A primary benefit of being active online (by having a website with a biographical sketch and having articles relevant to your practice published online, for example) is that potential clients have an opportunity to learn something about your before meeting you. Whether your name surfaces by referral or by an internet search, it’s a safe [...]
In this economy, many lawyers are facing an unanticipated fork in the road. Layoffs leave some lawyers contemplating an exit from the profession, others considering whether to launch a solo practice, and others still looking to shift practice areas in hopes of finding a new position.
I recently watched a video of a presentation for the [...]
This week’s rainmaking activity focuses on publications. A “slow yield” activity that’s critical for growing substantive legal skill and reputation for expertise, every lawyer should have a few publications to his or her name.Â
Your task this week: select an issue on which you’d like to write a practical article and a publication in which you’d [...]
Legal management consultant Joel Henning concludes that the law firm business model is broken and that the currently-proposed fixes (such as alternative fees, offshoring, increased use of contract attorneys, etc.) are “insipid and inadequate.” For Henning’s proposal, which centers on a regulatory revolution that would permit outside investors who “would bring to bear a more [...]
How do you ask for business? We all know intuitively (or through training) that those who don’t ask typically don’t get business. However, many lawyers are leery to come out and ask for business explicitly, and rightly so. Asking can disrupt a relationship if the answer is “no,” and, under some circumstances, asking can even [...]
Studies show that a prospective client must be exposed to you 7-9 times before they’re ready to hire you. (Those statistics are not specific to law, granted, but I have no reason to believe they’re off the mark for lawyers.) The reasons are simple: most potential clients don’t have a current legal need, are already [...]
Do you know how to get the most from your sponsorships? I was interested to see this article from The National Journal, with the headline, “No More ‘Chalets’: Legal Marketing Focuses on Building Business. Good idea, no? Sponsorships can be good avenues for business development, but simply posting a firm name on a tent at [...]
Have you ever been in one of those deadly conversations in which a lot of words fly about and yet nothing happens? Or when decisions are made and strategies are crafted, but everyone sitting around the table knows that nothing will actually change because everyone is talking around the real problem? What a waste of [...]
I’m on vacation this week, sort of. By “sort of,” I mean that I’m more or less alternating vacation and work days. Today is a work day; tomorrow, I’ll be out playing. The image to the left? That’s where I spent part of Saturday and Sunday, reading some of the books that have been on [...]
I gave a 1-hour presentation about rainmaking last week in the Chicago office of a large law firm, and following the presentation, a lawyer approached with a question: Is it ever too late to rebuild professional relationships that have languished?
The short answer is that it depends on the relationship. The deeper the relationship, the more [...]
August 31, 2009 
