Integrity Marketing

The Best Treat You Can Give Estate Planning and Elder Law Clients This Halloween

Working through the complexity of a Medicaid application or setting up an estate plan that involves trusts, QLACs or multiple marriages; the most important thing you can give your client is your undivided attention. That goes for when they are in your office sitting at your conference table or when you are mapping out a strategy and preparing their documents.

Your undivided attention is the treat. The trick? Tuning out interruptions.

Clients like knowing that you went to a well-respected law school. They also like knowing that you are a leader in your field. But they need to know that you have their back. That you or a team member isn’t going to let a simple (or complex) error create a problem for them, their heirs, or their accountant.

Delivering quality work requires undivided attention, and that requires managing your time, one of your most valuable assets. Your cell phone rings, and it’s your brother-in-law. Do you answer it? Some estate planning attorneys set clearer boundaries than others. Their family and friends know that when they are in the office, they do not have time to schmooze. Lacking this basic time management skill causes more than a few attorneys to find themselves working late on a regular basis. But what do you do when the interruptions are coming from the people you work with?

Do associates have unfettered access to you throughout the day? This kind of interruption presents a challenge. Your associates or colleagues need to be able to ask questions. The trick is to balance their need for input with your need to stay on task. The solution is setting time boundaries.

Does the question have to be answered right away? If there is a deadline approaching, then you clearly need to have a discussion. Keep it on topic. Otherwise, schedule a time after you have finished up the work you are doing.

Does anyone else in the office have the answer? If you have a senior associate who can discern the difference of when they can accurately answer the question and when they cannot, perhaps the younger attorney could speak with them first. If not, your time will be needed.

Can a time for questions be scheduled? If your associate knows that they have fifteen minutes of your time at a specific time every day, they should be able to manage their own work flow in order to hold questions until that time.

Ultimately, you have to establish and enforce your time boundaries. And some of your associates may have to adjust to a change in your level of accessibility. But imagine yourself with a stretch of time where you can fully concentrate on your client’s estate planning with no interruptions and get enough work done to get out of the office at a reasonable hour. Sounds like a treat to us!

How Does Your Estate Planning Law Firm Manage Millennials?

Just like baby boomers and Gen X, millennial elder law or estate planning attorneys go into this practice area because they want to make a real difference in the lives of seniors and families. But that’s where the similarities end.

Work Must Have Meaning. This generation wants their work to matter to clients and to the community at large. They want to be challenged, hate being bored and have little patience for arbitrary processes that have no real purpose. Rewards must be more than monetary. Making a difference is what matters. Millennials also need to feel that they are growing as lawyers. They want to be challenged by assignments that are interesting and different.

Career Growth Matters. So Does Flexibility. When they talk work/life balance, millennials really mean it. A millennial won’t be the first to volunteer to pull an all-nighter unless it’s a project that really, really requires it. They have a different view of deadlines. Don’t tell a millennial that a document is due in court on Monday if it’s really due on Thursday. It will backfire.

Feedback is Essential. Millennials want lots of feedback. Blame their parents if you need to, but to keep them happy, schedule more frequent reviews, even if they are conversations that are not related to salary or advancements. They also expect you to give them clear directions and define specific goals to be achieved.

Transparency. You can’t just tell a millennial what you want them to do and expect them to obey blindly. They want to know what went into the decision. They might also ask that they be part of the decision making process next time. It’s not that they don’t think you know what you are doing. They expect to have an active role.

Playing Well With Others. Millennials like working in groups. In fact, they prefer a collaborative, team-based approach in the workplace to a competitive atmosphere.

They Know How the Digital World Works. Mostly. Don’t assume that just because someone is under 30 that they know all there is to know about social media or how your computer system works. They will know how your smart phone works. But we know millennials who refuse to use Face Time or Skype, started using Twitter in high school and then dropped it in college and think that the best use of Facebook is to keep their grandparents up to date with their lives.

Changing Jobs Does Not Scare Them. This is not as dramatic in law as it is in technology, but a millennial will not stick around if they are not happy in a law firm. They expect to be challenged, motivated and fulfilled and if they’re not, they are looking elsewhere. A baby boomer or Gen X will stay for the paycheck and the prestige, but the millennial will not.

Leadership in Your Law Firm: Are You James T. Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard?

Star Fleet Academy does a good job of turning out leaders, but despite going through the same program, James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard have very different leadership styles. There’s no answer as to who is the better captain, despite endless debates by Trekkies, but these two captains may serve as a useful measuring tool for essential leadership skills.

Engaging with adversaries. This one is a little too obvious. Kirk is faster to resort to physical force, while Picard would be more likely to initiate a discussion. Consider how you deal with other attorneys when they are coming from an adversarial position. Which approach has served you better, and which has set a professional example for your associates?

Sticking with the plan. Picard is the easy winner here. You can just see him explaining to a baffled crew why the initial plan, whether it’s about an attack or a decision to travel to a far-off galaxy, makes sense in the face of otherwise contradictory evidence. In an estate planning office, new information may be uncovered during the course of preparing a will. Do you stick with the original plan? Are you teaching your associates how to respond to client surprises?

Improvising to meet changing conditions. Kirk’s devil-may-care attitude often hides his analytical skills, which are often underestimated as a result of his bravado. Experience has taught his team that while he may be going in a direction that does not make sense to them at the moment, Kirk knows what he’s doing. Note: in an office setting, your team will appreciate your explaining to them why you are doing what you are doing when you are doing it. There are more learning opportunities in real time than after the fact.

Following the rules. There are a lot of rules in Star Fleet, and the same can be said for the legal profession. The Prime Directive never changes, and neither do the rules of the law and of the state. While Kirk may stretch things a bit, there’s no room for this in the law.

Making tough decisions. This is where both Kirk and Picard excel, and this is also a key component of a leader in any setting. Leaders are not afraid to make unpopular decisions. They also have the ability to take the short and long term impact of those decisions into account before making a final determination of what to do next.

Who would you rather work with? Think about your support team, paralegals and associates. You know them well, and you also know the dynamics in your office. Which of the two Star Trek captains do you think they would be more likely to follow into battle, or in your case, to dig into an extremely complex estate plan that requires a tremendous amount of time, legal research and negotiations?

Team Building to Build a Successful Estate Planning Law Firm

Building a profitable estate planning and elder law firm is difficult if you have a revolving door of support staff, paralegals or associates. And unless you were fortunate to work at a very progressive law firm, chances are good that you have never experienced any kind of team building. A great team doesn’t just happen by luck, and it doesn’t just happen during the hiring process. It takes effort, time and sometimes, the help of an outside consultant whose focus is team building.

Before you hire anyone to help with team building, make sure that they understand the very specific culture of an estate planning and elder law firm. The dynamics of your office, regardless of the number of personnel, are not the same as a commercial litigation firm.

You’ll need to lose the lawyer’s natural orientation towards advocacy. You may be able to out-reason your associates like no one else, but that’s not going to help your team bond and grow.

Team building does not end when the team building retreat ends. That’s just the beginning. Team building is an on-going process, much the same as marketing. Almost every day provides a new opportunity for team building and reinforcing the firm’s values. For example, do you have weekly staff meetings and do they actually take place? Weekly meetings are a great way to reinforce successes and explore how to solve challenges. A small firm might have a short team meeting every morning.

Building a strong team includes a shared vision for the firm. Do your team members know that your intent is to build a small, high quality practice or that you want to create a multi-office practice that focuses on a particular segment of the population? You have a vision. Your team needs to know what that vision is and they need to be on board with you.

Do you have a mission statement, and if so, do your team members understand it? Do you understand it? And if it is the same mission statement that you created ten years ago, does it need to be updated to reflect where you are right now?

Successful teams have clear goals. Do your team members know what you expect from them on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? Clear goals will help you and them measure success.

Offsite meetings are best for team building. Groups bond better when they are away from the day to day tasks and scenery. Besides, who will answer the phone when you’re in the middle of an intense discussion?

Don’t forget to have some fun. A happy team is a successful team.

Thought Leadership That Helps You and Your Estate Planning Practice Grow

Do your marketing efforts also provide thought leadership for your team, your clients, referral sources and allied professionals? Thought leadership distinguishes you from attorneys who are engaged solely with the daily business of a law firm. No judgment here, but to build a profitable practice, you’ll need higher visibility—that means a higher level of leadership.

Thought leadership includes:

Taking leadership positions in professional organizations. Anyone can be a member. Not everyone takes it to the next level. Is there a niche in your office that you are passionate about? That’s your best choice. Don’t jump into an area that you don’t care about, because it will become apparent to you and those around you. Better is to follow your interests.

Speak up! If speaking in public is new to you, start with small groups, then work your way up to regional and national conferences. If you aren’t a natural speaker, if you’re not comfortable or want to get better, invest in a training course. There are any number of national companies that are designed just for speaking skills.

Get published in legal and business journals. Here again, if this is new to you, start small and work your way up. Your local bar association has a printed or digital newsletter. Give yourself the task of being published once a year. Next step: your state or city’s law paper. Select a topic where your knowledge is better than others in the field, and present it to your peers through this medium.

Identify other thought leaders and develop relationships with them. Who knows your practice areas better than you? The trusts and estate planning and elder law bar is known for its collegiality. If you don’t already know who these individuals are, look to see who is publishing and speaking, introduce yourself, using social media if that’s in your comfort zone, and make a point of meeting up with them at bar meetings or national conferences. You’ll grow more professionally by joining up with these leaders.

How do these elements tie into your marketing efforts? Thought leadership activities establish you as a source that is respected by your peers. Otherwise why would they permit you to publish, speak or lead? And the bigger the group–national versus local, and the more prestigious the publication, the more elevated your leadership becomes.

Striking a balance between practicing law, running a law practice and taking thought leadership positions requires you to manage your time wisely and well. It also takes a great team, systems that work smoothly, and strong time management skills. But we are sure you’ll agree that the end results are well worth the effort.

Leadership Skills to Make a Trust & Estate and Elder Law Practice Soar

We don’t care if you are a three person law firm or a practice area in a large law firm: strong leadership skills will make the difference between maintaining the status quo or growing your practice into a powerhouse. Most law schools don’t teach leadership skills. This is one area where on-the-job training can be counter-productive. What does the estate planning and elder law attorney need to know about leadership? As it turns out, a fair amount.

At its core, leadership is the ability to influence people to act towards a goal. Understand that leadership is different from management. Management is important also, but a manager focuses on the day to day operations of a law firm. Leadership is a much bigger role. Are you a leader at your firm?

The Long Run. Leaders understand the difference between short term management and a long and broad vision essential to the success of their law practice. They share their perspectives with team members, and that includes everyone from the receptionist to the senior associates. Employees who adopt a leader’s vision are motivated and energized.

It Takes More Than Money. Your firm’s future depends on having an engaged group of professional and administrative employees who come to work every day for reasons that are greater than a paycheck. People want to be in an office where they feel that they are a valued part of an enterprise that can achieve short and long term goals.

It Takes a Team. A great leader knows it takes a great team to succeed and just as importantly, a leader who takes care of their team. A steady diet of conflict and criticism can doom a practice–we’ve seen it happen. You may not have learned how to manage employees during law school, so be careful about on-the-job training. Running into the same problems over and over again with support staff? Maybe it’s not the staff, but a lack of leadership and a shared set of values.

Breaking up is Hard to Do. One of the hardest tasks is telling an employee they’re fired. Unless you are really hard-hearted, or angry about poor performance or a bad attitude, it’s difficult to tell another person that they no longer have a job. However, a bad employee impacts other employees, who are likely to resent someone who isn’t doing their fair share or who is not being penalized for slacking off. A good leader makes the hard decisions.

Innovation is Good. So is Change. One of the shared characteristics that we have seen in successful leaders is being open to trying new things. That includes everything from new document systems and marketing tools to changing up where people sit. Your office may have processes that have been in place for more than ten years. Could your office be better with a change?

Good leaders are forward thinking, excited about the possibilities and always looking to make things better. Does that describe you?

Why Are We Still Talking about Lawyer Videos at WealthCounsel Symposium?

If you want your estate planning and elder law practice website to really stand out from other practices, a professionally produced lawyer video is the way to do it. Most of your peers still don’t have them, for reasons that continue to mystify us at IMS. That’s because we hear first hand from our clients about the impact the videos have on their marketing efforts.

Why are videos so powerful?

Video drives a much deeper engagement than text. Videos are processed faster by our brains than text. It’s how we are wired. Think about how much we love going to the movies or how much people love to watch “their shows” on television. We engage with moving pictures of all kinds, from movies to television to YouTube videos. We get lost in the stories being told.

Videos are also more geared to our emotional side. When making a decision about who to entrust our family’s future, a lifetime of savings, and making difficult decisions, we want to choose someone we feel comfortable with. That connection happens faster and on a deeper level with someone who we have seen speaking to us in a video.

Think about your favorite movie. How many times have you watched it? Do you feel like you understand the characters the actors are playing, even if they live in another country or another galaxy? That’s an example of the emotional power that video has.

Another nice touch about lawyer videos: they are you, “live,” 24/7. People can meet you on their phones, tablets and desktops, without ever setting foot in your office. And when they do meet you, they’ve already had a really good introduction. They know what your voice sounds like, have a sense of what kind of mannerisms you may have, and already established a level of comfort.

Want to know more?

If you’re reading this from WealthCounsel Symposium, please do stop by the IMS booth #37 to say hello to Michael and James. Michael will be more than happy to talk with you about lawyer videos and you can pick up a copy of our new book, 52 of Our Best Ideas to Market Your Firm Now! You can also call James at 877-352-2021 ext. 80.

Estate and Elder Law Attorneys Advised to Ramp Up Mobile to Keep Up with Google Index Changes

We’re taking a brief break from this week’s WealthCounsel Symposium to share an important change that is coming from Google. For as long as there has been a Google, its algorithms have crawled websites to create search engine results pages (SERPs). Today, when they crawl your websites, they are also checking for mobile-friendly pages and responsive design techniques. Websites that meet responsive design criteria are given preference in mobile search results over those sites that do not offer mobile friendly design.

Today, we live in a mobile world, and according to a number of Google analysts, in the very near future, mobile search results will no longer include sites that are not mobile friendly.

Not only that, but the mobile search index will become the primary index. While the desktop index will remain active for the time being, the rate of updating will decrease. This is likely the first step toward eliminating the desktop SERP and index. This is a big change.

If you do not have a mobile friendly site, you can forget about being included in the mobile search results. And if you are not mobile friendly or if your site does not incorporate responsive design, you are not going to show up on the mobile search results. Over time, you’ll simply fade away.

This has not been implemented yet, but it’s on the horizon. Are you ready?

If you have already updated your website to responsive design, that is, updated the site so that it looks and works on a mobile device as well as it does on a desktop, then you are ready.

IMS introduced responsive design as an option in the spring of 2014 when Google announced that its algorithms would be shifting to favor websites with mobile-friendly designs.

For those who have not made the upgrade, be aware that your SEO results may start to be impacted. Our recommendation? Click here for a support ticket so that we can get the jump on this before it takes a toll on your online visibility.

When is the change going to be made? One analyst reported “within months.” In other words, you want to contact your IMS Support Team sooner rather than later!

If you’re reading this from WealthCounsel Symposium, please do stop by the IMS booth #37 to say hello to Michael and James. Enjoy a refreshing beverage and pick up a copy of our new book, 52 of Our Best Ideas to Market Your Firm Now! Hope to see you soon!

Digital Leads are Different – Jennifer Goddard Speaking at WealthCounsel Lunch & Learn

If you’re at WealthCounsel Symposium this week, join us on Wednesday, October 19^th at 12:45 pm for today’s Lunch & Learn program where Jennifer Goddard will be presenting “Transforming Digital Leads into New Clients.”

In case you still think that having a great website is all you need for your estate planning and elder law practice, we need to share some of our experience with you. Your website is just the beginning of a marketing strategy that starts when people begin to look for help with an estate or elder law problem and doesn’t end until… well, if everything is being done right, it never ends.

Your relationship with clients is different than a transactional law firm, like the one that handles a residential real estate purchase. Let’s look at the process.

Prospects search for an estate planning or elder law firm online. They find yours (because your SEO is good!) and spend some time reading about your firm, watching your videos and clicking on your social feeds to get a sense of who you are. Do they like you? Trust that you’ll do the right thing for them? Don’t underestimate the power of a video to help them engage with you on a personal level.

They fill out a form or call your office. That’s the first big part of bringing new clients to your practice. How you respond to their initial outreach will make a big difference as to whether or not they retain your firm. That’s the topic of Jennifer’s presentation, so we’re not going to dig into it here.

Once they have become clients, are you finished marketing to them? Not at all!

You know that estate plans are not “set it and forget it” documents, and you know that reminding your clients that their plans may be ready for a review is a mark of good service as well as good marketing. But that’s not where it ends either!

In addition to reviewing and revising estate plans, you should also be staying in touch with clients throughout the year in a way that is informative and helpful to them. It’s far easier if you have an automated system in place, like our E2-CRM.

Your marketing messages should be value-driven: informing clients about changes in state or federal laws that will impact their estate plan or their plan for long term care, news about speaking engagements or the practice’s involvement with local not-for-profits, client appreciation events and the like. Communication should be on-going.

Some offices send birthday cards to clients at milestone birthdays. We think it’s a warm and friendly thing. Who doesn’t like to get a birthday card?

A successful, profitable estate planning and elder law practice is like a garden that needs tending, but over time, with the right nutrients, sunlight and enough water, the garden will produce a bountiful harvest for many years to come.

Integrity Marketing Solutions Has Amazing Clients—Meet Them at WealthCounsel Symposium

We at Integrity Marketing Solutions are so proud and honored to know that our estate planning and elder law attorney clients include a number of amazing individuals who are dedicated to making a difference in their communities, elevating the profession and making the world a better place. We look forward to seeing them at the WealthCounsel Symposium in Washington, DC this week, and we want to share their stories with you.

Marty Burbank is a California estate planning and elder law attorney who wants to live in a world where children are healthy and safe, where seniors live without fear or pain and where Veterans are respected and cared for. Those are admittedly big goals, and that’s why Marty and his firm are making a big difference. Earlier this year, he set into motion a commitment to pay for a group of kindergartners to attend college who otherwise might have never been able to afford it. Learn how this came about at 11:30 a.m.  on Wednesday, October 19 when he presents “Treasure Hunting in a California Kindergarten.”

Elder law and estate planning attorney Vincent Bonazzoli really gets marketing. That’s one of the many reasons we love working with him. He also understands how important it is to connect with clients on a personal level and just as importantly, in an on-going manner. His presentation, “Essential Elements of Effective Client Maintenance,” at 3:45 p.m. on Thursday, October 20, will explore client maintenance programs, including how to get started, which components of such a program provide the most perceived value to clients, and how to make this a successful and sustainable part of your practice. Attorney Jeffrey Matsen will co-present with Vinnie.

We hope you’ll make a point of seeing our clients speak at WealthCounsel! Don’t forget Jennifer’s Lunch & Learn program at 12:45 p.m. on Wednesday, October 19 on transforming digital leads, and please do stop by our booth to say hi to Michael and James. We’re serving up a refreshing beverage and giving away copies of our new book, 52 of Our Best Ideas to Market Your Firm Now!