Are lawyers starting to accept the word sales?

After my first sales call at a law firm, I asked one of the participants for advice on the best way to explore what other firms were doing. She suggested I join the Legal Marketing Association. Through the magic of Google, within an hour I learned that it was founded in 1985 to serve as “the voice of marketing professionals and attorneys at law firms looking to develop their practices,” and had over 2,200 members. A few minutes after that, I was in.

Some time later, I emailed her again to ask her impression of the Raindance conference, which I had found on the web. She replied: “I'm sorry to say I don't know anything about it.. If you do go…I'd be interested to hear your take on it.” Which was my first sign of how rapidly things are changing.

If you’ve read previous posts, you probably know that I did go to the conference, and that it was sponsored by the Legal Sales and Service Organization (LSSO) an organization “for professionals who recognize that business and client development skills must be cultivated to successfully sell legal services and retain clients.” LSSO was launched in August 2003 by Silvia Coulter of Coulter Consulting Group, Beth Cuzzone of Goulston & Storrs and Catherine MacDonagh of Day, Berry & Howard. All three were quite active in LMA before founding LSSO, and after: Silvia is a former national president of LMA, and Beth and Catherine are past presidents of the New England chapter. They did not want LSSO to compete with LMA, they wanted to supplement it with a new forum to focus on sales, client development, and client loyalty.

I recently talked to Beth Cuzzone about the founding of LSSO, the state of the profession, and the line between marketing and sales. She had a number of insights I’ll discuss in future postings about how competitive the legal profession is becoming, and how the emphasis on sales will inevitably increase. But the comment that most got my attention came near the end of our conversation: “Things are changing,” Beth said, “and the legal profession is ripe for sales experts from other fields to contribute.” Sounds good to me.