Question: I feel like I did all I could over the last few years to keep my cell number out of clients’ hands. But I think I opened the floodgates when I recently began allowing clients to text me. The convenience factor and desire to modernize my customer service won out, or at least that’s what I told myself. Now that I’ve opened the door to another channel of communication, what ethics pitfalls might come from texting clients? Answer: In previous articles, I’ve focused on ways to successfully use email — “the grand champion of modern-day communication” – as well as try to get lawyers to ditch email for more secure client engagement (read: client portals). But I’m glad to see the topic of text messaging come up. It’s an important reminder of how we can apply the same ethics rules to novel techniques of delivering legal services. In other words, the rules don’t change, just how we apply them. Let’s dig in! Just as I’ve asserted that secure client portals should replace email communication with clients, text messaging should follow the same logical progression for how we engage with clients and store information on attorney-client matters. So, just as you’d take a call from a client on your mobile device, you may likewise fire off an email, text message or instant message. However, while they may offer convenience, are we sacrificing security and embracing potential ethical pitfalls with what may be sensitive information? Four Ethics Considerations for Lawyers Texting Clients Here are four considerations for lawyers to keep in mind when texting messaging with clients: Customer serviceConfidentialityCommunicationDocumentation 1. Customer Service While you’ve asked specifically about texting or SMS communications, many clients use and prefer various electronic communication tools other than email. These can include instant messaging services like Facebook

Do you read books? Of course you do. Maybe you like to escape into James Patterson’s latest thriller or load a beach read into your smartphone for those precious few minutes of downtime. Many lawyers anticipate extended time for leisure reading during travel or while on vacation. Getting Smarter With Nonfiction Leisure Reading Perhaps you read books to improve your lawyering skills. These could be procedural books about topics like negotiation or books about substantive issues that affect your clients. Nonfiction is not a synonym for boring. “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment” by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein explains why judges are unpredictable. “The Power of Moments” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath teaches the persuasive importance of story-telling, whether talking to your client, a jury or a CLE audience. Do you handle employment cases, or maybe you’re intrigued by the regular news stories about the treatment of employees in meatpacking plants and Amazon warehouses? The classic “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich can provide insight. A search for books about banking regulation referenced “Illicit Financial Flows & Worldwide Money Laundering Practices: White Collar Crimes in 2021” by K.M. Cook. A search for books about environmental regulation brought up “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate” by Naomi Klein as well as “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet” by Bjorn Lomborg. Finding books like these can open a window into views you might not otherwise see. What’s That Got to Do With Marketing? Like you, your clients are busy. Unlike you, their reading habits may not uncover books that could provide legal insight for their business or personal life. Moreover, they probably lack the ability to connect the legal dots. They need you to

Is your firm producing the kind of marketing content clients and prospects want to read? If I had a dollar for every panel discussion where a GC admitted to ignoring an important client alert after reading the first or the second one in their inbox, I’d be a very wealthy woman. They’re Called ‘Client Alerts’ for a Reason Having worked in-house at several law firms and as a consultant, I know how long it takes to get a client alert or blog post from concept to first draft, formatting and distribution. Yet, despite legal marketing surveys that show this to be true year after year, very few firms manage to get it right. Client alerts and blog posts should be informative and of particular interest to your firm’s clients. Like a present that arrives days after the recipient’s birthday, the client alert’s impact is greatly diminished if it’s too late or never opened. Improving Your Marketing Content: Tips for Lawyers and Law Firm Marketers So, what’s a lawyer or legal marketer to do? Here are some suggestions to help improve your firm’s content. For Marketers: What’s the difference between a good email subject line and one that gets ignored? Whether you’re emailing the perfect thought-leadership piece or client alert intended for your firm’s clients, you have mere seconds to grab their attention. Marketing pros recommend 50 characters or less in your subject line, but if you’re the marketer, you know that’s not gonna fly with your lawyers. Marketers know that the firm’s clients are too busy to read everything that lands in their inbox, so you need to stand out and get to the point! Start with a compelling subject line. Think “more interesting than boring,” and definitely not “click-bait.” I hope you’ll remember these tips the next time you’re

How to maximize productive time and ensure those contacting you get a responsive, personal experience? Virtual receptionists and live chat. A typical attorney captures as little as 2.5 billable hours per day. While some non-billable time is spent on administrative work, marketing, and business development efforts, large chunks are lost to unexpected phone calls and other distractions. In fact, it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain focus after every disruption. That time adds up. If you charge $350 per hour, for instance, five calls in one day could cost you $678 in missed revenue. How do you maximize productive time while ensuring everyone who contacts your firm receives the responsive, personal experience they expect? The answer lies in virtual receptionists and live chat. Virtual Receptionists Virtual receptionists work remotely, offering callers the opportunity to connect with a real, live person who represents your firm. Unlike automated phone systems, virtual receptionists delight callers and clients while performing the same tasks as an in-house hire at a fraction of the cost. You can choose to forward your calls to virtual receptionists full-time or part-time, or as backup: Full-time answering is perfect for attorneys who prefer to respond to client calls on their own time. Virtual receptionists answer all your calls live 24/7 or during the hours you set. In addition, you can choose to have calls connected directly to you once they’ve been answered, or have the caller announced so you can decide whether you’d like to take the call, have the receptionist take a message, or send the caller to voicemail.Part-time answering is ideal for attorneys who want to be available for callers sometimes but prefer to block out certain days or times of day to focus on work. With the right virtual receptionist provider, you

Current thinking about marketing holds that a business’s success depends on creating quality marketing content. For example, the Content Marketing Institute preaches that businesses are not selling goods and services; they are selling their content across multiple platforms, which in turn induces people to purchase the actual good or service. Creating Content Well, you may be thinking, that’s fine for a business with a dedicated content creation team. But I’m trying to practice law here. More writing tips from Teddy Snyder Counselors, it’s time for a mind reset. You are regularly creating content in your briefs and memoranda. The trick is to recycle the document you’ve already created into marketing content. Sometimes you can do this right away, though you do need to take the time to camouflage identifying data. Who knows? Maybe your judge will see and be influenced by the persuasive arguments you publish. Other times you will want to wait for the relevant matter to conclude. Even then, respect client confidentiality rules and just plain courtesy. First Quick Recycle: Email Marketing After you have put in the work to create a legal document, edit it for your email marketing newsletter. That entails scrubbing client identifying information and any secret strategies. Make sure your newsletter speaks your client’s language, as in plain English, not legalese. Include definitions of any terms of art. Second Quick Recycle: Blog Post Post that same content to the firm’s blog. Assuming you have not made that blog private, now the world (and Google) can see your content. Third Quick Recycle: Social Media Post links to your newsletter and blog posts on the social media platforms you frequent. Minimally, that’s likely to include LinkedIn for a business-to-business practice and Facebook for a consumer practice. And don’t overlook Twitter. Fourth Quick Recycle: Medium.com You can

Ever wish you could get past the basics in Excel and work a little bit smarter? Here’s a great tip on using TEXTJOIN, from Affinity Consulting Group’s newly updated guide “Microsoft Excel for Legal Professionals.” If you’ve ever needed to combine text from multiple cells in Excel, you know how challenging it can be to work with the CONCATENATE function or to use ampersands to get the job done. It’s even harder if your data has some blank cells. Unless you jump through hoops to nest some formulas, you’re going to end up with double spaces that need to be removed. Enter TEXTJOIN, available in Microsoft 365 and Office 2019. When You Need to Use TEXTJOIN If you have rows of data that need combined (think a column for first name, a column for middle name, and a column for last name) and some of the cells are blank (not everyone has a middle name), then TEXTJOIN in Excel is the easiest way to get the job done. TEXTJOIN is especially useful when you’re preparing data in Excel for a mail merge. Data is much easier to manipulate in Excel than it is in Word, so you want to account for things like missing middle names in Excel, not Word, whenever possible. How to Use TEXTJOIN in Excel Start by making sure you’ve created a column for your newly combined text — Full Name in our example. Now, click in the first cell where you want the combined text to appear. In the example above, click in cell D2. Functions, like TEXTJOIN, can be easily accessed from the Formulas ribbon. In the Function Library group, click on Text. Select TEXTJOIN from the drop-down list. TEXTJOIN has 3 unique arguments (information it needs to work): Delimiter, Ignore_empty and Text. You can enter multiple

The Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account, commonly called IOLTA, is one of the most valuable tools for expanding legal representation to appear in recent decades. Unlike traditional attorney trust accounts, IOLTA programs, available in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, allow lawyers to hold client retainers, settlements and other money in interest-bearing accounts. The interest collected statewide funds legal assistance programs for low-income people and traditionally underserved populations. The community and social benefits of IOLTA programs range from financial assistance for legal fees to clinics, classes and workshops. But IOLTA management can present a major challenge for lawyers, particularly those in solo practice or small firms. IOLTA regulations vary from state to state but tend to be complex and time-consuming. Moreover, the penalties for mismanagement can be severe, including disbarment. While large law firms have advantages of scale, including dedicated accounting and bookkeeping resources and robust technology solutions, solo attorneys often manage their own office finances. That creates a significant burden and has several drawbacks, especially regarding IOLTA management: Most attorneys don’t have accounting or financial management training or experience.Spending time on bookkeeping means less time for helping clients.Spending time on bookkeeping reduces billable hours. For lawyers working long hours without proper training in financial management, an oversight or accounting error can quickly develop into a major transgression. Common Mistakes Lawyers Make in IOLTA Management Commingling client funds with the firm’s operation account, failure to maintain three-way reconciliation and poor record-keeping, in general, are the most common mistakes lawyers make. Avoiding these common errors requires time and attention — precious commodities in a lawyer’s life. Lawyers who fail to maintain proper accounting for IOLTA can face professional discipline, including censure, suspension or even disbarment. In fact, some lawyers, anxious over the complexity and risk, simply avoid

According to the ABA Profile of the Legal Profession 2020, nearly 20% of lawyers suffer from anxiety. Lawyers struggle with anxiety at levels substantially higher than the general population and other highly educated professionals. It is important for law firms and firm leaders to “lead the way” for attorney well-being by creating a culture that does not increase our stress and anxiety to unhealthy levels. We as individual attorneys also have a responsibility to make our self-care a priority, especially if we suffer from anxiety. We need strategies that empower us to manage stress and anxiety effectively. What Is Anxiety, Exactly? Everyone experiences anxiety sometimes. It is a regular part of life. When we face problems at work, confrontational discussions with opposing counsel, or need to make a big life decision, we feel anxious. This is called situational anxiety. Anxiety disorders are not like this. They are not characterized by occasional or temporary worry or fear. Rather, a person with an anxiety disorder often suffers worsening anxiety over time that may not be directly related to things happening in the present. Symptoms of an anxiety disorder can interfere with daily activities, job performance and relationships. Whether you are experiencing situational anxiety or an anxiety disorder, there are strategies you can use to alleviate symptoms and feel better. Five Strategies Mental Health Experts Recommend to Reduce Anxiety 1. Focus your attention. We can get carried away by our anxious thoughts. To reduce anxiety, it helps to engage in activities that focus your attention on other things. That’s why mindfulness practices are the perfect way to move the brain away from anxious thoughts. During meditation, for example, we focus on our breath, or on a mantra. This focus gives the brain a break from our anxious thoughts and reduces feelings of anxiety. Try these activities for focusing your attention

Using legal data for strategic law firm planning is no longer reserved for BigLaw. With the improved access to litigation data from numerous vendors in the exploding legal tech ecosystem, solo practitioners, small law firms, and regional and midsize firms can take advantage of insights from data to position themselves as leaders and market movers in their respective practice areas and jurisdictions. In “How Attorneys Can Use Legal Data for Business Development and Intelligence,” we looked at how attorneys interested in incorporating legal data into their marketing toolkit can begin by using a series of simple reports to view their clients’ and competitors’ litigation data. This allows firms to find new business opportunities and better understand their real market share. Then, in Part 2 of this series, “How Attorneys Can Use Legal Data for Legal Recruiting,” we looked at some practical applications of litigation data in the recruiting process and detailed some fundamental questions firms should ask and answer before determining which laterals to hire. In this third and final article, we’ll touch on how firms of all sizes can use litigation analytics to spot trends impacting their most important revenue streams and continuously monitor what’s happening in specific practice areas to strategically position themselves for the future. We’ll also discuss how to combine insights from litigation trends with lessons learned from previous articles to determine where to focus your marketing efforts for the greatest return. Uncovering Opportunities and Diagnosing Weaknesses in Your Markets For law firms, it’s critical to gather intelligence about real-time trends that are creating sharp and sudden changes as well as longer-term trends affecting the overall health of your markets. Short-Term Trends A great example of how firms can use short-term trends to shore up their practices and prepare for downturns comes from the dramatic decline

By embracing legal tech, firms are stepping into the future and preserving the integrity and success of their practices. As another wave of COVID-19 ravages the U.S., forcing at-home work to extend even further, the legal industry continues to feel the disruption. As in any industry that relies on collaboration, communication and transparency, the pandemic has forced legal professionals to find new strategies to manage their work. Adding to these challenges, cyberattacks remain a looming threat. As guardians of clients’ personal and confidential information, legal professionals face an array of complex risks that can be difficult to navigate in such a volatile environment. The good news is that legal tech programs can prove valuable in helping you manage and protect your law practice. The Rise of Legal Tech and the Evolving Law Firm Fueled by increasing investor interest and client demand, legal tech is on the rise. That is prompting a reassessment of everything from research, contract and case management to data security, intake, invoicing and more. Innovative legal tech works to increase accuracy and efficiency, allowing firms to improve workflow and capture new business. Efficient matter management, research, contract analysis and other services can boost productivity, providing a competitive advantage. For example, rather than sorting through mountains of paperwork with the risk of something being misplaced or missed, legal tech solutions can automate all sorts of lower-end, repetitive tasks. This leaves more time to focus on clients instead of spending potentially billable time on internal responsibilities. Notably, firms that fully leverage technology may actually see an increase in profitability at much higher rates than others since the pandemic began. Simply, the traditional practice of law is rapidly modernizing. Data Security Is Top Priority Understandably, a major concern for law firms and legal professionals is data privacy and security. Amid