I’m often brought into law firms by GM’s, COO’s, Lead Administrators or Office Managers. They tend to call me when they become frustrated by endless lawyer requests to do what I lovingly refer to as “random acts of marketing.” “We should be spending $6K/month on SEO. Get on that, will you?” “We should be putting [...]
As part of my strategic planning process with clients, I conduct interviews with each lawyer and a representative group of staff. One of the many questions I ask them is this: how will your client base shift in the coming five years, and how might that affect how you will provide legal services to them? [...]
Lawyers are some of the most intelligent people in this country. But from a business management perspective, I’d put them in the bottom 50%. That’s because lawyers don’t like to plan, they don’t like to ask how they are doing, and they don’t like change. But mostly, it’s because when they do get good advice, [...]
(This post first appeared in SLAW) Most firms have come to appreciate the value of practice groups in their management and marketing; but not everyone knows why they are more powerful than operating without them, which may result in their under-utilization. In this post I’ll explain the evolution of practice groups, what they look like [...]
(This article was originally published in SLAW). When I ask lawyers what their firm’s business goals are for the year, it’s shocking how few know the answer, often because those goals don’t exist. So, it’s understandable that when I ask those same lawyers for their personal business goals are, they don’t know those either. Firms [...]
Great marketing isn’t a single action; rather it’s a series of connected actions, each one building from the other for the purpose of creating a mutually beneficial and ideally ongoing relationship. This is a difficult lesson for lawyers to get, for three main reasons. Most lawyers don’t like marketing. It isn’t why they joined the [...]
By definition, make or break decisions occur when we have the least amount of time and emotional control to make them. How can we make the best possible decision in the worst possible circumstances? Management is about dealing with people and things – including events. We can’t possible manage every timekeeper, every moment of the [...]
I learn about things that can help marketing from all sorts of interesting sources. For example, I heard about Parkinson’s Law from Malcolm Gladwell in his podcast “Revisionist History”. At first, I thought he was talking about Parkinson’s Disease, the progressive nervous system disorder. But Gladwell clarified that Parkinson’s Law is the belief that work [...]
Having worked in or with law firms for over 30 years now, I can say that in my experience, law firms have a hard time being honest about certain things. I’m not for a minute suggesting that lawyers do not tell the truth. The foundation of every firm I’ve worked with is the personal integrity [...]
Most law firms I know are very giving from a charitable perspective. This could include altruistic monetary donations, support for client events, support of charitable initiatives involving the firm’s lawyers or staff, or in-house events in support of a charity. I’m always interested to see where in the budget these activities reside. It says a [...]