Why Clients Call

The underlying problem that your law firm can solve and offer assistance with is your Calling Card. Literally.
It is what will make those you hand out your cards to and meet or who know about your firm actually call you. For example if assets need to be recovered from a foreign jurisdiction, they specifically know that you are the law firm to go to and not just a law firm.
Extending the idea of the Calling Card to a logical conclusion and in a move at out-managing the competition, you can even divvy up your practice by underlying problem instead of practice area so that related problems tend to get processed together, said problems are tangible to grasp and solve and you avoid the omnibus 'practice areas' which are vague and imprecise universes that whole economies of value and cash get lost in.

Tie your law firm's services to the problem you can solve, the assistance that you can offer in a specific transaction. This means that you study, you note and you review. For example, to build a terrace house how many problems come up, you list them out one by one and then place your law firm services in the event of their happening side by side. From this you understand the matter on a basic level, you can explain the matter in overwhelming persuasiveness to the clients and you can use the insights and confidence gotten from the detailed breakdown process to persuade clients to hire your law firm. This is the Breakdown method of business development and it is very important to do it in excruciating detail, especially if you've been at it for years, the matter is boring and mundane or you know it so well. This is not finger wagging or hortation, it comes from painful experience.

To further encourage thee to engage in the level of detail that this process requires: it is a fact that the level of thought and study that you give to any matter before you, will determine the amount of intelligence and superior performance you will bring to it as a lawyer. Kobe Bryant shoots 800 times in the morning 5 days a week and you wonder why he wins and plays so much. 800 times.

And one for the road. One of the first things artists learn to do is to stare at a dead fish for 8 hours straight and almost without fail they get impatient and frustrated after the first thirty minutes 'there is nothing else to see' but when their boredom and irritation subsides they then go on to produce drawings from the same fish that are mind-blowing in detail, in beauty and which were impossible to create before and which go on to win prizes.

Darwinian For Clients' Sake

Attracting clients to your law firm is a lot like the theory of Natural Selection. You take in a lot of data, you process it and put your conclusions into play. After repeated exposures, successes and failures, what survives is your own law firm's unique formula. It is a result of the natural selection process where the natural process of trial and error has produced a successful formula for attracting clients. For example, Nelson Mandela in his own view was a middling student who lacked the ability to 'learn things easily'. He knew he had to put in hours of work to grasp the material and so his eventual exams-passing and material-understanding formula was; long hours of repeated study.
Some law firms are great at coming up with novel defences, others at making connections with clients and your law firm must find its own way. As a reference, have you considered deliberately learning how to get referrals so that in 3 years 50% of your business will come from referalls? The Samsung CEO said that he expects 70% of his business in the next ten years to come from products that are not in existence today. So clearly he is building an innovation strategy.

So, you inform clients of matters you can address, problems on which you can offer insight or assistance so that when such matters come up, people in your network twice removed know you are in play for the action and can take the ball across the touchline.
This referral idea at its core is simply that whenever an issue comes up because you have taken the effort to be identified with it, the client or whoever is sent to you.
You can also address it as the underlying problem your law firm can help solve: your law firm's Call-Card.

Law And The Rest Of Us

Here in Nigeria, the local blogging space has a lot on politics, entertainment and sports but there really is the need for the rational, cultivated legal mind to contribute to issues on a more useful and practical level absent the drama and fuzz.
That is, man cannot live by cotton candy alone, she needs a proper diet.
Reference is not being made here to analyses and commentary on Guri v Hadejia Native Authority or PDP v INEC that too many legal blogs engage in.
Those analyses seem to be written to be read by legal practitioners or because the authors believe that is what lawyers should go on about.
That analyses is very important but we stress and refer to a mind that has had the benefit of legal training talking about issues of consequence to the general population in a manner that is accessible to the general public and which gives instruction for action.
It is like putting forth Michael Jordan to talk about the process of building a sports team; others, talk show hosts, radio jockeys et al will say something but he will tell it to you from his ideals, beliefs and failings. His obviously superior insight can then be applied to other fields of endeavor outside of just basketball.

A lawyer setting up a maritime blog and approaching it from problems that exist, how they can be clearly understood and using the actual legal position as a very light reference is preferable to the Domesday book we came across the other day. It went on for pages, it was like a Supreme Court Judgment where all the Justices gave their full opinions, with dissenting judgement in full without adopting anything previously said by my learned brother! Going Domesday once in a while is okay, there needs to be depth legal, analyses. But all the time?
It is less about seeing the law as the answer to everything the same way a man who has a hammer sees everything as a nail but more about making that vast legal intelligence open to the rest of society through the way you apply it to matters of consequence to the general population.
Especially if it is politics, entertainment and sports.

Books Of Business

As a legal professional you need to be aware of a certain dynamic that occurs in the law firms of our friends in the City of London and across the Atlantic. What they have done in the face of the brutal and bloody competition is that they have largely thrown away traditional ideas of a law firm partnership and have replaced it with a 'Star' system where whoever has the largest book of business is king. In fact they seem to encourage very much this system.
A local analogy would be what is happening in the Ikoyi area of Lagos where new money is displacing the tastes of old money and turning the sedate residential area into commercial property with the usual effects.
Since the said law practice trend will eventually find its way to the Nigerian legal services space (if it is not thriving here already) you need to learn to develop a book of business that you significantly control and are responsible for, to get you the partner seat or a big fat profit sharing arrangement.
Adding this specific skill to all else that you are doing right now will be trying and if you keep reading this blawg and put heads together with two or three other professionals you can find your way to make it happen.
The summary for all this is that you get to eat what you kill at your law firm and not just on a selfish, personal level. You will build skills during the hunt, you will take some of the pressure off of your managing partner and you will earn some elbow room at the practice.
And if that was not clear enough, this: your law firm will appreciate it if you produce ideas, make great things happen when your MP is not looking and not just process the work or grind out the analyses. It will keep members who carry their weight and nothing is heavier than having your book of business.
Don't let the analogy of hunting and killing turn you off, it's something our friends in the City and across the Atlantic contributed to the global legal space.

Lucky You

The first challenge you will probably have to get out of your legal mind as concerns attracting clients to your law firm is one that is peculiar to most lawyers. And it is this; in general, many lawyers do not understand or appreciate the time , dedication and effort required to attract clients on a regular basis.
The entire process is a complex one that requires certain things to be done and others avoided. And then there is the concept of luck, which tends to follow those law firms that have attained their own formula of attracting clients.
Another way to put this point across is to look at those who exercise regularly and are fit and have well-toned muscles.
There is really only one way to get that kind of result and this is exercise. If you exercise regularly then you get that way and if you don't then you don't.

So here's to making your own luck as far as you can take it;
1. Go to meetings/conferences that the leaders/members of the industry that your law firm wants to work with, go to.
2. Read what they do and what they read so you get a sense of how to work with them and what they find relevant.
3. Write about what you know in a way that is relevant to them and take the time to find out what is relevant to them and work to address it.

If You Have It And They Want It.

While having a reputation for being a dismal lot, economists have offered spectacular clarity to the business of running your law firm: the law of supply and demand.
Thus, if your law firm's knowledge and expertise with a high-impact problem is in high demand by clients and clients perceive that your expertise is in relatively limited supply, you have a price-fee advantage.
Simply put, if you have it and few other law firms have it and clients want it, then you have leverage to get paid twenty Indian elephants. On the flip side, if the said expertise applies to a mature matter you really haven't a price fee-advantage, where mature means that the problem is well understood by clients and other law firms and there is little risk of bungling no matter who handles it.

One reality that then affects your law firm as part of the sweet package of the law of supply and demand is: the issues that are right now limited to few law firms will be open to a whole lot more as other law firms acquire said expertise and clients understand the issues from regular exposure so your law firm needs to be searching for new issues.
It then does make sense for you to focus your law firm in areas where you can have the most impact i.e. where they ain't. Eric Silverman began in project financing in the 80's when in his entire law firm, only one partner was involved so Eric got to manage client relationships as well. Fast forward to 20 years later and project financing contributes ¼ of the entire law firm revenues.
The point for your law firm is that you will always need to compete and sometimes that will mean leaving the majority and going to empty places you can dominate. It helps if the laws of competition (namely, you don't have the resources to go head-to-head with the bigger law firms) compel you to develop neglected areas of practice.

Lawyers and Sellers

There is some sense to a lawyer is an artist is an architect is a president. The sense is that the ends to which your knowledge are put are different but the skills are largely the same and are transferrable so as concerns selling your law firm's legal services here are a few clarifications. See if you can spot the difference between these basic selling techniques and the practice of law.

1. You do not offer advice until you understand the problem.
2. Ask questions until you understand the issues involved.
3. Alert the client based on additional concerns that you have noticed based on your experience.
4. Confirm that you and your client have a shared understanding of the said concerns.
5. Describe the solution you offer and the effects of putting not into play.
6. Confirm that your client agrees with the solution.
7. Set up the schedules and put them into play.

Winter Is Coming

If you are convinced that your law firm is on solid footing on the client attraction front, what would you do if the economy lost ½ its value in a recession or an economic crisis? Our friends across the Atlantic faced the same issue in 2008 when a 50 year boom in the sale of legal services came to an end. Thousands of law jobs vanished, law firms went bankrupt and law firm partners who could not bring in books of business were de-equitized i.e. kicked out of the partner table.

The primary challenge was that during this 50 year boom of abundant business for the law firms, the needs of companies were obvious and they were actively letting law firms know they had needs and law firms could pick, choose.
After the slump, law firms had to learn to uncover value, to unlock it because the abundance had vanished and they did not know how to uncover needs. Unlocking said value was a strong skill to have because in the drought all the streams and rivers had dried up so wells had to be dug by law firms.

Your law firm is probably not under the gun yet but you will be at some point in your long and hopefully, illustrious career. Will you wait for the Central Bank to force you to raise your capital to $25 Billion or go bust?

Sit At The Table

If your law firm wants to be welcome in the discussion about the future, you have to be able to add something to the conversation. The very first step is by making your self relevant by taking ownership of the issues that those who hire legal counsel and those whose jobs depend on addressing those issues must care about.

For example, the local economy is an oil based one so your law firm will be aware that all sorts of issues relating to oil will perennially come up. How about setting up a war chest for the refinery business where you are one of the go-to firms on anything that refers to refining or how about the business of oil subsidies? You can take lessons from the Oil Depletion allowance used in the American oil industry to make a contribution.
Many other oil based economies have addressed similar issues and your law firm can access this information and build a proprietary strategy asset to create and have conversations with industry members and leaders on several fronts and from different points of view.

This is just one example that your law firm can address out of several.

All This Theoretical Pablum

In the current Nigerian public life, there seems to be a general disdain for theoretical stuff as is evident in the placement of theoretical government bodies in the outskirts of the national capital and this attitude has naturally come to law land as is evident from the state the CPD movement is in.
Legal professionals feel 'what on earth is CPD going to achieve for my practice when weighted matters like bills being paid are on ground? It extends further to vital matters of running the law practice, namely, attracting clients.

To attract clients to your practice there is a plan or a strategy and planning or building a strategy involves lots of theory and this is where the previously mentioned disdain comes to bite lawyers in the rear. Because you do not respect theoretical frameworks, you do not understand them or are able to access the value that they offer you. The result is you do not have any practice planning to attract clients or even worse, you are handed some paper and told to make it happen. What!??!
Without the plan you have failed already. Everything else is just going through the motions and soon enough the reality of your failure to plan will catch up with you and your law firm.

This disdain is not a figment of our imagination as players in the local legal services place. For your thinking pleasure: listening to a speaker from Germany at a training session, he observed that the locals refused to study the body of work that the entire world had produced, they refused to access the knowledge and the result was that they could put aircraft together at the factory but the said planes never, ever took flight.

'Nuff said.

You Are Going Global

As a local law firm that is intent on participating in the global market place you have the home court advantage in the sense that global clients prefer local expertise rather than legal and other affairs being handled remotely by foreign counsel.
And before you get into a bother about your capacity levels remember that the USA was unable to execute its Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in the '60s simply because Fidel Castro knew the area of invasion intimately, in fact he went there regularly to fish and the Americans did not know the area.
So, the move for your law firm is to have an active presence on the internet.
You begin by writing your articles, blogging, making sure that those who are searching or looking into the country will come across your material. This is a first step to becoming a player in the global game.
As an observation, we have noticed that a popular approach taken by local business law firms is the 'Doing Business In Nigeria' PDF file and its placement up on the web. We strongly suggest that you come up with your own firm's position paper on the subject so you are accessible to your potential and actual clients and you handle the enquiries from there.
And remember, as long as you are competent you needn't bother about the competition. Yet.

When Selling Fails

When your law firm has put its ideas into play and the client chooses another, you must always remember two facts familiar to those of us who have embraced the bosom of the sales business.
Selling is a numbers game and you will make many attempts and have many failures. As you learn from your failures and make the adjustments you will succeed as you keep practicing selling your legal services (See Nick Murray's Game of Numbers, it costs $50.00 dollars).

Second, clients make decisions for emotional reasons and justify them with rational ones so work to address the emotional aspects of the selling process as well as the technical and treat your clients as though they are people, not just dispensers of choices.