LawBiz Management Podcasts
LawBiz® Management Company works with lawyers to increase their profits and their effectiveness in the way they practice law. Ed Poll, the principal of LawBiz® Management, and author of LawBiz® Blog: Your Practical Guide to Profit, is a nationally recognized coach, law firm management consultant, and author. Ed has written several books and audiotapes on running a profitable law practice, and is also a frequent contributor to legal and business publications including: The Compleat Lawyer, Lawyers' Weekly USA, California Lawyer, The Practical Lawyer, Law Office Economics & Management and California Law Business (supplement to the Los Angeles Daily Journal), and other publications.
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Debbie Epstein, founder and principal or Flex-Time Lawyers LLC
In this interview, Ed speaks with Debbie Epstein about diversity in the law firm with specific focus on gender issues. Debbie is the founder and principal of Flex-Time Lawyers LLC, who helps law firms address gender issues -- specifically, how to retain women in their ranks. Women, in many of the top ranked law schools, comprise more than 50% of the graduating classes, and have for quite a few years. Yet, this percentage is not reflected as law firm partners, management or committee members. What is the reason for this and why is it important? Download MP3 (run time: 25:35)
Peter Brusso Interviews Ed Poll at CA Bar: Part 1
Peter Brusso, CEO of Infocard.cc, works with service businesses to create small CD-ROM business cards. He interviewed Ed at Ed's State Bar of California annual conference booth in September, 2007. Peter is also CEO of podcastingforlawyers.com. In this first interview Ed discusses the importance of a business plan. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Download MP3 (run time: 13:50)
Peter Brusso Interviews Ed Poll at CA Bar: Part 2
Peter Brusso, CEO of Infocard.cc, works with service businesses to create small CD-ROM business cards. He interviewed Ed at Ed's State Bar of California annual conference booth in September, 2007. Peter is also CEO of podcastingforlawyers.com. In this second interview Ed discusses the power of coaching and mentoring and the importance of learning how to run a business. Download MP3 (run time: 11:28)
Jim Arden talks about Internet Security
Jim Arden, a California litigating attorney who focuses on attorney malpractice and legal ethics, discusses the issues of computer security. Download MP3 (run time: 24:42)
Thom Singer, author of Some Assembly Required, 2nd edition. and The ABC's of Networking
Thom Singer, author of Some Assembly Required, 2nd edition. and The ABC's of Networking, is Ed's guest. In this fast-paced interview they discuss practice development techniques and increasing your connections by using networking principles. Download MP3 (run time: 22:01)
Scott Simmonds, Insurance Consultant for Buyers
Ed Interviews Scott Simmonds, an insurance consultant for buyers and lawyers. Scott talks about common mistakes that lawyers make when buying both general business and professional liability insurance. He also provides some key clues on how to improve not only your purchasing power but also your coverage. Download MP3 (run time: 33:47)
Rick Borstein, Business Development Manager of the Legal Market for Adobe Systems, Inc.
Once again Ed has the pleasure of interviewing Rick Borstein. Rick is the Business Development Manager of the Legal Market for Adobe Systems, Inc. Among other topics, they discuss the search element of Adobe Acrobat®. Download MP3 (run time: 18:52)
Carol Fritz, Partner in Offshore Services for Lawyers -- based in Philadelphia, PA
They discuss offshore legal work. Download MP3 (run time: 07:03)
Mimi Donaldson, Co-author of Bless Your Stress: It Means You're Still Alive!
Download MP3 (run time: 20:39)
Russ Ruffolo, Asset Recovery and Recycling Coordinator of MRK Group LTD: Recycling Electronic Equipment
Russ Ruffolo is the Asset Recovery and Recycling Coordinator of MRK Group LTD in Elgin, Illinois. Though based in Elgin, his company's focus is national. Russ will talk about recycling electronic equipment. In California alone, 6,000 computers become obsolete daily! And 680 million computers will become obsolete within the next few years! What happens to them? Russ will discuss the importance of recycling, the methods of recycling and what to look for. Download MP3 (run time: 14:21)
Donna Payne, President and Founder of Payne Consulting Group: Microsoft Office 2007 for Lawyers
Donna Payne is president and founder of Payne Consulting Group, a training and development company headquartered in Seattle, WA. She and the company have authored 12 books on Microsoft Office including the best-selling series: Word for Law Firms and Excel for Law Firms. She was an original member of the Microsoft Legal Advisory Counsel and is a frequent speaker at legal and technical conferences. Donna discusses with Ed the new Microsoft Office 2007 and the dramatic differences between this edition and all of Microsoft's previous formats. Download MP3 (run time: 25:27)
Peter Lowey, Senior Counsel and former Managing Partner of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP: Challenge of Building a Law Firm
Ed Interviews Peter Loewy, Senior Counsel and former Managing Partner of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP. Peter talks about the challenges he faced in building his West Coast practice from one lawyer (himself) to a staff of over 70 lawyers and 400 staff in just 20 years! Download MP3 (run time: 19:07)
Zafar Khan, RPost: Registered E-mails
Ed Poll interviewes Zafar Khan, chief executive officer of RPost, a new electronic registered mail system that allows you to both certify receipt of mail by the recipient as well as the contents of the attachments. Not even the U.S. Postal service can do the latter. It's the next best thing to having someone watch the recipient read your post. And, the best part, you don't even have to sign up for the service, just pay for the post as you use it. Listen for more details as Ed interviews Zafar. Download MP3 (run time: 21:24)
Holly M. ONeill, Talking Business: Outsourced Legal Transcription
Ed Interviews Holly ONeill. She is the principal of Talking Business, a company focusing on marketing strategies, focus groups, branding and brainstorming for new products and services. Download MP3 (run time: 14:47)
Don Garrison, Quik Sek: Outsourced Legal Transcription
Ed interviews Don Garrison of Quik Sek, a virtual dictation service. He discusses how his company uses "outsourcing" to help lawyers deal with increased secretarial needs. He talks about the company's technology to help lawyers deal with forgotten or never-learned dictation skills needed to use his service. Listen now to this interesting conversation. Download MP3 (run time: 14:41)
Winston Marsh, Australia-based Speaker and Marketing Guru: "Make more money... HEAPS more money!" - Part 1
Winston Marsh, a professional speaker based in Australia, is a marketing guru who helps businesses make more money ... heaps more money. In this first half of this fascinating interview, Winston addresses his distinctive license plate that helps him remember a key rule in marketing; as well as his unique formula for substantially increasing your revenue. You'll hardly be able to wait for next week for the second half. Download MP3 (run time: 27:40)
Winston Marsh, Australia-based Speaker and Marketing Guru: "Make more money... HEAPS more money!" - Part 2
In this podcast, Ed continues the interview with Australian-based Winston Marsh. Winston is a professional speaker and a marketing guru who helps businesses make more money ... heaps more money. This segment continues by shedding light on his unique 2 x 2 x 2 formula to substantially increase your revenue. Download MP3 (run time: 28:04)
Donald A. Downey, Executive Director of minisoft Worldwide
Donald A. Downey, Executive Director of minisoft Worldwide, is interviewed by Ed Poll about collecting both WIP and AR. Don suggests that WIP (work in progress) that is not quickly converted into AR (accounts receivable) becomes sediment that needs to be cleared out. Download MP3 (run time: 25:12)
Norm Thomas, Director of Business Development for Microsoft Professional Services Solutions
Ed interviewed Norm Thomas, Director of Business Development for Microsoft Professional Services Solutions. Norm starts the discussion with Microsoft's approach to developing solutions while using its platforms and applications. He then continues to discuss specific applications to help improve the efficiency of lawyers, and concludes with a sneak preview of their presentations at the forthcoming LegalTech Show in New York. Download MP3 (run time: 23:21)
Rick Borstein, Business Development Manager for the Legal Community for Abobe Systems, Inc.
Ed interviews Rick Borstein, Business Development Manager for the Legal Community for Abobe Systems, Inc. Rick discusses The new version of Adobe Acrobat® and how new features are of special interest to lawyers. Download MP3 (run time: 21:00)
Billie Blare, President ad CEO of Leading and Learning, Inc: Succession Planning
Leading and Learning, Inc. provides consulting services to the corporate world by guiding organizational change management. Billie talks about succession planning -- probably the single most important change that any organization can face. Download MP3 (run time: 34:55)
Jeff Carr, General Counsel of FMC Technologies: The DuPont Model
Jeff Carr, General Counsel of FMC Technologies, in another interview, talks about the "DuPont Model" and compares this model to his own expectations when interacting with outside counsel for FMC. Jeff talks about how the law firm needs to partner with the Corporate Law Department, collaborating together, as contrasted to the traditional vendor-buyer relationship. Collaboration produces more effective representation at a lower cost to the company without discounting either the value or the per hour fee of the lawyer. Although alternative pricing is an important topic that will likely appear again in our podcasts, this is the last interview in our current series on the topic. Download MP3 (run time: 33:01)
Hugh Gottschalk: Alternative Fee Billing
Hugh Q. Gottschalk, an attorney in Colorado, leads us in yet another perspective on alternative legal services pricing. He also discusses understanding the cost of your services, budgeting for litigation and structuring the actual fee agreement with a client. Download MP3 (run time: 41:04)
Jeff Carr, General Counsel of FMC Technologies: Alternative Fee Billing
In today's world, the preeminent method of billing is still based on the hour. It's not the way that lawyers have billed traditionally. It used to be that bills were given on a bottom line for value rendered services. Changes resulted largely by corporate counsel and insurance counsel in the 1970s, or perhaps more so in the early 80s, when people were frustrated with that kind of billing system. We went to the billable hour as a way to impose some cost control and as a way to understand the way law firms were billing us. Now of course we've got a whole generation of lawyers who know nothing else at this point. Jeff Carr discusses this "new" horizon. Download MP3 (run time: 25:37)
Jim Michalowicz, Litigation Program Manager, Tyco Corp: Tyco's approaches
Jim Michalowicz, is the Litigation Program Manager for Tyco Corp. Formerly, he was with DuPont in a similar capacity for 13 years. Our interview with Jim also includes two other folks from the Tyco Legal Department who will also focus on development the best business practices for their legal department - developing the most effective and efficient approaches to handling the legal affairs of Tyco. Jim combines information management, relationship management and best business practices in his role as manager. Listen as Jim explains further about Tyco's approaches and what he expects from outside counsel that work with and for Tyco. Download MP3 (run time: 52:18)
Dr. Gayle Carson, President, Carson Research Center: Interpersonal Communication
There are four personality styles What is yours? Why should you care? How does your style impact your client relationships? Gayle N. Carson, President of Carson Research Center tells us why we need to know and why we should care about this issue. Download MP3 (run time: 17:28)
Christopher Marston, CEO, Exemplar Law Partners, LLC: Providing Value to Clients
Chris, a member of the Massachusetts Bar, was the CFO of a technology company. This is his first venture into creating his own law firm. He brings his financial and management expertise to the opening of Exemplar Partners. Chris talks about providing value to clients. This means, among other things, no hourly billing and valuing the firm's human capital by creating the right work environment. He also talks getting clients more involved with their own legal matter to help increase their level of satisfaction. Download MP3 (run time: 24:53)
Kevin O'keefe, President, Lex Blog: Internet Marketing
Many say the guru of creating blogs and promoting blogs is Kevin OKeefe of Lex Blog (www.lexblog.com). In a recent interview Ed discussed with Kevin, one of their favorite subjects, using the internet (including blogging) to market one's law practice. Download MP3 (run time: 40:41)
Rick Simses, Attorney: Alternative Fee Billing - Shared Risk
Ed Poll interviews attorney Rick Simses on the subject of alternative fee billing. They discuss sharing the risk of a matter with the client... what it means and how it should impact the client's fee. Download MP3 (run time: 31:20)
Thomas S. Brooks, Vice President At&T Law and Government Affairs: What Do Huge Multi-National Corporations Look for in Outside Counsel?
Let's take another look at what general counsel are searching for when they hire outside law firms. This time, Thomas S. Brooks, Vice President of AT&T Law & Government Affairs, shares his views on the subject. Download MP3 (run time: 45:04)
Steven A. Lauer, Director of Integrity Research, Integrity Interactive Corporation: How in-house counsel selects outside-counsel
Steven A. Lauer, having been both inside and outside counsel, shares his thoughts on how today's lawyers should approach inside general counsel to gain their trust... and their business. He currently is the Director of Integrity Research, Integrity Interactive Corporation. Download MP3 (run time: 38:30)
Dr. Gayle Carson, President, Carson Research Center: Time Management
Ed Poll interviews Gayle Carson, president of Carson Research Center, on the topic of time management. While no one can truly manage time, Gayle shows us how to "pick up" 22 eight hour days over a year's time. That would make one very interesting vacation, or allow us to do a lot of additional billable work. Download MP3 (run time: 17:26)
Jeffrey K. Riffer, Attorney: Microft OneNoteTM
Jeff Riffer, senior litigation partner in the law firm of Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro in Los Angeles, CA, discusses why and how he uses Microsoft's OneNoteTM software for day-to-day litigation. Download MP3 (run time: 22:45)
Ron Baker, Verisage Institue: Customer Value
Ron Baker, a noted consultant and principal of Verisage Institute, quotes from Peter Drucker: "What is value to the customer? ... The customer never buys a product. By definition, the customer buys the satisfaction of a want..." Following Drucker's idea, Ron Baker is the promoter of "The Chief Value Officer" concept. He encourages professional service firms to think in terms of value rather than time. In an interview with Ed Poll, Ron discusses this concept further. Download MP3 (run time: 42:06)
Scott Rockfeld, Group Product Manager, Microsoft: Discussion about Microsoft OneNoteTM
90% of our work is unstructured, according to Scott Rockfeld, Group Product Manager for Microsoft. In discussing MS's new product, OneNoteTM, Scott tells us how to work in our world with a new approach. Download MP3 (run time: 27:41)
