I come from a world where client service is as important as legal expertise. In fact, client service might be even more important than legal expertise because as Maya Angelou said, years from now people won’t remember what you said or did but they will remember how you made them feel. The reality is that [...]
Change is a reality of business. Client needs shift; legal expertise shifts due to retirements and new hires; legislation and case law create new opportunities and close down previous legal practises. Change is hard for most people, but particularly for lawyers. The lawyer personality doesn’t like change; it likes the expected, precedent and tradition. Lawyers [...]
While Ronald Reagan wasn’t one of my favorite Presidents, he produced one of my favorite quotes about leadership: “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." The decision-making process most firms seem to use for selection of [...]
Most businesses – especially law firms – must market to some degree. And they do. They have a website. They print business cards. They make sure the logo is used on tombstone ads and sponsorship programs. Law firms do spend some money on marketing, and some of their lawyers even spend time on marketing – [...]
Years ago, when lawyer attrition started to reach alarming rates (which for some reason we are more complacent about now), Catalyst in the US conducted research to determine why so many female lawyers were leaving the profession. Not that only female lawyers were leaving; that was simply the focus of their research. They found that [...]
I often get asked “what kind of marketing should we do?” Or I’m asked to “just provide us with a bunch of great marketing ideas”. No time spent determining what the firm wants to look like in the future. No proper assessment of where they are today. No indication of what success would look like. [...]
Instead of business as usual this year, I invite you to consider managing your firm like it's a business instead of a law firm: through business goals and plans. Most law firms only have a general sense of what they want to accomplish this year as a business. Earn more revenues. Grow our client base. [...]
In this second segment of a two-part article, I focus on succession planning for practice groups and individual lawyers. In Part One (published here in October), I explained why proper succession planning is so important. I also touched on why senior partners might be reluctant to retire, and offered advice on how to overcome this [...]
Client teams may be one of the most powerful business development tools at your disposal, but are an oxymoron to most lawyers. As a profession, lawyers aren’t usually known for being team players. By nature, they are individual thinkers and doers. They like their autonomy, and tend to feel that too many rules restrict their [...]
Lawyers are highly intelligent, capable human beings who can probably reasonably do any task placed in front of them. That doesn’t mean that they should. The wise business person focuses on their core competency, and for lawyers, that’s the practice of law. There’s also the belief by some (well, many) that lawyers are typically not [...]