By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach The concept of financial bonuses is not unknown to most people. It is highly used in a lot of sales and marketing industries. Even in the legal world, many lawyers have, at some time or another when working for a firm, received some kind of bonus. However, the concept of bonusing non-attorneys is relatively new, particularly for the estate planning lawyer world. Attorney and Ultimate Estate Planner President, Philip Kavesh, did not consider or implement the idea of a formal staff bonus system until about 12 years ago. He, as well as the attorneys…
Are You a Helicopter Boss? How Micromanaging is Killing Your Practice
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach You may have heard of the term “helicopter parent”. It’s a term used to describe that parenting style where they “hover overhead”, like helicopters, over everything that their child is doing, overseeing and trying to control and supervise all aspects of their lives. This type of style can also be found in the workplace. A helicopter boss, whether it’s the attorney business owner or perhaps an office manager or other person in some type of supervisory role over others, is someone whose management style is similar to this parenting style. It’s someone who is…
Having Disconnects and Conflicts in the Office Right Now?
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach With everything going on in the world right now, it is safe to say that most people are under much more stress than usual. From dealing with concerns around the pandemic and working in a post-pandemic world, managing the constantly barrage of headlines, politics and war, to feeling a whole spectrum of emotions about all the change and heaviness that has happened in past couple of years. Business owners and employees with young children are having to juggle their own set of challenges trying to navigate care and schooling for their children, while we…
How Do You Properly Compensate (and Incentivize) Associate Attorneys?
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law One of the biggest mistakes I see attorneys that own their own practices make is failing to properly incentivize associate attorneys. The primary way I have done this successfully for many years is through monthly bonuses. Whereas attorney bonuses are usually purely discretionary and undefined in advance as to their amount and frequency, the bonus system that I have developed is based on a clearly defined formula. By utilizing monthly bonuses, you will not only make your associate attorneys…
The Success of Your Business Starts with a Happy Work Environment
By Kristina Schneider, Practice-Building & Marketing Specialist “Businesses often forget about the culture and ultimately suffer for it because you can’t deliver good service from unhappy employees.” – Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos An often overlooked aspect of developing a successful business is really taking the time to look at the employees, the work environment and the company culture. The fact is, if you have a disorderly, stressful, and hostile work environment, chances are that you have unhappy employees who don’t like coming into work every day. And the bold truth of it is that your business will suffer…
Kick-Start Your Boss’ Calendar in the Right Direction for 2022
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach It’s hard to believe that we are already heading into the final months of 2021. As the former Executive Assistant to busy attorney, Philip Kavesh, what this time of year typically meant for me is that I would be typically preparing Phil’s calendar for the next year so that we can maximize the best use of his time, while also making sure that I don’t overlook important items that need to get onto his calendar. Here are some tips for laying out the 2022 calendar for your boss (whether he or she is an…
Are You Fitting Jobs to People?
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Hiring, training, and managing employees have certainly not been easy things to learn when it comes to owning my own law practice. I say it time and time again, but these are the things that we never learned in law school, but yet seemingly take up a great deal of time (and expense) if not done well. One common mistake that I am guilty of making in the past, but that I’ve seen come up quite a bit lately…
What to Do When Everything is Urgent & Important?
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach Too often for most people, there’s far too much to do and not enough time to do it. This requires a balancing act of figuring out how to prioritize your work. For most people, the work that gets set aside are the non-important, but also sadly, the non-urgent and important items. The things that you know you need to get to, but that don’t have a looming deadline to be met. Those tasks will constantly be backburnered into an oblivion, perhaps for eternity. We implement what is known as the “Urgent & Important” (or…
The Art of Confirming an Appointment
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach Knowing the steps of how to properly confirm an appointment – – any kind of appointment, including a phone appointment, client meeting, lunch meeting, etc. – – is extremely valuable to any office looking to continue to operate efficiently and effectively. However, I have found that a lot of people don’t do this (or don’t do it properly) and this can result in a lot of disruption in the office. Whether or not you are the one responsible for confirming appointments, if you know that your office could benefit from a makeover in your…
Top 10 E-mail Etiquette Rules for Estate Planning Professionals (and Their Assistants and Staff)
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach Electronic mail (otherwise known as e-mail) plays an important part in any business these days. It’s helped make communicating and doing business far more efficient and simpler. However, as with most things in business, there are certain rules that professionals should follow when it comes to using e-mail. If not done correctly, it can actually create unnecessary confusion, chaos, and an unnecessary amount of miscommunication (and maybe even legal liability!). Below, you will find what I consider to be the ten most important e-mail etiquette rules to live and work by. (NOTE: These are…