At last the votes are cast...and guess what, the sole practitioners didn't attend.  Well of course they couldn't, they're too busy dealing with business, firefighting, answering the phone, doing vat returns and all the other small but necessary things that drains their time and reduce their ability to provide a better service.

There is a better way and it's coming soon.

If you are a sole practitioner or a lawyer wanting to start on your own, believe it or not, this is probably the best time in history to do it.  And in these pages over the coming month I will be showing you why and how.


If you've not read the article, it's here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7005416.ece

What would you do if you were the Chancellor and you'd just announced that halving the UK's annual budget deficit was "non-negotiable"?
There are a few things I think we'd all get sorted in a hurry. We'd cap all public sector salaries at, say, £175,000. We'd cut all benefits to the middle classes. We'd try and make the tax system flatter and less complicated (how hard can it be?).

And we'd ban management consultants.

But then what? Here's an idea. How about we increase the minimum wage by 30% or so, making one hour of basic work worth £7.50 and a year's work on the minimum wage (assuming a 40 hour week and four weeks paid holiday) worth £15,600, rather than the current £11,856.

http://www.moneyweek.com/blog/its-time-to-raise-the-minimum-wage-00111.aspx

Entrepreneurs create companies. They create them for various reasons – to build up and sell, or to generate wealth for their families.

Eventually, if these companies survive, they’ll change hands. They’ll either end up with the next generation, or they’ll be sold into private hands, or they’ll go public.
 
At no point is the government directly involved (nor should it be involved) in that decision-making process. But once a company’s gone public, you have to accept that you can lose control of it. (For example if Cadbury’s had wanted to stay British, it should never have been listed. )

But life goes on. A successful economy creates companies, builds them up, then lets them go. And the important thing is that this entrepreneurial process is given an environment in which it can thrive.

That’s why it’s important to have a nice stable taxation system, and as little red tape standing in the way of business creation as possible.

That’s why a warning from the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) that new taxes and regulation will cost British firms £25.6bn over the next four years is such a worry.

The group wants a three-year moratorium on new employment laws in the UK, and a campaign for an EU-wide moratorium. Of course the BCC is always going to talk up the interests of its members, but given the government’s constant fiddling with the country’s tax laws it’s not hard to see their point.

And it’s an important one. If there’s one thing that can help the UK  economy get out of its debt-burdened holesand grow again, it's entrepreneurship.

And as a Lawyer, if you're considering setting up on your own, you will soon be able to take advantage of a new website that provides you will all you need to start your own law firm, from as little as £500 per month.

There will be more on this when I confirm the name of the site and the basis of their offer.

If you're familiar with the story, "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr. Spencer Johnson, you already know that when change happens, you either adapt or perish. If your cheese supply dries up, you have to go looking for new cheese.

The gist of the story is; change happens and the cheese keeps moving. And like the little mice in the story, you must change and adapt, if you want to keep ahead of the pack.

I could relate this story to the Law and the changes in the law, but I won't, instead I'll relate it to something else you ought to be doing to position yourself within the legal industry....your website presence.

Web 2.0 properties like social news and bookmarking sites are spidered quickly and often. So are blogs and any sites containing RSS feeds.

To those who say "social media marketing" is a fad or a buzzword, it's time to stop the denial and get over it. Sometimes things change and they're never the same again.

According to Dr. Spencer Johnston, "If you do not change, you can become extinct. Get out of your comfort zone and adapt to change sooner. Take control, rather than let things happen to you."

According to Forrester Research, "Stop the denial. Get over it, get on with it, figure it out. Or end up in the dustbin of history, along with sheet music publishers, cassette manufacturers, BETAMAX and now VHS"

So it's time to change and adapt your SEO strategies to include blogs, social media and bookmarking, or end up extinct.

Are you ready to change?