RainmakerLawyer: Law Firm Marketing | Business Strategy for Attorneys | Attorney Marketing

Print Email

The Lawyers Who Don’t Need Marketing and Business Strategy

If you work in a law firm – particularly a big law firm – you may not need to know how to originate new business.  Someone may feed you business.  And they may do so for years and years.
 
You will probably make a respectable salary and you will get to do meaningful work, some of which you’ll enjoy.

If you work for yourself, own your own law firm, you may not need to do much in the way of marketing.  You may be able to go directly from a public position (Prosecutor’s Office or Public Defender’s Office) into a practice where your reputation delivers clients to your doorstep on a steady, regular basis.
 
Both of these options are true career paths that thousands of lawyers have worn over the years.  Many of the lawyers that follow these paths make a good living.

There is one challenge with these two paths:  They leave an awful lot to chance.

With the big firm path, you never have the opportunity to control your own destiny.  You constantly wait for someone to deliver work to your office, you say thank you, and you kill yourself for no glory.
 
On the second path, you have every opportunity in the world at your feet. You can take whatever cases you’d like.  You can charge whatever you’d like and you can work whenever you’d like …
…if you know how to attract and retain clients.

Note:  Being a good lawyer is not a strategy.  Being a good lawyer is a prerequisite for any attorney who owns his/her own firm.  If you stink as a lawyer, your lousy reputation will overwhelm any marketing efforts you can possibly employ.
 
Being a good lawyer and promoting yourself minimally (putting up a website and attending a few local events) will help you expand your reputation and get you to a comfortable place financially.

If you want to make more money, mid six figures to seven figures and beyond, you will need to do some marketing and set a sound business strategy.

That means creating a message and targeting a specific market with that message.  It’s not necessarily advertising…it is marketing and business strategy.

The bottom line:  If you want to top out at $150,000 - $300,000 per year, that’s great.  Continue to work for someone else or start your solo shop and rely solely on good fortune and your reputation.
Risky but possible.

If you want to make $500,000 and beyond (I have several clients who make multiple millions of dollars per year in law firms they own, with less than 10 employees) you need a sound strategy and you need marketing.
Need help with this?  Think I’m wrong?  Give me a call.
Dave Lorenzo 888.692.5531

Print Email

Business Strategy Coaching Takes Law Firms from Good To Great

I was at a high profile networking event last week and I was introduced to a successful attorney as “a fantastic marketing consultant” for attorneys.  The attorney shook my hand and said something like: 

“Why would a good attorney hire a marketing consultant?  If you are a good lawyer your reputation should deliver clients right to your doorstep.”

At that point I explained that I worked as much on business strategy as I did on marketing and that seemed to make more sense to my new friend.  But his statement got me thinking about why successful attorneys have hired me in the past (only about 20% of my work comes from start-ups and I work with few attorneys who are actually in danger of failing).

After giving this considerable thought (and talking to two-dozen clients) here are the six main reasons why a successful attorney would hire a business strategist: 

They are working too many hours. They’re pretty sure that if they left for a vacation, or even just took a day off, things wouldn’t work anywhere near as well as they do now.  If you’re ready to work a whole lot less, a good business strategist can show you how.  Our proven process has worked for hundreds of clients.  It helps shed some light on the things you should be doing and the things you should be delegating to others or outsourcing completely. 

They are ready to make a whole lot more profit.  Sometimes a law firm requires so much effort that the partners begin to ask; “It is worth it?”  We have identified hundreds of ways for you to make more money – regardless of your area of specialty.  We can help you with business development, team building, advertising, firm growth, building firm equity, helping Partners with business development and cross selling, developing business systems and jump starting billing.

They are ready to build a team of people that can grow and run the firm without the day-to-day involvement of the principles or founder.  Good help is always hard to find.  We have a proven process for recruiting, training and keeping the best people.  Not only does this make your life easier, it helps your firm run effectively and efficiently. 
They can’t keep up with the changes in their market. They know that firm growth follows personal growth, but they don’t even have time to keep up with the day-to-day changes in their area of specialty – let alone the changes in the local competitive environment. Business education has moved into a new realm, with business mentoring and coaching taking over from traditional books and seminars so you get the right information at the right time. We call it “Just in Time Learning”.  You get what you need specifically for your law firm - not a bunch of academic theories.
They need someone to hold them accountable, someone to demand a profit, to demand results, someone to push them to do what is necessary to take the firm to the next level.  Being a business owner, a law firm owner in particular, can be a lonely job. Having a sounding board, a mentor and coach, a friend to talk with about your business problems is just a small part of what we do, but often it is the most valuable.

They need someone who can see the forest for the trees, an outsider who isn’t blinded by Big Law and by too many years of being told “that’s the way it’s always been done.” Outsiders can often provide the “secrets to success”.  The reason: Running your own firm is like any part of life; often you need an outsider to see the simplest of things. Often you need someone to ask the tough questions. We can provide the objectivity you need to make the best decisions for the long-term health of your business.

Those are the six reasons why my most successful law firm clients engaged me.  The one thing I noticed was that marketing advice was not specifically mentioned.  My clients mostly highlighted the business and personal strategy work as the main reason we worked together.

In fairness, I do give quite a bit of marketing advice and that is the reason most of my clients initially seek me out.  But the strategy aspect of our work is something that cannot and should not be overlooked.

Thanks to all who helped me answer this question.  For more information on my new Strategic Advisor Program, please visit:

http://www.rainmakerlawyer.com/site/coaching

Print Email

How to Pick a Coach to Help Build Your Law Practice

Many attorneys are turning to business coaches to help them develop solid business plans or marketing plans.  This is a great idea but selecting a coach to help you build your practice can be a difficult decision.  There is no licensing agency that regulates coaching.  There are a few groups that “certify” people to be coaches but the criteria set by these agencies are often arbitrary and self serving. 

There are a few franchise business coaching companies that provide coaching models.  The intellectual property that these companies have developed is good but often remedial – especially for logical process oriented folks.

Any of these solutions might serve your purposes.  The question is: How do you know if you coach is qualified to work with you?

Here are some things to look at when deciding who to work with to help you build your practice:

Print Email

Page 1 of 1 pages