WHAT YOU COMPETE WITH

What you are competing with is how different you can be, how original you can be, how much thought you can put into your work, how much you can uncover.
This is because the basic tools are the same, they are finite and your true competition knows about them.

ANY LIMITS TO IMITATION

As you go about your practice there are some law firms that are above your current reality and are your role models or there are others who are dominating industries you hope one day to actively dominate as well. So the advice comes in that if you emulate them then you will be where they are at and have what they have or something along those lines.

But how do you know if what they are doing is any good, or if that is the direction you should be going in. Like the production of brochures and gifts for the holidays that are then handed out to friends, competitors and clients? Why are they done, what do they achieve and most importantly should you be doing it?

These are general questions you should ask yourself every time you observe a practice those you see ahead of you in your law practice or who have certain industries locked down are involved with.
They have a lot to teach and offer by their example and you'd do very well to listen listen pay close attention but after that if you are going to be successful competing in the arena of ideas, of marketing your law firm's services you will at some point have to be original.

USING THE ARTICLE 2

Using articles to get anything meaningful done as you generate business for your law firm means:

1 Setting a purpose for your article: Let's say the article is the only marketing tool you are using then it must accomplish your business generating aims on its own. The question is why are you writing this article? What do you hope for it to do for you?

2 Deciding the actual subject you'll write about: What do you know? The clients you are targeting have what problems on their plate? You are targeting a specific problem for a specific market. Let's say its Brand Managers of FMCGs, what bothers them at work, what is coming their way in the near future and what do you know or have access to that can assist them? That, my friend, is the subject of your article.

3. What publications are you aiming them to be in: What kind of stuff do the said Brand Managers read or what publications advertise to them. Check out the editorial and ads of magazines to help answer these questions and read them to get a feel of what they are about and how they work.

4. Write: Writing is a major art form and you should write your article carefully with lots of planning and thought. Think of what the magazines will find acceptable and the reader will find useful when presenting your ideas. Remember you are doing it for them and not your self aggrandisement. Your writing is about presenting your ideas so this naturally be the centre if this article and the tweaking comes afterward.

5. Use the reprint: Talk this over with the publication for a proper format.

You are a legal services professional and you already have a lot to say about a lot of things in the profession itself and about other industries. Go do it.

USING THE ARTICLE

Of all the tools that are available to put the word out about your law firm and to generate the business, writing articles punches above its weight. Way, way above.

The idea is that we are a law firm that knows about such and such so if you have anything related along these kinds come to us and we'll set you aright.
This is the message you want to communicate to the client reading your article.

The article trumps the interview because you say what you want to say, how you want to say it. It does not matter if you are a solo or fifty person office you can project your expertise just as well as anyone else and compete for the same business. For certain transactions you may need $30 Million to be a part of a conversation. The article you write is your $30 Million ticket.

The article gives you the chance to speak with clients you may have difficulty reaching or who are to expensive to reach physically. You can tell them what you can offer to assist them right from the comfort of your desk.

THE SILVER BULLET

This idea came from Hollywood vampire movies where all the hero had to do to slay the all powerful and very deadly vampire was to shoot it with one silver bullet. That's it. Just one and all the problems are over.
Now somethings should stay in the movies but the Silver Bullet idea has found its way everywhere else, the idea being that with just one easy thing you do you will eliminate all your problems. Really?

Well, in generating business for your law firm it will not do to go the Silver Bullet way. It will not work. The closest to this you can get to work for you is a plan for the concentrated focus of your resources on a clearly defined target market and a separate plan for the management of those resources to make sure they pay off.

The other pothole you may fall into with the Silver Bullet is to spread yourself too thin. For a plan to work you must give it the resources it needs to work not what you can spare i.e. if you need boiling water it must reach a certain level of heat or else you will never have the water boil. Never, no matter how long you are at it.

The seduction of the Silver Bullet is that it seems like the case for focus and sounds like the fact that one specific thing is usually what provides a large portion of your results like a keystone habit or an single product economy or a group of three assets. So does mean that you dump the other clients and just have those major group? Only you can answer that.

IS YOUR SELLING WORKING OUT FOR YOU

When do you know your marketing plan is a good one or when do you know that it is going to work? You really do not because marketing is an art form of which you do not know if it is going to work until you have put it well in play.

The taste of the pudding is always been in the eating and every thing done before the actual eating is to convince you to eat. For example, you go to a seminar based on what it promises to offer and the reputation of the chaps speaking and your want or need of what they offer. These three things are designed to get you to go to the seminar but unless you go and hear what they say, you will never know how useful or otherwise it is.

Assessing the marketing plan for your law firm services is unlike a loaf of bread where you can smell the loaf or touch it to tell if it is edible (although you can never tell if there is too much salt until you actually eat it).

Any marketing plan is probably expensive and if it fails you have an expensive failure. That is the risk, the fear that after all this you will not only have any return on your investment but you will also have egg in your face for your trouble.
The solution is to assess the potential value against the potential loss and decide if it is something you can live with. Because in competing with other law firms some risky new marketing idea or two will come across your plate to execute and if you do not risk it you will not achieve much.

Resign yourselves to following:

In deciding whether a risk is worth it for you always know that there are no absolutes and the spirit and effort with which you put your plan into play is the what, which makes it certain to fail or not. Not the plan itself. Your firm, your marketing, your attention to detail and embracing of risk.

SHOWING HOW YOUR LAW FIRM IS DIFFERENT

This is very similar to showing how one individual human being is different from another. Your law firm has the same lawyers, legal education, same market, same responses to legal problems. In essence it sounds just like a commodity situation so it is difficult to say that your pork barrels are better than the other chaps pork barrels .
But there is a fact in your favour already, you know that each person you meet is different somehow because he has a unique personality, way of thinking,of doing things of approaching problems, a special work ethic and so on and so forth.

The limits to which you can show how your law firm is different are really set by how much thought and effort you put into it.
Thus it is clear that those law firm that do more thinking come up with better approaches and service levels. They are always seeking to improve and if this is a character trait at your firm then you are already different from other law firms. You do it because you seek to be better and not to hang yourself as the poster child for a unique law firm.

Now while it is admittedly difficult, clearly demonstrating the ability to understand your clients problems is a certain way to show how you are different. This can be understood as firm wide empathy and it is something that will tilt the decision in your favour when the client is putting together her internal mix of factors to make her hiring decision.
You can also come up with an innovative solution and show how it is innovative or a world apart from what exists. This is where your long hours of dedicated study and thought will yield fruits as this is where ideas come to you that may not occur to others simply because they were not looking for them.

The singular theme to show you are different is to prepare differently, to put in hours of deep thought and study on the matter. No one can do this for your firm and you certainly cannot market an average product for a premium price.

WHAT MARKETING IS

If you think that marketing your legal services is going out and sending out letters of introduction to get business, you are denying your law office of the full benefits of marketing.

1. Marketing shows the uniqueness your firm offers so if whatever you call marketing does not have this effect and the clients or even you cannot point out a meaningful difference between yourself and other law firms then you do not know what you are doing.
2. Marketing creates new sources of business leads for your law firm to follow up on and to close. It unearths the opportunities and opens your eyes to them.
3. Marketing makes certain that the clients and the marketplace know who your firm is and they remember. This means they can reach out or be receptive when you reach out to offer assistance.
4. Marketing tells the client and target market what you have done and what you can get done. It puts out your skills and expertise so clients can readily access and identify you.
5. Marketing fixes the idea clearly in your law firm consciousness that you are in it for the long term, through boom and bust cycles, through economic or industry wide restructuring and that you are a law firm that will stand the test of time.
6. Marketing is always about meeting the needs of the client and is the primary tool you use to keep your clients.

So instead of pushing your services, you can have all of this if you take these ideas and apply them thoughtfully and with imagination to your law firm.

SO, WHAT SHOULD YOU BE READING?

During legal training you probably read enough law books, related material and class notes to last you a lifetime? But in every law university there is always that proffessor who always says ' You are a lawyer, read widely'
So do you mean that after all of this you still want me to do more? Yes, in fact.

There is a tale about Obafemi Awolowo that whenever he had to tackle a non-legal matter in court he would read up like a daemon and be able to come across as a professional in that field for the duration of the trial. In this tale it had something to do with medicine.

Where you assume that all you need to read and have time for is law books to prepare for cases, you may be right but even if you do that whatever legal reading you do is full of references to other areas not legal that your curiosity will lead you without.
But if it does not then you must go outside the fold so that you can find answers to your legal dillemmas or you will lack a connection with reality and practice your law largely for yourself.
Reading widely means you will be able to have conversations with people outside legal which is essential to generate business. You cannot always talk politics, sports and law with clients, it may seem like that is all you are capable of or it will make your conversations less engaging.

There is also the fact that a lot of the great achievements and events in some fields were borrowed from other fields. For example, The first conjoined twins, joined at the head from birth (craniopagus) to be separated and survive were the Binder twins from Germany and the operation was carried out at Johns Hopkins by Benjamin Carson (who by the way is being touted as the American republican presidential candidate for 2016).
He was able to solve the problem of one of the twins bleeding to death after separation which had always happened in previous operations by looking at a water tap (plumbing) and making the connection that once the babies hearts were stopped for an hour their blood would stop flowing the same way water stops flowing when you turn off the tap. All nerves could then be arranged after separation and death by exsanguination (loss of blood) would be avoided.

Also, the current structure of business is modelled on army military formations and a lot of our fashion items and jackets are also modelled on military uniforms.

The point of all this is, you need a basic education to have access to every idea you can to make sure you can contribute to legal affairs and your immediate environment, in philosophy, science, history and reading the newspapers really will not do.
As to a specific reading list you really will have to design your own programme and how you will fit it into your very busy schedule. However, accepting the idea is the very start and once you are convinced it is important you will find your way to fit it in.

LAW FIRM STRATEGY

Strategy is derived from the Greek word Strategos which means to position, to arrange your forces on the battle field.
At your firm your strategy is really the answer to the question, how do we plan to win? How do we plan to distribute or resources so that we win?
So instead of thinking of strategy as a highly intellectual, destination activity look at it a stating where do we want to be with this client and with this industry in 2 months or 3 years time.

The following will help:

1. What is the centre of your strategy, what is the Big Aha! around which you will be operating your firm? Aggressive public advocacy, human rights violations or heavy financial restructuring in energy services?

2. What resources are available or can you access so you can put your plans into play?

3. What are you going to do to slaughter the competition? Or at the very least kick them out of your specific market? Do you know what they've been up to and what is your response, however robust?

4. Execution is the missing link between your lofty, aggressive plans and the realization of those plans. It is a separate discipline of getting things done and it will always be the difference between the solid firms and the perpetual dreamers.
Also, since a lot of the tools are the same for legal entities your firm's level of getting it done is the identifiable edge.
In the words of the late Steven Paul Jobs 'Real Artists Ship'. They get the job done, they deliver the service, they execute the plan.

JUST SAY YOU DID IT

This is about simply admitting liability or rather the absence of anyone anywhere admitting liability quickly and early before the issues are joined. It can happen to anyone doing a thoughtless, inadequate, hurtful deed and caught in the glare of the headlights.
So far the predictable human response is to deny, shift responsibility or throw mud up. It is cheaper on your resources, your reputation, your ability to do more in the future and your peace of mind if you cut your losses instead of evading responsibility.

This concerns your law firm because in doing right by your client, there will be some or a lot of liability and a need for some one to accept responsibility. This fact has led to endless litigation in some form or the other.
So in what cases should you simply say 'We did it. We are sorry. We will not do it again. How can we make it right'. This is clearly the only way to address the issue but I can just see the reasons and justifications formulation a revolution of a protest as you read this.

Is this not the essence of solving the problem? Admitting you dropped the ball and moving forward quickly?
If it is any comfort or support to your case, because denial is so common it is a specially studied psychological phenomenon this fact of trying to evade or reduce responsibility for the things your client or even you law firm does.

Keep in mind that while you have your duties to your clients, the bias to avoid liability is already working in your thought process. Scientific fact.

SPEECHIFY

As a legal professional or Managing Partner, you will be giving public addresses or speeches. Whether it's at a roundtable or at a public forum you will get up and put out your ideas.
Putting out your speech starts with what you are trying to communicate, the central idea or ideas and then you fashion out how actually say the words and which words you will use. Again, the most important part of your speech is the idea you want to put across to whoever is listening to you, the rest is the vehicle.

A few questions to help you get in the right frame of mind for a speech that achieves what you set out to:

1. What do you want your audience to think, to feel or to do after hearing your speech. This matters because a speech is a work of art and your intention during planning or preparing will be very very obvious to whoever listens to you.

2. In your choice of words keep it simple. This is more difficult than it first appears because you may be used to certain words and unconsciously refuse to bring it down. Try to aim for primary school understanding or as Einstein said Keep it as simple as you need to grasp and understand but not any simpler.

3. The idea of the opening joke, the joke references during the speech e.t.c may not be relevant. Put out your ideas clearly and be careful of the jokes, if they are relevant.

4. Read it out aloud because the written speech may be glorious and may totally bomb when the audience hears it. It has nothing to do with your intelligence or artistic ability, it's just that the word written to be read and the word written to be spoken are two very different things.

At the end of it, the idea you are putting out there is the most important part of your speech and all the rest are the means to do so. Remember this and you'll do alright.

MEDIA FRENZY

Sometime ago there was a massive noise in the media over the Federal Government's payments and choice of contractors for a Fuel Subsidy programme. We all heard things like cabal, payments for no deliveries and political favours.

From the perspective of the law firm that represented one of the accused parties, let's say a major integrated energy company, what is your response on behalf of your client when the media is calling for its head?
At the time the response of most of the parties involved was the usual silence on the part of the accused and then the obligatory advertorial in the newspapers stating the position of the energy companies and after a while the matter went away.
In cases of media warfare, your law firm will be responsible for managing what information can be released and even how it can be released so here a few things to keep in mind:

1. The media is not in the business of telling your story, it is in in the business of telling the story as it sees it.

2. Business people keep score by the number of deals, in sports its the number of championship rings or trophies and in the media they keep score by toppled empires and naked emperors i.e. the scoop.

3. How will your first response pan out when your anger has cooled down? Outrage is all well and good but you are in it for your client who is in a media firestorm and has you for refuge.

4. Is there any real damage to your client business or reputation or it is just assumed? This is where you should put your attention and resources, then you can better arrive at a position.

5. As a general rule you should have a media frenzy management policy just like you have a fire policy in case of fires and everyone knows where the exits and assembly points are. Your options are obviously limited if you make it up during the heat of the media storm.

6. Assume that the general public will assume you are guilty of whatever and so operate from this position and Communicate, Communicate, Communicate.

All the above only applies if your considered opinion in line with consultations with your client is to engage assertively. You can always place the advert and go about your business or you can maintain a studied silence , working from the background.

THE FORTY SIX YEAR LESSON

A sideline on keeping you around for your forty year law career.
So I am checking out a commencement address of a 46 year veteran and here are the highlights of the speech.

1. As a lawyer you are a chap clients count on and come to, to provide a solution to whatever drama that they have on their plate.
2. You need to know more than the law because other people will not want to hear you go on and on and on about the law. Even worse, they may get the idea that your mental landscape is limited to legal matters alone.
3. Take care of yourself totally because no one else will.
4. Nobody is mentored to success so you are in charge of your own success whatever your mentoring program says. You go to fill your skill gap, chase down opportunities.
5. Show up. Show up to do the work and to try to put your ideas into play. Everyday.
6. Clients want to make it happen and you should help them to, not shoot down their ideas and tell them why it won't work.
7. If you do not understand a conversation or so, hold up and ask for a clearer explanation. Do not let it fly by you in a bid to appear smart. You will save yourself and others from the drama misunderstood ideas create.
8. Have your work in the law, the facts and your strategy locked down and go kill it.

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION

It's this: What do I have to do to make my dreams and objectives as a legal professional come true?

The idea behind change and dreams usually has a lot of external manipulation, cheer leading and posters being put up. If you have a bad name, set up a press release operation, if you don't like your image in the marketplace, do a few ads.

This will not do. Change the reality. If you are not client friendly then that is not your selling point as a firm. Don't argue about it or try to get cheap points from customers with surveys. Just Change The Reality.

If you want to be sole counsel for a particular entity, the question is always the same? What do you have to do to make it happen.

A BRIEF EXHORTATION

With all the exhortations to sell your legal services, it probably has occurred to you that you cannot go everywhere with the resources that you have, profitably. Call it ROI or Working Capital Ratio but getting what type of clients, how much will this cost us, what kind of practice or firm will we be?

All the above is about where you are targeting your selling effort and managing the difference between getting clients and building a practice. One is not the other and if you want some enduring profitability and professional competence you have no option than to actually build a practice and differentiate your service offerings imaginatively.

With a focus on the type of legal entity you want to become you will have to develop actual strength to serve your market and this is by having people with the ability to be relevant to and to relate successfully with the market they choose to serve. Your people are the ones with the responsibility for marketing your law firm, for doing the work and for holding on to the business.

WHERE DID YOU SAY YOU WERE HEADING?

When you get up on a Monday morning, you are headed to the office, the courts or a meeting. You or the chauffer knows where to go and how to get there so in 45 minutes or an hour you are there.
This simple analogy is what you could apply to the direction of your law firm. A lot of your resources are being used to fight daily battles but the way out is not to win those battles, it is to take a step back to see where you are and where you are headed.
You do this to see if there is any connection between what you say you want and the things that you do everyday at your law office.

You know all the metrics of goal setting and have been to a few seminars plus read the books, even set a few But are they working? So.

Unrealistic, unachievable and plain wishful thinking. Sounds familiar? What do you want, how will you get it and are you doing the things that will get you these things.

Any specific objective however tiny forces you to do specific things to make it happen and you know when you have failed and how to correct. So the specific objective

Final word, you are measuring every day so if you drop the ball you know why.

REALITY CHECK

So your law firm wants to generate business, mmm?
Any idea on why the business should be given to you and not your competitor? You both are well armed with superior skill, marketing tools (articles, seminars, brochures, networking), reminds me of a question a client asked during a pitch 'so if we use your services and you have another client going for the same business how will it work out?

The point is that if we all have and use the same marketing tools and moves who wins, out in the streets? The chap who understands the market. The one who the client prefers for whatever combination of reasons.

The truth is that all the facts and tools your law firm has, other law firms have or can copy and developing a niche that no one else can access is quite difficult to create and even more so to sustain. So the value of your work is in how creatively, imaginatively they are put into play.
This has always been the historical edge between businesses because at the core the raw material is always the same. The motor vehicle, the loaf of bread, the computer are basic products and yet different companies make them and present them with varying degrees of imagination.

YOU REALLY SHOULD LEARN TO SELL

The legal services professional is the marketing plan, the marketing medium and the marketing content so unless she puts her back into it there is no plan.
It is not like with regular products where there is the motor vehicle sitting in the factory and then there is the marketing team on the first floor coming up with ways of communicating the quality and uniqueness of the car. NO.
In the case of the lawyer it is his knowledge, his intuition, his judgment and his perceptions that are being sold. These things are not separate from who he is as a legal professional so to sell his services he must be at the centre of every idea and plan to generate business.

With the regular heat from competition, it is now the case that you are fully in the marketing business and the law is the tool to your marketing. This is not really a damninf on legal it is a trend across major industries where the entire selling process is determining how much of an edge the company can get in the market from Nike to Coca-Cola to Skadden.

Learning to sell your legal services means using the wide range of tools at your disposal, understanding how each one works and what it can do. If a conversation will do the job and you are using an article or if a three-man team is what is needed and you do not use it, what kind of results can you realistically expect?
An article is good for getting your ideas and practices into the minds of the client so they know what you are about and the service levels you have or at least aspire to but to close the deal, hand to hand meetings will have to happen.

The underlying idea for learning to sell are that the benefits are quite a few:

1. With the oft mentioned competition, the law firm that can make the best presentation with what it has wins over others: the best seller wins.

2. For the partner track, business development skills are a premium and an edge over other candidates and they are a valid bargaining chip that both contribute to the firm and the individual's development.

3. For the individual associate, having selling skills means access to clients on a level that gives independence and opportunity for implementing innovative ideas in keeping with the times.

The end game of learning to sell is to use a variety of tools and moves at the disposal of the lawyer to bring the client and the lawyer to the place where the lawyer can do the actual selling: Showing the client why she should say yes.

BRANDING

In a series of post on how to generate business for your law firm and how to sell your legal services, Branding just had to come up sometime. So, here it is.

What in earth is a brand? Is it your reputation, your flag colours, what people associate with you?
Depending on where you head, Branding is the belief that the client or consumer has that a certain product is unique and offers better, more or unique value to her. It is not the product, the company or the service that says what a brand is. It is the buyer, ergo Branding is out there not in .
Our goods and services are the body and the brand are the clothes that we have on, they are the wrap around.

The same law firm is the same law firm is the same law firm whatever you call it. This is quite difficult to accept because the hard work needed to actually change direction is too much. What to do? Rebrand.
A product example... Spaghetti has always been spaghetti and cocoa drinks have the same basics recipe so what to do. Rebrand with thousands of new vitamins, fortified by all what not but the product is still the same..
Branding is not a fad that you jump through like you do niche marketing or foreign degree getting or the latest fashions from the Champs Elysees or whatever else the business community decides is in for the now.

In many senses, the brand approach has been reduced to 'use my legal services because I have a nice logo, an affiliation with some legal network plus we have really cushy offices. Do clients really care about your appearance, do you need it to justify your fees, is that the kind of law firm you are or you want to be?

The law is largely brainwork and your brains plus the use you put them to should put the Rest of God in the minds of your clients.

A decent appearance is all that matters, unless you are an empty suit or barrell. Leave the fashions on the runways and do your work.

MARKETING ON POINT

It does matter that you connect all your law firm's, legal marketing activities conducted under any guise to some intention, some purpose. This matters because you are competing with other lawyers and law firms for the opportunity to be of some use to the marketplace.

Restraints or no competition means that you can go after the clients of other law firms and they will come after yours. It means that the services will be bought according to the criteria that makes sense to the buyer and you should organize your firm accordingly. It always helps if you have some premium or impregnable position as a law firm such as being a serious thoughtful practitioner of legal services marketing NOT a hack.

INNOVATION IN DEED

Everyone talks about innovation but few know what innovation really is.
Putting out the word about your legal services to generate business and be of assistance to clients means knowing what your legal services are, knowing what you want to help the client do. This is elementary and yet a lot of the challenges law firms have is knowing the ABC's of the services they offer and how to put it across to the client.

Innovation is another world entirely. It is not adding bells and whistles. In fact innovation could be said to be so different from current reality that you might as well be speaking Greek to a Yoruba man.
Innovation is a substantial departure from your regular legal service levels in a bid to serve the client or to put your law firm in the first. You may have a vague notion that your law firm is a me too law firm and this is justified by the realities of your marketplace but the moment some other law firm 'innovates' you will line up to copy the new market realities.

In one sense innovation is the application of common sense and in others it is combining ideas from other industries and using it in your own work. It is searching for the moves other chaps from everywhere use to show that they are thinking about their work and their client.

The innovation may be as small as using 37 drops of gum to seal an oil barrel instead of 40 drops which will save you tons of cash across industries or as large as allowing the clients determine how much they think your services are worth and letting them pay it with no questions asked ( The Summit Law firm and the Exemplar Law Firm use this model)

An 'innovation' to consider is Value Billing which is getting paid for the value of the work to the client and not not he cost of production if the law firm. A senior Partner commands a specific fee irrespective of the matter.
This not Value Billing.
The down side to running away from value billing is that when the matter is with so much more you are stuck with your fee scale because if you try to plead value the client will naturally apply it to other matters where you got paid not according to value but to your fee scale.

LEGAL SERVICES AND LEGAL PRODUCTS

Buying goods and buying services are entire continents apart from the perspective of the manufacturer of the goods and creator of the services. Even CEOs of companies that have goods and services business in their offering staff them differently, operate them differently, sell them differently and know that different measurements and tactics MUST be used to make a service business successful and a goods business successful.

This intro is necessary to make it clear that you, the lawyer or the law firm, are in the services business so you should prepare your mind as such, find out how services are sold across other services business such as hotels, financial services, accounting firms and know what makes services business thrive or not.
You now have the basic tools to 'market' your brilliant work.

Understanding the following differences:

1. Pitches for selling goods move buyers to make the decision immediately so if you walk out of the office without the order you know what just happened. Selling services pitches usually have the purchase decision is rather distant from the marketing effort.

1. With selling goods, the goods stay after the sale and the sales person goes while selling your legal services, you stay with the client all the time. So you have shorter response time.

2. One person can usually make the decision to purchase goods but the decision to buy services is made by a group of people which means attending to more people and having more meetings to secure the business.

3. Selling goods can be seen and the track record is clear plus goods come off an assembly line so the next box of noodles will be just like the last box. With selling services each engagement is different and competent work can only be certain after the lawyer has been engaged and work has been done. So trust is the major item being sold and bought in every transaction.

These three items have meaningful implications for the working law firm and for its financial and professional aspirations.
Problems with law firm growth or marketing usually suggests that the law firm is working without the benefit of these facts.

LET ME BE YOUR MOTIVATION

As the Managing Partner and Principal conductor of your law firm orchestra how do you get your people to release their forces to make it happen? This is the substance of the problem of motivation.
Over at Microsoft, they have solved the problem of how to motivate despite the reality that everyone in their industry already has a great salary and can get a decent job anywhere else thus making the money lever ineffective.
They offer them the opportunity to do great, creative work and then recognition by having the work used. And they only hire people who live on doing great work and this is the business culture they have.

Lawyers are a different breed and the economics of legal services suggests different levers, namely: Offer independence and you will attract the best of the best.

The rest is this. You do not want to serve as a mere training ground but the reality is that it is a fundamental law of labour that you cannot force an unwilling employee on an unwilling master.
To have solid people you must accept the fact that some of these people will leave. This is the reality at every company with a solid rep so the question for your law firm is would you rather have a team of stars with the reality that some of them will definitely leave taking away the investments you have made in them or a team of helpers to execute the ideas of the one master.
The option of golden anchors or handcuffs exists for you as well and has been quite successful but according to Drucker the chaps who give in to the anchors tend to become resentful because they feel they have been bribed and were unable to resist the bribe.
All of this affects the team spirit and the attitude with which your people go about their work and it matters because when the Chips are down or a superhuman effort is required to make it happen, every team member goes 'why should I bust my chops for these people?'

A word on the motivational training business: you need fundamental, actionable intelligence NOT songs, dances e.t.c.
The following levers:
1. Overwork inspired well paid people
2. Hire 5 right people, work them like 10 and pay them like 8
3. Company loyalty must be legit because it has almost no credibility so you will have to work really hard on that one

Please note that it is unlikely that you can motivate underpaid people. You must offer an adequate wage unless you are relying on the adage 'the hunger of the labourer will drive him' as a firm policy.
Where you are going is when your people get the choice to jump shop they have valid reasons to remain at your shop.
This means clarity of what you expect from them and what you offer them: no tricks.

GETTING AND KEEPING THE BUSINESS

There are two arms to selling your legal services. The first one is actively going after the business and the second one is keeping the business after getting for your firm and from others who want to take it from you.

In the first arm you are competing with the other wolves, foxes and ferrets with the underlying understanding that if you let up on your competitive game you will be bested by them. Competing demands that you take great effort to understand the clients you wish to serve as well as you can so that you know where your services will be sold. Is it corporate leasing? Joint venture with foreign entities or government work?
Then, how is your ability to actually do the work in the market you have chosen? You are up to speed on the trends, you have a basic understanding of the said industry and you think about it clearly making connections to its needs and how your law firm can assist.

Now to the second arm, keeping what you have profitably, is really where the fruits of all your wooing will come out. This is because it is a fact in marketing that the best clients you have are your existing clients because you can add and receive more value by properly tending to your existing clients, it costs about seven times more in resources to woo a new client than to woo your current clients. And woo them you must.
It is more about making the best use of what you have access to than acquiring more or you may find your self in a situation where you have 300 marginally profitable clients or high working capital ratio where you spend too much in money and other resources to process the work.
One reason why wooing current clients may be difficult may be because you do not see them for the deep mine that they are or the fact that going after new business is rather exciting and cultivating your current clients is rather difficult work that you must regularly justify doing.

A conjugal analogy would be wooing the lady, getting her to say yes to the marriage proposal and then staying happily, productively married.

SELLING YOUR LEGAL SERVICES

In selling your legal services, you the lawyer and the law firm are the 'product'. What the client buys is you, your ability to do such and such. You are the one who does the actual selling.
You may have the feeling that selling your legal services is about getting clients to do what they do not want to do, to force your services on the client and this makes you uneasy.

Let us suggest the Flowing approach to get your mind in the right place to do it right.

1. First identify the potential client.
2. Identify the clients problem or need.
3. Make certain the client knows you understand the problem.
4. Make sure the client knows you can assist with the problem.
5. Convince the client to start on Monday morning.

Using this approach beats the mindless, numbing brute-force approach.
The Flowing approach requires that you think it all through, you plan who to speak with and you actually have something to contribute even if it is the fact that you have thought about the client through all the 5 steps. Actual thought and planning with the intention of going to secure the business.

Questions like where are the clients, what are the problems, who are we speaking with, how are we hoping to assist dominate your 'sales' pitch.

For more on this approach, check out SPIN SELLING by Neil Rackham.

TELL THE TRUTH

On a business development meeting, yours truly was in a conversation with the client and she said something along the following lines 'most law firm advertising pitches as seen on their websites are empty meaningless statements'. Blurbs was one of the specific words that she used.

This brings us to the question, how can you pitch your law firm's services? The idea behind this question is that you actually expect a potential client to read your services offering, blog, brochure, website and pick up the phone to call you and ask about your legal services then you can pick it up from there.

If you were a product company you could claim you had the fastest internet service on a sub-sea cable in the country or your product would last for one year with a no-questions-asked money back guarantee.
But you cannot say we are the smartest law firm in Mergers and Acquisitions and everyone knows it.
Or we write better briefs. Really. What is a better brief? One in which you wax lyrical or poetic, one which impresses the client, one which 'wins' the case?

We strongly suggest that the only reasonable marketing pitch is to tell the truth, to stick to the facts. This is good news bad news. The good news is that clients know what to expect and you know what your law firm is truly like. The bad news is that the truth may put you in a bad light for marketing purposes or you find out you are a me-too law firm with commodity status. Ouch.

The next move is to actually say what you can do in terms of 'We deal with litigation with more than lawyers, we have field researchers,working relationships with cutting edge companies in aeronautics to support our work'. This is a factual description of how you work and will pass legal advertising rules with flying colours.

You also need to make a list for presentation, of your achievements with your clients, both big and small because they show what you have done on the competing and cooperating side plus the application of your mental capacity and innovation on all types of matters NOT just the marquee, six figure ones.

In closing, when your firm says it 'advised' on the General Electric Company sub-listing and leaves it just at that, you are leaving some value on the table. You can go further to complete the sentence by stating the effect of your presence as advisor in tangible terms such as cost or time savings you made

It is no good saying you are the best thing since sliced bread unless you really are. Just stick to the facts and you'll be just fine.

SALES FUNCTION AT YOUR LAW FIRM

Yours truly came across this tidbit: Over half of all partners in UK law firms spend 16hours or more on business development and marketing activities. Whether that is good, great or bad, it has led to this post on the sales function at your law firm.

Your law firm is a business and according to Drucker, the job of a business is to create a customer. Sales is about searching, understanding and finding how you can be useful to the marketplace.
Simply put there must be a sales function, a marketing function, a client management function. You do the work of securing the business and when you get it, you make sure you keep it, keep the client satisfied and the relationship mutually profitable.

Since lawyers love to practice the law, actively looking for business may sometimes seem like a distraction from the true calling. We hope you do not fall into this group. As stated elsewhere in our writings, the law firm is a business and without customers or sales, it is a dead business so this work must be done and done well.

Successful marketing is about developing a great product and presenting it in the best light possible. Michael Jackson had a work schedule that was insane(this is developing the great product) then his presentations at his shows always blew people away as there was always something awesome and magnificent to see and talk about.
It will not do to have great legal services and not put it out there. Neither will it do to put out a heavy campaign for poor legal services as according to Ogilvy, this just reduces the market for your services faster, faster, faster.

What some firms have done in other jurisdictions is that they have created full-time sales units that are dedicated solely to this business of legal sales. This role works with the resident lawyers and helps to introduce the lawyer to ethical and massively productive means of legal sales and also leaves the lawyer with some time to do actual fee-earning work.

This model is one way to go about it and you can evolve something that will fit your current reality but your long term plan or hope cannot be to muddle along in the hope of the special boon from the goddess of fortune. You can set your sails so when the wind blows in you will be pushed ahead.

Another means is to bring in outside professionals to design legal marketing programmes for the law firm which will be put into play as a joint venture. This is really because the spirit of the marketing programme must be followed or else the habits of the law firm tend to smother its successful Implementation.

You can also do it on your own as the knowledge is widely available, you just have to provide the force and energy to put it into practice and to stick with it until you, your people and your law firm have actually made intellectual and financial progress.

WINNING

This is not a legal post so skip over if you aren't in the mood. Yours truly was listening to the audio book 'Winning' by Jack Welch the former CEO of GE and I am struck by the clarity and lack of quackery in his approach to work. Never having read any news reports about the fellow all knowledge so far comes from 'Winning' itself.

But to the ideas.

1. Telling the truth: Do your people feel cheated or that they are being kicked around in the game because they are being assessed by unknown criteria or they are being told one thing while being judged by another?
There are always justifications. Always. The market is bad or the economy is slow or you should not be naive, you have to wait your turn e.t.c.
With this it is little wonder that once these same people find their feet they go where their interests will be served best, loyalty be damned. They probably feel that they earned their way.

Mr Welch makes another point about the results an employee produces being the only things that can give her any wiggle room or perks whatsoever. It works like a chit system where you give your results in exchange for perks or whatever. This becomes clear after a while and definitely after a few hard knocks, but the public presentation is that all are equal and this message is pushed at the naive, innocent and gullible: blame them for being stupid enough to believe the brochure.
Then the employee gets to thinking, if these people can do this for how to get ahead within this structure what else is happening that I am unaware about. And so the games begin.
None of this is easy either for management or the employee.

One simple message from Winning is you are better of fighting to be realistic with yourself as to the choices the people you work with and who work for you will make under certain situations so that a gay time will be had by all.

MARKETING MISTAKES TO RUN AWAY FROM

We just love to go on about marketing your legal professional services so here are three things you need to make sure are not dogging your steps.

1. FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THE MARKETING PROCESS: Selling services is not the same as selling products, your expectations on the type of results you can expect or how long it will take must be based on your understanding of professional services marketing or else you will lack the spirit to make the process work for your law firm.
You also will fail to make the adjustments the programme needs when the ground shifts and you may end up blaming the marketing programme for your failures. MORAL: understand what legal services marketing is and how it works before embarking on the voyage.

2.FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THE SKILLS AND TECHNIQUES OF MARKETING

3. PLAIN OLD POOR JUDGMENT: When things go dry in a marketing programme you will want to go back to your old way of doing it but if you do the marketing program will fail and it will be your fault

In general you should bone up on professional services marketing, search for the pros and understand the basics of it. You just need enough to make an informed decision and to take business risks such as trying out a new idea.

WHAT LAWYER IS A TRUSTED ADVISOR?

Every client has a level of priority that she gives to the lawyers she does business with. Some lawyers chase after the client fruitlessly, some get called when there is trouble in the offing, others are permanent bosom bodies. This last group are the ones the client calls when she wants to make certain decisions or respond to important business requests.

This division is not the only one that exists, it is just for descriptive purposes kind of like a Facebook friend, an acquaintance, a colleague and a 'ride or die' friend.

Needless to say ( but we are still going to say it) where your law firm is going is the 'ride or die' legal services professional i.e. A Trusted Advisor.
Attaining this position is about deciding what kind of relationship you want to have with valuable clients or what kind of law firm you want to be. Would you like to have C.E.Os of Global Corporations calling you or sports legends on your law firm's books? Then you have a slow, long and hard route ahead.

There are 1.2.3 steps that you must take but those steps will be the letter of the law. You must provide the Spirit your self, the needed energy, inner drive to push these steps to their success in the face of the certain obstacles and excuses you will definitely meet on this road.
This position is about exercising influence way beyond your official position as there may even be other advisors the client can reach out to but she chooses you as part of her core decision making team on professional or personal matters.

Think about all the above and compare it with the 'gofer' advisor, how can the 'gofer' move on up?

1. Become a deep generalist: Hve your core legal knowledge fit and ready to do battle then become knowledgeable about unrelated and other industries so you can advise according to reality.

2.Selfless Independence: You need to become independently wealthy so you can be professional, not push an agenda with your client and hold your ground when the client threatens you.

3.Personal Trust: Your client needs to be utterly convinced that she can absolutely trust you and you will not hide behind legal legerdemain or seek to run when you drop the ball.

You know all the stories you hear about law firms doing wonders for their clients, the ones you and the boys use in your speeches, to encourage the younger lawyers?
This is one of the ways those stories came into being.

If you'd like a play by play about becoming a trusted advisor check out CLIENTS FOR LIFE by Jagdish Seth and Andrew Sobel.

THE WAY IT IS

You are stepping back from the daily grind at your law firm to think about the Big Picture and what it is that you are doing. We'll take it from there.

There are two types of law firms: commercial law firms and litigation law firms. You will appreciate this taxonomy better from the perspective of bringing in the business to your firm and the concentration of the 'best' legal talent, whatever jurisdiction you are in.
The litigation law firms are the firms that the general public associates the words lawyers with because they go to court, they wear the wigs and everybody knows that the lawyer goes to court. They generally work with individuals and small to mid sized companies.
The commercial law firms are the ones that keep the business world humming. They help actual businesses prepare contracts, timelines, schedules, achieve clarity and most importantly, they wield the big stick so everyone plays by the rules. If you have an Alpha Wolf Law firm, everyone will leave you alone. These types work with HNIs, RNIs and large companies.

Now the way the practice of the law has evolved you may have got it into your head that litigation is the only way to practice the law but it is a wonder how many billion dollar law firms across the globe are commercial law firms. Their fates seem intertwined to the world of trade and finance businesses.
This narrative matters to you because to follow the law of economics you will be better off as a law firm being a commercial law firm than a litigation law firm and a commercial lawyer than a litigation lawyer. You will also know what sort of entity you will be crushing in the near future as you compete and raid each others' territory.

The question now arises, is litigation a viable practice area for law firms? Commercial law practice areas can sustain the firms without any support from litigation practice areas but can litigation do likewise? For example, preparing a Mortgage Deed can yield $10 million with no drama and Goodwill to all men but for litigation to do likewise all sorts of hourly rates billing procedures and padding will fall into place. Plus the matter should be sophisticated or involve large business enterprises.

Now moving on to the effect of this on talent. Speaking with a random lawyer the other day at the Bar association meeting, it was revealed to yours truly that a move was being planned, by said random lawyer, to move over to corporate law because 'that is where the money is' The marketplace has spoken loudly and quite clearly, anyone with a modicum of common sense will set his sights firmly on a commercial law practice.

But the marketplace is always shifting and changing and responding to new developments, is the commercial law practice area here to stay?
Is this the way it is?

MARKETING THE LAW FIRM

Before yours truly got into the marketing business, there was this assumption that marketing was really about flogging the product, about pushing it and coming up with ways to get the customer to buy, buy, buy.
So what about all those lofty definitions: marketing is understanding the client so well that your product fits his needs (Drucker). Do they have any meaning or use in the marketplace? They do, in fact all the consistently successful marketing and business executives swear by them, from Ogilvy to MillerHeiman to Louis Gerstner Jr.

A word about stimulating demand for products and services: while the tactics are questionable and the need tenuous, entire companies and economies live on the very fact of consumers buying things they do not want or need.

Well clearly the first letter in the alphabet of selling your services is to know what you are selling. It also helps to have an idea of how you are presenting it to the market. For example, you could offer it as a great product (Apple Smartphone), as innovative (3M), as quality for the masses (Walmart), as a luxury brand (LVMH). As you can see there are many varieties as there are products and companies.

What do all these product examples have to do with your law practice?

1. You are primarily an advisor and enabler to businesses so you should understand their product offerings and how they roll.

2. Inevitably from offering advice to complex corporations you will have to pick up some of their ways so you can work at the same levels.

3. A certain aspect of marketing stimulates needless buying but legal has limited use of this concept. Imagine urging a divorce to get legal business or a financial audit to get tax business.

Being able to assist matters so you really have to be worth something to have a seat at the table.

BUZZWORDS

There was a Toyota ad a while ago that said 'Good Thinking, Good Product', remember it? Well, with the confusion that buzzwords have introduced into the practice of the law one wonders...

A buzzword is a word that originally expressed a specific idea that both the hearer and the speaker agreed meant the same thing and therefore could have a meaningful conversation with.
No confusion. But because of the wrong use, misuse, tweaking and wasteful use of said word, it now has lost its meaning or has acquired different shades of meaning that no two people can agree on so it is now useless for any practical purposes. For example, 'go' means 'go' anywhere and anytime so there can be no argument about this. Furthermore, the idea it sought to express is lost to the legal profession and its clients.
When a term has become commonplace i.e. a buzzword, no two people use it alike, it can't be understood or convey any meaning.

Clarity of expression follows from clarity of thought i.e. if you are explaining your ideas and position clearly and persuasively you must have done some clear thinking. You can only do so with words that have clear meaning that you and your potential or existing client agree upon.

The buzzword list is rather long and while it sounds sophisticated, it communicates no specific meaning just a vague idea. Branding, Value-Add, Niche Marketing e.t.c. Think not? Ask two of your colleagues what these words mean...

Think of words like this the next time you or your ilk wants to make a contribution: The thing is to explain your IDEA clearly and to explain your THOUGHT clearly so that what you have in your head is what your audience sees when you speak.
In this sense, thoughts and ideas are the cargo and words are the delivery service (UPS, DHL, FEDEX). If you choose a rundown service, your cargo will:

1. Get lost.
2. Get to you late or damaged
3. Never get to you.

In marketing your legal services using confusing words capable of multiple interpretations perhaps in a bid to sound sharp will almost certainly lead to ' I thought you meant, but no I did not' conversations down the road and remember, you will be there to face the music.

So what should you do?
1. Explain your ideas so that children can understand you. If you can do this with you wealth and depth of knowledge and experience, you are almost a genius.
2. Call out chaps who introduce such nonsense verbiage and ask for simpler words.
3. Give your self a tax on buzzwords.

Oh, one final thing. Stick to just two syllable words and three at the most.

MARKETING THE LAW FIRM: THE MISSION STATEMENT

Today we will be looking at the mission statement of your law firm and what it means for your marketing efforts.

I suggest that your mission statement is really saying 'this is who you are and this is what the world can expect from our law firm' Yes, this sounds a bit lofty given the obvious lack of connection between the statement and the reality that yours truly has encountered in a few shops.
And this is where the drama begins. A Mission Statement is not an advert or a mere puff, it is a contract between your firm and its employees on the one hand and your firm and its clients on the other hand, something similar to a corporation's Memorandum and Articles of Association.
It really only counts if it can be depended on, if strangers can call you out on it and there is no where for you to hide and no excuses to offer.
If you don't use it then...

Another thing, in this business of marketing your legal services,you simply cannot be everything to everyone, you cannot service all clients across all industries and you most definitely cannot eat an elephant whole. And yet, vague, omnibus Mission Statements proudly set out to do just this with the result that these Mission Statements have no relationship whatsoever to reality. They are ideals that will never be met on this side of the river.

Here is an idea: let your clients decide your mission statement for you and you will find it more useful, you will know what type of law firm you are, you will be more able to plot midcourse corrections by it and will be able to truly assess your usefulness and growth as a law firm.

Try not to think about Mission Statements as attempts to express your highest levels of commercial nobility. It is a simple, specific and clear statement of what you will do for the marketplace.

In the final analysis you do not determine when you have 'made it' as a law firm, the marketplace does no matter what you say to the ether.

COMPETING FOR STAFF

Whether you are in a tough economy or not, you have to have decent people at your law office to be up to scratch. The good news is that you know your economy and current operating environment intimately: salary levels, education levels and problems. And you can do something about it.

What yours truly is introducing is the idea that you should now compete for the best people your environment has to offer, the same way you compete for clients. And you know you cannot build your law firm on your own...

So what does your law firm have to offer:

1. Salaries and allowances: This is the big stick you can wield to whip people in line but here the way you combine them and when you make the payment are your strengths in bringing good people into the fold. The larger the amount, the better but with what you can offer, Be sincere and legit.

2. Exciting Work Opportunities: A law firm that is a great place to work has an edge in getting good people on to the ship. They will look forward to work, they will bring their ideas in and work to make them happen and they will not stay down when they get knocked out. Does your firm offer anything remotely interesting, that drives the juices of your people every once in a while? Of course it does, so use that.

3. Physical Location: Now believe it or not where you are does matter in individual cases because if the commute is impractical your search is limited to your immediate environs. This can be a strength or not depending on how you use it.

4. Feeling of Family: Everyone wants to be part of something meaningful and perhaps your law firm has that type of vibe going on? Then you have an edge that even money cannot trump. After a certain basic level more money will not bring out the genius in your people or bring in geniuses. This is where your sense of destiny and achievement comes to the fore.

Even if you feel you have the impregnable position with hiring people do not project that because it is a bad attitude to begin with and will attract wolves in sheep's clothing.
Finally, If you have a swift turnover rate for your people, it is a testament to your incompetence and affinity with mediocrity that in a scarce job market you are unable to attract and grow and retain good people.

CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE

This change business is a full fledged industry and whenever some chap wants to push a programme, change is the name he calls it. While there are charlatans doesn't mean change is not happening as we speak or at least on its way. Case in point, in the Old Testament there is the story of a man called Noah ( he was the original change guru) who warned everyone for years that a flood was coming and would drown everyone. They laughed and ignored him showing statistics and beta analysis on why he was talking crap but the floods came and the laughers went.

But for your law practice you need to learn to understand what are fundamental changes (game changers) that you make fundamental adjustments for and others that are the regular heat of battle exchanges.
A fundamental change is that you are now competing with firms from developed economies and when you advise high value clients you will come up against the full weight of these law firms and their developed legal expertise.
The thing with game changers is that you make them or you respond to them e.g. the Apple iPhone changed the way phones were made and most of the other phone makers copied the design except RIM, the Blackberry maker.

So for your law firm, what is happening? and how will it affect the business environment, the attitudes of the people you work with and compete with.
To answer this you must go there yourself, talk to the customers, the government officials and get as close to the source of the information as you need to.

Change really means that access to potential has shifted. For example, when Nigeria switched from a military regime to a civilian one the rules of the game altered and there was a different attitude of 'we are open for more business'
Now it is a notorious fact that legal is resistant or at least slow to change, hundred year old laws are still on the books, law firm behaviour is largely the same with better dressing and technology.

Nigeria is an economy dominated by oil so all the law firms will naturally focus on it with the result that the potential everywhere else will be left unexplored until some law office does the work of searching out the potential and promoting it and thus making it a game changer with the effect that everyone else begins to follow the new direction .
You can now do so much more with less as the regular media has realized with the rise of new media blogs and online news outlets or in the publishing industry where there are thousands of self publishing outlets which have built their own platforms and do not rely on the Big Five so much.

THE CASE FOR FOCUS

A typical shopping mall has a grocery store that sells everything from soda to cutlery to wines to pastry to cleaning liquids. It also has stores that sell just one item such as perfumes or timepieces or prescription medicines. These two types of stores are both in the same shopping mall and they are both profitable.

Law firms somewhat work like the businesses in this shopping mall story. Yours truly uses somewhat to stress that selling products and selling services are two very different animals but you get the picture.

The law firm may be a Full Services (Terrible) firm or Boutique ( what?)firm. From the shopping mall story, the full service law firm which does EVERYTHING can be likened to the grocery store that has everything and the boutique law firm can be likened loosely to the store that sells only time pieces.
The question is simple: is it reasonable for a law firm to be full service? Methinks Not but it is the industry norm and how law firms are organized. They have never seen a dollar of business they did not want. Global law firms run this model/, sometimes very well and it performs wonders.
The dillema is this: to focus means letting business go and finding a way to bring out the value this focus model has brought to other industries as even boutiques are having quite a tricky time running the business model effectively.
Imagine opening a bottle of Coca-Cola and putting it to your lips and as you drink it you swallow a large portion of Starbucks coffee! That is what some boutiques are forced to offer to stay afloat and the market punishes them for this deception for economic survival.

The dislike of focus is partly a result of the times we live in where resources are spread to no purpose, single minded obsession is discouraged at every turn plus there is the reality of focusing for years and still not becoming 'great'.
Focus works because it provides room to find new services and products by the law firm, it forces the firm to dump areas where it cannot operate profitably and as other industries have shown unless you do so there will always be a limit to your global aspirations.

MARKETING THE LAW FIRM

Marketing your law firm suggests that you know who your market is i.e. the actual people or business you expect to use and pay for your legal services, right? We hope you do know your market because we have observed that there is a lot of kick and follow and muddle through in this business of marketing legal services perhaps with a vague hope that something will come of it all.

A quick word on marketing : at the beginning or during really fluid times your market may be unclear or you may just be winging it. This is okay as long as it is not The Plan. It is just like finding your way out of traffic: you know in what direction you are headed but when there is a really knotty lane you just need to get out of there.

So, yours truly attended a product marketing event where the title was 'Knowing Your Target Market' by Lanre Towry-Coker of Afritickets and some of the insights are very applicable and adaptable to your law firm.

1. Sit down and define the ideal client: Size, location, social class, income levels e.t.c

2. Customer service: When your clients are upset how will you know and when you know what will you do about it.

3. Revenue: Can these clients pay for your services and are they in a large enough number to sustain your law practice?

4. Is there a need for your law firm's services or are other law firms taken up all the need? This means you know that you are in for bloodthirsty competition and compulsory innovation.

5..Market demographics: Demographics is a long word that means the type of people that stay in a particular area. So the demographics of Ikeja are different from those of Yaba. This matters because it determines where you will focus your marketing efforts. So, if your law firm focuses on the Indian community the Ilupeju area is more productive than say the Yaba area on account of the concentration of the community in the Ilupeju area.

These are some of the questions you will answer to give a direction to your law firm as you go about marketing.

MARKETING THE LAW FIRM

We'll start at the beginning i.e. your law firm is a Professional Services business and it is not a Product company like car makers or smartphone companies. This difference is the foundation of how you will understand the work you are in for and how you will succeed at it.

1. If you try to sell your legal services as though it is a car or if you use regular marketing practices you will fail. Here's why: product marketers can innovate and tweak their products to the limits of human intelligence such as the keypad being replaced with the touchpad on mobile devices. You cannot because the law is the law and barring a repeal you must work within the law.
This does not mean you cannot innovate you just have a different way of going about it such as adding a consulting component to your legal services.

2. A product maker knows what the market needs and can also persuade customers to buy what they do not need. This happens all the time. You cannot persuade a client to litigate so you can generate business, this is unethical and vexatious though it also happens all the time.
You can only contribute when you perceive a valid need or find a way of making a contribution to the clients' business. So, spending your time persuading as though you were a product maker will make your efforts fail.

3. The way you gather and spread information within your law firm and to your clients is a major, major source of marketing. This is simply because marketing is any contact you have with your customer and because you are banned from regular marketing, simple communication is your major means of talking about your law firm, shoeing what you do and how you go about your work.

4. When you sell a product the product stays with the customer and the seller goes about his work but where you sell your legal services, you the seller stay behind to do the work, you are the product. This also means that you can deliver the work with a twist or an improvement each time unlike a packet of spaghetti that will always be the same no mater how many times the wrapping is changed.
Thus the human factor in the delivery of the service is a variable that you can use to get an advantage over less fit law firms by being better at talking with and showing you understand the clients business and current reality.

These are a few ideas you can think of in your work. We will fill you in on more stuff on law firm marketing.