How to be a Better Law Firm Associate

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Legal Toolkit

How to be a Better Law Firm Associate

07/11/2018

[Music]

Intro: Welcome to Legal Toolkit, bringing you the latest legal trends and business initiatives to help you manage your law firm, with your host Jared Correia. You are listening to Legal Talk Network.

[Music]

Jared Correia: Hello and welcome to a new episode of The Legal Toolkit here on Legal Talk Network. If you are looking for the new season of ‘Westworld’ and if you can find it and explain it to me, that would be awesome. So is everyone a robot or what’s happening?

If you are a returning listener, welcome back. If you are a first time listener, hopefully you will become a longtime listener. And if you are Bryan Colangelo of the Philadelphia 76ers, at least as of this recording you should endeavor to familiarize yourself with HIPAA laws.

As always, I am your show host Jared Correia, and in addition to casting this pod, I am the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, which offers subscription-based law practice management consulting services for law firms and Bar Associations. Check us out at redcavelegal.com.

If you are starting a law firm, we are hosting exclusive workshops in Boston and New York this August and September. Find out more at buildyourownlawfirm.com and start your new law firm with confidence, especially if you happen to be an associate who wants to do your own thing instead.

Finally, you can listen to my other, other podcast, The Lobby List, a family travel show I host with my wife Jessica on iTunes. Rate us there and comment.

But here on The Legal Toolkit, we provide you each month with a new tool to add to your own legal toolkit so that your practices will become more and more like best practices.

In this episode, we are going to talk about how to be a better law firm associate. But before I introduce today’s guest, let’s take a moment to thank our sponsors.

Scorpion crushes the standard for law firm online marketing with proven campaign strategies to get attorneys better cases from the Internet. Partner with Scorpion to get an award-winning website and ROI positive marketing programs today. Visit scorpionlegal.com/podcast.

Next, we would like to thank our sponsor, Thomson Reuters’ Firm Central, cloud-based legal practice management that streamlines your day and automates non-billable administrative tasks, so you can accomplish more with less.

Answer 1 is a leading virtual receptionist and answering services provider for lawyers. You can find out more by giving them a call at 800-Answer-1 or online at www.answer1.com, that’s www.answer1.com.

All right. My guest today is Jay Harrington of the aptly named Harrington Marketing Agency; don’t know how he came up with that one. Jay is an attorney and the Chief Strategist at Harrington.

Jay previously practiced law as a commercial litigator and corporate bankruptcy attorney at Skadden, Arps. He also co-founded and ran a boutique corporate restructuring firm in Detroit.

Jay played college baseball at Bowling Green State University. He is married to his business partner and they have three children, including twins who have different birthdays.

His writing is featured in monthly columns for Attorney at Work and Legal Ink Magazine. Jay’s new book, which we are going to talk about today is called, ‘The Essential Associate: Step Up, Stand Out, and Rise to the Top as a Young Lawyer’. That’s available right now.

Jay is also the author of a prior book called, ‘One of a Kind: A Proven Path to a Profitable Law Practice’, and that one is about niche practice.

Welcome to the show, Jay Harrington.

Jay Harrington: Thanks Jared. It’s great to be here.

Jared Correia: Yeah, this is good. I don’t think we have done a podcast together before, so this is long overdue, and I apologize, because I should have had you on before this. I blame myself.

Jay Harrington: No worries. I think we did a webinar way back, but this is our first podcast, so I am excited to be here.

Jared Correia: Okay. What will we do next, who knows, stay tuned. Let’s talk briefly about your college baseball career, were you a better baseball player than Danny Ainge?

Jay Harrington: That takes me way back. I appreciate the question, not often am I asked to compare myself to a two-time NBA champion, but we are talking baseball here, but sadly, yeah, Danny Ainge was better than me. I think he certainly got a few at-bats in the Major Leagues with the Toronto Blue Jays. The only thing I think we had in common was we both played second base.

Jared Correia: Oh, second base, that’s a great position, very underrated. Although Danny didn’t do very much for them; he was the best in the Majors. However, I have no complaints about how he is running the Celtics right now.

So let’s get into like the real stuff here why people are listening and let’s talk about associate attorneys at law firms. So how does an associate attorney become good at being an associate attorney, because it’s not essentially obvious, and I think there is a mindset component here and I think the question is like how can young associates take ownership of their careers or feel like they are taking ownership of their careers when that seems to go against like everything that you would suspect is required of actually working in a law firm as an associate?

(00:04:50)

Jay Harrington: Yeah. It all does come down to having that ownership mindset and I think that’s the most important predictor of success for a young lawyer. And that means many things, but broadly speaking, it means being accountable for everything you do, and that ranges from the work product you produce, to your overall career trajectory.

And I think in my book, in the research phase of it, I spoke to dozens of successful lawyers and general counsel and the ability to take ownership as an associate is probably the biggest thing that they mentioned, distinguished high-performing associates, from those who are just sort of getting by and middle of the pack.

And I guess that makes sense, right, because if you think about it from their perspective, which is the perspective that matters, if you are thinking about advancing within a law firm, they are very busy, they have a ton of responsibilities on their plate, and so they need good people working underneath them, who they can trust, whose work they can trust, who can take a project, take an objective and actually achieve it from start to finish.

And it’s really about when you think about it, unfortunately, throughout your career as an associate, that means doing a lot of things that may not be all that exciting or interesting. It’s the grunt work that we all faced as young lawyers that you really don’t want to do. You prefer to pass off to somebody else or just hope it goes away. But it’s the kind of stuff that you need to embrace and accomplish in order for you to develop the level of trust you need with your superiors.

And so it’s really about doing the little things well, because if you don’t do the little things well and take ownership over them, then you will never be entrusted to do the big things.

So it’s really taking that beginner’s tasks you are assigned, doing them well, taking ownership of them and being then in a position to take on bigger things as you advance in your career.

So yeah, I mean I think ownership has many different aspects to it. I think one of the big ones is being able to see the big picture, understanding not only what tasks you have been assigned, but what the ultimate objective is.

I mean if you think about it, you might be assigned to do X, but if you are really taking ownership of it and understanding what the client objective is ultimately, in the course of that work you may unearth Y and Z, which are other possible options or possible courses of action or things that other people missed that could have a significant impact on the ultimate outcome.

So understanding that big picture from the start and keeping that in mind is very important, involves leadership. Even as a young associate, there is still people within the firm; they may be the paralegals assigned to the case, your administrative assistant or other associates who you need to make sure are doing their jobs as well.

So yeah, ownership is about stretching yourself, and as the old saying goes, growth comes from discomfort, getting out of your zone of comfort and stepping into things that may not feel comfortable, but after achieving them, then they start to become routine and that allows you to kind of level up in your career.

There are a number of aspects to it, but it’s really just about taking on everything that you have and doing it to the best of your ability, which allows you to do bigger and more interesting things as you progress and earning that trust that you need with your superiors.

Jared Correia: Who knew practice of law was boring? No, I kid. So one thing you mentioned is it’s still a job, it’s still all about the billables, right, like that’s still a thing. So I think there is a little bit of a balancing act here and I want to ask you two questions about this.

And the first one is like, how can an associate be as productive as possible with like these billable hour requirements raining down on them and still be able to work on their personal brand within the firm?

Jay Harrington: Sure. So I think productivity in general and grappling with that tension between what you need to do, which is achieve your billable hour marks and what you need to be doing, which is doing the things that matter, doing the things that will help you advance in your career is kind of a tricky one to balance.

But more than anything, it’s really about understanding what is important and what is necessarily not important, because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter so much what you are getting done if what you are getting done doesn’t really make an impact.

So yeah, billables are certainly important, but if presented with the option between an associate who is billing a ton of hours and not really moving the needle forward all that much and another who might be middle of the pack in terms of billable hours but is again making a big impact and really producing work of real value, the latter is always going to be advancing at a faster rate and more valued by their superiors, because at the end of the day, yes, billables matter, but the quality and the consistency of your work is what really makes a difference.

So, yeah, I mean I think that in order to do that, it’s all about — there’s a few aspects to it I think in terms of being productive enough to be able to get done what you need to get done and then finding time for the priorities that really matter and make a significant impact on you.

(00:10:04)

So there are a few things there. I mean one is I guess creating an environment in which you can find the time and be able to prioritize those things that matter. So minimizing distractions, things you have heard before, staying off social media, not being instantly responsive to email all the time, not allowing all the inputs that are flying at you as a busy young lawyer distract you from your big priorities.

And then it’s also a matter of capturing and distilling all of the data and inputs and priorities that are swirling around you. So I am a big fan of creating to-do lists. A simple thing like a to-do list makes a big impact on your overall success and trajectory. That involves both what I call a macro list, which is kind of your big picture objectives and then reducing that macro list to a micro list that you are working from on a daily basis that identifies say three primary priorities that you are going to focus on and accomplish that day.

And again, you also have to distill among and prioritize what those objectives are, so understanding again what matters and what doesn’t is key.

And then using — something as simple as using your calendar not as a place to book other people’s priorities, but your own. I mean oftentimes I think that if you look at the typical lawyer’s calendar, it’s filled with meetings and tasks and duties that are set by other people, other people’s priorities, and that’s of course important and necessary, but you also need to schedule some time for yourself. You need to schedule time on your calendar to be able to accomplish things and blocks of time that you can — that you hold sacrosanct that you can use to pursue those priorities.

Jared Correia: All right, that’s good stuff and especially for associates, if you are talking about someone else defining your calendar, that’s pretty much a fact of life, so the extent to which you can take control of it, all the better I think.

So the extension on this of course is like you are at a law firm, you have got a lot of pressure, you are trying to build your business and your brand up as well while you are there. And then the third component here is like having a life outside of the firm.

Like how possible is it to do that, to get your billables in, build your brand and also have some time to spend on yourself or with your family while you are working in a firm as an associate?

Jay Harrington: Well, I think it’s not only possible, but it’s necessary. I mean at least if your objective is to not live a frantic, empty life that you regret at the end of your career. I mean sure it’s possible to achieve and I will use air quotes here “success” as a lawyer by being nothing but a workaholic.

I mean just look around you I guess, I mean there’s lots of lawyers I am sure at firms that people who are listening are working at who are successful in a conventional sense, who are made partner, achieve a high income, but are unhappy as a result. They have nothing else in their life to really look forward to or focus on. They have made work their thing, that’s their hobby. I don’t think that’s really a way to live, nor build a career around. Easier said than done, but you need to find instances and interests outside of the office that will help you to sustain through the hard times of being a lawyer.

Now, I am not suggesting that you can ever achieve absolute work-life balance. I think that’s a myth. I don’t even think that’s a thing. But it’s about listening, being purposeful and listening to that voice in your head that helps you to understand when things are way out of balance and that you need to take some steps to find balance and try to kind of correct course a little bit, because if you are not conscious of that, then you will find yourself simply consumed by work and always focused on it.

So when I work with lawyers, when I coach them on issues related to building a practice and what they want out of their careers, I often tell them not to start — we don’t want to start with where you are at, because they are often looking for that sort of short-term, quick fix to sort of solve and correct course with where they are at right now.

But I ask them to look forward say 20 years and say where do you want your life to be, and it’s only by looking out and understanding what you want out of life, what your purpose is that you can really start to work backward and make the changes that will make it possible to sustain and not burn out during the course of what’s often a very stressful and challenging career.

Jared Correia: So you are telling me I should keep knitting.

Jay Harrington: Yeah, if that’s your thing, absolutely. But that’s the problem though. I mean most lawyers I don’t think take the time to find a thing, so they need to think about that, because that thing is going to be the thing that allows you to structure your day and prioritize it in such a way that you look forward to getting out of the office.

I mean many lawyers I think just get into a rut and their sort of concept of their self is that of a busy lawyer, and so when they don’t have their hair on fire and are working 18 hours a day, they tend to hang around the office looking for the next thing, because that’s who they are, that’s their identity.

(00:15:04)

So you need to find an identity outside of the office as well that allows you to fill your time and structure your days in such a way that you can be looking forward to getting out, doing those interesting things, spending time with family, whatever it might be that drives you outside of your career, you need to be able to keep that in mind so that you can — you structure your workdays in a way that allows you to get out of the office and get out into the world and do interesting things, because this career will be all-consuming if you allow it to be.

Jared Correia: Yeah. I was just kidding. I don’t really knit, so no one ask me for scarves or anything like that. As it turns out, my billable hours for this portion of the podcast are up, so let’s take a brief pause and hear from our sponsors.

[Music]

Firm Central, a cloud-based legal practice management software for solo and small firms, provides a single online location for all of the tools you need to manage client files and perform client work, and offers unrivaled integration with Westlaw. With Firm Central, you can securely store and organize documents and case files, manage time tracking and billables, and collaborate with clients through a secure client portal from anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Do you feel like your marketing efforts aren’t getting you the high value cases your firm deserves? For over 15 years, Scorpion has helped thousands of law firms, just like yours, to attract new cases and to grow their practices. As a Google Premier Partner and winner of Google’s Platform Innovator Award, Scorpion has the right resources and technology to aggressively market your law firm and to generate better cases from the Internet. For more information, visit scorpionlegal.com/podcast today.

[Music]

Jared Correia: Hey, thanks for coming back. I stuck around and as luck would have it, so did Jay Harrington. We are talking about what it’s really like to be an associate attorney and how to make the most of it.

So Jay, we talked a little bit about the importance of brand building while in a law firm working as an associate. Can you talk a little bit more about that and potentially some about how possible it is to build a brand while working for somebody else? I think people find that concept to be difficult, because it’s obvious how you build a brand when you have your own law firm, but when you are working for somebody else, it’s kind of tough to inject your personality into the marketing that you do or tougher, I should say.

Jay Harrington: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the thing to keep in mind is that as many have probably heard or have heard others discuss is that you have a brand whether you like it or not, so it’s not a matter of building a brand per se. To me, it’s more about crafting the brand you already have.

I would ask everyone — all the listeners and lawyers listening to think about their colleagues, for example, and each of them has a brand, good or bad, because again, a brand is not what you think or say or project about yourself, it’s what other people think or say about you.

So even if you are working for someone else and you have little client interaction, for example, you are not out actively marketing, then you are still in a position to develop your brand, whether you like it or not, you have to, and you have to be conscious of it.

The good news is I think you can, because you alone have the power to craft it and that’s the thing that’s going to have a significant impact on your career.

So the thing is when it comes to the lawyers who are working in law firms who might not have that outside interaction as much, they need to think about how their brand is being projected internally, and that’s really important because everyone talks about the fact that as an associate, especially as a younger associate, your client is really the partners that you are working for. And so you need to be able to build a brand that appeals to them. That positions you in a positive light with those people and is authentic to who you are.

So whether you are again working with and marketing actively outside of the firm to try to bring clients in, or your clients are in fact the people you are working for within the firm, you can definitely craft a brand to help you and help your career move forward in a way and in a direction that you want it to.

Jared Correia: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, that’s a good way to look at it, projecting a brand within the firm I think makes it more strategic as well for a lot of folks.

Now, let’s shift topics a little bit and talk a little bit about your new book and a little bit about your old book. So one major component of an attorney’s branding can be a niche practice and I know you are a big believer in niches. So how can an attorney working within a law firm still potentially work on a niche practice when a lot of their work is assigned?

Jay Harrington: Sure. So I would say the biggest thing to keep in mind as you are just getting started is to start small, don’t set out with — and I guess I will define I guess why it might be important to have a niche in the first place.

(00:19:54)

A niche would be a narrow area of focus for your career. It might be an industry for which you focus on, a practice area specialty or sub-practice specialty that you have, some area where you can become a master craftsman as opposed to a jack-of-all-trades, a specialist versus a generalist.

So it’s incumbent upon you then to sort of start small and then you can kind of trade up the chain as you go. The best way to describe this is probably to look at a specific example. One of my favorites is featured in both my first book and my new one, is Scott Becker, who is a partner at McGuireWoods, former Chair of the healthcare practice, very successful lawyer, great person, and also runs a publishing Empire called Becker’s Healthcare.

And, when he was a mid-level associate, say probably 25 years ago now, he realized that in order to get control of his life and his career he needed to build a practice. So he kind of went out and spoke to a mentor of his in the firm who encouraged him to focus on a niche, especially as just a mid-level associate at that point.

So what Scott did was he kind of identified a few different areas within the healthcare sector, started doing some experimenting by producing a few newsletters and kind of just getting out in the marketplace and ultimately landed on one which was surgical centers within the Greater Chicago area. He started to dive deeper into that industry, continuing with his newsletter, starting to host small industry conferences and then he became successful with that niche, started getting business, more business and that allowed him to then advance to bigger doctors within the healthcare industry starting to serve hospitals and then health systems, and ultimately crafting a very successful career for himself.

So, I think if we can follow that pattern of starting very small and then sort of trading up, laddering up, that’s the path to success when it comes to establishing a niche. You aim straight for the top, you’ll never get there. It’s the same process that companies like Amazon started with books, had an aim in mine which was dominating the world, but they started with books because they figured out it was the market they could penetrate.

Jared Correia: Yeah, yeah.

Jay Harrington: Facebook started at Harvard before taking over the world, all these things, all these companies do the same thing, I think lawyers can replicate that process.

Now one thing to keep in mind is, especially if you’re a young lawyer you’re probably not going to be in a position like Scott Becker was and the industry has changed obviously over that time, could necessarily go out into the marketplace and start developing business right-away within a niche, so again think internally not externally.

Brian McCarthy who’s the office Managing Partner of the Los Angeles office for Skadden, I spoke to him regarding my book and he gave some great insights on this topic, I think, and he talked about the importance for every young lawyer to become an expert in some small task or area that is of value to other lawyers within the firm.

So that might be knowing the rules of civil procedure in your local courts inside and out, or it might mean, being the expert at making sure that a transaction — closing documents for a transaction, get to the right people, get signed and get back on time. These little things that you can become known for within your firm will then put you on the radar screen of people that matter.

So, even if it’s not an industry niche or a practice area niche because you’re say a first or second year lawyer, there can be some process or project management system that you can own and be excellent at and people think of you for that thing and you’ll build your brand as a result of having that niche expertise.

Jared Correia: Got you. That’s some good stuff right there. Ladder up, I think you need t-shirts for that. I like that. I’d buy one of those. Speaking of clothing options, while I look for my good Nehru jacket, let’s listen to some more words from our sponsors.

[Music]

Is your firm experiencing missed calls, empty voicemail boxes, and potential clients you will never hear from again? Enter Answer 1 virtual receptionist. They are more than just an answering service. Answer 1 is available 24/7. They can even schedule appointments, respond to emails, integrate with Clio, and much more. Answer 1 helps make sure your clients have the experience they deserve. Give them a call yourself at 800-Answer-1 or visit them at answer1.com/podcast for a special offer.

[Music]

Jared Correia: Okay, hey, thanks for coming back after break number two. How’s your Sky Bar? Now, let’s get rolling in with Jay Harrington of Harrington Marketing. He was telling me how law firm associates can make the most of what they do.

So, let’s talk a little bit about some of the technical aspects of marketing. So, how should law firm associates be splitting their time between networking or in-person marketing and web marketing?

Jay Harrington: I think this gets back to the issue of prioritization. You’re only one person with limited time for things like networking and marketing, so you need to prioritize. So, I’d say — I would say the best thing to do it would be to assess your current network and your contacts, and identify those who you deem to be high priority, and think about based on the niche that you’re pursuing, who are the other influential people within that niche that you’d like to get to know, they have an impact on your career.

And I’d reserve my time for networking that one-on-one sort high-touch strategy for that relatively small universe of people, say, there’s 25 people on your high priority list. Focus on them for one-on-one networking, same goes for what kind of networking events and conferences that you attend.

Again, you have limited time, so think about the ones that matter most where the influencers and potential clients and referral sources that are associated with the industry or niche that you’re pursuing are congregating, spend your time there.

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Jay Harrington: Now, as far as web strategy; again, that’s a way to sort of scale yourself. I think that when you think about your personal brand, one of the best aspects of having a powerful personal brand is that it allows you to scale yourself in some sense, just like a business scales in order to serve a broader group of people or customers, your personal brand can help you scale because you can’t be everywhere at once but your personal brand can be the thing that sells you when you’re not there to sell yourself.

So, use social media, use email, use digital tools to spread your message. Stay in touch with people with your broad network. Use that, write articles, distribute that, so you can you can express your thought leadership to people that you may not be able to get in touch with one-on-one all the time, and that way though you can still maintain that broader network while focusing most of your attention on your high priority network.

Jared Correia: That sounds great. Those are good strategy pointers right there. So, let’s talk about what it’s like to work within specific firms before we finish this up. So, what internal resources are there available for law firm associates who want to market themselves more effectively, like within the firm that they can access?

Jay Harrington: Yeah, I think there’s a ton really and many of them are overlooked. So identify a few here, but I think one would be just the resources, the financial resources the firms make available for marketing or marketing related activities, this would include budgets for learning, taking courses or attending conferences. I think oftentimes that’s not tapped into. Budgets for marketing, I think associates sometimes think again, because they’re not actively pitching business that they aren’t really marketing or they’re not in a position to be marketing yet, but I think marketing and business development are very related, but marketing sort of warms up business development.

So, if you’re an associate, think about business development down the road, but use marketing budget to take out to lunch people that again are in your high priority networks, who you’re going to sort of grow with, and that will be in a position to refer you work or hire you directly down the road. Use those dollars that are made available.

Publish on the — within the publications that are made available by your firm, the blogs, the newsletters, the other resources that the firm has established that oftentimes are starved for resources. They’re looking for people to contribute to those types of things and you’ve got it. You’ve got an active network to publish on.

Work with your marketing and communications team and people at your firm. I think oftentimes there’s a disconnect between lawyers and the marketing team and I think the marketing team, and in the course of our consulting practice we work with a number of marketing departments at different firms and I think they’d love to have that more direct feedback in sort of teamwork integration with the attorneys to better understand how they as marketers can help support the business developers within the firm. They can go out — if they understand what your niche is and what your objectives are as an attorney in terms of building your practice, they can then go out and seek PR opportunities and establish relationships with editors within industries — editors or trade publications within industries you’re focused on. So, work with those people.

Tap into the partners and mentors, observe and develop relationships and spend time and ask questions of the successful lawyers within your firm and then model your behavior after them. I think that’s a resource that should be tapped into. Then there’s little things like many firms have like professional proofreaders on staff, utilize those resources. If you’re writing something for outside publication, send it to the copyeditors and proofreaders within your firm so they can really help you polish your work. Your writing and other forms of thought leadership are what is representing you in the marketplace ideas, so make it the best you can.

So, I think those are some areas that I would focus on internally that maybe are overlooked a bit.

Jared Correia: Good stuff, man. I like that. All right, last question in terms of this. How about differences between small firm, large firm, like a lot of the resources that you’re talking about like proofreaders, for example, those are big firm resources. So, you are an associate within a smaller law firm, how is it different to go about creating a brand and then what resources could you leverage in that space?

(00:30:00)

Jay Harrington: Yeah, now that’s a great question and I mean, I’ve worked in both environments. I’ve worked in Skadden, which is obviously a massive firm with huge resources available to you, and I also ran my own small firm where I was — had to be the scrappy entrepreneur.

And it’s different but in many ways, the small firm environment for that entrepreneurial-minded young lawyer is the ideal environment because there aren’t all of the — there’s not all the red tape that’s involved with doing some of the things that may be leading-edge that might would it be found upon or just would have so much red tape involved, you can never doom at a big firm.

Like, for example, if I was a young lawyer right now and I was really focused on building a niche and a name for myself within a particular space, starting a podcast would be a great avenue to do that, where that might be able to do it a big firm. And then you also have certain other advantages like more flexibility in terms of billing rates.

You are and more positioned to go out and develop business at an earlier point in your career because there’s a different financial structure involved and oftentimes have more flexibility to do things like that. So, I think that just while you’re an associate — a young associate at a big law firm, oftentimes you need to think more entrepreneurial — being more entrepreneurial within your firm environment.

At a small firm, you’re able to act much more entrepreneurial, meaning going out and really conducting business outside of the firm and trying to draw people into it, in terms of clients. You’ve got really that flexibility, and so that requires you to think more creatively and not just rely on like the resources to spread the word or to throw at your marketing issues. You need to be able to think creatively and think about new ways to reach markets. But I think that’s really not necessarily a disadvantage, I think it can be a big advantage.

Jared Correia: Very nice, you put a nice bow on that, my friend. So, my last question for you is this, you’re married, you work with your wife, you have three daughters, when was the last time someone in your home was embarrassed by your behavior?

Jay Harrington: All right, that’s — I’ve got that’s ripe ground for picking hair, so.

Jared Correia: I thought so.

Jay Harrington: Well, let’s see, my oldest is eight years old and I coach her soccer team and just last night, we had to practice and I don’t know if you’re familiar with the new dance craze going on through the elementary and middle schools around the country, but it’s called the Floss.

Jared Correia: I saw it the other day, performed, yes.

Jay Harrington: Yeah, some of the girls on the team are trying to teach me how to floss on a soccer field and I was a willing participant but my daughter was obviously horrified at my behavior and my lack of dancing skills, so that’s probably the most recent example.

Jared Correia: Were you okay? How did you do?

Jay Harrington: My hip is a little — yeah, I got a little hip issue this morning, but otherwise I’m good.

Jared Correia: Maybe start with the dougie, just to start a couple of years back. That was good stuff, I like that.

Jay Harrington: I’ll just ease in.

Jared Correia: Nothing like being an embarrassing dad, it’s the life. So, this was fun and that’ll do it for this episode of The Legal Toolkit.

We’ve been talking to my friend, Jay Harrington, of the Harrington Marketing Agency and we’ve been specifically chatting about the myriad ways associate attorneys can market themselves.

Now, I’ll be back on future shows with further insights into my soul, The Soul of America and the legal market. If you’re feeling nostalgic from my dulcet tones; however, you can check out our entire show archive anytime you want at legaltalknetwork.com.

So, thanks again to Jay Harrington for coming on the show today and putting up with me.

So, all right, Jay, tell your public once more about what you do and where they can find out more about what you do?

Jay Harrington: Thanks Jared and thanks for having me on, this was a lot of fun. So, I am a legal marketing consultant, I own an agency called Harrington, you can find us at hcommunications.biz. We work with law firms and I also coach individual attorneys primarily in the areas of business development and marketing and personal branding.

And, as we talked about during the podcast, I have written a couple of books, the most recent one called ‘The Essential Associate’, is available at theessentialassociate.com, available for purchase there as well as on Amazon. So, look forward to hearing from anyone that wants to touch-base regarding legal marketing, branding or anything else.

Jared Correia: All right, folks, you heard it here. You go pick up a copy and thanks again to Jay Harrington of Harrington who crushed it today.

Finally, thanks to all of you out there for listening, and please tell my kids to do the same when I talk to them.

[Music]

Outro: Thanks for listening to Legal Toolkit, produced by the broadcast professionals at Legal Talk Network.

Join host Jared Correia for his next podcast covering the current business trends for law firms.

If you’d like more information about today’s show, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. Subscribe via iTunes and RSS. Find Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn or download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google Play and iTunes.

The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

[Music]

Continue Reading