attorney-client

Here at Vickie Milazzo Institute we frequently mentor new CLNC^® graduates on creating their unique selling position (USP). Your USP communicates how your legal nurse consulting experience, nursing experience, education and leadership in nursing can specifically benefit the attorney-client with his medical-related cases. In essence, you are translating your experience into a benefit for the attorney. USP is not about you and the CLNC^® services that you provide. It is about how you translate you and your CLNC^® services into the mind of the attorney-prospect.

The important word in USP is “unique.” What can you claim that another registered nurse cannot? The most common mistake I see is including a generic quality or characteristic that any legal nurse consultant can claim such as, “I’m organized and very analytical.” Who among us would say we’re not organized and analytical? If you want to stress your analytical skills, is there a specific experience that separates you from other RNs? Here’s an example:

“Five years of experience reviewing medical records as a risk manager in a variety of specialties plus my CLNC^® Certification qualifies me to quickly and cost-effectively review cases in any medical and nursing specialty. I can save you time and money by screening cases before you pay to send them to expensive medical experts.”

A second common mistake I see is legal nurse consultants stating expertise and credentials without a benefit statement such as, “I have 10 years of experience.” The attorney might not instantly understand all the benefits these 10 years of experience offer. Here’s an example of adding a benefit statement to your experience:

“I have 10 years of emergency experience. Having worked inside emergency departments, I can share details of how emergency services are provided that you will never find in an emergency medicine textbook. This will reduce the time you’ll have to spend with expensive medical experts.”

A third mistake I see is focusing on the CLNC^® services you provide such as screening cases and analyzing causation issues. At some stage you will want to emphasize CLNC^® services you provide, but they are not a USP. CLNC^® services are common to all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. Your USP can, however, qualify you to deliver a CLNC^® service in a very unique, more qualified or more specific way. Here’s an example:

“My five years of experience in cardiology qualifies me to identify plaintiffs who have a pre-existing risk for heart attack and stroke in the defense of your Vioxx^® cases.”

Put your USP to work for your CLNC^® business with your attorney-prospects and remember to keep it unique.

Success Is Inside!

The other day Tom and I went to purchase a new mattress. We thought it was time for a change and that a rainy afternoon was a good time to start looking. We’d already done our homework so we knew what we wanted. The first store we went into, the sole salesperson reluctantly left his seat at the counter only after we struggled in from the rain, shook off and folded our umbrellas. It was still two hours before closing according to the sign on the door, so I wondered if he figured we weren’t serious shoppers, although who else would be out in a hard rain? He answered our questions, let us roam about the store unattended and didn’t really try to sell us anything.

We left and drove about three blocks to the next store. Even before we had the umbrellas wrapped up a young salesperson named Tiffany walked up and introduced herself. She asked what we were looking for and patiently heard us out. After helping us with the mattress set, she inquired about other products we might be interested in as well as any concerns we might have. She complimented us on our choice, told us why it was different from similar sets and spent a lot of time with us without exerting any pressure tactics.

She was so good that before we left the store, we’d not only laid on almost every mattress they had, we’d also tried out all their recliners and added one of those to our growing list. I had to draw the line when I heard her telling Tom that they made a matching cup and snack holder for the recliner. When we made our final purchase she checked the store’s inventory and told us that while the recliner could be delivered the next day it would be a week before she could arrange delivery of the mattress set. She offered to send over the floor model along with a complimentary set of sheets to let us sleep on it as a test until ours could be delivered. We walked out of the store the proud new owners of not only a mattress but also a new recliner, a reading lamp and some other accessories, a not inconsiderable sale for a rainy afternoon.

On our scheduled delivery date, Tiffany arrived at our house just after the delivery truck. She supervised the load-in and helped set up everything. After the delivery crew left Tiffany stayed to orient us to everything and to go over our invoice to show us what had been delivered and what was still outstanding. The next day she called to see how we’d slept and if we had any questions or needed any adjustments. She also updated us on the delivery date for our mattress.

I was struck not just by how good her service was, but by how far she went above what I would have considered normal or even great customer service. How often do you walk into a store and have to struggle to capture the attention of a salesperson or even pry them off their cell phone to work with you? Here was a woman who not only took charge of the sale from the minute we walked in the store, but did everything she could to make our experience a memorable one.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, do you do the same for your attorney-clients and prospects?

• Do you offer a seamless experience from the time you meet them, up to and after you deliver your work product?
• Do you offer additional CLNC^® services that will benefit the case?
• Do you assess whether you can provide something more (such as articles on the topic) to the attorney right away, and before you deliver your final work product?
• Have you followed up to see if the attorney-client has all the information that she needs and to answer any questions she has after reading your legal nurse consulting work product?

Next time you find yourself working with an attorney-client or -prospect, ask yourself whether or not you’re delivering “Tiffany-quality” service.

Congratulations to Stephanie Crawford, RN, BSN, CLNC for successfully using videoconferencing with her attorney-clients. She shared with me, “Even though I have a fondness for settling down with my records, a mug of coffee and wearing sweatpants… I wore my black suit for my first videoconference. It was a milestone accomplishment to step up to the big league lawyers and meet this attorney via webcam.”

Here are some tips for doing your own legal nurse consulting videoconferences with attorney-clients.

• First of all, to videoconference successfully, you’ll need to have a webcam. Make sure the webcam you use has a high-quality picture with a good microphone built-in. Prices are pretty low so this might be a good time to buy a new webcam. If you’re stuck on using an older, microphone-less webcam, you can purchase a separate microphone. Avoid the headset/boom-mike look unless you really want to look like a telephone operator or someone from NASA. Many Apple laptops come with a built-in camera and microphone so you won’t need to buy any additional gear to start videoconferencing.
• Be sure your hardware – that means your computer, Internet connection and especially your webcam – are all in working condition. Then check that the volume and picture settings are correct. My personal webcam has a motion detector that can track movements in a limited area (people on the other end of the videoconference said the constant motion made them queasy). It will also move to pick up anyone who walks into view of the webcam. I find this to be distracting and have disabled it. Now the picture is stable.
• Be sure that both you and the attorney(s) are using compatible software. Skype is an easy to use, and free, program that allows videoconferencing over just about any Internet connection. It’s fairly intuitive when it comes to setting up and connecting with other Skype users. There are other programs out there that you can research using Google.
• Dress professionally and be dressed from head-to-toe. One of Tom’s treasured Dilbert cartoons shows an unshaven, unshowered Dilbert videoconferencing while wearing a bathrobe. He’s holding a Dilbert finger-puppet in front of the camera. In reality you can’t predict whether you’ll be standing up, retrieving a legal nurse consulting document or doing something else that may expose more of you to the videoconference than you expected. You don’t want to forget and accidentally show your attorney-client that you’ve got on Sponge Bob pajama bottoms under your suit jacket. You may walk through the webcam’s range too so dump the fuzzy pink slippers (they’re a fire hazard anyway). The newer webcams can pick up and broadcast an amazing amount of detail with complete clarity so check your teeth for broccoli before you fire up the conference.
• Clear your background and clean up your legal nurse consulting office. Whatever is shown in the background of your webcam’s picture reinforces your image as a professional. You may need to temporarily move your computer to a different room and even shuffle some furniture around.
• Cut down on possible distractions. Move your cell phone and land-line telephone handsets to another room (to avoid ringing) and consider putting a sign on your doorbell asking visitors to knock. If you have your email program running in the background be sure to silence any sounds that indicate the arrival of new email.
• Send any visuals in advance. If you’re going to be showing exhibits, demonstrative evidence or your CLNC^® work product to the attorney, remember that these may be difficult to see over a webcam. Consider sending them before hand in .pdf format (so your attorney-client can easily open them without worrying about document format compatibilities).
• Prepare a list of bullet-points or write out a script you wish to follow during the videoconference. Keep it handy and even consider posting it behind your webcam so that you can see it without looking away from the camera.
• Address the webcam, not the picture of the attorney on your screen, otherwise you’ll appear to be looking down.
• Practice videoconferencing with other Certified Legal Nurse Consultants and ask for their feedback before you take it to the big time with your attorney-clients. You may need to learn to sit up straight, address the camera directly and avoid unnecessary movements. Think of it as good training for your first expert witness experience.

Finally, remember to have fun. Be yourself and let your personality come through. Videoconferencing can add another dimension to your legal nurse consulting business if you let it and, if you’re prepared and ready for it.

Success Is Inside!

This past Sunday Tom and I visited the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and their special exhibition on Arts of Ancient Vietnam. We’d already seen many of these rare treasures in the National Museum of Vietnamese History in Hanoi and the Museum of Cham Culture in Da Nang. The museum was filled with holiday spirit.

I love the holiday season and call me strange, but it’s not just the decorations and everybody’s good moods, I even like holiday traveling. I think what I like is the organized chaos of holiday travel. You find disparate groups of people all moving in their own holiday migrations across a state, across the country and sometimes, just across the airport. The lines at the airline check-in counters are fairly well organized, but once you pass the TSA security lines, the real chaos ensues. Some travelers are organized and move with intention, some are not and move like it’s their first time in an airport. I like to think of Tom and myself as travel pros, creating our own choreography as we move through the crowds of travelers.

Seeing the Vietnamese exhibit brought me back to an experience I had while stuck on a curb in Saigon (I know it’s Ho Chi Minh City but nobody calls it that). My objective, a restaurant where my husband and my lunch awaited me, stood on the opposite side of the street. I could see the food, smell it and, if you know me, you know I had built up quite an appetite.

Stranded in the Chaos

The only barrier between me and my lunch was crossing the street. Now, this sounds like a simple task, but at noon in Saigon, my objective might as well have been the far side of the moon. The road was crammed with motor scooters (called “motos”), bicycles, motorcycles, cyclos (pedaled rickshaws), cars, trucks and buses. The fewer wheels a contraption had, the more passengers it seemed to carry. I saw a family of 5 riding a Honda scooter – sans helmets, of course.

Even the center lines contributed to the confusion. In Saigon, rather than dividing the traffic into two lanes, each moving in opposite directions, the yellow markers apparently serve only to indicate that you are on a paved road. I watched as people passed, stopped, turned around and crisscrossed the center lines with utter abandon.

Traffic flowed both ways in the same lane, more traffic merged from the side streets, and people pushed their motos off the curbs into the flow at odd angles. At any given moment traffic bore down on me from as many as 6-8 directions, front, back, sides and all angles – everywhere, it seemed, except from above. To me it was a scene of incredible chaos.

The traffic lights compounded my problem. In Saigon they serve only an advisory purpose. Even when the light turned red, traffic continued to flow, as drivers blatantly ignored the red light! The lanes of traffic impatiently waiting at the green light would edge forward into the traffic that was ignoring the red light. At some point traffic trying to move with the green light would build up enough momentum (and vehicles) to stop the traffic running the red light. Traffic would then flow correctly until the light changed, and the whole process started again.

Dancing Through the Chaos

Under this onslaught, the flashing green “walk” sign over the crosswalk taunted me from the far side of the street. I was ready to look for something to eat on my side of the street when an older Vietnamese gentleman took my arm.

In English he kindly said, “Crossing the street is not a problem, but a dance.” With that, we stepped off the curb and entered the maelstrom together.

My heart pounded as we walked slowly across the street. Instead of greeting us with blaring horns, irate shouts and screeching brakes, the drivers saw us and adjusted to us. As long as we made no sudden movements (like diving for the curb or running screaming from the street), we were fine. I felt like we were swimming through a school of fish. The tempest flowed smoothly around us and before I knew it we had reached the other side.

I thanked my benefactor and went on to lunch. Later that day I taught the same technique to my husband and friends – at one point crossing a busy boulevard with an entourage of eight people strung out like a Broadway chorus line.

Later I thought about how the traffic in Saigon is a metaphor for your legal nurse consulting business. There is a sort of graceful chaos, everyone going in their own direction, some traveling with traffic, some across it and some against it. Buses and trucks barrel through the streets, stopping for no one. Certainly collisions and accidents happen, but for the most part the system works. People reach their destinations and life goes on. And the best way to survive is not to struggle against the flow, but to approach it like a dance.

Invitation to the Dance

Do you dance through your life, your CLNC^® business and the surrounding chaos? Or do you struggle against it, exhausting yourself, causing collisions with others and keeping yourself from reaching your chosen destination?

On any given day, each of us must adapt to life and pass through it gracefully. Occasionally things are going well, then out of the blue a big truck bears down on us, forcing us to stop or change directions. How we deal with such routine chaos as Certified Legal Nurse Consultants determines whether we prosper or fail.

In your CLNC^® business, you have attorney-clients, subcontractors, vendors, obstacles and challenges that appear in the road in front of you. You have many choices. Tell me – do you collide with them head on, turn down a side street, take a detour, avoid them altogether or simply flow with them? How well you adjust your dance to this chaos controls your future success as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant.

You can adjust to the chaos and dance through it gracefully, or you can allow it to stop you or force you into costly detours. The choice is yours.

In Saigon, I chose to cross the street with my new-found guide and enjoyed the reward of a wonderful lunch. Then I plunged back into the chaos, feeling a lot more comfortable with it all. Every day in my business I face the traffic, dance with it to the best of my ability and hope to enjoy continued success. You can do the same for your CLNC^® business if you cultivate the grace to flow with chaos.

Success Is Inside!

One of the most famous paintings in history, DaVinci’s Last Supper, is about 13 well-known people sitting around a table sharing bread and wine. From the beginning of mankind people have used food as a way of bonding. The tradition of “breaking bread” goes back to before knives were present at the table (probably before manners too). Bread was considered essential to life and it was the ultimate act of sociality to break or share bread with another party – friend, stranger or foe.

Today, all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants expect and enjoy dining with family and friends and probably take the act for granted (unless they’re the one stuck with the dishes). Even breaking bread (although in some hospital cafeterias, it’s so hard you may not be able to break it) with our nursing colleagues is part of our day, even if a hurried one. Certified Legal Nurse Consultants understand that the act of dining with attorney-clients and attorney-prospects is a way to create and strengthen bonds. I routinely dine with the CLNC^® Mentors, vendors and attorney-clients and look forward to it. As Tom said after one dinner with an old attorney-client, “I haven’t laughed so well or eaten so hard in a long time.” (Just like Tom to mix metaphors and still make some sense.) I’ve had some great times with business associates and while there’s no better way to “let down our hair” and informally talk the business of business than dining with an important client (especially with a good bottle of red wine in the mix), it’s important to remember that there are rules of business etiquette that must be followed.

1. Dress the Part

Always dress appropriately for the occasion – business attire for a business lunch, casual attire for a casual lunch such as an outdoor picnic you are invited to. For an event calling for cocktail dress, keep it professional. If an attorney remembers what you wore to a party or a meeting, you probably wore the wrong thing. We once had an employee’s date show up at a company function wearing a Marlon Brando “Streetcar Named Desire” style white T-shirt that was totally inappropriate for the situation. He stuck out, but not in a positive way.

2. Arrive Early

Timing is everything – show up 5-10 minutes early. Speak with the maitre’d, server or person behind the counter and explain that it’s a business meal and the bill should be presented to you. If the server asks for your order first, you can respond by saying, “please take my guest’s order first.” This confirms with your guest that you are responsible for the tab and reminds the server that you should receive the bill. Do not take a seat at the table until the attorney(s) has arrived (of course a female Certified Legal Nurse Consultant in the bar by herself may present its own issues). While you’re waiting, use your notepad to look busy.

3. Act the Part

Attorneys are people, and people are attracted to individuals who are happy, positive and excited. They love doing business with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who bring these natural traits to the table. Smile and look happy even before the attorney arrives.

4. Focus on What Counts

The meal is all about the attorney, not the menu. Decide on your meal choice quickly or even in advance. Give your attorney-client the space and ample time to choose.

5. Go Along to Get Along

Match the attorney. If the attorney chooses an appetizer, go ahead and choose one too, if they don’t you shouldn’t either. Meals are a bonding experience. If you choose a light salad with no dressing while the attorney is chowing down on a huge bone-in rib eye steak or a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, you’ve lost the opportunity to bond over the experience.

I was eating spaghetti and meatballs with two favorite attorney-clients of mine. They had sauce on their ties and I had sauce on my sleeves. We looked like we’d been eating spaghetti without utensils and this experience together became not only a source of laughter, but also a moment of unity – we were the same after all. When we get together, it still comes up and we all have a good laugh, even after all these years. Don’t be afraid to get down and dirty. Another of my favorite attorneys loves digging into a steaming hot pile of boiled crawfish. There’s no polite way to eat crawfish so if you know in advance what you’ll be eating, you’ll know how to dress (dark clothes that won’t show the stains). One word of caution: crawfish bibs look goofy on everyone. Don’t put yours on until the attorney is wearing his.

As to the meal itself, find out whether lunch or dinner is more convenient. I much prefer someone to take me to dinner where the crunch of the day is not weighing on me. At dinner I can truly relax and put my focus on my dining partner. Another person might prefer lunch so they can get home and tuck the kids into bed. All attorneys eat, but not all appreciate a long business lunch with a salesperson or vendor. Be respectful of their time. Sometimes something as simple as dropping by their office (call in advance) with their favorite deli sandwich and a bag of chips can be a great way to experience a no-pressure lunch and retie the connection.

6. Focus on the Attorney

It’s your job to engage the attorney – not vice versa. Ask about the status of cases you’re consulting on and inquire about new challenging cases that have just come into the attorney’s office. Offer opinions about how you can help.

7. Be Gracious

In the beginning and again at the end of your lunch or dinner, always take the time to personally thank the attorney for meeting with you and for the opportunity to share your CLNC^® services or to discuss a new business matter. You may be paying the bill, but it’s their billable hour they gave up to meet with you. Their time is their most precious asset. Be sure to thank them for sharing it with you.

8. Be Discreet

If the attorney is buying, never order the most expensive meal on the menu (think about the 54-oz lobster above), but at the same time, don’t order the least expensive either. You don’t have to order the mac and cheese off the kids menu. Use your host as a guide by discussing recommendations. Ask her what she likes on the menu and consider ordering from those choices. If it’s good enough for her, it’ll probably be good enough for you (unless it’s a $99 bowl of pasta with truffles).

9. Stay Sober

It’s perfectly okay to have a drink if the attorney does, but never try to keep up with the attorney who has more than one. Many of the attorneys I’ve shared a meal with are twice my size and have a much higher tolerance than I’ll ever aspire to. I’ve learned the art of fitting in by sipping slowly. Don’t have a cocktail before dinner if ordering wine. Eat some bread with olive oil to slow the absorption of the alcohol. There’s nothing wrong starting with a mineral water and lime while the attorney has a martini. Don’t try and keep up – you need to be articulate, not unconscious.

10. Know the Proper Use of Utensils and Plates

The bread plate is on the left and beverages are on the right. An easy way to remember it is “Left is lumpy, right is runny.” Utensils are used from the outside of the plate in on either side. For example, the salad fork is outside the entree fork. Rest your knife and fork on the plate between bites. You’ll eat more slowly and enjoy the meal more. This is not a nursing lunch – it’s a chance to make connections. You can’t do that while speed-stuffing a burrito into your digestive system.

11. Set the Tone of the Conversation

Attorneys love to talk. Allow the conversation to flow from polite introductions to social conversation before addressing business. Once business is concluded, return to a light social tone. Do not make it personal unless the attorney has moved the conversation in that direction. Even then, keep your remarks socially acceptable. Remember to come up for air and let the attorney talk. Think of it as a good time to properly masticate your food (while keeping your mouth shut). Try and eat while paying attention when the attorney is talking. This will add some give and take to the conversation.

12. Let Humor Ease the Tension

If there’s an awkward moment at a formal occasion, e.g., you forgot which fork to use, add humor to the situation to ease the tension. Everyone will laugh and feel more comfortable. Likewise, if the attorney spills something on his tie, try not to laugh. If you spill something on yourself you’re fair game – to you. If you swallow the wrong way you can always say something like “I’d forgotten how dangerous sea urchin is without wasabi.”

13. Accept Social Courtesies

Be aware of gender differences when it comes to common social courtesies. Allow a male attorney to be a gentleman even if you are usually very independent. This goes a long way to fostering professional relationships. I am independent and my husband Tom comes from the East coast, so if he forgets to open the door for me, I may get it for him (then shut it before he slips through). In Texas, many male attorneys still believe it is proper to open the door for a woman so I let them. This change in tradition is actually nice. Woman-to-woman or man-to-man, it’s whoever gets there first.

14. Don’t Wear Out Your Welcome

You’ll want to be aware of time constraints and be respectful of the attorney’s workday. Don’t drag out the meal. Don’t be the only one to order an appetizer or the only one to order dessert or coffee. Sometimes they need to get back to work and may be too polite to say so. Giving the appearance that you too need to get back to work maintains the image that you are a busy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. If you really need dessert you can always grab a pastry and coffee at Starbucks^® later.

15. Say Thank You

Send a handwritten thank-you note within 24 hours of your meal. Few people take the time to do this today, so you are setting yourself apart and further cementing your relationship. If you bought, thank them for their time. If they picked up the check, thank them not only for the meal but for introducing you to a great new restaurant and tell them that the next time will be your treat.

Once you master these strategies, business meal etiquette will be as natural to you as resuscitating a patient and a lot more tasty. Relax and enjoy.

Success Is Inside!

I like to joke with Tom that, “Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit.” Right now I’ve just finished sitting at my desk, not thinking but gazing at a gift that my nephews gave to me for Christmas a couple of years ago.

It’s a gift that has rapidly become one of my favorites – a digital photo frame. Normally I’m not a fan of digital gifts (especially if I’m getting them) because they represent two learning curves – first, Tom has to learn how to use it (and he gets noisy about stuff like that), and second, learning how to use it myself (and suffering through Tom’s rapid-fire training).

This time though I absolutely fell in love with this gift from the minute I opened it. I love photos and, if you’re like me, you have lots of digital photos of your trips, your family, your friends, your pets (or plants) and anything else that passes in front of your camera. And, if you’re really like me, these photos stay in your camera or sit on your computer’s hard drive, never to be viewed by anyone (until Tom comes and moves them off my hard drive to create more space for my music). With this simple gift to yourself you’ve got the opportunity to turn those pixels into fun and instant renewal as you relive your favorite memories.

Vickie and Tom in Bhutan

First thing you do is create a directory or file folder on your computer called “My Photo Frame” or something similar. Then spend about 15 minutes a day pouring through your old photos from vacations long-past. Use the preview feature in Windows^® to view the photos. You can copy the photos you like directly into the new “My Photo Frame” folder. Once you’ve gone through all of your photos, it’s time to pull out your old albums (or storage boxes) to see if there are any printed photos you want to scan and add to your growing collection.

Next, open the photos with Microsoft Office Picture Manager or any other photo editing software you have and edit, crop and save the photos in a lower resolution. This isn’t hard to learn and if you mess one up you can always copy another over it and try again.

Once your photos are saved to the “My Photo Frame” folder, it’s time to toss out the memory chip that came with the frame. It’ll be the cheapest memory chip with the smallest amount of memory the manufacturer could find. Next go to Amazon.com and buy a 1 to 8 GB memory chip (or larger) that’s compatible with your frame. Memory chips are so cheap you can buy two. Your computer should have a slot for the chip, if not you can buy a cheap USB adapter that’ll hold the chip so you can load your photos onto it.

Now plug the chip into your computer and drag your photos onto the chip. You may have to consult the dreaded documentation to see if there’s a special naming convention for the photo display folder or directory. I like to copy the photos to the chip, not move them so that if something happens, I can reload them over and over again. After you’ve loaded the photos, pop the chip into the frame, plug in the electrical adapter and turn it on.

Often there are all sorts of settings, like how long to display a photo, whether to display them in random order, automatic on-off, etc. All those are up to you. What matters is that you’ve just created a constantly changing stream of memories. Each time we take photos, I select some favorites to drop into my frame’s file. I’ve even converted at least some of those boxed-up photos into an assortment of fun.

This is the perfect gift for a parent, grandparent, sister or even a great attorney-client. You may even want to buy one for yourself and capture your CLNC^® business with photos of your favorite attorney-clients and anyone else who has helped you grow your CLNC^® business.

Success Is Inside!

Sometimes we get so caught up in marketing to prospective clients that we forget one of the most lucrative marketing sources – our existing clients. Focusing your marketing efforts on your existing and prior clients will often yield a much higher return on your efforts than prospecting for new clients.

It takes time and effort to create a business relationship with a stranger. Creating and mailing your marketing packets, making phone calls, scheduling and attending interviews and doing the follow-up can swallow precious time you could be devoting to working on cases.

New Certified Legal Nurse Consultants will have to market to new attorneys, but even experienced legal nurse consultants sometimes forget to go back to those existing clients to ask for new business. We’re in a relationship business and I like to think of relationships with attorney-clients as long term. Once you’ve invested the marketing time and money to create a relationship, it is nothing short of criminal to abandon it.

If you’re serious about your CLNC^® business, it’s time to sit down and mark out an action plan for creating new business from old attorney-clients. They already know you so you can easily glide past the gatekeeper. Assuming you provided the excellent work product attorneys expect from CLNC^® consultants, the attorney should be happy to take your call.

Set a time to get together with the attorney. If the attorney is too busy for lunch, try a morning meeting and bring coffee and bagels. When you meet, remember your positioning strategies and your interview techniques. Focus the meeting on the attorney-client. Ask what kind of cases they’ve been working, what’s coming up and what their needs are.

Remind them you have a wide range of CLNC^® skills and offer to help in any way you can. Mention the fact that you belong to an association of more than 6,000 Certified Legal Nurse Consultants whom you can call on to quickly answer any question they may have. Be flexible and think on your feet. Every attorney has different needs and you might be surprised at the niches you have yet to fill (and may not have even thought of).

If the attorney is too busy to meet with you, send a handwritten note and attach an article they may find interesting, something on standards of care, changes in hospital policies (not your own) or let them know about non-reimbursement for “never events.”

Remind yourself that you already know this attorney so you’re not asking a favor, you’re not trying to establish a new relationship – you’re just retying the connection and seeing how you can help. Time spent remarketing will be rewarding for the attorney-client as well as for you.

Off to climb the right CLNC^® tree!

Success is Inside!

I found myself standing in the gas chamber at Auschwitz contemplating how I arrived there. My father’s family is Sicilian – 100%. Picture a 13-year-old boy holding his uncle’s hand, gazing at the Statue of Liberty from the deck of a passenger liner in the early 1900s and that’s Papa Milazzo, my grandfather. My family name, Milazzo, comes from a village in Sicily. My grandparents knew each other as children before leaving Sicily and lucky, against all odds, managed to find each other and marry in the U.S.

My mother was 100% Louisiana. She grew up in Tickfaw and met my dad in New Orleans. Dad had just returned from fighting the Japanese at places like Angaur and Peleliu in the Pacific during World War II – fattened up by the Army to a wholesome 125 pounds. She immediately married him and soon here I was (along with my twin brother and older sister).

Tom’s family has a completely different background. His father’s parents are Polish, both coming from the Krakow area – about an hour north of Oscwiezm, the Polish name for Auschwitz. Tom and I both have vivid memories of our grandparents speaking in Polish or Italian when they didn’t want the grandkids to understand them. Tom’s mother’s side is a little more complicated – and the reason we were here. Tom’s maternal grandfather was Scottish (right down to the tartan). His grandmother was middle-European Jewish. In the 1930s when this zaftig woman married the Scotsman, out of her faith and against her family’s wishes, her family simply said a Kaddish (prayer for the dead) and started setting one less chair at the seder table on Passover. Sixty years later only two members of her family would speak to her. (Aren’t family grudges stupid?) One of those two was Tom’s Great-Aunt Fannie and his Great-Uncle Otto.

Tom remembers that Otto still had the tattooed numbers on his arm from Auschwitz. He’d been collected from his home, transported, numbered and then, luckily, transferred to a work camp. Fannie found Otto there and she managed to bribe his way out. Somehow the two worked their way through unfriendly, Nazi-occupied Europe and to the U.S. Many others from the family weren’t so lucky and never saw the outside of the iron-gate with the “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes one free) motto outside Auschwitz again.

Main Gate to Auschwitz

So what does a gas chamber and the Holocaust have to do with legal nurse consulting? It may seem like a stretch, but it simply comes down to living with integrity. The other day I was mentoring a legal nurse consultant who faced a difficult choice. An attorney-client who gave her a substantial amount of business gave her an ultimatum: stop working with certain competing attorneys or risk losing his business. If she gave in to his demand, she would keep his business – but at the cost of losing her integrity. After all, if she gave into that demand, what would his next demand be?

Integrity-based decisions are not always easy. After standing in the gas chamber at Auschwitz and in the women’s barracks at the adjacent camp of Birkenau, I’ve seen what can happen when a person’s integrity is broken. If you think about it, all the things we treasure, our family, our possessions, our success, our dignity and our individuality can all be stripped from us. Standing in such a horrific place, I realized how easily we can lose everything – everything except our personal integrity.

If you’ve ever read Viktor Frankl or talked with a Holocaust survivor, you know that each day in the midst of unimaginable cruelty, the Holocaust victims had to decide how to treat others and handle themselves with integrity. Without integrity, even living through those conditions would not guarantee surviving the memories afterward. I couldn’t help wondering how my own integrity would hold out in that situation.

The choices we make determine whether we live a free life or a life imprisoned, and I’m not talking about a physical jail cell. No one would voluntarily imprison herself and be her own warden, yet every time we breach integrity we sentence ourselves to a mental jail. This all came to mind while speaking with this nurse who, to me, had a much simpler and easier choice than anyone ever faced in a concentration camp.

Ironically, the very thought that “work makes one free” was what was troubling this legal nurse consultant. She simply needed to make a choice to keep or break her integrity. I couldn’t make her decision for her, but did encourage her to honor her integrity. When I hung up the phone she was still undecided and still troubled.

About a month later I received a call from her. She made the choice to be true to herself and to what she wanted for her CLNC^® business. She was now happier, relaxed and successful on her own terms.

Temptations abound in not only the business world, but also in our personal lives. No matter how complex a decision appears on the surface, when stripped down to basics, I tell people it’s simple: do what’s right, not what’s easy or most appealing. Remember, no matter what choices you make in your life – they should all be integrity-based. Integrity has the final say in whether we will rise or decline, be whole or broken. When uncompromising integrity is our guide, then our personal and CLNC^® success is authentic.

Here’s to your authentic CLNC^® success.

Success Is Inside!

Michelangelo is my favorite sculptor and artist because he was the renegade of his time. Michelangelo knew from his earliest days that he wanted to be a sculptor. He was happiest when he worked with stone and his passion completely transformed his sculpture. He learned to create statues that live and breathe. He was a renegade in his departure from the expected. His works are celebrated to this day and, during my trip to the Louvre, I was lucky to see these two different slaves, one of which he finished sculpting in 1516.

Today is a great day to ask yourself what renegade actions you can take for your legal nurse consulting business to create something unexpected and lasting – something your attorney-clients will remember you for.

Success Is Inside!

Every CLNC^® consultant worries endlessly, and to some extent needlessly, about privacy. Without getting into a discussion, let’s talk first about the hippo in the room – HIPAA. It’s been said that law firms are not covered entities under HIPAA (hooray).

That being said, in my humble opinion (which was wrong once back in 1977 – a really bad haircut), a legal nurse consultant working for the defense would be considered a business associate of the defense attorney who would be a business associate of the hospital, other facility or other defendant who is covered by HIPAA. On the plaintiff side, HIPAA regs don’t apply because you’re looking at the records with the plaintiff’s, or potential plaintiff’s permission. But to be safe, keep your CLNC^® subcontractors under contracts with confidentiality provisions and you should be in good shape. Once the suit has been filed, the plaintiff’s medical records are pretty much fair game as they’ll become public records. Here’s a Medscape article on the subject if you want to read more, but the best way to stay in compliance is to discuss any privacy expectations with your attorney-client first.

Enough of HIPAA – let’s talk tech! More and more Certified Legal Nurse Consultants are buying laptops, which means you’re working in places where other people can see your laptop’s screen. I know that every time I walk through a Starbucks^® or to the airplane’s restroom from my seat in steerage I look at what people are doing on their computers (most of them are watching movies but you see the occasional worker bee crunching away on a spreadsheet). Sometimes I get dirty looks but I really don’t see much. It’s the person sitting next to you for a period of time at a table or on a three-hour flight who is the danger.

If you’re worried about people seeing your work product, or lack thereof, consider buying a frameless privacy filter for your laptop. You’ll have to mess around with the installation and make sure your laptop will close with the screen installed, but the filter will hide your data from prying eyes. 3M makes some highly rated filters. They’re a bit pricy, none is perfect (some can be viewed from above) and all can be seen from behind you (otherwise you couldn’t see through them). The good news is that it works on all laptops, after you figure out how to install it. If you think you need one go ahead and buy it. I’m thinking about getting one to keep Vickie from looking over at my laptop to see my flight simulator score on those long “working” flights. But if people seeing your work (or play) isn’t a concern for you, save your money and put it into your marketing materials.

Another privacy concern is with getting your work product to an attorney via email. There are ways to encrypt your email but they can be pretty complicated to set up and not every attorney understands “public key encryption” like you do. So, for legal nurse consultants who want to keep their documents private, buy a copy of WinZip^®. It will allow you to compress your reports, into password-protected “zip” files, which you can then send to your attorney-client. Simply set up a different agreed-upon password with each attorney-client and then send them the password-protected zip files. If anyone intercepts your email or it goes to the wrong address, they won’t be able to read it (easily).

In an earlier blog I discussed another way to secure your work product by sending your attorney-clients your work product in portable document format (PDF). If you have the free Bullzip PDF Printer or a full version of Adobe^® Acrobat^® you can password protect your PDF documents too. Once you get Adobe, it will integrate into your Microsoft^® Word software so you can print PDF files straight from Word. The “save PDF” add-in from Microsoft will let you create PDFs but will not let you add security so you really need either Bullzip PDF Printer or Acrobat (Bullzip is a lot cheaper…free). Then you can simply email your new password-protected PDF documents to your attorney-client (just make sure he’s got the password).

You should keep in mind that it’s pretty unlikely that someone will intercept your email. It’s more likely that you’ll send it to the wrong address and password-protecting your work is a great way to keep it private.

This post should help allay some of your privacy fears but, remember, even paranoids have real enemies!

Keep on techin’,

Tom