SCHOOL ET AL: ACT ONE SCENE ONE

Looking back at your own legal education with your years of practice and your exposure to how lawyers are educated in other countries of the world, do you not find 5, whole years a bit too much? This question about the education system professionals like lawyers and doctors go through is not new. The idea behind this length of time is to give you a thorough exposure to the rudiments and nuances of legal theory so that your entire being gets the idea that you are studying the law. Now, while one understands the howlers who say the time is too much ( yours truly met with a lady who studied in London and she asked 'what are you people doing with 5 whole years? Reply: 'My Sister...' ) and I strongly agree with them but I am more concerned with the content and direction of the education itself.

This is what we do at IBARU-McKENZIE, we generate business for law firms. This is our contribution to legal, others have social reform, justice e.t.c. we want to build billion dollar law firms, outside the major cities. So if you decide to spend your precious eyeball time on this blawg the preceding sentence was written so you'll have a clear idea of the kind of stuff you'll be getting. And blawg was not an error, it is pretty normal in the legal blogosphere as in B.LAW.G

So this matter of generating business in law firms rests primarily on the not-so- obvious assumption that the law is a business and a business needs customers to exist. You've probably read this business of the law being a noble profession? All lawyees get this from day one. Please for your own sanity take it down a little on the noble and dig in to the business. You cannot exercise a drop of nobility if the economic existence of your firm is in doubt. Not survival now, existence.
Following from this what did you ever learn in school about generating business apart from 'No Soliciting'. Probably nothing, so you had to learn by aping your seniors and the school of hard knocks. But (one really should not start a sentence with but, but it sounds right) there is this strange idea that has been around for a while. Really since the foundation of school and it is this: the plan behind setting up a system and working through it is that the individual can achieve more through the system than on his own? Well, reform in education requires a concerted, planned and political will rich process, McKinsey has a report out on it.

While the wheels of change are turning, you have to be committed to the hunt as a law firm and do remember, you are a professional services firm with limits on how you can go about it both by law (LPDC anyone?) and by the nature of the services you sell. If it is any consolation to you, developed legal economies, the U.K., the U.S. have the same challenges in driving business their way.
Soliciting will not do it for the long term though an anything-that-comes-in-the- door policy has always bee used to tide over till more stable times, no trouble with that. As long as it is a SHORT TERM measure and you fight like hell to keep it so.

A closing thought: have you noticed that most regular folk associate the lawyer with the courts i.e. litigation while the legal community itself seems to reward business law which follows business around and does its paperwork? It gets one thinking about what is what.