technolese

When I first decided to learn about online marketing for my legal practice, I signed up for quite a few newsletters on anything that had the word “online” in it. Not surprisingly, within a week my inbox began to receive a steady stream of just about every topic related to marketing online. All well and good to get my feet wet. But eventually (as in a month later) I realized that much of the content was duplicate content in terms of general principles, and the rest was just a question of the specific practices in which these could be applied.

After that initial month, I applied one of the principles I learned about evidence, which I hold near and dear to my heart professionally and personally: relevancy.

Relevancy forces me to be focused, and ignore the latest fad if it’s of no use to me. For example, the iPad. I know a lot of lawyers who have one or want one. I’m in the second group: I want an iPad but refuse to buy one. The reason is simple: I can’t find a use for it in my practice that is not fulfilled by my new smartphone or my HP mini notebook. Believe me when I tell you that I’ve tried to convince myself to get one; and I have been unsuccessful, even with the iPad 2 now out.

Essentially, information (and gadgets, which I love) has to pass my very own two-prong test:

1. It has to be relevant to what I want to accomplish now or in the near future. This also means that it has to integrate, with very little duplication, with what I already use and do; but help me go a little further along my goal.
2. It has to be something that has a short learning curve for me; something that builds on skills I’ve already acquired somehow. I may have to rethink this part of the test because every new gadget or software out there builds on a lot of what is available right before it comes out…so everything now is pretty much “intuitive.”

These two principles save me time and money (or are those two things the same thing?).

I have since unsubscribed from many of the newsletters I originally signed up for. And, unfortunately for me, the iPad doesn’t pass the first part of my test—it’s just duplication in terms of technology.

The best part is that applying relevancy in my daily work has also increased my productivity—I don’t get distracted as often. Hence: phone calls not related to what I am working on have to wait; as does email (of course); or that interesting article in the Bar Journal that I just got in snail mail.

When I was writing the last post on finding time, I was in the process of looking to replace my virtual paralegal. Truth be told, I saw it coming since early February, when my then virtual assistant had been experiencing some challenges handling her time. Still, I tried to put off addressing the issue because she is really good at what she does, and we work well together. Besides, the thought of having to set aside time to search for someone new, and to train them, meant I had to stop and carve out time away from all my current commitments and projects. Eventually I couldn’t postpone it any longer—the anticipated discomfort of trying to make the current situation work weighed more than the pain of looking for the time to do this; the desire to avoid pain can provide such an impetus!

Last week I set out to find a new virtual paralegal. I hired him last week, after reviewing his resume and meeting him for lunch. But in the week it took me to get to this point, I realized that the true reason I dreaded the switch was that I didn’t have a way to get the new assistant up and going from the start with a minimum “waste” of time, without taking time away from the things I have to do or those I want to do.

With the old paralegal, I didn’t need to have “a manual”; our work history provided the undocumented way of doing things that worked. She had worked with me at one of the firms; and knew not only the practice area, but pretty much how I work as well. Of course, this means I have no real system to get the new person started other than sitting down and explaining as we go, as he encounters challenges along the way.

Obviously, this is not good because some day my new assistant and I may part ways; and I will be left in the same position—which is why the E-Myth book continues to make more and more sense. To avoid being in this situation again, then, I need to do have a manual for this virtual paralegal, and any others I may need.

We read (and write) about how to get the practice running smoothly, how to get clients, how we can get a better handle on our time, our work habits, etc. For me the hard part has been knowing where to start doing any of this stuff—I see myself standing in the middle of a meadow, with all these “practice parts” strewn around, and wondering where the heck to start. So I’ve decided to just pick something and run with it, tinkering with it within the framework of the kind of practice I am building.

I don’t know if working on this manual for the paralegal position is the place to start in my quest to improve things. But it is a start. The way I see it, if I start using the framework from his book and system, using the kinds of tools that have been working so far for me, then I will at least be that much further along than I am now.

In the end, if all I do is read the “how to’s” without making a concerted effort to actually implement what seems useful to me (and tweak as I go), I’m just wasting time; time that I can allot to something else.

With all the hats we wear, it’s sometimes difficult to pause to really consider how we can get our practice to flow more smoothly in terms of getting the work done, doing the marketing, generating a profit and still have time for a life. Sure, we may have thoughts of trying one thing or another, but most of the time we get caught up in delivering the work and with the countless details that come up during the day. Personally, I find that it takes real effort to make time for thoughtful consideration of these things because it’s normal to spend the bulk of the day working on two rails: one rail is the work on individual cases and the other is the ad-hoc rail, dealing with whatever comes up during the day–which is why I found an exercise from The E-myth Attorney helpful.

In the book, Michael Gerber and his co-author attorneys suggest keeping a diary of everything we do for about a week—and they mean “everything,” including time you spend in the bathroom.

Well, the exercise turnout to be quite eye opener for me! I found out that fully half of what I do,I can delegate to my paralegal. Even though I have a lot of things in some sort of system—and “some sort” appears to be the key phrase here—I have a lot of room to make changes that will let me concentrate on the things I like to do as well as the ones I have to do personally.

Of course, now I have to find the time to look at these quasi-systems and see how to improve or do away with them. But I guess if I am going to make any progress, I can console myself with the idea that the sooner I start, the sooner I will be able to make headway on getting rid of things that are just a lot of busy-work compared to the benefits for the practice and myself.

Here are eight more tips from NexFirm’s David DePietto, on how to keep control of your week. I think tip #1, on creating a task list for the week (I’m thinking a “to do” list, of course), may have a limited use unless we use the other 7 tips to do it.