Archive for the ‘
’ Category
The Coming $1M Exemption
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
See our take on estate tax repeal at the Wachbrit Braverman PC Estate Planning & Asset Protection blog…
Create Your Law Firm Procedures Manual in One Week
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Procedures are the codification of best practices. By having written procedures in your office, you ensure that every single client will receive the very best treatment you and your team know can be provided.
You can even house them on an internal wiki (such as the inexpensive one provided as part of Google Apps at $50/year per user) where they can be constantly improved.
Procedures do not turn people into machines. On the contrary, by taking people's minds and memories off of the rote parts of their jobs, procedures free people up… Continue reading | 3 Comments Market and Sell Estate Planning Law TODAY
Monday, August 24th, 2009
Here are some tips for struggling professionals. They all require either time or money and since we're talking about people who are struggling, I'm going to assume they're using mostly time:
1. Solidify your referral relationships and ask directly for referrals. We're all in this together 
and if you tell your referral relationships that you are looking to them to provide you with a referral in the next week, you are more likely to get a referral in the next week. Of course, it's crucial that… Continue reading
and if you tell your referral relationships that you are looking to them to provide you with a referral in the next week, you are more likely to get a referral in the next week. Of course, it's crucial that… Continue reading Entrepreneur.Com: attorneys need to sell themselves
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
Entrepreneur.com quoted Diedre Wachbrit Braverman in its recently published article, Up Your Sales Technique: Now, more than ever, service professionals need to step it up and sell themselves. Diedre shared a technique she herself uses: warm-calling the collaborative partners she already has in her database.
"Fretzin's friendly selling techniques are similar to those that Diedre Wachbrit Braverman employs when she networks. The creator of Strategic Attorney Mentoring calls her approach 'warm-calling'.
"She says, 'I call on professional advisors with whom I have some relationship - no… Continue reading | 1 Comment 9 Decisions You Must Make Before Opening an Estate Planning Law Practice
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
Whether you are just starting out in law practice or are adding Estate Planning to an existing practice, there are 9 decisions you must make that will affect your practice for years to come:
1. How are you going to draft your documents? Almost all estate planning attorneys use document drafting systems to save time and avoid mistakes. You can pay between $700 and several thousand every year. In general, you get what you pay for but how much power you need depends upon your target market.
2. Who is your target market? If it is… Continue reading | 1 Comment
Review: Advologix PM with iPhone
Monday, August 10th, 2009
Our 6-person firm just implemented AdvologixPM.com, a SaAS practice management system, and we are very happy with it. It's built on the salesforce.com platform which gives me confidence in the company's stability. The technical support has been beyond superb. The company is still small enough that I can call or email Jonthathan Reed, the Advisory Board Chair, or Paul Duchenes, CEO and Tech Guru anytime and get a same-day or even same-hour response. The AdvologixPM folks even added functionality for JungleDisk when they learned we were using that to store our client files (we're moving everything to… Continue reading | 4 Comments
Why be a specialist inside of a specialty?
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
Today I'm (Diedre) speaking on a panel of practitioner's at the Wealth Counsel 2009 Annual Symposium in Chicago. Our topic is "Pitch Your Niche" so I thought it would be a good time to explain why it is so powerful to specialize within the specialty of estate planning.
You already specialize in estate planning so why specialize even more? Won't that scare some good potential clients outside the new specialty off?
Let me tell you my story of how my specialty has gotten me through this recession. I have always been a specialist of some sort. In my early days as an… Continue reading
Rain-Making: A Game You Can Win Your Way
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
All the rain-making in the world won't do you any good if you don't have sound controls on your firm's finances. However, without revenue, nothing moves in a firm. Nothing.
So what is rain-making according to Strategic Attorney Mentoring? At its most basic level, it's that set of attitudes and actions that leads from nothing to revenue. It encompasses sales and marketing, yes, but also client service and post-engagement contact. It includes your website but also your thank you cards. Rain-making is about attitudes toward other advisors and attitudes toward generating and following internal processes.
You could probably, if you tried hard… Continue reading
SA is on Twitter!
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Strategic Attorney is on www.Twitter.com as StrategicAtty. Continue reading
Welcome to Strategic Attorney Mentoring!
Monday, July 20th, 2009
Announcing a new program from Strategic Attorney LLC: Strategic Attorney Mentoring, which provides one-on-one mentoring to estate planning attorneys across the country in 3 key areas: professional development, rain-making and practice management. Continue reading | 3 Comments
