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Top 3 tools to help lawyers better organise

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Top 3 tools to help lawyers better organise

Whether you have been practising for one year or 25 years, you surely have come across an array of emerging tech tools and services designed to help you improve your law practice. As the industry moves forward, it is essential for competitive lawyers to invest wisely. There is no better time than now to take inventory of your practice to see where focusing your time and money can make the biggest impact.

​​Below are 3 tools that will help you set professional boundaries, manage your law practice in the cloud, get better and faster research results, and keep tabs on the things that matter in your daily life.

Podio

Podio is one of the best project and task management tools to get your tasks, clients, and projects together in one place. The platform provides you templates for more routine workflows or builds a custom one for larger projects, and see the status of where every person working on it is in the process. And because it integrates seamlessly with Google Drive and Dropbox, you can attach documents to each project, and your support staff won’t waste time searching for them.

Podio’s versatility makes it such a great tool. In addition to managing tasks and projects, it can be used as a CRM tool, to manage to follow up with leads, or even track expense reports. Notifications, of course, are built right in.

G-suite

G-Suite, a professional product from Google, is a wonderful and more versatile option for you. You may use it to organize your sessions, send emails, and collaborate with colleagues and other authorities in real-time. Moreover, you can organize your files with Google Drive, manage Gmail and work schedules, notes, and meetings efficiently with secure communication with your clients and your legal team. 

The great thing about G-Suite is that you may utilize any of the service’s products with your own custom domain.

Zapier

Finally, every attorney could benefit by using an automation tool such as Zapier. These apps help automate repetitive tasks between two or more apps. An automation app frees up attorneys and staff time to work on more important tasks. Anything where you have to move information from one app to another. 

If you are an attorney that has systems in place where you have to move information from one app to another, this tool is highly recommended for you.

These are the top 3 tools that should help you improve your work as a lawyer and better prioritize your tasks. If you need further assistance to improve your law practice, make sure you are on the right path to success by consulting your professional legal coach to advise and support you. 

5 Skills every successful lawyer should have

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5 Skills every successful lawyer should have

In a difficult, confusing, or complicated situation, individuals and companies may find themselves desperately seeking the guidance of a well-prepared and reliable legal professional. A great attorney has the potential to have a dramatic and positive impact on the life of a client. Whether it’s by helping them through a difficult family law matter, protecting them against false charges, or securing fair financial compensation after an accident, attorneys advocate for people during some of the most challenging times in their life. Lawyers matter.

To build a successful career in law, there are certain core legal skills that every law professional should have. The legal positions of lawyers may vary in terms of responsibility and scope, but the impact of these skills remain unvarying and persistent on all aspects of the legal profession.

Good communication skills

On a fundamental level, attorneys are communicators. They communicate with their clients, they communicate with other parties to the case, and they communicate with the court. Beyond that, lawyers communicate in a wide range of different ways. A great lawyer knows how to get important ideas across in formal legal writing, in informal emails, in phone conversations, through discussions in official legal settings, and in private conversations. 

Lawyers must be orally articulate, have good written communication skills and also be good listeners. In order to argue convincingly in the courtroom before juries and judges, good public speaking skills are essential.

Logical and Analytical Rationale

Both the study and practice of law involve absorbing large quantities of information, then having to distil it into something manageable and logical. At times, there will be more than one reasonable conclusion, or more than one precedent applicable to resolving a situation.

Reviewing legal documents, analyzing their complexities, identifying pain points and drawing inferences is a reasoning process that every lawyer must follow. However, the thinking behind this process must be logical. Problem-solving analysis and argumentative evaluation are highly important for practising law. With a structured and deductive rationale, lawyers are able to reach effective and sensible conclusions.

Substantive Knowledge on Law and Legal Procedures

While successful lawyers share many common traits, they may rely on a distinct body of law. Legal research is a core skill that allows lawyers to support and validate their conclusions and arguments. For thorough and extensive research, legal professionals should use proper citations, incorporate the techniques of statutory interpretations, integrate legal authorities, and deep-dive into legal research database software and other credible applications available online.

Creative Problem Solving

The very top lawyers are not only logical and analytical, but they display a great deal of creativity in their problem-solving. The best solution is not always the most obvious and in order to outmanoeuvre your challenger it is often necessary to think outside the box.

The best way to create unique solutions is to approach each situation with compassionate listening, which enables you to really understand the issues and what the client and the adversary need. That level of understanding can lead to a long-lasting solution that works for all interested parties. 

Superior Writing Skills

Last, but not least, to be a great lawyer, tremendous writing and drafting skills are needed which are useful and beneficial while preparing case arguments, briefs, and other legal documents.

Excellent writing skills assists and aids in making the position of the client and case, the marriage and fusion of both speaking and writing skills are invincible. In order to become a great lawyer or Advocate, tremendous writing skills are needed which are useful and beneficial while preparing the case arguments, briefs and other legal documents.

And, of course, always keep in mind that none of this would be effective without organisation skills. 

If you want to be an excellent lawyer then you must have all these above-mentioned abilities. To develop mastery in these skills, keep practising them to the fullest. The more you exercise these abilities, your legal career becomes more secure and successful. A professional legal coach would always advise and support you, not only on developing a complete set of skills but also the best ways of putting those core abilities into practice. 

How to prioritize business goals as a lawyer

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How to prioritize business goals as a lawyer

Productivity experts have observed that productivity boils down to determining how best to deal with all of the things you have to manage and learning how to focus. But first, you need to know what to focus on. Too often, lawyers fall into the trap of expending time and energy on the wrong things because they seem urgent or simply because something happens to be in front of them: the telephone rings, the e-mail arrives, or a colleague or staff member knocks on the door. The time has come for every lawyer to learn how to better prioritise their business goals.

Let us take things one step at a time.

Set SMART objectives

Not all goals are created equal—some are SMARTer than others. Lawyer goals need to be clear and measurable to be effective, which is why SMART goals for lawyers are so important. Whether regarding your career or any other area of your life, a SMART goal is:

  • Specific: if your goal is specific, you should be able to identify why you want to accomplish it, how you will accomplish it (that is, what resources you’ll need) and if there are any potential roadblocks that could challenge you.
  • Measurable: include a measure to enable organisations to monitor progress and to know when the objective has been achieved.
  • Achievable: design objectives to be challenging, but ensure that failure is not built into objectives. Objectives should be agreed upon by managers and employees to ensure commitment to them.
  • Relevant (or realistic): focus on outcomes rather than the means of achieving them.
  • Time-bound: set a time frame for each goal that you want to accomplish within. Set an honest, realistic deadline from the outset to boost your chances of success.

Set your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are the measures you choose to gauge your firm’s performance over time. These measures determine your progress in reaching strategic and financial goals, help you measure competitiveness, and more.

In your law firm strategy, decide which KPIs are best to track for your firm. Some examples of KPIs include:

  • Client satisfaction rating
  • Operating account balance
  • Amount of accounts receivable
  • Number of new clients
  • Number of new cases
  • Number of consults

Remember to choose KPIs that are directly related to your law firm’s goals. Start simple by gathering a few key metrics that are easy to track until you’re ready to analyze more. Finally, revisit your KPIs often. As your firm grows, your metrics will shift as your priorities change.

Focus on activities that bring the highest result

High-value activities are those that make the biggest impact, often while using the fewest resources. Many times, these are the same “important but not urgent” tasks that are ignored because you’re too wrapped up in the day-to-day work of the practice of putting out fires to make them a priority. Other times, you just don’t know how to identify which activities are of high value. 

Here are some questions to help you identify your high-value (and thus priority) activities or tasks: 

  • What is the purpose of this task? 
  • How important is this task for my practice or career?
  • How important is this task to my client? • Is this task related to one of my goals? How? 
  • Is this task directly related to my personal or firm values? 
  • How will I feel when this task is done?
  • What will be the result of this activity emotionally, productively, financially, or organizationally? 
  • What will the impact of this task be? • Is the impact short-term or long-term? • Is this a “need” or a “want”? 
  • Is this task more or less important than the other things I need to accomplish? 
  • How will my firm/practice/clients/employees be affected by this task or its outcome? 

Even the passion you have for the law isn’t enough to create a successful solo or small firm. To create a sustainable firm, you must strategize for both the present and the future. The key to successful lawyer goal-setting is to stay adaptable. Know why you want to pursue a goal, make it measurable, use tools to help you track your progress, and then watch and reassess as needed—based on your progress and what’s happening in the changing world around you. 

Make sure you are on the right path to success by consulting your professional legal coach to advise and support you. 

3 Simple Ways To Improve Your Law Firm Visibility

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3 Simple Ways To Improve Your Law Firm Visibility

While it’s true that lawyers can attain many clients through the quality of their services alone, a lawyer or a law firm that is looking to grow their business needs to adapt themselves to the latest industry trends.  The “do good work and clients will come” adage is less true today than it was thirty years ago.

Clients today are not required to book an appointment with a lawyer offline but can review a law firm from online profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other portals. Thus, due attention must be paid to the online presence, which must constantly be maintained to stay relevant and well connected.

The best way to be on top of one’s game is to exhibit excellent Thought Leadership. Online marketing for law firms can get the much-needed boost through Thought Leadership, as it can allow stable and trustworthy relations with clients, in an online setting with all the resources at hand. By adopting this astounding approach, law firms can easily gain a large and participative online presence.

That being said, here are 3 simple ways to improve your visibility as a law firm or an independent lawyer.

Increase the business generating potential of your law firm’s online platform

If your online platform is going to become your best performing salesperson, it needs to be in a position to be found. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will always be an important tool for online law firm business generation. SEO best practices may change, and it’s important to have somebody on board that has an awareness of the shifting sands of search, but if your website isn’t effectively presented to search from a technical SEO perspective, it will never generate you value.

SEO involves techniques that send signals that show Google your pages are valuable resources based on what people are searching for. This process will help to ensure your website appears high on the list of search engine results and maximize the number of people who visit your site. Therefore, for Search Engine Optimization to be effective, you will need to optimize your entire website. And one first thing to look into is your content.

Build Trust by Creating Content

If your law firm has a marketing department, they’re probably always asking your lawyers for content (and for good reason). Blogs are a great way for your law firm to naturally pump search engines with your keywords. Posting merely once or twice per week will boost your law firm’s website visibility. 

One of the best ways to showcase your Thought Leadership is by creating content that appeals to your Target Audience. Identify the challenges your clients are facing and create content that will be helpful to them. For example, for lawyers in many practice areas, COVID-19 has presented numerous opportunities for educating clients about new laws and how to deal with the many challenges the pandemic presents on every communication channel.

Develop a social media strategy

Whether we are thinking of Organic Social Media or Paid Social Media, a consistent strategy on social media platforms is always a good choice in order to gain more visibility. The number of law firms, lawyers, solicitors etc. (whatever the professional title) who see the potential of social media to expand their online presence is growing. Yet using social media to simply share information about you, through your latest updates and links back to your online platform isn’t going to help you stand out from the crowd (although it is important for traffic and social signals).

By designing, implementing and sticking to a social media strategy that is aligned to your overarching business goals, you will:

  • reach more potential clients
  • develop new relationships and strengthen existing ones
  • demonstrate your industry expertise and experience 
  • establish your position of Thought Leadership
  • gain insight into what your competitors are doing
  • generate more business online

The last decade has seen a transformation of the entire industry. Transactions and dealings are now global, the world has become smaller, and interactions take place at a faster rate. All this is due to the emergence of the internet, especially in terms of networking and online marketing for law firms. Fortunately, there are always ways for every law practitioner to grow their business. A professional legal coach would always advise and support you, not only in building your social media strategy but in creating breakthrough results for your online legal business.  

Top 6 challenges of becoming a lawyer today

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Top 6 challenges of becoming a lawyer today

A career as a lawyer is one of the most sought-after professions and there are indeed many rewards if you pursue one. But working as an attorney has some drawbacks as well. It’s not all exciting courtroom drama, news conferences, and grateful clients. 

The legal profession is a competitive one. It always has been, but these days—with rapid changes in the way we practice law—it seems to be even more so. Despite all its rewarding aspects, the work itself requires incredible intellect and resourcefulness. 

So, what are the major challenges facing lawyers today? And what can lawyers do to overcome them?

The challenges

The Long Hours

Any given workday for an attorney is hectic. Their schedules are unpredictable. From courts rescheduling hearings to unanticipated developments in a client’s case, there are many days where an attorney’s work cuts into family time and sleep. While some long days are unavoidable, consistently long days with an excessive workload can affect your health and wellbeing.

And the reality is that the long hours you work as a lawyer don’t just take a toll on you. They take a toll on the people around you as well. You begin to miss important family events. Your social life starts disappearing. You start drowning in work.

The solution you are looking for is to balance your life as a lawyer. A good time management strategy begins with tracking all your hours and evaluating your habits. If you find that interruptions like phone calls and emails slow you down, cut down on multitasking and block your time for specific tasks.

The Stress

Deadlines, billing pressures, client demands, long hours, changing laws, and other demands all combine to make the practice of law one of the most stressful jobs out there. Throw in rising business pressures, evolving legal technologies, and the unpredictable social, political and economic context and it’s no wonder lawyers are stressed.

While helping your clients and resolving cases is rewarding, it comes with a significant amount of stress. It’s no secret that attorneys struggle with excessive stress, anxiety, and depression. 

Be mindful of your emotional, psychological and even physical needs by practising self-care. Your mind and body need to recharge so you can work optimally and meet the commitments in your personal life. Understanding that self-care is a necessity will make it easier to dedicate your time to keep your body and spirit healthy with good eating habits, a workout routine, and even meditation. Hitting the gym, taking walks and adopting a daily meditation practice will work wonders for managing stress and anxiety. Then you can better focus on your career as a lawyer.

Low-Cost Legal Service Providers

While the hours might be long and tiresome in those first few years, the dividend is the higher fees that one can command with the experience that they have under their belt. At the same time, lawyers have traditionally provided a valuable service that individuals and organizations have been more than willing to pay for in the past. Times are now changing in this regard.

There are many new low-cost entities entering the legal community that offer many of these services at a fraction of the cost. Whereas the only option used to be a local lawyer that was located nearby, individuals and organizations today can choose from a wide range of options available on the Internet. 

As a consequence, lawyers are now having to examine their approach to the service that they offer, including their existing fee structure. This does not mean that you must accept less financial compensation in the end, but it does mean that you need to approach your business model from a different perspective than you used to.

Unrealistic Expectations from Clients

We can all agree that technology helps in a lot of ways. It has made many aspects of both work and personal lives easier and more convenient. Technology has also changed the face of the way many industries operate. 

However, one reason it’s a challenge for lawyers is this: Clients’ expectations are more than ever sky-high and on-demand. Access to the Internet provides potential clients with access to legal information at their fingertips. They are empowered by technology and today, they expect their attorneys will be proactive in finding ways to be efficient and offering options and solutions in terms of results. This can strain relationships between lawyers and their clients, which puts additional pressure on attorneys to find ways to meet these expectations.

What needs to be done is managing client expectations. Your best bet for managing expectations is to operate with transparency and open communication from the beginning. Clients may come to you with fear and uncertainty, needing hope. While there’s nothing wrong with providing compassion and comfort, it’s important to do so with a balanced approach. 

You Won’t Like All Your Clients

The forever hard to swallow pill: not all of your clients are going to be “ideal”. You will occasionally represent clients who are involved in an industry, project or case that is not aligned with your values.

You won’t be able to pick and choose which clients you take on, at least not if you want to make a living. People who need lawyers don’t represent a single, simple demographic. They might be wealthy and sophisticated, but arrogant and exacting. They might be homeless and accused of a crime that they did or did not actually commit. 

Keep things professional. And remember that you chose a career as a lawyer for a reason. Hopefully, you’ll find that this reason makes everything worth it in the end.

Clients’ Reluctance to Spend Money on Legal Services

Clients have become more conscious of their legal spending. After years of seeing billing hikes that far exceeded inflation, clients began demanding more value for their money. This forces lawyers to keep their billing rates reasonable.

Some people and businesses these days prefer not to spend any money on legal services. They’d rather take their chances with new technologies. Many of these technologies offer the same value at lower costs. The parties that do spend money on legal services aren’t typically willing to spend much. There are several lawyers on the market, so clients can go elsewhere if they don’t like your prices.

The best course of action here is not to drastically lower your prices but to provide value that your competitors don’t. If you do so, you can make your clients understand why your services are worth what you charge. 

While it might seem like the solution is to roll up your sleeves and work harder, the key is to stay on top of the challenges in the legal profession and make moves to ensure you keep up. Some challenges are out of your direct control—competition, globalization, regulation—but some you can proactively tackle. Do not hesitate to turn to your professional legal coach for the best support, to grow and develop yourself.

How lawyers can improve client communication

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How lawyers can improve client communication

For lawyers, good client communications can make or break your reputation. Whether you’re taking on a new client, emailing or calling someone with an update, or sending out a bill, every time you communicate with your client you shape their idea of what it’s like working with your firm, and a positive experience can mean the difference between a new business referral and a poor review online.

Recommendations and reviews are important, since, according to the 2020 Legal Trends Report, positive reviews or personal recommendations are the most important factors when considering the hireability of a lawyer. Below, there is some advice from your professional legal coach on how to improve your client communications. 

The main points

Communicate clearly, and often

Good client communication is about being proactive so that clients feel truly cared for and informed. Make a deliberate effort to ensure your client understands what’s going on, and you’ll avoid unnecessary communication breakdowns.

Wherever possible, avoid legal jargon in law firm client communication. Default to plain language instead, and leave an opening for your clients to ask questions about anything they don’t understand (a simple “please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions” at the end of a lengthy email will do).

Tip: make your clients feel truly informed and cared for by getting in the habit of answering your clients’ questions preemptively. After client calls or meetings, send a secure message that summarizes what was discussed and provides supplemental info for the next steps.

Always truly listen 

As a professional coach, I truly believe that good listening skills are crucial for effective legal communication. When clients are listened to, they feel understood and are more trusting of you. To connect with your clients and others and to have the experience you as an effective lawyer, polish your listening skills.

Since lawyers are smart, we often anticipate what is going to be said, and don’t feel the need to listen carefully. But when we really listen to a client, we can hear levels of communication that may deepen our understanding of the client’s problem. To improve on listening skills, attorneys should avoid interrupting or rehearsing answers while their client is talking and instead make sure they pay attention to non-verbal cues like emotions to best communicate with clients.

Communication throughout the whole client journey and keep it on the safe side

Your client begins their experience with you long before they sign their engagement agreement. Ensure your website and marketing materials are clear and engaging so that potential clients don’t get frustrated trying to find your contact information.

At the end of your client’s journey, add detailed notes so that your clients understand what they’re being billed for—especially if they haven’t worked with a lawyer before—and clearly illustrate services you’ve written off so that clients see the full extent of the value you’re providing, even if they’re not being charged for it.

Don’t forget to ask for feedback from your client throughout their time with your firm. 😉

Know when to automate communications (and when not to)

In today’s legal market, the skills lawyers need for effective client communication are adapting to the digital age. Automating tedious or repetitive processes can be a big win for law firms. However, when it comes to communication, it’s important to be thoughtful and ensure that automated communication is convenient for both you and your client. 

In general, simple and transactional communications are fine to automate, but more personal and specific communications are best left to humans. For example, lawyers can always set an automatic welcoming mail for their clients to set expectations and keep your client informed on how to access case information. However, if an anxious client calls or emails the office looking for reassurance or an update on their case, they need that empathetic, timely response that can help calm your client’s worries. 

The attorney-client relationship is something that the lawyer creates by managing every step of the client experience. As a general rule of thumb, put your client at the centre of everything, and you’ll be that much better positioned to communicate intentionally, provide great experiences throughout the whole experience, and build a strong reputation for your firm.

Clients have expectations and our job as a lawyer is to understand, manage, and respond in an appropriate and timely fashion to address them. It’s all about good communication. If you find that your skills as an attorney might benefit from a coaching program, do not hesitate to reach out to my professional coaching program. 

5 ways to maintain your work-life balance as a lawyer

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5 ways to maintain your work-life balance as a lawyer

Achieving a healthy work-life balance is important for all professionals, but for solo practitioners, it can be challenging. When you’re climbing the rungs of the legal ladder, figuring out how to have both a career in the legal business and a social life can be tricky. Over the years I have set myself small targets for professional and private equilibrium, and here I share some professional coach tips for success.

The following considerations are essential to assist you in meeting the expectations of your new role as an attorney while keeping a healthy balance outside of the office.

The main points

Set yourself limits for working hours

One of the greatest tips for a better work-life balance as an attorney is to keep track of the number of hours you spend working, such as My Hours or Clockify. You could consider how many hours you’re willing to work in a single day or week and stick to it. By asking yourself what amount of time you’d be happy to dedicate to work, you will know that anything above that will be detrimental to your personal life and happiness. 

Throughout your day, set aside adequate time to engage in leisure activities such as taking 5 minutes to walk outside. This will provide you with a much-needed break to minimise stress at work. Allocate these into your work schedule as you would other tasks and you may find this makes a noticeable impact on not only your stress levels, but your work-life balance and overall productivity. 

Prioritize your workload

Learning to prioritize your workload is key. Ask yourself whether you need to respond to, or action, a request straight away. If you have a long list of tasks, spend time establishing their order of importance. Which are urgent and which are neither urgent nor important?

Look for easy ways to implement time-saving tools for your office. One of the top reasons why people don’t take time for themselves is because they feel like they honestly don’t have it to take. One way to help you feel more comfortable taking time for yourself and your family is to use tools like legal document automation solutions or online firm management programs. Technology was designed to make your life easier. Explore some of the modern legal office software programs that are revolutionizing workflows for lawyers.

Choose carefully

As a whole, legal professionals are intelligent, ambitious, assertive, and creative types who understand the importance of working hard. They don’t sit around waiting for an opportunity to knock—they chase it. Many in the legal field strive to earn the best assignments and hustle to land the best cases. Most lawyers have a competitive streak.

Before accepting any role, ensure you research the firm thoroughly – consider everything that comes with the position. A specialist recruiter will also have a good understanding of the different cultures across firms and can be a useful source of guidance when choosing a firm that’s right for you.

Unplug for a Little While Each Day

Although many lawyers keep a traditional schedule, being your own boss gives you a degree of flexibility. When it comes to spending more time with your friends and family (or even participating in your favourite activities), take advantage of being the boss. Go to that book fair with your child; go with your spouse or friends for a long lunch. You can always work a little later in the day or even come in a little earlier the next day. Learning to embrace flexibility will help improve your work-life balance.

Here’s the key to making this work: you must actually treat those items as appointments. That’s not to say that you must be inflexible with your life. It’s more to make sure that you are taking time away from your work. Your mental health, your relationships, and your business are all worth it.

FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)

This malady is common among lawyers committed to becoming partners. They feel the need to be constantly available, throwing off work-life balance. Their concern was that by not being seen in the office, at all hours, they would miss out on opportunities to work on important cases. Ironically, their fear of not missing out at the office can often lead to them missing out on their personal lives. The constant need to stay on top of case developments and respond to clients’ calls and emails is exhausting. It can quickly destroy the balance between the office and your private life—especially when this is done after hours or on weekends.

In order to cope effectively, remember to set yourself boundaries when managing tasks. Whenever possible, ensure that you can delegate certain tasks to your juniors – allowing more time to focus on the key deliverables at hand. Becoming too involved is a common complaint with lawyers. Learning to let go of emotionally intense situations. Mentors can be a great sounding board to help put things into perspective. When constant work and business is ingrained in us, it can be hard to take time for ourselves. The day in the life of a lawyer can get stressful, but don’t give up. You can always reach out to a performance coach to get a better hold of legal practice and achieve all your goals.

HOW TO ATTRACT MORE OF THE CLIENTS YOU WANT?

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HOW TO ATTRACT MORE OF THE CLIENTS YOU WANT?

Have you ever in your legal business asked yourself why clients are not decisive from the start about what they want to do? Or why they do not provide you with the full and complete background story of their case, and then you end up blind-sighted? Or why they do not understand that the circumstances of their case evolve and there is no fixed solution from the beginning of their case up till the very end? Or why they agree on a strategy and fee with you, and then they change their mind? Or why they have the tendency to negotiate your fee? Or why they call you after business hours, even though you clarified that with them at least a couple of times? The list could go on… I am sure there are many versions of these complaints… 😊

During the personal growth workshops that I led for attorneys and in our one-on-one coaching sessions, we often looked at the relationship with the client, as an essential part of the performance of our legal business. Client relationship management is everything. It is a complex thing, and for now, I would like to refer to one particular aspect i.e. attracting the “right” legal business clients.

By “right” I do not mean that there is something wrong with the clients you already have. In fact, what I am pointing towards is that, if your complaints sound very similar to the above list, then you might want to stop and consider that it is not that they are not the right clients, but rather, that they’re probably not the “right” clients for you!

Now that gives you some power, to get off whatever you are on with your clients, clean up any mess, or unclear situations, and start taking some responsibility around who your clients are, whom you have taken on in your law firm, your portfolio. If you are a legal business owner or planning to become one, then you want to have a look at this now! Because who your clients are, speaks volumes of who you are as a lawyer!

Look, I spent the first ten years of my career thinking that if I work hard, do my part inside out, and do great work with everything I do, my clients are going to appreciate me. The result was lots of work for me, I kept myself and my colleagues to a very high standard, never satisfied with the accuracy of the legal drafting, the time put in, there was always more planning and organizing, more task management required, more checks. I would double-check my team’s work. Hell, even proofread their work! I ended up tired, stressed, overwhelmed, and stuck. No matter how much I try and work to make my work impeccable, in the end, the client is not going to appreciate it. They would change their mind, drop a project, after having worked for months on it, or after me and my team had spent a considerable amount of time to make it to a tight deadline. Which, in the end, was never going to happen. And so on… I felt stuck.

But I did not know any better, I was playing a small game. The game called “I win, if I do as the client wants, if I do it “right”.

So, I am challenging you to take a moment today and write down on a blank piece of paper who are your current clients? Who entered your portfolio in the past twelve months? Who got referred to you, by whom and why? Are they clients you couldn’t say “No” to because they’re a relative, or a friend, or some favour call? Or are they clients who have stuck with you for the longest period of time, people with a huge commitment in life, who always deliver on their side of the deal, who cherish and respect your private time, who are proud to be represented by you?

And, you know, you might not like it in the beginning, and it might be that you get a little confronted 😊 by this. By the fact that your current clients are the result of your action, or shall I say IN-action?! But at the end of the day, you and I know, that we are the only ones responsible for how our legal practice looks today. We created it!

And that is why I created the IO Masterminds platform. At IO Masterminds we Empower and Support Lawyers to Promote Themselves, Start or Grow Their Legal Business through Digital Legal Marketing. So that you can go from where you are today in your business, in your relationship with your clients, to where you want to be, Attracting More of the Clients You Want, Realizing an Abundance of Clients and Projects that are True to Who You are as a Lawyer, What You Stand For, and ultimately Be Successful in Your Legal Business.

I am curious about what you wrote down on that blank paper and what you discovered taking on my challenge. If you care to share, let’s get in touch! Also, if you want to know more about the IO Masterminds platform and what is possible for you and your legal business through Digital Legal Marketing, also get in touch! 😊

WHY DIGITAL MARKETING IS AN ESSENTIAL SKILL FOR ANY LAWYER’S SUCCESS?

Leave a Comment / Authenticity, Community, Digital Marketing, Integrity, IOMasterminds, LegalBusiness, LegalMarketing, LegalMasters, Mastery, Uncategorized / By

WHY DIGITAL MARKETING IS AN ESSENTIAL SKILL FOR ANY LAWYER’S SUCCESS?

That’s right! I assert it’s a digital marketing skill, not just a tool! Let me elaborate on this distinction:

A tool is an instrument that you use to perform a specific task. Say, if you want to promote yourself in the digital space, then you use certain tools, which are specific to digital marketing, such as Social Media, Email Marketing, Podcasts etc. You set certain targets, you create a budget, and you hire someone to use specific tools for your legal business to be successful i.e. achieve the results you want.

However, I cannot stress enough the importance of Being a Digital Marketing Expert. Not as an instrument that you pass on or delegate to others to handle for you, but as a way of being for your own success as a Legal Professional. When you are a Digital Marketing Expert yourself, then beyond understanding the tools and what you can do with them, you become extremely Powerful with:

  • (i) what is Important to you in practising your profession, your Expertise;
  • (ii) where you want to Make a Difference through being a lawyer;
  • (iii) the way you communicate – what is important to you, your projects, the results you produced with your clients, your peers, and other stakeholders;
  • (iv) building a community around you, far beyond your immediate contacts, of like-minded people. 

Promoting ourselves as lawyers and our legal business is not something we learned in Law School. And that is a fact. We’re all “illiterate” in this respect, coming out of Law School. So, we have to acquire this through our own experience or by learning from others.

When my father started practising as an attorney-at-law in Romania back in the late seventies, there was no social media, internet, or even mobile phones! He had a landline at home, he met his clients in our living room in the afternoons, in our two-interconnected-bedroom apartment (meanwhile, we would have to sit quietly in our bedroom or kitchen and not interrupt). The only channel available for promotion for lawyers back in the day was a room within the courthouse where people would come and… smoke. It was there where he met potential clients, typically upset or disgruntled people who would come to complain at the courthouse. The onboarding was done there and then. Later, being successful with a client’s case would attract more clients and in time he would build his reputation and so on. It took years of hard work, commitment, relentlessness in the fight for human rights in Romanian society.

But those days are gone, and we now live in a Digital World, where anything is possible. And that is why I am sharing this story with you; to make you aware of how far we have come in the promotion of our legal practice. And even though in some ways or forms the “fumoir” experience may still take place, there is so much more out there available for us to meet our clients, promote ourselves and build a reputation. 

Provided always that our Core Principles of practising the legal profession are observed, the information we provide to the public is accurate and not misleading, with Integrity, Authenticity and Alacrity. I strongly believe that we, as legal professionals, have come a long way in promoting ourselves and our legal business. In fact, I see Digital Legal Marketing as an Essential Skill to Promote and Ensure Civil Society’s Access to Justice.

If you want to learn how You can Make a Difference through your Legal Practice, by becoming a Digital Marketing Expert yourself, contact me for a free 45-minute coaching session!