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Five Things I Wish I’d Learned In Law School

Omer,DavidThis post originally appeared on the Law Student Division page, where you can find it and more advice for newly minted lawyers.

By David G. Omer

Law school is a strange creature.  You spend three long years sacrificing your sleep, your credit rating, your relationships, and your sanity.  In return, you get the opportunity to take the bar exam and start a career where you get to challenge yourself every day, help countless people, and maybe even make a little money along the way.  As you’ve (hopefully) learned, law school is all about filling your brain with points of law and forcing you to think your way around the gray areas.  For all the substantive information you pick up during your time as a law student, however, there are some important things that get left along the wayside.  As a recently licensed lawyer in North Carolina, I appreciate the opportunity to fill you in on a few things I didn’t learn until I made it out into the “real world.”

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Extra Credit: Five Things I Wish I’d Learned In Law School

By David G. Omer

Law school is a strange creature.  You spend three long years sacrificing your sleep, your credit rating, your relationships, and your sanity.  In return, you get the opportunity to take the bar exam and start a career where you get to challenge yourself every day, help countless people, and maybe even make a little money along the way.  As you’ve (hopefully) learned, law school is all about filling your brain with points of law and forcing you to think your way around the gray areas.  For all the substantive information you pick up during your time as a law student, however, there are some important things that get left along the wayside.  As a recently licensed lawyer in North Carolina, I appreciate the opportunity to fill you in on a few things I didn’t learn until I made it out into the “real world.”

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The Practice Series – Question and Answer with a Family Lawyer

Jessica B. Heffner is a 2013 graduate of the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law at Campbell University.  She practices with Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton LLP in Raleigh, NC.

Q:  What kind of law do you practice?

A:  My practice includes all aspects of North Carolina family law including absolute divorce, child custody, child support, property division, spousal support, separation agreements, postmarital agreements, and premarital agreements.

Q:  What do you like best about your practice?

A:  I enjoy practicing family law because it allows me to work with individuals.  Family law requires a great deal of client contact—in person, over email, and/or over the phone.  It’s a practice area where you interact with clients every working day.  Also, every family law case is unique and challenging in its own way.  As members of a “learned profession” we are challenged to consistently study and expand our knowledge of complex and evolving issue—it keeps my day to day job very interesting and rewarding.

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Here’s What Should Be Keeping You Up At Night

Here’s an actual email1 I received from a consulting client at the Center for Practice Management.

Dear Erik,

I think it is time for me to ramp up my firm’s online marketing efforts, but nothing I’ve done so far seems to work. It’s almost frustrating enough to make me miss the Yellow Pages.

Sincerely,

Sleepless in Search Engine Land2

And my reply3.

Dear Sleepless,

I’m sorry to hear about your frustration with online marketing. The place I would start with this is thinking about what keeps your clients up at night. To get your gears turning, here’s a list of things that keeps me up at night:

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The Chair’s Comments

By Ginny Allen

Almost two months ago, I left my job as head of marketing and business development with a large North Carolina law firm to start my own company. Until recently, my interest within the law practice management and technology world had largely been technology, specifically marketing technologies.

Over the course of these last months, my eyes have been opened to the resilience, hard work, and investment of time it takes to get a business up and running.

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Nine Questions to Ask About Your Firm’s Website

By Deborah McMurray

Law firms are investing more in the de­sign and development of their websites than ever. But are your visitors any happier?

No matter your law firm’s size or budget, visitors expect the same intuitive experience that they have with CNN.com, Southwest.com or Opentable.com. And your site is be­ing judged by the same criteria: (1) Is it easy to navigate and search—meaning do I quickly find what I want and need? and (2) does it an­swer my question or solve my problem?

If you have marketing or business development expectations of your law firm website, then you must view this medium and investment very differently.

1. Start at the Beginning: Is Your Strategy Clear? The reason so many law firm websites are poor is because too few firms pay attention to firm vision and goals, understand their target mar­kets or develop a website strategy. Firm strategy, key messages and points of differentiation should shape every decision that’s made in creating design, determining functionality and developing con­tent. Your firm strategy should be clear when a visitor comes to your site. You have one chance to make the right impression—and you have about five seconds to make it before your visitors make a “stay/leave” decision. Don’t risk making the wrong impression by not spending time on this critical step.

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