Personal Branding for Lawyers

So welcome everyone to today's learning objectives. And today we are not going to talk about technology, which is my usual topic. Today we are going to talk about building a personal brand. And there's a lot of different ways you can build a brand, but the first thing I wanted to talk about is what it isn't. And so a personal brand is not about marketing. The personal brand that we're talking about today is people's perception of you, and when they think about you, what comes to mind. So, um, if I show you a picture of a cup of coffee? Does any— and you can use the chat to tell me— when you think about coffee, what brand comes to mind? Okay, Dunkin' and Starbucks. Anybody else? Keurig. Okay. Folgers and Starbucks. Okay. Starbucks, Starbucks, Starbucks. So what's interesting is this technically, while it is a picture of a cup and there's coffee brewing into it, Someone said Keurig. So you see this picture, and depending on how you interpret the picture itself, you may think about a coffee brand, you may think about the coffee maker. All of those have brands. So Keurig is a popular brand of coffee maker, Starbucks is a brand, and Folgers is a brand of actual coffee. Folgers we tend to make at home, Starbucks we tend to go pick up, even though you can buy the beans. And so just this image alone depending on where you're coming from, a different brand pops to mind depending on how you interpret the picture. And that is essential in thinking about how people look at you and your brand and thinking about that from the perspective of, are they a potential client? Are they a colleague? You know, they're all going to perceive you in some different way framed by their own reference points. So we'll try another one. Nope. So if you see this object, what's the first brand that kind of enters your mind? Samsung. And, and that— if this is funny because Y'all recognize that this is more than likely a Samsung phone versus an iPhone, which looks a little bit different. Um, Brian says Apple. So again, you're thinking about the brands of the phones. It may be because you carry a Samsung phone or an Apple phone. Um, and I have, I have a Samsung phone. So those are the, the big brands. Now, a different way to frame this is, what is your perception? So if you think this is, you know, what brand occupies your own mind for smartphones, and that's Apple, what are your perceptions of Apple? And y'all can open your mics if you want to, if it's easier not to type. But your perception of Apple from a brand perspective, is it expensive? Is it reliable? Is it attractive? Is it functional? Is it overpriced? Is it overhyped? Long-lasting? Okay, so you think about first that brand kind of occupies your mental space for a particular thing, purchasable good or service, and then what are your impressions of those? So we think about, you know, the phone itself, how we feel about it, how we feel about the brand. Here's a, here's another one. So let's just brand this as a concept of legal research. So when you think about legal research, what's the first brand that pops into your mind? Westlaw. Anybody else? Lexis. Okay, Westlaw. Case text. Okay. And CaseText now is part of Westlaw. And it's interesting that y'all say Westlaw, because when I think about legal research now, I think Thomson Reuters, the bigger, the bigger entity that owns Westlaw. And Westlaw is now a product under Thomson Reuters. But that's weedy. But all that to say, do you trust Westlaw? Is, is, is it easier to use? Is it what you had in law school, and so you, you trust it because the, the law librarians at your law school trusted it to get it for you. What makes you think about Westlaw, and then how do you perceive it? So that's kind of when we think about brand, we think about what brand occupies your mind for a particular thing, whether that's hotel chains, or legal research, or coffee. And then how do we perceive that brand? Do we buy that brand over another because of the strength of its value proposition? For instance, for me, Patagonia. Now, my perception of Patagonia was it was a little expensive, and it was, you know, kind of boring clothes. Fair enough, but well made. Then I started reading more about the brand, um, and what they give back and some of their environmental, um, efforts and things like that. And that improved my opinion about Patagonia, um, because they, they went beyond just being a company that sold clothes to a whole concept about what occupies my mind and how I relate to that brand. And this is all important in thinking about how you develop a brand. So you're, you know, you're a person who is either getting a law license or practicing law. And the next thing is, how do people perceive you? As we talked about before, depending on who you are talking to, their perception will be different— other lawyers, people in your network versus clients or potential clients, the public if you're a public figure, or even if you're not a public figure, how does the public feel about lawyers? So you're a lawyer, you're a person, and then how do we humanize you? If you're in law school, how do other students and your professors think about you? And what is the brand that you're trying to develop? And that's not about marketing, and that's not about your name necessarily. It's really the whole package. When someone thinks about you, um, coming from their different perspectives, what is the thing that they think about? Um, are you diligent? Are you, um, responsive? Are you calm under pressure? Uh, do you deliver what you say you're going to deliver? All these things. And the bar is not incredibly high to develop a good brand, no matter where you are in your career. Because it's really just about— a lot of it is showing up and being conscious of other people. So about 25 years ago, um, there was this concept of the brand called me. And at the core, personal brand is an amalgamation of your skills and experience and your personality. It attracts clients, it attracts other lawyers. If you've ever heard someone talk about another lawyer, even though they are on the other side, you respect them for their abilities, for their intelligence, for their persona, and that all goes into building brands. Now, your marketing can definitely highlight your brand. In fact, you should work on making sure that, um, your marketing highlights the brand, but the visual identity, logos and color schemes and all that kind of stuff only serves to reinforce, um, your professional persona. So about 25 years ago, there was a management guru named Tom Peters who wrote a book called The Brand Called You. It was actually an article that came out in, I believe, Fast Company. And this is obviously prior to everybody just Googling someone's name. And he talked about how to stand out in a sea of competitors, building trust and credibility, enhancing your professional relationships. How does one attorney bill at a higher rate than another? What makes them trust— what makes people trust that that person billing at a higher rate is worth the money? And that, that is part of building that brand, that it has value to that person. But recently they interviewed Tom Peters, the guy who wrote The Brand Called You and ask him over the 25 years that he's been, you know, he was talking about this, what, what's changed. And, you know, one of the things is that it's, you know, branding is not about self-promotion. It's about distinguishing yourself and thinking about some of the things that you can do to really strengthen your personal brand. Being a student of life is one of the things that Peter says. Don't let the sun set without being a little smarter than you were yesterday. And then he says to read fiction. So if you tend to read self-help books, business books, law books, and you're not expanding your horizons by reading other types of literature that give you a bigger picture sense of what's going on, and being able to talk to people about multiple things, not, not just, you know, the news or legal topics, but being well-rounded, I think, is, is the primary idea here. And he says, whatever you do, do it well, which probably sounds obvious, but he advises by simply doing your job, a lot of times that gets you ahead of other people. We all know those people who are super responsive, and we know the people who are not. And again, a lot of this is just showing up. And then this concept of taking on a humanist approach, being aware and sensitive to others' needs and putting them, sell them before yourself. Um, so thinking about, you know, decency and being aware of other people and implicit bias and perceived slights and just how you talk to other people and being mindful of your language is incredibly important. So crafting your personal brand, thinking about different things, define what your value proposition is. And so if that is, you know, I'm smart, I'm responsive, I'm willing to put in the work. What are the things you like to do? You're more likely to be able to build a good brand when you're happy doing what you're doing. So what are your strengths? What are your passions? Being self-aware and doing a self-analysis. And I'm not necessarily talking about going and getting some sort of personality test so you know that you're, you know, whatever all the acronyms are for the different brand types or the personality type tests. Those can be very helpful in being aware of, um, how people are, how you're perceived potentially, but you can fight against those things. So if you, for instance, if you go, well, I'm just an introvert, you can, you can get past being introverted. It doesn't have to be your defining trait. Find the things that you like to do that fit with your strengths. So if you feel like you're introverted and going out and networking and shaking hands with people is not your idea of a good time, Then focus on writing and getting published and getting out in front of people in that way. Um, let your words do the talking. So again, kind of build on your personal strengths and seeing how it resonates with different people. Um, one of the things that I personally somewhat regret in my, um, my brand is that I don't get to use the personal pronoun, um, that, that I write in third person or second person, um, because I feel like that it would, it would give me the ability to be my own brand. But I work for a company, and so because of that, I tend to, uh, not inject my personal opinion. Now, in my writing, you will see it's obviously my personal opinion, and I strongly feel about some things, um,. But in your world, you may be able to insert yourself a little bit more in your, how people are exposed to you. And then just thinking about your journey, what got you to go into law? What do you enjoy about it? What do you not enjoy about it? What have you seen others do that you admire? And think about people that you think have a strong personal brand and see if you can emulate that. One thing that if you read any articles about personal branding and lawyers that you'll see over and over again, that we, we talk about foundations and ethical conduct. And so no matter what your professional challenge, if you maintain a high level of ethical behavior, that will go a long way to strengthening your brand and not just following the ethics rules, um, but for instance, so we have an ethics rule in North Carolina that says if you receive a document that has comments or track changes or anything that would be exposing metadata to someone else, that you should notify the sender. I always refer to that as the golden rule rule because do unto others. So if you sent a document over to another attorney that had, you know, information in it that you didn't mean for them to see, wouldn't you want them to let you know that you accidentally sent something over to them and that they're going to give you a pass? Doing, doing those kinds of things is not just the ethical behavior, but it's also good for your personal branding and your perception by other lawyers. So thinking about different scenarios like that, It's not just, again, following the rules exactly as so much as applying them in different situations. So let's talk about your online presence a little bit. One of the realities is that people do Google your name, and you want to show up, and you have some, some control over this, but you want to show up online as well as you do in person. So one way you can do this is just to do a Google search on your name. Um, you can use Google, you can use Yahoo, you can use Bing, you can use DuckDuckGo, whatever search you want. In fact, I would suggest using multiple searches because they all have slightly different indexes and will find different things. Do a search without being logged in. You can go and do the incognito because when you're logged into, um, these search engines, it's influencing the search results. So you wanna see what it looks like to someone else, not necessarily just the results it's gonna show to you. Um, and then put in your full name, variations of your name in quotes with and without your firm's name. Try to get a very good sense of how you're showing up online. Um, I will tell you that I had a young woman who came in, um, to, uh, interview interview for a position that I had at a previous job, and I thought she was wonderful and I would have given her the job. I didn't Google her name and my boss did, and she said, do you realize that this young lawyer, um, not only was very vocal about— and this was in the, um, 2008 era she was not only vocal about how law school was supposedly lying about your ability to get a job, but she tried to do it anonymously. And there was this whole— there's this whole movement about, you know, people saying that law schools were lying, that people were not getting the jobs and the salaries that were being suggested. There's a whole lot of economic stuff going on at the time. So people were very disgruntled. Anyway, she, um, she was doing all this posting anonymously, and somebody took the time to go figure out who she was, and then that became a story in and of itself. So when you Googled her name, that was, that was a lot of the information that was coming up. So, um, be aware of what people are saying about you, what be, you know, what people see when they Google your name, and don't just stop at the first results page. Keep going, um, a little bit deeper, a couple of pages deep. Look at the images that crop up, the videos that crop up. Um, we, we don't always have complete control of what people see when they Google us, uh, but there are things that you can do to somewhat control it. And if you can't take something down that is negative, then at least you can kind of fill up the void with positive things, which takes some effort. But again, our online presence, for better or worse, is incredibly important. So I always say the best defense is a good offense. Get out there, get published, be visible in the places that you have complete control over. Um, when you get into practice, or if you're already in practice, you know that there's a whole lot of directories out there who take the roles from the State Bar because that's public information and put you in AVVO and lawyers.com and other places. Be aware what people are saying about you. I will tell you that I had an attorney call me and said that he had missed a partners meeting and he came back to find that the, the partners had nominated him as the marketing chair. And so he contacted me to talk about marketing strategies and I said, well, let's, let's just Google your firm's name. Well, their firm had some negative Google reviews. In fact, those were the only reviews they had. He was unaware that people were posting reviews about them on Google, um, because I don't think they were aware that they even had a Google Business presence, um, and didn't know to look. We have ethics opinions about responding to negative reviews. Um, which is that you can do it, but you can't expose any confidential information about the client relationship. And if you're interested, if you ever find a bad review about yourself or your firm, get in touch with me and I'll, I'll send you the ethics opinions and some thoughts about how to be responsive. But being aware and then being responsive and then trying to change the perception by flooding positive information and helpful information out there is one tactic that you can take. Don't, don't let someone Google your name and only find things that other people control and not you. So when we talk about LinkedIn, the reason I usually talk about LinkedIn is because It is a social media platform that is very visible to the search engines. It's free, and it's where business professionals and other professionals are. Um, 99% of attorneys are on LinkedIn, and whether or not they're participatory in LinkedIn is a different matter entirely, but there are, you know, most people at least have some sort of profile. So LinkedIn is, is an easy place to be able to create a good profile. So you want to create a detailed profile with as much information filled out as possible because you can make that profile indexed by Google. And so when someone types in your name, if there's not a lot else out there about you, they will find your, your LinkedIn profile and can go there. And there's a place in the profile that you can choose what you make visible. To people who are connected with you on LinkedIn or generally. So you have a good bit of control over that. The other thing is a lot of people put kind of a CV in, in LinkedIn, and then they do nothing with it beyond that. And if you want to stand out, if you want to be visible, you actually have to get social on LinkedIn and then connect with people. So, you know, again, a lot of times people get on and then they get trepidatious about connecting with other people. I get a lot of times people will say, well, do you connect with anybody who sends you an invitation? No, I don't connect with anybody who sends an invitation, but I do seek out people who I know or have met, and I connect with them on LinkedIn. And if someone sends me an invitation, unless they seem creepy or just really not a good fit for me and what I'm trying to establish, then I'll connect with them. And if they prove to be something that I didn't anticipate, then I unconnect. It's not that big of a deal. The other thing is LinkedIn has groups. You can join groups, you can have conversations about things, um, helps you stand out when you're helpful and share information. So in your profile, just, you know, there's a couple of things you can do. In your headline, I have my title, but if you're practicing law, my suggestion would be your firm name is going to come up if you're at a firm or an organization or a law school. So in this area where it says director or center of professional practice management, you can put whatever you want to in there. So if that is practicing IP law in Asheville, or looking to start my practice in healthcare, or whatever, whatever, if it's aspirational, if it's accurate to this day, all of that. For sole practitioners, same deal. My general feeling is that if you, if you have a specific practice area or a couple of different practice areas, make sure that that goes straight in front of people. So if you're a sole practitioner and you have a general practice, you can say something, you know, practicing law in XYZ town, helping people with their day-to-day needs, whatever whatever seems authentic and informational. And again, strengthening the brand, what people know about you. Now, there are things in our ethics rules that say you can't make self-laudatory comments. That doesn't come off all that well anyway. So if you can't say you're the best lawyer in the state, you know, you can't do these, that, there's certain things you can't say., but you can certainly say if you're a certified elder law attorney, say certified elder law attorney helping people with X, Y, or Z. The characters are limited, but one thing to be aware of is that this information is the very first thing people see. They don't— if they don't scroll past any of this, you want to tell them what do you do, kind of what are your aspirations, what are your goals, how do you help people, where you are, how to get in touch with them, put your contact information in there. If you have a website, put a link to your website in there. And, you know, all of this other information, um, the North Carolina Bar Association, that comes up because of my employer, um, and my school. Those things come up automatically. You don't have to waste text on repeating that information. So another thing is you can actually, on the LinkedIn app, go and in your profile record your name and how to pronounce your name. And there's a couple of benefits to that. One, if you have a name that's difficult to pronounce or people stumble over it, it's a way to help them pronounce your name. It also lets them record your voice. So somebody has a better sense of you, not just a picture and a text description, that also adds voice to the mix. And so you have to use the LinkedIn app to be able to do that. But then it adds, you know, your— the recording of your name as pronounced by you. And you would be surprised, even what seems to be a simple name like mine, people mispronounce it all the time. So even if you think I have a very easy to pronounce name, go ahead and take the step to do it to give people a sense of how to say your name and also record your voice. And then just keep working on building those connections. You can see who's viewed your profile, who's viewed other— who they've viewed, what other profiles they've viewed. And there's a, you know, if you never go to LinkedIn, you're probably not going to be building your connections. So it's going to have to be intentional. One of the things that I like, because I'm an Outlook user, is in Outlook, if you mouse over someone in an Outlook thread, it will show them— because Outlook is owned by Microsoft, as is, and Microsoft also owns LinkedIn— you can actually go and see someone's LinkedIn profile and connect with them straight through Outlook. So it doesn't always have to be visiting LinkedIn, but building those connections in LinkedIn just gives you a bigger pool of people to interact with, people to see. So the next thing is interacting. So you've gotten your profile and you've built up a community, and then you start interacting. And so this is a pretty simple process. I do this— I just check my LinkedIn app on my phone while I'm having coffee in the morning. If you can just dedicate some time during lunch or whatever and go through and react or comment on what's going on with other people. There's a benefit to doing this other than just kind of patting the person on the back and being aware that you can like, but you can also support, you can also applaud, you can also love the, the little, um light bulb is good idea, um, or laugh at it. So using a different icon that stands out other than there's just the thumbs up is another thing you can do to make you kind of separate from the crowd. Um, when you do this, everybody who David Cluft is connected with who's seen this post also sees me. So in addition to, um, supporting that person, it makes me more visible to other people. So commenting has kind of a double, uh, and commenting, reacting, it, it shows more visibility, um, for me and also supporting good things. Commenting, try to keep it positive. Um, right now the world is full of negative comments and, um, I think keeping it thoughtful and polite, and if you disagree with the person, probably not the best place to discuss it is on LinkedIn unless it, it can be done well and thoughtfully. Then the next step is adding content, and that doesn't have to be some super long pithy concept. In fact, I think the post that I got the most reaction from of anything I've ever posted on LinkedIn was It was a simple description of one day I was going to do a program via webinar. It was during the pandemic. We were all kind of learning video conferencing in a very hasty manner, and I was really glad that I'd gotten on 30 minutes before because my microphone— everything was wrong. Everything that had worked 2 hours before, nothing was working. And so I just wrote this little, you know, post about here's a reason you always get onto your video conferences early, because if it can go wrong, it will, and you want to have time to figure out what's going on. And I got so many comments and so much support for that that I realized that while LinkedIn, we typically see a lot of posts that are self-promotional, or, um, I got this new job and got a new award, you know, got this recognition, or here's an article I've written, or here's an article I'm sharing. Sometimes being vulnerable and sharing experiences is refreshing in the LinkedIn world, so don't, don't be afraid to be yourself there. And, you know, look at teachable moments without being too over-the-top teachy. There's definitely some posts that I've seen where people are, you know, a little ham-handed with the whole, here's my thing that happened to me and the learning you can take away from it. Be, be a little bit more subtle than that. But really, people do interact with LinkedIn in a way that is different than I would have said 5, 6 years ago. And remember, you can also put interactive content on LinkedIn. It's not just posts and pictures. You can do video, you can do streaming, you can do a whole lot. You can put blog posts up there, you can do newsletters. So it's not just reacting and writing a post. There's a whole lot of ways you can put interactive content and interesting content. You can also do polls. People love to take polls, so insert a poll just to get a feel of how people are doing, but creating something that creates interaction will get you more visible. The other thing is LinkedIn is actually a really good research tool. One of the things that I use quite a bit is when I see a post that I think has important information that I want to get back to, there's a little button that says save, and you can save a post, and then it saves it like you've bookmarked it in LinkedIn so you can get back to it later. You can follow hashtags in LinkedIn, and then you can also do a search for individuals, for companies, for groups. And one thing is, if you're in the job market or even just going to meet a new client, make sure that you do your research before you go in. And sometimes that's a matter of Googling their name, but LinkedIn will pull up more information. Sometimes you can get a sense of that person. But I had someone come in for an interview, and that was— I was working at the American Bar Association, and the department that I was the director of was the Legal Technology Resource Center. So I asked the candidate, you know, what do you know about us? And they gave me the, you know, basically the about statement from the ABA's website. And I said, well, what, what do you know about the Legal Technology Resource Center? And they said, not really much of anything. And you should never go into an interview or a client's office not knowing the client, the candidate, the job, the principles, what they do, what their focus is, what their goals are. Depending on the situation, you may be able to find a lot of information. You may not be able to find too much, but this is worth your time to know people because because there's no better way to leave a good impression with someone than flattery. So knowing something about someone and saying, oh, I saw that you were recently speaking at X, Y, or Z, or that you won this award, or whatever— people love that. And that makes them think better of you because you took the time to learn about them. The other thing is you can see how you're doing in LinkedIn. So, you know, this was that post I mentioned, just kind of here's what happened and here's what I learned. I had 147 reactions, 32 comments, almost 8,000 views. And then I can— you can actually go in and see from the individual views where they work. What their title is, where they live. And so one of the things that I had to do when I moved here from Chicago was start trying to build my brand here in North Carolina. And so, you know, using hashtags, being aware of the statistics and who's looking at what and trying to figure out how do I get to the audience that I want to reach in a different location when my network was primarily in Chicago prior to 4 years ago. So again, All of this, the more aware you are, the more mindful of, of how people see you, um, the better. So the next thing I want to talk about is your communication skills. These— this is so incredibly important to think about as you're building your brand, maintaining your brand, is your ability to communicate effectively. So there's a study called Best Lawyers in America, and they use peer-reviewed methodology to publish a listing of top attorneys. And they ask, which of the 3 following adjectives do clients use most frequently when describing the characteristics of outstanding lawyers? And the options are intelligent, capable, zealous, responsive, attractive, insightful, well-connected, aggressive, confident, accessible, knowledgeable, expert, prompt, clever, eloquent, persuasive, bombastic, and successful. The top 3 responses over and over and over again are responsive, accessible, and prompt. And if you think about that, those are pretty synonymous. So again, when they say that, you know, 90%, um, of the effort is showing up, being responsive and prompt and accessible are things that will go a lot farther. And those are things you can control to a certain extent. Even in that, say you're gonna be out of the office and not able to respond, set up an auto response that says, I'm not in the office over the next couple of days handling a big trial. I will get back to you as soon as possible. If you need assistance and you need, you know, an immediate answer, please contact this person who's helping me out. Well, I'm, you know, not available to answer your question. Those kinds of things so that people aren't left in the dark, that they don't get, you know, they send you an email or leave you a voicemail and it goes into a black hole. People remember that. And that doesn't matter whether you're serving clients, working with other lawyers, whoever you're working with. Again, this is a big secret to success in terms of having people like you and think about you because of your accessibility and promptness. Another thing is being good at active listening, whether that's in person or when you're responding to an email. So you've probably all experienced sending an email to someone asking specific questions where they just don't answer the question asked, and that gets frustrating. And then they feel like they need, you know, you gotta send another email to try to clarify. So for one thing, when you're sending an email, try to be clear about what it is that you need from someone. Use bullet points, be brief, be direct but polite. And then when people send you emails, try to respond thoroughly and really listen to what they're asking. When you're reading that, you might read it out loud just to make sure that you hear we read into stuff a lot. And so communication, especially brief communication, people will ascribe tone to it when they really shouldn't. So think about that as well. And sometimes having a video conference or in-person meeting, especially if the news is bad or difficult, you may want to switch over from email. When I first moved here, my sister moved in with me, and so I would text her and say, I'm on the way home. And then she started texting me that she was on the way home, I would respond, okay. Well, one day that happened and she got home and she said, are you mad at me? I was like, why would I be mad at you? And she said, because you said okay. And I realized I didn't put okay smiley face or okay exclamation point. And so people read into things no matter how brief or direct. So sometimes it helps to couch things, I find that the generative artificial intelligence tools, I will, if I think that what I say and how I say it is incredibly important, I will get, I will put it into a GenAI tool like Claude or GPT and say, you know, adjust the tone to sound more friendly, you know, whatever. So that's something you can do if you're wondering if how you're expressing yourself is conveying in the way that you're meaning to, and just be intentional. And then something that I express to attorneys in marketing, um, but it also goes for personal branding, is being able to say what problem you solve and for whom. That, that's your elevator pitch. But your elevator pitch changes depending on the context and the person you're talking to. So what's your elevator pitch to a managing partner versus a client versus, um, opposing counsel versus, you know, the person on the street? What I do, and I will fully admit that I've been doing legal technology and practice management work for 25 years, and it's taken me a really long time to figure out how to say what I do that makes it stick. And for the longest time, my family couldn't even tell you what I did for a living. And so you, you want to be specific, but not so specific that you get into the weeds, um, because on the flip side, I used to ask young attorneys, you know, well, what, what's your practice area? And they would say complex civil litigation. And this is primarily attorneys in Chicago and large law firms. And I would laugh and I say, I don't know what that means. So if you say complex civil litigation, most people are not going to really understand the nuance of what that might mean. So you may say, I work with corporate entities for compliance with regulatory rules, or I help people purchase and buy or purchase or sell homes, you know, if you're doing real estate or whatever. But think about what your message is, how you're different from other people, and get that all into a language that they can understand. So while other attorneys may understand what eminent domain is, some of your clients may not. And so again, just kind of thinking about how you express that to other people and test it out. Um, another thing is going back to being accessible and prompt. Um, you have to create a system to ensure responsiveness, being able to triage messages, get back to them. Um, and so that's just a matter of staying organized. Some people are better at it than others. So the more organized you are, the better you will be at prioritizing and being responsive. And responsiveness can be creating, uh, auto responses to fill in the gaps so you don't have to personally be responsible for all of this. Um, I have lots of email templates, so somebody emails me something, I just use the email template, um, to respond to them. Uh, it doesn't— it, it helps me be responsive but without having to recreate the wheel every time. There's a tool that I really like for following up. It's called Boomerang. Gmail and Outlook already have the ability to do this in terms of having an email come back into your inbox, but what I like about Boomerang is the added ability to say return this conversation to the inbox if I don't get a response. So if I sent out an email, um, to Brian and I say, can you send me these documents? I might forget about it. And then I find myself in a position where I needed the information from him to move things forward. Now, um, moving things forward is, is potentially off the, uh, the rails because I didn't get the response. So you can have Boomerang remind you if there's no response and gently remind the person, hey, I really need these documents in order to be able to help you with your matter. Because no matter how responsive you feel like you are, their perception is your reality. Um, whatever people think about you is the reality even if you disagree with it. So you really have to look at things from their perspective, um, which is why I'm a huge fan if you're in practice of sending a— not just a closing letter with a how did we do, but actually checking in with them throughout the representation just to say, are we doing a good job? Are we meeting your needs? Are we responsive? It's better to know advance than at the end, right? The other thing that doesn't get taught in law schools very much is the concept of soft skills. And the first soft skills course that I took, the instructor asked everybody in the room, how are you arriving today? And the funny thing is, that stressed me out so much. How am I arriving today? What does that mean? What she really meant was, are you coming in curious and ready to learn? Did you have a bad morning? Did you eat your Wheaties? You know, all the things. If you are self-reflective enough to be able to realize how you're coming into a room and adjust so that if you've had a bad morning, that doesn't come off, if you're hungry, that doesn't come off, because I hate to say this as bluntly as I'm about to say it, but you don't get to have bad moods. We don't get to be moody. We don't get to have people afraid of us. When I was in a law firm in the late '90s, there were partners who had reputations for throwing things. And somehow, culturally, not only was that okay, it seemed to be kind of encouraged. I don't think that's how it is anymore. Um, I think that your personal brand is that you are responsive and kind and thoughtful and the person that people can go to for help, and that, that's, that's what you want to enhance. This is a law school preparedness survey where attorneys responded to this, talking about what, uh, characteristics they'd like to see in new attorneys. They said that the, the associates who are coming into their practices were good at email and critical thinking, but as you start moving down, um, they start lagging in time management and judgment and decision-making. And some of that is learned behavior, but that's where they felt like the soft skills were weaker in the crop of new associates that they had coming into the law firms. And so if those are things that you can start thinking about how can I be a better manager of my time and making better decisions and interacting with clients. These are things to start stepping up to now and developing them early and then continuing them as you go through your career. We've heard so much about how artificial intelligence is going to take over lawyers' jobs. Artificial intelligence is never going to substitute for human skills or soft skills. So Jordan Furlong, if you don't follow him, he has amazing content. He has a Substack you can subscribe to, but he breaks down what he's talking about in the human lawyer skills versus the technical lawyer skills. A lot of the technical lawyer skills may be something that AI can do. But relationships and leadership and persuasion and reading the room and conflict management and collaboration, those are things that technology is never going to replace. So just think about where do you find yourself on that, you know, the side of the, uh, the blue skill set, and try to enhance those as much as possible. The other thing is you're making assumptions about what someone needs, who they are, what their background is. All of those things are never going to be friends of yours. Um, I— if you've ever worked retail, it's, it's a, it's a humbling and very good experience. Um, Because what you find is that you can seriously underestimate or overestimate someone based on their physical appearance. And so we have to park that at the door. We really have to work at treating everybody, um, as equals until they prove us wrong and not make assumptions about them that will come off to anybody, um, that you're working with in life. The other thing is it's okay not to know. Um, and so do not fear looking foolish. You will look smarter for asking for clarification than moving forward on assumption and not asking for clarification. So, you know, whether you're working with a client, with another attorney, If you need better explanations, um, ask for it. Uh, and then one of the things that will go far with other attorneys especially, and your paralegals and anybody you work with, is respect for each other's time. You want to show up on time and have a good attitude and be authentic. If somebody gives you an assignment, ask for a deadline. Tell them if you're not going to meet it. Admit your mistakes, um, and be respectful and recognize that everybody's got things going on and we don't know what they are. So respect each other's time, respect each other Um, show up, do good, be ethical, and focus on what your strengths are. Be aware of your weaknesses and work towards them and start building that brand that no matter where you are, what firm you are in now, what firm you may be in, whether you're in law school, that people, when they think about you,— they go, right, this person is honest, hardworking, shows up, a great communicator, and we enjoy working with them. And that's, you know, that's the end goal. That's, that's what we want. And that will in turn raise the entire profession, the persona of the profession. I think that The days of being— having the reputation as the bulldog or difficult, I hope, are gone. We're probably still seeing some of that, but I think, um, the more you work at being the kind of person you'd want to work with, uh, the better off we are. So I've got some other slides about client perception. I'm not going to go through them. I just want to mention that if you've never done a client persona, this is an exercise that can help you understand where clients are coming from, what their problems are, what they're bringing to the room when they work with you in order to be a better lawyer to meet their needs. So you really think about your, your client, what they read, where they're coming from, um, and, and what they may think about lawyers. Uh, and so as you develop that, that helps you kind of figure out the right way to work with them. So with that, um, I am going to give you my contact information. If you want to do a LinkedIn profile review, if you want to talk about, um, how to build a persona, how to get published, any of this, feel free to reach out to me. Um,, we can schedule some time to talk. And with that, I appreciate your time and attention. I'm gonna stop the recording, but if anybody has any questions, um, I will stay here, uh, with you for a minute.