Law And More

Affordability Puts New Home Sales in Free Fall: Lawyers depending on closing for entry-level service in trouble

Handling the closing for a new home has been traditionally a tactic for lawyers to develop business. The jittery home buyers frequently feel grateful to the lawyer for leading them through the legal mine field. At that end, they have their new home.  For doing their will or later suing the roof contractor for whatever, they will tend to return to that same lawyer.

Now that way to prospect for clients is less likely. As USA Today reports, in March 2014, the sales of new homes went into free fall. They nose-dived 14.5%.  The main factor has been interpreted to be the lack of affordability, both in the price of the property and in the rate of the mortgage. Here is the coverage. 

So, what are lawyers to do?  One proven approach is to get the hang of social media.  This means experimenting with what channels are effective. Not all are for each unique law practice.  Blogging and tweeting may bring in business for an immigration firm. On the other hand for personal injury the channels which have the greatest impact could be YouTube and Facebook. Then those have to integrated seamlessly into the rest of the marketing mix, including presenting seminars and providing complimentary consultations. 

The challenge in marketing in law, as well as much of professional services, is that there are no longer right answers, at least not for long.  The game demands continual deep digs into what could work. For example, I was stunned how productive customized pitches sent email has been for developing new business for my communications boutique. There I have been piggybacking on the recommendations provided in "What Color Is Your Parachute?"

Airbnb: Can it be (effectively) regulated?

The Sharing Economy, just getting off the ground as an industry, has taken another hit.  For a while, Airbnb seemed a cool hipster concept for short-term leasing space. Those with the space to rent out received extra money and those bunking enjoyed a rate lower than that of hotels. The main target markets have been major metro areas like Manhattan.

The latest problem Airbnb has encountered, reports the New York Post, is that the space leased is allegedly being used in Manhattan for prostitution.  This came to light when publicist Jessica Penzari leased space in which a hooker allegedly had been slashed. Here is the Post coverage.

What lawyers will immediately see is this issue: Can Airbnb be effectively regulated?  Already law enforcement such as the New York Attorney General is focusing on how it does business.  One matter has been the law that the owner or permanent renter must be on the property during the short term lease. 

Another share-economy player taking heat is Uber. That taxi service raises its rates significantly when demand is highest. It defends this business practice by contending that is needed as incentive for drivers to stay on duty after they had "earned enough" for that day.

Will hipsters have to go back to the Hilton and hailing a yellow taxi?

Unmanned Aircraft Systems Practice Group: Business Development Not Zero-Sum Game

The law firm Kramer Levin is among those who have pulled out approaching new business development as a zero-sum game. Instead it has created a new practice area where there isn't yet a lot of competition. That's the unmanned aircraft systems group or all the legal issues involved with drones.  Those issues range from air and land rights to privacy to regulatory compliance with the FAA.  Here is the coverage in Bloomberg Business Week.

By entering this fresh territory, Kramer Levin will have the early adopter advantage of the unique sales proposition. When it pitches to prospects it can present how it is approaching situations and then its track record.  You bet, prospects will be all ears.

Obviously, law firms will be hiring talent who has a deep understanding of technology and its implications for the commercial sector. That's the expertise that law students should be focusing on to acquire.  And they should seek out summers at firms like Kramer Levin which specialize in practices related to emerging technologies. No, not every internship is created equal.

 

Yelp: Consumer-information tool or platform for dirty tricks (ECHR ruling)

Consumer review sites like Yelp are powerful.

That's exactly why Joe Hadeed, owner of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning in Virginia, sued seven anonymous reviewers on Yelp for alleged defamation and demanded the site release their identities.  As Angus Loten reports in The Wall Street Journal, Hadeed contends they hurt his business to the tune of millions of dollars.  The suit is being heard by the VA Supreme Court this month. Here is the WSJ coverage (sub. req.)

Among the many questions embedded in this lawsuit is this: Can sites on which consumers anonymously review services and products remain legitimate public information tools or have they already morphed into a platform for dirty tricks. Among the latter could the lousy reviews planted by the competition and possible retaliation by the media outlet itself against those not buying advertising. 

Ruling Against News Portal

Those represent one set of issues.  Meanwhile across the ocean the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) fined Estonian news site Delfi because it was found to be negligent in its process for managing anonymous comments which were ruled defamatory.  Here is coverage of that court decision, as reported by Wired.co.uk.

Could it happen that sites like Yelp will find it necessary to overhaul their entire approach?  That could include banning anonymous comments.  A less drastic measure would be to install an automatic procedure for identifying potential defamation and then addressing that, immediately. The option of taking it down, of course, becomes a free speech one.  

Huffington Post now bans anonymous comments. Will other influential media properties like Gawker also come to that decision? Comments provide insight into public opinion. That's why entities ranging from marketers to politicos take them seriously. When posted anonymously, they could contain more candor. 

JD or Ph.D. in Humanities: Which is worse for (trying to) making a living

"Father, forgive me, my first career never got off the ground."

Don't kid yourself.  Advanced degree programs, professional and graduate, rewire our brains and re-socialize us. The purpose of that was to shape us into professionals for fields such as law and college teaching of the humanities. When those fields are ones we can't penetrate in order to earn a living, that bit of neuroplasticity and stilted persona become detriments to being hired in parts of the economy which are growing. 

So, lawyers shouldn't assume they can easily catapult into another career.  If the past is prologue, the lost generation of humanities doctorates and ABDs (All But Dissertation) can teach you something brutal. The mental models we had developed to identify and process data and the questioning personality which had been superimposed on us alienated employers.  

I lost the first two jobs I landed.  The third paid peanuts.  Only the fourth, at Chevron, was a charm.  That means that for five years I wandered in the desert of financial insecurity and zero professional status.

What would I have done differently?  Here are four tips.

Watch how successful people went about their careers, ranging from what they read to how they presented themselves. 

Forget sunk costs. Later in life there would be plenty of other lousy investments.

Be nice. The aloof superior attitude of the over-educated didn't get me far.

Get in and out fast of new career paths. I spent too much time exploring being a psychiatric social worker.

The good news is that profound suffering so early in my professional journey made it possible to get on the other side of setbacks later in my career.  We get better at stumbling and getting back up.

Be Next LegalZoom: Unlikely

Displaced and unhappy lawyers are being derided that they don't have the makings of becoming an entrepreneur. Everything in your personality, education and employment conditioned you to play it safe, give them the answer they were expecting and not question.  That's what you have been told. So, some of you might be yearning to prove "them" wrong.  Maybe you could put together the next LegalZoom. Or a company whose niche is screening and placing Mandarin-speaking nannies for upwardly mobile families in fly-over land. 

Well, think about that.  Explore how to to do it and how it could be funded.  And maybe even trial run it on a very limited scale.  At the very least you will learn plenty about yourself, the world and business. At the most you could make it big. But the odds are against all startups, not just you with the legal training.  

In the rawest kinds of measurements the numbers are that the majority of startups fail. In The Wall Street Journal, Deborah Gage wrote a chilling article on that. Here you can read it (sub. req.)

More specifically, Gage cites the research of Shikhar Ghosh of Harvard Business School.  In terms of venture-capital backed startups, about 30% to 40% go into liquidation. And more than 95% never fulfill the projected ROI.  So, if you were fortunate enough to attract investors, you have a less than 5% chance of succeeding in a financial way that means something in the world of capitalism.

Startups are a sexy concept. But it makes more sense for a lawyer who's lost or just plain miserable to simply develop an entrepreneurial mindset.  Essentially, that's the ability to take short-term risks to try yourself out in other career paths.  Ideally they should be related to the experience you already have.  

For instance, a lawyer who has worked on closings is checking out getting her real estate license. She will start out with the sold revenue-producer of rentals, meanwhile leveraging her contacts for sales listings. Hopefully she can bump into commercial developers who see her as useful.  Former BigLaw lawyer Elie Mystal was entrepreneurial in parachuting into journalism at Abovethelaw.com. He's made a brandname for himself. It might not have worked but it did. At that same media property Yale JD David Lat handles the business side, along with an article now and then. 

 

Nuking Law Career? Not so fast

The stress involved in a law career is the stress you know.  The stress involved in a career change and possible relocation to another part of the U.S. or world is what you don't know. It could be worse.  And it could be of the kind that you can't manage.

A 50-something lawyer is sitting on the hard rock of indecision. The spot isn't comfortable so she wants to get off it, as soon as possible. That could cause her to choose unwisely.  She could receive an offer for a demanding, well-paying position in the administrative part of law. Or she could pull the plug on all that and move into a new path. That would be real estate, both residential sales and rentals, leading perhaps into the development side. She is good at making contacts. In addition, she is toying with the option to flee the Northeast Corridor which seems to over-value success.

There is no right decision. There are only more informed ones. This lawyer knows what a legal job requires. She knows the Northeast.  She does not know real estate, except to work with closings.  She does not know other parts of the nation. 

Contagious: Why (most) lawyers can't create that force field

In marketing, public opinion, arguments to judges and jurors, interviews with media, client relations and human resources management at the firm lawyers need what they're presenting to be contagious.

 "Contagious," of course, is the new buzzword for what resonates, what goes viral, what sticks in the minds and hearts of humans (and probably animals) and what becomes associated with you.  Contagious is good. 

Most lawyers fail at generating what becomes contagious.  And the reason why is this: They are conditioned by personality and training to be negative. Of course, there are exceptions.  One is John Tarantino of Adler Pollack & Sheehan.  He argues from a position of law and on the side of what's right. In the courtroom there is no garlic in his soul.

Recent research shows that positive is more contagious than negative. That study of 100 million was focused on Facebook memes.  Here you can read a summary of the research in The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.).  There are many reasons for that.

Much of Americana is based on family values. That has permeated all our institutions. So, from the get-go we're tilted that way.  The genius of Facebook is that it simulates those values.  In their ebook about Facebook "Contagious Content," Brian Carter and Marketo document that phenomenon.  Here you can download the book, free.

Negative puts us on guard.  That's why it's the kiss of death in an ad to embed the negative.  Even on late-night television personal injury lawyers limit their reach in framing insurance companies as bad.  The more effective approach is to be seeking justice. 

In addition, especially with the world in turmoil and the economy unpredictable, negative erodes the ability of human beings to keep functioning.  Positive may be a happy illusion but it works, at least enough of the time. 

The most successful American leaders with the greatest reach, such as Ronald Reagan and Warren Buffett, have been sunny.  So, how lawyers flip the switch to positive? Read Reagan's speeches and Buffett's annual reports. Notice how they are able to find light in darkness.

Pimp: Role now demands Machiavellianism, technology, special events

Soon enough higher education could create an academic degree for pimps. It would equip them with the complex knowledge base and skill set required to be successful in the sex industry.  And if the industry is legalized in more states, then the curriculum would include courses in human resources and compliance.

According to a study funded by a half-million-dollar Justice Department grant, the pimps who thrive in the current market have sophisticated operations.  It has been published in the Urban Institute.

As Bloomberg reports, they use Machiavellian tactics. Those include setting employees against each other.  In that competitive context, employees are more apt to make and exceed their quota.  In addition, pimps have to up on technology.  The best will envision what special event to sponsor - especially sports ones - to bring in the johns.  Also, in a just-in-time manner they will parachute their employees to a disaster scene to provide service, including to the gawkers.  Here is the Bloomberg coverage.

All this shows that pimps have a handle on how to make a good buck in a turbulent economy.  But what about the employees? Obviously, if the sex industry would be legalized in more states the employees would enjoy the federal and state protections of the law which other kinds of employees do. Pimps as employers would have to navigate the same EEOC hurdles as PepsiCo and IBM. 

Daniel Muessig: Out-of-box Advertising Came from Hip-Hop Culture

The legal sector is reluctant to market in out-of-the-box ways.  

So, when a member does, the odds are that the outreach can generate over-the-top results.  Pennsylvania criminal defense lawyer Daniel Muessig is a recent example of that.  

Muessig's background in hip-hop conditioned this to make one of the most candid and in-your-face promotional videos. Ever.  Here you can view it and read Amanda Hess' interview with Muessig in Slate.  When you do, you will understand why it has gone viral, got the phone ringing non-stop and attracted media attention. 

Candor, because it is so rare, is a very disarming entity.  It breaks through people's protective layers. They are ready to trust. That's the first step in the process for buying a service like legal representation.

In the video, Muessig has street types emerging from the courthouse in a happy mood.  Their body language blares: We won our case.  Then the audio portion says, "Thanks, Dan."  Dan can thank himself for having the smarts and courage to do this commercial.  The American Bar Association should invite him to deliver a keynote speech on marketing and sales. 

Thank you to Charlotte Toal of central Pennsylvania for flagging me on Facebook about this news.  Toal and I were roomies in college.  She became an artist who married a lawyer.  The good news is that their daughter Julia also became an artist, not a lawyer.  I became a writer whose fantasy of becoming a lawyer landed her a 1L at Harvard Law.  She fled with the first lucrative offer to ghostwrite a book and return full time to communications.