Part of my mission at Legal Ease Consulting is to educate lawyers about practice management, productivity, management and marketing topics, which is why I created the Legal Ease blog, offer articles on this site, lecture at CLE classes, do webinars, etc. As part of that effort, I’ve also written some books which may be of interest to you.
Make LinkedIn® Work for You A Practical Handbook for Lawyers and Other Legal Professionals (e-book)
NOW AVAILABLE! Dennis Kennedy and I are excited to announce our new book, Make LinkedIn Work for You, A Practical Handbook for Lawyers and Other Legal Professsionals. This book is being released directly to Kindle in paperback and in e-book format. It takes all of the lessons we’ve learned over the past several years teaching and writing about LinkedIn and how to make it an effective tool for lawyers and other legal professionals.
Make LinkedIn Work for You isn’t just a “how to” on using LinkedIn; it delves deeper into creating a strategic approach to your use of LinkedIn based on who you are, where you are in your career, and what you want to accomplish on LinkedIn, and prompts you to ask questions like,
- What are you “hiring” LinkedIn to do for you?
- How do you make yourself “discoverable” within your network?
- How do you bring the real world into LinkedIn and LinkedIn into the real world?
- How do you want to communicate with your network?
The book focuses on the three parts of your LinkedIn presence that you must understand well: Profiles, Connections, and Participation. We have long called these the essential building blocks of LinkedIn. In many ways, the three blocks notion is our fundamental insight in this book. If you understand and get these blocks right, you will “get” LinkedIn and should find it a valuable use of your time.
Buy now at Amazon
How to Do More in Less Time: The Complete Guide to Increasing Your Productivity and Improving Your Bottom Line
Many lawyers work long hours and still do not have enough time to complete all their work–let alone tackle the business aspects of their job, such as marketing, business development, or strategic planning. It’s a common problem, and learning how to juggle the work and manage the extras can be overwhelming for the new and seasoned lawyer alike. How to Do More in Less Time can help you learn strategies for taking control of your day and improving your productivity.
Written for the busy lawyer, this book outlines how you can identify the right activities that need to be accomplished and then how you can perform those activities efficiently to maximize your productivity. You will learn how to:
- Develop good productivity habits by setting goals and prioritizing your workload;
- Eliminate the distractions around you;
- Clean up the clutter;
- Delegate your workload efficiently;
- Organize and schedule tasks weekly;
- Create effective systems in your daily practice;
- Streamline your email;
- Do 90 minutes of work in 60 minutes – and maybe even 30;
And much more!
Want a preview? Check out the podcast interview
LinkedIn in One Hour for Lawyers, Second Edition
OUT OF PRINT – NO LONGER AVAILABLE – SEE “MAKE LINKEDIN WORK FOR YOU ABOVE”
LinkedIn in One Hour for Lawyers was originally released in March, 2012, but LinkedIn made so many changes at the end of 2012 and during the first half of 2013 that we had to update the book much more quickly than we originally anticipated. This Second Edition was released in October 2013. Published by the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Division, this book was co-authored with technology expert Dennis Kennedy, and contains practical lessons for using LinkedIn effectively as a lawyer.
The book goes through our three “building blocks” for using LinkedIn: Profile, Connections, and Participation and provides you with Action Steps for each building block so that you can improve your LinkedIn presence as you go along. Screenshots show you exactly where the features of LinkedIn are located, and our Advanced Topics cover many issues of concern to lawyers, including ethical issues that may arise with the use of LinkedIn, as well as how to create a LinkedIn Company Page for your law firm.e book sooner than we expected. This all-new version follows the same basic building blocks as the original book, but it contains all new screenshots and covers all of the new features and changes recently made to LinkedIn.
What others are saying about the book:
“As the owner of a solo practice for over twenty years, the management of my “I’ve consulted with Allison on a few occasions, and I intend to use her again. One of the things I like about her is that she thinks outside the box (particularly with regard to the use of social media and other technologies) while maintaining the practical mindset of a la-w firm managing partner.
Allison’s been in the trenches and therefore sees the “whole field”: from efficient business management to marketing to effective client service to legal ethics. She “gets it,” and she’s a pleasure to work with.”
– David G. Ross | Ross Law Firm, LLC | www.davidrosslaw.com
If you find yourself asking why a busy lawyer should waste time on social networks like LinkedIn, you’ll come away from a short 60 minutes spent with this slender volume with a much better understanding of how a small investment of time in completing your profile and mastering the site’s relationship management tools can really benefit any lawyer’s client-development efforts.
Whether you’re already highly invested in social media client development or you’re finally ready to take the first steps in that direction, you’ll find something of value in this little book that you can put to work in your practice today.”
– Laura A. Calloway, director, Alabama State Bar Practice Management Assistance Program
I loved the first edition of LinkedIn in One Hour for Lawyers by Dennis Kennedy and Allison Shields, but I am thrilled that there is a second edition. LinkedIn, like every other social media site, has changed so much that you need an up-to-date guide to make good use of LinkedIn as a lawyer.
There are now more than 770,00 members of the legal profession using LinkedIn, so it is important to use it well. Most lawyers barely use it – they fill out their profiles (often not very fully, which makes it less useful) and that’s it.
But there’s so much more you can do. Just as one example, using advice that Dennis and Allison gave, I have begun to invite my connections to CLEs where I am speaking – that has been very useful indeed. Best of all, I can filter the people I invite by geographic area and their professions.
Dennis and Allison have done a lot of hard work in the second edition – every single image is new, much is updated and there is a new chapter on LinkedIn Ads which they see as becoming more important over time. To answer an obvious question, the book still instructs those who need basic information on how to use LinkedIn, but there are a number of advanced topics as well – and new ideas that I certain intend to put into action!
I like the authors’ approach when they ask “What are you hiring LinkedIn to do?” If you spend some time contemplating that question, you can read this excellent book and figure how to make LinkedIn work for your law firm.
You can order this essential marketing book at the ABA Webstore.
– Sharon D. Nelson, Esq. and John W. Simek, president of Sensei Enterprises, Inc. and co-authors of Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers
LinkedIn in One Hour
OUT OF PRINT – NO LONGER AVAILABLE – SEE “MAKE LINKEDIN WORK FOR YOU ABOVE”
Although our other books are written specifically for lawyers, LinkedIn in One Hour was written for all business people, regardless of their profession. We get questions from all kinds of professionals about how to use LinkedIn and what is the most effective strategy for maximizing their use of LinkedIn. We wrote this version of the book so that other business people could take advantage of the same strategies that lawyers use to build great profiles, make connections, and get known on LinkedIn.
“I’m a lawyer who doesn’t practice law. Instead, I run a small business. So while I found “LinkedIn in One Hour for Lawyers” to be useful (and was part of the ABA LPD Publishing Board that approved that book), I found “LinkedIn in One Hour” even more useful because it’s geared to business people like me. If you like a book that explains, step-by-step, how to use technology, includes color screen shots to better illustrate important points, and teaches you how to set up a robust LinkedIn Profile to market you and your company, get referrals, join and create groups, find a new hire, or even find a new job, then this is the book for you. From basic tips on “how to set up an account and profile,“ to the more advanced tips, such as using LinkedIn to create an ad campaign or a Company page, this book will help you increase your business by leveraging your existing contacts and finding new contacts.
– Carole Levitt, President, Internet for Lawyers
Facebook in One Hour for Lawyers
CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT
Released in August, 2012, Facebook in One Hour for Lawyers answers the question co-author Dennis Kennedy and I are often asked when presenting about social media for lawyers: how and why would lawyers want to use Facebook? This book covers the basics about how to use Facebook, what you can do as a professional on Facebook, how to create a Facebook Business Page for your law firm, and more. One of the advanced topics covers ethical pitfalls that might arise with Facebook use as a lawyer. We show you how to filter activity on Facebook so that you can have effective conversations with family and friends and still have a ‘business’ presence on Facebook and how to remind your Facebook friends what you do for a living – without being boring or obnoxious about it.
Watch this page for additional upcoming titles – I’m working on a new book for 2014 on productivity for lawyers, and I can’t wait to share it with you!
