Today we will provide information and reviews about Free products in your dealership: work them or avoid them?
Read the following article to get more information.
There are a lot of freebies for starting or running lawyers. From document sharing platforms to conference call services and websites to legal research, the costs of running a law firm are many. Free products are also proliferating. My current slide deck for free has almost doubled since I last had it two years ago.[Note: the practice management platforms are not free, although most of them offer a free trial period.][توجه:پلتفرمهایمدیریتتمرینرایگاننیستند،اگرچهاکثرآنهایکدورهآزمایشیرایگانارائهمیدهند)[Note:thepracticemanagementplatformsarenotfreethoughmostofferafreetrialperiod)
But is free right for your practice? That depends. My own view is that no type can play a role in any rule, but mileage may vary. Below are some rules for when it can work – and when to avoid it.
1. Free always works for experimental use There’s a reason companies offer free trials – because it gives potential customers a chance to try a product and decide if they like it. In a similar vein, you can use the free products listed in my slide deck to determine if they might work for your practice. For example, are you thinking of starting a blog? If you’ve never blogged before, it doesn’t make sense to drop a few hundred or a few thousand dollars on a top platform that you may never use. Instead, it’s better to start a blog on a free site like Blogger or WordPress, and if the blog takes off, get a paid professional design. Likewise, you may have toyed with the idea of offering online webinars to current or potential customers or a customer newsletter, but didn’t want to make a significant investment to get started. With sites like AnyMeeting or MailChimp, you can set up a webinar or newsletter in under an hour, it’s really that easy. Sure, the free versions are ad-supported, but again, if you decide that a newsletter or webinar series can work for the long haul, upgrade to the relatively cheap, paid version of the product with just a click of a button.
2. Free does not work for critical law firm functions Free works for testing because, by definition, they don’t include mission-critical tasks. In contrast, free fails for functions that are critical to your company. Mission critical is a subjective and reality-specific standard. What is important to a criminal defense or consumer law firm may be entirely different from what is important to an appellate shop or regulatory boutique competing with large law firms. For example, a national appellate practice is likely to require superior legal research tools, while a state-specific transactional practice may reasonably rely on Google Scholar. A company that wants to make published decisions, regulations, or published materials available to customers can use Dropbox or an unsecured portal to share information, while a company that collects Social Security numbers and other sensitive data It wants a more secure platform. the cost of something
3. Free needs to work for clients Some free services are not easy for customers to use. Not all customers use Dropbox, and to share a document privately, they must set up a Dropbox account, thus adding an extra step to the transaction. Many (but not all) paid services are set up to allow clients access to documents without having to go through additional steps. On the other hand, attorneys should be prepared to educate clients about the risks for free. For example, Gmail is a great way to send emails – but you don’t want your customers to log in from work, as doing so can take away their email privileges. In my case, I’ve had to put my foot down when clients who want to exchange confidential energy-related information on Dropbox subject to various NDAs. Because customers are so important to all legal actions, making sure that freebies meet our customers’ needs is perhaps the most important rule of all.
4. Free should make you look like a professional, not a pauper Remember Vistaprint’s “free” business cards with the Vistaprint logo on the back? How much do you trust a lawyer who can’t pay $50 to order a stack of business cards? Lawyers can use free to enhance a professional presence or make themselves more visible with a range of useful free tools. Or they can make themselves look like poor people who may not be able to keep the lights on while their clients’ cases are pending. If you can’t use free to look professional, don’t.
