In Episode 5 of Lawyerpreneur, I talk with Frank Ramos about using LinkedIn to grow his network and extend his reach, mentoring other lawyers, and how being a Latino lawyer has affected his law practice.
Frank Ramos has mastered the art of maximizing the benefits of using LinkedIn as a platform to connect with people and raise his profile for the purpose of helping other lawyers along their journey. I think of Frank as a Seth Goden-like figure for lawyers because of his commitment to daily posting in the form of a microblog. Some of his posts are inspirational while others are really grounded in the realities of law practice. But every day they are intended to edify and strengthen his readers.
For the reasons we discuss in this interview, I recommended Frank in my article, Lawyers to Follow on LinkedIn.
You can listen here or on your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, and RSS.
Mentoring, Diversity, and LinkedIn for Lawyers with Frank Ramos
Jeremy Richter
Welcome to Lawyerpreneur where we explore how having an entrepreneurial spirit helps us fill our creative wells and excel in our work, because being a lawyer doesn’t have to mean doing business as usual. I’m your host, Jeremy Richter. My guest today is Frank Ramos, managing partner of Clarke Silverglate in Miami, and author of a dozen books, including LinkedIn for Lawyers. Frank, welcome to Lawyerpreneur.
Frank Ramos
Thanks for having me.
Jeremy Richter
I guess you and I have chatted over email and over LinkedIn several times, but this is the first time we’ve ever had a chance to talk. So I’ve been looking forward to this.
Frank Ramos
Likewise, likewise.
Jeremy Richter
Before we jump into the questions for the show, I wanted to do a quick refresher about the premise of the show and that is entrepreneurialism among lawyers exhibits itself in several different expressions.
First, there are lawyers whose entrepreneurialism is seen within or attached to their law practices. They have a nice law practice or a creative way of reaching clients or in your case, have built a platform that is enables them to speak to clients and to other lawyers.
Second, there are lawyers who have side hustles. And their two subsets of these. Those who side hustles are adjacent to their law practice, but isn’t necessarily intended to directly affect their practice. And this is the path that I’ve gone with my law blog and books and now with this podcast, and then there are lawyers whose side hustles are wholly unrelated to the practice of law. Guys like Kevin at Financial Panther, or Josh at Big Law Investor.
And then finally, there are lawyers whose entrepreneurialism will take them out of the practice of law, either still within the legal sector, as in legal support, like with Ross Guberman, who I interviewed for Episode 3, or with legal tech companies. Or they are businesses that are unattached to law, like Sean Askenosie, who’s a former lawyer who became a chocolatier, or Mark Dawson in the UK, who is now an international best selling thriller author. So that’s the premise of the show.
And today I want to talk with you about building and utilizing a platform, mentoring, and also how being a diverse lawyer has affected you in your practice. Okay, all right. So you have built a platform on LinkedIn over the last few years and actually have capped out the number of connections that you can have. How did you start attracting so many people?
Frank Ramos
You know, I got really active in 2016 I’ve been on the platform pretty much from its inception, and been active on the platform off and on over the years. And in 2016, I wrote my second book, The Associate’s Handbook, which was published by the Defense Research Institute. And I was thinking of how I could promote it. So I started taking little excerpts and plugging them into posts every day on LinkedIn. And that started developing a bit of a following. And I committed to posting every day, and I’ve posted every day, including weekends and holidays since then.
So it’s been almost four years now. Now that we’re in April of 2020. And the more you post and the more content you share on the platform, you’re going to find that you can attract more connections and more followers. Now, for those not familiar with the platform, you’re capped at 30,000 connections, but you’d have an unlimited number of followers and at some point which you can’t better connections, people kind of figure that out and they simply start following you. And so the way I did it, again, it’s been sustained over now four years is being and providing just a lot of content day in and day out. That’s geared primarily towards younger lawyers. But some of it can be equally applicable to more seasoned lawyers as well.
Jeremy Richter
Was there any particular reason that you chose LinkedIn as opposed to any other social networking platform or even creating your own website or blog?
Frank Ramos
I think people who are attorneys and are in the legal sector, kind of flocked to LinkedIn. I think other platforms attract different types of viewers and audiences and they just aren’t as professional. There are others who do a very good job on Facebook, on Twitter, even on Instagram, but the content I was pushing out was a bit more professional. It was much more sort of, content based much more practice based And LinkedIn seemed to be the best venue for that type of material.
Jeremy Richter
Aside from wanting to promote that one book, which could have just been kind of a short lived experiment for you, what was the reasoning behind starting a daily practice in 2016, of writing and posting?
Frank Ramos
You know, I’ve been writing on and off for a number of years. And I previously blogged over two periods of time, one time in 2011, again, and 2013 and did that on off for a bit and enjoy just sort of sharing tips to garden lawyers. Basically, when I started doing that a number of years ago, I wanted to kind of share my own experiences and help young lawyers, learn from my mistakes and my experiences my communications with others.
And I found that by doing it daily, it actually helped my practice because it really helped me focus on doing things better. It helped me define my own processes and you Mental, better processes. And it made me a better communicator. Because if you’re posting every day and you’re writing every day, whether you realize it or not, you’re becoming more effective in how you’re communicating, you’re becoming more direct, more succinct. And I thought the whole process was sort of if there was a benefit of it, it just made me a much better communicator.
Jeremy Richter
And I’ll tell you, that’s been my experience, too. When I started my law blog, I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about. So I started writing. I started out with just doing briefs of appellate decisions that had come out for Alabama. But eventually that wasn’t what ultimately I was interested in.
And it morphed into writing about client management and case management and practice management. And not that I have a great deal of experience in all of those areas, because I’ve only been doing this for eight years. But it was things I was interested in learning about. It helped me like you said to establish my own processes and learn a lot more The way because I was, I was writing as I figured things out, and wanted to help other lawyers who are following in the same footsteps to just provide an easier path for them.
Frank Ramos
I agree, I think writing’s primarily a very selfish process because you’re learning more about yourself, and you’re learning how to improve yourself. And you’re and the audience. First and foremost is yourself. I mean, ultimately, you want to reach others, and you want to influence others. But before you even get to them, you’re really trying to have this internal dialogue with yourself about whatever you’re discussing.
Jeremy Richter
Yeah, for sure. And I always, I was always concerned in my writing that I wanted to come across as, hey, I’m still trying to figure this all out. Not Hey, I’m some guru and you should listen to me because I know all these things. But I feel like that’s a really important line, especially for a younger lawyer like me to walk. Whereas a more experienced lawyer like you can say to these other lawyers, hey, I’ve been here. And here’s the things that I’m learning, whereas mine is more like, Hey, I’m still here, and here’s what I’m figuring out as I go.
Frank Ramos
Well, a lot of my content is based on my own mistakes, and I’m pretty open about that. So, you know, wherever you are on the spectrum or on the path in terms of your career, there’s always more to learn. And there’s always things look back on and, and appreciate, share.
Jeremy Richter
What are the topics that you tend to focus on as you continue to write daily? And I mean, there are days when I say that you’ve written, you know, posted multiple times a day about various things that you’re experiencing. So what is it that you tend to write about?
Frank Ramos
You know, I’ve kind of moved away from the very practical advice. I still do that at times. But I’ve written a number of books where that’s all sort of there. And, and so it’s the information on how to take the deposition, how to interview a witness, you didn’t find it, I can, most of it’s free and share it with members if you go to my profile. page you can find it there. I think what people are craving more our sense of motivation, inspiration, they want to know that things are going to be okay that the career that we have is a challenging one. It has its obstacles and pitfalls. And especially for younger lawyers, things happen at work that they weren’t expecting, you know, they have a tough boss, they may be let go, they may have a client that is not treating them particularly well. And how do you deal with those sort of issues.
And so I’ve tried to provide a certain light, if I can, and make people realize, look, what you’ve been through, I’ve been through, I still go through some times. And it’s part of the practice, it’s part of life. And we all move forward from it, and we learn from it and we become better for it. And so that’s mostly Those are my topics lately. And so I still write some practical stuff and from time to time I’ll, I will give a tip on how to use exhibits and deposition or how to cross examine a witness trial. But more and more, I’m finding myself talking more about the soft skills and talking about just dealing with life and career.
Jeremy Richter
And I think that’s really important. I’ve noticed that shift in your writing. And I will say that so much of it is encouraging and edifying. And that that seems to be a rarity in our profession. Are you naturally an optimistic person? Or is that something that you have to, you know, diligently maintain?
Frank Ramos
I think I’ve gone through this path where at one point, I kind of just saw, glass is half empty, and now I see it as half full I, it’s I each of us kind of go goes through this journey. And for the most of my life, I’ve dealt with things in very pessimistic way, very fearful way. And you realize that you can’t kind of go through life that way. Each of us have to figure that out on your own. It took me a long time to figure that out. But once you’re on the other side of it, kind of crossed the force in your past that you look back and realize it’s been a lot of waste of time and energy.
And it’s so much better to have a different mindset. You know, it’s you deal with the same circumstances doing the same situation. But just having that mindset where no matter what happens, whether it’s good or bad, you’re going to be able to deal with it and move forward. makes things so much easier, both in terms of your cases, in terms of your career terms, your family. And as we all get older, you know, we have more issues to deal with, you know, we have more likely that people are going to be thinking or families when we pass away, you know, jobs change. And so you kind of need to be better adept at dealing with certain circumstances.
Jeremy Richter
In the last few weeks, a lot of your posts on LinkedIn have focused on the current challenges that we’re experiencing. So this is April seventh of 2020, that we’re recording it, that we’re going through this pandemic and all of us are having to deal with these new challenges that we’re experiencing both personally and professionally. And a lot of years have been encouraging people along the way. Have you felt more? I don’t know if call is the right word, but more called to provide encouragement and light in this moment than even before?
Frank Ramos
I think so I think this is a very difficult situation for all of us. And it’s very unusual one. And none of us has a crystal ball. None of us can say that this is going to end by date x or things are gonna go back to normal by date, why? And the best we can do is control our reactions to it. We can’t control a situation, but we can try response. And if I can help people by giving them some sort of encouragement or helping them see the benefits of there are any other these circumstances in terms of making the most of the time you have at home? For some of us it’s very challenging. Some of us have small children like us, some of us have elderly parents, but for some in my situation, both my boys are grown. I’m at home now working, working from home. For a bit more, I assume it’s a great opportunity, right more to speak more to communicate more. And so always trying to find the opportunities in the bad situations. That’s that that’s what I’m trying to encourage when my posts in the last two, three weeks or so,
Jeremy Richter
With not having court appearances, or at least not in-person court appearances and depositions, have you had more opportunity to do your creative work?
Frank Ramos
I have. When this first happened to be in Miami, we were a little bit slower to react to just collectively than other cities in other parts of the country. But in the last three weeks, things have kind of come to a halt, and things are being rescheduled and moved and eventually, we’re in the process where most depositions and hearings and even mediations will be handled remotely. But there was that sort of interim period, which we’re still kind of in where you find yourself at home don’t have to travel to work, you don’t have to get dressed for work, and you don’t have to do a lot of things that involve just being at work and you try to make take advantage of that time.
So I find myself writing more than a couple books now to DRI. One on how to get published and one, which is compilation of some of my recent posts on LinkedIn. And I’m currently working on one called Confessions of a Latino Lawyer, basically, sort of my approach to diversity in the practice. So, again, it’s trying to make the best of a bad situation, finding myself with having more time at home, instead of you know, watching Netflix all the time. I’m trying to spend more time writing.
Jeremy Richter
I want to talk more about hear more about the book about being a Latino lawyer. Tell me kind of what your experiences have been. I know that’s a super broad question, but kind of how that’s affected your practice.
Frank Ramos
Yeah, the genesis of the book was that a lot of firms even today in 2020 struggle with diverse lawyers, they are very aggressive and very proactive and trying to hire diverse lawyers, but they have a hard time holding on to them and have a hard time turning them into partners. And I think the problem is that the experience of many diverse lawyers, it’s inherently different than more senior lawyers, many of us are first generation attorneys, many of us came from working class backgrounds, many of us did not have connections or relationships that would sort of facilitate a career in law. Many of us had experienced racism or prejudice in our lives. And I think each of us would the reverse not has her own story.
And if you have a common story, it’s easy to have that relationship. When story isn’t common. When two people have very different backgrounds and very different stories. In order to build a relationship, one has to first share that story, understand it, embrace it and become and appreciate what it means. And so the purpose of the book, yes, it’s sort of like my career. My life has been You know, Hispanic person had been his back lawyer. But more to the point, the purpose of the book was to sort of explain the firm’s that you want to keep diverse lawyers in the fold, you really have to take the time to learn their stories. And so I share my story as a way to encourage other firms to learn stories of their diverse lords, not just the diverse Lords but any lawyer, I think because at the end of the day, law firms see based on relationships, and if it’s a personal relationship, it’s hard. It’s I tell people, it’s easy to leave a job, it’s hard to leave a relationship. And so if a firm has a relationship with you, you’re gonna be less inclined to walk away from it, even if you can get more money, even if there’s a better opportunity, per se, is this relationship you’re gonna think twice before leaving?
Jeremy Richter
So you’ve been at the same firm for — actually, I don’t know how long you’ve been there — presumably a long time, right? You’re the managing partner. Is that something that they did well with you or that Is it something that you’re inherently, you know, some people are more loyal and tend to stick to one place? How did that develop?
Frank Ramos
Well, I think ours was a smaller firm. And I think smaller firms had sort of a leg up on larger firms, it’s easier to have a personal relationship with individuals, you know, our firm has always been, you know, between 10-15 lawyers more or less over the years, and it’s grown and shrunk, depending on a variety of reasons. But, you know, we all know each other, we all know each other’s families, we all know what the children’s interests are, and, and large firms can, can, can do the same if within certain practice groups obviously, or within certain offices that’s important to have those relationships. That’s kind of what’s kept me there.
Jeremy Richter
Other than learning the people that you work with, and having those relationships, are there any other things that you know, you know, I as a white male might not have certainly don’t have the same experiences as a person of color. Are there things that firms can do, other than forming those relationships that are really specific things that will help develop those lawyers who might have different backgrounds and keep them, you know, at the firm?
Frank Ramos
You know, I think if firms can invest in the regarding lawyers and reverse lawyers, and really all their lawyers, by helping teach them the life skills we need as lawyers, we didn’t learn in law school in terms of how to communicate how to be proactive in seeking out business, how to come across as competent, just everything from body language to attire to dealing with people to going to conferences, to work in a room. There’s a lot of little nuances and issues that I think some firms do a good job. Others do less of a good job in terms of spelling out for their attorneys. This is exactly what you should be doing. Let me accompany you to this cocktail hour or come with me to this conference. And we’re going to talk through what I’m going to do you Watch me, then you’re gonna do it.
The apprenticeship model really has kind of gone to the wayside in many respects. And this is something that was common not too long ago, where you had senior lawyers taking junior lawyers out in firms, you know, back 30 or 40 years ago, and you kind of walked and observed and eventually you were kind of pushed out and kind of did it on your own. And again, it may be because a lot of firms are much larger now and maybe because of the pressure of the billable hour, and it takes time away from billing hours, but fewer firms are taking that time to invest in their young lawyers and really teaching them the soft skills they need to feel confident to be effective in the courtroom to be effective in the boardroom, to be effective when you’re speaking with people at a conference become a leader, so on so forth.
Jeremy Richter
So if firms are willing to take the time and the resources to mentor all of their young lawyers it sounds like they’re going to have a leg up on the competition and be positioned themselves to better be more likely to keep their younger lawyers regardless of color.
Frank Ramos
Yeah, absolutely. They spend time mentoring and passing along their skill sets with their young lawyers. Yes, there’s time and investment costs in that. But you’re going to save the cost of having to continue hiring new people continuing and people come and go, continuing having to acclimate new attorneys to the same clients and clients wondering why they’re constantly having new people work on their matters. So there’s, there’s a give and take here, you’re gonna lose some time in terms of billable hours gain continuity.
Jeremy Richter
And there’s certainly a difference between institutional mentoring like we’re talking about here, and personal mentoring relationships, and I’ve seen where you have posted on LinkedIn that you’re going to be having coffee at a certain place at a certain time and if any young lawyers want to come and have coffee with you and chat and learn some things If you’re open to mentoring relationships, why is that personally been important to you?
Frank Ramos
You know, I think it’s important because there’s so many young lawyers who don’t have anybody to talk to their own firms. And a lot of their questions are the same questions I get all the time in terms of how do I deal with the situation? Or that how do I deal with this client or that boss or this circumstance? Or how do I, you know, become a leader in this organization or develop a book of business or whatever it might be. But there are very few questions I get that I’ve never heard of before numerous times. And I’m always kind of surprised that they don’t have anybody that’s being talked to, and answer their questions directly, honestly, completely. So I’m more than happy to get together when I travel or we’re here in Miami, our set of circumstances, there’s either standard or traveling going on, or many coffee houses that are open.
But whenever I travel, I make a point to let people know to be in town and if they want to meet with me, and then usually two or three young lawyers will take me up on it and I usually meet with them for about 45 minutes and the questions I get are probably questions everybody else gets. And the answers I give aren’t earth shattering, are pretty common sense. But they’ve never been told that. And that goes back to my point earlier that mentoring is so important because things that a certain level of experience you can’t take for granted. There’s certain people who just never been exposed to certain issues or ideas or how to deal with certain circumstances. And so if you can kind of share that and pass that knowledge along, that’s very helpful.
Jeremy Richter
On your side of it, what benefits have you seen from mentoring other people, you know, taking away the benefit that they receive from it and understanding they receive? What benefit does it give to you?
Frank Ramos
You know, I learn every day when I speak to just about anybody. When they share their story with me and their circumstances and how they deal with situations, whether it’s at their firm, with clients, how they dealt with certain issues. However, they’ve gone through their own struggles. It’s very edifying for me as well. It opens my eyes to new situations. You know, a lot of what we do, whether we’re trial lawyers, whether for transactional, whatever it is, a lot of it’s based on human interaction relationship. And getting to know people and understanding them understand where they’re coming from, I think makes me a much more effective advocate for my clients.
Jeremy Richter
I’m going to go back to the LinkedIn for a second. Aside from just having more connections, have you seen any direct effects on your law practice from your engagement and your writing practice on LinkedIn?
Frank Ramos
I have I get a lot of calls. A lot of the cases we end up referring out because they’re not types of work we do. I get a lot of patients to speak, which then leads to potential referral sources. I get opportunities to write. I meet a lot of attorneys and I think what happens is that a lot of the attorneys that follow me are people I already know. And the thing about getting business from people, which isn’t necessarily directly their LinkedIn is that LinkedIn is a tool to stay at the forefront of the minds of people you already know.
And it’s much more than just somebody knows me. They have to think of me when the case hits their desk. And each of us knows multiple lawyers all over town, all over the country all over our respective states. And they have to be thinking of me at that moment. And for that to happen, I need to be at the forefront of their minds. And for that to happen, I need to constantly be in front of them in a non obtrusive way. I can’t be constantly calling or emailing them. But if they’re regularly on LinkedIn, and I’m on their feed, I’m not being pushy about it. They’re just kind of coming across my comments or articles, whatever I may be sharing and an article or something hits their desk. They say, Oh, yeah, Frank Ramos. He’s in Miami. He does commercial employment products, whatever else he does. As their give them a call, or give his firm a call.
And so the thing about LinkedIn, which I like as opposed to having my own website or having a blog, which both of you, which you mentioned both earlier, is that I’m not pushing content to people’s faces there. They are seeking out to be on LinkedIn. And they’re coming across my content very naturally. And by doing that on a regular basis, they come to see me get to know me.
Jeremy Richter
No, I like that. And I think that’s a really important part of this conversation. Because you and I can tell people, hey, you need to be writing you need to be, maybe it’s not writing, maybe it’s podcasting. Maybe it’s YouTube videos, maybe it’s any number of things to get you in front of other people and be top of mind. But they need to understand that it’s a long term play. You’re not going to see overnight results necessarily. I mean, you might, but you have been doing this for four years. I’ve been doing what I’m doing for four years. It just takes time and consistency for you to do these things to write regularly, to share information with people regularly for you to build up that that presence in their mind that when they see something that’s in your geographical area, and in your law practice area that you’re the person they think, Oh, I know.
Frank Ramos
Exactly. And as you mentioned, it does take commitment. I when people ask me, they want to involve LinkedIn, I tell them, Look, you have to have an honest conversation with yourself. If you don’t see yourself posting regularly, a year from now, don’t start, you’re just not, it’s not worth it. You know, there’s lots of different ways to market LinkedIn is one way it’s not for everybody. It is a long term commitment. It is something that will bear fruit but will bear fruit over a long period of time. And you have to enjoy you have to enjoy posting you have to enjoy participating, interacting, responding in queries. It’s you have to enjoy the social media aspect of it and that everybody does.
And you shouldn’t do LinkedIn, you feel like you have to like anything else, for that matter. And so you can certainly try it and see what you think. But if you don’t commit to it understand and be honest with yourself, Am I going to be posting regularly? You know, several times a week, a year from now? April 2020? No, April 2021. Am I still gonna be doing this? If the answer is no are likely not then, then you’re probably better doing something else.
Jeremy Richter
So when you started your daily writing habit on LinkedIn, did you have a like, a time limited goal of Hey, I’m gonna do this every day for three months and see how it goes. Or were you just decided, this is what I’m going to do now?
Frank Ramos
I decided to do it. I didn’t really have an end game. And honestly, at the time when I did that said, I’m gonna do this indefinitely. I’m not you know, I didn’t think I’m gonna do this through. I started 2016 artists 2016 2017 or 2018. And even now I’m not thinking I’m going to stop doing this year, two years from now, as long as the platform is up, and as long as I got no breath in my neck, keep doing it, I enjoy it. And you create a certain level of confidence in yourself, you create a certain ability to communicate and affect things outside, outside and beyond yourself. And the more you write, especially if you focus on one or two topics, he becomes sort of a thought leader and somebody a bit of an influencer in the sense that you’re able to set the agenda for whatever you’re writing on, whether it’s a specific practice area or form of leadership or management style.
If you’re providing value, providing content, you’re doing it regularly, you’re giving your way for free, people are gonna come and they’re following listen to you and if what you have to say makes sense, and it’s positive, and it can be used by others to help improve their practices and their lives. They’re gonna listen and in the process, you’re gonna develop from expertise. reputation. And people are going to listen to what you have to say. And, you know, turn get picked up by reporters by newspapers by publications, and a whole host of things can happen. It’s a long term commitment, obviously. But there are a lot of secondary positive effects that one didn’t appreciate, until once been doing it for a while.
Jeremy Richter
So sometimes when people think about a writing habit, and they think about writing 700 or 1000 words, that can seem intimidating, even though it may be something that you are I do regularly for people who don’t write regularly, that might seem you know, two or three pages might seem like a lot. Once you got into a newer writer before you started this particular habit, but once you started writing daily, did you find it easier to maintain that then when you wrote less regularly,
Frank Ramos
it is once it becomes a habit becomes a lot easier I can. I’m not at a point where I can write a book in about three weeks, not very long one, I can write a for about three weeks, I know it’s what happens is, is that you become very effective in communicating, you learn how to self-edit, you learn what needs to be said and what needs to not be said. And that just comes with doing it more and more.
You know, every book I’ve read on writing, has talked about having a daily word count, whether it’s On Writing by Stephen King, or Bird by Bird, or whatever the book may be, at some point, whether it’s out in the open or sort of tucked away, and one of the paragraphs the author’s will say, Well, every day I write x words, I think Stephen has 2500 words with others. 1500 is not even that many. You can see yourself on there by 200 words a day and noise, increase that or decrease whatever we’re counting you want to work with. But if you stick to a word count, then you know that like you have to do it. It’s really it’s very basic rule to set for yourself. I think I’m gonna do 10 push ups a day ever run a mile a day, whatever it might be, and no matter what happens, you do it. Sometimes your writing to be good sometimes will be bad. Sometimes it’ll be great; sometimes to be poor.
But what’s going on is that invariably you’re improving the skill set. And so you may have setbacks, you may have a few days where you’re really wondering, this is really not good at all. But then suddenly, you’re surprised yourself and write something that is very creative or imaginative or very thoughtful. And the more you do it, the easier it gets. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s in writing 1000 words a day three years ago, took me a lot longer than writing 1000 words today.
Jeremy Richter
Yeah, and I’m glad you mentioned those two books because whether you are want to improve your legal writing, or creative writing, whatever kind of writing you want to do, or improve, Stephen King’s On Writing, and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird are just great books, if for nothing more than just learning about creative people. But one of my favorite things about Bird by Bird is and I’m not going to use her exact word But she says that everybody writes terrible first drafts. And that’s something important is when you start writing like that first draft, it’s going to be bad. Like whether it’s a legal brief, it’s just not going to be as good as after several rounds of edits. And so whenever I write something terrible, I know that like, in there somewhere is still some nugget of something good. And I may have to get rid of 600 words to find it. But the idea is in there and so you just have to be consistent and willing to self-edit, like you mentioned, and the writing is like any other muscle The more you exercise it, the stronger and more refined it gets and more capable it becomes.
Frank Ramos
No, I agree. I agree. The more you do it, the easier it gets in the sense that you find the time like time to wander becomes an issue like it’s, you’re getting early, stay up late. You work out. Your phone, you do it, you dictate the car, but somehow you find the time to put it whatever work you’ve committed yourself doing on that day.
Jeremy Richter
Yeah, that’s great. If people want to follow you, I assume that LinkedIn is the best place to do that.
Frank Ramos
Yeah, if you want, it’s Frank Ramos with Clarke Silverglate. You’ll find most of my books are free. And if you scroll down to the publication section, under the profile, you click on that I can go and book I’m selling is one through the ABA, Checklists for Lawyers. Everything else is a free book either through the Defense Research Institute or the Federation of Defense Corporate Counsel. Most of them are geared toward younger lawyers, some of them a little bit more generic, some of them aren’t even really necessarily law related per se, but and they deal with know how to ride, how to lead, how to market all sorts of things.
Jeremy Richter
I have read several of them and I found them very useful. I’ve looked at LinkedIn for Lawyers which is available through DRI as well, which you’ve mentioned. And it has a lot of really good tips, some of the things that we’ve talked about here. Thank you for your time and thanks for coming on the show.
Frank Ramos
Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity.
Jeremy Richter
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