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Conversations: How the Web Helped a Law Firm Take Off

June 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

From the beginning, her strategy was to post lots of information about immigration. And today, by at least one ranking, murthy.com is the world’s most visited law firm site. Based in Owings Mills, Md., the firm has managed this despite its modest size — more than $10 million in annual revenue and about 110 employees, 20 of whom are in India and 27 of whom are lawyers, including five nonequity partners. Ms. Murthy, 51, is the sole owner.

In a recent conversation that has been edited and condensed, Ms. Murthy discussed why she decided to give away legal information online, how she discovered that she was a terrible boss, and what she thinks immigration reform would mean for businesses.

Q. How did you end up in Maryland?

A. I was born in Baroda, India, and attended University Law College in Bangalore. There, I met my husband, Vasant Nayak, a photographer and digital artist. He was studying in the United States and encouraged me to apply to law school here. I graduated from Harvard Law in 1987, worked for big firms in New York and Baltimore and started my own firm in 1994.

Q. What got you interested in immigration law?

A. I went through hell to get my green card. The process of becoming a citizen was painful, stressful and took 12 years. I’d wake up in a cold sweat panicking about my life. I was struck by my attorney’s lack of sensitivity and how little he cared. He only called when he wanted to tell me he was raising his fees.

Q. What led you to create a Web site back in 1994?

A. My husband, who built our site and today serves as a technology, marketing and operations consultant to the firm, insisted the Internet was the wave of the future. He suggested I grow the business by offering free legal information online. I thought, “If I didn’t love this man, I’d think he wants to bankrupt me.” But I was so frustrated by my own immigrant experience that I decided to start a Web site partly to make people feel empowered and respected.

Q. How did your early site do that?

A. Each day, I answered about 100 questions from immigrants. It helped familiarize me with real-life issues. I also started the weekly Murthy Bulletin soon after starting the firm. It’s an e-mail newsletter, which lawyers weren’t really doing then. Today, it has about 43,000 subscribers. Around 1995, we started accepting credit card payments — another thing almost no law firms were doing. But it was the only way I could help a client in California. There was no time to wait for a check in the mail.

Q. What type of reception did the Web site get?

A. It was like, build it and they will come — it caught on like wildfire.

Q. What resources are available on your current site?

A. It’s aimed at building an online immigrant community. There’s no hard sell — its priority is not to bring in clients but to help and show we care and know our stuff. We clarify the most complicated laws, using tools like teleconferences, podcasts and blogging.

Our moderated bulletin board has over 165,000 members who share information and knowledge about visa processing trends and related matters. On Monday nights, we have a real-time chat where one of our senior attorneys explains immigration law and processes. Every two or three years, we redo the site from scratch, working with a Web development firm.

Q. How’s business?

A. Clients are banging down the door. They throw themselves at our feet asking us to take them on. The feeling is, “If they give this much away for free, what must it be like if you pay them?”

Q. Given your site’s popularity, have you tried to generate income from its visitors?

A. No. We’ve kept it very pristine. We’ve been approached by insurance companies, travel agencies and airlines about doing ads. While we like the idea of getting $5,000 a month with no effort, we don’t want clients wasting time looking at a bunch of ads before they get the information they need.

Q. What has been your biggest challenge as a business owner?

A. I’m intense. I work 12 to 18 hours a day, no lunch break, bathroom breaks of less than 30 seconds. In the beginning, I assumed my staff shared my vision and passion and expected them to be excited just because I was. I worried about overpaying people, and worked them to death. I expected them to be my slaves, whipping limping horses. I was such a moron, I don’t think I even knew the Department of Labor laws.

Q. How did your staff respond?

A. Around 1997, three out of four of my paralegals walked off the job within a week of each other. It was like a bucket of water thrown at my face. I hired new paralegals, and my husband started coming into the office. The new paralegals started taking their problems to him. I’d be on the phone all day. I had a don’t-waste-my-time-with-this attitude. I’m not touchy-feely and sensitive like my husband. But I knew I had to reinvent myself.

Q. Did you?

A. I’ve come a long way, but I’m a slow learner. I still expect a lot from people, but I’ve had a reality check. I understand how important it is that they understand my vision and feel like partners. Now, all new employees meet with me for an hour. I share my background, and my experience with an uncaring lawyer. I explain that, as a client, I don’t care how much you know, I care how much you care. Today, 50 percent of my employees have been with the firm for more than five years.

Q. Why do you think they stay?

A. During interviews, I ask how I can create their dream job. If someone says they would rather write all day instead of talk to clients, I work it so they can — and vice versa. I try to capitalize on my attorneys’ strengths. If I can create that ideal job, you’ll stay until you’re dead or retired.

Q. How do you think immigration reform would affect businesses?

A. Reform would just offer a faster track for certain people — like immigrants with science, technology and math skills. This is good for employers because we’re not producing enough of these employees in the United States. Ultimately, talented immigrants would be encouraged to stay, jobs would be created, and the United States would continue to lead the world in innovation.

Q. How would it affect your business?

A. It wouldn’t make much difference for us — though we’d be busier because more of our clients would be eligible for a visa under the newly created EB-6, or start-up, visa category.

Q. What’s next for the firm?

A. We’re torn between maintaining our size and growing. Growth means more stress — more employees, more cases and more work. Three years ago, a group of Dallas tech business owners said, “We need you guys here. If you come, we’ll give you free office space.” We didn’t take them up on that offer. But we struggle with this.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/business/smallbusiness/how-the-web-helped-a-law-firm-take-off.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

The Boss: L.L. Bean’s Chief, Bringing a Family Perspective

May 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I saw how hard he worked and the rewards he reaped from that. We had a nice house and could take nice vacations, and I wanted to do something similar with my life.

My father paid for college for my older brothers, but I was determined to pay at least half of my college costs myself. I did so by working in construction during weekends and school vacations, with little sleep. I’m proud to have taken some pressure off my father.

My oldest brother is a doctor, and I thought I might enter that field. But I didn’t care for biology or lab work, so I dropped the idea. While attending Fairfield University in Connecticut, I took a number of business classes and a psychology class that I really liked. I realized that the two fields were related; you can apply what you learn in psychology to business management.

In 1977, after graduating with a psychology degree, I thought I might work for a year, then go to law school. I got a job settling claims with an insurance adjuster, but hated it because it meant negotiating with policyholders and claimants and paying out as little as possible.

Next, I worked in the marketing department at Garden Way, a gardening company in Norwalk, Conn. My wife at the time was making more money than I was, and we had just bought a condo when the company asked me to relocate to Burlington, Vt. We took the risk and moved. While there, I saw a help-wanted ad for L.L. Bean in Maine. When the same ad appeared three weeks later, I applied and was hired as assistant advertising manager in 1983.

At first, I was uncomfortable because my predecessor had died, and I had to work closely with her fiancé, the head of the creative department. But he talked about his grief and we became friends.

I’ve been here 30 years and was promoted, on average, every other year before becoming C.E.O. That’s part of what kept me here, because if you’re not learning, you’re dying. Every time I felt I was at the peak of the learning curve, the company gave me more to do.

In the late 1990s, Leon Gorman, a third-generation member of the family that started L.L. Bean, who was then C.E.O., made me head of the women’s product line. I knew marketing, not products, but I realized he was developing me to become a senior leader. The first thing I did was surround myself with women who knew the product line and had good taste in clothes. In 2001, Leon became chairman and asked me to become C.E.O. Having grown up in a family business, I felt that I brought a perspective I could draw on.

Recently, we’ve moved away from the heavier down outerwear to less bulky products that still offer warmth. And while our print catalog still plays a huge role in our business, the biggest change since I’ve been C.E.O. has been the growth in selling on the Web. Thirty years ago, I’d visit the mailroom and look at the trays of incoming mail. I could tell how we were doing by the number of trays. Now I get hourly updates on the Internet.

When I met my wife, Beth, in 2007, I invited her to join me in some outdoor activities. We kayaked one day and went on a 30-mile bike trip the next. On a break while biking, I asked if she wanted to return to the house or head in a different direction. I thought that she was enjoying herself, but she said, rather sternly, “Let’s get this nightmare over with.” Now when we bike together, we keep it short — around 15 miles.

As told to Patricia L. Olsen.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/jobs/ll-beans-chief-bringing-a-family-perspective.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Wealth Matters: Measuring College Prestige vs. Price

April 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

But let’s face it: the cost of a college education these days ranges from expensive to obscenely expensive. So the decision is likely to be tougher and more emotional than most parents and children imagined as they weigh offers from colleges that have given real financial aid against others that are offering just loans.

While some students will be able to go to college only if they receive financial aid and others have the resources to go wherever they want, most fall into a middle group that has to answer this question: Do they try to pay for a college that gave them little financial aid, even if it requires borrowing money or using up their savings, because it is perceived to be better, or do they opt for a less prestigious college that offered a merit scholarship and would require little, if any borrowing? It’s not an easy decision.

“It’s not just the sticker price and the net costs,” said Sarah Turner, professor of economics and education at the University of Virginia. She added, “How likely is it that you will get into medical school or law school or have some other opportunities” if you choose the more prestigious college?

That’s the rational argument. In these decisions, though, emotion often wins out, and it can lead to the slippery slope of excessive borrowing.

“Families really need to look realistically at what they can afford,” said Lynn O’Shaughnessy, author of “The College Solution” and a blog of the same name. “Sometimes, they’ll look at a package and say, ‘It’s not enough, but we can sacrifice and send our children to the school they really want to go to.’ They have to realize this a four- to five-year commitment.”

Ms. O’Shaughnessy said she was trying to counsel a father in New Jersey who was on the verge of making a horrendous financial decision. His daughter had received a full scholarship to attend Rutgers University but her first choice was New York University, which, even with financial aid, would cost the family $32,000 a year. The father, an engineer who was also out of work, said he was going to send her to N.Y.U.

“I can’t even believe he’s considering it,” she said. “I was floored. It’s irrational.”

But, unfortunately, that father is not so unusual. While it is hard not to give our children what they want, here are some ideas on how to think about this financial dilemma without going broke — or at least know why you will be broke.

The competition to get into top colleges is fierce in many cities and towns in America, but nowhere is it more so that at the country’s elite institutions. And many parents feel compelled to reward all that hard work.

The debate between paying full tuition at an elite institution or accepting a merit scholarship from someplace less prestigious “is a conversation we have all the time,” said James Conroy, chairman of post-high-school counseling at New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Ill., an affluent suburb in Chicago. “It’s a tough conversation because what it gets down to is the values of the family.”

But he said many parents did not realize that their children were going up against other children who were identical to them — at least on paper. “There are 100 schools that we talk about in this office day after day after day,” he said. “But those are the same schools that every New Trier across the country talks about.”

Prestige has always been part of the equation, but he said he had expected parents to start looking for value in colleges after the 2008 financial collapse. Instead, parents have come to see the elite universities as the only way to give their children a chance at success. They feel jobs are hard to come by and companies are only going to look to hire at the elite universities.

“Whether it’s true or not, I have no evidence,” he said. “But that was what was out on the bongo drums in the community.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/your-money/measuring-college-prestige-vs-price.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Small-Business Guide: When Couples Divorce but Still Run the Business Together

December 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The two met in the late ’80s, in law school, and the relationship blossomed in the early ’90s at the firm — Ventura, Ribeiro Smith — where Mr. Ribeiro was essentially the chief executive. They were married in 1998, and soon after, Ms. Calistro took a more active role in running the company’s operations. Together, they built the business into what is now a 50-person operation with an emphasis on civil litigation.

But while the business grew, their home life started falling apart. Mr. Ribeiro and Ms. Calistro divorced in 2006, and suddenly, the former spouses had to make a choice: Do they continue running the business together or should one of them leave? (Ms. Calistro was not an equity partner at the time of the divorce; she is now.)

“People said, including both of our lawyers, that we shouldn’t work together,” Mr. Ribeiro said. “But we talked in an office for two hours and decided we should try to make our business relationship work.”

Given a 2007 Census Bureau estimate that about 3.7 million businesses are owned by a husband and a wife. Given the high rate of divorce, this situation is more common than many realize. This small-business guide, based on the experiences of owners like Mr. Ribeiro and Ms. Calistro, offers suggestions on making the best of a difficult situation.

“We created the business,” Mr. Ribeiro said, “we created the structure, and we had a team that counted on us.” Six years after signing the divorce papers, the business partners say they are working together happily and the firm is in good shape.

RESPECT IS CRUCIAL When Stephanie Blackwell and her husband of 12 years divorced in 1991 — “we just fell out of love,” she said — she wanted out of the business they had started together, growing alfalfa sprouts. He was angry, she said, and she could not deal with it. One day she drove off, but he chased her and told her to come back to work. “There was so much anger between the two of us,” she said, “but I still cared for him. I just didn’t want to be married.”

While it was tough to continue running the company with her husband, she stuck it out. They had four children together, she could not afford to leave her job, and she still respected him.

In 1998, she left to start another business, Aurora Products, which turned into a $45 million company that packages and sells natural and organic snacks. Initially, her former husband took full control of the alfalfa business but it closed 12 years later. He now works for her, overseeing construction of a new plant.

Ivan Lansberg, co-founder and senior partner at Lansberg Gersick Associates, a consulting firm in New Haven that advises family businesses, also emphasizes the importance of respect. Unfortunately, he said, many relationships become so damaged — especially if one person has cheated — that trust and respect are not possible.

To Mr. Lansberg, it all depends on open communication, predictability (people have to do what they say they are going to do), and consistency (they have to follow through even on bad days). But there also has to be some compassion. “You have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the other person and empathize with what they are going through,” he said.

GET HELP Unlike most former spouses, those who own a business together must continue to see each other regularly even after the divorce papers are signed. That can make it harder to heal, which may be a good reason to seek professional help — even if it is too late to save the marriage.

Terri Allen still cared for her husband when the two separated in 2010 — they are not yet divorced — but there was so much anger that they could barely communicate. That made it difficult to continue running their accounting firm, which is based in Toronto.

The couple decided to hire a therapist to help them sort through their problems so they could continue working with each other. They found someone who specializes in Imago Relationship Therapy, a type of therapy that helps people communicate. “It helped us learn how to talk to each other in a calm and rational way,” Ms. Allen said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/business/smallbusiness/when-couples-divorce-but-still-run-the-business-together.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Economix Blog: Ask David Segal About Law School

December 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

On the cover of this week’s Sunday Business section, The Times’s David Segal writes about how standards set by the American Bar Association can affect law schools. The association’s rules make it difficult for law schools to offer legal education without charging hefty tuition.

The article concludes a series of articles about legal education that Mr. Segal has written this year:

Is Law School a Losing Game? (Jan. 9)

Law Students Lose the Grant Game as Schools Win (May 1)

Law School Economics: Ka-Ching! (July 17)

What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering (Nov. 20)

Readers are invited to submit questions about the series, or about law school, in the comment section below. Mr. Segal will respond to a selection of questions in the days ahead.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d2b926c7fb46cfe2aa90920679f2952c

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Judges Compete for Law Clerks on a Lawless Terrain

September 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The judges compete aggressively each year to recruit the best law students to work for them as clerks, prestigious positions that involve research, counsel and ghostwriting. But the process has become a frenzied free-for-all, with the arbiters of justice undermining each other at every turn to snatch up the best talent.

Based on rules that were intended to curtail shenanigans, judges hiring for the 2012 season were supposed to begin interviewing third-year law students no earlier than Thursday, Sept. 15 at 10 a.m. But somehow, at the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan, most of the interviews — and job offers— had already concluded by 9:45 a.m.

Indeed, hoping to leapfrog their peers, most judges actually began interviewing hours (if not days or months) earlier. Many made so-called exploding offers, forcing candidates to accept or decline a job offer on the spot (and it’s a “Godfather”-style offer: one they can’t really refuse). Some judges extended offers by phone, which is even more nerve-racking for students because cellphones are not allowed at many courthouses. At the Manhattan courthouse, anxious young applicants in stiff new shoes were darting in and out of the building all day, checking and rechecking their phones with the security guard, just so they could listen to their voice mail between interviews.

They had, after all, heard the warning tale of an unlucky student from the year before, who didn’t answer the phone because he was on a flight to another interview. The story ends with two voice mails: the first offering a job, and the second revoking it.

This recent chaos in the hiring system, particularly intense on the East Coast, has been fed by the competition between judges, by the relative scarcity of top law jobs, by more applications from those who have already finished law school and by students pressuring for earlier interviews out of fear that no slots will be available if they are not first. The result is a pressure cooker in which law students have little control over their fates, and even the standard-bearers of American justice are expected to break the rules.

For decades, judges have tried to get ahead of one another to swipe the top graduates from schools like Yale and Harvard, goading some judges to extend offers before students had even completed their first year of law school.

“I’m not into cartels or collective action or things like that,” says Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, who has vocally criticized efforts to regulate the recruiting process. So when does he start recruiting? “At birth,” he says.

There have been several attempts to levy self-enforced rules, similar to those used by the N.C.A.A. for recruiting young athletes, with the most recent system created in 2003. While none of the students interviewing at the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan that Thursday wanted their names published for fear of jeopardizing their careers, many expressed frustration with the process.

“It’s insane and has been driving everybody nuts for years,” said one student from a top 20 law school who had three interviews in New York that day, and three others across the Midwest this week. “But I don’t really see any way to fix it.”

Students are willing to jump through the hoops because the jobs are so precious. A clerkship is possibly a prerequisite for one’s own judgeship someday and a ticket to a higher salary at a white-shoe law firm. And while the process has always been competitive, it has become more frenzied in the last few years as law firm jobs have dried up and young lawyers have sought shelter in the public sector.

Clerkships traditionally go to third-year law students, but now more graduates are also competing for (and getting) these positions. The recruiting restrictions officially apply only to current students, so judges can hire graduates whenever they want without being accused of cheating.

Last year 382,828 applications were filed electronically for clerkships with 874 presidentially appointed federal judges, each of whom typically hires one to three clerks each year. (Some applications were submitted in hard copy only, but those numbers are not tracked.)

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0a3ca1eec89d3dd7c21e9f5a3d240e4b

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

F.D.A. Issues Alerts on the Heart Drug Multaq

July 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Opinion »

Is Law School Necessary?

In Room for Debate, seeking a new path to practicing law: apprenticeships, shorter programs, better classes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=04541f858bd11af00fbab0fb8eac8559

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Corner Office: Barry Salzberg: The Right Job? It’s Much Like the Right Spouse

May 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Q. What are some important leadership lessons you’ve learned? 

A. Shortly after I joined the firm from law school, one of the managers asked me to find and make a copy of a ruling and bring it to her. So I got the ruling from the library, read it, and I wrote a little summary of it and gave it to her. I got a call from her and she said: “When I want you to interpret the ruling, I’ll ask you to do that.  All I wanted was a copy.” And I said to myself, O.K., if I’m ever a manager, I’m never going to do that. I was trying to be a little proactive and forward-thinking, and to this day, I really encourage people to think and act that way.

Q. What are some other lessons?

A. There was an early training program I attended at Deloitte, and the partner teaching the class told us about the five P’s: Proper planning prevents poor performance.  That must have been in the 1980s, but here I am in 2011 and I guide my leadership style by the five P’s.

I say it to people all the time, and I do it myself. If my executive team comes into my office to discuss their 30-page PowerPoint presentation, I will have read it and thought through it and be prepared to discuss it.  They know I do that, and they say it to their teams. You’ve always got to be prepared. 

Q. What else is important to your leadership style?

A. I don’t like surprises.  I don’t like good surprises. I don’t like bad surprises. Obviously it’s better to have good surprises, but the idea is to be transparent and straight and tell it like it is all the time and to make sure that you are involving others along the way. People know that’s what I stand for today.  My board is never surprised by anything going on, good or bad.  The people who report to me are transparent, they’re right to the point. Sometimes surprise is unavoidable, and we all understand that.  But if you have control over it, there is no reason for there to be a surprise. You don’t want to blindside anybody in a meeting. 

Q. How do you drive that message home?

A. It’s not only in the consistent and repetitive messaging. It’s also in the actions because people take their cues not only from what you say, but what you do.  And so, people know: Just come to Barry. You are not going to get yelled at.  It’s not going to be the end of your career if it’s bad news. You have to come forward with all of it. If you practice it long enough, it becomes routine. 

Q. What about your parents? Were they big influences?

A. I’ll tell you one story. I was a great math student.  I remember on many occasions, I would come home from a test in math and my father would ask me how I did.  And I would say, “I got a 99.”  And he would say, “Well, where’s the other point?” So I said to myself, O.K., strive for excellence, and there is no excuse not to. That’s really what he was saying to me.  He wasn’t being cute.  He wasn’t criticizing me. He was just saying that if you got 99, just know you can get 100.

Q. Not everybody would take that feedback so well and see it as a challenge.

A. I did take it as a challenge, and I realized he had the confidence in my ability to do this, and so I’ve got to keep working on it. That would stay with me forever. 

Q. How would you say your leadership and management style has evolved over the years?

A. In our firm, we are very open to feedback.  It’s a very open partnership and the partners like to be able to express their points of view. When I was first elected into a national role as managing partner eight years ago, it was a very hard thing for me to receive critical input about  some things. But I describe Deloitte as a self-improvement-addict firm.  We always want to improve what we do, and even with all the good things, it’s just never good enough. We are proud, but never satisfied. And I think that’s a good culture to have.  But when you have that culture and you are sitting at the helm, you constantly get feedback.

People would send e-mails all the time. At the very beginning I was very taken aback by it and it bothered me. But through proper coaching and proper learning on my own and maturing, I really took the feedback in a much more positive way over time. Today, I read through it and I find the pearls of wisdom.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b9ec25f218c71795e2c348fd96d5f74a

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,