Archive for the ‘bankruptcy’Category

Open Plea to Legal Marketers … little help?

Me Learning to be Humble

Asking for Help ... Hat in Hand

Being the Practicehacker doesn’t mean I know everything. Take law firm marketing for instance.  
In real life I run a 3-lawyer suburban Chicago practice engaged in what I call “Small Business” law; i.e. we do pretty much everything a small business or its owners need their lawyer to do, including:
  • Business start-ups, incorporation, organization
  • Contracts: drafting, review, enforcement, terms
  • Hiring and firing of employees and contractors
  • Commercial litigation, collections, and defense
  • Real estate transaction, liens and construction
  • Business, stock and asset, sale and purchase
  • Divorce and estate planning for entrepreneurs
  • Bankruptcy, reorganization, crisis management
I can’t think of any aspect of practice organization,management, or marketing that I couldn’t improve. In fact, I am absolutely certain that I must learn to do a lot of things better. Of course, if I had to single out one thing for attention at the moment, it would have to be our law firm marketing.
Full disclosure: I’ve never been satisfied with my firm’s online or social media presence. I mean, my name is out there, but the picture that emerges of my firm seems fragmented and weak. Then again, my off-line presence is no better. I’ve prepared and delivered seminars, given talks both locally and nationally, and have had articles published all over. But to what end?
The worst part of the problem is that it feels like my office is being severely underutilized. After a harrowing couple of years in this see-saw economy, I finally have a stable team of trained lawyers and staff, with more becoming available all the time. But if what we have to offer does not reach the right Clients, it’s wasted. That’s the hardest part of the problem: matching the right skills with the right Clients and keeping the process going.
There is one final caveat: I need new marketing initiatives to have a measurable ROI so we can decide whether to stay with it, pivot, or abandon it and start over.  If anyone thinks they can take a crack at evaluating our situation, or knows someone else who can, please get in touch or leave that information in the comments to this post.  
Thanks to everyone who thinks they can help.

17

09 2011


by practicehacker
posted in bankruptcy, Blogging, business, Career and Job, competition, current-events, employment, facebook, Google, law office, Marketing, media, new media, old media, practice, practice management, referrals, social media, social media tools, the business of law, tips, twitter, Video, website, websites, Wisdom of Crowds, work, youtube
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Muzak Emerges from Chapter 11

Insert Muzak joke here …

On Monday Muzak Holdings LLC announced that it has completed its financial restructuring and has emerged from bankruptcy protection.The company, which provides background music programming is heard in stores, office buildings and on-hold phone systems, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware a year ago to refinance heavy debt. The Fort Mill, S.C., company said it has significantly improved its balance sheet, reducing its outstanding debt by more than half and realigning its organizational structure to improve its clients’ experience. In a prepared statement Stephen Villa, CEO of Muzak, was hopeful for the post-reorganization future of the company, saying:

As we move into the future, our strengthened capital structure provides us with the renewed ability to invest in new talent and technology that will allow us to provide new offerings and further enhance the first class products and services that our clients have come to expect from Muzak

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

Posted via email from beyond bankruptcy

03

02 2010


by practicehacker
posted in bankruptcy, current-events, work
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Will Recap finally make PACER user friendly?

Recap: Making Pacer User Friendly

Making Pacer User Friendly

Friday I stumbled on Recap and was impressed.  How impressed? I downloaded it immediately and signed the online petition to make federal case-law available for free. Yeah – that impressed. Recap seems to have impressed some others as well; it has even enlisted top-shelf talent like the lawyer-activist-millionaires over at Justia (you might be more familiar with their last project, Findlaw).

How it works: Recap saves every document you view on PACER, adds meta-tags and other features, makes the item easier to find, and posts it to a central locale.  The next time a user goes to PACER and wants that document, if it’s already been “liberated” then the user can download it free of charge.

Granted, you end up paying the 8 cents per page, which means that someone else gets a free ride, but the idea is that someone else could be doing the same and so on.  Of course the fact that Recap exists begs the question of why we Americans must pay to view the fruits of our own justice system. Westlaw and Lexis figured out that answer a long time ago.

To use Recap you must use Firefox, the open-source alternative to Internet Explorer. But I suggest you download Firefox even if you don’t download Recap. It’s just a better browser.

Feedback:  If you’ve used Recap or have an opinion sound off in our comment section or contact me, Hacker in Chief, at mhedayat@mha-law.com

18

08 2009


by practicehacker
posted in apps, bankruptcy, bookmarks, browser, business, casestreaming, collaborative tools, community, cool stuff, courts and, crowdsourcing, current-events, disruptive technology, document automation, document exchange, federal courts, firefox, free, Government, government 2.0, judiciary, knowledge management, law, legal marketplace, legislation, Lexis-Nexis, litigation, Microsoft, Mobile device, PDF, practice management, radical transparency, records, search, storage, tags, technology, the business of law, web 2.0, website, Westlaw, widget
2 Comments

ABA TechShow 2009 – Short and SaaSy

Were the ABA Damnit!

We're the ABA Damnit! We own you!

This was my 10th year at ABA Technology Show in Chicago. This year was particularly cool.  Here’s why:

Meeting The Heavies: To me, seeing people like Dennis Kennedy, Tom Mighelle, Bob Ambrogi, Jim Calloway, Kevin O’Keefe, Brett Burney, Andy Atkins, Jay Foonberg (!) and the rest of my pretend blog friends … I mean pretend LinkedIn friends … is like reconnecting with long lost relatives. Exciting and a little intimidating. But all of them were really great and down to earth. Except that Kennedy. Such a prima donna. I kid, I kid.

Meeting Canadians: Who can forget meeting the Great Librarian of Upper Canada! Beat that. Then there was Phil of the Future (my name for him), Steve Matthews (nice guy), Brett Burney (I think he’s Canadian), Dominic Jaar (vive la Quebec libre!), the boys from Clio (or as I called them, the Booth Babes), and a host of other talent from the Great White North. It was great to meet you all: now go back where the ice doesn’t melt until July.

Technology Becoming Accepted: This year for the first time in memory I noticed a preponderance of grey hairs and the careful gait of partners scoping out potential buys for their offices.  This was not the brash, flash-in-the-pan TechShow of the late-90′s in which the Internet was decried as a fad.

SaaS, Saas, and more Saas: Software as a service was all over the place, and by next year it will be pervasive. This year I was knocked out by the number and variety of kick-ass SaaS providers at the show including Clio, RocketMatter, and VLO Tech. Clio was my hands-down favorite for a number of reasons – I intend to use it in my own practice. Whatever your cup of tea, the idea of throwing away the IT department in favor of the Cloud is gaining traction fast.

Less is … Less: One lamentable fact about this  year’s show – there was less of it than I’ve seen in a long time. Another casualty of the economy I’d say, but we shouldn’t overlook the fact that many legal technology vendors have been slaves to profit instead of boosters for innovation and the slow economy is making it painfully apparent what a royal screw job they’ve been giving lawyers all these years. Many players couldn’t make it ? Good riddance to bad company.

Other than that however, it was a great experience as always and one that I heartily recommend to one and all. If you haven’t been to TechShow, go there. If you have, come back. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

For more coverage see my SmallLaw Column in TechnoLawyer.

Check out Twitter coverage of TechShow.

As always, I’d love your thoughts. E-mail me at mhedayat[at]mha-law.com or tweet me @practichacker.

ttyl :-)

07

04 2009


by practicehacker
posted in ABA, accounting, Adobe Acrobat, aggregator, ALM, Amicus, android, antitrust, Apple, apps, Avvo, bankruptcy, Bill Gates, Blogging, Blogroll, bookmarks, browser, business, Career and Job, careers, casestreaming, civility, collaborative tools, committee, community, competition, conduct, conference, cool stuff, Copy Right, corporate counsel, courts and, crowdsourcing, current-events, cybercontrols, de.licio.us, defamation, diigo, disruptive technology, document automation, document exchange, DRM, e-discovery, e-filing, e-mail, employment, enterprise, ESI, facebook, federal courts, feedburnerfeed101, feedreader, finanancial, FindLaw, firefox, FRCP, free, friendfeed, Google, Government, great conversations, hacking, IICLE, IL Bar Foundation, illinois supreme court, in house counsel, india, ipod, iPod Nano, jaiku, jobs, judiciary, knowledge management, law, legal marketplace, legislation, Lexis-Nexis, lifestreaming, lists, litigation, LPM Section, management, manager, Marketing, mass customization, mcle, Meeting, member perks, microblogging, Microsoft, Mobile device, moblogging, money, municipal government, myspace, news, Notice, outside counsel, outsourcing, PCLaw, PDA/SMARTPHONE, PDF, Podcast, Podcasting, Politics, poll, practice, practice management, privacy, radical transparency, records, recycling, referrals, remote, review, rss, SaaS, school, search, SEC Football, security, semantic search, SEO, slideshare, social networking, software, Sponsor, Steve Jobs, storage, tags, technology, Telephony & Voice Over IP, the business of law, tips, twitter, unbundling, Uncategorized, Video, Videoblog Notebook, web 2.0, website, Westlaw, widget, wiki, Wired, Wisdom of Crowds, work, youtube
3 Comments

Oh, the humanity!

law firm layoffs continue ...

law firm layoffs continue ...

I just discovered a blog (I refuse to say “blawg”) called Lawshucks that’s done a really impressive job of tracking the carnage created by big-firm layoffs (now a weekly announcement). Here is a set of quick links to their well-designed graphical representations

Follow this link to see the whole post.  Once you sneak a peek you may wonder, as I did, whether these high-profile layoffs are merely normal attrition; or the result of outsourcing; the economic downturn; an excuse to shed sub-standard performers? Or were there really just too many lawyers to begin with? Maybe these big firms have really been bottom-heavy, lumbering organizations and law schools should have applied the breaks years ago when everybody in the industry saw this coming? Any chance of that?

19

02 2009


by practicehacker
posted in bankruptcy, Blogging, business, Career and Job, careers, community, crowdsourcing, current-events, employment, enterprise, finanancial, jobs, law, legal marketplace, lists, outsourcing, practice, practice management, the business of law, Wisdom of Crowds, work
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still a bargain at $1,000/hr

Who says lawyers can’t get good work these days? Take this piece for instance from the ABA Journal:

Kirkland & Ellis Seeks Fee of $18.50 a Minute for Bankruptcy Work

Posted Jan 28, 2009 By Debra Cassens Weiss

Kirkland & Ellis has requested a fee of $1,110 an hour in a corporate bankruptcy, a possible record amount, according to one expert. The hourly rate breaks down to $18.50 a minute, Bloomberg reports. The law firm is seeking the fee for its representation of titanium dioxide-maker Tronox Inc. Two other law firms are seeking nearly as much, requesting hourly rates in excess of $1,000, according to the story. They are Sidley Austin, in the restructuring of the Tribune Co., and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, representing Circuit City. Bankruptcy law professor Lynn LoPucki of the University of California at Los Angeles told the wire service that fees for lawyers and other professionals in bankruptcy cases are growing at four times the rate of inflation. “As the economy gets worse, the bankruptcy lawyers are charging more,” LoPucki told Bloomberg. “It seems that each month one sets a new record for hourly billing rates. $1,110 is, to my knowledge, a record for the debtor’s bankruptcy counsel.”

And you thought the economy was having problems!

30

01 2009


by practicehacker
posted in ABA, bankruptcy, business, Career and Job, careers, community, competition, corporate counsel, current-events, employment, enterprise, federal courts, finanancial, jobs, law, legal marketplace, LPM Section, news, outside counsel, practice, practice management, referrals, the business of law, work
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