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About Last Night...

It happened at 2:33am.

I wasn't sure what was happening at first. Was it time to get up already?

BEEP.

Then silence. Must be nothing. Back to sleep.

BEEP.

Ugh. The fire alarm is out of batteries. AGAIN. Why does it always seem to run out of juice in the middle of the night?

Roll out of bed. Get head straight. Turn on the light. Grab one of the bar stools from the kitchen, and drag it over to the offending machine.

BEEP.

Climb up, pull it off the ceiling, and pull the battery. Back to bed.

The fire alarm is doing an important thing. It's working 24x7 for the health of my family. And I know you're supposed to test the damn thing by pressing the button every month, and change the batteries every six. I know this. I never do this. Instead, I wait and just get pissed off at 2:33 in the morning.

But I appreciate the little guy.

Got me thinking how many lawyers don't have a health meter for their business.

They don't have a smoke detector which tells them whether they're going to have new clients coming in next month, and the month after that.

You know, an early warning system.

You can live without one fine, yeah. But what happens when there's a fire? Or a slow smoldering, like the current economy that's making clients more scarce? Or the ever increasing pool of unemployed law school grads hanging shingles and nipping at our heels?

Are you going to wake up one day and realize you're not getting enough clients to cover the bills?

For many lawyers, discovering how to do marketing right is something that starts happening when it’s too late. When the building is already on fire.

Don’t let that be you.

Raj Jha