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Message: Hi, I thought you might be interested in this article I found. Four Things I Do Not Understand About Law Firm Marketing Even though I make my living giving law firm marketing advice, there are some things about my clients I do not understand. And I am a big enough person to admit it. Here are four of these law firm marketing mysteries: Why do some lawyers view marketing as evil? Marketing cannot be evil. Marketing is a business process. It is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service. A business processed can be misused. It can be used unethically. It can be used unprofessionally. But ultimately, there are many, many lawyers who are great at effective, professional, ethical marketing. To brand marketing itself as wrong, evil or improper is simply ignorant, narrow minded and foolish. Unless of course you are doing so as part of your own marketing strategy…. Besides laziness and lack of imagination, why else do attorneys bill hourly? There is no good answer to this question. Hourly billing is unethical in most cases. It ensures that the lawyer’s financial interest and the best interest of the client are divergent. If a client wants a matter dragged on for a long time and they retain a lawyer for that purpose, then hourly billing may be an ethical option. Very few clients have that objective in mind when they retain a lawyer. Just because something is an accepted practice does not make it right (Slavery was an accepted practice for a while in the United States. Honor killing is still an accepted practice in some parts of the world). Your failure to at least present an alternative to hourly billing to a client is evidence of either a lack of creativity or laziness. Why don’t litigators form partnerships with transactional attorneys more often? There are only three ways to make money as an attorney. They are: 1). Get more clients 2). Get more matters from existing clients 3). Raise your fees The best way to take advantage of all three of these is by developing a relationship with a client where you can work with them over the long term. Litigation is an ad hoc process. Once the matter at hand is disposed of, it is gone and in most cases, so is the relationship. In a perfect world, every litigation practice would have a transactional component to it and vice versa. This would allow the firm to benefit from the depth of the relationship with both the client and any referral sources. This is commonsense and not marketing genius. Litigators: go find a transactional lawyer you like and ask them to share office space with you. Why would a lawyer hire an unsuccessful former lawyer or a part time lawyer to help with marketing? Would you hire a butcher to cut your hair? Would you hire a hairdresser to do your root canal? Would you hire a dentist to perform open heart surgery on your grandmother? Would you hire a heart surgeon from the Cleveland Clinic to neuter your Golden Retriever? The answers to these questions are an obvious and emphatic “NO”. Yet when I ask attorneys why they hire other attorneys to help them with their marketing, I get dumb looks and even dumber answers. Let’s face it, 99% of the time when an attorney decides to become a “marketing guru” they are a failure (or an underachiever) in their own profession. After all, if they were great attorneys, why would they abandon that profession (or make it a part time job). Honestly, if you need marketing help you don’t have to work with me. In fact, most of the time you cannot work directly with me. But please, please, do not give your hard-earned money to a former lawyer who learned about marketing in a three day seminar. Or even worse, to someone who practices law part time and is a marketing guru part time. If you need help with law firm marketing, hire a law firm marketing expert. Link: http://www.rainmakerlawyer.com/site/permalink/four_things_i_do_not_understand_about_law_firm_marketing/