Thursday, October 25th, 2007
Building a successful legal practice takes time and effort. You can make all the right moves, build the right relationships, and develop your expertise and profile but it may take a number of years for the results to appear. This is a test of your patience and resolve. Sometimes the best things are worth waiting for.
I was just speaking to a lawyer friend I worked with a few years back. I asked him the usual “how are you doing?” and he replied with a great “happily ever after” success story.
He works in a particular niche area of litigation and because of the seeds he planted over several years he is now the recognized expert in the niche and getting the biggest and best files. He absolutely loves his legal practice.
Here’s what made it happen:
We met when he was a senior associate who had just joined the firm as a lateral hire. He had a goal to build up his practice in a particular niche litigation area. He’d been junior counsel on a number of important cases and it was time for him to take the lead.
At that time there were not many files in the area. But the prospects for the future were good. We developed his personal marketing plan. The emphasis of the plan was on building relationships with referral sources and potential clients and raising his profile.
He invested a great deal of time and effort in developing and expanding his network of contacts. He used his lunch hours for meeting people and developing existing relationships. He wrote articles and presented at conferences. Always with a focus on the niche area of law.
Then he took the initiative and pitched the idea of a book on the subject to a legal publisher who agreed. Of course not everyone at the firm supported the project. Some wondered if the time might be better spent on further relationship building. It was a gamble. Nonetheless he persisted and the first edition was published, followed by a second edition the following year.
Still the files were not coming in. Had all that effort been for nothing?
All this marketing and business development and still only a small trickle of files. What was crucial is that he did not give up. Nor did his firm.
He began speaking at the law school. Kept writing. Kept presenting. Kept relationship building. And he stayed the course.
The word spread and finally after four years the files began to flow in. My friend is now the lawyer “who wrote the book” on this area of law. He has a completely full plate of his favorite type of legal work and is having the time of his life.
It’s a real success story.
And the firm? The firm supported his investments of non-billable time, partners gave him work to keep his plate full and he was made partner even before the tides had turned in his favor.
What did he do right? He knew what he wanted. He completely focused his marketing and business development efforts on the goal. He invested a lot of time and effort. He took the initiative and created opportunities for raising his profile. He was not dissuaded by the naysayers.
And he just didn’t give up.
Posted in Business Development, Goals, Planning | Permalink | No Comments »
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
I was attending a marketing event last week and we all got to talking about the reaction of the old guard to the new generation of lawyers entering law firms today. One of the attendees Dorothy Sitek shared one take on the generation gap that she in turn picked up from a presentation by business coach Karen Elliot:
These professionals entering the work force today are your children. You were the ones who raised them. And how did you raise them? You raised them to contribute to the conversation at the dinner table. You raised them to have an opinion, and to know how to express it. You raised them to be confident and to value themselves.
What are these new associates looking for? More then anything mentorship, training, and a place where they can contribute and where they feel valued.
Our law firms haven’t traditionally been great at these things. So as Blane Prescott of Hildebrand writes, if you really want to invest in associate retention at your law firm the first place to invest is in training your partners to be good mentors. And the second is in investing in training programs and coaching for your associates to give them the support that they value.
My view is that money becomes the bottom line for associates only when other needs are not being met. More than anything these new associates are looking for a place to put down roots and build a practice. The important question this raises for senior partners out to bring in talented new recruits: “Does your law firm provide fertile ground for growing a practice? ”
Posted in Training and Retention, Mentorship | Permalink | No Comments »Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it takes to make a great presentation. Over the past month I have been doing almost one presentation a week. Yesterday, I traveled to Abbotsford, a small community outside of Vancouver, to speak to the local bar association. On the way there I complied a short list of my favorite presention tips:
- Check your ego at the door. The focus for your presentation is your audience and how you can best use your designated time to help. What have you got to say that will most benefit the attendees?
- Get to know your audience before the event. Find out as much as possible about their needs and concerns and learn what they would like to get out of your presentation. If you can’t contact some of the audience members beforehand, introduce yourself to people as they arrive and ask them. Or as a last resort, open your talk with the question - although you will get more information if people can speak to you in private rather than in front of the whole group.
- Settle on the top 3 points you wish to emphasize in your presentation and build your speech around them. Which of the three ideas is the central focus?
- Embrace imperfection. Many great speakers touch us because they are so down to earth. Put your emphasis on being genuine and up front rather than perfect and polished.
Surfing the web this morning I found Garr Reynolds web site. Reynolds is a former Apple executive who now teaches at a University in Japan. His site has lots of great presentation tips and his blog post this morning has an illustrative comparison of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs presentation styles. It’s worth reading if you want to re-think how you handle your PowerPoint slides.
Posted in Presenting | Permalink | No Comments »
Monday, October 15th, 2007
Clients want lawyers with niche expertise.
At a client panel I took part in last month one of the big themes that emerged was that clients want to hire a lawyer who “gets them” - who has a depth and breadth of knowledge of their industry, their profession, their business, or in essence their issues.
So a great way to build your practice is to focus on developing some niche expertise and getting known for it. The question for a lot of lawyers is how do I find my niche?
Kevin O’Keefe of Lexblog has a helpful post on finding your blog niche (which was inspired by a freelance writer’s post on finding your writing niche). In addition to his handy niche questions I have a few to add of my own:
Think about your background. What jobs did you do before becoming a lawyer? What degrees do you have? Does your family run a business? I was working with one client who casually mentioned his parents, his uncles, and his brother were all in the same type of manufacturing business and that he had worked for them before becoming a lawyer - that became his niche.
Kevin says “find what inspires you.” I agree. What is it that fascinates you? How might you draw the connection with your legal practice? Here in British Columbia one lucky lawyer dominates the ski hill business and another has secured the winery niche. There must be some nice perks with clients like those.
Another question to consider is what kind of clients do you like working with most? What do they have in common?
Ultimately finding your niche is about discovering what you like best about your legal practice and getting more of it. And for associates it’s an effective strategy for gaining ground rapidly, raising your profile, and securing your own clients.
Posted in Client Relations, Marketing | Permalink | No Comments »
Monday, October 15th, 2007 Posted in Leadership | Permalink | Enter your password to view comments
