Authentic Law Marketing Blog : Lawyer & Law Firm Consulting : Elizabeth Ferris : Ferris Consulting : Collaborative Lawyer Marketing, Family Law Marketing

Last week I had a conversation with a highly successful family lawyer who was telling me about what he wanted “more of” in his law firm. He said, “I want us to be a firm that is 100% committed to excellence, to provide our clients with the greatest level of value, and to be seen as a firm that consistently achieves the best results for our clients.”

There was a sense of excitement in his voice as he described what he wanted and why it was important for him and his firm.

Lawyers who believe their work is meaningful are successful rainmakers, enjoy their work and have thriving practices.

One source of meaningful work comes from delivering a high level of excellence and exceptional value to clients. It is rewarding, worth the effort and results in increased revenue and profitability. Yet, many firms continue to over emphasize the billable hour as the primary message with associates and partners, a message that can leave lawyers less than enthusiastic about growing their practice.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, The story of success, he states “It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five, it’s whether our work fulfills us.”

In his book there is a chapter on lawyers, devoted to the concept of “meaningful work.” In the chapter he describes how highly successful law firms were founded by individuals whose cultural circumstances gave them belief in meaningful work.

According to Gladwell, having meaningful work was one of the hallmarks of successful people.

How meaningful is your work? Assess your practice and answer the following questions:

• What is important to you?
• What contribution do you want to make?
• Why does your practice exist?

The following is an email I received from a family lawyer who understands the value of meaningful work:

“I began to see the practice of family law as the service of guiding people through one of the most difficult times of their lives. I truly believe that is what we do, but when you “name it” you internalize it. In the past, when people asked me what I did for a living, I responded that I was a “divorce lawyer.’” Not anymore. I will proudly proclaim that I am a problem solver.” And I believe it.”

The lawyer who sent me the email has a thriving, profitable practice and is one of the top originators at her law firm. For her, meaningful work comes from knowing that she has the knowledge, expertise and resources to help clients achieve the best possible results. For others, meaningful work may be something different. In Outliers, Gladwell outlines the following 3 criteria for meaningful work:

• Autonomy
• Complexity
• Connection between effort and reward

We all may define meaningful work differently, but what is universal is that meaningful work comes from a strong sense of purpose and typically goes beyond  a surface measurement like a “billable hour” quota. By focusing on why you exist and the contribution you want to make, you will attract desirable clients, increase your origination and build a practice that provides fulfillment ( and satisfaction) to your work. 
 

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One of the most effective approaches to growing your law practice is to apply the 80/20 rule or the “Pareto principle” to your marketing activities.

Knowing what the 20% high return activities are that will bring 80% of your results, is especially important for lawyers who are constantly struggling to find time to grow their practice. 

I was reminded of this principle as I read David Meerman Scott’s blog post today called About You. In the post Meerman talks about the lost opportunity of not having a well written bio or About Us page.

I'm amazed when someone writes a terrific blog or has a great Twitter feed (or a presence on some other social networking site) but fails to say who they are. Don't they want to stand out from the crowd?

Your blog's "about" page, your Twitter bio and the other places you interact on line are a great opportunity to say who you are! It is an essential element of personal branding. Don’t ignore the opportunity to tell the world about you.

Not only is a biography or “About “page important on your blog, LinkedIn or Twitter profile, but your biography page is one of the most frequently visited pages on your law firm’s web site.

What does you biography page say about you?

Your biography page should effectively communicate to prospective clients and referral sources:

• Who are the clients you serve?
• What is the value you provide clients?
• How do you differentiate your practice?
• What are your credentials and experience?

Answering the above questions will take time and can be challenging to summarize into a short synopsis. However the time you spend creating a biography that tells people "who you are"  and more importantly how you can solve their problems, will be a 20% high payoff activity that can produce 80% of your results. 

 

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In a recent blog post by Nick Morgan, Nick talked about the two critical elements to increasing your charisma.

The following are Nicks tips:

First, increase your authenticity.  And that means being absolutely aligned in what you say and how you say it – content and body language.  You can’t be authentic if those two modes of expression are not aligned.

Second, increase your passion.  Focus in yourself on how you feel about the moment, the people you’re with, the situation you’re in, and then express that (see #1).

 Working on these two steps will create a virtuous cycle that will increase your charisma quotient as you get more and more practiced at expressing emotion authentically.

Nick has simply and succinctly named two approaches that will not only increase your charisma but also increase your effectiveness to grow your law practice. Research shows that over 90% of what you communicate is non-verbal, this means that you must first be convinced about what you are saying before you can convince anyone else.

Assess you personal passion and belief in the value of your work. What can you do to increase your alignment between what you say and how you say it?

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Last week the headlines about Hillary Clinton's visit to Africa included, Hillary Clinton loses cool at question on Bill: 'My husband is not the Secretary of State, I am'.
Hillary’s “rage” over a question asked by a Kinshasa university student overshadowed her entire Africa tour.

You can view the you tube video of Hillary's infamous reaction to the students question here.

As I watched the video of Hillary “losing her cool” which was repeated over and over on all the major news stations, I thought about how “losing your cool” can override good work and make a smart, sophisticated person look foolish.

I am reminded of a term coined by Daniel Golemen called Emotional Intelligence. Goleman defines emotional intelligence as “the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves , for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships”

Mastering Emotional Intelligence is an essential skill in building and cultivating long term relationships with clients, colleagues and referral sources.

One of the elements of Emotional Intelligence is Self Control, this is the ability to keep disruptive emotions and impulses in check. The following are three actions to keep in mind to assist you in maintaining self control in a difficult situation:

1. Manage impulsive feelings- Maintain an awareness of your emotions. Once you feel the urge to react negatively to a comment or situation, think about the goal you want to achieve and how your behavior will help (or hinder) you to achieve your goal.
    
2. Respond calmly- Keep in mind that people respond better to a calm and thoughtful response. If you feel you are “losing your cool”, pause and visualize what you want to achieve before reacting in a disrespectful manner. If you have the opportunity, take a break and remove yourself from the situation before you respond.
    
3. Become curious- As soon as you are certain that what you are hearing is wrong and upsets you. Seek to understand why the person is asking the question or making the statement.  Imagine how different the outcome would have been if Hillary would have asked for clarification from the student about the "Bill" question before she reacted.

Those who can monitor and control their internal feelings, impulses and resources possess a high level of emotional intelligent self-management skills.  In my experience, the lawyers and executives who have the ability to manage and control their emotions are also those who gain the most endorsement from clients, colleagues and their personal and professional network. By knowing how to manage disruptive emotions and stay calm in difficult situations, you will be perceived by others as more empathetic, intelligent and be someone who others want to spend time and do business with.

 

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Building a successful law and collaborative practice does not have to be complicated or require you to give up your social life and the things that you enjoy.

The following is a list of simple and effective things you can do to grow your practice:

1. Routinely ask yourself, “What is my vision for my practice; what kind of work do I want to do? Why is this important to me? Write down the answer and then commit yourself to doing something every day to meet your vision. Commit yourself to excellence in your field, whether it is family law, finance, employment law,collaborative practice, etc.

2. Be selective about the work you accept. If you are constantly busy with work that is not consistent with your vision for your practice, it will be difficult to find the time or energy to grow the kind of work that will allow you to achieve your goals. Decide who your ideal client is and proactively attract this type of client to your practice.

3. Nurture and grow business from your top referral sources. Referrals come from people who know, like and trust you. The best way to gain trust is to develop a relationship with those who already know about you. This will require scheduling the time to get to know your referral sources and learning about their businesses and interests.
 
4. Provide remarkable service to your clients. Word-of-mouth marketing is by far the best marketing strategy for any service. The only way to get people talking about your service is to make the experience for clients remarkable -- then they will want to tell other people.

5. Have a web site  (and blog) that educates people about who you are, including what differentiates you and what is your "unique selling proposition" . Offer information that is of value to your prospective clients. Your message should connect at an emotional level with your target markets’ desired outcomes. A good resource for learning about creating a Blog is Lex Blog.

6. Share your success- help others learn and grow. The more you share your success and knowledge with other professionals, the more they will learn about you and your expertise.
 
7. Begin doing something towards building your practice today. The small events you do today will result in Big change for your practice in the future.
 

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Last week I received a question asking me, "What is the best way to help people find the switch to illuminate the light bulb in their heads about the crucial need for vision, mission and values?"

This is a common question I receive from Law firms, Collaborative groups, and businesses. For some reason, the thought of creating a strategic vision and mission is counter intuitive to professionals who want to accelerate the growth of their practice in a difficult economic climate.

The instinct is to go out and start “doing” an activity or even worse to respond or react to an event of “special marketing offer” that requires an immediate decision.

Accelerated results come from the power of a group or firm to work in unison toward a shared vision. It is similar to an elite group of rowers whose power comes from the synchronicity of each person working together. Speed and power is achieved by rowing in unison in the same direction. If one person is out of sync the whole group’s ability to succeed is challenged. If a few people are rowing out of sync, the results can be disastrous.

This is true in organizations and law firms, for example, before I conducted a strategic planning retreat for a collaborative law group, the organization had 12 committees all working in different and sometimes opposite directions. Board members had different opinions of what were they thought were the high priority activities for the organization. This created tension among board members and even worse reduced the efficiency of limited and valuable human and financial resources. The organizations members were questioning the value of their membership and getting frustrated with the lack of results they were seeing.

The group participated in a in two day retreat that was preceded by interviews and targeted strategic assignments for board members. In the retreat, the board clarified the purpose of the group which put everyone on the same page as to “why” the organization existed.

This lively discussion allowed everyone to listen and convey what they believed was the reason for the organizations existence. The value from this process was not just in coming up with a great mission statement; the value came from the dialogue and mutual understanding of the companies reason for being.

Once everyone was in alignment with the purpose for the organization, they were able to move forward and create a shared vision about what they wanted the organization to achieve.

After defining the vision and mission, the group efficiently and effectively developed a plan to translate their vision into results. The energy of the group was ignited because the retreat discussion was focused on the organizations most important results. An action plan was created and is now used as a road map for prioritizing agenda items at every board meeting. The plan is being followed and the group has experienced breakthrough results.

It is difficult to answer the question about illuminating the light bulb on the value of vision. However, my response would be, it is not what the vision is... it is what vision does. Optimal results are achieved when everyone in your team knows where they want to go (clarifies what success looks like) and are in alignment on how to get there. In other words, they are all rowing in the same direction.

Let me know if you are part of a team that is rowing in different directions. I will provide you with some ideas on how to get everyone working towards a common goal.  

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I recently met with a partner at a law firm who asked me to assist him in placing an article he had  written.  He said a few of his partners had recently published articles in various publications and he thought he should be doing the same.

I asked, "what do you want to accomplish by writing and placing the article?" After a short conversation, he defined the results he wanted to achieve -he wanted to increase his visibility among targeted referral sources.

Once we clarified his objective, we formulated a strategy for increasing his visibility among targeted referral sources. We developed three tactics for achieving this goal. One of the tactics included writing and placing articles in targeted publications.

Strategy defines the results we want to achieve and tactics are the actions taken to achieve the strategy. Tactics can  include, launching a blog, attending networking events, creating a brochure, advertising, revising a web site, social media ( twitter, Linkedin, you tube, etc.) etc. See Kevin Okeefe's post Law firms mistakenly focus on social media tactics over strategy .

Clearly there is a difference between a strategy and a tactic and the key to achieving optimal results is to start with strategy before tactics. We all understand this basic concept yet, the majority of people will start with tactics before strategy. Why is this?

In this mornings post, When tactics drown out strategy Seth Godin lends great insight into answering this question. 

Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don't feel confident outlining one unless we're sure it's going to work. And the 'work' part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, "I'm going to post this." If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)

Lawyers and collaborative law practitioners are great at executing tactics. You know how to get things done. By starting first with strategy, you will achieve your desired results.

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 Social media is the new buzz in growing your law practice.

Today I read about how the American Bar Association is using Twitter to help attendees and non attendees follow what is happening at the meeting. You can read the article at At ABA, Whole Lotta Tweeting Going On .

Last week I was interviewed for an article In the Wisconsin Law Journal, Jack Zemlicka wrote about Online networking has limits.

Every day we see and hear more about the virtues and issues related to social media and growing your law and collaborative practice.

In the last few months my clients have been asking me, what is Twitter and why do I need to know about it?  

Twitter is one form of social media that is also called micro blogging and is a communications platform that helps you to do the following:

• Share information with people interested in your firm, your business and what you do.
  
• Gather real-time market intelligence and feedback
  
• Build relationships with clients, partners and other influencers who care about your firm or business
  
• Communicate with a company (or anyone else) about your experience with their  service or products

No question, Twitter is an important networking tool. Why the resistance? The down side of Twitter is learning how to use it and where to start. My recommendation is to:

• Begin reading about twitter at twitter101
  
• Start slowly and spend 30 minutes a day learning about the value of social media
  
• Define your goals for what you want to achieve using social media
  
•  Monitor your results and tweak your plan if you are not meeting desired goals.

On a lighter note, a few weeks ago I was watching John Stewart and in the show he explored the question, “Why Twitter?  .

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