Brand
Business
Leadership
“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
In his classic bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie says that their own name is the sweetest sound anyone can ever hear.
Posted on 21/08/2010
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
I was giving a seminar to a group of IT lawyers within a prominent firm when—as a former IT lawyer myself—I began discussing some business development strategies allowing such lawyers to involve themselves more, both within the industry and within their own client base. Shockingly, it became clear to me that most of these lawyers were very adept at the “law” but quite clueless about IT and the business of technology. I couldn’t help comparing their attitude to mine, when I was in their position.
Posted on 15/06/2010
I was having lunch with some of my fellow female lawyers and the issue of women’s versus men’s networks came up (and of course the fact that women will always, to some degree, be excluded from our male colleagues’ bonding sessions, whether sporty or social). This reminded me of a Harvard Business Review article that I’d once read, which I looked up again. (How Star Women Build Portable Skills by Boris Groysberg.) In the article Groysberg makes the argument that star women build better portable business because most women’s networking is done by building on external relationships—with clients and contacts—which brings them portable business.
Posted on 01/06/2010
This morning I gave a talk to the Association of Women Solicitors about personal branding (around the format of a networking breakfast). It was a well-attended event composed mainly of senior private practice women working in the City. Yet afterwards I found myself considering those invitees who chose not to come (no one being hugely specific as to whom they might be). I asked myself, “Did they stay home because, as fellow private practice lawyers, they felt that their networking opportunities were limited?” and: “Had they had thought General Counsels or other potential clients had been there, would they have come?”
Posted on 12/05/2010