Thomson Reuters recently completed its fourth State of U.S. Small Law Firms survey.
The findings were summarized here on Attorney at Work. That post’s title, “Small Law Firms Still Struggling With Finding New Business and Managing Administrative Tasks,” accurately reflects the overall state of the world of small law firms.
We’re going to focus here on the struggle to find new business since that is my sweet spot in the legal consulting world. According to the survey, only 29% of firms have implemented changes to address the challenge of new client acquisition.
"Put another way, more than 70% of small law firms are doing absolutely nothing new to find clients.
Incredible!"
If you’re in that 70% and you’re wondering what to do, just spend one hour on the web. You’ll find that we consultants all say the same things, only in different ways.
For instance, I say that business development is a three-step process. You need to ensure that new clients or referral sources:
This is easy enough to understand. Of course, it’s the execution of the process that separates the great rainmakers from the mediocre ones.
Contrary to what you may believe, the execution winners are not the “life of the party” personality types. They are all personality types. And they all have one thing in common: They follow what I call the three “P’s.”
In today’s small law firm world, lawyers wanting to make it rain should focus primarily on two areas: networking and digital marketing. The amount of effort in each area will usually vary by the practice area and geographic location.
I’ve always maintained lawyers have it pretty darned good. We have a monopoly that seriously limits competition. And the competition for client acquisition that we do face is lazy. Thomson Reuters’ surveys continue to prove that. So get off your you-know-what and get some new business!
Read this article as originally published at "Attorney At Work".
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