How to Significantly Grow Your Legal Practice in 2015

Most business-savvy legal professionals I know spend a significant portion of their time and revenue on advertising and marketing activities. I've found that this is particularly true for those of you in areas like personal injury, insolvency and employment law. As you are undoubtedly aware, practices can spend tens of thousands of dollars on TV advertisements, billboards and print advertising.

On top of all the effort you are expending on managing your offline advertisements, you need to build and maintain an online presence too.  Despite the plethora of information available both online and off, Canadians still find it challenging to select the right legal provider.

When prospective clients start looking for a lawyer online, it is often because something has happened that requires immediate attention and very specific expertise. They may need a personal injury lawyer, someone who practices family law and has expertise in adoptions, or perhaps they need legal assistance with a real estate transaction. Someone who is looking to get out of a criminal offense needs to know if the lawyer they select specializes in theft, insider trading, drug trafficking or murder cases. It is critical that your prospective clients find you online, and understand why they should select your services.

That's where we come in. Introducing Kabuk for Legal Professionals, the best way to connect with new clients and grow your practice.

How does it work?  Prospective clients go to Kabuk to search and find local law practitioners by area of practice, review their profiles, read testimonials from previous clients, and then (if bookings are enabled) book an appointment directly on the site. Once the client has visited your legal practice they are prompted by Kabuk to leave a review of their own, helping future clients make informed decisions. You can restrict testimonials to those who have booked an appointment on Kabuk, creating an additional layer of credibility - and reputation protection - for your practice.

We are excited to announce that, as of today, we are now accepting beta users. You can sign up HERE to be notified of updates, future developments and get a three-month free trial when we go live.

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MDs: e-Book with Kabuk!

Doctors - just a reminder that registration for Wave 2 of Canada Health Infoway's eBooking initiative closes December 15th!

E-booking is one of Canada Health Infoway’s key initiatives right now. Licensed physicians and nurse practitioners who implement an e-booking solution, like Kabuk, by December 15th are eligible to receive up to $2,000 through the Canada Health Infoway e-Booking initiative (a further per-clinician amount of $750 may be reimbursed for additional clinicians at the practice). You can find out more information about Canada Health Infoway’s e-Booking initiative here.

Did you know that 90% of Canadians surveyed by Canada Health Infoway said that they would like to book appointments online. E-Booking is not only good for patients its good news for clinics too. Canada Health Infoway found that clinics implementing eBooking solutions reported fewer no-shows, increased staff satisfaction and an 80% decrease in the time required to set up a single appointment.

You can get set up on Kabuk in just minutes here. We're a very affordable way to give your patients (and yourselves) the gift of e-Booking. Kabuk is available for a flat cost of $50/practitioner/month with discounts for larger clinics. We know it takes time to transition to any new technology so we are currently offering a THREE MONTH FREE TRIAL.

What are you waiting for? Get yourself online right now!

Have questions or need help getting set up? Feel free to contact me directly at asha@kabukit.com.

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Finding Strength in Differences

In a start-up, there is a 0% chance that you will always agree or get along with your co-founders (no matter how awesome indeed your co-founders are!). That's not necessarily a bad thing.

When this happens, what do you do? While this is hardly a start-up specific problem, I think that when you are arguing over your "baby", things just have the potential to get that much more "heated". After all, unlike employees in a firm, you and your co-founders are all extremely invested in every marketing decision, strategic move and technical choice that you make.

People say that picking your co-founders and defining roles can help circumvent some of these issues. While, I agree that selecting your co-founders is a crucially important decision, I sincerely doubt that it cuts back on the arguments... the good ones that is. A certain amount of heated debate can be very healthy. After all, you didn't select co-founders that would blindly agree with you all the time. In my opinion, if you don't argue you probably don't care that much to begin with. Adding new view points to a discussion can help you discover whole new strategies. What's important is the ability to listen and take-in other people's thoughts and the potential to change your mind when warranted.

At Kabuk, we tend to have a few spectacular fights every few months or so. We yell, talk loudly over each other and vigorously defend our own views. Can these incidents be stressful and emotional? Yes, but I think we are better off for them. These "incidents" typically blow over in a day. We fight things out, get everything on the table, and miraculously come-up with some middle ground (not right away of course... sometimes we need some downtime in between to let things sink in). Luckily, the three of us handle arguments in a fairly similar way. That is, we can get really angry, but we don't take anything personally and we don't hold grudges (and that's a very good thing).

Sadly, my arguments against us all taking a sparring class for team-building have so far been ignored.

Is it ok to get mad at your co-workers and think that they are a bit (or a lot crazy)? Perfectly normal! The way that we are set up at Kabuk, two of us are extremely technically/functionally oriented, and the third design/user-experience obsessed. Do we sometimes want to strangle him when he is pushing all this pedantic formatting, and user messaging talk in the middle of a big release when - to be completely honest - all we are really concerned about is fixing functional issues? No comment. Does his input make Kabuk a better product for users? 100% - having a less technical co-founder helps us uncover usability issues that wouldn't occur to us in a million years. Striking the right balance between form and functionality is a big deal!

Every start-up handles these issues differently. What do YOU do when your co-founders and you disagree? How do you "fight" or not?

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