Deena Burgess
Law Offices of Deena Burgess - Managing PartnerNew York,
http://www.ebusinesslawgroup.com
Deena's Blog
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Twitter is a fantastic business tool. It's helped me grow my business and allowed (similar to this blog) for my followers to get to know me a little. In case you're not following me, my legal twitter handle is DeenaEsq.
In case you haven't realized it, I'm very different from most lawyers. I'm very comfortable with the latest technology. As such, I'm often asked to help colleagues to get started.
The question I get asked most is why anyone would bother with Twitter. For lawyers, it's not an intuitive step.
The reason that Twitter is valuable to me is that lawyers are generally intimidating to most small business owners. Having people get to know me as a person makes me far less intimidating to approach when they need a lawyer to talk to.
Twitter is a very accessible medium for companies. It's easy to use, easy to start and has a very shallow learning curve.
Everyone thinks that they can just jump right on and start tweeting their business. But it's not quite that [...]
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Hey, the only way we learn is by making mistakes. Ok, well, that's not exactly true. You CAN learn by following someone's example that already made the mistake, but if you're anything like me, you never do that...
Do I get stuff wrong?
Heck, yes. All the darn time.
You think I'm smart? I'm not. I've just made a TON of mistakes... LOL! And I'm still making them.
I'm so darn stubborn that I even make mistakes that I would advise my clients not to make. Like the mistake that I made this week.
I advise people about how to choose the right lawer. I even wrote a whole blog post on the topic.
So, what did I do when I wanted to find a lawyer to handle the real estate closing for the sale of my apartment? Did I follow my own advice?
Do you really have to ask?
Of course not.
I let my husband ask a friend for a recommendation and went forward without doing any additional checking. Sometimes, I'm really dumb.
We were supposed to close Monday. But no. We all got th [...]
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Normally, I wouldn't do this (and I apologize to those of you who read my legal blog on a regular basis, since I just posted this there too). But it's too important to all of you for me not to repeat it here.
Just When You Thought That You Were Compliant With Privacy Law
by Deena Burgess, Esq.
You're a responsible business owner. I know that you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't have stopped to read this blog post.
You know that you have to follow certain privacy laws regarding the information that you collect on your site. You've even read my blog post on why you shouldn't use free privacy policies and hired a great lawyer to write them for you.
You're all done, right?
Sadly, no.
The law is an ever changing set of requirements. And there's just been another change that you should be aware of.
As of September 12, 2009, a new privacy law in the State of Maine will go into effect about the requirements for collecting and using information from minors in the State [...]
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I don't always participate in conversations that take place here on STS, but I watch what seems like most of them (though I'm sure that's not true).
I see a lot of discussion of Facebook for business and Twitter. Don't get me wrong, I use them both and I enjoy them (well, Twitter more than Facebook, but still...).
I think that LinkedIn gets overlooked in the equation, particularly for people who are running service based businesses.
Hey, I get it. You can't be everywhere. Limited amount of time...You've got to run your business...Blah, blah, blah....
Trust me, I've got the same problem.
But LinkedIn has been an invaluable tool for my business. Here's why...
As a lawyer, I'm not able to disclose the identity of my clients until it becomes public record. Period. I get asked for references or representative clients all the time. And I can't give them any.
So, how do people who want to hire me know if I'm any good?
I'll tell you how.
I have some great clients [...]
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Whoever said it was right. It's not what you know, it's who you know.
No, really. It is.
When I was in my 20's, I remember distinctly thinking that being smart should be enough to get me where I want to go. I work hard, I'm a pretty smart cookie... (If I do say so myself).
When my dad would say that he knew a guy who knew a guy... (you get the idea), I'd look at him like he'd lost his mind and tell him that I appreciated the offer but that I wanted to do it on my own.
I don't have a lot of friends and I've never been particularly "popular". I'm a very "tell it like it is" person and that tends to rub people the wrong way. It's not a good way to be when you need to network with people.
So, I didn't have a network. In fact, I avoided networking like the plague when I was an attorney in a firm.
And I didn't really have to. When you work in a firm, you can coast on being a good worker.
It was part of what worried me most about launching my own firm was going out and [...]
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Today isn't the day I was born. That's in February (in case anyone's interested).
Today is the one year anniversary of me launching my law firm. Hooray!!! On July 7, 2008, I launched my website and started marketing my firm.
That's kind of like my birthday. I mean, I am my firm. (Hmm, I wonder if that means that I should ask my husband whether I should expect presents... Probably not... LOL!)
And it's been an unbelievable year. I owe a lot of that to you Savor ladies. Thank you so much!
Not only because many of you have become clients and friends, but also because of the many things you've helped me learn along the way.
In honor of my firm's anniversary, I've decided to donate 5% of my profits from July to a great cause, the Children's Aid Society.
For anyone who would like to join me in supporting this great charity, you can either hire me in July (LOL!!!) or you can click on the form on the front page of my site and donate money to this great charity. At t [...]
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I went to a NYC Entrepreneurs event/conference last week mostly because I thought it might be a good place to find business. That turned out not to be the case.
Oh well, you win some, you lose some.
The event wasn't a total loss for me though. I got to hear a very interesting speaker named Simon Sinek. He has a book coming out in October called "Start with Why".
He talked about why companies like Apple Computers, Harley Davidson and Southwest Airlines have such loyal customers. They buy them even when their products are more expensive and not necessarily better than the competition.
He said that there are three elements to a business (which he represented as concentric circles), what you do, how you do it and why you do it.
Most companies start with the what. What do you do? You sell makeup or jewelry or widgets. You offer legal or consulting or public relations services.
The how is easy. It's how you deliver the product or service that you offer.
Why is [...]
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When you're a service business, all you have is your reputation. And part of the way that you gain a good reputation is your level of professionalism.
You would think that this would be common sense to most service businesses. But it's apparently not. Not even to lawyers.
(Then again, the problem with common sense in general is that it's apparently not all that common.)
Let me tell you a story about what happened with me last week...
I've been working on wrapping up and dissolving a company for a client where there was no operating agreement (ARGH!) and the parties are no longer on good terms.
It's been an arduous process, to put it mildly.
And to throw another wrench into the mix, the opposing party left the country for several months to someplace where access to fax machines and the internet is sporadic at best. The other attorney assured me that he would have power of attorney to sign on her behalf and asked me if I wanted a copy. I said that I did. You can see [...]
