Friday, January 4th, 2008
Welcome to January, the stern sister to December. While December is about gift giving and celebration, January arrives like the dreaded morning after bearing with it bill payments, back-to-work anxiety and of course the latest batch of New Years resolutions. “I will lose weight, quit smoking, save money, go to the gym, meet my billable hours target.” Can there be any grimmer start to the New Year?
I’m a professional business coach, goals and resolutions are the heart of my business, so trust me when I tell you, this year ditch the resolutions and abandon the guilt. Life’s too short! Replace all the gloom and puritanical posturing with some first class day dreaming. You know the kind you did when you were a kid. What do you want to be when you grow up? There’s always something new to learn, or see, or do. What to you want to get out of 2008? When you are raising your glass to bring in the New Year on December 31, 2008 what do you want to look back on?
Compelling and inspiring goals are the key ingredients of a fulfilling and successful professional life. They give you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. They encourage your creativity. They get you thinking, and planning, and moving forward. They provide the challenge and the meaning that is so easy to lose when things get busy at work.
For my own guide to goal setting follow this link to the full article posted on the Canadian Legal Research site Slaw.ca.
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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 »Friday, May 18th, 2007
This spring I was invited to contribute to the ABA Law Practice Magazine’s April/May issue: “First Years: What every associate needs to know.”
The issue arrived in my mail last month and is now live on the web. Have a look. It’s a great guide for new associates to making the most of the first years and establishing a foundation for their legal practice.
My article is all about what new associates should know about marketing. I was directed to answer the question - what do managing partners wish their associates knew about marketing? I interviewed a number of managing partners and practice group leaders to find out what was most on their minds. Here’s what they had to say:
Understand that Law Firms Are Businesses
Invest Early and Frequently
Invest Non-billable Time with Existing Clients
Talk Less and Listen More
Develop a Meaningful Introduction
Learn How to Close the Deal
Find your Personal Style
Associates, if you want to end up with a practice you enjoy and clients you like, it is critical that you learn to chart your own course. Marketing can help you do that. It is your time to discover the kind of work and clients you find the most interesting. It is also time to explore the kind of marketing and business development activities that you like best. It might be writing articles or maintaining a blog. It could be you have a flair for presenting. Find out what works best for you while advancing you toward your goals, and do it. Don’t wait until you have some free time. Weave a little marketing into everyday. Keep your own professional goals moving forward.
Posted in Business Development, Marketing, Goals | Permalink | No Comments »Tuesday, January 16th, 2007
In several of my blog posts since December I have been stressing the importance of strategic planning. A lot of time, money, and effort gets wasted because lawyers and law firms engage in meaningless acts of marketing. Strategic plans are the most important tool for ensuring you act wisely. In order to help you to accomplish this, I have developed a rough guide to strategic planning, which I will share with you in blog posts over the next month.
The first chapter of my guide starts with Mission, Vision, and Values - three simple concepts that are easy to get mixed up.
Your Mission Statement describes what your firm does and who your clients are. It captures the very essence of your practice – the relationship with the client. A Mission Statement is focused on what you do in the present.
A Vision Statement describes how the future will look if the firm achieves its mission. A Mission Statement gives the overall purpose of an organization, while a Vision Statement describes a picture of the preferred future result your firm is after. Your Vision Statement will tell a compelling story about the future you are going to create.
Once you have your Mission and Vision figured out, it is important to take some time to think about values. Values are the core beliefs at the heart of your firm’s culture, and are the foundation of all the actions you will take, and investments you will make.
Here is a list of questions to guide you through the process of determining your firm’s Mission, Vision, and Values. You can also use these questions for developing your own personal plan.
Mission questions:
What do we do?
Who do we do it for?
What is the benefit to the clients?
Vision questions:
What do we ultimately want to achieve with our practice – in terms of service to others?
What do we want the firm to be known for?
What reputation do we wish the firm to have in the business, legal, or other communities?
Value questions:
What professional and personal attributes do we value most?
What professional and personal qualities do we wish to be known for in the legal community and by our clients?
What qualities and attributes do we wish to characterize our firm?
The answers to these questions form the foundation of your plan. The next step is strategy. Stay tuned for that next week!
If you have your own questions and ideas on this topic, I would really enjoy hearing from you. I am always interested in learning powerful new questions for exploring Missing, Vision, and Values. If you have some you’d like to share, or other suggestions, please add them in a comment below or send me an email.
Posted in Marketing, Goals, Planning | Permalink | No Comments »Friday, January 5th, 2007
Lawyers, legal marketers, administrators, if you do one thing today have a quick look at Seth Godin’s blog. He offers up a most eloquent distinction between strategy and tactics, and sends us a valuable reminder on when it is time to re-think strategy. Here’s an excerpt:
Here’s the difference: The right strategy makes any tactic work better. The right strategy puts less pressure on executing your tactics perfectly.
Here’s the obligatory January skiing analogy: Carving your turns better is a tactic. Choosing the right ski area in the first place is a strategy. Everyone skis better in Utah, it turns out.
If you are tired of hammering your head against the wall, if it feels like you never are good enough, or that you’re working way too hard, it doesn’t mean you’re a loser. It means you’ve got the wrong strategy.
Here’s the big question for consideration. Are your tactics bringing in the big wins or are they just barely keeping your head above water?
For another story that describes the distinction between strategy and tactics we can look to the Second World War when Winston Churchill proposed the strategy:
“Attack the soft underbelly of Europe.”
This strategy determined the tactic of advancing on the German empire from North Africa, Egypt, to Sicily, and through Italy. The strategy was dead on. The tactics worked.
Here’s the caveat. Once we have bought into a strategy, and are deep into tactics, it’s easy to loose sight of the distinction. When the tactics fail or underperform it is tempting to look to different tactics rather than back to the strategic vision and plans.
In addition, many lawyers, administrators, and legal marketers, are trapped in a tactical silo, as so many firms still lack the strategic plans that come first.
If your firm, practice group, client team, or your own practice is struggling, take the time this January to review and re-think your strategy and ask:
“What is our strategy?” This should be answered in one or two sentences.
“Is this strategy paying off?” If not, “what’s working?” “What’s not?” “What could make a difference?”
And if you don’t have a strategy, make this the year that you develop one.
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Monday, January 1st, 2007
Goals - make them bold. Make them powerful. Make them compelling.
Learn - something new every day. Watch and listen for the lessons that will present themselves.
Enjoy - the journey. Tie your happiness to the process, not the outcome.
The joy is in the doing. I have a friend who recently launched a new boutique law firm. He has big goals for his firm, and lots of hard work ahead. And you know what? He is having the time of his life, because he enjoys being a legal entrepreneur. He likes the management of the practice as much as the practice itself, and his enthusiasm is contagious. His first six months have been very successful, and his clients like the feel of the new firm.
What is working for my friend is that his personal interests, goals, and the process are all in alignment. When you are making your own plans this year, consider a similar strategy. What goals are most meaningful to you? What actions can you take to move your plans forward that resonate with your own personal interests? What would you most like to invest your time in?
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