I thought I’d do the class today based on an article I wrote called eleven reasons that attorneys don’t do marketing. If you’d like a copy of that article you can find it on our website www.smartmarketingnow.com and click on smart article and scroll down a bit and you will find this one which was I think originally publish in the Law Journal newsletter I’m not sure, or the Law Marketing newsletter and subsequently in the Wealth Council newsletter an estate planning organization that some of you might know about.
It really is just born of my experience of talking to attorneys over the last fifteen years about marketing and encountering various forms of resistance. Obviously, not all resist, and not all continue to resist or I wouldn’t still have a job here. Still this is the mindset that I have discovered over the years. So let me begin with this list of eleven reasons.
1) Attorneys are trained skeptics – marketing requires faith and patience; attorneys like to prod and poke a marketing effort until they can prove to their great satisfaction that there is no way it can work. So its kind of funny because its true that law school and you’re training as a lawyer really I think, train you to look at any given proposition and look for the holes in it, look for what’s wrong with it, look for what the part the part of the argument doesn’t make sense or can’t be proved; and I’m sympathetic to that mindset because I am also a skeptic, I’m very much the same way and anything that I’m going to do or say or write or whatever, I want to subject it to some sort of rigorous counter argument; the problem is that mindset does not lend itself very well to entrepreneurship which is all about taking leaps and taking risks that is a subject we’re going to deal with a here a little more.
2) Attorneys love to argue; most lawyers are smart when it comes to embarking on unfamiliar enterprises like marketing, they find it difficult to be stupid and benefit from the wisdom and experience of others. I’ve often had the occasion it’s pretty funny to have litigator’s as clients and the first few that I had, it was very, very frustrating because they would argue with me. I mean they were paying me to be their marketing expert, to give them advice, to guide them in something they didn’t know much about and yet everything that I told them to do they would give me an argument about. I couldn’t quite figure it out until I realized that this is the way they understand the world; through arguments Socratic or otherwise and the attorneys the way they would behave often was they would argue with me and if I could beat them in the argument then they would do what I said to do and if I couldn’t, if some part of it required that they take it on faith then it would be a much harder sell.
3) Attorneys are risk averse. The most prudent and safest advice that attorneys give is ‘Don’t do it’ they live in a universe where mistakes result in liability, malpractice, large judgments. I think any of us when we have an image in our minds of the legal councilor that advises the family or the business or whatever, we imagine somebody who is pointing out pitfalls and dangers and insuring protections and giving conservative and prudent advice. The problem is that developing a business in very large part is not about that at all; in fact it’s the opposite. Starting a business, managing a business, which a small law firm is; is all about taking risks, and managing those risks, calculating those risks and calculating the potential rewards. In general, there’s a sort of exact correlation between risk and reward; the larger the risk the larger the potential reward, the smaller the risk, the more modest the reward. There isn’t an entrepreneur alive that hasn’t taken all kinds of what in retrospect may seem to be insane risks like leveraging their credit cards or their parents credit cards in order to start their business or selling their car or all kinds of crazy things like hiring people they don’t have the money to pay; entrepreneurs do this kind of behavior all the time and of course some of them go bust but we take risks every single day as your well aware; I mean driving to the grocery store involve a certain amount of risk but we decide it’s a manageable risk, its an acceptable risk and business is like that too. Its just full of risk, attorneys generally speaking, don’t like that much and that really holds them back from doing marketing and from growing their business.
4) Attorneys often don’t know very much about business; and that’s why I think SPU is such a great thing, if I can put in a plug for my home here, the law schools don’t teach much about business at all, unless they’re teaching business law, unless they’re teach contracts and torts and so on, but they really don’t teach anything about having your own business called a law firm and how to develop that business, but in general, and this is a sweeping generalization, but in general, law schools are preparing people to be junior associates at large law firms. That probably reflect the reality of what the law business was thirty, forty, fifty years ago. Now however when you want to go out on your own and be a solo, which is what this university is all about, then you have to know something about business, you really have to wear two hats. With one hat, you’re an attorney supplying work product to the firm; with the other hat you’re a small business owner who owns a business called a law firm the product of which happens to be legal services. But your long-term financial success is going to depend much more on those business skill then on your legal skills. The legal skills, much as you might pride yourself on them are essentially replaceable; you’re a good attorney, that’s great but there are other good attorneys that can be hired there. It’s the business skills that make the difference; if you have those skills, and that ability to grow a business, then you can hire any number of attorneys to do the actual work. So most attorneys don’t know the stuff that any high school business student would know about growing a business. I think historically the lawyers, and attorneys and the law profession has sort of conducted itself as if it was a nineteenth century guild with special rules and special qualification to belong and stuff designed to keep everybody else out and it’s a profession its not commerce its not a business it’s a profession and we conduct ourselves in a certain way; I ‘m sure most of you are aware that prior to 1981 even attorney advertising was illegal. So attorneys are historically uncomfortable with the idea of being in business. And therefore a lot of them pride themselves on knowing nothing about it. They have that sort of absent minded professor mindset of stumbling around the campus in a tweed jacket, but really not knowing anything about the world of commerce or business. So this is another reason why attorneys aren’t very adept at marketing and another thing that if your going to be a solo, your going to need to fix.
5) Attorneys fixate on costs; I don’t know what that’s all about I’ve never been able to quite figure that one out because most attorneys tell me ‘ya know Mark, here’s what I hate; I hate it when a client comes into my office, a prospective client, comes into my office and plop themselves into a chair in front of my desk and the first thing out of their mouths is ‘so what’s all this going to cost?’ and I always laugh when I get that when I’m speaking at conferences around the country and I’ll get that a lot and I always respond by saying ‘ what do you think the first questions attorneys ask me about marketing is?’ ‘What’s it going to cost?’ focusing on cost causes paralysis; the fear of loss is one of our strongest inbred defense mechanisms. Most of the time it serves us in good stead; it stops us from being careless with our money; in certain situations it works against us. Being entrepreneurial is one of those situations. There are others like the mechanic says to you ‘it looks here like you need a new carburetor and its going to cost eight hundred bucks and if you don’t do it then one day soon your whole engine is going to blow up and your going to have to buy a whole new engine’ and your so cheap and can’t stand the thought of spending the eight hundred bucks that you don’t do it and one day soon your engine blows up and you have to spend five, ten grand on a brand new engine. So in that case the fear of loss, the inability to spend money has just hurt you. Marketing is a lot like that; it requires an investment. If you fixate on cost, you’re going to be paralyzed and your just never going to do it. If you waiting for it to feel good to spend money and invest in your business, then go home now and get a job, because your never going to be able to do this without spending money. You need to keep your focus on the top line, on the revenue line on growing revenue, that’s where your whole focus should be. You take care of that top line and the bottom line will take care of itself, I promise you. So do not fixate on cost. Think about your own clients, prospective clients, when they come into your office; lets say they need to do an estate plan or something like that. If they fixate on what that plan is going to cost them, its going to be too painful to write that check; they might as well go home and accept the fact that they’re never going to do any planning, cause its never going to be free, its never going to feel good to write the check to the attorney. So if you’re waiting for that, give it up now. You have to have the ability to spend money if your going to grow a business you have to know how to do it. Keep your focus on the top line, on revenue growth.
6) Attorneys like to dither – that’s kind of my derogatory term for it; you might say that most attorneys are on very high on the kolbe index scale of fact finding. That’s natural to their profession; they like to research things, they like to know all the facts before they take a step, they enjoy I think thinking about action more then taking action because taking action of course has attendant risks so what you end up with attorneys a lot of time is paralysis by analysis. They’re just going to think about marketing more then they’re will ever want to do any marketing. The fact is one of my favorite maxims, one of the ones I made up and repeat over and over again is ‘life rewards action and ruthlessly punishes inaction’ General Patton said ‘ a good plan violently executed now is better then a perfect plan next week’ so if your dithering and trying to make your perfect plan, your perfect business plan, your perfect marketing plan, your going to do something once you’ve hired a secretary, or your going to do something when that check comes in, your going to do something once your have gone to kids go to college, or your going to do something once you’ve met the perfect marketing guru, forget about all that just do it, do it, do it. Life rewards action, stop dithering.
7) Attorneys lack perseverance when it comes to marketing. Really when they do get into marketing and engaging, any bump in the road will throw them off; you know I made this perfect plan and I started on this perfect plan and this thing didn’t work out so to hell with it. Marketing is messy; marketing half the time involve trying three things and seeing if anything works and attorneys tend to be the kind of people who are very driven to success. They went to school they got good grades, they went to law school and they passed, this kind of thing, and they can’t stand the idea of failure; well marketing and business growth is all about failure, in fact there is a theory of business called ‘fail faster’ that theory says that lets say that your going to try ten things and the tenth thing is the thing that’s going to work. What’s the best thing you can do in that situation? The best thing you can do is get through the other nine as fast as you can; try it fail, try it fail, try it fail, try it – oh that works’ but it you do try it fail and go home and lick your wounds for a year think about the money you lost, get all depressed about it then think maybe you’ll do the second thing but your not sure because you got burned on the first thing, well maybe you’ll try it but you’ll try it in a half-assed way, and all of that, look, your never going to get there. I remember reading an interview with the actor Roy Scheider, who said he went to one hundred and twenty two auditions before he got an acting job and I thought how many people would have given up after ten, how many after twenty, how many after fifty, how many after a hundred? You have to persevere, you have to get on the road and do these things and keep doing them. You can’t be knocked off, you can’t be thinking well, this didn’t work, that didn’t work, the best thing you can do is find stuff that didn’t work great, then on to the next thing. Chop, Chop, don’t sit around and brood about it or anything like that. Try it if it doesn’t work, get after it again.
8) Attorneys aren’t comfortable with the idea of making money. Now this is something I discussed a little more in depth on the class I did on fees. The fact is that contrary to the public image that lawyers have on being rapacious, most lawyers are really motivated by a desire to serve, to help people. Given the background of law schools and what they teach that we discussed before, that attorneys are in a profession, they’re not in a business, they’re not in commerce and so on. A lot of attorneys are uncomfortable about even admitting in private conversation that they’re motivated by a desire to make money, or a desire to make lots of money, or a desire to have a great lifestyle, or a desire to retire or anything like that. And of course most of us in this country anyway, were brought up with some form or the Judea Christian ethics as our sense of right and wrong. Those religion and those texts send very mixed messaged about the pursuit of wealth. So a lot of attorneys that I know have a real sense of guilt about wanting to make money. They are just very conflicted about it and I try to reframe it for them in different terms like being more successful rather then making more money, achieving more rather then making more money, being able to help more people is a good motivator for some people so if it helps you to think about it that way then think about it that way. There is nothing wrong with wanting to have a successful law practice and make a lot of money; I think that’s a great ambition, it’s the American way. So I bless you and I cleanse you go forth its ok to make money. So if you’re having that kind of internal conflict there are ways to deal with that. You might want to go back to my class where we discussed fees. If you own a business, the business exists for one reason; and that is to make money. That is why business exists, to make a profit, to make money so get comfortable with that as soon as you can.
9) Attorneys defining themselves as attorneys and not the owner of a law firm. I alluded to this earlier. Most attorneys, that’s their entire self-image you know, what are you? Who are you? I’m an attorney; I went to law school, I came out, I practice law that’s what I do, that’s who I am. Well, if you’re a solo, you’ve got another ‘who I am’ and that is you own a small business. You’ve got to put on that hat, you’ve got to be comfortable with things that business requires, you’ve got to learn business skill and learn to be that; if you don’t, if you can’t that’s ok, I mean I have had clients and prospective clients say to me ‘ you know Mark, I love the law, I just love meeting the clients, I love drafting, I love the research, what I love is the law, I hate this marketing and selling stuff’ and I tell them ‘ That’s great, that’s wonderful, you need to get a job; you’ll have a desk, they’ll send clients to you, you’ll do the legal work for them, you’ll have a 401k, you’ll be happy, because you cannot own a business and not do this marketing and selling stuff. You have to be comfortable with it; I have clients obviously who are the direct opposite of that; they love the marketing, love the business of development, love the rainmaking and all of that and can’t stand the fulfillment, can’t stand the actual legal work. So those attorneys, the second group has a much better chance of success then the first one in terms of solo practice, in terms of owning their owning business. So find what’s right for you, but you do have to understand that in addition to your self image as an attorney, you got this other self and that self is a business owner, and in terms of your financial success, that business owner is much more important then the attorney one, as the attorney, you are replaceable, no matter how good or gifted you are, your replaceable. As the rainmaker, the business owner, the visionary, the one who generates the revenue, you’re not replaceable; you’re the person so keep that in mind as you go forth in your solo career. So here’s my final one for today.
10) Attorneys are obsessed with what other attorneys think of them. I can’t think of another business that’s like this, I’m sure there is one out there somewhere but I don’t have any experience with it. I mean the guy that owns the hardware store down here in Naples I don’t think gives a damn what the other hardware store owner thinks about him. He’s competing with that guy, and he’s trying to do his best to grow his business, and do a good job, and exist as well or better then that guy down the street but he doesn’t care what his opinion is. But attorneys on the other hand are just nuts about this; if they run an advertisement or they do something in marketing, and some of their colleagues raise their eyebrows at it, or think its undignified, or think its ambulance chasing, or think its whatever, then the attorneys just get paralyzed by this. I met one time with a lawyer who was part of the ethics panel on estate bar association. Of course they often have to approve direct mail pieces or advertisements or any marketing efforts by attorneys. And this particular gentleman told me that ninety five percent of the ethics complaints received by the bar association are by one attorney against the other. Not by the public complaining about a lawyer marketing or efforts, but by one attorney against the other. Ya know ‘Freddie’s breaking the rules teacher’ kind of thing. He told me they throw those right in the wastebasket in general. If they get a complaint from the public, then they’re all over it; but this stuff about one attorney against another is just crazy. So I don’t know what the root origin of that is, but attorneys go nuts with what other attorneys think of him or her. It can be very, very inhibiting, and very, very self-destructive. I tell my clients that if anybody says anything to you about whatever we’re doing together, I want you to roll your eyes and say ‘oh my god, its those crazy marketing people that I hired’ you know put it on our shoulders if that makes you to feel any better. I mean the same way that you as attorneys say ‘ blame it on your mean attorney.’ If they’re worried about that kind of thing. So I urge you of course to follow all the rules, all the ethics constraints that you guys operate under, I wouldn’t for a minute urge you to break any single one of those. However, I urge you likewise, to not sit around and obsess what any one of those ‘unsuccessful’ attorneys think about you. Although another aspect of that I find aside from the unsuccessful ones, is that attorneys of a certain age, I’m fifty-nine years old, but attorneys that might be in their sixty, in their seventies, or whatever, have worked their whole lives, have developed this great practice, they make a ton of money, they’re really sitting on a gold mine in a lot of ways; but some young attorney, comes out of school, or leaves a firm and starts their own solo practice, and that young attorney has to make so moves, be aggressive to start growing their business, and that older attorney sniffs at that and says he shouldn’t do that or that’s undignified blah, blah, blah well, that’s easy for you to say, your sitting on a pile of money, you’ve had a great successful career, you’re not out there trying to start something. So plug your ears, don’t listen to the other attorneys, don’t listen to anybody that might think that anything your doing is too aggressive, go out there and be aggressive, and I promise you that the rewards from your success will far out weigh the sting of any criticism. So that’s today’s lesson on eleven reasons why attorneys don’t do marketing in my next lesson I’m going to talk about common marketing mistakes and how you can avoid them.
So thanks very much for your attention to today’s class and I will see you next time.