted by the software, they can feel their value has been lost. This is commonly identified when a staff member is overly ‘worried’ about switching to this new software method. They find reason after reason why it just won’t work and grudgingly accept any suggestions for how it might work after all. This is purely a psychological reaction to their perceived loss of value.

The advanced parts of case management software are even more likely to trigger such a reaction. Document assembly, event management/tickler systems can leave a paper-based staff person feeling their only function now is to answer the phone.

The solution is for the attorney, and trainer/consultant, to demonstrate how the staff member is now more instrumental as a highly trained user of a complex computerized system. It is also important to discuss additional roles the staff member can now adopt in the new system.

The reality is that as the mundane tasks of law office operation are automated, it requires higher skilled staff members to make the system work properly. It also opens up many new avenues for staff members to take on new and more valuable responsibilities.

This is where the attorney can demonstrate leadership by encouraging firm members to embrace these changes for the good of the firm, and themselves. By making it clear how valued the staff is in this transition, and how important these changes are to the economic health of the law firm, the attorney has the chance to shine as a leader.

So, no matter which management approach you lean toward, take the time to make it clear to your staff how new technology will make them more valuable to the firm. It’s your business and your license. Don’t let your staff dictate law office operation, but at the same time, don’t ignore their concerns. They have valuable input regarding the implementation of the new system. Take advantage of it.

Lee D. Cumbie is licensed to practice in S.C. and N.C. He is the founder of Cumbie Law Office Automation Consulting, Inc., the top legal technology consultancy in the Carolinas. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at Campbell University where he teaches the Law Firm Computer Lab and Advanced Litigation Techniques course. He is a former chair of the Law Practice Management section of the N. C. Bar Assn.

Lee earned his B.S. degree from Regents College after military service aboard a U.S. Navy submarine as a nuclear powerplant operator. He earned his J.D. from Campbell University, cum laude, in 1997.

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Techno-Savvy: Why You Should Consider A Blog For Your Practice, Part One
By Sheryl Sisk Schelin

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Last time, I discussed the development of the “wired” law practice and mentioned some specific websites and applications I use in my practice to make things flow more easily. This column's focus is the most indispensable part of my practice: my blogs.

Full disclosure: I also have a side business through Inspired Consulting setting up lawyers’ blogs (blawgs) for marketing purposes and teaching lawyers how to “blog for clients” according to a system I developed through my experiences with blogs and my own practice.

But first you're wondering, “Why on earth would I want to have my own blog - yet one more time commitment I can’t afford to make?” The answer is pretty straightforward:  blogs are, hands down, the most effective and efficient way to get your marketing message across on the Internet to your prospective clients.

Blogs, short for “web logs,” have been around for several years now. They developed initially as personal journals, but the “first adopters” of the new format quickly realized the potential for business purposes. Now, you'll find all kinds of people blogging for business –CEOs of large corporations, law professors, artists, dancers, waiters, florists, doctors, and, yes, lawyers. Blawgs can take one of three basic approaches, though several successful blogs take a combined approach: legal news, policy / argument, and subject matter.

Legal news blogs primarily offer short entries featuring news and recent developments in the legal profession. Several of these blogs take a humorous approach, such as  www.quizlaw.com; others take a more serious, journalistic approach, like  http://blogs.chron.com/legaltrade. Policy argument blogs are popular among law professors, and two examples include the Volokh Conspiracy, http://volokh.com, and Sentencing Law and Policy, http://sentencing.typepad.com. But by far, the most popular approach for solos and small firm lawyers is the subject matter blog.

Examples of this type of blog abound. The Bankruptcy Law Network is a loose consortium of bankruptcy lawyers who joined together to promote a group blog on bankruptcy information for consumers, www.bankruptcylawnetwork.com.  Patently-O is devoted to patents at www.patentlyo.com, and SCOTUSBlog an Akin Gump blog dedicated to Supreme Court litigation, www.scotusblog.com.

To understand why blogs are so popular, and such a good idea for solos and small firm lawyers looking to maximize their internet marketing budget, we must first understand how search engines work. Most of us are familiar with the main players, including Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, so we’ll use Google as an example. Very basically, Google sends out “spiders,” which are bits of code that crawl the web looking for websites and the keywords most prevalent on those websites. The spiders gather bits of information about the site—when it was last updated, how many times the keywords are mentioned, and a host of other facts—and bring them back to Google’s databases, where the information is collated and stored, awaiting a search. When a user types in a search query, Google’s massive database is called up and analyzed for the keywords present in the user’s query.  Then, the magic happens and the results are ranked according to several factors calculated by the ultra-secret, highly proprietary Google algorithm.

While only Google engineers know for sure how to get to that #1 slot on your preferred searches, we can say a few generic things for sure:

1. Google likes organic content that offers genuine value to the searcher. Thus, so-called “scraper” sites that merely yank copied information from other sites verbatim and regurgitate it all back on a single page (in hopes that the frequent mention of keywords will boost the site up in the rankings) will not get to the top of Google’s  Search Engine Results (SERs) as fast as a 500-word article on, say, bankruptcy basics written by a sincere lawyer.
2. Google’s aim is not to help the website owner, but rather to help the searcher. Understanding this fact alone can greatly improve your web marketing efforts.
3. Google prefers sites that are frequently updated; that use <h3> and <h4>  “headings” tags in HTML (the generally accepted coding language of the Internet); that link out to other pages; and that are linked to from other popular, well-respected sites.

These three points explain why blogs are powerhouses when it comes to legal services marketing. First, good blogging offers genuine value –real information that answers the questions prospective clients are asking. These questions, of course, vary from practice area to practice area. The blog posts that make up a blog’s content are the answers to those questions. Most search engines reward a sincere attempt to answer the searcher’s question with higher placements.

Second, a blog done correctly and well, with honest, authentic, and relevant content, offers more help to the searcher, word for word, than does the average static law firm website. The reason is related to the third point: blogs are updated frequently (I advise my clients initially to make daily blog posts), use headings tags liberally, offer links to other valuable pages, and –by earning the respect of the blogging community for offering real content of value on a consistent basis—earns links back from those valuable pages. All four of these factors boost the blog’s search engine ratings for the relevant keywords.

Be sure to read Part Two in Spring 2008!

Sheryl Sisk Schelin is a solo consumer bankruptcy and employment lawyer in North Myrtle Beach, SC. In her other life, she crusades as the Inspired Solo, blogging at http://theinspiredsolo.com, spreading the word about using technology and personal development concepts to make the most out of any solo or small firm practice. In December, her bi-monthly column for the New York Lawyer website (www.nylawyer.com) will debut, focusing on solo practitioner issues. She is also working on a book about legal issues of concern to bloggers, as well as one about “going solo.”

More South Carolina Blogs
Family Law blog:  www.SCFamilyLaw.com
Family Law website:  www.StevensFirm.com
Mac Legal Technology blog:  www.TheMacLawyer.com
Personal Injury blog:  www.SCPILaw.com

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Newsletter articles

If you are interested in submitting an article for the next section newsletter, please forward to Courtney Kennaday at ckennaday@scbar.org.