New Lawyer Training Holds Lessons for All Lawyers
By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program

One hundred and fifty lawyers recently attended a free day-long program produced by the Oklahoma Bar Association called “The New Lawyer Experience.” More than half of the attendees were brand-new lawyers, having been sworn in to our profession just the week before. Of the rest of the group, most had been practicing law three years or less. But several veteran lawyers attended, including some public officials who will soon be rejoining the ranks of private practitioners.

Much of the content provided is valuable for lawyers in all walks of life, particularly those in private practice. This month we thought we would pass along a few of the highlights to all of you. In return, we hope that you will remember this program, which will continue to be scheduled the week after the new lawyer admission ceremonies in the fall and spring. Please encourage the new private practitioners in your community to attend.

Plan your work… work your plan.

Some clichés have been around a long time for good reason. Because the practice of law is so time consuming, it is easy to get trapped into a cycle of primarily meeting the daily deadlines while spending little time on long-range planning.

The key to having a well-thought-out plan is simple. It is critical to take the time to think about it and then put it into writing. When contracts or agreements are concerned, lawyers all appreciate the necessity to “reduce it to writing.” But this concept is equally important to lawyers for their internal planning operations. Whether it is your business plan, a marketing plan or a plan to handle the numerous matters associated with complex litigation, taking the time to put things in writing gives you the ability to make decisions about priorities and time.

We all have numerous aspirations, ideas, plans and goals. Most of us have dozens or even hundreds of things that we would like to accomplish. The reality is that many of these goals will never be accomplished. Investigation may prove that a goal is not practical or even desirable. Time constraints mean that many of us seem to live our professional lives in a constant state of triage, deciding which “patient” gets treated first. By taking the time to write down your goals, you can prioritize their importance. Then you can write down action steps to accomplish these goals and give yourself deadlines for the steps.

A business plan is a perfect example of how this could work. When lawyers of my generation opened a law practice, few of them ever drafted written business plans. (And those that did were probably forced to do so by loan officers at financial institutions.) With the ever increasing complexity of law practice in business operations generally, it is now a very good idea (if not a requirement) to draft a business plan for a new law practice, even if it is just handwritten steps on a legal pad. More formal business plans are often desirable, particularly when several lawyers are involved.

Here at the OBA Management Assistance Program, we just received a copy of The Lawyer’s Guide to Creating a Business Plan, 2006 Version by Linda Pinson. This software package from the ABA Law Practice Management Section is available for sale to our members at a modest discount. The price of $149 (plus shipping and handling) might seem a bit high to some. However, when you consider all of the effort and financial resources that will be poured into starting a law practice, you probably should consider it a bargain.

Keep the main thing the main thing.

The main thing about a law practice is clients and service to the clients. OBA General Counsel Dan Murdock told the attendees of a commercial enterprise that used this phrase as part of their mission statement. All law firms should have as a core value the goal of delivery of excellent client service. But it is not enough in the 21st Century to merely deliver good client services. A critical component of good client relations today is excellent communication with the client. Doing a good job for the client is only half the battle. It is very important that the lawyer communicate to the client the effort expended and value to the client. Promptly returning phone calls, making sure that the client receives copies of all documents associated with their case, explaining matters clearly and obtaining feedback to make sure that the client understood the explanation are all benchmarks of a successful law practice.

We provided a document to all of the seminar attendees called the Ten Commandments of Client Relationships, which is suitable for framing. This document is attributed to the Queensland Law Society of Australia. It is now online in several versions. You can download your own copy, suitable for printing, framing and hanging on a wall in your office, at: http://jimcalloway.typepad.com/TenCommandmentsClientRelations.pdf

It is (or should be) all about your clients.

Have a trustworthy trust account.

OBA Ethics Counsel Gina Hendryx spoke to the attendees about trust accounting and other ethics issues. She talked about the importance of making sure that your trust account bank statement is delivered to you unopened. You should review all of the information and the canceled checks before passing it along to your staff. Your staff should be aware that you conduct this review of the trust account records. As a former U.S. president famously said, “Trust, but verify.”

We all appreciate that some lawyers get into trouble with trust account problems. One recent law school graduate remarked to me at the program that because there had been so much talk in law school about losing your license to trust account violations, he now had a great deal of anxiety about the topic. I told him that it was really just a matter of adding and subtracting. Just pay close attention to the trust account, keep good records and never take anything from it that doesn’t belong to you.

Ethics Counsel Hendryx noted that there is no rule prohibiting a lawyer from authorizing another person to sign the checks on his or her trust account. (In fact, in larger firms, it is a standard course of operation.) However, she cautioned, just be aware that it you are giving this person the ability to take not just your client’s money, but your law license as well.

Marketing is not a four letter word.

Many lawyers express disdain about the advertising methods they see employed by some fellow members of the bar. But in an increasingly competitive business environment, it is important for most lawyers to make information about the types of services they offer freely and widely available. Marketing is not advertising. Networking with other lawyers and businesspersons, making presentations to community groups, having a tasteful Web presence for the law firm, and writing scholarly articles for publication in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are but a few methods of accepted and professional marketing activities.

The most effective marketing tool is to do a good job for your clients and communicate with them well during the representation so that they will relate their positive experiences with your office to others.

Technology is pervasive in law practice.

Most of the activities that lawyers do involve the analysis, processing and communication of information. We are all aware how information technology tools have changed and continue to evolve. Most lawyers now use digital legal research tools, at least in part. It is interesting to look back and note that it was relatively few years ago that an AOL user could not send e-mail to a CompuServe user and vice versa. The debates about whether lawyers should use mobile phones or e-mail seem to be in the far distant past even though they took place not that long ago.

Technology will continue to evolve and lawyers will continue to have to learn more about information management tools whether they want to or not.

It’s not just a business.

Although most of the information provided at the new lawyer experience program was about how to run the law firm as a business, it is more than just a business. Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Steven W. Taylor referred to the legal profession as a “calling” and reminded the attendees of our important role in maintaining the rule of law for all of our society. Lawyers were heavily involved in drafting the documents that formed the foundation of our country. Lawyers continue to be involved in improving our society. We all should be proud to be members of this honored profession.

Finally, a special thanks:

This program could not have taken place without the cooperation and support of many people. Thanks to OBA Director of Educational Programs Donita Douglas and the OBA CLE Department for their support of this program. Thanks to Oklahoma Attorneys Mutual Insurance Company for agreeing to buy everyone lunch and to OAMIC President Phil Fraim for talking to the group about how to purchase professional liability insurance. Thanks to my assistant Sharon Dotson for her hard work. Thanks to the Tulsa County Bar Association for allowing us to use their facility at no charge for the Tulsa edition of this program. I want to add a special thank you to the remainder of our sponsors: Beale Professional Services, LawWare, Software@Law and Thomson West. Our sponsors allowed us to make this program available for those who really need it at no charge.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal Oct. 7, 2006 - Vol. 77; No.27