06/24/2009

Presented by: Small Firm & Sole Practitioner

Co-Sponsored by: Barristers, Business & Corporation, Commercial Law & Bankruptcy, Immigration, Individual Rights, Litigation, Remedies

Program Information:
MAKE YOUR MISSION POSSIBLE

The 2nd Annual 2009 Small Firm and Solo Practitioners Conference: MISSION POSSIBLE was a hit with an excellent line-up of speakers and sessions.

More than ever the Small Firm and Solo Practitioners need to run an efficient, comprehensive, and profitable firm prepared to meet the complex needs and requirements of clients. The conference armed attendees with the cutting-edge tools you need. This year’s inspiring program focused on providing strategies and information to transform today’s difficult challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities. The impressive lineup of speakers guided attendees through the important topics of the day (work/life balance, rainmaking, technology and practice management) and provide insightful looks to the future.

The possibilities are endless. The mission is possible.

Rainmaking Track

Rainmaking Track Session 1
Rainmaker 101: What to Do Now to Build a Strong Book of Business
Speaker: Julie A. Fleming
No lawyer in private practice can deny the importance of business development. Whether you’re a sole practitioner or working in a law firm, technical legal skill is no longer sufficient to ensure a full practice or satisfying career advancement. Rainmaker 101 will present the tactics and resources that you can apply immediately to launch your rainmaking efforts, plus the five steps that will strengthen every business development plan. In this highly-interactive program, you’ll learn how to personalize successful rainmaking approaches to match your practice and your preferences for ultimate success. We’ll cover time-tested tactics (such as networking, speaking, and writing) and newer approaches that can net great results now, even in today’s tight economy. You’ll leave with a list of “must do” tasks and a full understanding of how to complete them to maximize their business generating potential. Although this program will be most useful for lawyers who are just beginning their rainmaking efforts, we’ll also address some intermediate and advanced tactics.

Rainmaking Track Session 2
Follow Your Bliss
Speaker: Louise Nemschoff
Running a small firm or solo practice is too much work to do unless you really enjoy what you are doing. So how do you turn the things you like to do into a law practice? A veteran with over 25 years experience in small firms and solo practice discusses strategies for developing referral networks and building a practice you love. The presentation will be very informal with audience participation encouraged.

Rainmaking Track Session 3
Do It Yourself Public Relations
Speaker: Brenda McGann
You don’t have to wait for the precedent-setting case or multi-million-dollar deal to get the media calling. This session will show you how to become proactive in seeking publicity for your area of expertise and particular practice. It will show you have to both follow the news and create news of your own by using your industry knowledge to suggest article and broadcast topics. In less than an hour a day, you can create materials blog items, story pitches, press release- to establish name recognition and credibility in your field of practice.

Rainmaking Track Session 4
Small But Mighty: How to Compete With the Big Guys
Speaker: Jeremy Miller
This session will focus on how small law firms and solo practitioners can effectively compete for business with much larger law firms. The session will explain how to make your small firm “look” bigger; how to gain name recognition; using technology to level the playing field; and how to recognize and exploit the advantages of being small.

Law Practice Management (LPM) Track

LPM Track Session 1 (1.25 hrs CLE)
Cash Flow Tips to Thrive in a Down Economy
Speaker: Ed Poll
Is it possible to remain profitable or even increase your profit in uncertain economic times? As in life, there are no guarantees, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have at least some control of your firm’s destiny. As we move through this period of economic disaster, it is even more important for you to understand your firm’s profitability and how to enhance it.

• Are you experiencing slow-pay or no-pay clients?

• What can you do to improve your collection?

• Are you at risk for your trust account if your bank fails?

• Are your clients demanding lower billing rates from you?

• How can merchant accounts help you?

• Are your clients satisfied with your service?

• Are they loyal to you?

• Is your practice area at risk of disappearing?

LPM Track Session 2 (1.25 hrs CLE)
Are Lawyers Unbundling in a Frigid Economy
Speaker: Elizabeth Moreno
This panel will explore unbundling legal services in the wake of increasing numbers of self represented litigators in non family law matters, who do not have the monetary resources to hire an attorney to handle the entire matter. Unbundling legal services or giving a litigant a limited scope of representation is becoming more popular in the downtown of the economy. However, attorneys must be mindful of their professional and ethical obligations and must take to communicate fully with the client and put appropriate procedures in place to ensure the client receives competent representation. This panel will compare and contrast the practice in family law cases and explore asking the client the right questions, identify issues, make disclosures and develop procedures to handle the client’s legal matter.

LPM Track Session 3 (1.25 hrs CLE)
Successful Strategies for Solo and Small Offices
Speaker: Patricia L. McCabe
In this session, participants will learn key strategies for solid solo and small firm management. In an open discussion forum, this program will explore business development and planning. Participants will enhance networking skills. Critical Issues facing solo and small firm today will be discussed, including your professional growth, what tools are necessary for your firms healthy financial management, unique ways of staff development and how to maintain work-life balance in a solo and small firm with mounting pressure.

LPM Track Session 4
Get Paid What You Are Worth: How to Get the Right Legal Fee
Speaker: Gideon Grunfeld
Whether you charge and hourly rate, collect a flat fee, or work on a contingency basis, in this program you will learn how to determine what you should charge for your services. Attendees will learn:

• How to avoid the most common mistake lawyers make when they are asked, “what do you charge?”

• The essential formula that determines a lawyer’s fee

• How to determine what kind of fee (hourly, flat, contingency, or combination) is right for you

• What are most relevant ethical restrictions in California regarding fee setting

• What is the single best way to ensure that you will be able to raise your fees and make them stick

Work-Life Balance Track

Work-Life Balance Track Session 1
Work-Life Balance: Success Without Stress
Speaker: Jessica Dominguez
Finding work-life balance has its challenges, two of which are managing stress and managing to find “me” time. This section will offer suggestions on how to decrease your stress and increase ways to nurture yourself. With a demanding schedule it is important to ask “Am I giving my best to what I consider most important in my life?” and “Am I enjoying while I am achieving?” This section will provide the tools to enable you to answer both questions with an affirmative, and to attain your personal and professional pursuits with less stress and more success.

Work-Life Balance Track Session 2
Practical Solutions for Work-Life Balance
Speaker: David Ackert
This interactive workshop gives you an opportunity to examine your priorities in business and life, and improve your ability to fulfill on them. This practical, thought-provoking program provides concrete takeaways that you can implement as soon as you get back to your office.

• Improve efficiency

• Reduce procrastination

• Take control over email, tasks, and client demands

• Create a simple plan to address those neglected areas of life

Work-Life Balance Track Session 3
You Can Have It All and Do It All
Speaker: Alexis Martin Neely
Alexis Martin Neely will guide law practice owners through her experience of leaving a big law firm life and starting her own firm with limited financial resources, while she was the bread winner in her family, she had a baby at home and another on the way. She’ll share the trials, tribulations and rewards of growing her practice from scratch into a million dollar a year law business in just three years and how every solo and small firm practitioner can follow the proven blueprint for success she developed and has now successfully taught to over 150 other lawyers. Listen to the presentation and be ready to transform your business and become the lawyer you’ve always wanted to be while achieving a work/life balance.

Technology Track

Technology Track Session 1
Social Networking for Lawyers: A Roadmap to Success
Moderator: Heather M. Milligan
Speakers: Victoria Pynchon, Adrianos Facchetti, Gordon Firemark, H. Scott Leviant
In this interactive session we will explore the buzz surrounding social networking and social media tools and how solo and small firms practitioners can effectively employ them to communicate with current clients; control your messaging as you reach out to new clients and the media; and to meet, network and collaborate with colleagues.

Our panel of solo and small firm attorneys will discuss their experiences with blogging as a social media tool, and we will spotlight several social networking applications, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. By calling upon their personal experiences, our panel will highlight best practices for how you can incorporate these and other Web 2.0 applications into your business development, PR and networking activities.

Technology Track Session 2 (1.25 hrs CLE)
Negotiating and Mediating Your Way to Better Results in a Troubled Economy
Speaker: Jeff Kichaven
How you should negotiate if you want to generate and conserve wealth for your clients? In some ways, it’s easier than you think, and in other ways, it’s very difficult. But in all ways it can be learned, and you can learn to do it. In this highly interactive workshop, you will learn the basics negotiation strategy, for use in mediations and negotiation in general, that will always allow you to win as much as you can.

Technology Track Session 3 (1.25 hrs CLE)
Computer Forensics in Civil Discovery: A Primer
Speaker: Alexander H. Lubarsky
Traditional computer forensics is now applied to civil Discovery. Under the new Federal and California Rules, computer sleuthing has given way to modern e-discovery practice. Computer forensics are applied to date collection efforts and will optimize the discovery review and production process.

This session will cover the basics of computer forensics as applied to the discovery process, the new FRCP rules and an introduction to popular e-discovery and litigation support review tools.

Technology Track Session 4
Turning Events into Investments
Speaker: Tracy Kwiker
A business related event is much more than just an event. It’s an investment. The expenditure of time, capital, and resources all come with a cost. And like most investments, if you want to maximize your ROI, you must establish the right strategies and performance criteria from the outset. In this presentation, Tracy Kwiker will explore how you can transform an event which you host, sponsor, exhibit, serve as speaker, or attend, into a sound business investment. Providing a unique framework and innovative methodologies, the program will examine how you can define clear objectives, craft effective strategies, determine relevant performance criteria, and leverage key opportunities before, during, and after your event to maximize your event investment.

This event was co-sponsored by the following LACBA sections.
Barristers, Business & Corporations, Commercial Law & Bankruptcy, Immigration, Individual Rights, Healthcare, International Law, Litigation, Real Property, Remedies, Senior Lawyers Division, Taxation, and Trust & Estates

This event was also supported by the following Allied Associations: Commercial Real Estate Women - Los Angeles (CREW-LA), Mexican American Bar Association (MABA), South Bay Bar Association (SBBA), Southeast District Bar Association (SEDBA), Southern California Chinese Lawyers Association (SCCLA), and Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles (WLALA).

Speakers:
Elizabeth A. Moreno, A Professional Corporation

Location:
Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa St. , Los Angeles

Parking:

Times:
Registration: 8:00-8:30AM
Meal/Reception:
Program: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

	Also Availabe In: Price Range: Audio CD $130.00 - $205.00

For questions about programs or program registration, send e-mail to our Member Service Department: msd@lacba.org

The Los Angeles County Bar Association is a State Bar of California MCLE approved provider. If this is a CLE event, the Los Angeles County Bar Association certifies that this activity has been approved for MCLE credit. CLE events will state the amount and type of credit offered in the calendar listing.