Marketing: The Art of Getting and Keeping Good Clients

Date: Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Time: Noon-2 p.m.
Location: Ginopolis' Bar B Q Smokehouse, 27815 Middlebelt Rd, Famington Hills
Register: online or mail/fax form PDF
Cost: Section members $30; all others $40

The ultimate question in the business of practicing law is how to get and keep good clients. In this day and age, word of mouth is not enough. What do you know about using Facebook? Twitter? Blogs on the Internet to attract good clients and to keep current clients interested? How do you target your marketing to those individuals and companies that you wish to represent?

Presenters
Julie I. Fershtman. In 1993, Julie I. Fershtman left a large law firm to start her own practice. She wanted major insurance companies as well as small businesses as her clients. She wanted to be involved with people in horse-related businesses and activities to satisfy her lifelong passion for horses. Well known marketing guru Jay Foonberg told her she would starve. Undaunted, she persevered and her practice flourished. She has also become known as the premier expert on equine law in Michigan and across the country. She is now a shareholder with Foster Swift in Farmington Hills, MI and the former president of the State Bar of Michigan. Do not miss this opportunity to learn some of her marketing secrets for solo and small firms.

Arnold E. Reed. Mr. Reed is the principal owner and operator in the firm of Arnold E. Reed & Associates, P.C., Farmington Hills, Michigan. His practice concentrates on litigation in the areas of personal injury, police misconduct, product liability, discrimination, criminal, and entertainment law. Mr. Reed has obtained numerous multi-million dollar verdicts. Mr. Reed was the first attorney nationally to successfully sue firefighters for a wrongful death arising out of the handling and response to a fire. Most recently, he achieved a $750,000.00 jury verdict in a dog bite case, the highest award ever achieved in the country in such a case. Mr. Reed obtained a $4.2 million verdict against Brinks Home Security in a civil rights case. Mr. Reed’s client base has included major music industry conglomerates such as four-time Grammy Award winner and R&B superstar R. Kelly; five-time Late Night at the Opollo winner, poet, and author Jessica Care Moore; former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick; and the Queen of Soul, Ms. Aretha Franklin, for whom Mr. Reed won a lawsuit to block the unauthorized release of a documentary. He has also served as legal counsel to national talk show and PBS television host Tavis Smiley.

Helpful Publications From Part 201 Citizen's Guide

• What You Need to Know if You Own or Purchase Property with Environmental Contamination PDF
• Baseline Environmental Assessments (BEA) PDF Liability protection for new or prospective owners or operators of contaminated property

Post-Divorce Conflict: Therapists Caught in the Crossfire

Chapter excerpt from Defusing the High-Conflict Divorce by Bernard Gaulier, Judith Margerum, Jerome A. Price, and James Windell. (Impact Publishers 2007)

As the divorce rate grows, so does the need for therapists to understand what happens when divorces go terribly wrong. More importantly, what do we, as therapists, need to do to correct the damage. Most high-conflict court cases come repeatedly to the court for solutions. The court is faced with the same problem, having to decide who is most fit to have the children. "I know my ex-husband molested our daughter because she came home from a visit and kept touching herself there." Or, "I know she'll verbally abuse our son, just like she verbally abused me." Or, "She betrayed me with her yoga teacher and now she's living with him." Or, "He just up and left me for his secretary."

The court is asked to decide who gets to see their children and who doesn't. They decide who is harmful and who isn't. More commonly these days, the court turns to mental health professionals to tell them what the truth is. These referrals to therapists for intervention and recommendations give us great power and, simultaneously, great responsibility to understand what is happening in a high-conflict divorce versus what seems to be happening. If we don't help, the future for the children is bleak. They wind up in our offices, aggressive and substance abusing, or in the criminal justice system as delinquents. In high-conflict divorces, everyone may have given up by the time the case is referred to us.

Read the entire chapter