Vas Gets Ready to Play at SpinNYC

The Lawline team went out on Thursday night to celebrate COO Frank Bastone’s birthday at SpinNYC, a mix of table tennis club/lounge on East 23rd.  It was a great event for all, as they saw who could master the skills of ping pong!

The team presented Frank with an array of gifts, ranging from a “Bastone Book” (a play off of Lawline’s Culture Book) to a Weight Shaker (As Seen On TV!!).  Two tables were used to compete for the bragging rights of “Best Ping Pong Player at Lawline.”

Frank Bastone reading the "Bastone Book"

From our Sales Team, Peter, Jessica, and Rob, proved to be in the top tier of tennis players, while Dan did not win a game all night.  Better luck next time!

Lawline will venture out next month for its annual “Faculty Awards Night” on November 17th at Hudson Terrace.  Lawline’s faculty will be honored and it is sure to be a great night for all!

Check out the video below to see some of Lawline’s best in action on the ping pong tables!  (Just kidding, we found this video on YouTube)

SpinNYC

Lawline at Lucky Strike Poker Event

On Tuesday night 8 determined Lawline employees entered the AOL.com Spot at the Table with Beth Shak poker event to help raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation.   All 8 employees sat at their respective tables looking to work their way to the final few players.

Joey , more of a movie guru than a poker guru, went all in 5 hands into the competition, only to watch the remainder of the event from the sidelines, rooting on his coworkers.  Allen was the next to go, but did not regret one move he made the entire night.  “I went all in with Queens, and I was met by someone with trips Kings.  What can I do?  No regrets,” said Allen.

The final table consisted of three Lawline employees; salespeople Hillary and Jessica, and COO Frank.  It came down the wire as Jessica and Frank went heads up.  Jessica went all in and Frank called.  Jessica caught a flush draw on the river and went home with a gift certificate to Rue 57, while Frank went home with a comfy LOVESAC.   However, at the end of the night everyone was a winner as participants were able to bowl all night, and all money was donated to charity.

Lawline is looking forward to their next casino night!! (to say the least!)

Dave on the left, and Sir Joey on the right.

The Lawline Culture Book is made up of first hand reviews of what life is like at our company.  I decided to ask a few employees to share with me, in more detail, what their experience has been like so far at Lawline.  My goal was to see how our culture has compared to other companies that they have encountered.  What is different?  What is similar?  Joey and Dave both had interesting answers.

My first question was “What about Lawline makes you enjoy coming to office?”

Their answers were similar in that both enjoyed the laid back environment of Lawline, but structured tasks laid forth by management.  Everyone knows what their job is, and it is up to their own style to complete their tasks.

Joey thought the support system that was put into place made life at Lawline friendly, fun and rewarding.  Dave agreed by saying he enjoyed helping his colleagues.  Employees will routinely listen to each others calls in order to provide feedback.  The only way Lawline will continue to grow is if employees continue to improve, and giving feedback to each other on a daily basis happens regularly.

Both Joey and Dave agreed that growing the business is what really motivates them; that what is done today will effect the company for years to come.  Joey looks at the Lawline culture as a “culture of family.”

Dave enjoys the fact that his work is something that can be tracked a daily basis, and his suggestions can be utilized the same day to improve systems.

We are glad to get this feedback regularly from our employees, and we want to continue to improve as well in order to create the ideal company we would like to work for!

Lawline.com will be attending the New York Ente

Lawline hopes to bring home the gold tonight at the NYER Awards.

prise Report 2010 Small Business Awards at The Metropolitan Pavilion from 6pm-10pm.  We have were named finalists earlier this year in the Sales & Marketing category, and are looking forward to taking home the prize tonight!

Last year Lawline was a finalist in the Customer Service category.  The 2010 Sales finalists include Abrahemsen Financial Group, Bergen Newspaper Group, Cartwheel, Consultants 2 Go, Dogmatic Products, eMazzanti Technologies, Media Trust, and Lawline.com.

Lawline’s Sales and Marketing teams have grown significantly over the last year.  After the hiring of COO Frank Bastone, Lawline has formed a strong Sales team who reaches attorneys all over the country.   The use of daily departmental meetings in the morning has been a great way to structure the company and keep everyone focused on goals.  In a time where the economy is unpredictable, Lawline has never seen better days.

The Yankees open their playoff series against the Twins at 8:30pm, so hopefully they will have a TV or two to catch up on some of the action!  Results to be posted tomorrow!

Lawline has been a public access television show spreading legal knowledge to the community of New York for 27 years. Recently, Alan Schnurman, host and creator of Lawline sat down with his son David Schnurman, President of Lawline.com, to discuss his passion for sharing information.

Alan Schnurman started Lawline 27 years ago as a means of spreading legal information to the community. He wanted to include the public in a community of education once available only to an elite group of lawyers. By bringing to the show prominent and experienced attorneys Alan hoped that he could share valuable information to those who might not be able to afford premium legal advice. “It was a labor of love,” Alan says. He gets a tremendous amount of satisfaction from helping people and wakes up happy every day because he has found what he loves to do, and he’s doing it.

But what makes Alan so optimistic and happy when so many see these bleak times as a doomsday scenario come to life? It seems to be the pessimist’s heyday, but Alan remains unflinching in his optimism. Every cycle comes back around, Alan says, and this recession may be longer than we’ve seen in a generation or two but this is the time where people position themselves for success later on.

Alan attributes his success to his attitude, “attitude is altitude.” He reads quotes like these that guide his life every morning, and he believes that attitude is everything. In his eyes, capitalism is the best system the world has ever seen, and eventually this downward cycle will improve. During this upturn, it will be those who avoided the advice of pessimists and were patient who will amass the great fortunes of tomorrow.

When it comes to advertising Alan advises confidence in one medium. All good companies are built on advertising. You may have the best company in the world but if nobody knows about it your business will fail. Building an advertising campaign, too, takes patience. You have to educate your market before you can reap the rewards of your advertising. Instead of moving your advertising around and using a variety of means Alan recommends investing solidly in a small number and focusing your efforts on those. Patience and focus will drive your advertising profits higher and higher as time passes.

But in the end, success in all things comes from having a great attitude. This is the timeless and universal advice of Alan Schnurman, a man who loves what he does. When you love what you do you will have a great attitude, and that will lead to happiness every time. You will surely fail and fail often. But, if you stay enthusiastic and stay positive you will learn from your mistakes, and your eventual success will be worth it.

Last night our president David Schnurman, spoke at the Levin Institute on the tools of leadership. He spoke through examples, sharing 15 tools he has used as leader of Lawline that has spurred impressive growth. Among these tools several key points stand out as important advice to carry whenever interacting with people. The first is attitude; you have to keep your game face on. Problems will come up and you need to be ready to handle them as they come without getting frustrated or stressed, then you can find a solution and move on.
Discipline is closely aligned with attitude because without a good attitude you can’t be disciplined. As a leader, David says you can’t try to control people because people resist control. Instead, people need to be self-motivated. It doesn’t help to over-manage or micromanage someone, to build self-motivation you must build the people around you to be their own leaders. David highlights the 8am meetings and focus on customers as examples here at Lawline that have helped create a culture of discipline. Lawline culture is also full of fun events and blogs and book reports that keep employees engaged with each other. By creating a team atmosphere where information is shared freely employees and leaders alike can impact each other with new exciting ideas.
The free flow of ideas and transparency within Lawline is a rare and important asset. By creating a disciplined culture but allowing transparency and idea sharing at every level of the organization David increases accountability and responsibility for everyone. At Lawline every idea is valued. When an idea works it sticks, when it does not a new idea grows. He is not worried when an idea fails because this is when the learning begins. David says he wants people to come to win, not to work.

The book discusses the dynamic parternship between PHP and MySQL and the advantages of each one. PHP is a scripting language that specifically was created for use on the web and allows the creation of dynamic web pages (pages that interact with customers, rather than serve as a static page) and also serves to communicate with the database management system, which MySQL is an example of.

In the relationship, PHP creates a connection with the MySQL server and sends an SQL message through the connection. The MySQL server interprets the message and follows the instructions, and sends a response. If it does not understand the message, an error report comes onto the web browser (I’m sure we can all relate to this part). SQL is the language used to add, delete, and edit information within the database.

An example of a relational database. Click to enlarge.

In the database, PK stands for “Primary Key”, and “FK” stands for foreign key. This example to the left shows how variables interact with one another. A variable may be a Primary Key in one field and a Foreign Key in another.

For example, Contact Name ID may be the Primary Key of the “Contact Name” field, and all the other variables are details describing that particular Customer Name ID. In another field, such as Contact Address, the Contact Name ID is a Foreign Key that is used to represent a description of that field’s Primary Key. Because the database is relational, the Contact Address field will thus share all the same information about that Customer Name ID that is described in the Contact Name.

Hopefully this helps shed a little light on databases.

For some entertainment, click on the below youtube link of my 5 year old son Max volunteering at a magic show at the Hoboken Arts and Music Festival.  Max can teach us all to have no fear and to laugh at ourselves.  Also included are special appearances by me as his assistant.  Here is the youtube link. You can watch it in HD if you have a good internet
connection!