Making the Most of Holiday Cards

When you get cards in the mail around the holidays, you probably open and read them. Well guess what - your clients probably do, too. That's one of the reasons why holiday cards are a great way to connect with clients in a personal way. But you need to make sure to follow some guidelines to make the most of your holiday cards this year.

In a recent post on Attorney at Work (http://bit.ly/1OjsYGg), Dennis Goris provides six tips for good holiday cards:

1. Keep your message simple and try to focus on health, prosperity, and the coming year. Religious themes should almost always be avoided.

2. Your holiday card should not be a sales pitch. Try to include a personal message and always be as sincere as possible.

3. If your budget allows, use a custom-designed card that's tailored to you and your practice.

4. Don't be afraid to be humorous. Gorris notes that "a little self-deprecation might make you more likeable" and "[p]eople do business with people they like."

5. Don't use a generic electronic card - it defeats the whole purpose of sending a personal holiday card.

6. Make your cards truly personal by addressing and signing them by hand, and using a real stamp instead of a postage meter. To emphasize this point, Gorris asks, "In a pile of mail, what do you open first, the cards addressed with preprinted labels or the handwritten one?"

Robot Lawyers, Part 2

In the September Biz&Tek column, we highlighted some recent discussions regarding the probability of robots replacing lawyers. This month we'll take a look at what managing partners at large law firms think about the likelihood of robot lawyers.

Legal consulting company Altman Weil recently released its "Law Firms in Transition" report (http://bit.ly/1Ks0KqL), which covers a wealth of information gathered from a survey of managing partners. As a "bonus question," the survey asked: "Can you envision a law-focused 'Watson' [i.e., the IBM cognitive computing system that defeated two former Jeopardy! champions] replacing any of the following timekeepers in your firm in the next 5 to 10 years? (Select all that apply.)" The results were as follows:

Paralegals - selected by 47.0 percent of respondents

First year associates - - selected by 35.0 percent of respondents

2-3 year associates - selected by 19.2 percent of respondents

4-6 year associates - selected by 6.4 percent of respondents

Service partners - selected by 13.5 percent of respondents

To end on a somewhat more-optimistic note, 38.0 percent of respondents selected "Yes, but not in 5-10 years" and 20.3 percent of respondents selected "Computers will never replace human practitioners." But think about that last statistic for a moment - only one in five managing partners at large law firms believe that lawyers will never be replaced by robots!