You Can’t Teach Hungry

it has been my experience that childhood and home life play a huge role in developing the trial lawyer’s personality.

For example, one of the things I wish I had done early in my career was to have branded my firm with a vanity phone number. I didn’t until about five years ago.

THE BEST DAY TO PLANT A TREE WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO, THE NEXT BEST DAY IS TODAY.

My business motto for life would be, and that is “Nothing is about today, everything is about tomorrow.” When I say, “Nothing is about today, everything is about tomorrow,” I am talking about my business philosophy as it relates to the practice of law. There are many short-term benefits that must be sacrificed for the long-term objective.

I have found most hares live for today, for the moment. I have found most tortoises think far into the future.

I would like to suggest to you to go out and buy the book, “The Tortoise and the Hare” and leave it somewhere in your office, where you will see it every single day. This childhood story, at the end of the day, is a key life lesson for businessmen in general, and trial lawyers in particular.

It is important to remember our careers last forty, fifty, sometimes sixty years. This race is a long one.

One of my favorite books, “The Millionaire Next Door”,

Good offense consists of developing business, trying cases with success, and building a good reputation within the trial community. Playing good defense means running the law firm like a business, being conservative in your spending, and worrying about tomorrow much more than about today.

Because as trial lawyers, we tend to be risk takers and gregarious by nature. Therefore, it is hard to take on the role of the tortoise. However, you will find as life goes on, planning, patience and purpose can yield spectacular results.

The most glaring weakness I find on a regular basis, is that most firms have no plan –not for the short term nor for the long term. Most firms I meet with just have a general hope that things will always work out. They have no reason as to why things will work out; they just hope like hell that they will.

More shocking, there often are no scheduled partner meetings, planning meetings, or budget meetings. For that matter, I have found most firms I come into contact with do not even have a budget, much less a budget meeting. How one can operate a business without setting a budget at the beginning of the year and making certain assumptions for fees collected is beyond me.

Andy Grove, the great CEO of Intel, once wrote a book titled, “Only the Paranoid Survive”. I had very little interest in the story of Intel, or Andy Grove for that matter. But when I was walking the aisles of that bookstore, and I came across that book and that title, I froze. It felt like that book was calling out for me to read it. I did read it and simply put, it is how I have governed my business for the past twenty-five years.

For many, the fear of failure is always with us. I have been amazed as I have read books and articles through the years of the great CEOs and entrepreneurs who confess, even during the height of their greatest success, to fearing failure and worrying about being exposed as a poser. That fear of failure is with me every single day. First, I want to tell you it is extremely healthy to have a fear of failure. When your mantra is, “only the paranoid survive,” you don’t need an alarm clock, you bring work home, and you work on Saturday.

Only the most paranoid lawyer truly survives.

The one thing I can say with certainty is, if you have bought this book and believe it may be a panacea for success but you have no work ethic, you can stop reading now.

Now some of us believe we are hard workers when in fact we aren’t. For those who believe it, but aren’t, you are in a very dangerous position and will ultimately fail.

You must have a strong work ethic.

I have found for example, almost everyone I know who ever worked a paper route, was later very successful in life.

The most tragic of all figures is the lawyer who works his or her ass off but goes nowhere fast. They often remind me of the hamster on the spinning wheel. That hamster gets up every day, eats, drinks and gets on the spin wheel. By the end of the day, he has run miles, burned hundreds of calories and is totally exhausted. The tragedy is he has done so in the confines of his cage and has gone nowhere. The reason for this is that there was no plan.

During my career, I have constantly read the books authored by CEO’s, founders of significant companies, and management professionals.

There is nothing more important in all organizations than the people who work there.

I can tell you , it has been my experience when I find a resume that shows a person hopping from job to job, if I were to hire him, he will be hopping soon from me.

INFORMATION IS POWER. Many people choose not to step on the scale every day. They do it for one reason. They don’t want to know the truth.

One thing I have always found helpful is to remember this: When a person resigns from your law firm, that person is firing you!

If you, or a family member or very close friend were injured in a serious accident or were the victims of medical malpractice and you could hire any firm in your area, including yourself, would you hire you or your law firm?

I knew that to develop the firm as I envisioned it, I would need to surround myself with warriors, also known as the “American Trial Lawyer”.

I will give you one test that will help you and it is not fool proof, but I have found it to be pretty darn close to fool proof. On a weekend or at night after nine o’clock, email a question to your lawyers. You will find that the killers, those with an insatiable appetite, will respond within the hour. You will find that in many cases a message sent out on Friday night may not be returned until Monday morning when the satiable slug returns from a weekend of leisure.

MONEY NEVER SLEEPS. And neither does the lawyer with the insatiable appetite.

One of the things we do as human beings is try to change peoples’ conduct or behavior. We try to make people something they have no chance of being at all. YOU CAN’T SEND A DUCK TO EAGLE SCHOOL.

It is my firm belief a capable person will never make more money, stock market included, than investing in himself.

Always remember that a business that is not run like a business is no business at all. At least one that I would never invest in, would you?

I would like for you to read the book, “Who Moved My Cheese”.

In study after study, it has been repeatedly proven that people who have goals do better than people who have no goals, and people who write their goals down do significantly better than those goal setters who keep track in their minds. During my business career, I have always written down my goals, not only for myself, but for my co-workers as well.

These goals are set and then published on a monthly basis to all of the attorneys inside our firm. Money is a wonderful motivator, but over the years, I have found competition and pride are sometimes as important as money itself. I can tell you first hand the lawyers whose name appears at the bottom of the monthly report are as bothered by this fact as the lack of bonuses they are receiving for their efforts.

Another detail that is overlooked by many of the firms with whom I have consulted is the emphasis on a strong and reliable receptionist. Carol Ann has been with me in my Orlando office since I first set up my own shop. Because she is smart, because she cares, and because we love each other, my business matters to her.

Throughout my organization, much attention is paid to the hiring of our receptionist.

First, let me say, as forcefully as I can, ADVERTISING WORKS!

The purple cow. I am constantly looking for advertising opportunities that allow me to be the one person in my group that stands out. I call it the purple cow. Purple cow advertising are such things as cab tops; five-and-ten second ads between songs on the radio; weather and traffic sponsorships on television and radio and even blimps. When I talk about purple-cow advertising, I am talking about advertising that is impossible or near impossible to miss.

I suggest you purchase the biography of Sam Walton and there you will find his ten rules. He tells us in this book that all of the rules are important, but one of the rules is greater than all of the other nine put together. SWIM UPSTREAM. In business and in law, everybody is in the same stream or river. For the most part, they are all traveling the same way. With the current!! They are perched on top of inner tubes coated in sunscreen, lip balm applied, and a frosty margarita affixed to their right hand with a big black cigar attached to their left. They are all moving at about the same speed because they are all riding the current.

You must live by the motto, “Nothing is about today, everything is about tomorrow”. You must believe in yourself and you must have a work ethic that equals none. You also must strip off your blinders of the past, and put on a pair of binoculars that allow you to see the future in a 360 degree way.