Quicklegal, Inc. provides attorneys on demand via Facetime, video chat, voice call, and instant messaging.1
For Consumer-Clients
For the consumer-client, Quicklegal eliminates the wait. Using a smartphone, iPad, or computer, the consumer-client visits Quicklegal and gets instant access to a wide variety of lawyers. The consumer-client avoids the hassle of setting an appointment and waiting for the appointment date and time. Questions that can be answered in under 15 minutes are answered free. When fees are required, the consumer-client pays an affordable rate.
For Attorneys
For the attorney, Quicklegal is a law firm in a box. In addition to ready-made clients, Quicklegal provides case management, document management, calendar, and task management, legal research, malpractice insurance, and continuing legal education. For the new lawyer or the established lawyer looking to hang a shingle, Quicklegal makes the transition as easy as a fixed monthly payment.
Quicklegal Founder
Derek Bluford has a history of entrepreneurial success in the legal service markets and has won business awards such as California TechWeek, Entrepreneur Magazine Growth Conference, Legal Innovator, and more. Mr. Bluford has a degree in legal studies and graduated Cum Laude. Mr.Bluford’s companies have been seen in publications such as Business Journal, California Lawyer, Landlord, Daily Journal, and Porsche’s “The Drifter”.
Shifting Legal Services Industry
In its first year of operation, Quicklegal annual run rate grew to $780,000. At the time of this writing, Quicklegal was entertaining a letter of intent for $14 million.2 For the attorneys that bemoan a shrinking legal services industry, Derek Bluford has created a platform that introduces them to a steady stream of clients. For the consumer-client, Derek Bluford has created a platform that has eliminated the awkwardness of meeting in a law office and waiting for the privilege to do so.
The legal services industry is not shrinking, it is shifting.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
The temptation is to conclude that, “I could never be an embezzlement victim.” Join the club. That is what most (if not all) embezzlement victims thought. It is worth re-considering though – the stakes are just too high not to. The embezzler has too many tools in his or her bag-of-tricks to think you are safe: cyber fraud, internal fraud, forged checks, misapplied payments, old-fashioned checks, bookkeeper fraud, fake vendors. A one-time bank wire can put an entire firm out of business.1
Embezzlers Only Steal When Trusted
When someone takes possession of something because they are supposed to and then they do something with it they are not supposed to – and benefit personally – that is embezzlement. Yes, I could fill up a page or two with a legal definition and subtleties of the many shades of embezzlement, but it all boils down to something really simple. I trusted you with my stuff and you took it. If you never trust anyone with your stuff, you will never be a victim of embezzlement. Even so, 85 percent of all fraud activity involves a trusted employee.2
Is Earned Trust Enough?
Many people will respond, “people have to earn my trust” or something similar. Embezzlers know this. They work hard to be trusted. They are diligent in small things that they know will be noticed. Drop a quarter, they will most certainly pick it up and return it to you. Embezzlers rely on the old maxim, “He who is faithful with little can be trusted with much.”
Also, embezzlers may be faithful in every area of their life except when it comes to handling the property of others.
Why Trust At All?
The quick cure, of course, is to stop trusting everyone. The problem with this defense is the stifling impact it has on the organization. Paranoid organizations ultimately implode.
The encouraging thing is that three simple practices reduce embezzlement by close to 100 percent.
Cross Train and Rotate
For each person of trust in your firm, train someone else to do their job as a backup. At least once a year, have the person of trust rotate with their backup for a minimum of a week. If your person of trust takes a vacation or is out on sick leave, have the backup employee rotate into the job. Resist the temptation to leave the position vacant simply because the vacancy is short. A potential embezzler will encourage the position to remain vacant rather than be filled by a backup employee. Fill it anyway.
Have the backup employee write a report detailing what the did during the rotation and specifically have them answer these questions:
-Describe what you did while you were working as a backup employee?
-How could the job you were filling in for be improved?
-Describe in detail anything that you encountered that you had not been trained for?
Random Review
Appoint someone in your firm as an internal auditor. Have that person conduct random reviews at least once a month. A random review could be as simple as requesting from the person of trust a copy of a random bank transaction and the documentation supporting the transaction.
Create a Compliance Culture
What is better than trying to police everyone is a culture of people who police each other, a culture where compliance is a part of the day-to-day conversation. This is accomplished by involving everyone, regardless of their role in the firm. Invite cross-trained employees to share their experience during a department or division lunch. Invite Internal Auditors to share what they discovered. It isn’t necessary to identify a specific transaction or name the specific people involved. Have them generalize their experience and tell how what they learned might improve the firm.
Another technique is to create a way for people to anonymously report suspicious activity. This can be a contact form on your website or an anonymous email. Employees often see things that don’t make sense. They may be hesitant to report because of personal friendships or office politics. Be sure to keep the focus on any potential wrongdoing rather than who made the report.
Change Your Point of View
The best possible source of information is a client after their representation has ended. Send each client a letter after every other transaction has been completed and ask them for advice on how to improve the client experience. Make one of the questions, “How could we improve anything that made you feel uncomfortable during your representation?” You may be surprised to learn that a client has been asked to participate in borderline conduct or something that is just wrong.
These three techniques could save you from big dollar liability. They could save you hundreds of hours of forensic accounting, interviewing witnesses and litigation. It might be uncomfortable to implement some of these techniques. Do it anyway.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
If you join a couple of attorney friends for lunch (a table for three), one of the three of you will suffer symptoms of attorney depression at some time during their legal career. Identifying which attorney at your table may be suffering from depression is challenging. Symptoms of depression are often the character traits of good attorneys. Good attorneys, for example, are often introspective and pessimistic (always anticipating what might go wrong).1
The legal services industry itself is often structured to manifest depression where attorneys are expected to fix problems, battle for clients, and deal with client emotions but have no control of the results. It is hard to work in the legal services industry and not experience stress and anxiety.
Identifying Depression
Probably the easiest indicator of depression is the loss of interest in something someone used to enjoy. This is distinguished from a season of life where someone has a hectic schedule and can’t do something they enjoy. Rather, a symptom of depression is someone losing the joy of something they used to enjoy. Given the opportunity, they refuse because they “just aren’t interested anymore.”
Otherwise, symptoms vary person to person. That is, depression in some people may look like sadness and weeping. In others, it may look like anger and irritability. Consider some of these varied symptoms:
Even with close friends, the prevailing response to depression is to not get involved. Just let things run their course and see what happens. Why meddle and risk a negative impact on our relationship?
The costs of not getting involved are simply too high. At a minimum, unchecked depression results in lost productivity, ethics complaints or malpractice claims for failure to act resulting from fatigue or forgetfulness. The severity worsens to substance abuse issues, divorce, wealth depletion, and suicide. Why bother? The stakes are simply too high not to.
The Best Help
Often someone suffering from depression does not know it. They may know that they are so fatigued that they cannot complete the same level of work. They may complain of waking at 2 a.m. without the ability to go back to sleep. But they may not know they are suffering from some level of depression. Simply suggesting that someone consider that they may be suffering from depression may be the best help.
How you approach someone will vary from person to person. Approaching a person you have an established friendship with is different than approaching someone you only know casually. Often, pointing out changes in behavior that you have personally noticed is impactful, especially when coupled with an offer of help. Consider questions like these:
→ This is the first year you haven’t played softball with us, is there anything I can do to get you back?
→ Several times I’ve heard you say that you are not sleeping well. My brother-in-law found a great doctor to help him with a similar problem, could I introduce you to my brother-in-law?
→ You know, for as long as I’ve known you I remember that you take your wife out on a date every Friday. I’ve noticed that you haven’t mentioned that in over a month. Is there anything I can help you with so you can get some free time?
Simply having an open conversation can be immensely helpful. Many attorneys know they are suffering from a symptom (like fatigue) but it never occurs to them that they may be suffering from depression. Once the discussion starts, you may find many opportunities to steer your friend toward objective help.
Objective Help for Attorney Depression
A friend may be more willing to receive help from a helper outside of a friendship and you should encourage them to do so.
The ability to objectively evaluate depression in our friends is often clouded by all that we know about them. If you personally know someone to have a keen memory, it is sometimes difficult to admit that their memory is failing. If you personally know someone to have a strong work ethic, it is difficult to admit that their work is slipping due to fatigue. A third-party helper can analyze symptoms more objectively and provide valuable advice and resources.
Also, someone who has studied depression or had experience with depression is better equipped to identify red flags of increasing severity (like substance abuse or suicide) and they are better equipped with resources to help.
More and more resources are available for attorneys suffering from depression. Consider these three:
A Depression Coach
Dan Lukasik is an attorney who suffers from depression. He has created a national coaching practice to help other attorneys. Dan is a great first step for attorneys struggling with depression symptoms who want to talk with someone that has both legal experience and experience with attorney depression.
Medical Help
Beyond coaching, attorneys seeking medical advice often confer with G. Andrew H. Benjamin, J.D., Ph.D., ABPP for evaluation and treatment. Dr. Benjamin has a unique insight into attorney depression as he is credentialed both as an attorney and health services professional.
A Local Attorney Depression Group
Unlike group therapy, a local attorney depression group is a meeting of attorneys who have identified that they struggle with depression. Many have developed coping skills and identified local resources that they are willing to share. If you don’t have a local attorney group close to you, consider starting one.
Joy On The Other Side of Depression
Of course, in more acute situations, you may need to involve your Lawyers Assistance Program. Even then, however, the goal is not just to navigate through an acute depressive episode. The goal is to establish a lifestyle that balances joy in the practice of law and in life beyond the law.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
Whether your practice is solo, small, medium, or whether you are an associate or partner in a firm, all attorneys manage their own personal law practice. The organization you work for, or with, is not responsible for your personal law practice – you are. If your personal law practice does not grow into what you want it to be, the grief is personal. If you are practicing law, the following attorney financial reports can help you meet your personal practice goals and avoid hidden enemies that could cost you everything.
When I am traveling in the U.S., in a car, I don’t bother much with drawing out a course out on a map anymore. I make sure to have a good address and a phone number of the place I am going. I have Siri or some kind of GPS. I’ve been driving long enough to know that from where I live, I head east for Atlanta and west for Dallas … you get the picture. For me, some travel is just intuitive.
My daughter and I starting a quest.
But when I am hiking, I have a completely different philosophy. I might have newfangled technology that tells me which way to go and how many steps I took to get there. Even so, I want a map and a compass. If I can get it, I want a topographical map. This compulsion might be a holdover from my Boy Scout orienteering merit badge. More likely, it is motivated by the feeling of being lost. If you have ever been lost in the wilderness, really lost, with limited food or water, you never want to be lost again.
Financial reports are the map and compass of a law practice. And by the way, if you are not looking at where you are in your law practice financially, if you don’t know where you are, you are lost.
Newfangled Technology Makes It Easier
The good news is, you do not have to spend hour upon hour pouring over financial reports. There are many tools available that work all of the following financial information into a dashboard. Many dashboards can be configured so that good things are green, cautioned things are yellow and areas of concern are red. You can configure the dashboard to reflect your own personal priorities.
The essential financial reports that are measured by your dashboard are summarized below.
Annual and Monthly Budget
This report is a plan: where am I going over the next month or the next year? It does not have to be drilled down into how many paper clips you might use. On the other hand, a budget helps you structure your practice into what you want, rather than what everyone else wants. If for example, you are on track with your budget to meet your revenue goals, you may be more comfortable turning down business that is outside the focus of your practice. A year of pruning your practice in this way may establish you as an authority in the practice area you want rather than a jack-of-all-trades.
Monthly Profit and Loss Statement
Where a budget is what you intend to do, a monthly profit and loss (P&L) statement is what you actually do. This is the report that you compare to your monthly budget to determine if you are on track or not. So that this data does not get too stale before the reports are available, establish a date early in the month where all the information for the prior month must be entered. For example, by the 6th of this month, all invoices should be sent, all expenses entered and actual transactions should be entered for the prior month. With this practice, your monthly profit and loss statement is available – and accurate – on the 7th day of the month.
Weekly Cash Flow Projection
Of course, the data reflected in a monthly P&L has already happened. It is like driving a vehicle while looking in the rearview mirror and only the rear view mirror. A cash flow projection is looking forward using the whole front windshield. A cash flow projection is calculated like this:
If you are watching your 90-day cash flow projections, you will have plenty of time to work out cash flow problems before you are suffering the consequences of them.
Balance Sheet
A balance sheet tells you what your practice is worth: Assets minus liabilities. It is a good tool to inform you if, over time, you are creating value in your practice or not.
A Broken Compass Is Dangerous
Financial reports are the map and compass of a law practice. The map informs you about where you are and where you want to go. A compass informs you which way to go. Sometimes, however, a map can be wrong or a compass can be damaged. A dashboard with red and green showing your condition is only as good as the data that goes into it. Financial reports are only as good as the data that goes into them. There is nothing more dangerous that a compass that reads wrong.
For me in my practice, and for many others, financial reports were purposefully altered to hide thefts or unauthorized activities. To guard against this happening to you, establish a way to insure that your bank statements are reconciled against your financial reports by someone other than the person that enters your financial data, or prepares your financial reports. Broken financial reporting is dangerous but easy to fix.
Reaching The Summit With Attorney Financial Reports
Isn’t the summit for a law practice strategically developing a fulfilling practice that meets your financial goals? Strategic decision making always has a financial component. Cash flow projections have always helped me make short term decisions strategically. Decisions with a longer impact may require looking to other financial reports – like your balance sheet.
Law practices are more like wilderness trekking than interstate driving. These few financial reports are tools for strategic practice growth. If you wouldn’t trek out in the wilderness without some way of knowing how to get back, don’t trek out into the future of your law practice without financial reporting.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
When I hear people arguing about how secure cloud computing is, or isn’t, I chuckle a little (to myself). I never lost sleep worrying about how secure our computer server was. As a former Information Technology (IT) director, I made sure our systems were password protected and secure behind a firewall.1
I’d Been Locked Out Myself
Further, our computer server was in a locked cabinet. The locked cabinet was in a locked equipment room. In order to get to the locked equipment room, you had to somehow gain access to the locked office. To gain access to the office, you had to get into the building somehow. All the doors stayed locked except the building doors. At six o’clock in the evening, the building doors locked automatically. I’d been locked out myself a couple of times.
In addition to the security system our building had, my office was designed with an independent security system that only allowed access to people with the code – which we changed often. It seemed like I was always having to memorize a new passcode. One long weekend, the office building was burglarized (all 15 floors). The burglars left our office alone, I figure our independent security system spooked them. All in all, I felt pretty secure. I shouldn’t have.
He Carried My Computer Server Out Under His Arm
In December of 2012, an attorney in the firm walked out the front door with the computer server under his arm. Of all the high-tech cyber-crime scenarios we had guarded against, our computer server just walked out the front door!
Fortunately, he was an attorney and former member of the firm so the data was not at risk like it might have been if the computer server had been carried off by a masked burglar. Unfortunately, as a former member of the firm, he claimed an interest in the computer server so there was no quick ownership resolution. The true cost was in organizational disruption and the time that had to be put into recovering data.
A Sad Backup is Better Than None
At least, we had a backup. It was an old tape cartridge system and as soon as we started extracting large segments of data from it, the power supply died. Since the system was so old, there was apparently not a replacement unit -or replacement parts – on the planet. Our computer tech guy was able to rig a replacement power supply. This image is a sad – but working – backup system. A sad backup system is better than no backup system.
Cloud Computing is Cheaper
Other members of the firm and I had considered several proposals for off-site computing. They seemed expensive compared to our relatively low technology budget. In retrospect, our budget was understated. It did not consider the cost of catastrophic failure (like a hurricane or someone carrying the computer server away under their arm). Also, our budget did not consider the cost of inefficiency due to operating with technology that was two or three generations behind.
In cloud computing, all IT resources and applications are maintained and managed offsite, so your firm pays only for the services it needs and uses. All of the critical hardware, software, maintenance, and management is provided, so businesses have minimal start-up costs and predictable ongoing operating expenses.
There is also the consideration of disruption when the computer server is down or (in our case) missing. Over an average year, our computer server might have been down one full day. We were so dependent on IT, most attorneys and staff were so unproductive during that day, there was little work that could be completed. In the case of a catastrophic event, this unproductive period might last days or weeks. The cost of disruption is simply too high to pay.
Cloud computing offers disaster recovery and business continuity solutions, so you are immediately back up and running in the event of a catastrophic event.
I Have Flip-Flopped on Cloud Technology
Certainly, I was convinced that our computer server was secure. I also had an uneasy feeling about cloud computing. I believed that I could maintain a higher level of security with a legacy system than a private vendor could with state-of-the-art technology.
Today, I have flip-flopped. I’m writing this post on a cloud platform. Cloud computing protects data with state-of-the-art, highly secure US-based facilities that feature 99.99% uptime and up to moment-by-moment backups. It is important that you select a cloud computing vendor that can serve the higher standards placed on law firms. The lawyer must maintain ownership of the data, the data must be kept separate and never shared.
Pay for What You Use – Not What You Might Use
The power of the cloud is that it grows with you – your law firm can scale IT infrastructure up as needed. Your law firm does not need to make a capital call, save or borrow for future requirements. You never have to have another discussion with a technology vendor about more hard drive space, RAM, CPUs, or additional software user license subscriptions. These are simply scaled up on the cloud as you need them.
When there is a large swing in client demand, a law firm conducts a return on investment analysis on some level. Is it worth investing in the technology to meet the client demand? If the client demand normalizes or goes away all together, the investment no longer makes a return. This return on investment roller coaster is avoided with cloud computing.
When client demand increases, cloud computing resources are scaled up to meet the demand. When client demand decreases, cloud computing is flexible enough to seamlessly scale down. In both instances, the law firm only pays for what it uses – not what it might use. Cloud computing serves both the client and the law firm budget best.
Empowering People to Work
Offsite accessibility was an ongoing concern for our firm. On the one hand, attorneys and staff wanted the ability to work from home and we wanted to accommodate them. Empowering people to work when they want to work improves productivity. On the other hand, every time someone connects to the computer from outside the office, it is a security risk.
On a cloud platform, authorized users can easily connect to their virtual office from any location and any device with an Internet connection – allowing 24/7 access to your private cloud environment. There are some internal security policies that have to be followed (like not connecting over public WIFI). But with those considerations, remote connections are secure.
Is Cloud Computing For You?
It’s cheaper, more flexible, scalable, and more accessible. Even so, you have to decide if it is right for your law practice. The only real advice I can give you is this, “no matter how many locks you have, somebody can still walk out the front door with your computer server under their arm.”
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
The nagging question for me is the same as it was four years ago, “how could all of that happen and I didn’t see it?” If there was an invisible gorilla, how did I not see it? The complete answer is a moderately sized book. Here, however, is one method you can use to avoid ever having to ask yourself this question. Further, although these facts are concentrated in a law firm, the principle works in most every area of life – business, dating, anywhere an invisible gorilla might sneak into your life.
The question could arise when, like me, a grievance or complaint is filed against your law firm. It was filed shotgun-style against every member of the firm. After meeting to share what facts we knew, we appointed one of our attorneys to conduct an internal investigation and draft a response.
What Is An Invisible Gorilla?
An invisible gorilla is a popularized way of saying a condition known as inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice a fully-visible, but unexpected object because attention was engaged on another task, event, or object.1 Several tests have been done to study this phenomenon with the most popular being the invisible gorilla test.
In the “… Invisible Gorilla Test,2 [a group of subjects were asked] to watch a short video of two groups of people (wearing black and white t-shirts) pass a basketball around. The subjects are told to either count the number of passes made by one of the teams or to keep count of bounce passes vs. aerial passes. In different versions of the video a woman walks through the scene … wearing a full gorilla suit. After watching the video the subjects are asked if they noticed anything out of the ordinary take place. In most groups, 50% of the subjects did not report seeing the gorilla…. The failure to perceive the [gorilla] is attributed to the failure to attend to it while engaged in the difficult task of counting the number of passes of the ball. These results indicate that the relationship between what is in one’s visual field and perception is based much more on attention than was previously thought.”3
Notice that the test subjects’ failure to see a gorilla walk through the scene was not related to how obvious or outlandish the gorilla was. A bunch of people were passing basketballs and a gorilla walked through the scene, everybody saw that, right? Wrong! What was relevant was the level of attentiveness the subjects were giving to their assigned task – to count the number of passes. The more the subjects concentrated on their assigned task, the less they saw the gorilla in the scene.
A Particular Threat to Law Firms
Maybe not at first glance, but law firms may be particularly susceptible to invisible gorillas. My first mentor encouraged me to start my day as a lawyer as early as possible. His practice was to start the day sometime between 4:00 and 4:30 in the morning. He was convinced that the early morning hours were more productive and that he could give his full attention without distraction. I learned from him that the more undistracted attention I gave to a matter, the better service I provided for my client.
So, if you have several matters that you are responsible for and you are giving each one of them as much attention as they deserve, how many invisible gorillas might be lurking in your law practice? Doesn’t this research seem to indicate that the better service you provide your clients the more susceptible you are to invisible gorillas?
A Certain Method
Turns out that the attorney that we assigned to investigate was the invisible gorilla. The culpable party was assigned to investigate himself. And, it would be easy to say that is the method: Don’t appoint the culpable to investigate themselves. That may be a method, but it isn’t a certain one. After all, if you knew who the culprit was you probably wouldn’t need an investigation.
The certain method is to hire someone outside of the situation to conduct the investigation. Hire someone outside the firm to give their full attention to the investigation. At least two things are accomplished by hiring someone outside the firm. First, their opinions are not colored by the people involved. Second, since they are being compensated for paying attention, they are certain to see the gorillas.
Broader Use
Consider using the method in other areas of your life. Where you may have thought that it was easy to split your attention across several things, reconsider. For example, if you read something that consumes your attention while you child is playing at the park, takes someone with you to help watch your child (or make your child the focus of your attention).
The examples are endless and one thing is clear. Attention is a limited resource. When you give it to one thing, you take it away from another. Make sure that what you take it away from doesn’t put you at risk of an invisible gorilla.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
See Mack, A., & Rock, I. (1998), Inattentional Blindness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ↩
Conducted by Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University. This study, a revised version of earlier studies conducted by Ulric Neisser, Neisser and Becklen in 1975. ↩
Most, SB; Simons, DJ; Scholl, BJ; Jimenez, R; Clifford, E; Chabris, CF (January 2001). “How not to be seen: the contribution of similarity and selective ignoring to sustained inattentional blindness”. Psychol Sci 12 (1): 9–17. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00303. PMID 11294235. ↩
