It’s easy to define your ideal client—someone who needs your services and pays their bills, right? When you’re building your practice, that’s a good place to start. Any client looks like an ideal client at first, but after a few years in practice you begin to recognize the clients you want—and those you don’t. Better to have that recognition sooner rather than later, because then you can build the practice you want, rather than have it built for you by whoever comes in the door.

There are plenty of clients who need your services and pay their bills, but some . . . [more]

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 their managing partner tends to seek out those who qualify for the first sentence, and are ill-prepared for the second. In my experience, firms choose managing partners for any (or a combination) of the following reasons:

• The candidate is the strongest biller in the firm;

In my column about content marketing, I described it as: “relevant, useful information consistently provided to a specific audience” and likened it to the opposite of advertising. Does that mean that advertising is irrelevant and useless?

Done poorly, yes. Done properly and targeted to the right people, no.

In the average law firm, if there’s a firm marketing budget, it’s lean and includes everything from event tickets to holiday cards. Lawyers may or may not have individual business development budgets, which they guard jealously for pet projects that they’ve always done—without tracking results. The firm might still be running . . . [more]

Back in 2014, I wrote about cycling being the new golf as a means of business development. It was something I had been thinking about for a number of years and still believe there is merit. With cycling, you may spend a day or two riding with like-minded people during an event and potentially a number of other days on training rides. That is a lot of face time (lycra time?). With a round of golf, you may spend half a day together once a year. Cycling provides plenty of time to get to know someone and their business.

The . . . [more]

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. So law firms spend some money on marketing, and some of their lawyers even spend time on marketing – taking people to lunch, playing golf, attending a board or trade function, perhaps hosting a client seminar. Year in, year out it’s pretty much the same. They base their marketing spend on what they spent last year (perhaps with a bit of a bump). They . . . [more]

This column gets published on December 22, when just about the last thing anyone will be doing is reading a column about marketing a law practice. That’s the Friday when everyone who hasn’t already taken off for the holidays is trying frantically to get out of the office by noon for the final frenetic round of shopping. Still, I have to assume that you’ll be back in the cold light of January and looking for something to kick-start the engines for another year. So here are ten New Year’s resolutions to rejuvenate your marketing plan for 2018.

1. Set a . . . [more]

Does your company have marketing materials that have been sitting around for years? We do and sometimes you find out they are being used out of the blue.

I recently received a “brochure” that was 29 pages long. The book – at 29 pages it’s hard to refer to it as a brochure – was almost entirely text with maybe 25 small images in total. Block fonts, full justification, disoriented information, no branding, no context and no flow. It was a marketing package by name only and would likely cause us to lose more projects than win.

The material was . . . [more]

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. And no commitment to doing what will be suggested. Just “fix me”. It’s a bit like a disgruntled teenager saying “make me popular, but don’t ask me to change anything about my looks, personality or actions”. I can do that. Give me several million dollars . . . [more]

My colleague Shari Robinson and I met for coffee recently and, inevitably, we spent some time talking shop about client and business development efforts in law firms. Shari always brings a pragmatic and enthusiastic perspective to the discussion, drawing upon her sales background and time at one of the Big Four accounting firms. We got to talking about the importance of having a client-centric strategy, what that really means and what kind of resources are required to successfully execute.

We know through our experience that there is value in having a rigorous and standardized approach supporting a firm’s client relationships, . . . [more]

I received an email from a father and a former Military lawyer now in private practice. He started with… “Thank you for the wonderful resource. I came across your blog on LinkedIn.” As he continues the tone turned to frustration and resignation. He explained the pressure and stress that I hear from many, many lawyers. He had the guts to write it down and hit SEND. He wrote…

“Bottom line is that I am more miserable right now than I have ever been in 12 years since graduating, have no job satisfaction, stress through the roof, and not sure how

How can you save time and money marketing your law firm? Drop a few clients.

Yes, drop. Some lawyers are better than others at saying no to taking on certain clients. Some groups can more easily spell out the criteria for their ideal client than others. And some firms are better than others about enforcing client intake policies. But very few lawyers, practice groups, or firms have committed to regularly culling their client lists for The Clients Who Aren’t Worth the Trouble.

But how do you know who those clients are? That’s where client classification comes in. Classifying your clients . . . [more]

Giving back is when we give and then nothing happens. No benefits for you, no recognition, nothing tangible gets sent your way. The biggest and sole reward is the realization that we have made a difference. However, there is very little in life do we do and “nothing” happens. Gaining skills, knowledge and expertise are common side effects and giving others your time may bring you interesting and challenging opportunities that might not come along otherwise.

Being a good corporate citizen has many different values and is assessed in many ways. One of the key assessments is to be recognized . . . [more]