Starting a Law Firm Book Review | Lawyer 2.0 Part II

I'm sure most you read my post on the starting a law firm book I reviewed on Wednesday. If not you can read that post here. It got some interesting comments, one from Carolyn Elefant, a former lawyer turned starting a law firm guru (who I admittedly got a lot of information from before she started solo practice university), and one from the author of the book. The both make a couple of good points, so I wanted to talk about them.

Carolyn's Comment on My Lawyer 2.0 Review

First, let's talk about Carolyn Elefant's comment. Here it is, in case you missed it:

If you review and pretty much trash a book, the least you can do is link to it. I notice that your idol Rjon uses my shingle as a key word for his videos on YouTube yet you won't even link to someone's book that you reviewed.

I'm not going to talk about the tone of the comment, as it's irrelevant in my eyes. What I want to talk about is the substance, namely why she mentioned what she mentioned.

If you read the comment you'll notice the emphasis here is on links and keywords. She is concerned that I didn't link to the book for people to go and check it out. I'm not sure what the point of the RJon comment is, but I think she's trying to say that when RJon does his stuff he is nice enough to use a keyword Carolyn has in many ways coined (I believe "My Shingle" was the name of her blog when I used to read it).

In my mind this is the type of stuff that should be included in a starting a law firm book - the importance of links and keywords in your posts. Carolyn understands the value of a good link, what that can do for a website in terms of Google ranking and visitors. That type of information is not only important but critical for building business, whether you are starting a law firm or writing a book about starting a law firm. It is the type of thing that you can do on your own without a lot of cost that can pay off huge in revenue.

Thanks Carolyn for pointing that out for me. And, if you'll see, I have added a link. My thinking in not adding a link at the time was that if I'm not endorsing a product I wouldn't include a link - that's why I gave the full name of the book so anyone could easily Google it and find it. But I have no problem adding a link, though I did make it no follow, which is internet speak for Google won't give it any credit as a link (though I encourage you to go check it out and see if it's something for you).

Josh Williams', the Author of Lawyer 2.0, Comment

I don't know why but his comment hasn't shown up on Blogger for me yet, but I got an email that it had been posted. It was long and I wanted to talk about it here, so I'll republish in case it is lost:

As I state prominently on the back cover of Lawyer 2.0 and on the first page of the companion website (www.lawyer2point0.com), “Lawyer 2.0 is a comprehensive summary and description of all the technological tools I utilized to build a six-figure solo law practice in less than 12 months.” Accordingly, I limited the scope of the book to a discussion of all the technological tools I use in my practice and describe how I use them; I felt that Carolyn Elefant’s excellent book, Solo by Choice (www.myshingle.com), more than adequately covered all the other considerations that go into building a successful solo practice.

The tools outlined in Lawyer 2.0 are what I have decided to use in my practice after considerable research and trial and error, and I felt other solos could benefit from reading about what has worked for me rather than go through the costly and time-consuming process of trial and error themselves in setting up an infrastructure for their solo practices. Thus, I think solos who need guidance with respect to the technological nuts and bolts of setting up a law firm--including a comprehensive description of how to create a paperless/digital law office--will find the book and companion website (where I give away half the contents of Lawyer 2.0 for free via blog posts) to be excellent resources.

For a discussion of fundamental business principles, ethical concerns, philosophical and other important considerations that go into building a solo practice, I recommend that solos read Solo by Choice; I am hopeful that the author of this blog will publish a similarly-helpful publication.

Okay, now that that's done let's go through this a little bit and discuss, because I think he makes some good points.

First, let's talk about the purpose of the book, to "a comprehensive summary and description of all the technological tools I utilized to build a six-figure solo law practice in less than 12 months." That is actually a great summary of the book and what the book is really about. If the title of the book was "The Technology You Need to Build a $100,000 Practice," my review of the book would probably be much different.

But this is how the book is billed. How to Build a Six-Figure Solo Practice in 12 Months or Less. To me, that sounds a little more comprehensive than "a comprehensive summary and description of all the technological tools..." It's a bit deceiving and is the reason I wrote the review the way I did. I didn't think it delivered what it was selling (and I apologize for not reading the fine print).

What's missing from this book is how he actually built the six-figure solo practice. I guarantee you it had less to do with the technology he had and had a lot more to do with the marketing and management aspects of how he set up his law practice. And before you harp at me, I know technology has something to do with both marketing and management. But instead of "I bought a Toshiba laptop," I would have expected something like, "when clients call this is how I answer the phone. I have a database set up that captures the following information and this is what I'm trying to figure out from the get go..." That is what is critical to successfully opening a law firm, not whether or not you have a live secretary or a virtual one.

Second, great shout out to Carolyn's book Solo by Choice. I feel like I've read it and was again left wanting more. But, just to be sure I'll grab a copy this weekend, read it, and let you know what I think. Make no mistake, Carolyn knows her stuff. Like I said, I used to be an avid reader. Though in the last year or so it's turned much more commercial, with classes and stuff that tend to be more of an ego boost than a reality check for what is required to be successful (and to be fair, I have not enrolled in any of her classes - they could be wonderful - this is just my opinion from the outside looking in). She's got some great stuff on her old website and blog, though, if it still exists.

Third, and finally, regarding why he wrote the book. I think that's great. I am all for the book. It has some useful information that some people care deeply about. Just don't bill the book as a how-to manual for building a $100,000 practice. If you followed everything in that book you'd have a great set up in front of you but you'd be waiting forever for the phone to ring. I would have liked to have known what you did to market your practice - if it's high volume you've got to have your hands in a lot of cookie jars (adwords, blog, facebook, twitter, newspapers, radio, television, etc.). I'm always interested in what works for people and what doesn't. That information is critical to the success of your firm.

The Book Does Fit a Niche Need

As I close this out, I do want to point out that this book fits a niche need. I'm sure there are people out there that are interested in a thorough review of how technological choices were made when starting a law firm. When I write my book it definitely won't have this amount of depth on this subject matter. If you want to find out why this guy chose a certain laptop or why he uses gmail as his email application, go read the book. It will give you a great understanding of that.

And, finally, I do want to give him credit for putting pen to paper. It takes a lot of time and effort to put something together like that, as I am quickly learning. And opening yourself up to criticism, fair or not, is just about as scary as starting a law firm. The book is well written, I just think it under-delivers.

I look forward to his review of my book when it comes out.

Have a great weekend. As always, questions and comments are welcome.