Genies in the lamp
04 July 2011
At the moment there are simply too many law firms and not enough work. Work no longer just arrives; it now has to be won. If that wasn't hard enough to swallow, the dark cloud of Clementi and Tesco Law looms which means, like it or not, traditional private client practice could very soon have a slick and aggressive competitor that will massively alter the way the public buys personal legal services.
An easy answer would be to lay all responsibility at the door of your firm's BD or marketing resource. However, private client is an area that relies more on trust and relationship than on technical ability which means your firms most effective promotional tools have to be the fee earners themselves, the people who will actually deliver the advice to the client.
At the same time I accept this is going to take some seismic shift in traditional fee earner behaviour - while no one entered the law to become a salesman, a completely different mind-set is going to be required if you and your firm are going to do what's needed to win more work, keep the clients you have and make sure those clients are referring you within their network at every opportunity.
I use the term ‘behavioural change' carefully. The whole notion of behavioural change is contentious. It drums up touchy-feely images of emotional discovery, of counselling and personal upheaval. The truth (in a legal services context at least) is that it's just about applying some common sense to the business development activities you engage in, activities that will actually generate relationships that will in turn provide fee earning opportunities.
The first point to bear in mind when I talk about activities is that's exactly what you should be focussing on - activities and not results. You will never make a client instruct you but you can definitely take action that will increase your visibility in the right areas and in front of the right people and stack the odds in your favour for when the client is weighing up who to instruct.
I split these activities into 3 steps; "Get out, get on, get in". To read these 3 steps and more, please click on the link below.
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John Haresnape, Head of UK Business Development, Taylor Wessing LLP, Law Firm
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