How can a business serve its customers and make money doing it?
What about charging what the market can bear and the laws of supply and demand?
How to provide diamonds to those that cannot afford them? So if you cannot pay for a diamond you go without?
This line of questions reminds me of a blog post I read the other day by a guy on how to make the most of your time and use better business processes. In listing all the things that he refrained from doing because they 'wasted' his time, he included responding personally to comments made by readers of the said blog.
Now, note that without people reading and coming to the blog there really isn't a marketable blog and responding is a, 'waste'?
This is the dilemma the firm is in. You want clients of course but you want profitable clients you can make money doing work for. You aren't a charity. But for so many reasons you cannot say this when you are starting out or in a position that is shaky so you push the 'we care' message. However the moment you have some breathing room you throw the unprofitable clients under the bus. Literally or in attitude.
Don't feel guilt, most businesses do it.
Businesses only do things that they can do profitably and if not then they do not do it.
Now great business find ways to do what they cannot do profitably, profitably: its that simple. Getting legal services to startups who cannot pay, providing complex legal services to midsized companies, looking for ways to get your legal services out there in an affordable package.
This is the difficult work but you have it better than say the construction people who have to first invest in massive infrastructure and capacity. They still make a profit.
And always remember, the client can always walk away or flee the moment she has a viable competitive option which is some other law firm being bigger, stronger, faster, loving the game more making it a better player and then placing its focus on handicapping its competition.
You.
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