I am trying to decide what to do next, there are a lot of things I could do, but I cannot do all of the things at once. I would appreciate some feedback from a small group of enthusiastic users (so real life people) on what I should do next, rather than deciding in my head what everyone wants and sinking significant time into the wrong thing.
Summary
Where did this start?
I started this Facebook group, NSW Estate Lawyers, because I deeply appreciate the collegiality of our profession and I saw a need for a place to discuss the various form over substance issues that we encounter in relation to Probate and Estate Administration. I actually created the group before the online Probate was launched, the fact that it was valuable for that was honestly good luck not good planning.
I started preparing CPDs way back when I was heavily involved in Penrith Lady Lawyers because I have always enjoyed teaching, I even taught accounting for six months. I hate the assessments and the exams though, even when you are on the “other side”. I particularly enjoy teaching with lawyers because our profession has so much depth and knowledge, it allows for a more collegiate approach, what educators would call “adult learning theory”.
While I enjoy running the CPDs as I do now, I have to admit it is incredibly difficult to do the collegiality when it is me speaking for an hour in a Webinar. I would love to eventually shift to something like a group dynamic, or going back to face to face meetings (though distance makes this hard).
A decision
I want to take another step, to create another offering in relation to Janis Consults, and there are a few things I could do. I am aware that a number of solicitors have paid for multiple events and seem to get value from what I am doing, and I was wanting to speak to them about what they value before I decide how to move forward.
I consider that my strengths are primarily -
Taking a pragmatic approach to things - in relation to documents I have always deeply loved improving precedents and processes, and collecting and measuring relevant data. I believe strongly that improving processes and precedents in your law firm is an important step for both the clients and the lawyers working within the system.
Communicating with and teaching lawyers with an emphasis on these more pragmatic approaches to things, looking at situations that we are actually facing in our practices, with our real life clients, and as a result improving the way that we communicate with and teach our clients.
I am particularly experienced in relation to Estates and Estate Planning, as well as the way that they interact with other areas of law due to my suburban and therefore more generalist beginnings (the first 15 years) in the law.
I am also experienced and qualified in the business side of running a law firm (and I do have a Bachelor of Accounting to back up the practical learning) but I am not particularly interested in anything that looks like being a business coach.
While I am certainly capable of providing a deep dive into case law or technical points, I think there are a lot of offerings in this realm. I am not particularly interested in competing with an existing platform, or a provider who is already doing a great job. I am also far more passionate about the practical application of the law, for instance I understand the law around elder abuse, but how do I get the client sitting across the desk from me to make better decisions to protect themselves down the track?
The way I see it moving forward I could do a few things, but not all of the things all at once. I would love some feedback from those who seem to value my time and my current offerings on what they would find valuable, that is, what I should do next. The options as I see it are -
Creating a set of precedents focused on Powers of Attorney and Appointments of Enduring Guardians in New South Wales. This would include things like slides and documents for the initial consultation, letters of advice, homework or intake sheets to give to the clients, an ideal workflow document that is easily changed, tasks lists that could be uploaded into some sort of free program like Asana, coding the precedents up for legal software programs like Clio, and creating a Letter of Wishes precedent that only deals with retirement, aged care and capacity concerns; or
Creating a set of precedents focused on Estates. While we don’t need the Court documents as precedents any more, there are plenty of other steps that we take repetitively in NSW in relation to Probate, Letters of Administration and Estate Administration. I could create precedents around those areas of work, not unlike the list of suggested precedents in point 1 above;
More Webinars, basically more of the same except with more topics, maybe weekly or fortnightly a new topic, with the ability to buy past papers in Webinar and Pod Cast format. I would also build out a course bundle (so everything on the topic of Powers of Attorney, with checklists and worksheets for the solicitor to go through as they are doing the course to apply it to their own practice).
A membership (which feels unwise, cause everyone hates subscriptions at the moment) that allows for members to attend any online trainings I run for free. There would be an undertaking from me about how many publicly available trainings a month I would do (probably two, at least one being a new topic, at least one re-running a previous topic), as well as semi regular (fortnightly or monthly?) closed meetings for members of the group where we would cover more pragmatic topics.
One example would be sharing what we have been doing that month in relation to marketing, or intake with clients, or business networking, and what has been working. Think of this less like business coaching and more like an interactive opportunity for us to talk to others about what is working, what has not worked, and get feedback on what to try next month. There would be a quick run sheet for everyone to fill out first so they have thought through the question in relation to their own business, then we would come together to discuss. There would also be inbuilt accountability, the meeting is coming up I should do that thing.
I could create a weekly podcast, just for the group, where I run through either a tranch of recent case law, or case law around a particular topic. I know we are all busy so having a audio only option might help some people to keep up to date.
We could touch base around the excel spreadsheets (that I will be creating for an upcoming event) used to measure our Estate and Estate Planning matters. Are you using them, what are you finding useful? Could we (or could I) build out a new automatic report that can be easily replicated by all of you to help you to better measure your success, or conversely issues within your own practice?
We could discuss our Letter of Wishes precedents, are clients completing them? What is working for others? What steps could we be taking to help the clients actually complete them and not simply become overwhelmed?
Are Estate clients updating their Wills, and getting accounting advice, or are they simply overwhelmed? How can we help them through that process, discussing some real life examples from our own practices.
Options
Why am I telling you all of this? Because I would honestly love your feedback. To be clear this is not a sales pitch, if you have been sent this unlisted page from my website it is because I want your feedback regardless of whether you end up using the service.
Secondly I want to get some honest feedback before I invest more time. Maybe your feedback is that you don’t like any of these ideas, or you have a completely different idea about how I should move forward. I would love to hear that too.
Lastly, however I choose to move forward at first I would only be offering it to a small group, while I get ongoing feedback on how to improve the offering. The initial group would therefore get an opportunity to create something more useful to them in their practices. These people aren’t just ideal client avatars, they will help me with the early setting of direction by giving real time feedback about what they want, and what they find useful. I am thinking the group would be limited to something like a dozen first users. Again, if you know this won’t be you, you don’t have the time or the cash flow that is fine. This is not a sales pitch, this is asking for feedback.