Erik Mazzone

I love photography. Not so much the doing of it as the admiring the finished product of beautifully composed and edited photos. Especially landscape photography.   There was a time – or if I am going to be honest, there have been several times over the past 20 years because it takes a while for a lesson to make a dent in my hard head apparently – where I’ve looked at some beautiful landscape photography and thought, “I might like doing that…” Read More

Most of the successful private law practices in North Carolina and around the US – and I am speaking here about individual lawyers’ practices as opposed to law firms – have been built on the backs of referrals. Referrals from other lawyers, referrals from other professionals serving the same client base, referrals from former clients, or – the gold standard, as many lawyers like to tout – referrals from opposing parties. From whatever source a referral comes, they all share the common trait that someone, somewhere said to a friend, colleague or loved one: “you know who you should call for help with that?” A referral is an implicit endorsement and accelerates trust right at the beginning of a potential client relationship. Compared to a cold call from, say, a Google search, it’s like you start the sales process on third base. So, how does a lawyer set about to generate potential client referrals?    Read More

When you find yourself in a hole and you want to get out, as the saying goes, the first rule is to stop digging.   Nowhere is this more true than in digging out of an altogether too common hole among law firms today: reducing attorney and staff turnover. Employee turnover is expensive, disruptive to workflow, frustrating to clients and damaging to team morale. Not to mention soul-sucking when you have to sit through hour after hour of terrible interviews seeking gamely to replace the person who just left with someone – you are getting the sinking feeling – who won’t be quite as good.   Read More

The web browser is one of those things that flies under life’s radar. It is almost definitely one of the top two or three pieces of software used on your phone and computer (competing with Outlook and Word, for most lawyers), and yet it also probably gets among the least amount of brain space and attention. This is kind of a shame because browsers are kind of amazing software. Free, easy to use and almost infinitely customizable, they can be huge value adds to your workflow, as well as make the other non-work parts of your life (you do have some of those somewhere, right?) smoother and easier, too.   Read More

Law firm website are, for many firms, the albatross around the neck of their business development efforts. They are expensive and time consuming to create and for a lot of lawyers they are not an especially productive part of their business development systems. You have to have one, because when a potential client is referred to your firm or a potential employee is interviewing for a position with your firm, they will very likely first go to your website to see what it is your firm says to the world about itself.   Read More

The annual performance review is the dental visit of firm management. It must be done. It is sometimes painful. And basically nobody likes doing it. (Apologies to the lawyers out there who are married to dentists.) There are better tools available for firm management.   Read More

I did not grow up in a boat family, but my wife did. They had a little Boston Whaler that they trailered to the Chesapeake on the weekends and used for water skiing, crabbing, and otherwise doing fun summer stuff on the water. The photos from that time look amazing, and they all reminisce about how fun those days were. But one day when my wife and her folks were reliving some fun boating memory, my father-in-law pulled me aside and told me: “the two best days in a boat owner’s life are the day you buy the boat and the day you sell it.”   Read More

I was mad at Microsoft for a pretty long time. I am finally over it (mostly).  To understand why, you must first know that I spent an absurd amount of time and energy looking for the perfect task management program. I tried, almost literally, everything I could find. No kidding, I probably cycled through … Read More

There was a time when I was a little bit obsessed with productivity books. (That time was known as my entire adult life up to and including today.) I don’t know why, but I love them. All evidence to the contrary, I always feel like I am one good self-help book away from really firing on all cylinders. In actuality, I have a shelf full of books that I never look at and as for firing on all cylinders… I could charitably be described as cruising in eco mode.   Read More

I grew up with my German grandma living with my family. She was like a third parent to my brother and me. She wasn’t an educated person; her formal schooling ended in 8th grade and she immigrated to the US in the early 1920’s after she turned 18. She was smart and wise and had lived through the best and worst the 20th century had to offer.   Read More

Small confession: there was a time, about 20 years ago, I was on a night flight back from Houston. I had spent all week at a stressful NITA advocacy program. I was exhausted and couldn't wait to get home to my own bed. And for some reason, out of nowhere on this very routine flight, I developed an immediate and intense fear of flying that lasted for two or three years. For years after that night, every time I flew anywhere, I was freaked out and terrified about crashing. Not a super fun travel experience for Mrs. Mazzone.   Read More

Part 1: Introduction Small confession: there was a time, about 20 years ago, I was on a night flight back from Houston. I had spent all week at a stressful NITA advocacy program. I was exhausted and couldn't wait to get home to my own bed. And for some reason, out of nowhere on this very routine flight, I deve… Read More

I’m not a doctor, but I play one on the internet. A few years ago, an Italian orthopedist spoke at a medical conference about some special technique she invented. The conference materials apparently listed my email address for the doctor’s contact information (her actual email is different from min… Read More

If you are one of the many, many lawyers who has an iPhone tucked away in a pocket or bag, you have probably noticed by now that Apple released a new operating system for the iPhone, iOS 16. The updates with the new number (as opposed to the decimal additions like 16.0.1.1) are the big ones. The ones where Apple packs in a lot of new features and injects your aging phone with a shot of new life.   Read More

There’s a certain kind of advice you get once in a while that is a little infuriating. I’ve certainly gotten it a bunch, I bet you have, too. It never fails to irritate me. And here I am now about to do the same thing to you. It happened to me most recently with a lawyer friend who is really into photography. He takes amazing pictures and has one of those fancy cameras with the big lenses that you carry around separately in its own backpack. He brings back incredible photos from national parks and foreign destinations.   Read More