Chances are you “specialize” in a particular area of law. But unless you’re board certified, your state’s rules of ethics likely don’t allow you to call yourself a specialist.

Many lawyers focus on an area of practice where they can develop a certain level of expertise. It’s natural to gravitate toward a practice area that holds a special interest for you or that allows you to use your innate talents and abilities – or for which there’s a particularly high level of client demand.

Plus, focusing on a particular practice area makes it easier to develop the level of knowledge and experience you need to serve your clients with confidence and authority.

But here’s an interesting statistic: nationwide, fewer than 4% of attorneys are board certified.

If so many attorneys choose a specific practice area to focus on, why do so few take the next step and become board certified?

There are a couple of reasons.

First, board certification for attorneys is a relatively new concept.  Until fairly recently, the legal profession was a profession of generalists. Specialty certification of attorneys did not start until the 1970’s, and the ABA did not accredit the first attorney certification board – the National Board of Trial Advocacy – until 1993.

Second, and probably more significant, becoming board certified is difficult. It takes time and effort, and it can be expensive. To become board certified, an attorney must:

• Devote a large percentage of his or her legal practice to the area of law in question

• Have a substantial amount of experience in that area

• Maintain a substantial amount of continuing legal education credits in that area

• Submit to a peer review and recommendation process

• Pass a written examination

• Maintain a high degree of professionalism

• Meet additional requirements as determined by individual certification boards

Becoming board certified is not an easy process. But think about what it says to your clients when they see that designation after your name. It lets them know that you’re dedicated to your practice. You’re an expert in your field. You’re serious about taking care of your clients. You’re well-regarded by other lawyers. In short, it gives clients that added boost of confidence that they’re in good hands.

What do you think about board certification? Are you board certified? Has it made a difference in your practice?

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services, Marketing & Recruiting
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com

I’m looking at how the event is run, how the company staff is organized, what they’re wearing, how they’re handling 1500 participants, including filming, recording, and processing guests through a testimonial booth and 75 vendor booths, what they’re feeding us, how the agenda is organized… It’s poetry in motion!!

Then, when I leave the conference, I walk back through this huge monster of a hotel, one I was really excited about staying at. The wait staff and other hotel personnel generally give guests the cold shoulder and seem to all share a snooty attitude, like they’re doing people a favor when they answer a question. The cleaning staff leaves the dirty glasses in the room and barely runs a vacuum at 5:00 pm. This is a completely different WOW experience!

The contrast is so stark! A privately held, successful business holding a conference versus the corporate giant. A speed boat as opposed to an aircraft carrier. Small business wins.

The president of the company holding the conference started the meeting out by saying, “We are a values based business. We surround ourselves with 225 staff people in our company who share the same values. Those who don’t share them — are asked to leave.”

Guess that’s the secret. Whether there are 700 or 225 employees, or 50 or 5, everyone needs to be singing the same song or your music just won’t work!

How’s your sheet music serving your firm? How do YOU wow? It’s fun to actually itemize the things you do that make your clients think they are your favorite!

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services, Marketing & Recruiting
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com

The Academy has partnered with LawInfo.com, a website dedicated to providing the public with access to quality free legal information and if necessary, qualified representation. LawInfo’s compliment of legal websites receive over one million page views per month.

Even more significantly, LawInfo maintains a directory of pre-qualified, Lead Counsel Rated attorneys practicing in a variety of areas of the law. As of March 21, Academy attorneys are included in this directory, making it even easier for prospective clients to find you.

Visitors who come to LawInfo.com and perform an estate planning attorney search in your area will find your listing prominently displayed in LawInfo’s “Featured Listings.” Your listing includes your name as well as your firm’s profile and contact information – including a link to your website.

In addition, because of the Academy’s background check and your 36-hour CLE requirement, you’ll be listed as a “Lead Counsel Rated” attorney, which means prospective clients will be assured of your:

• Experience and practice area qualifications
• Good standing and spotless record
• Position of respect among your peers
• Continuing adherence to LawInfo’s – and the Academy’s – rigorous standards

If you’re not familiar with LawInfo, head over and check out their website.

And let us know if you start to see an influx of calls from LawInfo.com users. We hope this strategic partnership will prove to be a valuable marketing asset for you!

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services, Marketing & Recruiting
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com

“I lost your pen Sunday. It was horrible. I have carried it with me every day since they handed it to me at the police station. I looked and looked. It was like losing a bit of you all over again. The next day, between the washer and the dryer, I found it. It just never ends. I miss you all the time. Mom”

I am not an estate planning attorney like most of our subscribers, I have consulted with hundreds of you over the past 20 years or so, and one thing that I have just never quite gained a clear understanding on is this: I have no idea how you master the art of sitting across the table from a grieving client and doing all the things they need for you to do as a professional without losing your empathy.

Looking at the huge number of responsibilities that estate planning attorneys running a law practice have to be an expert on—this seems to me like one of the most difficult parts. Is that true? Do you have words of wisdom you could share with others on the subject of being comforting, listening fully, having professional “distance” enough to get the job done without getting lost in the process?

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com

I’m just beginning the annual review of Academy financials in preparation for our big Spring Summit closed-door meeting. All Members who submit their financials have a closed door meeting and look at all the other estate planning law firm financials and have a valuable discussion. About 5 law firm owners are on a panel and specifically discuss their numbers from last year.

One easy benchmark to look at on your own financials is the Revenue per Attorney number. You need to total your number of attorneys in the law firm. If you have 3, plus a 20 hour / week attorney, plus 1 owner – your total is 4.5 attorneys. If that is the case, you have enough attorneys in your firm to expect to be able to handle around $2,250,000 to $3,750,000 in gross revenue.

That doesn’t mean that each attorney must go generate $500,000-$750,000 in revenue. Some attorneys are rain makers, some are more drafters of documents and behind the scenes talent. We’re just addressing the average revenue per attorney that seems to make the most sense.

If the number is LOWER than $500,000 per attorney, the factors to look at usually center around:

1. Are the attorneys actually busy?
2. If they are, how much of their work or time spent is non-attorney work?
3. Are there enough staff people on the payroll to pick up all the non-attorney work the attorneys are doing?
4. Is the revenue too low to really generate $500K per attorney?
5. Is the marketing off? Or is the attorney effectiveness in consultations off?

Are you able to quickly come to some conclusions about how healthy this benchmark is in your firm?

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com

One of the foundations of working on your business rather than in it is your ability to use your firm’s financial and human resources effectively, efficiently, and fairly. Any entrepreneur, in any field, would jump at the chance to discover industry-specific financial benchmarks for the optimal relationship between overhead and revenue, or revenue and number of employees, or gross revenue and owner’s comp. Consultants may be available to run these numbers for you, for a nice fee, and they may or may not be able to give you current information about how your allocation of resources stacks up against that of other, thriving legal practices.

Members of the Academy submit these financials annually and at a close-door session at every Spring Summit, these same Members share information able their financials with each other. If you’re not a Member, you still have the opportunity to have us review your financial statistics against our benchmarks for owner’s compensation, revenue per person on the payroll, revenue per attorney in the firm, and cases per employee, among other valuable ratios. To find out how you too can adjust one or more of your financial numbers and get out of the office and onto the golf course while your revenue skyrockets, contact us about Membership today via email at info@aaepa.com or by phone at 1-800-846-1555.

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com

Why? Because it helps you develop better email programs, although you have to know what to look for and how to act on the data you receive. Email marketing analytics focus mainly on things such as open rates, click-throughs, bounces, and spam reports.

For example, the average open rate, or percentage of people who actually open your email, is 19.8% for emails delivered through professional services. If your e-news has less than a 20% open rate, you need to make some changes. One thing to review is your subject line. Many times, a general subject line works better than a specific one. It could be that “January Estate Planning News” works better than “401(k) Accounts and Estate Planning.”

Regular personal contact can also enhance open rates, especially if your rates are low because your audience hasn’t added your address to their address book. Ask all of your associates who have personal client contact to promote the benefits of your e-news and to encourage clients to add your email address to their address book.

Click rates are another indicator of how well your e-news is engaging your audience, showing you how many people click through to your website. Pay attention to these click rates and how they vary from one e-news to the next and from article to article. The average click rate for emails delivered through professional services is 3.7%. Your e-news template will have an area for your website link. You can encourage people to click on it by including a phrase such as “To learn more about us click here,” but a better tactic is to create links within each article that land people on a specific page relevant to the article.

Watch your bounce rates and spam reports. A “soft bounce” indicates that a person is away or their mailbox is full, but a “hard bounce” usually means that the address no longer exists. If a recipient has not opted in to your emails, or has forgotten that they have, they may report the mail as spam. ESPs will scold or cancel you if you have high bounce or spam rates.

So, keep your list clean. Study your subject lines, open rates, click rates, bounces and spam data. Successful email marketing is all about continuous improvement.

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com

1. Send a Card or a Care Package to a Deployed Service Member.It used to be that civilians could send care packages addressed to “any soldier;” however, security concerns now prevent this. The Department of Defense requires that all letters, cards, and care packages be addressed to a specific service member. If you don’t personally know a deployed service member, you can go to ourmilitary.mil/care-packages/ to find a list of organizations that will help you connect with a soldier overseas. Not sure what to include in a care package? AdoptaPlatoon has compiled an excellent list of tips, ideas, and reminders to get you started.
2. Write an Online Thank You Note. The USO’s Thanks From Everywhere page lets you post an online message to deployed service members, their families, and to wounded soldiers and veterans. You can also read messages from people in your area and around the country. 
3. Help Out a Military Family. Deployed soldiers aren’t the only ones who sacrifice to serve our country. The holidays are especially difficult for the wives, husbands, and children left at home during a service member’s absence. Here are some ways to help:

• If you already know a military family, bake a batch of holiday treats to share, or offer to babysit so that mom or dad can do some Christmas shopping without the kids in tow – the simplest gestures often mean the most. 
• Volunteer with the USO, give to Operation Homefront, or support another organization that helps military families. 
• Give or donate a Flat Daddy to the family of a deployed soldier. Flat Daddies are life-sized cardboard cutout photos of deployed service men and women. They’re designed to help children – especially young children – of deployed soldiers better cope with their parents’ long absences.

Whether or not you already have a connection with a service member, these are just a few of the countless ways you can show your appreciation and support this holiday season – and throughout the year.

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com

If you haven’t been keeping your list clean via monthly updates or if you have a list but you haven’t used it in, say, nine months or so, your emails could get labeled as spam. This can result in your ISP (internet service provider) blocking your emails from being delivered. This can also damage your “reputation” in the minds of the ISPs, since they assign a score to you which is akin to a consumer credit score.

Here are some tips to help you with building, then managing, your email list.

• If your email list is old, meaning you haven’t used it in the last nine months or so, it’s time to clean things up. Assuming that all of your email contacts have “opted in” (given permission for you to email them), consider using an email delivery service that boasts a high delivery percentage and reports on the open rates as well as bounced rate. Disable the email address in contact records that opt out or bounce back.
• If you’ve been sending emails regularly (every month or two) and you haven’t had any spam complaints, your list is probably OK. Presumably, these people have opted in to receive your emails, which of course is a best practice. Best rule of thumb is, as mentioned above, remove all the opt outs and bounce backs to keep your list as clean as possible.
• The old adage, “it’s better to ask forgiveness than it is permission” does NOT ring true with email! Get creative when it comes to getting permission to communicate with the email herd you build. Generally, getting permission from clients or prospective clients at speaking engagements (by offering a newsletter or the delivery of some other valuable information) or offering something of value on your website that requires permission in order to deliver what you offered—is the easiest way to obtain permission.

Remember, your list is a valuable asset. Manage it accordingly, keep it clean, set systems in place to add to the list whenever you can, and deliver your emails as promised in terms of frequency and value-added content.

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com

The checklist of things to make sure those appointments stick is short:

• The Right Team. Without the right staff and right attorney perspective – it doesn’t matter how many systems are in place or how much is read, studied, discussed, or debated… none of it will work in the end. But WITH the right law firm direction, team and regular meetings to ensure the flow of work and the analysis of results are functioning optimally, there is no limit.

• Build rapport, trust and respect by doing what you say you’ll do. Start by setting expectations, finish by delivering on them. Entirely too often in our lives we learn to wait for the disappointment. Having a doctor’s appointment at 11 and not being seen until 12:15. Getting a quote on a car repair that is half of what it will end up being. The countless other examples in our everyday life just go to show us that on the rare occasion that someone actually DOES what they said they’d do—it’s almost a memorable occasion! Opportunities to do what you say you’ll do abound. If you tell someone you’ll call them back tomorrow, do it. If you tell them you’re mailing a map to the office, do it. If you tell them that you’ll follow up with a reminder call the day before the appointment, do it. The person who handles these interactions with clients or prospective clients needs to be organized and on top of every detail.

• Passion and Compassion. The engine behind rapport building efforts must be passion for what you’re doing and compassion for those you’re doing it for. If you don’t care about these clients or this type of work, it will surely show up—there is no way for them to build the feeling of “obligation” it takes to fight off the desire to cancel an appointment. The people you and all the law firm staff work with need to feel special. They need to have the type of relationship that would cause them to not want to let you down. Develop relationships with the people you do business with.

• Follow Checklists. Of course without systems, checklists, schedules, or routines even the best personalities and highest skilled team members would flounder. Break EVERYTHING down into a process or system that can be documented and allow someone in the firm to own that responsibility.

When these important areas are covered and a prospective client or client experiences loving care from highly skilled professionals—the possibility of a cancellation is greatly reduced!

Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com