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“This book tells you all you need to know about how to get on.” The Times
“Relatively few books have been written with assistant solicitors in mind, about how to succeed at the business of being a lawyer… fewer still have devised a programme for so doing that runs alongside a book. This book does both.”Law Society (The Law Management Section)
5 star rating HR Magazine
The most basic rule of business development is something lawyers often forget. It’s this: tragic as it may seem, clients don’t care about what you do. Instead, they stubbornly persist in caring about their own problems and needs. (Very strange (not!), but true . . . )
Posted on 21/07/2010
I’ve met many lawyers who chose their profession for its intellectual challenge—or (still more frankly) because they “wanted to avoid anything to do with sales”! But, in the latter case, the joke’s on them because as lawyers we must sell ourselves—and our services. Unfortunately (at least for these lawyers) we’re still in the sales business.
Posted on 13/07/2010
The best-known example of cross-selling is the inevitable question arising upon ordering a cheeseburger: ('Do you want fries with that?') For us, as lawyers, it’s really just that simple, but we must remember to first ask our clients whether they’re interested in that extra service, which means we must start out by genuinely collaborating with our colleagues to understand their practice areas and how they synergize with ours.
Posted on 20/05/2010
There are a lot of good books out there for learning how to network, build client relationships, and market one's self. And I’ve read most of them. But very very few of these books are specific to us lawyers—which is one of the reasons I wrote Juggling the Big 3.
As a lawyer, we tend to feel as though we work within an idiosyncratic profession—we are valued and rewarded for our intellect—and not cut from the same cloth as, for example, management consultants and sales people. (Did I actually use that four-letter word “sell” in the same sentence as “lawyer”?) Further, lawyers (at least in private practice) work on the basis of billable hours, which means time spent on “other” endeavors can feel like time wasted… and only fellow lawyers (who understand this difficulty) can advise on how to “juggle” networking and marketing with the unique demands of a legal career.
Posted on 25/01/2010