Unlocking the potential of your clients
Clients can be demanding creatures. Indeed, there are some where, it doesn’t matter what you do, it will never be enough. But, at the risk of stating the obvious, your firm is the…
What do you do?
A solicitor/lawyer/advocate/barrister/attorney. Professional services. Deal with clients. Law. Solve problems. Bill. But what do you do? No really. What do you do? This is not the Why or How question. This is much…
R.I.P. up the ‘Business Development’ Script
What does Business Development (BD) mean to you? Branding? Networking? LinkedIn? Social Media? Blogging? Sales? Marketing? Innovation? Change? Thinking the i-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e? Imagine being offered a blank sheet of paper and asked to write…
The fallacy of the cost/benefit paradigm
The exalted cost/benefit analysis is a specious proposition. You cannot predict with (any) precision: The outcome of the case; The costs; The actual benefit to the client. Client: how much will the case…
Social Media: Manage from the Inside / Leverage to the Outside
Social media doesn’t start with the platforms.
It starts with the people who are entrusted with its development.
If they are disinterested then no amount of technology will rescue your efforts.
You may feel inclined to produce a compendious social media policy or, if you are feeling brave, you may even combine this with a strategy paper. But, as much as it pains me to say so, you need to up-skill first (the ‘What’ is just as important, at this stage, as the ‘How’), and to paint vivid and meaningful pictures of a world filled with remarkable content that engages your clients. If all you think about is content of old, then social media will not correct your ego based obsession with showing how learned you are!
Too Much Style ~ Too Little Substance
It is hard to escape the winds of change blowing through the legal profession.
- ABS
- Outcomes Focused Regulation
- On-line legal services
- A lack of work in certain areas necessitating a root and branch review of the business
Many partners will wonder:
(a) why they went into law; and
(b) why such an esteemed profession could find itself in such a precarious (falling like a stone) position.
How to avoid internal politics
Truth is, you can’t.
We all know that you have to play the game, it’s just that some people seem to get more satisfaction from being in the mix than do the majority of others.
I would not sure how to describe my journey with the internal jostling and sucking up. A part of me would like to think (smugly) that I ploughed my own furrow (“I’ll show the bastards”) but perhaps the more sanguine part of my personality would replay some of my more cringe-worthy moments, where I thought the only way to get on was to play the game. Either way, it didn’t benefit me. And, if anything, it made me even more resolute in the end that I simply wasn’t cut out for corporate life because I couldn’t be the real me.
WIIFM + Call to Action ~ The Only Way to Write
Stage 1
What’s In It For me?
Let me repeat: What’s in it for me?
Website.
Newsletters.
Emails.
Blogging.
Why the silo mentality is a slow road to ruin
Let me make one thing clear: a Silo mentality in legal practice stifles growth – both individually and collectively.
Look about you.
How many lawyers work for ‘their’ clients?
How many are working against an individual target?
And how many are prepared to pass on work which is better suited to someone else in the firm?
I see no discernable difference in legal practice since starting my professional life in 1996. There appears no lessening of the ‘I’ approach (“One for one and all for one …!”).
It goes beyond hoarding.
The only (success) strategy you will ever need
I am not someone given to hyperbole.
What you see is what you get.
Straight talk.
Having spent just over a year away from practice (I am still not sure about the title “non-practicing solicitor”), I have had time to reflect on the highs and lows of my professional life. But more than that, combined with my work, consider what actually worked.
