Why lawyers should ignore good ideas

A few months ago, a lawyer I’ve known for a long time asked me about his New Year’s resolution.  He wanted to develop more new business in 2008, and was looking for advice to help him succeed.  My answer was simple:  Ignore good ideas. 

Lawyers are much too busy to spend time on ideas that are only good.  To maximize the chances of success, each individual must focus on the very best ideas for their practice, their personality, and their schedule.  For example, it’s good marketing advice to volunteer for a bar association committee.  It’s an easy and enjoyable way to develop new relationships that could lead to business in the future.  But it is probably better advice to skip the bar association and volunteer instead in an industry organization whose members are potential clients. That way, the relationships you develop will lead to more new business, more quickly.

Even that is probably not the best advice.  For most lawyers, the best place to start is with current clients.  If you would have averaged an hour per week on that committee, spend it instead on your top clients.  Take them to lunch.  Listen.  Find out what they want.  Give them more.  Do things for free. 

But don’t make those client lunch reservations just yet, because there are no generic answers to the question of what’s best.  Maybe in your unique situation the bar association would be best.  Or maybe none of these three are right for you; you need to go in a different direction.

Since established lawyers never have enough time for marketing, they must prioritize relentlessly and keep returning to the question:  “What should I do today to increase new business?”  You must place the highest priority on tasks that are most likely to yield the type of clients you want to work with, and the types of matters you prefer to focus on. 

For example, I often talk to lawyers who are writing articles or books in their marketing time.  As a man who spends a lot of time writing this blog and many other things, I obviously think that writing can be a good way to increase visibility.  But there are several important caveats.  First of all, writing is way too much fun for some of us, and it’s easy to write things that do not serve the central marketing purpose.  Second, by itself publication is unlikely to bring in new business.  To be an effective marketing tactic, writing must be used to build relationships, one person at a time.  (One example:  Send copies of your article to key contacts, each with a short written note.)   Third and most important:  you must consider what else you could be doing with that time.  If an article takes ten hours to write, what else could you do with those ten marketing hours?  Would you get more results with current clients, or by strengthening relationships with people you already know?   

What’s the best way to come up with the best list of activities for your unique situation?  Review things that have worked in the past for you, for your partners, and for other firms.  Quickly.  Because every minute you spend planning is a minute you are not following up with clients.  You can start from the lists of best practices in our LegalBizDev Success Kit. 

Full disclosure:  if you buy the Success Kit, I will make money.  You will too.

Comments

[New York CLE]

In a market like this one, even lawyers need to take notice and work harder for the business that is out there. Take this strategy to the next level and only practice the best of the best ideas out there. No time to waste on good ideas, everyone else is already beating you to the good ideas. Innovate and invest in new strategies.