 the think tech Hawaii's law across the sea program. Today we're going to go across the sea to the mainland and then inland across the Rocky Mountains to Denver, Colorado to talk with Miranda Vieira. We're going to talk to her about how law firms can thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic. Welcome, Miranda. How are you? Thank you for having me here today, Mark. I'm wonderful. And you're in Denver now and that's a few hours difference from us. Yeah. What time is it there? So it's 5 p.m. there. It's happy hour and it's not me. Okay. All right. So tell us, Miranda, what do you do as a legal marketing consultant? What is that entail? How long have you been doing it? And give us a general idea of what that is before we get into the details of thriving in COVID-19 pandemic. Great. So I'm the owner of Denver Legal Marketing. I've been in Colorado law for a little over 20 years this year, which is kind of rough to say out loud, but I opened Denver Legal Marketing about four years ago to focus on solo and small law firms. Their marketing health, their business development health give them some extra consulting support. So this, my strategies are based on decades of experience with lawyers in business to business and also business to consumer practice areas. I run a remote team from my home in Colorado and, yeah, full service marketing firm. And your clients generally are, it sounds like small and medium sized law firms and most of them in Colorado are, I mean, can you also advise lawyers outside the state of Colorado or do you do that? Absolutely. So my intention when I started Denver Legal Marketing was to work with solos and smalls here in the metro area, but I quickly found out that there are lawyers with the same exact problem all over our country. And so my client base is about 60 lawyers here in Colorado and their practices touch six different states. So they either have offices in other areas or are licensed in other areas. And a lot of this is beyond just Colorado. It's just how law firms and lawyers can market their services. So yes, absolutely. I do work with lawyers from all over the country and also have been contacted by lawyers in Israel. I mean, this is a relationship based business and it works similarly everywhere. Right. Okay. So things have changed quite recently and we're dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and what have you been doing? How have you been dealing with it? What have you found that law firms are confronting at this time with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic? And what have you been advising generally at this point? Yeah. So part one of your question, I have been in the house for about, I don't know, 30 days, maybe 40 days, running my business with my two small kids. And so when I speak to lawyers by phone, by Zoom call through Microsoft Teams, by text message, by email, we're all usually pretty much in the same boat. Everybody is in quarantine conditions and trying to run their business from their home. And oftentimes our kids are there too. So the unique challenges that I have seen lawyers push through and initially it was, how do I run a law firm on a remote basis? And now what I'm starting to see at least this week is what should business development and marketing look like from home. So now after the initial kind of pressure of how to pivot from a law firm environment to a home-based office environment has kind of worked out. Now they're wondering how do we pivot on the other strategies? Okay. And so you've seen kind of the change in the practice of law by people going to their homes and having to practice out of that. And generally speaking, I mean, how are lawyers reacting to this? And how are they feeling? What do you sense or what do you get from your contacts with lawyers? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think I've been really impressed by the lawyers that I work with on how they have reacted to this crisis. I think this is a time when our country needs leadership. And a lot of people look to the lawyers in their lives as leaders. And I have seen the lawyers in my community and in other communities really rise to that challenge, helping people understand their rights right now, understanding what their obligations are, understanding how to interpret the different loans and other types of assistance that are coming out kind of in real time. So lawyers have a unique role right now of leadership, specifically thought leadership, on how people should be acting and reacting in the times of this crisis. So I'm pretty proud of the lawyers that I know and seeing them kind of rise to the challenge with regard to their questions of kind of what's next. I am hearing a little bit of nervousness, I guess. Lawyers usually bill about one to two months behind. So they have cash reserves right now. And in the spring, the average law firm usually keeps about two to three months of cash reserves in general. So they'll probably be good through about summer. But where I'm really concentrating with my law firms is let's keep that business development pipeline moving. And so everyone is good in August and September and November. Let's just kind of keep the conversations moving with current clients. How do we meet potential clients, things like that. So their law firms stay financially healthy during this COVID-19 crisis. Okay, so that's kind of a general overview. And I have several Hawaii lawyers have sent in some questions. And I'd kind of like to specific questions about specific things. So I'd like to kind of start going through those if that's okay. Absolutely. And let's start with Attorney Tred Eierly who sent in this question. Basically, how to address clients who will be unable or unwilling to pay their bills or at least full bills. And Tred is an attorney with Damon Key, Leon, Cupjack, Hastrick, Lafferra. Okay. So this is a question that actually has come up before and has been presented to me as a marketing consultant. And so what I would assure your colleague is that lawyers have every right to be paid just the same as any other professional services vendor. And what I have been suggesting is rather than preemptively giving everybody just a discount or payment options or something like that, I would wait for your network, your community, your client base to reach out to you and say, I'm having trouble with these bills or wait until they are a week or so behind. And then you reach out to them and then individually address what sort of flexibility your law firm can have with regards to payments. So maybe you will accept credit card payments on an automatic draft of such amount per month. Maybe you are going to start moving your law firm toward payment tiers rather than an hourly commitment. So whatever sort of flexibility that your law firm is willing to do, I would suggest using this as really an opportunity to connect with your clients, get on their level and figure out how you can still maintain a relationship with them and still be paid for the services that you've provided. Okay. Maintain the relationship. Yeah. Attorney Dick Mosier of the Denton's law firm asks, any suggestions for best use of social media conversations? It seems to be an entirely different communications process. What are your thoughts? So I agree. He has really called out a big issue that everyone's dealing with right now because these, I assume he's talking rather than just social media calls, just video conferencing. This stuff can be a big mess if you've got people that aren't used to handling these types of remote meetings. And so what I would suggest is these run similarly to how your in-person meetings would. So keep them professional. I would suggest an agenda. I would suggest a hard start time, maybe a break period put into an hour, and then a hard end time. I would also suggest opening up all of your Zoom meetings or Microsoft team meetings with ground rules. So in this call, we will have these two presenters. Everyone else needs to put their microphones on mute or ask your questions in this amount of time that's provided for at the end of each segment, or maybe ask your questions in the chat box and we'll address them then. So really just kind of laying out what the expected behavior for these Zoom calls is probably the easiest way to control the chaos. So yeah, be prepared is what I hear you saying. Get prepared and send it out. Let people know what to expect. So the expectations are there. That's a really good, I like that. That's a good suggestion. Okay, one more question before our break. Hawaii Law School Dean Emeritus Lawrence Foster asks, you know, law offices deal with great deal of documents. Some need to be notarized. You know, what do we do? Can we notarize without the client being in front of my notary? I mean, how do you deal with that? Yeah, this is a question we've been dealing with out here in Colorado, pretty much in real time, and each state is different. But I did check on what's allowed in Hawaii. And it does look like your governor recently passed some sort of initiative that allows for audio and visual tools like Zoom to be used. But it looks like the person signing the document has to be in Hawaii, probably the notary has to be in Hawaii. But they have had a little bit of flexibility when it comes to notarizing documents, especially, you know, documents that require wet signatures like wills and things like that. So I would assume that any law firm that requires documents to be signed is going to utilize technology right now, including, you know, DocuSign is a great software program that helps you figure out who is signed what, when they signed it, when they received it, and then figuring out maybe with your court recording firms or some other legal services vendor how you get that third party in the Zoom room on the Zoom call to make sure that documents are being properly notarized in this remote environment. You know, and that's good advice. In other words, check what the rules are because the rules have changed. The rules of this game have changed. And so I just like you checked what's going on in Hawaii. We got to do that ourselves. So okay, all right, I get it. That's very good. We have some more questions, but we're going to take a one minute break right now, Miranda, and we'll get back in one minute after the break and start on questions again. Thank you. Hello, I'm Lillian Cumick, host of Lillian's Vegan World, the show where we talk about veganism and the plant-based diet located in Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm a vegan chef and cooking instructor, and I have lots of information to share with you about how awesome this plant-based diet is. So do tune in every second Thursday from 1pm. Aloha. Aloha and welcome back. We are with Miranda Vieira, a legal marketing consultant in Denver where I understand you've had some snow recently. Miranda, is that right? Yeah, spring is our worst season for this. Okay. Well, I'd like to resume some of the questions. Next question we have from University of Hawaii law professor Connie Chang and her question, really good questions, are there any specialty areas of legal practice that seem to be affected more or less by the COVID-19 pandemic? And if so, what is your advice to pivot in these areas, one way or the other, and how can lawyers market in these areas without appearing to be too opportunistic, taking advantage of bad times? Yeah, so those are great questions. I think the first one, which practice areas are being affected a little bit more right now, it depends. So I am seeing major spikes in practice areas such as, you know, trust in estates, people are starting to shore up their wills because the future is a little bit uncertain right now. I'm seeing spikes in criminal defense right now just because there are issues related to small business loans and people that have a criminal past. There are also early release issues, given the COVID-19 presence in jails, family law, how to, you know, co-parent in, you know, a situation with two homes during this quarantine. On the business side, I'm seeing a lot of business lawyers really put out thought leadership right now to their clients and their community proactively. People have a lot of questions regarding contracts and, you know, enforceability of different aspects of contracts. And they also have questions regarding their business and eruption insurance coverage. So I have seen the majority of law practices actually stay steady right now. Again, people need their, they need their lawyers right now because things are kind of out of whack. And lawyers are usually able to guide them to a place of certainty and understanding what their requirements are under the law, what relief they might have. So people need their lawyers right now. So with regard to pivoting, I am thinking that lawyers that are marketing and kind of business development savvy aren't really looking at right now, but kind of looking at the COVID-19 crisis as a whole, almost as a five to six month period of time. And when it comes to pivoting, we start to talk about recession marketing. So even after maybe our daily lives get back to normal, I think people will be a little bit more concerned with how they spend their money. And that's going to include how they consume legal services. And so savvy law firms are looking at flexible payment arrangements and tiers, you know, tier three different tiers for their services through packages and things like that. So that's how people are pivoting. And then the final one was how not to seem opportunistic, which I agree with. I think we are in a place right now where a lot of people are are in economic pain. Some people have lost family members. Some people, I mean, yesterday, I wasn't able to spend the holiday with my grandparents. I think all of us have experienced loss and grief in the past, you know, six weeks or so that we are necessarily sharing with everybody. And I do think that lawyers and law firms looking to market right now need to be understanding of that. So what I would consider is rather than looking at the next couple of months as a marketing opportunity, I would really look at it as a way to push out your thought leadership. You can do that through writing, webinars. You can do it through hosting, you know, town halls, just kind of being a leader in your community and sharing things that you know. And if people have questions that are not in your practice area, I would encourage lawyers to become connectors. You probably know lawyers that practice in, you know, family law or an employment law or some other area that you don't, that maybe somebody in your network could really use their help. So I think marketing right now and business development looks different. Okay. And I hear you also saying what you kind of said at the beginning is that people need lawyers and you're not, you're, you know, do it, do help people. And so that's good. That's good. You know, people need help and lawyers can provide it. Attorney Dick Mosier, his next question, was basically, you know, within the office, how do we compensate for office interaction from walking around, going to lunch, water cooler conversations that we no longer have? Yeah. So I think this is a great, this is another great question. So, so here's the thing, we're all separate right now, but, but we are kind of connected, if that makes sense. We are finding connections with people by email, and we're finding connections with people through social media and text messaging and things like that. So that's really what I would tell you how to preserve those connections in your community, at your law firm, right now in the quarantine environment is, you might need to actually set it on the calendar of we're going to talk for 15 minutes every other day and just, and just have a team meeting or a powwow or something like that. I've seen unique things coming out of law firms of, you know, let's, let's see your pets, you know, and sometimes pets show up on the Zoom call or, you know, they'll have themed Zoom calls and things like that. So I think you can still have an authentic connection with the people that you work with. I think it's just going to have to be a little more deliberate than it normally would, you're not going to pass them in the hallway. And it might actually have more meaning because it is more deliberate. Okay. All right. Dean Foster's next question. Yeah. Again, kind of similar. Lawyers do a lot of physical networking, Rotary Club meetings, nonprofit boards, giving talks. How do you maintain those connections and still practice social distances? Yeah. So this is, this is an excellent question, because it really goes to the heart of what does business development look like for lawyers right now. And it is exactly what, what, what I've been describing. It is showing your thought leadership in a different way. And so you still can go to those Rotary Club meetings. You can attend their webinars. You can engage with their, their community members and share your thought leadership. You can attend board meetings. All of the ways that you have engaged with them in the past, it's just going to, it's going to have to be in a remote circumstance. But that being said, it's, it is easier to kind of not attend these things, because you, you feel like you won't have kind of the bang for your buck that you would in person. But I would actually encourage the opposite, attend more, because we have less interaction. And so we need to make more use of the time that we have in front of these people, just to remain relevant and remain top of mind, which is basically what you would be doing if you were in a room with them at a meeting or board meeting. So yeah, what I hear you saying too is just do it and do it, do a lot of it. Do a lot of it. Connie Chang has another question and it goes right to the heart. I mean, you know, you're, how much is all this going to cost? Yeah. How much is, how much does legal marketing servicing and really what you're doing is coaching? How does it, how much is it cost? So it depends. So my marketing, my marketing firm customizes everything that I do for each of my clients. I charge similar to a lawyer, I charge hourly, except I charge in 15 minute increments, which allows me to build in a little bit of client management, social media work and kind of bigger projects for, for marketing firms are usually charged on a flat fee. And I do that same thing as well as kind of web design. And you know, if you're looking for a branding website, those things are usually flat fees. But I think that Connie brings up an interesting point. And this is something that has slowly started to kind of come into my world of what if somebody needs just kind of an in the moment marketing, marketing strategy just for the COVID-19 process. And my guess is that would be, it would be probably about two to three hours worth of work. So not, not a ton of work. And also not a ton of detail because we're not talking long term, you know, goals and kind of, you know, long term goals of the lawyer and the law firm. So I think you could probably get away with under five or $600 for a short term marketing plan that will hit, hit, you know, digital marketing, social media marketing updates to your website. And then also how to stay relevant in your community through cause marketing or maybe some of the other options that you might have. Okay. So, so contact you and we've been broadcasting your contact information. You can give them some type of an estimate at that time too, I assume. Sure. Yeah. And, and okay, Dean Foster has one more question. Let's what do we have from Dean Foster? Okay. All right. Well, this is a good one too. I like this. Justice delayed is justice denied. Our state and federal courts are making in Hawaii are making heroic efforts to maintain some critical functions, but so much is on hold both in civil and criminal courts. What can we do? So I hear I love this question and here's why I think this is again an opportunity for lawyers to really show leadership. So some of the options that they might normally have of taking things to court a day in court, getting in front of the court, that's not there, but you still have ADR. You still have, you know, different forms of mediation for dispute resolution. So justice might not be able to be in front of the court system right now, but you probably can bring your client to some sort of agreeable resolution if you look into the ADR system. When it comes to criminal cases and kind of family law cases that might, you know, necessitate a judge, again, mediation, ADR can probably can probably be a great solution, you know, as well as just kind of create a problem solving what the other attorneys involved. So thank you. So look for options. Don't just give up. Try to find what you can do. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now we got we have one more question from Professor Connie Chang. I'd like to put that up. Okay. She read another article you recently wrote about law firm branding and using tokens. I kind of like this one, even though it's not dealing directly with COVID-19, but it talks about marketing. And she asked, you know, how do you keep your name in front of people? And then she asked, what are some of your favorite tokens? Yeah, I love that idea. So, you know, right now, mail, regular mail is one of the only ways that you can kind of exchange those swag items that promote your law firm. Maybe they have your law firm name. And so when you're looking at buying these things, my favorites always are the ones that are, they have utility. So, you know, the phone chargers that, you know, might be branded with the law firm name, but they actually work to charge multiple devices when I'm at the airport. I've seen law firms create pop sockets that have their contact information and even the types of cell phone. It's like where you can hold your credit cards and your license and things like that. I've seen high end clothing come out of law firms, you know, North Face type vests with the law firm name on it. I think the biggest thing is to not spend your money on junk. You want to make sure that people will actually use it and they won't just throw it away or give it to their kid when they get back from the conference. You want to make sure that it's of quality. This is an extension of your brand. And so keep marketing, I hear you saying, and looking for opportunities even at this time. If somebody wants to contact you, they can just get ahold of you in Denver. I think we put up your contact information. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, LinkedIn is probably one of the best ways to stay up to date on the thought leadership that I'm putting out. So, certainly find my LinkedIn profile. It's just my name, Miranda Vieira, and you can find all of the information that I'm putting out there on how lawyers can pivot on their marketing strategies right now. Okay. And just for our audience to let you know that we will hopefully, we got a lot more questions, but we're out of time. So we'll try to get at some of this on Miranda's LinkedIn and other published locations so that we can read it. And we'll try to get that out there soon. Absolutely. And thank you, Miranda. I appreciate your advice and nice to meet you. Nice to talk to you and hopefully we'll see you in Hawaii one day. I would love to lecture in Hawaii. Thank you so much, Mark. I appreciate it. All right. Aloha, everybody. Thank you very much.