Alyn-Weiss and Associates Blog

It is unreasonable to expect every lawyer in your firm to market in the same traditional way-- acting as a "hunter" and attending events, serving on committees, making speeches, fundraising and teaching continuing professional education. But that does not mean every lawyer in your firm cannot contribute, and significantly, to business development. Every lawyer can contribute in a way that is comfortable to them to a law firm marketing plan. Attorney and marketing consultant Stacy West Clark describes this as finding "critically important behind-the-scenes roles" for partners and associates who are unwilling or unable to market publicly. As we all know, many lawyers are disinterested in a book of their own business. What can those lawyers do? Write articles, blog posts, speeches, seminar presentations; develop prospect databases and contact schedules for working through them; evaluate trade and community groups and activity within each; monitor, evaluate and update your Web site; monitor competitors' marketing; update and manage client and referral lists. These are critical and mighty contributions to marketing. And, the lawyers who can do them best are (too) often encouraged and given training and support to do other things. Of course, like the efforts of the traditional rainmaker these "behind-the-scenes" efforts by your less public lawyers needs to recognized in your compensation plan.

Labels: law firm marketing, lawyer compensation, rainmaking

The landmark 2003 study of women rainmakers—the only report of which I am aware that tabulates how much time needs to be spent to create a book of business-- has been updated. Based on 400 interviews, it indicates the threshold for success is for lawyers to devote 8 hours weekly to personal business development. Spend less than eight hours, and originations plummet. Spend more, they soar. The average return when that is done is $59,000 in originations per hour devoted each week. (Ten hours on average spent weekly equals $590,000 in annual originations.) Of course, as we often discover when writing law firm marketing plans and coaching lawyers, the vast majority, male or female, just don’t make the needed time commitment. (Our experience is that male lawyers need to devote similar amounts of time to that shown in the study and to similar activity to build similar books of business.) The report also discusses barriers to success specific to women, firm culture issues, mentoring, and the most effective lawyer marketing activities— networking, joining business groups, leading and speaking. That those are the highest-yield tactics is confirmed by our bi-annual national marketing effectiveness surveys. Developed by the Legal Sales and Service Organization, the executive summary of the report is 69-pages long but in PowerPoint. You can read it in 15 minutes and then go back to those points of greatest interest. One observation I did not see addressed in this executive summary, but which was addressed in the prior report, is that top rainmakers also ask for work and for referrals from clients and prospects. That’s a critical sales skill most lawyers fail to develop and execute consistently— asking for work. Here’s a link to the report: http://www.legalsales.org/pdf/LSSOsWomenLawyersStudiesExecutiveSummarySeptember20091

Labels: lawyer business development, lawyer networking, rainmaking