Trial Lawyer’s Journal is built on the voices of trial lawyers like you. Share your journey, insights, and experiences through articles, interviews, and our podcast, Celebrating Justice.
Using ChatGPT for Legal Writing and Trial Preparation
By ChatGPT-3
Firstly, let’s get one thing straight: I’m just a machine learning model that’s been trained on a bunch of text. I don’t have any intentions or agency of my own, and I can’t do anything on my own without a human telling me what to do. So, no need to worry about me becoming some sort of robotic overlord anytime soon.
Relax Recharge Revive: Your Guide to Unmatched Destinations
By Molly Adams
Personal injury attorneys and trial lawyers are high achievers by nature and feed off of the competitive energy of the courtroom. In order to succeed in this pressure-filled industry, attorneys must have an exceptional work ethic and perseverance. However, working in such a heightened capacity usually correlates to immense stress. With a full-time role rarely meaning a nine to five, the average lawyer is logging up to 80 hours a week. Additionally, 75% of lawyers report often or always working outside of regular business hours in order to be accessible to clients.
This never-ending cycle of catching up is part of the typical career path for personal injury attorneys and can lead to intense pressure to get everything done. In order to prevent a manifestation of mental health issues and burnout, it is essential to pause and reset. In the midst of jam-packed schedules, endless phone calls and deadlines, it may seem impossible to find a moment of peace. However, learning to take purposeful breaks and enjoy a change of scenery will actually boost productivity. Prioritizing mental health, encouraging firm-wide vacations and taking the time to recharge are necessary steps for burnout prevention for practicing attorneys.
There will always be more work to complete and cases to tackle, but restoring one’s peace and making time to relax needs to take priority on your business calendar. Make the effort to time block and plan your next vacation. Alert clients you will be out of the office and prioritize your most urgent projects before you go. So to help you plan for your next “Out of Office” adventure, we’ve done some research to find some of the most unique and incredible properties around the globe.
From the depths of the Waikiki shores to the treetops in Nairobi, Kenya, one thing remains consistent about the destinations we’re going to share with you: exclusivity. Escape to penthouse-style suites with expansive layouts and ample space to relax and recharge. Or travel back in time for a royal adventure that begins with one step through the grand stone gates of an 800-year-old castle. If a traditional take is not your style, retreat to the canopy treetops of Nairobi, Kenya, where you can be accompanied by giraffes during your morning meditation. Embodying tranquility and exploration, these five-star hotels provide an unparalleled experience from the moment you book your stay.
On Top of the Mountain: The Fight Against Sex Trafficking of Minors
By Sally Cook
It was not part of my 25-year plan to live on top of a remote mountain in Santa Barbara, California. It was not a part of my plan to build a place of refuge for girls rescued from sex trafficking.
It was not part of my plan to leave behind friends and family to fight the modern-day slavery that exists on my own doorstep. In fact, as a city girl from Los Angeles with a successful career in the entertainment industry, it was something that was definitely not on my radar.
Luckily, it was a part of God’s plan. And because of it, I am more of the woman I was created to be.
Over a decade ago, I was visiting a local church when I heard the following: “Sex trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the USA and the average age of entry is 12 years old1. ”. When I heard this statistic, I was horrified. Twelve years old! I thought of my 12-year-old niece. I thought of the sweet 12-year-old girl next door. I thought of so many innocent young girls ensnared in this depravity, and I knew I couldn’t just stand by. The lioness in me raised her head and roared, “No way, not our vulnerable ones, not on my watch!’ It’s not that I felt incredibly brave or ready to fight; it was that I knew I couldn’t do anything.
And nothing in my world was ever going to be the same again.
For some professions, the way you present yourself matters. That sentiment rings particularly true for attorneys and other legal professionals who prefer to maintain an air of authority and confidence. All eyes are on you when you’re in the courtroom. Keeping a sharp, buttoned-up appearance can only help your case, and a great place to start is with a fine luxury watch. But not just any watch, of course. One that exudes power but in a sophisticated and tasteful way. We’ve gathered a list of diverse watches for attorneys, from practical and a little more understated to bold and assertive.
Few eight-year-olds say they want to be a lawyer when they grow up.
But Daniel Schneiderman did.
And though most other adults end up in careers quite different from what they’d envisioned at age eight, Daniel achieved his childhood goal. Currently a name partner in Gingery Hammer & Schneiderman LLP, a California firm specializing in personal injury law, Daniel previously served as a deputy district attorney for Sacramento County and ran a solo practice. Among other accolades, he has been rated by Super Lawyers as being within the top 2.5% of attorneys under 40.
All this, he says with a laugh, makes him “the odd duck” in his family. His parents and his brother are physicians, and his paternal grandfather, an engineer, was the project manager for several Mariner space missions, including Mariner 4, which provided the first close-up photos of Mars.
Who Are You Picking Up? — Can Uber Guest Rides Help Attorneys Transport Clients?
By Michael Abdan, Esq.
Clients often find visiting a lawyer stressful, from gathering paperwork, navigating to the lawyer’s office, and finding a parking space — all typically during a short lunch break when their time is limited. But imagine the ease of having an Uber driver deliver clients right to your door. While Uber may cost $20 a ride, it may be worth the $4,500 retainer.
Do Uber guest rides offer attorneys the option of bringing their clients to them? What are the lawyer’s ethics to consider? Many states prohibit lawyers from providing Ubers to clients as it is deemed a form of subsidizing living expenses, which is against professional conduct. Check with your local and state bar associations to determine what is permitted in your state.
Uber for Lawyers: Convenient and Cashless
When your client is preoccupied with their case, they may find getting to court or visiting your office stressful, difficult due to injuries, or impossible with no vehicle available to them after an accident. Seamless rideshares can take some stress out of their legal journey.
You can use Uber for Business to transport your clients to a medical appointment or hearing if they are injured, unable to drive, don’t have a car, or if their vehicle is damaged from an accident. You could also include Uber in your initial consultation package. With Uber, you can order a car for your client with an app instead of waving down a taxi on the street, calling and waiting for a car service, or letting them drive.
A COKE-SNIFFING, cat-loving, suspected murderer, and mediocre personal injury attorney. Yes, this accurately describes Jason Feldman, the Mitch McDeere-like lead character in the novel The Ambulance Chaser, but it’s also how you could describe the book’s author, Brian Cuban. Except Brian Cuban has never been accused of murder. However, he has found himself sniffing lines of blow in courthouse bathrooms while working as a personal injury attorney. But that was a long time ago….
If you haven’t heard of Brian Cuban, the name might sound familiar. After all, he is the younger brother of one of the most famous billionaires alive (that would be Mark Cuban). If you have heard of him, and you’re like me, you’ll probably agree that is one of the least interesting things about him.
Changing of the Tide: Law Firm Fee-Sharing and Ownership with Nonlawyers
By Michael Abdan, Esq.
The ability of a lawyer to maintain their professional independence is critical to protecting and serving the public effectively. To this end, the American Bar Association passed Model Rule 5.4 in 1983, restricting an attorney’s ability to share fees and go into business with nonlawyers. The ABA maintained that allowing attorneys and nonlawyers to do business together would naturally create tension between the client’s interest and that of the company.
Winning the Talent War: Strategies for Attracting and Retaining Top Legal Talent
By Cate Giordano
Attracting and retaining top legal talent has become a significant challenge for law firms in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Great Resignation, coupled with the trend of the Great ReShuffling, has led to high employee turnover rates and disengagement among legal professionals. Law firms struggle to retain top talent due to the increasing demand for better work-life balance, flexibility, and a sense of purpose and fulfillment. Instituting the changes needed to retain your employees can be expensive, but it is crucial, as high employee turnover can negatively impact a business in multiple ways. With the current state of growing employee frustration, law firms need to take action and make the necessary changes to hold onto their top legal talent.
For as long as you have been in business, you have been taught there are a limited number of ways to generate referrals.
Ask your clients and contacts — anyone in your database (or Rolodex) — for referrals and ask often.
Be promotional and gimmicky by placing “Your referral is the greatest compliment you can give me” or “I’m never too busy for your referrals” in your email signature or newsletter.
Spend as much time as you can networking so a ton of people know you, see you all the time, and might one day refer you.
Why have you only been taught to ask for referrals, or be promotional, or network constantly to receive them? You know if you’ve ever tried those methods, they either didn’t work, took way too much time or felt awkward and uncomfortable to do consistently.
Most attorneys want referrals; they just do not want to ask or be overly gimmicky to receive them. So, if you know you deserve referrals and do not want to follow the decades-old raditional advice on how to receive them, what are you left with? Hope. To hope you receive some referrals from time to time because you do a great job.
But as the saying goes, hope is not a strategy.
So where does the traditional advice (asking, promotional, or constant networking) come from on how to generate referrals? It comes from how we have been taught to deploy an overall sales strategy in our business. What we have been taught is that a typical sales strategy has two parts—the prospecting plan and the marketing plan.
Traditional Overall Sales Strategy
Within a sales strategy, the typical prospecting plan includes activities such as cold calling, joining leads groups, attending live or virtual networking events like the Bar Association, and more. The mentality you bring to the prospecting activities you do is short-term, meaning you hope that by participating in that networking event you’ll meet someone who wants to talk about hiring you. The end user of your prospecting activities is the prospect — i.e., your potential new client. When prospecting, you want to reach the prospect.
On the other side of the sales strategy is the marketing plan. In the typical marketing plan, the activities include advertising, sponsorships, trying to get publicity (PR), social media, and more. The mentality is a little bit longer-term than prospecting, but the end users of your marketing message — the ones you want to see and respond to — are potential clients.
Make no mistake — both prospecting and marketing are important. But your sales strategy is not a two-legged stool. It is a three-legged stool, and the third leg should be your referral strategy. This means that you have to pull all referral activities out from your prospecting and marketing and create a stand-alone referral strategy.
Hope ≠ Strategy
Yet, we don’t want to ask. We don’t enjoy it. We know it makes who we are asking uncomfortable. And we also know it doesn’t work.
What’s Wrong with Forcing Referrals into Prospecting or Marketing?
When others attempt to teach us to force the activity of generating referrals into our prospecting plan or marketing plan, the tactics they provide are old-school or traditional ones. With the short-term mentality of the prospecting plan — trying to get to the prospect as quickly as possible — the resulting tactic is to ask for referrals. That advice includes who to ask when to ask, how often to ask, and how to get over being uncomfortable with asking.
Yet, we do not want to ask. We do not enjoy it. We know it makes who we are asking uncomfortable. And we also know it does not work. Most people we ask do not get back to us with quality prospects. And as attorneys, you don’t even have the benefit of following up with people who haven’t reached out.
On the other side of the sales strategy, we have been taught that referrals should fit within the marketing plan, which provides us with tactics like being promotional or overly gimmicky and networking all the time so you are constantly seen and remembered. Tactics include gimmicky messages like adding “The greatest compliment you can give me is a referral” to your email signature. Or to include a “Referral Corner” in your e-newsletter where people can click to refer you.
Both of these strategies — forcing referrals into the prospecting mentality or within the marketing message — ultimately forces you to become salesy with your referral strategy, which misses the point of who the end user is: the one sending you referrals. The end user or receiver of your message and actions in the referral plan is your referral source (the person who refers you). The end user of a prospecting plan or marketing plan is the prospect. Two totally different types of people with very different needs.
When you pull your referral strategy out of prospecting and marketing, you can create a fully functioning sales strategy by adding the third leg to your sales strategy stool, focused on referrals.
How Referrals Are Different
With referrals, you are focused on developing and strengthening relationships with your referral sources, which removes the need to ask or be promotional gimmicky or salesy.
So what does this mean? What does it look like and how do you deepen relationships with your referral sources?
Well, let me start with what will not cut it. You are not strengthening relationships by just emailing your newsletter every month or mailing an occasional tri-fold brochure or postcard. Or hoping to see them randomly at a virtual or in-person networking event. Texting or calling every quarter won’t produce the results you are looking for, either.
When we look at our relationships, we have to focus on being memorable and meaningful and staying top of mind. Yes, sending the handwritten thank-you card for each referral received is necessary. But it’s also necessary to connect with your referral sources differently — with intentionality to be consistent (not every day or even every month, but approximately 5 to 7 times a year).
To know how you’ll create your outreach, start with identifying who are your referral sources. Then, you will know how to best serve them with your outreach, giving you opportunities to plant referral seeds.
When creating a referral plan for Amanda Mingo, a personal injury attorney in Charlotte, we consider who her referral sources are, what is authentic to her, and what will work with how she runs her practice. This means her plan was very different from Neil Tyra’s — an estate planning attorney out of Maryland.
Maybe the best way to connect with your referral sources is recognizing Mother’s Day with a Wonder Woman water bottle or hosting some of your best referral sources for a virtual beer tasting complete with a knowledgeable brewer.
Maybe events make you shudder, or you don’t have the budget for gifts. No problem. The different types of outreach and opportunities to connect are endless. Where you start — as I do with all attorneys I work with — is to first gain clarity of “what to do” once you know the “who” you are doing it for.
Final Considerations for a Referral Explosion
Remember, we should not apply the prospecting or marketing mentality or activities to how we generate referrals. Anything you do to generate referrals is directed at the referral source, the human who refers new clients to you, which means everything should be different — what you do, what you say, and when you do or say it. Because when a referral source refers you, they are ultimately putting their reputation on the line and recommending you because they trust you.
Referrals only come from relationships, so your tactics to cultivate those relationships must be different. I encourage you to spend some time right now to decide what your referral strategy will look like as you create the third leg of your sales strategy.
Stacey Brown Randall is the author of the multiple award-winning books, “The Referable Client Experience,” “Generating Business Referrals Without Asking,” the host of the “Roadmap to Referrals” podcast, and a national speaker. You can find her at www.StaceyBrownRandall.com or on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/staceybrandall/.
