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Marketing advice for Harvard Law School students (Part 1 of 2)

By Jim Hassett

This week?s post was written for a presentation I gave yesterday at the Harvard Law School on Business Development for Law Students and Recent Graduates.  The panel was sponsored by the Harvard Law School Program on the Legal Profession, which ?conducts empirical research, develops new teaching materials and courses, and works to build bridges between the academy and the profession.? 

Like everyone else these days, law students are worried about the economy.  As if law school wasn?t stressful enough, now students have to plan their futures against a backdrop of law firm layoffs, pay cuts, and delayed start dates.

No one knows whether these changes are temporary, or whether they reflect the beginning of a paradigm shift in the way lawyers do business.  Either way, they call attention to the importance of a topic that is rarely discussed in law school: how marketing is related to long term success.

Your success in the first critical years of your career will probably have more to do with your relationships and marketing skills than with anything you?ve learned about civil procedure, property, contracts or torts.

And if you go into private practice, marketing could become a matter of life and death.  Whether you end up at a firm with hundreds or thousands of lawyers or at a small boutique, your firm?s health will depend on a steady flow of new business.

The economic crisis has raised the stakes.  In its 2009 client advisory, Hildebrandt International notes that ?the current economic downturn in the legal market is likely to be deeper and longer than any we have seen in the last two decades.?  Hildebrandt also predicts that in the future ?the right economic model for success could well be a firm with relatively fewer associates and partners than today, but with expanded categories of other lawyers (some of whom would be temporary or project specific).?  What does that mean to you?  Less job security, and more need for personal marketing.

The trend is up

For many lawyers, the idea of selling falls somewhere between undignified and unpleasant. According to Steve Barrett, formerly the Chief Marketing Officer at Drinker Biddle:  ?The job of lawyers is to help people understand what they can?t do. Sales is all about what you can do.?  

And there is no question that law firms now devote more time and money to marketing than they ever have.  Consider the facts in this table:

	20 years ago	Today
Percent of law firm revenue spent on marketing	0.5%	2.1% - 2.6%
Sales training (percent of large firms that have tried this)	0%	85%
Client teams	0%	74%
Formal client satisfaction interviews	0%	56%
Legal Marketing Association	100 members	3,100 members

Many experts believe that the trend toward more marketing will continue to accelerate.  Other types of professional service providers, such as accountants and architects, typically spend 6% to 8% of revenue on marketing, several times more than lawyers do.  Firms that sell products as well as services ? which some law firms may in the future ? often spend 10% or 20% or 30% of revenue on marketing and sales.

But there are many conflicting opinions about what works best

If you ask successful rainmakers what works best in legal marketing, you are likely to hear a wide range of opinions, including:

• networking
• focusing on client service
• giving speeches
• writing articles
• getting publicity
• sponsoring events
• ranking high in internet search engines
• structuring fees in new ways to increase client value
• and much more

You may even find someone who recommends running ads during the Jerry Springer show.

Each expert embraces their views with great confidence.  It worked for them, so surely it will work for you. 

But the one thing that experts agree on is that none of these tactics work quickly.  You may have to invest in marketing for months or years before you will see significant results.  Developing new business is a numbers game, in which even the most successful rainmakers fail far more often than they succeed.

This makes it very difficult to compare tactics.  When should you give up and try something else?  No one knows.

The Gallup organization spent 40 years interviewing over 250,000 sales people in a variety of industries to answer the question:  what?s the best way to sell?  Their answer was:  it depends.  Successful sales people use a wide variety of tactics.   (For details, see the book Discover Your Sales Strengths by Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano.)  What they have in common is that each individual finds something they like and are good at, that works--a tactic that fits their strengths.

But whether it starts with networking, writing in the ABA Journal, or getting quoted in The New York Times, marketing is ultimately all about developing relationships.

Everything you need to know, in seven words

When it comes to developing new business, everything lawyers need to know can be summed up in seven words:  meet the right people, advance the relationships.

Selling is like dating, and anyone who has ever gotten discouraged about romance knows that you may have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince or princess. Most lawyers have time for just a few frogs, so they must focus on the best prospects before puckering up.

Meeting the right people starts from a vision of ideal clients and referral sources, and continues with the discipline to focus on the few who are most likely to produce results.

Clients hire lawyers whom they trust and like. You don?t build trust by reading brochures, and you don?t build liking from a web page. The best way to build trust and liking is by sitting face to face and listening. (Notice that I said listening, not talking.)

After you?ve met a large number of the right people, it?s time for the last three words: ?advance the relationships.? The word ?advance? has a technical meaning to sales professionals, grounded in Neil Rackham?s research on over 35,000 sales calls. An advance is a specific action taken by either party that moves a sale forward, such as scheduling another meeting, getting introduced to someone new, or providing a list of references. Lawyers often love this concept, because it is so specific, concrete, and logical.

Rackham found that great salespeople succeed because they plan every sales call, and strategize how to get the largest possible advance. His SPIN Selling Fieldbook provides examples and guidance on how to brainstorm possible advances before a meeting, and then select the one that is likely to lead to the greatest progress. This takes effort and practice. But the ability to get advances is often the difference between success and failure. When you consistently find that you cannot get an advance with a particular prospect, it may be time to move on to someone else.

On the other hand, most law students have several years ahead of them before they have to start thinking seriously about bringing in new business.  Next week?s post will summarize what you should do in the meantime.

Full post as published by Legal Business Development on April 15, 2009 (boomark / email).