Southern California Arbitration Mediation and Conflict Resolution : Settle it Now Dispute Resolution Services : Serving Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Century City : Settle It Now Negotiation Blog

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This article (Relationships are Key in Job Searches) flogging this book (Whacked Again! Secrets to Getting Back in the Executive Saddle) landed in my email box from law.com this morning.

I have to say that I agree with magazine mogul Tina Brown that we're in a "gig economy" not a job economy.  What does that mean?  It means doing an inventory of your dreams right next to a realistic assessment of your skills, along with a time line for getting your own business up and running, with or without investors, remembering that in a "gig economy" barter is a perfectly acceptable alternative to cash and in the age of the internet (Networking Wisdom in Mentoring Circles) hundreds of marketing tools that can reach millions of people globally and thousands of people locally, are right beneath your fingers on the keyboard connected to the computer that brings you the most exciting set of opportunities since we decided to send men to the moon -- social networking (now there's a proper run-on sentence, the reward for which is buying myself a new copy of Elements of Style which every job-seeker and new entrepreneur should do post-haste since written communication is the key to successful online business development). 

That said, for those who NEED A JOB RIGHT NOW to pay off their law school loans (remembering that dischargable or not, we no longer have debtors' prisons), here's today's Law.com advice:

The book gives a 12-step plan for landing a new job: 1. finding passion and creating vision; 2. creating a brand; 3. creating a value proposition; 4. creating stories; 5. developing a marketing plan; 6. getting a message out; 7. creating a marketing document; 8. meeting the friend's friend; 9. power résumé; 10. preparing for an interview; 11. negotiating terms; 12. landing the job; and the next step.

The book emphasizes the importance of keeping up contacts after landing in a new job -- knowing that another may search may be ahead. But it suggests maintaining contacts by looking for ways to help other people with a "pay-it-forward" approach. "We all need help at some point," the book says. "The concept is that you are thankful for those who helped you in the past."

Villwock told the group that in his experience, the most successful CEOs and other professionals are those who are most passionate about their work. "When they stop having fun, that's when they stop and go on to the next job," he said.

He also advised the group that attitude and personal skills are as important as professional credentials. From observing executives, he said, "half their success has nothing to do with performance on the job. It has everything to do with ability to sell themselves and build trusted relationships."

If you substitute business plan for power résumé and starting the business for landing the job, you've got a perfectly great recipe for engaging the gig economy eagerly awaiting your contribution.  Listen up!  You didn't get the highest PSAT and SAT scores, graduate cum, magna or summa, ace the LSAT, study your $#@% off, learn lawyering skills, conquer your fear and pass the bar exam to be hat in hand looking to be someone's apprentice galley slave. 

Think about it and join the rest of the gig economy. 

We're looking forward to your unique and valuable contributions to the new economy right now!

The writing on the inside of the secret entrepreneurial decoder ring?  MONETIZE EVERYTHING!

AND WOMEN!!  JOIN THE PROFESSIONAL WOMEN'S NETWORK OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.  WE'RE ONLINE NATIONALLY AND "ON THE GROUND" LOCALLY.

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If you're worried about your law job becoming -- as they say in Britain - "redundant" or if you've already been laid off due to the recession, join Lawyer Connection which was born today as the result of a twitter conversation I had with Gwynne Monahan (who you can follow @econwriter).

Here's an exploration of what a mutual aid group is from the viewpoint of a social worker -- which speaks to me because I lived through my first husband's MSW in Social Work studies before he lived through my Law School experience (an eventual relationship-killer). 

Visit Lawyer Connection

From Andrew Cicchetti's Mutual Aid Based Group Work blog:

Mutual aid as group work technology can be understood as an exchange of help wherein the group member is both the provider as well as the recipient of help in service of achieving common group and individual goals (Borkman, 1999; Gitterman, 2006; Lieberman, 1983; Northen & Kurland, 2001; Schwartz, 1961; Shulman, 2006, Steinberg, 2004; Toseland & Siporin, 1986). The rationale for cultivating mutual aid in the group encounter is premised on mutual aid's resonance with humanistic values (Glassman, 2002) and the following propositions: 1) members have strengths, opinions, perspectives, information, and experiences that can be drawn upon to help others in the group; 2) helping others helps the helper, a concept known as the helper-therapy principle (Reissman, 1965) which has been empirically validated (Roberts et al, 1999); and 3) some types of help, such as confrontation, are better received when emanating from a peer rather than the worker (Shulman, 2006). Mutual aid transactions that occur amongst and between members stimulate cognitive and behavioral processes and yield therapeutic, supportive and empowering benefits for the members (Breton, 1990;Northen & Kurland, 2001; Shulman, 1986, 2006).

Obviously, we're not pursuing the therapeutic benefits of a mutual aid society as social worker Cicchetti is.  Having been a member of such a group (a community-based women's credit union in the early 1970's for instance) I can say that the experience is not only economically, but also personally, enriching.

Let's not wait for the economy to improve.  Let's start improving it TODAY.  We are the change we want to see in the world. 

JOIN US!!

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Internet defamation attorney Adrianos Fachetti; entertainment attorney Gordon Firemark; class action attorney H. Scott Leviant;  Barger & Wolen Marketing Director Heather Milligan and I will be presenting Social Networking for Lawyers: A Roadmap to Success Session 1 (9:15-10:30) at the Second Annual LACBA Solo and Small Firm Convention on June 25, 2009.

In this interactive session we will explore the buzz surrounding social networking and social media tools and how solo and small firms practitioners can effectively employ them to communicate with current clients; control your messaging as you reach out to new clients and the media; and to meet, network and collaborate with colleagues.

Our panel of solo and small firm attorneys will discuss their experiences with blogging as a social media tool, and we will spotlight several social networking applications, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. By calling upon their personal experiences, our panel will highlight best practices for how you can incorporate these and other Web 2.0 applications into your business development, PR and networking activities.

Below is a tremendous slide show on basic social networking by Deanna Zandt and Susan Mernit.

 

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A few days ago, in the wake of my social media presentation for the SCMA, I pulled out an old hand-out that mediator and USC Mediation Clinic Director Lisa Klerman and I used for a "write your way to success" seminar for the SCMA a couple of years ago.  I am pasting it here for the use of any mediator who is at a loss for a starting place to market his or her practice in these difficult economic times.

Write Your Way To Success:  A Workshop on Marketing Your Mediation Practice

            Vickie Pynchon and Lisa Klerman
_______________________________________________

Why Write Articles As A Marketing Tool?

1.    A reminder to your existing clients that you still exist
2.    Exposure to potential clients who don’t yet know you exist
3.    Become recognized as an expert in your niche
4.    Increase your prominence and credibility within the field
5.    Improve traffic with increased links to your website
6.    Expand your geographic reach
7.    Inexpensive
8.    No face to face selling
9.    You will master a known topic or perhaps even learn something new
10.    Writing can help you clarify your personal vision and goals


“Yes, But I’m Not A Great Writer” 

Not an acceptable answer.  If you can talk about an interesting topic or idea in your practice, then you can write about it. 

Tips to Get Started Writing:

Here is a simple approach to start writing your first article:

1.    Determine your target market – who do you want to reach?
2.    Ask yourself:  “What do I know that my target market would like to know?”
3.    Pick a topic, such as how to deal with difficult negotiators, cross-cultural mediations, etc.  Choose a topic that you find appealing and exciting.
4.    Ask: how would my target market prefer to receive information?  Blog, newsletter, print, electronic?  Short and punchy, or detailed and well-researched?
5.    Ask:  what about my articles will attract my market to me as a result of reading those articles?

• voice
• expertise
• creativity
• credentials
• knowledge of industry
• knowledge of legal specialty

6.    Write an outline of the points you want to make.
7.    Decide on three to five main points within your chosen topic that you want to share with the reader.  Do not overload the reader with too much information.
8.    Write it.  Put it aside for a day or so.
9.    Return to it with a fresh perspective.  Edit it, and send it out!


Blogs:  What’s All The Fuss About?

Law blogs (“blawgs”) have radically changed dialogue and scholarship on legal issues, leading Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor of the on-line magazine Slate, to recently observe:

The most compelling, cutting-edge, honest legal writing being produced in this country today is happening on the Internet, and the crop improves daily. From the fistful of judges (including Richard Posner) who maintain regular blogs, to the vast and growing number of law professors and law students who find the time to post daily, it's clear that the real bones and guts and sinew of the national conversation is happening online, and not in print.

Benefits of your own blog (a very short and incomplete list)

• you can write about and link to people in your market (rule of reciprocity)
• you can publish at will (for the instant gratification crowd)
• you can generate subscribers
• you can become an indispensable source of information your market needs to have but doesn't have time to read, summarize, locate, etc.

Benefits of publishing elsewhere

• greater prestige
• greater reach
• targeted to a market that isn't yet aware of your existence/services

General Advice

Consider guest posting -- compare Blawg Review Guest Editor Pages

Write for Mediate Dot Com

• A good place to get your publishing feet wet. 
• Mostly read by mediators but you can pass these articles along to your clients. 
• Mediate dot com itself packages these articles, which then appear on other mediators' web sites, increasing your presence on the internet. 
• It is fairly easy to get published here.

Local and Specialty Bar Associations have newsletters and are always seeking content - learn their submission guidelines and turn your thoughts into an article for your market's reading pleasure.

YOUR OWN PERSONAL MARKETING PLAN

Within the next month, I will:

• identify my target market
• identify areas of interest to that market
• write at least one article for publication in ___________
• gather information about __________
• subscribe (preferably by RSS feed) to the following sources ____________ to generate article and blog posting ideas
• begin to read ADR blogs and post comments on them to get a feel for how they work.  Start Mediator Blah Blah, The Mediation Channel, Settlement Perspectives, PGP Mediation, Civil Negotiation and Mediation, and the rest of the blogging posse at mediate.com/blogs.
  
  Within the next ___ months, I will:

• write at least ___ pieces for publication in ____ publications
• gather information about __________
• post entries in the following blogs: ____________
• interview one lawyer in my market for a short article about an area of interest to him/her for publication in _____.
• interview one __________ in my market via web cam & send it to any blogger who writes in your niche practice  (5 minutes or less)

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 With many apologies for the incomprehensible blurriness of this interview with Woody Mosten conducted in the noisy exhibitor ballroom at the NYC Sheraton Hotel during last week's ABA Dispute Resolution Conference, I nevertheless provide the interview because of the importance of Woody's message. 

Woody consults with attorneys who wish to make the shift from legal to mediation practice, continues to mediate himself, authors books on mediation and career development and conducts training on mediation practice and professional development.  As Woody's web site states:

Forrest “Woody” Mosten has an international reputation for high quality mediation training from introductory courses to advanced supervision for highly experienced mediators. He maintains an intense focus on cutting edge issues in law and the craft of mediation skill building, and enjoys helping other professionals build their own profitable mediation practices.

Woody Mosten's Mediation Training is an Approved Continuing Education Provider by the California State Bar CLE & Family Law Specialization, the California Psychological Association Accrediting Agency, and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Most courses are approved by the Association for Conflict Resolution.

 

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In anticipation of working out Affiliated Organization agreements with SCMA and CDRC, current members of those two organizations (and others in the very near future) will receive special Enrollment Discounts as a benefit of your membership in either of those groups.  Group Discounts are also available for groups of two or more registering together.
 
Please visit AIM's site for more details and additional course listings.
 
The American Institute of Mediation cordially invites you to elevate your mediation practice
by joining us for one of our upcoming workshops.  Advance registration is required.

 

Be sure to read about available discounts, including Bring A Friend, Group Discount and membership in one of AIM's Affiliated Organizations.
 
 
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS:
 
 
Harnessing the Power of the Master Mediator
with Lee Jay Berman & Doug Noll
Wednesday afternoon - Sunday afternoon, May 6-10, 2009
 
Mediating Divorce Agreement
with Jim Melamed
Wednesday - Sunday, May 13-17, 2009
 
 
Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Resolution
with Ken Cloke
Thursday - Saturday, June 4-6, 2009
 
 
Beyond Yes:  Deeper Wisdom and the Art of Negotiation
with Erica Ariel Fox
Thursday - Saturday, June 4-6, 2009
 
 
Settle More Cases by Mastering the Essence of Mediation
with Lee Jay Berman and Richard Millen
Thursday - Saturday, June 18-20, 2009
 
 
Building a Profitable Mediation / Collaborative Practice
with Forrest (Woody) Mosten
Thursday - Saturday, June 25-27, 2009
 
 
Post-Disaster Mediation Training
with Mel Rubin
Thursday - Friday afternoon, July 9-10, 2009
 
 
Mediating Mortgage Foreclosures
with Mel Rubin
Friday afternoon - Saturday, July 10-11, 2009
 
 
Mediating and Negotiating Commercial Cases
with Lee Jay Berman
Wednesday afternoon - Sunday afternoon, July 15-19, 2009
 
 
The AIM Institute is where leading mediators turn to continue their learning and career development.
 
 
WHERE:
 
Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, USA 90049
 
 
The American Institute of Mediation delivers “World Class Training for the Complete Mediator”.  Offering a unique and diverse curriculum whose sole purpose is to elevate a mediator's practice, the AIM Institute is where leading mediators turn to continue their learning and career development.  Being free of academic constraints and embracing other disciplines allows the AIM Institute to expand the frontier of this developing profession by offering practical courses designed to make an immediate impact on a mediator’s practice.  Our core faculty includes Lee Jay Berman, Ken Cloke, Erica Ariel Fox, Jim Melamed, Forrest (Woody) Mosten, Doug Noll and Mel Rubin.
 
Join our mailing list to stay apprised of new course offerings.
Join us on Linked In and Facebook.
 
www.AmericanInstituteofMediation.com

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This month, ADR Services, Inc. will host my presentation to the Southern California Mediation Association’s Professional Development Committee meeting on social networking to build your mediation practice.
 
On Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 7 p.m. I will speak on the use of social networking tools to build your mediation practice under the auspices of the SCMA Professional Development Committee. 

Here's the announcement ADR Services just sent out to its neutrals. 

 

All local mediators are also invited to attend, but please RSVP so we can both get a head count and to give your name to the front desk.

Victoria, who blogs on negotiation, mediation and arbitration at the IP ADR and Settle It Now Negotiation Blogs, will discuss all forms of social networking, including the use of LinkedIn, Face Book, Twitter, ning and blogging to raise your profile locally, nationally and internationally. The meeting will take place at our 1900 Avenue of the Stars address.
 
Victoria will also be speaking on this topic at the 2009 Small Firm & Sole Practitioner Conference to be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in June.
 
Southern California Mediation Association
Event: Using Social Networking Tools to Build Your Mediation Practice, featuring Victoria Pynchon, Esq. of ADR Services, Inc.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location:          ADR Services, Inc.
                        1900 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 250
                        Los Angeles, California 90067

RSVP to vpynchon@adrservices.org

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(image by the great Charles Fincher at LawComix)

Thanks first to LexBlog for giving yesterday's post here a shout-out but more importantly, thanks to LexBlog for giving Arnie Herz' post at Legal Sanity Why lawyers should get emotional with clients coverage in the same daily compilation of LexBlog client posts, a tremendous resource I highly recommend you include on your news reader.

You'll see from my lengthy comment there that Arnie is singing my song about the law and emotion and in particular, the fact that we cannot make decisions without emotion something every trial lawyer, negotiator, mediator and sales person knows down to the knuckles of their spine.  Excerpt from Legal Sanity below.

Here are two facts:

• There’s a client service deficit in the law.

• Lawyers tend to regard emotions – their own and other people’s – as irrelevant to their work.

At first glance, these two facts seem unrelated. But they’re actually closely (even intimately) connected. 

Some time back, I posted on the interplay of emotions and client service in this new era of customer control. I linked to a ClickZ article citing a (then) new book by Dan Hill called Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds. Launching from the premise that humans are primarily emotional decision-makers, the book discusses how emotions factor into our business opportunities in the marketplace and workplace. 

Picking up on this point from a slightly different angle, in a recent post, designer and marketing mentor Peleg Top says, Go ahead, get emotional. Top notes that, in marketing (and, I’d add, in providing) our services, “an effective way to generate action is to tell a compelling story, one that hits your customer’s emotions.” Suggesting that most service providers miss this mark, he observes . . .

For the remainder of Arnie's great post, click here.  And here's another great link on the same topic from Cutting Edge Law - the illicit relationship of lawyers and emotion.

More on the effective use of emotion in the negotiation of settlements soon.

 

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Thanks to Diane Levin at the Mediation Channel for pointing me to a recent post by Ken Adams about the adversarial versus the "meeting of the minds" approach to contract drafting.  Thanks to both!

Contracts as a Relationship-Building Tool

That’s a long way from my let’s-have-a-meeting-of-the-minds approach. But I’m so buried in detail that I find it useful to be reminded periodically that contracts serve a broader function than mitigating your risk or handcuffing the other guy. I received just such a reminder in the form of this blog post by Douglas R. Griess of the Denver law firm Dymond Reagor Colville.

Some people regard the contract process as an adversarial one. I encountered a great example of that recently: someone I’ve been corresponding with used the word “opponent” in referring to a lawyer representing the other side in a deal. When the other side is the enemy, you’re free to indulge in “creative ambiguity” and other shenanigans.

Diane, who writes the best mediation blog in the country preceded my entry into the blogosphere by years.  She could have treated me like a competitor.  Instead, she taught me how to use html code (that's how long ago in blog years we "met"); hipped me to the folkways of the blogosphere; introduced me to her best professional contacts; and, all but baked me a hot apple pie.

If it works here on the internet - collaboration instead of competition - which is where the 21st century is heading mind you -- online -- it should work equally well in all of our professional and business dealings, particularly as we struggle with the one big failing economy that will rise when one of us rises and fall again when one of us falls.

Just sayin' . . . .

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I've always recommended barter when cash is tight.  In an early post entitled The Benefits of Barter, I explained how interest-based barter is not simply for small-fry.

 AT&T used interest-based negotiation tactics and bartering in its 1999 fight with Comcast Corporation for the acquisition of MediaOne Group. All parties were at impasse until AT&T offered to provide Comcast with surplus AT&T cable systems that would fill Comcast's critical need for additional subscribers -- 2 million to be exact. In exchange, Comcast withdrew its $48 billion bid for MediaOne, leaving AT&T as the only potential purchaser in the field.

Interest-based negotitions such as the AT&T-Comcast deal go beyond evaluating the strength of the parties' "positions" (or muscle) by engaging them in a mutual exploration and assessment of everyone's needs and resources -- a process that can create new buisness opportunities or relationships that increase the value of Business A without concomitantly decreasing the value of Business B.

"This type of negotiation begins with all community resources and know-how with the goal of increasing the well-being of all stakeholders rather than assuring victory to one of them," I wrote.

For those of us in the wisdom business, much of what we have to barter is our ability to mentor and be mentored.  The Professional Women's Network of Southern California is, essentially, a "mentoring circle," in which each member teaches, each member learns, and each member connects every other member to her network. 

Now, the Women Lawyer's of Los Angeles is putting its wheels on recovery road by kicking off its existing Mentoring Circle Program to meet the challenges of the coming year. 

For a number of years, the WLALA Career Mentoring Committee has organized a West LA Mentoring Circle for WLALA members to meet and support each other's career development over lively dinner conversation.  These meetings have served as a forum for participants to share stories, goals and advice.  Over the years the women involved in the Mentoring Circle have become a close-knit group of champions for one another's success.

The WLALA Career Mentoring Committee is excited to expand mentoring opportunities for WLALA members by starting a Downtown Mentoring Circle.  If you are interested in mentoring others or benefitting from the experience of other WLALA members, please join us for the first meeting of our new Downtown Mentoring Circle at Bonaventure Brewing Company at 6:30 on January 29. 

Our discussion topic will be career goals and objectives for 2009.  Please RSVP to Jessica Pink (jlpink@allenmatkins.com) if you plan to attend.

Bonaventure Brewing Co.

404 South Figueroa St. Suite 418A
Los Angeles CA 90071
(213) 236-0802

We look forward to seeing you!

Your Career Mentoring Chairs,
Gigi and Jessica

Check it out!  And for women AND men professionals in all parts of the country, you couldn't do better by yourself and your business than to start your own mentoring circle.

Laissez les bon temps rouler! 

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Check out Liz Straus' 25 Traits of Twitter Folks I Admire and 25 Folks Who Have Them.  These "traits" are in fact disciplines.  Achieving them on a consistent basis is work but work worth doing.  Use them to guide your way in the new year and your conflicts with your fellows will decrease and your fortunes rise!  Thanks Liz!  Click on the link above for the Twitter "Folks" who have these traits and follow them.

1. don’t seek to be the center of any universe.

2. find great conversations and get to know the people there.

3. realize that every venue has it’s own culture and rules.

4. do their own talking and their own listening.

5. talk mostly about the accomplishments of others.

6. ask intriguing questions that invite others to join the conversation.

7. don’t worry when folks don’t respond to something they say.

8. have time for new friends, talk to them, listen to them, read their sites and bios, ask them questions — avoid assumptions.

9. have a different conversation with every individual and every business.

10. take embarrassing or private conversations offline.

11. are inclusive and encourage folks who exclude people to exclude themselves.

12. shout out good news, help in emergencies, and celebrate with everyone.

13. say please, thank you, and you’re welcome, and mean them.

14. are incredibly curious about what works, what doesn’t work, seek feedback often, and look to improve what they do.

15. study the industry and trends, watch how things occur, share information about those freely, but never break a trust.

16. offer advice when people ask. Help whenever they can.

17. aren’t “shameless.” Ask for help in ways that folks are proud to pitch in.

18. are constantly connecting people and ideas in business conversations that are helpful, not hypeful.

19. get paid to strategize business, build tactical plans, but won’t “monetize” relationships.

20. ignore the trolls.

21. keep their promises.

22. can be transparent without being naked … most of us look and behave best in public with our clothes ON.

23. listen to the hive mind, but think their own thoughts.

24. send back channel “hellos” to friends when there’s no time to talk.

25. understand that the Internet is public and has no eraser.

The relationships with people — social in social media — is what is changing things. It makes a business experience worth looking forward to and turns a transaction into a relationship. It’s different online because I can’t see you. When I meet folks who make that distance and darkness disappear, I respect and admire them.

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Video below is part I of an interview on negotiation challenges, strategies and tactics for women with

Vicki Flaugher, founder of SmartWoman Guides.  The full audio of the video is here along with Ms. Flaugher's kind comments about our conversation.   Ms. Flaugher describes her site resources as follows:

If you’re a beginning female entrepreneur or a women who is thinking about starting in business for herself, you have found your tribe. You have arrived at a safe place to talk about business. Especially if you are 35-55 years old, you are going to love this site because that’s a magic age time. You really discover who you are during those years and finally decide to do what you love instead of just what you’re “supposed” to do. The spirit of that revelation and all the promise it holds is why this site was created.

Now, Part I of Negotiating Women!

"Never Fear to Negotiate" from JFK's Inaugural Address with video here.

So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free."

And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

 

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Leave it to a legal marketing blog -- Lawyer Casting - to choose Evolution Day for its first entry into the BlawgReviewOSphere.  As blogger Joshua Fruchter explains in Blawg Review #187, because the anniversary of Charles Darwin's publication of The Origin of Species on November 24, 1859 is inextricably intertwined with the idea that only the fittest survive, Evolution Day should be celebrated with advice for survival.  And so it is.

For those of us who toil the legal fields, Fruchter suggests a range of survival options including

• Excelling at Our Work with links to Drug and Device Law; Law Prof on the Loose; and our own post on sincere and effective apology.
• Switching Practice Areas with links to the Bankruptcy Practice Pro; The Volokh Conspiracy; Conglomerate; the Electronic Frontier Foundation; PomTalk; the Legal Blog Watch; Pepper Podcasts /*; and, the Antitrust Review.
• Going Solo with links to Charon QC (an interview with Susan Cartier Liebel about Solo Practice U; ) the greatest American Lawyer; and, Law21; and,
• Leaving Law with (what else?) Above the Law; JD Bliss; and, Rush on Business.

There's advice for law firms here as well, so crawl on out of the loser gene pool and make your way over to Blawg Review # 187.  The survival of the legal species might just well depend upon it!

Note that Eric Turkewitz at the New York Personal Injury Law Blog  will host Blawg Review #188.  Anyone interested in participating in future blog carnivals should take a look at Blawg Review, which has information about next week's host and instructions on how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

Finally, in true celebration of Evolution Day, take a look at some of the most enduring misconceptions about Darwin's paradigm breaking theory here, including the fact -- noted by Fruchter -- that Darwin did not originate the phrase "survival of the fittest."

________________

*/ Pepper Hamilton is podcasting??????  A short but vivid season of my legal career was served as a Pepper associate back in the late '80s (Alum Network here) when this grand old Philadelphia law firm turned 100 at which time it was still using quill pens - at least in the Philly office.  In the Los Angeles office, we associates routinely gathered in the library (yes! with books) and were required to share the one Lexis/Nexis research station which we were forbidden to use except in the most dire circumstances and with pre-approval.

 

 

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By Guest Blogger Renée Barrett aka AAARenee 

One of my favorite movie quotes is from Angelica Houston’s character in Ever After. As the wicked stepmother, she declares to her favorite daughter

Darling, nothing is final until you're dead, and even then, I'm sure God negotiates.

Although I cannot speak to the question whether God negotiates, I have found the first part of the formulation to hold quite true. I have learned that if I am persistent, passionate, and willing to see my challenges and opportunities from a variety of angles, I am usually able to find a creative solution to a problem and identify common ground with someone with whom I have a dispute.

Whether it’s getting a customer service agent to empathize with my situation, haggling to pay wholesale instead of retail, or building consensus amongst a range of strong personalities, there is always a way to state your case and persuade your audience to see the world through your eyes. 

There is one challenge that I have discovered to be most daunting for professionals to negotiate -- the management of their time. 

Time is our most precious nonrenewable resource and as such, we put a premium on it. We attempt to prioritize and guarantee a return on our investment. Often we are left feeling that an activity was either not worth our time or took so much time that we were unable to sustain the task's momentum.

Between work and life, we struggle to find balance and sanity.

My work with attorneys -- helping them to build their practices; assisting them in overcoming their own internalized judgments about marketing and business development -- requires me to help them re-negotiate the way in which they allocate their time.

I empathize.  It is a daunting task to find a comfortable balance between one's professional and personal lives when you are forced to measure it out in six minute increments.  Despite many attempts to eliminate or modify the present system by which we value legal word -- the billable hour remains the entrenched and painful lens through which a lawyer's daily practice is viewed. Given this historic approach, it’s no wonder than that Web 2.0 activities (blogging, online social networking, & wikis) are met with such resistance.

 

While it is true that there is no one size fits all solution for growing a legal practice,  there is one excellent way to refocus the discussion.

I've never worked with an attorney who didn't agree that the practice of law is a relationship-driven business. Relationships take time to develop and require nurturing, both of which can be streamlined with Web 2.0 tools. If used correctly, there are numerous opportunities online to have a "deep dive" conversation - one in which attorneys can quickly learn a potential client's business, current needs, and future risks.

When someone is in pain, there are opportunities to help them find a solution and be of value. Relationships that would take years to develop offline can accelerate faster online because -- for better or worse -- the internet encourages candor.

 

If you are struggling with how to do more with less in these tough economic times then reconsider making a small investment of your time in the mostly free Web 2.0 resources.  

The sense of community, collaboration and reciprocity that exists in online social networks can quickly translate into marketing opportunities that are speedily turned into new engagements. If you contribute positively and regularly to the online conversations at Q&As (LinkedIn), subject matter listserv forums, blogs, and, most recently, twitter, you are highly likely to improve your "know, like and trust" stock.  

In the end, professionals who are able to renegotiate their time priorities to set aside a few hours a week to invest in online-relationship-building, will be rewarded many times over by the ease with which your network can be immediately deployed for your benefit or that of your clients. 

If you find Web 2.0 daunting, ask a tech-savvy professional friend to advise you or, better yet, give me a call!

Renée Barrett is a business development & marketing consultant, specializing in change management, professional development, branding, social networking, and client relationship management.

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The first thing we mediators are taught (after digesting the imperative to "be conscious") is that people in conflict need to be in an atmosphere of hope and safety to be able to:  (1)  recognize the point of view of another; (2) be accountable for his/her own "part" in the dispute; and, (3) generate creative solutions to bust past impasse.

This is the reason one of the post categories over at the IP ADR Blog is "Innovate, Don't Litigate," which is the dispute resolution mantra of Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

That said,  I am happy to link my readers to The Financial Crisis' Silver Lining over at Harvard Business Publications.

Perhaps the good times are in fact dead. And certainly someone thinking of forming the umpteenth "Web 2.0-widget-to-grab-audience-and-find-advertisers" ought to pause to think whether they really have some kind of defined competitive advantage that can translate into a sustainable business.

But real customers continue to face real problems. And as always, innovators who figure out different ways to solve those problems--and make money doing so--will have opportunities to create new growth businesses. In fact, the creative destruction unleashed by a crisis always opens up opportunities for innovation.

As a simple example, consider a New York based startup called On Deck Capital, Inc. As described in Monday's Wall Street Journal, the company loans money to small businesses. Instead of relying on individual loan officers to pour over episodic financial information and make decisions, the company has an algorithmic approach that uses software to analyze a company's day-to-day activities in a non-obtrusive way to assess credit worthiness. Its loans feature higher interest rates than loans from most banks, but lower than alternative sources.

The company launched in May, and has already distributed $10 million in loans. It has suffered very few defaults. The current credit crisis and hesitancy of many banks to loan to even the best-run small businesses creates substantial opportunity for On Deck to extend its model.

Llssez le bon temps roulez!

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If you believe that law blogging is not only informative and entertaining, but capable of transforming our lives, our society, our culture and our legal system as well, run don't walk over to Peter Black's Freedom to Differ which not only rocks, it twitters, on One Web Day.  Surely this will be the BlawgReview of the year!

. . . .one recurring theme on this blog has always been a recognition of the value in a strong and free internet.  Therefore it is an honour to be able to host Blawg Review on Monday September 22, 2008, which is One Web Day 2008.  One Web Day was founded three years ago by Professor Susan Crawford from the University of Michigan, and she describes it as an "Earth Day for the internet".  The One Web Day website describes the day in the following terms:

The idea behind OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy), focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills), and create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet.  So, think of OneWebDay as an environmental movement for the Internet ecosystem. It’s a platform for people to educate and activate others about issues that are important for the Internet’s future.

If you'd like to host BlawgReview or submit to it, click here.  All future BlawgReview hosts please note -- THE BAR HAS BEEN RAISED!

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Thanks to Kevin's Remarkable Learning Blog (a fellow Forbes Blog Network member) for his  Seven Steps for Mending Broken Business Relationships. 

Each of the seven steps can help litigators de-escalate the conflict inherent in litigation before all-important settlement negotiations, whether they are conducted with the assistance of a third party neutral or not. 

One or more of them might also help ease tension in the law firm -- a very tense place these days given the recession, lay-off's, the de-equitization of partners and the shedding of non-productive practice groups or of those that might conflict with the law firm your firm is about to merge with. 

It's a rough time.  Let's all be a little more careful of our social capital there. 

We're going to need it.

Decide. The first step is you must decide that you want to improve the relationship. The precursor to this step is recognition - recognizing that the relationship needs improving - but the heart of this is the decision that this relationship matters enough for you to make the effort required to improve it. Without this decision, nothing else matters.

Forgive or let it go. If you feel the other person has done something to cause the rift or break-down, you must either forgive them or let go of your issues with it. Without this step, the steps that follow may help some, but will be limited in their success.

Take ownership. Recognize your role in the relationship, and take ownership and responsibility for it. Yes, deciding and forgiving are accountability actions; but being clear that regardless of the situation you have played a role in the change to the relationship is critical to your success in repairing any damage. Otherwise you are only blaming the other person - which cripples your chance for improvement.

Make your intention clear. Once you have decided to take actions to improve the relationship, your behaviors will change. Take the time to explain your decision and your intention to improve the relationship. Let the other person know that both the situation and the person matter to you, and you want a better relationship. This cements your commitment and communicates your intention to the other person.

Assume positive intent. While I have long believed this concept in a variety of situations, a colleague recently expressed it this way and it makes the idea completely clear. Assume the other person was - and is - acting in good faith. Will you be wrong sometimes? Perhaps. But by starting from this assumption you will immediately change your perception and therefore your behaviors toward that person.

Listen more. We all know how important listening is and how good it makes us feel when we are truly being listened to. Grant that gift to the other person. Listen intently, carefully and actively. Not only will you understand them (and their perspective) better, but they will trust you more and the relationship will build from their perspective.

Make an effort. Deciding is one thing. Doing is quite another. If you want better relationships, you must make the effort - it will seldom, if ever, happen automatically.

For the full post (well worth reading) click here.

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The Wall Street Journal Law Blog (Don't Wear Flip-Flops and Other Advice for Summer Associates) points us to a valuable new site for young associates (and would-be associates) -- The Hiring Partner's Office.   Whether or not this anonymous blog is posted by a hiring partner or a savvy summer associate makes little difference to the quality of the advice provided.  Check out Top Ten Things that Annoy Your Hiring Partner, one of which recognizes what most summer associates don't yet know -- the power in the firm as far as you're concerned, rests with people you might be naive enough to believe are "beneath" you. 

Number three on the list of what not to do this summer is --     

Being rude to support staff. If you say thank you to everyone who helps you, you would be amazed at how the staff will respond. Support staff work hard to help make you and the firm look good to clients and other third parties. DO NOT treat them like doormats. DO treat them with respect and show your appreciation.

Why do we mention this in a negotiation law blog?  Because you need to know who the secret stakeholders are when you are attempting to resolve any conflict or broker any deal.  They are not who they appear to be. 

And, head's up!!  "Your" secretary has been "practicing law" for decades.  S/he knows the judges, the court reporters, the clerks at the courthouse and the pecking order in the law firm.  S/he also knows where the bodies are buried.

Be nice.  Be teachable.  Learn.  Thrive.

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Go back to the Mother Country for your Fourth of July Blawg Festivities.

Image from John Cole's Toon Blog Here

 

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Thanks again to IP attorney R. David Donoghue of the Chicago IP Litigation Blog for including my post on Trust and Compromise in the May Carnival of Trust. 

Now I have even more reason to be grateful.  

The Political Calculations Blog's weekly On the Moneyed Midways compilation of business and money related blog carnivals choose my post How Can I Convince My Client to Lose More than Predicted and Still Maintain My Own Credibility? as the Best Post of the Week Anywhere!

Makes a girl feel all appreciated guys! 

Thanks!!! 

And nice to find the Best of the Best aggregated for readers on a weekly basis at Political Calculations which we'll be adding to our blog roll post haste!

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Today's New York Times (Questions of Rent Tactics by Private Equity) reports that investment firms have been purchasing New York City rental properties for the avowed purpose of "turning over 20 percent to 30 percent of the units, five times the typical vacancy rate," to upgrade the rentals up and out of rent regulation, generating tens of millions of dollars of income for the investors.    

Tenants are complaining that the investment firms' tactics to "turn over" those units (i.e., evict low-income residents from their homes) are not only ruthless, but fraudulent as well.  See the full article here.

So what's the little guy to do when BigBusiness decides to set aside ethics to maximize profit?  What individuals have always done when their survival is threatened.  Organize.  According to John Medina, author of Brain Rules, there's more than one way to be the fittest survivor and collaboration has always been our species' strategy.  

"Suppose you are not the biggest person on the block," Medina writes,

but you have thousands of years to become one.  What do you do?  If you are an animal, the most straightforward approach is becoming physically bigger, like the alpha male in a dog pack, with selection favoring muscle and bone.  But there is another way to double your biomass.  It's not by creating a body, but by creating an ally.  If you could establish cooperative agreements with some of your neighbors, you could double your power even if you did not personally double your strength. 

Trying to fight off a woolly mammoth?  Alone, and the fight might look like Bambi vs. Godzilla.  Two or three of you, however, coordinating your behaviors and establishing the concept of 'teamwork,' and you present a formidable challenge:  You can figure out how to compel the mammoth to tumble over a cliff.  There is ample evidence that his is exactly what we did

Locating and deploying likely allies is not only good sense when the individual has no bargaining power -- like NYC's low-income tenants -- it's also an extremely savvy move for business negotiators.  As Lax and Sebenius explain in their ground-breaking book 3-D Negotiation

[w]here one-dimensional negotiators mainly focus on actions at the table, [the] third dimension, “setup,” extends to actions away from the table that shape and re-shape the situation to advantage. In deal after deal we’ve seen the same result: once the parties and issues are fixed, and once the negotiating table has otherwise been set, much of the game has already been played.

Therefore, before even showing up at the conference room, 3-D Negotiators take the initiative. They act away from the table to set up the most promising possible situation, ready for tactical interplay. This means ensuring that the right parties have been approached, in the right sequence, to deal with the right issues, that engage the right set of interests, at the right table or tables, at the right time, under the right expectations, and facing the right consequences of walking away if there is no deal.

If the setup at the table isn’t promising, this calls for moves to re-set it more favorably. As we’ll show you, a superior setup plus the right tactics can yield remarkable results that would be unattainable by purely tactical means, however skillful.

See the 3-D Negotiation strategy summarized in the online introduction here.

You don't need to grow larger, richer, stronger or even smarter to gain a bargaining advantage.  If you find the right allies, before you know it, you'll be roasting that woolly mammoth over charcoal briquettes in your own backyard.   

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R. David Donoghue over at the Chicago IP Litigation Blog is hosting a new "Carnival" of Blogs that is new to me -- The Carnival of Trust.  

As David explains:

The Carnival of Trust is a monthly, traveling review of ten of the last month's best posts related to various aspects of trust in the business world. It is much like the weekly Blawg Reviews that I post links to and have hosted, but those generally contain far more than ten links. My job this month was to pick those ten posts for you and provide an introduction to each post that makes you want to click through and read more.

I'm ridiculously pleased to be included in the category of Trust in Leadership and Management along with Charles H. Green's Trust Matters; George Ambler's Practice of Leadership;  and Stephen Albainy-Jenei's Patent Baristas  (if they gave awards for blog template design, PB would win in my book every day of the week).  In this crowd I feel like Zelig!

Here's David's generous mention of the Settle it Now Negotiation Blog and my recent post on convincing your clients to give up more than you (their attorney) predicted while still maintaining your credibility.

On the subject of trust-based leadership, Victoria Pynchon at the Settle It Now, Negotiation Blog has an excellent guide for maintaining your client's trust during a difficult negotiation: How Can I Convince My Client to Lose More than Predicted and Still Maintain My Own Credibility? The answer is complex and multi-faceted, but it boils down to the fact that you have to get the stakeholders and decision makers face-to-face, get their buy in on resolution as a goal (in addition to winning), explore all avenues of resolution, and you have to let them explore all aspects of the dispute, even those that do not matter. The last point is a difficult one for lawyers. As a lawyer you generally want to remain focused on the settlement inputs -- money, confidentiality provisions, sale of existing product if something about the product is being changed, etc. -- but from a trust perspective it is important that the stakeholders resolve not just those issues that go into a final agreement, but any problems or concerns they have related to the dispute or the parties to the dispute.

And let me just add here -- though I'll sound like a broken record to my regular readers -- that business people seek out lawyers because they believe themselves to be victims of injustice. (see my short-short video on this topic here)

Though I, as a mediator, am always seeking business solutions to legal problems, the client's injustice problem must be addressed to maintain your credibility (and retain your client's trust.).  Every great mediator I know will address this issue with your client unbidden.  If you're using less than great mediators --  raise the issue yourself -- all competent mediators should be prepared to address the issues foremost on your client's mind right including -- Will I lose?  How much more is this going to cost me? and Am I Being Extorted or Low-Balled?

Thanks for the mention, David!  I truly am greatly honored.  But more than that, you've helped me reach greater numbers of business people with a message that I carry somewhat like an old-fashioned missionary -- go beyond positions; find the parties' interests; create value; claim as much of that value as possible; craft business solutions to a legal problems; and, frankly address your client's injustice issues.  They'll be yours for life.

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Practicing law, particularly litigation, is often frustrating, sometimes humiliating, and frequently simply dispiriting.  On the other hand, the practice of law can be thrilling, intellectually stimulating, challenging, absorbing, and a darn good way to make a good living.

When you shift the purpose of your legal practice from winning cases (litigating) to negotiating settlements (mediating) you also shift your focus from solving intellectual legal puzzles to serving individual party interests.  As a result, you give considerably more thought on a daily basis to what makes people really happy, or, at a minimum, fairly well satisfied.  

That's why you find "work life balance" and career advice in a negotiation blog -- because you cannot negotiate what you really want in exchange for what you do unless you are able to plumb the depths of your own true desire and discard any out-moded ideas about what "should" make you happy.

For these reasons I bring you a dynamite (and very funny) article by career coach Lisa Gates of 360 Alliance Coaching. If you're slogging around not knowing what to do with your early- mid- or late-legal-career-crisis, you couldn't do any better than to book a few sessions with Lisa. 

Her excellent post -- 29 Worn Out Perspectives in Need of the "Oh Really" Factor -- from LifeHack below.  

We all have places in our lives where we get stuck, augured in by a particular belief like, “work is hard,” or “children are too expensive,” or “politicians are evil.” To make matters worse, we often can’t distinguish between the truth and a disempowering belief because we attach little refrains like, “that’s just the way it is.” It’s as if our minds have become the honeymoon destination for Archie Bunker and Nurse Ratched.

If we really listen, we will hear a quality of flatness, resignation or a dissonant righteousness in our speaking. To bring choice, openness, and inquiry back into your reality try adding the challenge “oh really?” to these 29 worn out perspectives (or your own) and turn up the heat on those victim-making, life-killing, soul-sucking, war-making phrases that have been sapping your fulfillment.

1. I don’t have the time.
2. Everything on my to-do list is important and essential.
3. I can’t quit. If I do, everything will fall apart.
4. If I take time off, I’ll lose my game.
5. Nobody will hire me, I’m too old.
6. You’re supposed to get married and then have the baby.
7. Get your diploma, go to college, get a master’s, get married, get a career, have a family, grow old, die.
8. I need an MFA to get published.
9. Art is good, but if you want to make a living, you have to get a real job.
10. I am a complete loser without my [to-do list] [blackberry] [iphone] [rolodex].
11. You’re a loser if you use a rolodex.
12. I can’t delete all those emails.
13. You have to get a telephone. Everyone has a telephone.
14. Nobody will respect me if I don’t have a Ph.D.
15. I have to know how it ends before I begin.
16. You have to start at the bottom if you want to get to the top.
17. A black man can never be president.
18. My vote doesn’t count.
19. Women over 50 should not have long hair.
20. I’m not creative.
21. Investing is pointless as my age; I should have started years ago.
22. It’s all my mother’s fault.
23. It’s all your mother’s fault.
24. I don’t have any choice.
25. If I don’t make it by 30, I never will.
26. If you’re an artist, you need a career to fall back on.
27. Finding love is just not in the cards for me.
28. I’d rather travel, but I have to get a degree first.
29. There’s nothing I can do about it (the all-time favorite).

Now that you’ve disrupted the homeostasis, what other perspectives are now clamoring to be heard?

About Author: Lisa Gates is a coach and completion catalyst - the crazy glue on the soles of your sneakers that keeps you committed to your book, your project, your big idea. Committed to inspiring the leadership possibilities of livelihoods in action, Lisa has three words for all idea-crazed writers, entrepreneurs and dreamers: Someday is now. Find her at 360 Alliance Coaching.

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I'll soon be teaching a short session on career development over at the Straus Institute with one of the hottest mediators in town --  the busily brilliant Lisa Klerman, formerly of Morrison & Foerster and for the past few years the head of the USC Law School's Mediation Clinic.

I have my own short list of practice development principles in How to Start a Mediation Practice.  These broad guidelines have taken me farther in the first four years of my mediation career than I should reasonably have expected though, of course, I remain impatient to simply be booked three months in advance right now! ("instant gratification takes too long").   Here they are:

1. be conscious, i.e., be alert to conflict escalation, the parties' needs and fears, and your own true goals and genuine strengths.
2. be teachable
3. be of service
4. always say "yes" to a mediation request
5. be the exception to any rule that would guarantee your failure

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention mediator and educator Tammy Lenski's meticulously crafted guide book to the perils and opportunities of mediation practice -- Making Mediation Your Day Job here, which I'll be putting on the bibliography list for Jack's class.  (Diane Levin's and my reviews of this book can be found here)

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Lisa Klerman has passed along to Jack McCrory, guru to LL.M Dispute Resolution students over at Straus, the following article on business development for the final LL.M seminar before the students graduate from that program.  It is well worth re-printing here.

Yes, There Is Money in Mediation! Ten Success Secrets from Top (Non-Starving) Mediators.

It isn't exactly easy to make big bucks as a mediator, but industry standout
Jeffrey Krivis says it is possible. In his new book, he has teamed up with
some of his successful colleagues to share a few lucrative tricks of the trade.

Doctor. Teacher. Firefighter. Professional athlete. And mediator? Actually, yes. While few second-graders are naming this career on What-I-Want-to-Be-When-I-Grow-Up Day, mediation is becoming a hot career choice. Since the early 1990s many people, lawyers in particular, have jumped on the mediation bandwagon. No wonder. Its high success rate and lower costs (compared to those of a court case) have led to a boom in mediators. And surprise! Some of them are making serious money.

"Mediation is a career of extremes," says mediator Jeffrey Krivis, co-author (along with Naomi Lucks) of the new book How to Make Money as a Mediator (And Create Value for Everyone): 30 Top Mediators Share Secrets to Building a Successful Practice. /1

"This is a field in which it's possible to become wildly successful-think Tiger Woods, Martina Navratilova, Lance Armstrong-but only a relative few make it to that top tier. "There are many mediators who struggle," he adds. "And because they consider their career a calling, they accept the struggle. They'll tell you they can't imagine doing anything else. But the truth is, you can fulfill your calling and build up a healthy bank account."

Krivis and Lucks have written a book for mediators-and aspiring mediators-who want to do just that. It's an invaluable resource filled with practical, proven, and down-to-earth information on how you can develop a satisfying and lucrative career as a mediator, no matter what your area of interest. The book provides advice from 30 top mediators, who give a behind-the-scenes look at how they achieved success in this highly competitive profession.

Here are 10 great tips from How to Make Money as a Mediator that can put any new (or struggling) mediator on the path to success:

1. Inspire trust. You must ensure that your clients and potential clients-whether they are lawyers, helping professionals, families, or community leaders-feel they can trust you to be fair. They must believe you can help them grapple with the life-changing issues that arise in mediated negotiations. All top-tier mediators will tell you that inspiring trust is paramount.

2. Cultivate champions. A passion for mediating and terrific natural skills can take you only so far. You need to cultivate champions-influential people who believe in you as a mediator and who are happy to help you get your name out there to larger groups. "I have had several champions who paved the way for me, introducing me to important potential clients and polishing my reputation," says Krivis. "If you have even one such champion, you can consider yourself fortunate indeed. But note: they will not always come into your life by chance. You need to cultivate these relationships."

3. Practice authenticity. Authenticity is the bedrock on which trust is built. For a mediator, authenticity means being strong enough to work with ambiguity day in and day out, and to face the internal conflicts it sometimes engenders. You can't always know where things are going or how you are going to get there, but you must lead from an honest heart. This will give you the ability to walk the fine line between deception and honesty and to make the parties feel that you always have their best interests at heart.

4. Create value. Great mediators are always working to provide direction and encouragement, giving clients new tools for solving problems, guiding them around potential land mines, and helping them discover new opportunities. Krivis calls this creating value. In fact, he says, creating value might well be the foundation for getting clients and settling cases. When marketing your services, you can create value by finding out from the parties what their pain threshold is, what's causing them the most concern, and what has to happen in order for them to select you as the person who can help them solve their problem. Once you have this information, you can innovate regarding how to solve their problem.

5. Embrace rejection. Mediation is an isolated world. For every case you get, there are 10 you didn't. To be really successful, you have to expect rejection and embrace it. You must hold the view that when you've been rejected, it means that someone who believes in you has tried to sell you. He or she will keep putting your name out there, and eventually you'll achieve critical mass. "I hear the statement, 'Oh, your name comes up all the time' from people who have never used me," says Krivis. "Don't let rejection get to you. You may be on every lawyer's list of three top mediators, but you've got to remember that there are two other mediators up there with you. You just can't take the decision personally. It may be based on timing or scheduling, or the would-be clients just plain prefer another mediator over you that day."

6. Practice the Three Ps: Patience, Perseverance, and Persistence. Every single mediator who made it to the top did so because he or she understood the importance of the Three Ps. It can take three to five years to build a successful mediation practice, so relax, dig in your heels, and prepare to be there for the long haul. Believe in your abilities, believe that you can and will build a successful career, back up that assurance with real skills and real successes, and then stay the course.

7. Learn to deal with emotional overload. Sometimes, especially after a particularly rough or draining session, you just have to put the day out of your mind and move on.

8. Make yourself a standout. Here's the brutal reality: there are far more mediators than there are mediation opportunities. Think hard about who you are and what makes you unique, and how you can help your clients and potential clients recognize that uniqueness. Find creative, compelling ways to help yourself stand out from the pack whether it's through teaching courses, writing, or attending CLE programs. Put your name and face in front of your clients with enough frequency that you become familiar-a known quantity they respect. Whatever you do, be discriminating in the marketing choices you make for your practice. Interestingly, says Krivis, standing out doesn't mean tooting your own horn. "You're not out there to tell people how great you are, but to find out what's going on in their practice and how you can help. When they remember your name and face, that's the subliminal message they should receive on their radar screen."

9. Market yourself as a professional. What does it take to establish yourself, to be the name that repeatedly shows up on the ledgers of people who are looking for mediators? You must think of yourself as a professional mediator, believe in yourself, and live the part every day. You must develop a reputation for mediating well and staying with a case until it closes. But beyond these fundamentals, you must understand how to market yourself as a mediator: what it takes to get the power players on your side and what you need to do to be seen as-and become-part of their inner circle. Don't inadvertently market yourself as a fringe player.

10. Stay fresh to survive. Yes, everyone gets tired at some point. But you'll survive in this business by making an effort to stay fresh in your approach and your outlook toward your practice. Do all you can to maintain your compassion for the parties you serve. If, despite your best efforts, you find yourself getting stale or robotic in your approach, take corrective measures fast. You can get your blood pumping again by collaborating on ideas with other mediators or taking "educational vacations" to exercise your mind by learning about faraway places and far-out ideas. 

______________________

1/ See local mediator Charles Parselle's review of Krivis' book here.
 

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I've got a little series on law firm happiness going on over at the tremendous workplace law resource Connecticut Employment Law Blog.  Dan Schwartz, the dynamite Blog Meister behind Connecticut Employment Law had to take a blog break  while actually TRYING A CASE (yes, people still DO).  While working, he filled his excellent blog with guest posts, including my three-part series ending with partnership compensation today.  

Call me an idealist, but some of the suggestions made in my current post over at the Connecticult Employment Law blog are taken from Lauren Stiller Rikleen's exhaustive analysis of the modern law firm's ills and potential remedies in Ending the Gauntlet, my review of which will appear in this section of the Complete Lawyer's next issue so keep a look out for it!

 

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Why talk about achieving your heart's desire in a blog dedicated to negotiated resolutions of disputes?  Because you must know how you value a thing before you can even begin to think about negotiating a price for it.

This week, over at the Connecticut Employment Law Blog, Part II on my series of posts on negotiating  partnership compensation will appear.  (Part I is here).  If we don't know what we really want, we are more apt to accept in compensation for our life's work what one author has called "frozen desire" -- money -- even when money fails to satisfy.  (See Frozen Desire, The Meaning of Money here)

Because I made (and am continuing to make) a career transition and because my new career is truly  my own heart's desire, I offer the following advice from the middle of the road toward my own unique kind of success -- a success that includes but does not entirely rest upon money as a measure.  

• Give up whatever it is you are currently addicted to -- money, property, power, prestige, safety, drugs, alcohol, food, spending, cheating, clinging, worrying, or even simply saving against an uncertain future.
• Find your "bliss"
  • I didn't know what this was until I was ready
  • I wasn't "ready" until I conquered numerous other challenges 
  • Your "bliss" doesn't occur to you overnight and it changes over time
  • Your "bliss" generally takes more than one form
  • sometimes life has to rip out of your hands that which you already possess before you are ready to pick up the new thing and start working on it 
  • in other words, you can't do the new thing until you've pretty much completely finished with the old 
• Ignore "sunk costs."  In my case,
  • tuition for LL.M
  • cost of professional training other than LL.M
  • sweat equity
    • pro bono panels
    • writing
    • speaking
• Don't let people tell you that it cannot be done
  • there are a thousand, a million reasons why something cannot be accomplished and only one reason it can -- you are committed to doing it
  • people who say you can't are more frightened than you are about their own ability to alter their destiny -- be kind to them but do not let them deter you
• Don't give up when it -- whatever "it" may be -- doesn't happen right away
• Be flexible
• Fill in the lean times with stuff you already know how to do. 
  • I, for instance, write, legally and "technically"
    • I have a range of writing "rates" according to the task
    • I charge more for legal briefs
    • I charge less for the occasional odd job when someone who needs a little writing done thinks -- oh Vickie would be the perfect person to do this!
  • I'm not too good for anything that provides me with income
  • Nevertheless, I set my rates at "market" as soon as I believe I have the education, training and experience to justify it
• Give freely of yourself without expectation of reward
• That said, barter
  • what you used to do has more value than what you're now beginning to do
  • don't hesitate to barter your old services in service of the new
• Build a social and professional network
  • you are now in possession of plentiful seeds of your new venture
  • toss them everywhere; spread them promiscuously
  • don't let anyone tell you that so and so cannot give you work -- everyone can give you work, even people who others see as your competitors
  • you have no competitors -- your market is big enough for you
  • your network should be both online (LinkedIn, Face Book and the like) and off-line (Bar and industry associations)
• Be a program of attraction rather than promotion
  • be a problem solver
  • walk your ADR talk
  • let people wonder what you do and tell them only when they ask
• Market your own backyard
  • you know certain types of people, professions, industries and commercial enterprises better than others
  • market them
  • remember Colin Powell's advice -- the most important information to an international diplomatic negotiation is "being inside the other guy's decision cycle."
  • it's easier to market the people you know than those you don't
• Be passionately committed to your own success. 

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now. Goethe

The world comes into existence as you move toward it.  Paul Auster

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

--Galway Kinnell 
New Selected Poems, Mariner Books, 2001

 

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Sometimes reading my statistics page is the best way I have of taking the pulse of my readers and diagnosing the current actual rather than the aspirational state of settlement and mediation practice.

Listen.  Only the squeakiest client or party wheel will tell you that he is feeling coerced into settling the litigation that has become a millstone around your neck.

I'm talking to attorneys here -- but settlement officers, judges and mediators should pay attention as well.  Whether you're representing the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company or the 60-year old man who slipped on the iconic darkened bananna peel in the produce section of the local Ralphs, at some point during settlement negotiations your clients are going to suspect one or more of the following:

1. you're tired of his case and want to get rid of him
2. you're in cahoots with opposing counsel, with whom, frankly, you have a far more enduring if not affectionate relationship than with your client
3. you and your old buddy the mediator or settlement judge/officer have joined forces to to compel him to give up his legal rights in exchange for less money than you, his attorney, told him he was likely to recover two years ago
4. despite his protests, you, the mediator and opposing counsel keep saying the fact most important to his case  is "irrelevant" to his chances of recovery
5. when you talk to opposing counsel or the mediator about the case, he doesn't even recognize what you're talking about -- this is not the same case he brought to you to try two years ago
6. he feels extorted and no one is paying any attention to that
7. he feels like he's being sold down the river and no one is paying any attention to that
8. he paid his you and your law firm tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions or tens of millions of dollars in attorneys fees and he thinks he could have settled the case for the sum that's being offered/demanded now before he paid you to litigate this case to the settlement conference.
9. he's really really irritated now -- angry even -- though he doesn't get angry; he gets even, and he'll have no trouble spending another few million on attorneys fees so show that lying, cheating so and so in the other caucus room a thing or two
10. he's a successful business man and he's never been treated with so little respect before.

Now let me tell you something else.  If these thoughts are some of those which race through your clients' minds during settlement conferences, your mediator should be sufficiently alert to the changing temperatures in the room to address them. 

Why?

Because the mediator's job is not to settle the case.

What??????????????????????????

The mediator's job is to:

1. assist you in helping your client understand the options available to him
2. assist you in delivering bad news to your client in a way your client can hear it
3. assist you in negotiating as good a settlement as possible for your client without making your client feel as if he has no other options
4. assist you in resolving for your client the justice issues that your client originally brought to you to resolve
5. assist you in helping your client recognize and set aside the emotional experience of the settlement conference for the purpose of doing a sober cost-benefit analysis
6. assist you in helping your client recognize that legal cases change over time; sometimes getting better and sometimes getting worse, usually both in the discovery process -- this is not the case your client originally brought to you -- untarnished by the harsh adversarial systems but puts "facts" to a more exacting test than any other process in business, political or social life
7. assist you in helping your client recognize his own fallibility, potential for error, and accountability for his part of the harm for which he is seeking recompense
8. assist you in helping your client recognize that the other side -- evil, destructive and hateful as it may well be -- also has a few items of "truth" and "justice" on its side of the balance sheet
9. assist you in helping your client make an informed decision without pressure from anyone whether he wishes to accept less than he wants to or would like to take his chances at trial
10. assist you in walking away from the mediation or settlement conference with your client clapping you on the back and saying, "great work, John.  If I'm ever in need of a litigator again, rest assured it's to you I will come.  I'll tell my friends on the block or on the Board of Directors that you're the man.

How do we accomplish these ten aspirational goals together -- attorney and mediator and client?  Stay tuned.

The Jerry McGuire video above is for our clients -- with whom we do not share just how hard we are working and what a toll it takes upon us because that's what they've paid us to do -- and paid us handsomely I might add.

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I've never actually met  Kevin O'Keefe, the founder of LexBlog, but I owe him a great debt of gratitude for dropping by my old blogger site one day to say he liked a post of mine.  

The rule of reciprocity and -- more importantly -- of curiosity, made me click on Kevin's Real Lawyers Have Blogs.  The rest is my own LexBlog personal history.  First this Blog -- designed and maintained by Kevin -- and then the IP ADR Blog with my IP buddies Les Weinstein, Michael Young, John Wagner, Eric van Ginkel and coming next (!) the brilliant and talented Jay McCauley.

How Kevin Changed My Life

Listen, Kevin is one of those people whose brain is so active you have to put those nuclear material warnings around it.

 

 

 

What Kevin does for a living, however, is not designing and maintaining blogs for lawyers. 

What Kevin does for a living is to build communities, jump-start dialogue, inspire lawyers and those who serve them to reach for the higher value and the deeper meaning, and to guide and maximize entrepreneurial effort. 

THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH

A fellow blogger told me today was Kevin's birthday (thanks Stephanie!)  I only remember my own husband's day of birth because it is the same as mine.   I "penned" this post before I knew that Kevin had kindly complimented by blogging today.

Synchronicity.  Which is not surprising because Kevin's spirit now pervades the legal blogosphere.  He taught me the deep rules of blog road.  And every time a new LexBlog blog hits the runway, I can see Kevin's influence there -- his injunction to not just "join the high level conversation" going on in the blogosphere and in more journalistic venues, but to maximize every opportunity that someone else's insight presents to extend that conversation into your own niche and raise the stakes at least one level upward.

WHY KEVIN

If you want to get an idea of why Kevin is so meaningful to his bloggers, read his mission statement -- the following is an excerpt from it -- Why I Do LexBlog:

To help lawyers. A significant percentage of lawyers became a lawyer because of some principle they held - some burning light inside of them, some cause. Law school, student loans, and the practicalities of working long hours to make money and achieve what others have defined as success have just about drowned out that burning light. Blogging about something that you are passionate about, getting positive feedback from others about your blogging, and getting legal work in the area of law you are passionate about sparks that flame inside. Lawyers start to feel good about themselves. 
 

Thanks Kevin!  You're the best! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

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Making enough money doing what you love to do? No?

Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker, Doctor, Lawyer, Native American Chief, here's the book you must buy and read immediately -- Making Mediation Your Day Job: How to Market Your ADR Business Using Mediation Principles You Already Know

First, Mediation Earth Mother, Scholar and Entrepreneur, Diane Levin's review:

Shakespeare once wrote, "This above all: to thine own self be true." These words, written 400 years ago, resonate today. They do so especially for the many professional mediators who cringe at the very thought of marketing -- with its associations with shameless self-promotion, glad-handing, and cold-calling. For many mediators, marketing just feels wrong.

Now, at long last, there's a guidebook that achieves something no other mediation marketing resource has done. It helps mediators do the impossible: become more effective marketers and remain true to themselves and their work. Dr. Tammy Lenski, a mediator and mediation marketing coach who has run her own successful practice since 1997, has created Making Mediation Your Day Job, the definitive resource for mediators who want a realistic, practical blueprint for marketing their practice.

The clue to Dr. Lenski's formula for success is in the second half of the title of the book: How to Market Your ADR Business Using Mediation Principles You Already Know. She asks readers, "Would you enjoy marketing more if your primary aim isn't selling and self-promotion? I'm betting most of you would say yes." Like the skilled practitioner she is, she reframes, inviting readers to see marketing anew, "as dialogue or as a learning conversation", something mediators already know how to do, and do well.

Using humor, anecdotes, and real-life examples drawn from her clients, her students, and her own experience, Dr. Lenski encourages her readers to step outside their comfort zone and draw upon the professional skills they already have to build opportunities. She also offers sensible productivity tips, business planning advice, and useful exercises that help mediators master marketing.

What also distinguishes this work from the numerous resources available now on mediation marketing is its emphasis on professional integrity -- on honoring the profession through a commitment to mediation excellence. Dr. Lenski reminds readers that it's not just good marketing that matters; mediators also have a duty to uphold standards of excellence and develop their professional skills. She wisely observes, "In the end, it's the quality of the work you deliver that's going to help keep the clients coming."

More than a book, Making Mediation Your Day Job functions like an honest conversation with a wise and caring friend. Dr. Lenski writes as someone who has been there and understands where and why any of us get stuck when it comes to marketing. She's there to nudge us forward, with encouragement and straight talk. Making Mediation Your Day Job offers authentic, real-world advice for mediators who want to use marketing to take their practice to the next level -- and all the while stay true to themselves and their work.

And mine -- both of which can be found on amazon.com where you'll be purchasing Dr. Lenski's book today, yes?

I just finished consuming Making Mediation Your Day Job: How to Market Your ADR Business Using Mediation Principles You Already Know.

When I say "consuming," I'm talking about the way we exhaust our appetites over a Thanksgiving dinner plate -- eager, greedy and far too quickly -- before pausing to wonder where the turkey, potatoes, gravy, green beans and yams could possibly have gone.

Teacher, trainer, and mediator, Tammy Lenski is less than candid when she says this book is about marketing our ADR Business. This book is about locating and achieving our dreams. But Dr. Lenski doesn't stop there. She goes on to provide practial advice about making our living by living our dreams.

Why such effusive praise for a short book on marketing a mediation practice? Because it's not a "how to" but a "why" and a "what," with workshop questions to help us fill in the gaping holes of our lives.

This book does what no other career or marketing guide I've ever read even seeks to accomplish. It inspires and guides. It suggests reaching for the stars with our feet firmly planted on the ground. It asks us to look inside our very own hearts; to assess our strengths and weaknesses; and, to measure the width and depth and breadth of our desires. Then it gives us the action plan we've all been waiting for. The one that helps us make ME, INC. our day job.

It would be unfair -- selfish even -- to recommend this book only to mediators. Why would we withhold this practical wisdom from the aspiring lawyers, chefs and novelists in the world? Why would we deny the entrepreneurs and financial wizards; the actors and the politicians of the benefits of Dr. Lenski's ground-breaking work? It wouldn't be nice; it wouldn't be fair; it wouldn't be right.

And in this I do not exaggerate even a little. 

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O.K.  Big confession.  In 25 years of legal practice, I never developed a book a business.  Not one page.  Not even a post-it note.  Which puts me in mind of a Hugh (Gaping Void) McLeod drawing.

Other than to urge you to run right out and buy Dr. Tammy Lenski's new book Making Mediation Your Day Job I parrot once again Mr. McLeod's platinum advice for making your own rain (which, shhhhhhhhhhh, the rain maker's big secret -- it's often way more fun than practicing law!)  

Review of Making Mediation Your Day Job next.

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:


1. Ignore everybody.

2. The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours.

3. Put the hours in.

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

7. Keep your day job.

8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

11. Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

13. Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.

14. Dying young is overrated.

15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.

16. The world is changing.

17. Merit can be bought. Passion can't.

18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.

19. Sing in your own voice.

20. The choice of media is irrelevant.

21. Selling out is harder than it looks.

22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

23. Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time.

24. Don't worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

25. You have to find your own schtick.

26. Write from the heart.

27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.

28. Power is never given. Power is taken.

29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.

30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.

31. Remain frugal.

32. Allow your work to age with you.

33. Being Poor Sucks.

34. Beware of turning hobbies into jobs.

35. Savor obscurity while it lasts.

36. Start blogging. [see Why Every Client Should Want an Attorney Who Blogs here and the advice to "keep it quiet!" here)

The entire "must read" blog post can be found by  clicking here (pdf) or here.

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Before a wave of emotional despondency descends upon rank-and-file mediators from Geoff Sharp's revelation that median mediator income hovers around $67,000, let's get a little perspective.

First, if you are making $67,000 per year, you are the 52,428,447 richest person in the world and are in the top .87% of the wealthiest people worldwide.  See Global Rich List to end your week on a note of gratitude with a donation to the charity of your choice. 

 Chart from PayScale.

OK.  You don't compare yourself to the people living on less than one or two dollars a day, even though that's the first item on the list of your myriad blessings.  Half of the world's population -- nearly three billion people live on less than two dollars a day.

Check to charity or for a microloan written yet?

But you don't compare yourself to half the world's population.  You compare yourself to attorneys -- a profession you chose not to pursue or that you left to be happier.

The median salary for attorneys who have been in practice between one and four years is -- oh my goodness!!  -- just a couple grand less than the median income for mediators!

And remember, an attorney who has practiced between one and four years has been devoting him/herself to the law for between four and seven years -- the first three of which s/he was spending tens of thousands of dollars for a law degree and earning either precisely -- or next to -- nothing.

So.  If you've been mediating for between four and seven years and are making something between $50,000 and $100,000 per year, you are doing every bit as well as the median attorney.

Does your weekend look any brighter now?

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If you haven't seen it referenced by a hundred law blogs already, here's your link to the New York Times article The Falling-Down Professions, parsing not only legal, but also physician unhappiness.

Of all the fool's gold mentioned there (property, power and prestige) the article does contain one note of true value that attorneys might be missing in their practices:

Especially among young people, professional status is now inextricably linked to ideas of flexibility and creativity, concepts alien to seemingly everyone but art students even a generation ago.

“There used to be this idea of having a separate work self and home self,” . . . [Richard Florida, the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life”]  “Now they just want to be themselves. It’s almost as if they’re interviewing places to see if they fit them.”

The Choices We Make

In 1975, I was fresh out of college and typing in a typing pool in Midtown Manhattan.  I still believed my sixties values at the time -- you know -- that meaningful employment was more important than money.  I was -- not surprisingly -- just about as opinionated then as I am today and precisely as willing to share those opinions with anyone, regardless of hierarchy.    

So it is that I recall a conversation I had with a young lawyer whose typing I did.  He was relatively fresh out of Berkeley (Boalt) Law School.  He wanted to be an historian, but the Ph.D's at the time were mostly driving cabs.  He'd already left Sullivan & Cromwell for a captive midtown Manhattan law firm because S&C had given him such tasks as color-coding a map of the United States with the insurance programs available in each one.  He'd even saved it.  Pulled it from his top desk drawer.   A momento of the life he'd avoided.

But he wasn't finding happiness at this smaller firm with more hands-on work either .

He was about to marry the young woman he was living with when it seemed time to marry and they were looking for a house in the suburbs.  They were thinking of having a baby.

Here's the cheeky part:  "don't do it," I urged him.  "You'll be chained to this unhappy job for the next quarter-century."  

Why did I believe this strongly enough to confront my superior in this way? 

Because my entire generation had rebelled against just this type of life.  We believed in following our dreams.  We had the audacity to believe we could be happy.

The "Ending" You'd Predicted, Pretty Much

This young attorney's children are all grown-up now.  And he wouldn't, of course, trade them for anything in the world.  He finally left practice in his fifties, after his children graduated from college, to pursue that doctoral degree in history.  

Shortly after -- before he had the Ph.D in hand -- his doctor gave him bad news.  He has (still in his fifties) a particularly fast-growing and deadly cancer.

So . . . . Listen . . . .

Follow your dreams.  

Along the way, if you don't put it off, love will come and commitments will be made.  Children will follow with the joys and sacrifices they entail.  If you are robustly participating in your own life, these events will take place. You will be successful and you will fail. 

Your failures will be your greatest teachers.  And sometimes, those failures will be sufficiently dramatic to release you from the bondage of the fool's gold we all haplessly follow from time to time -- status and  stuff instead of satisfaction.  

That, at any rate, is how my life has rolled out and the lives of my friends and colleagues.

Take the long view.  Then commit to the present with passion.  

(I've written elsewhere why sometimes lawyers are unhappy -- here and here for instance -- but I promise some "why we're happy" posts in the New Year!)

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We know it's short notice, but if you can make it to the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco on January 15 (and shouldn't any excuse do?) don't miss the Lexis/Nexis Women in the Legal Profession Summit -- Rainmaking, Negotiating and Collaborative Development.

Ruth Kahn (Steptoe) and Marcia Pope (Pillsbury) are making the following high-powered conference happen to start your new year developing or growing the practice of your dreams!

 

In 2006, The New York Times® reported that only 17% of partners at major law firms nationwide were women—and according to a National Association for Law Placement study, less than 5% were managing partners. In a recent survey, less than 15% of general counsel at Fortune 500 companies were women, according to the ABA. These statistics raise the question: Is the glass ceiling giving way in the legal industry?

[note that we also recently learned that women in the same practice and geographical areas also charge less than men!]

At the LexisNexis Women in the Legal Profession Summit: Rainmaking, Negotiating and Collaborative Development, you’ll hear about the techniques and approaches that successful female attorneys have employed to overcome the odds and achieve equal status in their firms or legal departments. And you’ll hear from in-house speakers from Chevron, The Clorox Company, Starbucks Coffee, LexisNexis Examen and Union Bank of California. You’ll get:

• Techniques for overcoming gender bias and improving the inclusion of women in practice 
• Strategies for leveraging your strengths to create leadership and rainmaking opportunities 
• A better understanding of what work/life balance is and ways to achieve it 
• Insight into how others perceive your communication style and what you can do to translate it into effective negotiating skills 
• Strategies for attaining partnership and for succeeding once you get there 
• Insight from a corporate roundtable on how the panelists got where they are today 
• And much more

From impressive speakers, including:

• Linda Marks, director of training and consulting, Center for WorkLife Law University of California, Hastings College of Law 
• Laurie Stein, Esq., senior vice president & general counsel, The Clorox Company 
• Patricia Gillette, Esq., Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP 
• Silvia Garrigo, Esq., senior counsel, Chevron Corporation 
• Dawn Patrice Ross, Esq., senior vice president, Union Bank of California 
• Tina Bondy, Esq., corporate counsel, Coffee Master, Starbucks Coffee Company 
• Hon. Rebecca Westerfield (Ret.), JAMS

Led in their discussions by two extraordinary co-chairs:

• Ruth Kahn, Esq., Steptoe & Johnson LLP 
• Marcia Pope, Esq., Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

In addition, a luncheon and a cocktail reception will provide opportunities for discussion of issues and strategies with colleagues and experts.

 

 

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Both the Wall Street Journal Law Blog (Do Looks Matter in the Law?) and the ABA Journal (Good-Looking Lawyers Make More Money) are reporting -- the WSJ beside a photo of the none-too-beautiful but apparently universally "sexy" Matt Damon -- that good looking people -- even those in the legal profession -- make more money than their less comely peers. 

One of my favorite blogs, Deliberations, also covered this topic from the angle of jury persuasion in How to Be Better Looking here.

We've also covered this topic as thoroughly as we believe it deserves in the Power of Beauty here.

The executive summary?

Physical beauty creates a "halo effect" that leads us to believe that our better looking peers are smarter and more talented, generous and good-natured than the rest of us.  

The Lesson?

If we live life joyously and authentically, we will possess the qualities people automatically ascribe to the "beautiful" among us.  More imporatantly, we will have become beautiful by being the kind of person people imagine -- say -- Angelina Jolie or Matt Damon to be.

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(photo from Judicate West's home page) 

A terrific holiday party at Judicate West last evening with the best holiday hors d'ouvres of the season, mediator friends and new and old clients.

But that was just the beginning . . . .

 

 

 

. . . . then . . . .

 

 (Day 1 with the Forbes.com Business and Financial Bog  Network:  Sky Bar at the Mondrian Hotel --think Entourage -- the only bill I reached for quickly enough -- and Twisted Sister at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip) 

(Jay Jay French and Dee Snider Talk with Entertainment Weekly About Twisted's Christmas Album)

 

Mosh Pit (photo of "Dead Fish" concert by Luiz Alberto Fiebig) . . . .

 which makes me  . . . . .

. . . . worry about the "children" getting hurt

AND of course

. . . .potential liability.

 

 

 

Sharon Gitelle, the woman who will make the Forbes.com Business and Financial Network . . . .

ROCKIN' . . . . .

Trust me on this one.

 What all this has to do with negotiating middle age in the next post (along with the promised post on negotiating the flat screen HD TV purchase)

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(Notting Hill Gate by Paolo Margari)

What is that advertisement at the top of Victoria Pynchon's Negotiation Law Blog?

It's the first of several ads to be delivered on this site by Forbes.com.

Why is she junking up her blog with advertising; does she need the $$$ that badly?  . 

It's true that I will earn some income (a few dollars a month?  a couple of hundred?  I have no idea). 

But I'm not in it for the ad revenue.  

Why then?

Believe it or not, this blog is not merely a marketing device.  It is also an attempt to spread the good news of collaborative problem solving and interest-based negotiation to whomever those skills might help in their business and personal lives.  

Learning interest-based negotiation and mediation skills radically changed the quality of my life, my work and my personal relationships.  I don't just want to share that, I'll go all the way to say I have a mission to share that. 

O.K., But What Does This Have to Do With Advertising from Forbes.com

I'm joining the Forbes.com Business and Financial Network to bring the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog to as many people as might find it useful, most particularly business people and attorneys.

Forbes.com's homepage has -- drum roll please -- 20 million visitors a month. 

I have 5,000-6,000 visitors a month. 

I'd like to have more.

I'm truly hoping that the Forbes.com network will provide a greater array of information and advice to my existing five to six thousand monthly visitors and that the addition of my blog to the network will get the central message of this blog to more people.

What is your blog's central message anyway?

Here it is.  

A community thrives on collaboration and reciprocity.  All communities -- local and global -- thrive on collaboration and reciprocity.  And individuals living in collaborative and reciprocal communities are happier and healthier than those who don't.

The rest is implementation.  And practice.

So, let's see how this Forbes.com community can further that goal. 

Hop on board!  The train is getting ready to leave the station. 

But don't worry about being left behind.  We're a local so you can jump on any time you're ready!! 

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It wasn't actually John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles -- where he parodies the scene above -- in which the bandits famously said "we don't need no stinkin' badges." 

Are we just as confused about the role played by mediation providers?

This is what you hear from litigators:

I don't hire a mediation provider, I hire a mediator.

This is what you hear from mediators:

People don't hire me because I'm on the JAMS or ADR Services or Judicate West panels.  People hire me because they know me.

And yet, we are on ADR provider panels and they do provide us with business just as we provide them with our "book." 

I'm not going to deconstruct the misconceptions here, only to provide you with an excerpt from the address given by Elizabeth Birch transcribed here -- Meditation Providers No Longer Add Value -- courtesy of Geoff Sharp and The Political News You Need to Know. 

 

It provides just a few of the reasons you might want to call my ADR provider, and that of my colleagues Jay McCauley, Michael Young, and John Wagner, at Judicate West, the next time you want to schedule a mediation or arbitration. 

 

 

Administration

Now, here is the nub of the problem. Many of you feel that you don’t need your mediations administered … “I can do that myself. Why should I let a Mediation Provider take some of the mediation money, if I can do it myself?”

Continue Reading...

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From the Simple Justice Blog -- a Rorschah test.

And while we're on the topic of funny lawyer ads, see the ABA Journal's article Funny Lawyer Ads are No Joke in New York by Martha Neil, teh Journal's online legal affairs writer here.

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For the complete article 3 Steps to Making Smarter Counteroffers :  Get the Compensation Package You Deserve by Michael Chaffers click here.

#1: Get Prepared

Before the negotiation begins, take the time to [do your] research . . . Establish a reasonable range for [compensation], a typical benefits package and common additional compensation (e.g., stock options, annual bonus, performance bonus). This work makes it possible for you to know the ballpark in which any satisfactory agreement has to fall.

Then, from those general points, determine the most favorable compensation package for you. You should be able to justify that package given the field in which you work (since compensation differs across industries) and your experience, expertise and credentials.

Make sure that this package addresses the real needs you have -- you will likely have trouble asking for more later if you overlook something. This package is your counteroffer.

#2: Be Firm

[S]elect[] a reasonable and appropriate counteroffer -- one based on the data you gathered in your research -- and stay[] there until the other side offers a persuasive reason for you to move.

By "persuasive," I mean an argument based on additional data or information that justifies a different figure or package than you had developed. . . . . An example of an unpersuasive argument would be "Your figure is too high. We can't do that."

#3: Be Wise

Keep the big picture in mind. Your goal in the negotiation is to reach an agreement that satisfies your interests -- not to win a battle between positions. If your counteroffer is not moving you closer to an agreement, do not hunker down and defend it to the death.

Instead, think of another proposal that addresses your needs and concerns and is supported by data, and put that out as another offer. Use your energy to generate solutions, not to fight battles.

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(disclaimer, right:  this is not the sky; photo by NilsGeyland)

Check out C.C. Holland's Law.com article Mind the Ethics of Online Networking about ethical problems that might arise if you use Linkedin, Facebook and the like to build your legal or neutral practice. 

If you're risk averse, Holland and lawyers she interviews advise caution.  

First, Why Do Those of Us Who Use Social Networking Sites or (Gasp!) Blogs, Take the Risks. 

Holland identifes a handful of internet lawyer pioneers, including your faithful blogger.

Colin Coleman, a business attorney in Needham, Mass., uses the networking site LinkedIn to build professional relationships and make introductions. Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Victoria Pynchon, who recently launched a commercial-litigation mediation practice, likes the way Facebook mimics a neighborhood and allows people to get to know her. And Southern California entertainment lawyer Richard Jefferson maintains a MySpace page to ensure his clients consider him cutting-edge.

While their focuses are different, all three attorneys share one trait: They've recognized the value of these social-networking sites to help support and expand their businesses.

Early adopter attorneys are clearly at the forefront of a new networking movement. At the same time, these pioneers are blazing ethics trails into previously uncharted territory.

Gee, I Didn't Feel as if I Was "Blazing Ethics Trails into Uncharted Territory."

O.K., I sound a little bit like a jerk when I'm quoted as saying

I'm a pretty ethical person and I'm not risk averse -- that's why you buy malpractice insurance.  I don't let fears of liability keep me from doing anything."

Particularly when it's followed by Holland's comment that "most standard malpractice policies would not cover an ethical or disciplinary violation regarding an advertisement or communication to potential clients."

I'd meant to conclude that remark with advice given me long ago:  that good relationships with your clients is the best guard against malpractice.  Even so, as Holland correctly notes, if I'm violating ethical rules, neither good client relations nor malpractice insurance will protect me.

And what I don't know can hurt me.  From Holland's article I learn that:

the LinkedIn site . . . testimonials -- e.g., "Jane is a fabulous attorney who really knows her stuff" . . . [run afoul of] . . . the California rules governing advertising and solicitation [unless the testimonial-carrying page] contains an express disclaimer. 

My LinkedIn testimonials are primarily from attorneys for whom I've provided mediation services.  Though of course they all differ, each offer the opinion that I'm a pretty darn good mediator.  Here are a couple of edited examples:

I have had the pleasure of using Ms. Pynchon on several high dollar (and some low dollar) mediation sessions. While the amounts in controversy varied, her results were always great. Did she mediate a settlement in every case - no (but she's come pretty close with a 90% track record).  .  . . Overall, for my tough cases, I always call Vick[ie] first [because] I know that Vick[ie] can find a way to reach compromise when others will give up or run out of creative options. . . . July 13, 2007

Top qualities: Great Results, Expert, Creative  Tappan Zee
hired Victoria as a Attorney in 2005, and hired Victoria more than once

Ms. Pynchon is a brilliant mediator. Not only does she have a natural talent for mediation, but she is committed to improving her skills through hard work and study . . . which translate into the ability to quickly analyze the facts and law of a case and then be able to talk to the attorneys and the parties knowledgeably. I recommend Ms. Pynchon without reservation.”

Top qualities: Great Results, Expert, Creative Lilys Mccoy
hired Victoria as a Mediation in 2005, and hired Victoria more than once

So I should disclaim these by saying, for instance, that although these lawyers thought I did a great job "results might vary and side-effects could include nausea, dizziness, upset stomach and  irritation"? 

I don't mean to make light of the issue, but I've never found disclaimers of any sort of much use to anyone.  And other than Tappan's comment that I generally resolved about 90% of his cases, these are all opinions as to quality, not representations of fact. 

Still, I do have a disclaimer on this blog, warning my readers that:  

This Blog/Web Site is made available by the lawyer or law firm publisher for educational purposes only as well as to give you general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice. By using this blog site you understand that there is no attorney client relationship between you and the Blog/Web Site publisher. The Blog/Web Site should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state. 

I suppose that's all I really have to say on my Linked In and FaceBook pages and I guess I'd better do so.  Today, in fact.

But d'you think I really need to say that the photo on those sites is two years old when I was twenty pounds lighter?

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What: Teleseminar: “So You Want To Be a RAINMAKER?”

When: Thursday, October 11, 2007, 12 noon EST (9 a.m. PST)

Who: Kristina Haymes and Rainmaking consultant and author, Ford Harding.

Why: The fate of your mediation/ADR or law practice depends upon your ability to make it rain clients. It will be a lot of fun. Ford is going to discuss a rainmaking story of how an attorney went from zero to big book of business and how you can become a rainmaker too.

Sign up here: http://mediationmarketingtips.com/rainmaker.html

Hope to “see” you on the call.

Committed to your success,

Kristina Haymes

p.s. spread the word this is our last free teleseminar of 2007

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Negotiation is marketing is sales is negotiation is marketing . . . 

So what's Radiohead got to do with it?  According to the Church of the Customer, greater access to consumer information and, of course, generating demand. 

See excerpt below and link to full article here.

Of more benefit to them now is building a database of buyers, bypassing the information black hole of so many retail channels. That's the value exchange.

And in a few months, Radiohead will partner with a label, which will manufacture a CD of the album. If the album is great (always a non-quantitative variable when it comes to art), it will have already created demand for the totem version of the album.

If scarcity isn't your primary method for generating demand, then getting your product or service into as many hands, mouths and minds possible is. The ideas, products or services that spread the most usually win.

Today and more so tomorrow, that means letting go of the control you're accustomed to.

 

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I have heard from a "diverse attorney legal search firm" about this post (see comment below). 

Though this post was and is meant to be tongue-in-cheek and although the presence of under-represented "minorities" (including women) in law firm practice is a very serious subject, I note from a survey posted on Mr. Jordan's web site here  that Heller earned a "B" on its African American Greenlining Associate "Report Card." 

(above:  diversity and rocket science)

I'm certain my husband's law firm, Heller Ehrman, won't care that I've just now invented and awarded to Heller, Settle It Now's Diversity of the Year Award.

Heller does care however that the Human Rights Campaign has bestowed upon it the HRC's top rating for the second year in a row.  Heller's announcement below:

Heller Receives Top Diversity Rating For Second Year in a Row

(SAN FRANCISCO) September 18, 2007 – Heller Ehrman LLP announced that the firm has achieved the top rating in the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index.

Now in its sixth year, the survey is an annual listing that measures how equitably companies are treating their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) employees, consumers and investors. Heller Ehrman was among 195 major U.S.-based companies, 30 of which were law firms, earning a rating of 100 percent. This is the second consecutive year the firm has achieved a 100 percent rating.

“We take very seriously our long-standing commitment to promoting a work environment that celebrates the diversity of all individuals,” said Judith C. Miles, managing director of people at Heller Ehrman. “We are very proud to earn this recognition from the Human Rights Campaign for the second year in a row.”

The Index was released today by the HRC as part of a report showing that a record number of the largest U.S. companies are expanding benefits and protections for their GLBT employees and consumers. The number of companies achieving a 100 percent rating is up from 138 in 2006. When the index was first released in 2002, only 13 companies, employing 690,000 workers, received the top rating. For a copy of the Index and HRC’s report, visit www.hrc.org/cei.

“More businesses than ever before have recognized the value of a diverse and dedicated workforce,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “More importantly, these employers understand that discrimination against GLBT workers will ultimately hurt their ability to compete in the global marketplace.”

The 2007 analysis covers 519 surveyed companies and measures the extent to which employers protect their GLBT employees. The Index rated companies on a scale of 0 to 100 percent on several factors, including non-discrimination policies, diversity training and benefits for domestic partners and transgender employees. . . . .

The firm has also played a major role in litigation concerning the GLBT community. For example:

• Heller Ehrman represented law schools and law professors in bringing a challenge to the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment, which threatens universities and colleges with loss of all federal funds if they exclude military recruiters from campus or refuse to assist them in their recruiting efforts. Heller Ehrman was lead counsel when the case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Heller Ehrman has been involved in a nationwide effort in supporting same-sex marriage with litigation in California, Washington and New York. Cases in California and New York relate to the same-sex marriages performed by Gavin Newsom, the Mayor of San Francisco, and Jason West, the Mayor of New Paltz, New York. In Washington state Heller Ehrman wrote an amicus brief on behalf of a group of historians in the same-sex marriage case, Andersen v. King County.
• Heller Ehrman brought a class action lawsuit against a telecommunications company challenging the company’s anti-gay employment policies and practices that had been in place since 1970. A landmark settlement of the case resulted in significant monetary compensation for class members and changes in the employment practices at issue.

CONGRATULATIONS HELLER. 

I'm pretty sure I have some old Hellerware -- t-shirts, flip flops, beach bags, polo shirts, hoodies and the like that I can bronze for formal presentation of the Settle It Now Diversity of the Year Award. 

Stay tuned!

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This month brings us interviews with two mediators -- Geoff Sharp -- who talks about his mediation practice and yours truly, who talks about, what else, business and practice development while wearing my literary writer and editor's hat.  

Gini Nelson has included in this month's Engaging Conflicts newsletter an interview with one of my mediation mentors, New Zealand's Geoff Sharp who writes the brilliantly witty and incredibly honest ADR blog Mediator blah blah.  

To whet the appetites of my mediator readers, here's a snippet of Geoff's advice about being a mediation chameleon.

Gini: Do you have a “conflict resolution hero,” and if so, who and why?

Geoff: Yes I do. It is the chameleon.   I have always thought that mediators are natural chameleons. Good mediators can’t have egos, or at least they can’t bring them into the room, and they must to some extent mould themselves on the day to the environment they find  . . . To me that is all to do with being self aware, reflective and having very good antennae to know what and how one should present. If not the chameleon it is a little pig out at our bit of dirt just north of Wellington here in New Zealand. This little black kune pig lives with about five horses in a field. I think it thinks it’s a horse. It regularly intervenes when there is a problem between horses. It is a bit like George Orwell’s Animal Farm!

To read the rest of Gini's interview with Geoff, click here.

The second interview is with "completion catalyst" Lisa Gates of the Intrinsic Life Design blog.  Lisa and I stumbled across one another on the List of Magical Women Bloggers.  She's a career coach for writers who describes her work in this way:

I am the crazy glue on the soles of your sneakers that keeps you committed to your book, your project, your Big Idea. I'm the kick in the pants you wish you had nine months ago when you birthed that Big Idea in the first place. I'm equal parts left-brain, right-brain and I have three words for all you lurking, burning, idea-crazed writers, entrepreneurs and dreamers: Someday is now.

Because I'm the editor of a literary journal and a writer when I'm not mediating or blogging, and because Lisa liked my journal (thanks Lisa!) she interviewed me about pursuing ones writing dreams, which the journal surely is for me.

Because mediators are also pursuing a dream, I provide a little bit of the interview with Lisa here.  If this excerpt interests you at all, you can find the entire interview on Lisa's blog here.

Lisa:  How do you market or carve out your niche in the literary journal landscape?

Vickie:  You just start networking. I was innocent. I downloaded Yahoo's free internet-design program, taught myself to use it and am continuing to use it to this day. I think the website costs me about $20/month and the ad in Poets & Writers costs $60 every other month. I just do it.

That's what I've learned since '04 about everything in life. You just start the thing. You take a single step in the direction of a dream and another the next day, and the one after that. Things begin to grow. People start to hear about you or tell their friends or post something on a blog like you're doing. You become a kind of attractor. I'm not new age so you'll have to understand that what I'm about to say is truly metaphoric and not a concrete belief.

I think the power of intention coupled with action creates a kind of force that becomes bigger than you are, and everything you've ever done aligns with that intention and becomes part of the engine of the dream.

I think both Geoff and I would say, whatever your dream, go for it!

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Many thanks to Christine Mast over at DRI's informative, timely and well-written newsletter The Business Suit for mentioning the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog.

Christine is a partner with the Atlanta office of Hawkins & Parnell, LLP, a litigation boutique with offices in Dallas and Charleston, West Virginia. Absent the IP sub-specialty (see the IP ADR Blog) her practice pretty much mirrors my own before I abandoned ship and landed here on ADR Island. 

Chistine's commercial litigation specialties include insurance coverage and professional liability, fields in which I labored for many years

MAJOR ASIDE ON INSURANCE COVERAGE

If you're litigating a commercial case, are not a coverage specialist and have decided -- from reading the policy language -- that there's no coverage -- run to someone like Christine, or if it's a really really really big liability, my husband, Steve Goldberg over at Heller -- who litigated the World Trade Center coverage litigation on behalf of Silverstein's lender -- for counsel and advice.  It's not difficult -- it just requires specialized knowledge, knowledge many commercial litigators lack.  See the sad tale of Guess v. Jordache here.

END OF ASIDE

Christine says she's new to the blawgosphere so I wanted to thank her for the mention of our blog by showing her how the whole machinery of the thing works == like a giant internet barter circle of the kind described by author-lawyer Patricia Williams in her groundbreaking work, An Alchemy of Race and Rights.  See also the Benefits of Barter here.

People say "tit for tat" when they want to focus on the aggressive side of that game -- you hurt me; I hurt you.  When talking about it's beneficial effects, they use the words collaboration and reciprocity.  You link to me, I link to you.

But remember, there's a code of excellence here in the blawgosphere and I won't link to www.AccidentLawyers.com just because they mention me (not yet).

I mention Christine's article and the entire Newsletter because it's a great resource and my readers trust me to steer them to good stuff.

Because I'm an aggregator.  See The Long Tail.

Queen Latifa from Chicago on the seemier Tit for Tat side.

So, what do you say, Christine?  Get your law firm to take the blogging plunge by talking to my good friend Kevin O'Keefe over at LexBlog.  Online networking and practice development is geometric, as is LinkedIn, both of which I highly recommend, whether you're building your own business or just expanding your "book."

And, hey!  Thanks for the mention!

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Thanks to my friend, the arbitrator and mediator extraordinaire Deborah Rothman for passing along a terrifically compelling book review about an amazingly astute account of the reasons why we fail and the ways we might avoid at least some of failure's pit-falls.

The site is the Motley Fool which I've understood for quite some time is one of the best sources for financial advice, which I have repeatedly completely ignored, and the book is Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.  Really, this is a "must read" review.

Now if only there were enough hours in the day to read all of the good advice in the world, which is what this video is about (which I think I have either Gini Nelson or Stephanie Allen to thank.  You know what?  It was probably Tammy Lenski!)

The lesson of the video below?  Information technology is increasing at so fast a pace that the best we can do to prepare our children for the future is to teach them to learn.

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Right:  Steve (Goldberg):  Insurance Policyholder Coverage Counsel Extraordinaire and My Actual Bliss on "Our" Birthday -- May 1.

I am quite immodestly posting here Gini Nelson's Engaging Conflicts newsletter which contains an interview with me about my shift from litigation to mediation.

Because I recently taught the Deposition Seminar sponsored by the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, I have young lawyers and the challenges that face them on my mind. 

I'm therefore reprinting here that part of the interview reflecting the career questions so often asked by young lawyers -- is litigation the right career path for me. 

Though my own answer is, of course, unique to me, I think every litigator will find something of their own professional struggle briefly recounted here.

Gini: What is the best advice that you have been given? And what advice would you give a budding conflict specialist?

Vickie: Joseph Campbell, the brilliant and recently departed student and professor of comparative religions and mythology, long ago gave me advice I needed but was not ready to apply – follow your bliss.

I didn’t know what my bliss was and couldn’t find it. I had to spend a lifetime quieting a lot of other voices that were vying for my attention before I was ready. Voices that told me to prove to my dad how brilliant and successful I could be; that told me to compete and “succeed” by running the fastest and the farthest whenever anyone shot off a starting gun in my vicinity; that told me I needed property, (perceived) power and prestige to accept myself in all my human fallibility.

It took more than twenty-five years for me to realize the bankruptcy of those thoughts and to experience the results of that way of living.

Then a new voice entered my head and it spoke very very very clearly. “Why don’t you mediate?” it asked.

Two weeks later I took Pepperdine’s 42-hour Mediating the Litigated Case. A month after that, I enrolled in the Straus Institute’s LL.M Dispute Resolution program. And here I am. Following my bliss.

So I guess my answer to this question now that I have written my way to it is this – quiet the voices. Then follow your bliss.

Influences and mentors mentioned in the interivew:

Joseph Campbell (and I owe this to my 12th grade English teacher -- Mr. Higbee -- who assigned us Hero with a Thousand Faces when we were barely sophisticated enough to read it)

Peter Robinson of the Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution

Kenneth Cloke, Center for Dispute Resolution & Founder/President of Mediators without Borders

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For a real win-win, see the Professional Women's Network of Southern California Blog, subscribe to the feed, and join us in September for our first working meeting.

All is revealed at http://www.womenlawnet.blogspot.com  

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(photo by Scott Liddell; MogueFile) 

From this month's ABA Journal eReport, a refreshing article on client-centered legal practice -- The Chicken or the Client -- by Gerald Hecht of Hecht & Associates in Danbury, Connecticut.

And, yes, it is spiritual. 

Excerpt below:  

As a general practitioner, I help “real people with real problems,” and I have adopted that slogan as my professional credo. And it is a great answer to the inquiry “What kind of law do you practice?”

Grappling with the client, and not the chicken, enables the attorney to deal with the divorcing mother of three, the debt-ridden restaurateur and the juvenile offender. Another lawyer once told me, “We all know what the law is—the hard part is finding out what the client is.”

The public does understand this: but they just prefer to be entertained by that old razzle-dazzle (like the lawyer in the musical Chicago) and ignore the realities of the profession. It is said that people hate lawyers as a group but love their own lawyers.

For me and my practice, the proof of that is in the telephone. It rings. People want advice. People send money for that advice. It’s a nice system.

I have learned that the system is geared for the lawyer to assist the client, salve their wounds, remediate the problem and to obtain a goal. It’s almost spiritual.

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Because I recently invited a number of my professional and personal "contacts" to connect with my linked in network, I thought I'd post this YouTube video on how an internet networking service works.  I would give a tip of the hat to the blogger-friend who first posted this but I can't remember who it was. I'm not certain how it works, but here is how quickly your network expands.

This morning I had 31 "first degree" contacts; 600+ "second degree" contacts and 63,200 "third degree" contacts. By this afternoon, these contacts increased as follows:  41 "first degree" contacts, 1500+ "second degree" contacts and 110,000 "third degree" contacts.  Best of all, I exchanged emails with people I really shouldn't have lost track of.

No, I don't know what it means for my professional and business development.  I'll let you know.  In the meantime, run the video &/or view my linked in profile while deciding how you want to upgrade yours.

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(flickr photo:  Elevate by Frozenquack)

Every lawyer, business person and neutral interested in controlling his/her future should read this month's article by Catherine Alman MacDonagh and Beth Marie Cuzzone, Perfecting Your Elevator Pitch in the ABA's current Law Practice Magazine.

When I was a young associate, a senior partner in my firm bragged that he could pick up a girl during the time it took the elevator to get from our floor, the 25th, to the ground.  

"That's what you have to be able to do to develop a practice," he said gruffly, as I recalled his earlier advice that all a woman has to do to pick up a guy is to "show up."  I was certain that "showing up" wasn't a sufficient skill to develop my own Fortune 500 clients but I puzzled over the elevator rule for many years as if it were a zen koan.  

Today I learn that "elevator pitch" is an actual term of art -- an "introduction and description of who you are and what you do . . . ; [an] opportunity to define (or redefine) your personal brand or your reputation." 

"Communicating your elevator pitch," say MacDonagh and Cuzzone, "allows [others] to remember how you help people" and gives them the ability to "be your commercial."   

To be effective, say the authors, your pitch should be ten to twenty seconds in duration, succinct and memorable, spotlight your uniqueness, focus on benefits and be effortless to deliver.  

Earlier today I read some great "elevator pitches" in a Los Angeles Times article about Stanford Business School's "Entrepreneur Idol" Competition.  The competition required the students to "pitch their best business ideas" in one minute to a panel of four venture capitalists and one technology blogger.   The prize was "$2,000 in seed money and connections to a top-level venture firm." 

Contest winner Linus Liang held up a diapered baby doll and asked, "What if I could tell you how you can save 4 million babies a year?"   His idea?  Create a low-cost incubator that could help infants in developing countries. 

I have a lot to say about "elevator pitches," but suggest you take a look at MacDonagh and Cuzzone's article first.  I'll get back to this topic soon.

 

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. . . you'll want to attend Dina Lynch's upcoming Breakthrough Summit- Expanded 3 Keys on Friday, June 8, 2007, between 9 and noon PST at Preservation Park, Oakland, CA; Robinson Classroom.

Here's Dina's description of the seminar:

The Summit- the Power of Collaboration

There's palapable excitement that happens when folks get together to create something brand new and the Summit is no exception.

You'll be inspired by a ton of ideas that can shape your practice. You'll leave with your own written 'road map' and you'll be accompanied on your journey to success by all the interesting practitioners who will become part of your network.

With the ADRPracticeBuilder community and those folks, just imagine how supported and confident you'll feel.

Seminar Topics:

This is a full morning that will definitely give you food for thought and plenty to do!

Topics covered:

What Will Your Business Bring You?
Business Systems You Can't Survive Without, including Your Fab 4: Attorney, Bookkeeper, IT person and VA
Digging into the 4 Questions to Find your Niche
Related Niche Groups- Your Secret Weapon
Getting Known the Easy Way: Article Marketing
Your Cup is Overflowing: Eliminating Limiting Beliefs
You'll leave this fun, information-packed morning with a workbook that includes:

* a written Business Vision Statement * a Checklist for evaluating your 'business system health' * a Worksheet for explore the 4 Questions * a Roadmap for finding Related Niche Groups * a template for writing articles and submission site list

All this quality information and support for under $100!

SUMMIT DETAILS HERE 

For questions, please email email: dina@adrpracticebuilder.com or call 617 553-0423

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From the ABC's of Beginning Your Blog by Karen Klein at  Business Week with a hat tip to Kevin O'Keefe at LexBlog.

1. position yourself as an expert and demonstrate your experience.
2. the information in your blog should directly help your market solve a problem or address their wants and needs
3. read other peoples' blogs and get a handle on what they're doing
4. reading blogs within your industry will give you a sense of what niches are underserved and will help get your own creative juices flowing so you can write authoritatively when it's your turn.
5. initiate conversations with other bloggers by commenting on their blog entries
6. when you set up your own blog, [they will be] more likely to link to you, and send their readers
7. you need to blog regularly, under your real identity with an authentic voice
8. be sure that you have something personal and interesting to write about.
9. cross-promote 
10. consider adding a blog to your existing Web site
11. for experimenting with a blog, there's nothing more simple than setting up one on Blogger.com, operated by Google 
12. use a "tagging" service, such as that provided by Technorati.com, to help advertise your blog
13. a tag is basically a label you give your blog -- say 'professional services.'
14. anyone who uses Technorati and has subscribed to that tag will receive a notification of your new blog entry on that subject
15. encourage your customers to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed. 

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(The ultimate digression:  starting a post with a digression:  This beautiful blog was created, and is "hosted," by LexBlog, the only legal blog outfit in town worth talking to when you decide to drop blogger, typepad and the like and go professional).

That said (I don't say it enough -- thanks Kevin!) I learn from LexBlog's Blog today that Chubb Insurance has apparently reconsidered denying coverage to its attorney-blogging insureds.  And if I was going to reconsider a coverage decision, you bet your boots it would be my attorney-insureds that would make me re-consider the most quickly.

Here's Kevin's report: 

[Chubb] now says law firms publishing blogs will be covered by their malpractice policy so long as lawyers are not answering specific questions in a way that could be construed to be legal advice.

That from James Rhyner, worldwide lawyers professional manager for Chubb Specialty Insurance, in speaking with Lisa Berman, reporting for the New Jersey Law Journal (pdf of story).

Chubb does insure this new form of communication -- and will continue to do so within select parameters.

Ryhner also acknowledged, as reported by Berman, "[T]hat there have been no malpractice suits against blogging lawyers in the United States over bad legal advice. But he cites a U.K. suit involving Lloyd's of London that he is monitoring.

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Geoff Sharp kindly passes along his dad's advice not to be average and to always be in mid-career in his brilliant article on Starting a Mediation Practice here. (chart is Geoff's own)

My dad's career advice?  Never be a civil servant or wear a hat.  Huh???  Some dads give sound career advice and others zen koans to chew on for the rest of your life.  We love them equally because, well, because they're our dads!

Somedays, however, thinking of this little chart is all that keeps my internal energizer bunny rev'ving.

Have a great weekend.

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(BELOW, Katherine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster in The Rainmaker.  Dated and melodramatic.  But because this scene was my dramatic interpretation selection for high school speech tournaments in 1969, I can't think of rainmaking without recalling this scene)

Pull out that divining rod and begin prospecting for rainwater in your own backyard with marketing guru Sara Holtz's Women Rainmakers Blog.

Start with Your Mother Was Right Part II to get an idea of the ample marketing resources you already possess.  Resources that you need only begin to use.  It's EASY, say I, who developed not a LICK of business in 25 years of practice and am now a business development queen (since I only eat what I can kill). 

But it's not desperation that made me realize I had what it took to develop business.  It was simple necessity.  Everything else followed, without having to change my personality or do or say stuff that wasn't "me."  I'm not golfing or talking about the Final Four or pushing myself on the attorneys who have become my market.  But, this isn't about me.  This is about you.  Here's Sara Holtz's advice on that subject from "Your Mother was Right."  

Your mother told you that when others inquired about you, it was polite to reciprocate and ask about them. What she didn't tell you is it is also good for business development.

I was reminded of this during two recent conversations.

I was speaking with a (male) client. He is a funny, personable sort. In the course of our conversation, I asked him a number of questions - What was new with him? What were his plans for the holidays? What were his kids up to?

He didn't ask me a single question in return.

Least you think this is a "guy thing", I had a similar experience when having dinner with a (female) classmate from Law School. We had an entire dinner in which she failed to ask me a single question about myself or my family, even though that had been the focus of our conversation about her.

I was a bit puzzled in both situations. What do I make of this?  

That it was a missed opportunity to enhance their relationships with me. Carried over to the business development context, don't make the same mistake. Make a point to ask appropriate questions, learn about the other person, let them know that you are interested in them. It will strengthen your relationships. And strong relationships are good for business.

I'll add to this that both lawyers and neutrals are problem solvers.  You don't need to know what complicated antitrust problem your dinner companion is wrestling with (unless she's dying to talk about it).  Casual conversation over a relaxing meal will inevitably reveal some challenge your dinner companion is facing.

Be a problem solver.  I can now do this in minutes, holding a glass of soda water at any bar function anywhere anytime.  I do not tell people I am a mediator.  It tends to make them start looking over my shoulder for someone else to talk to.  They're afraid I'm going to try to sell them my services.  I simply ask lots and lots and lots of questions about them.  How's your practice?  Are you progressing as you want to?  How's the firm doing?  Are your associates getting the training they need, etc., etc.  At some point, I begin helping my new bar association friend with one or more of these challenges.  

Eventually they look at me with real interest and say "what is it that you do anyway?"  That's when I tell them, "I'm a professional problem-solver -- a mediator."  We exchange cards.  The business does not come directly and sometimes not at all.  But at the next bar association function, I often see my new old friend, ask how he's rising to the challenge we discussed when last we met.  He introduces me to someone else with kind words about how I helped him with, say, the paper clip supply in the mailroom.  Really, any  problem solving whatsoever will do.

This is how you build a network, a reputation and a business. If I'd known it was this easy, I'd have had a book of business before I was made (a non-equity) partner.  You can build yours too.  Starting now.

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below, 360 degrees of l.a. subway by Masumi Hayashi

I've told my own hard lesson about projecting a positive professional image before here and here. 

There's nothing like a 360 review to get you thinking about why you're (pick one) not getting the plum assignments; being passed over for partnership; or, not winning the corporate "beauty contest."  There's a great Q&A over at HBS Working Knowledge with Laura Roberts, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Business School on Creating a Positive Professional Image (before others do it for you).  Here's an excerpt and a link.  

Most people want to be described as technically competent, socially skilled, of strong character and integrity, and committed to your work, your team, and your company. Research shows that the most favorably regarded traits are trustworthiness, caring, humility, and capability.

Ask yourself the question: What do I want my key constituents to say about me when I'm not in the room? This description is your desired professional image. Likewise, you might ask yourself the question: What am I concerned that my key constituents might say about me when I'm not in the room? The answer to this question represents your undesired professional image.

My old friend and former legal associate, environmental attorney James Dragna at Bingham McCutheon, the best client developer in the business, used to say, "if people have the choice between someone competent they want to hang out with and someone they don't, they'll choose the guy [or gal] they trust and like."

Yes, you can improve your technical capability, but those other three qualities -- trustworthiness, caring and humility -- are choices we can make on any given day.  That's the good news.  Even if you never could get the punch-line to a joke right and don't care who the final four might be.  

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This January Seth Godin's [Marketing] Blog made a succint distinction between marketing strategy and tactics that is as applicable to negotiation as it is to business development.  "The right strategy makes any tactic work better," said Godin.

The right strategy puts less pressure on executing your tactics perfectly.

Here's the obligatory January skiing analogy: Carving your turns better is a tactic. Choosing the right ski area in the first place is a strategy. Everyone skis better in Utah, it turns out.

If you are tired of hammering your head against the wall, if it feels like you never are good enough, or that you're working way too hard, it doesn't mean you're a loser. It means you've got the wrong strategy.

It takes real guts to abandon a strategy, especially if you've gotten super good at the tactics. That's precisely the reason that switching strategies is often such a good idea. Because your competition is afraid to.

Thanks Seth!  Great advice!

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From Larry Bodine's excellent LawMarketing Blog comes the following news flash:

CORPORATE COUNSEL IS REALLY JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU.

Your neighborhood GC not only wants her attorney to concentrate on the corporation's business but when she hears from you, she'd really rather hear about herself.

So do you continue sending your clients arcane "legal updates" on the laws of attachment in California or changes in the evidence code? Do you buy ads in "Super Lawyers?"

No, silly. You send your clients a glossy magazine ABOUT THEMSELVES.

As Bodine writes:

At least one law firm is taking the lead in giving the client what they want. Bass, Berry & Sims* has . . . produced a second issue of a 30-page oversize magazine for clients called momentum that talks about client success stories. The brilliance of the editorial focus is that when clients and targets receive it, they'll see articles about themselves, not the law firm talking about itself.

(*Note the Bass Berry firm motto on its home page: "it's not enough to know the law, we have to know our clients' businesses.")

The firm . . spent the money to make it look like a newstand magazine: . . . a table of contents organized by 14 industries, lots of pictures with people . . . , a cover with pictures of the chairman and CEO of HCA Inc. . . . sidebars with drawings of their clients, and did I mention lots of pictures? . . . .

The writing is so well done that the law firm name is not even mentioned.

Here's why the magazine markets the firm so well:

They don't "market their organization" -- . . . [i]nstead they have "organized around the market," a smart marketing technique in which the law firm features all it's glamorous brand name clients.

It's fun. Page 27 has a recipe for cornbread dressing from Cracker Barrel restaurants . . . (something that plays better, I assume in Bass Berry's market than it would in, say Los Angeles, but fun is key)

The graphics are superb -- . . . . [with] "Not Quite 20 Questions" profiling clients concisely with a flattering hand-drawn portrait. I'll bet every client requested to have the original artwork.

It's designed to actually be read -- with short articles, short paragraphs and short sentences.

And if you don't have a marketing budget big enough to put out a glossy rag the size of W? . . . have I mentioned blogs lately?

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Jack Welch shares a golf-cart with former President Bill Clinton 

We've mentioned the benefits of small talk for settling lawsuits before. 

In a recent post entitled What Am I Supposed to Know About  (thanks to mediator blah blah for directing our attention there) professional firm management guru David Maister, praises the marketing value of small talk.  In this post, he suggests that we might  want to be conversant with the following topics to hold up our end of a conversation at a dinner party or on the golf links with potential clients. 

• Local politics
• National Politics
• International affairs not directly involving your own country
• The latest tech gadgets
• The latest fiction best-sellers
• The latest non-fiction best-sellers
• What’s hot on television
• The latest art exhibition to open in your town
• The popular music charts
• Yo-yo Ma’s latest album
• What’s good on Broadway this season
• The latest movies
• Local sports teams
• Sports events not involving local teams
• Latest theories of child-rearing

I'm tired already.  It's hard enough to keep up with what actually interests me let alone with what doesn't interest me in the least.  

Does that mean that my more eclectically knowledgeable mediator peers will be better able to settle lawsuits and develop business?  I don't think so.  Why?   Because they're really just not that into you. 

So here's the super-secret intergalactic decoder-ring mystery of small talk revealed.  Ready?  

 ASK QUESTIONS.

You don't need to know anything about sports, local politics, literature, brain surgery, travel in Cambodia, statistical analysis, Islam, the movies, Anna Nicole Smith or the British monarchy.

In fact, the LESS you know, the better.

WHY?

Because the less you know, the more interest you'll take in your fellows.  Show an interest in what your clients, potential clients and negotiating partners are interested in and you will make friends for life.

Eventually, these people will get around to asking what it is that you do, thinking it must be something pretty wonderful because you're one of the few people who appear to be smart and forward-looking enough to be so deeply interested in how fascinating they are. 

I tell students to whom I teach the art of taking pre-trial testimony, that this is the same principle as the one you use to pick up men in bars -- a talent I have not used in at least 20 years, having turned this dark art into a power for the good.

As we've previously noted, small talk settles lawsuits and greases the wheels of commerce.

The lawyer who gets credit for that new case from the Fortune 50 company is not alas, the lawyer doing the actual work.  It's the lawyer with the monthly golf date with general counsel or the CEO. And what that lawyer talks about on the links is not what she knows about the principle products of Paraguay or any other topic of general or specific interest.  What she talks about is whatever is of current interest in the GC or the CEO.

And the only way to know that, is to take a genuine interest in others and ask a lot of questions.

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Today we bring you practice development tips from Larry and Robert Kohn of Kohn Communications.  I re-print here verbatim the Kohn's Ten Counter-Intutitive Tips for Working a Room, all of which have worked for me. 

(cartoon from the Gaping Void -- the cartoon's sentiment is ironic, not true; it is, however, what many of us fear -- if we follow our dreams, they will bankrupt us -- not true not true!)

Don’t try to be charming. Effectively working a room does not require that you tell funny jokes or impress your targets with your charisma. The smart strategy for working a room is to think of it as research – a task with which lawyers and mediators already feel comfortable. Your job is to meet people and ask questions. Be interested in the people you meet. The focus should be on learning about the people you meet and the organizations they support - not strutting your stuff.

Go to poorly attended programs.  Realistically, you can only have quality conversations with a handful of people. Large crowds offer a false promise of increased introductions. A large crowd can feel overwhelming and make you more shy. A sparse attendance can be more relaxed and facilitates your meeting the people who have come.

Pick programs that don’t interest you. Programs that interest you may not be the programs that interest your targets. As you consider opportunities for working a room, pick programs that will be interesting to the people you want to meet. 

Avoid your friends. One of the biggest mistakes people make when working a room is they go with their friends and inevitably stay with them throughout the evening. Your goal is to meet new people. So, don’t invite your friends to join you or, if you do, make a pact not to stay together when you arrive.

Don’t be fashionable. People think it’s fashionable to arrive late. The problem is it’s very difficult to break into established cliques already engaged in conversation. If you arrive early, you will easily be able to visit with others in the room. In fact, it is almost impossible not to.

Pick the longest drink line. Usually, you want to get a drink as soon as possible. However, when you’re working a room, a long drink line gives you the ability to talk with the person in front of you and in back of you. The longer the line, the more time you have to get acquainted.

Don’t tell people what you do. Conventional sales wisdom is to come up with some catchy description of your service. The problem is that a catchy comment may position you incorrectly for that target. The better technique is to spend your time finding out what other people do. There will be plenty of time to talk about who you are after you qualify the person you’re talking to. The more you learn about the people you meet, the more effective you will be at customizing your explanation of your services.

Don’t give out your card.  Handing out your card does not give you control of the follow-up. Your  goal is to always get their card. That way, you are in a better position to stay in touch and build a relationship over time. By not giving out you card, you also avoid being bothered by people who you don’t want to hear from in the future.

Get the cards of non-prospects. If you find yourself talking with someone who is not a good prospect, the best way to end the conversation is to ask for their card. When you do, you can comfortably excuse yourself and move on to more fertile opportunities.

Don’t be a leader. Most people like to lead the charge to exit an event to avoid the exiting crowd. But, by lingering, you’ll have more opportunities to meet those who have remained. Often they are the officers of an organization or the people in charge of the event and they may be some of your best contacts.

By following these counter-intuitive techniques, you can expect to build your practice with comfort and ease. You won’t feel pressured to be charismatic.You won’t feel pressured to sell your services on the spot. You’ll meet more people, and you’ll learn more about them. The information you obtain will make it easier to connect, easier to follow up and easier to close.

Lawrence M. Kohn and Robert N. Kohn are principals of Kohn Communications, a marketing and management consulting firm specializing in professional service firms.

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I once knew a writer who despaired of ever being published.  The publications to which he submitted his material?

The New Yorker; The Atlantic Monthly; Harpers, and the Sunday New York Times Magazine. 

Discouraged, the writer would say to me, I'm just not going to write peppy feel-good articles for Dog World!!!"

 Patience.  Balance.  In between Dog World and the New York Times you will find a place to publish your articles.

Keep your dreams big and your steps small. 

Ask yourself these questions:

1. who is my market?
2. what do I know that people in my market need or want to know?
3. what publications do the people in my market read?

Pick a topic.  Write 1,000 words.  Send it off.  It really is that easy.

Here are some publications with low barriers to entry, i.e., you do not need to be Hemingway to publish here.  

The Southern California Mediation Association Newsletter.  I'm now co-editor of this newsletter.  The SCMA has a blog too!  We will publish your short mediation pieces there.  Even though it's local, it is on the internet and therefore reaches the entire world.

mediate.com.  You already know it.  They are hungry for content.  Write and publish.

The National Institute for Advanced Conflict Resolution.  They have a monthly newsletter and web site you can submit your articles to.  

Local and national bar association newsletters and journals in your market, i.e., the Los Angeles County, Beverly Hills, San Fernando Valley, etc. Bar Association newsletters and specialty bar associations like the several local newsletters published by the Association of Business Trial Lawyers and Federal Bar Association ADR section newsletter and blog.  

The Daily Journal and other non-bar legal publications.

If you're academically minded, Dispute Resolution Journals such as the one published by Pepperdine University School of Law.

A chronic self-publisher, I also have my own quasi-academic Dispute Resolution Journal for which I'm always seeking articles!

And have I said "create your own blog" lately?  See Blogging for Mediators 101!

There are many other journals and newsletters with low barriers to entry.  I ask my readers to please leave comments identifying them. 

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The world can never be assumed to exist.  It comes into being only in the act of moving towards it.  Ese est percipii.  Nothing can be taken for granted:  we do not find  ourselves in the midst of an already established world, we do not, as if by preordained birthright, automatically take possession of our surroundings.  Each moment,each thing, must be earned, wrested away from the confusion of inert matter, by a steadiness of gaze, a purity of perception so intense that the effort, in itself, takes on the value of a religious act.  The slate has  been wiped clean. It is up to the poet to write his own book. Paul Auster, The Decisive Moment from The Art of Hunger

I quote poet, novelist, critic and screenwriter, Paul Auster, because there is magic in this excerpt from his essay on the poetry of Charles Reznikoff.  

"The world . . . comes into being only in the act of moving towards it."  For whatever reason I had at the time, when I was a senior in High School, I wrote these words on my PeeGee folder -- "whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genuis, power and magic in it."  (Goethe)

Everything else is detail; putting one foot after the other; accomplishing one small task a day. 

That said, I begin with the educational resources that form the heart and soul of my practice and my business.  

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

I enrolled in the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution in May of 2004, with the goal of earning my LL.M in a year's time.  The pro's and con's:

1. it is true, as I was warned by Institute co-director, Peter Robinson, that the mere possession of the LL.M degree would not aid my career.  
2. what I did gain from my LL.M studies was:
   1. access to the best mediators in the country.
   2. a first class liberal arts education in conflict resolution, including cross-cultural studies; religion and conflict; the social psychology of conflict; arbitration practice; settlement and negotiation theory and practice; international diplomatic theory and practice; introduction to fields entirely new to me such as restorative justice (the mediation of crimes, including mass crimes such as genocide in Rwanda and the wounds of aparthied in South Africa through Truth and Reconciliation Commissions); the ideological foundations of ADR practice; and, communication skills, in addition to the standard mediation training.
   3. the opportunity to create externships in my target market, gaining access to people and places I would never have been able to obtain on my own.
   4. the opportunity to collaborate with some of the best ADR practicioners and academics in the country -- opening doors to collaborative seminars and co-authored articles with some of the most prominent mediators and conflict resolution scholars and educators in the world.

Continue Reading...

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Diane Levin of the online guide to mediation explains memes for the rest of us:

Memes, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the word, are ideas or units of cultural information that replicate and are transmitted virally from one human being to the next. In cyberspace, bloggers spread memes by tagging other bloggers and inviting them to amplify or discuss the idea, transmitting it in turn to other bloggers, and enabling the meme to propagate rapidly.

Tammy Lenski has created a meme for mediators, riffing on a post by Vickie Pynchon, on "How to Start a Mediation Practice"--a must-read for anyone interested in becoming a mediator. Tammy recounts her own proven formula for success in launching a practice as a mediator and has "tagged" Mediation Mensch Dina Beach Lynch and me, inviting us to continue the conversation on this theme.

Since the meme is coming back around to me, I "tag" Kristina Haymes of Mediation Marketing Tips whose excellent mediation marketing advice has been a great help to me.

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First, a huge round of Settle It Now applause for my fellow ADR Bloggers -- Diane Levin of the Online Guide to Mediation, Tammy Lenski of Mediator Tech, Dina Lynch of Mediation Mensch and the ADR Practice Builder, Kristina Haymes of Mediation Marketing Tips, and Geoff Sharp of Mediator blah blah.

These people are my mediation posse even though I've not met any one of them.  They keep my spirits up when they start to flag, share their abundant resources, wisdom and strength with me, and hip me to new ways to market my practice, new case law, new mediation techniques, and new ways to express my mediation practice in the world.  I genuinely don't know what I'd be doing without them.

If you blog, they will come.  I don't have sufficient thank you's in my gratitude bag for these wonderful ADR professionals.  Visit their sites often.  If you take the blogging plunge, they will arrive at your front door like the townspeople of some mythical Elysian American 1950's farm community, with flowers, tips on dealing with the local merchants, casseroles and favorite recipes.  Life doesn't get any better than that.

Part III of Building Your Mediation Practice next.

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MY BUSINESS PLAN

When first asked for my “business plan” by someone for whom planning does not mean picking up Chinese on the way home, I had only five principles at the ready:

1) Be conscious;
2) Be teachable;
3) Be of service;
4) Always say “yes” to a mediation request; and,
5) Be the exception to the rule.

That was it.

Well, and Also, I . . .

. . . gave my new business a name (duly registering it with the proper authorities), “bought” it business cards (free at Vista Print) and built it a web-site (with Yahoo’s free web builder).

Then I dove off the cliff by (gasp) quitting my day-job and

• joining every professional organization where my market was likely to congregate; 
• sticking out my hand to say “hi, I’m Vickie Pynchon” whether I wanted to or not; 
• taking every mediation class that intrigued me; 
• volunteering my mediation services – mainly on the Los Angeles Superior Court Pro Bono Panel – so that I could practice my skills before rolling them out to former colleagues; 
• talking passionately about mediation whenever asked; 
• writing articles about my new profession and submitting them to publications (which always need content); 
• asking seasoned mediators if I could observe them in action and for tips on commencing a mediation practice; 
• offering to be of service whenever I could to whomever I could; 
• speaking about mediation and negotiation skills to attorneys free of charge; 
• speaking to local business groups about matters of interest to them;
• attending law related and mediation conferences and workshops; 
• taking people in my market out to lunch; out for coffee, etc.; 
• becoming engaged in community activities again; 
• liberating my frustrated inner ad-executive by making post-cards about my new practice and filling them with catchy slogans and useful information; 
• being of service to the organizations I joined (they always need volunteers); and, 
• making too many plans, so that when some of them didn’t pan out it was ok with me.
  

BUILD A NETWORK

To build my network I simply paid attention to what people were interested in and offered to hook them up with others who I thought might be able to satisfy their interests. As more people introduced me to other people who might be of assistance to me, I connected them up with other people who might be of assistance to them.

$$$$$$$

Financing the whole thing, I not only lived on my savings, I also bartered a lot of my services in exchange for others.

LEARNING

Speed-learning my new profession, I kept a journal of my mediations. Not only did it allow me to second guess my own performance before I was strong enough to actually ask my clients how I was doing, it also supplied me with material for the articles I began to write.

ENDURANCE

Keeping my spirits up, I surrounded myself with “winners” -- with people who said “you can do it; of course you can do it!!!” I smiled nicely at people (the vast majority) who told me I’d never be able to build a practice because (pick one) -- the field is full; I hadn’t been a judge; the pro bono panel was ruining free market enterprise; better people than I was had failed, etc., etc.

I treated these people kindly, thinking that most people simply don’t believe in the powers of imagination, faith and audacity. I also reminded myself that I became a pretty good lawyer at an age when I was still afraid of the dark, my own shadow, and anyone who’d been over thirty when I was eighteen.

PRACTICING MY PROFESSIONAL PRINCIPLES IN ALL MY AFFAIRS

And, with everything that needed to be learned about resolving rather than escalating conflict, I began to practice peace-making in all my affairs.

TO REITERATE

Be conscious

This is sometimes called “mindfulness.” Author and mediator Ken Cloke has described mindfulness as

the capacity to be present and aware of what is happening inside you, while at the same time developing awareness of what is happening inside others. It includes the experience of relationships as malleable and subject to transformation at any moment. A mediator exercising mindfulness practices a type of concentration that gives rise to insight and creative intervention techniques. Whenever we allow ourselves to hear at a deep level what the other person is saying, credit it, discover its meaning, and give ourselves permission to present that meaning in the form of a question to the parties, we are using mindfulness to inform the mediation process.

Be teachable

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

Shaseki-shu in Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Be of service

Mediation is a helping profession. When I show myself able to be of assistance to people, I build a reputation as being a willing, cheerful, attentive and useful helper.

Always say “yes” to a mediation request

The answer to any request for assistance with mediation is simply “yes.” Yes, I will help set up the chairs, make the coffee, print the flyers, clean up the conference room. Yes, I will introduce you to attorneys I know. Yes, I will speak about mediation at your gathering. Yes, I will contribute an article to your newsletter. Yes, you may observe my mediations. Yes, you may have the number of my (pick one) web guy, accountant, assistant, teacher, friend, confidant, personal trainer, marketing adviser, etc., etc., etc. Yes, yes, yes.

Be the exception to the rule

Whatever else I am, good, bad or indifferent, I am unique. I am the exception to any rule that guarantees my failure.

That's it. 

I'll be commencing my third year of mediation practice in June and it is working.  It has been a lot of work and a lot of fun.  There's no reason in the world why you can't do it too!  After all, there's more conflict in human affairs than water in the ocean or stars in the sky.  Turn around and take a look over your shoulder.  There's a dispute waiting to be resolved right over there.   All you have to do is to let them know you've learned how to help them negotiate that contract, settle that lawsuit, or make peace with those neighbors.  Mediation is the better mousetrap.  Join us!

Tomorrow I'll provide you with links to resources that have been useful in building my practice.

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The Social Web - A World of Possibilities from the public relations/public affairs firm Tunnheim Partners provides the statistics for all the jabbering we do here about matriculating your law or ADR practice into the Web 2.0 University.  Excerpts below:

In a year when YouTube won Time magazine’s invention of the year and corporate CEOs were quick to create their own avatar – a virtual personalized identity – 2006 proved that “new media” now includes much more than blogs. The always-changing media landscape has forced public relations professionals to constantly re-examine the term “new media” and continuously find its hidden opportunities.

Gone are the days where a company could merely post information on a static corporate Web page and expect customers to find it. A survey by Ketchum and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center found that nearly half of all industry professionals use their corporate Web site to post important company news and announcements, but only 6.8 percent of all customers will go to the Web site to find it. Today’s more socially minded Web user will look to more interactive online locations to influence their beliefs about a company, product or concept – including the virtual world.

Read the rest of the article and check out more Tunnheim advice here.

And if you don't know what Web 2.0 is, check out the O'Reilly Explanation which includes the following comparisons between Web's 1 and 2.

Web 1.0	Web 2.0
DoubleClick	-->	Google AdSense
Ofoto	-->	Flickr
Akamai	-->	BitTorrent
mp3.com	-->	Napster
Britannica Online	-->	Wikipedia
personal websites	-->	blogging
evite	-->	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	-->	search engine optimization
page views	-->	cost per click
screen scraping	-->	web services
publishing	-->	participation
content management systems	-->	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	-->	tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness	-->	syndication

And no, we here at the Negotiation Law Blog don't know what half of these things mean.  The point is only that we're learning and we invite everyone else along for the ride.

 

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THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR BLOGGING

We had a great writing seminar with the brilliant and energetic Lisa Klerman of U.S.C. Law School, SCMA President Jan Frankel Schau of Valley Mediation Services and the tireless Phyllis Pollack, Chair of SCMA's Practice Development Committee, at the Los Angeles County Bar Association last night.

All participants walked out of the seminar with a writing/blogging marketing plan and some of the groups exchanged business cards, agreeing to act as "marketing buddies" to achieve the goals set at last night's session.

The Basics to Set Up Your Blog

Several attendees asked me to provide the links to blogging resources that I mentioned last night so here they are:

Google's Blogger -- where you can set up a blog free in about half an hour no matter how technologically over-50 you are.  There are other resources, like typepad, but I have no experience with them.

For broader instruction, Diane Levin at the On-Line Guide to Mediation and Tammy Lenski at Mediator Tech teach a four part blogging seminar that I attended just last month and which I highly recommend. 

Feedblitz syndicates your blog, i.e., permits you to put an email subscription box in your blog's sidebar and allows your subscribers to choose a direct "feed."  I have no idea how the RSS ("really simple syndication") feed works, but I use it myself and it's easy to set up at Feedblitz.   

I am indebted to Diane Levin for turning me on to MorgueFile, where you can get free images courtesy of a benevolent conspiracy of photographers who offer their stunning photographs free of charge.  Before Diane turned me on the this source, I used (and still use) istockphoto.com where most images cost a dollar.  Flickr also provides free images.

Google Alerts will send you articles and blog posts on any topic you choose.  Just put in a key term like "mediation," "negotiation," "insurance coverage," "family law," "health care industry," "community mediation," "restorative justice," "social psychology," etc. and google will deliver the web results to your email box.  (See also Google Tracking for Client Awareness at Netlaw Blog -- remember, your clients are Just Not That Into You; they are, however, into themselves).

Have I said "God bless google" recently?  God bless google, particularly for constructing a library of every book ever written still in existence today at books.google.com.  The New Yorker article on this dizzyingly audacious endeavor, Google's Moon Shoot, is here.

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I stumble across these things. 

Here's a law firm in Philadelphia, the Beasley Law Firm that showcases its lawyers and touts its services in short video clips on nearly every web page.

In light of the new generation's prediliction to obtain its news, products and entertainment on the web, the Beasley firm might just be ahead of the curve.

           If you're not awash in a web of legal referrals like most of us are, it might be nice to hear and see an attorney before you pick up the phone and call or get into your car to drive on over.

What do you think?  You might want to take at our earlier post on the Women's Law Network Blog concerning the young Pittsburgh bankruptcy lawyer -- legally blonde -- who's building her business on MySpace.

It's a new world folks!

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In this week's New Yorker, James Surowiecki reminds us that "business is not a sporting event [and] victory for one company doesn't mean defeat for everyone else."

Surowiecki's article, In Praise of Third Place, concerns the fight for market dominance in the video-game industry.  

The players?  Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's Play-Station 3 and Nintendo's Wii.  

The takeaway? Good news for those of us who continually hector our fellows about collaborative problem-solving and the real social, political and environmental dangers of fixed pie thinking.

By not competiting for the number one video-game slot, Nintendo is "beating" its Goliath competitors.

[Nintendo] has five billion dollars in the bank from years of solid profits, and this past year . . . saw its stock price rise by sixty-five percent.  Sony's game division, by contrast, barely eked out a profit and Microsoft's reportedly lost money.

How could this happen to the Big Boys?  Surowiecki explains:

Markets today are so big -- the global video-game market is now close to thirty billion dollars -- that companies can profit even when they're not on top, as long as they aren't desperately trying to get there.

Want to perform like Nintendo?

The key is to play to your strengths while recognizing your limitations.  Nintendo knew that it could not compete with Microssoft and Sony in the quest to build the ultimate home-entertainment device.  So it decided, with the Wii, to play a different game entirely.  Some pundits are now speculating, ironically, that the simplicity of the Wii may make it a huge hit.

Here's a question for the evolutionary biologists -- of Life's Top Ten Greatest Inventions -- multicellularity, the eye, the brain, language, sex, photosynthesis, death, parisitism, superorganisms and symbiosis, how many arose from competition and how many from collaboration (or is the question itself too simplistic?)

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Executive summary of "Six Sigma in the Legal Department: Obtaining Measurable Quality Improvements in Discovery Management," (KPMG Advisory) from the Corporate Library; See also KPMG's A Revolution in e-Discovery:  The Persuasive Economics of the Document Analytic Approach

There are two reasons for th[e Six Sigma] report.

First, the issue of discovery, especially "e-discovery" and the importance in litigation of computer files, has become one of vital importance for corporations as even one wrongly or carelessly provided document can have devastating consequences.

Second, legal departments are increasingly being expected to measure themselves along the same lines as operating divisions, and the "six sigma" management tool for setting goals and measuring progress has been proven to be particularly useful.

"The Six Sigma philosophy has had broad application across industries and has equal relevance to the legal profession. Corporate law departments—often viewed as a necessary cost of doing business—can benefit from measuring such important functions as ‘process management,’ ‘efficiency,’ ‘process improvement,’ and ‘cost savings.’  These issues resonate in the minds of GCs, CEOs, chief financial officers (CFOs), and other officers of Six Sigma–influenced organizations.

Outside counsel can benefit from understanding and adopting the Six Sigma approach to help their lawyers speak the same language as their clients from a problem-solving perspective, provide higher-quality deliverables, and improve customer service."

Six Sigma is a very stringent standard, allowing for no more than 3.4 defects per one million "opportunities" (tasks or decisions). This report uses Six Sigma to examine the elements of discovery production and ensure that the material provided is thoroughly understood and evaluated, and board members will find it useful in managing litigation risk.

My step-daughter, Julia Goldberg, who is in her second year at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, has the following to say about Six Sigma:

Six sigma is a quality control standard -- requiring that sub-standard products occur only .001% of the time, or six sigmas away from the mean in terms of mathematical deviations. Six sigma became all the rage in the 1980s or early 1990s, and is basically used for manufacturing processes.

There has been some backlash in applying six sigma for non manufacturing processes -- because it is VERY expensive. Companies have to get people certified in six sigma practices (people become certified and are called black belts) or bring in consultants.  At the end of the end of the day, the benefits are not always worth the costs, particularly in the case of, say, a bakery.

Thanks Julia!!

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