Goldilocks and Three Strategies for Marketing a Law Firm

"At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge."

Goldilocks, as we lawyers all well know, is a story of a blonde juvenile delinquent who, after breaking and entering, eating all of the food, and destroying certain articles of personal property (to wit, a chair), proceeds to sleep off her porridge-bender in the owner's (to wit, an exceedingly well-dressed family of bears, see above) bed.

Leaving aside the troubling topic of the moral of this felonious fairy tale - eat little trespassing vandals quickly before they can escape, I assume - the 3 choices that Goldilocks was confronted with at each turn put me in mind of another 3 choices that lawyers are confronted with: strategies for marketing a law firm.

I know, if fairy tales make you think of law practice management, it is probably a diagnosable mental illness.

I'm not referring to the ever-expanding roster of business development tactics (cultivating referral sources, placing advertising, blogging, etc) a lawyer might employ to market her practice, but rather the big picture strategies that undergird them. There are only 3 strategies that lawyers can employ, fundamentally, and they represent a sliding scale of marketing sophistication and efficacy.

1. It's all about ME.

The first strategy is the "it's all about ME" strategy. Unfortunately, this strategy is in fairly wide-use among lawyers, as any cursory review of the Yellow Pages (assuming that someone, somewhere still has a hard copy of that increasingly useless waste of paper) will reveal. Hundreds, if not thousands, of lawyer advertisements span the pages, almost inevitably featuring the headline "Smith & Jones" and "Joe Blow, Attorney at Law." The firm name is in the biggest font and is most clearly displayed.

Not to unduly pick on the Yellow Pages ads, because lots of law firms websites feature the same strategy. I regularly encounter law firm websites where the most fully developed page is the "About Me" page. Ditto efforts at social networking (here's a good article on the topic from Chris Brogan descriptively titled "Shut the Hell Up You Self-Promoting Turd" - no burying the lede with him), face-to-face networking, and pretty much any other business development undertaking; there are always people around employing the "it's all about ME" strategy. Their easy to spot because they are always, always, always talking about themselves.

It's tempting to assume that an attorney who plasters his name on everything he can find is an egomaniac who cares more about ego-gratification than successfully marketing his law practice. I don't agree. In most cases, the it's all about ME approach is employed because the attorney just doesn't know any better. He's out of ideas.

Sidebar: It reminds me of the old Seinfeld bit when Jerry riffs that the reason men typically use such hackneyed pickup lines is that they are simply out of ideas:

Jerry: I swear, I have absolutely no idea what women are thinking. I don't get it, okay? I… I… I admit, I, I'm not getting the signals. I am not getting it! Women, they're so subtle, their little… everything they do is subtle. Men are not subtle, we are obvious. Women know what men want, men know what men want, what do we want? We want women, that's it! It's the only thing we know for sure, it really is. We want women. How do we get them? Oh, we don't know 'bout that, we don't know. The next step after that we have no idea. This is why you see men honking car-horns, yelling from construction sites. These are the best ideas we've had so far. The car-horn honk, is that a beauty? Have you seen men doing this? What is this? The man is in the car, the woman walks by the front of the car, he honks. E-eeehh, eehhh, eehhh! This man is out of ideas. How does it…? E-e-e-eeeehhhh! "I don't think she likes me." The amazing thing is, that we still get women, don't we? Men, I mean, men are with women. You see men with women. How are men getting women, many people wonder. Let me tell you a little bit about our organization. Wherever women are, we have a man working on the situation right now. Now, he may not be our best man, okay, we have a lot of areas to cover, but someone from our staff is on the scene. That's why, I think, men get frustrated, when we see women reading articles, like "Where to meet men?" We're here, we are everywhere. We're honking our horns to serve you better.

On a semi-related note, I watch too much television.

2. It's all about X.

The second strategy for marketing a law practice is a quantum leap over the first. Rather than prattling on about the highlights of our biographies, "it's all about X" (where X equals your particularl practice area) features marketing that centers around the display of expertise in a practice area.

Most of the lawyers and law firms that have started blogging as a marketing tactic (a tactic that I heartily endorse, by the way) fall into this camp. Their blogs tend to be practice area-oriented, providing news, insight and commentary in their field. Blogs are not the only tactic lawyers use for the it's all about X strategy; speaking at CLE, giving free trainings to clients and potential clients, writing articles published in other media than the web (there are still some other media, right?) are all different ways lawyers use this strategy.

Some great things happen when a lawyer shifts from it's all about ME to it's all about X law; she displays expertise without having to read her resume to anyone who will listen; she increases her visibility in the world of people who care about X, enhancing her reputation; and perhaps most valuably, she starts to look like a scholar of her practice area instead of a used car salesman trying desperately to attract clients by plastering her face on the side of a city bus.

Whereas it's all about ME marketing tends to dim an attorney's reputation among his colleagues at bar, it's all about X tends to do the opposite.

3. It's all about YOU.

The third and most sophisticated marketing strategy a lawyer can employ is "it's all about YOU" (where you equals the lawyer's clients and potential clients). This represents another quantum leap.

It's all about YOU concerns itself first, last and entirely with the client and potential clients of the firm and their needs. Lawyers using this strategy (and there seem to be fairly few) choose the tactics and craft the content so that it solves the problems and gives the clients and potential clients the tools they need to solve their problems.

On the surface, the it's all about YOU strategy can look a lot like the it's all about X strategy. It frequently includes tactics such as blogging, teaching seminars and speaking to groups, just like in the it's all about X strategy. The difference is that it's all about YOU is concerned less with making contributions to a practice area and more concerned with how the clients and potential clients can use the information to improve their lives.

The thing about this strategy is that it is very hard to get right. If you have been stuck in it's all about ME marketing and want to move to the next level, it is pretty straightforward. It may be challenging to do well, but mastering the tactics and strategy is not complicated. It is both more difficult and more productive to go from it's all about X to it's all about YOU. The key needed to make that leap is to understand your clients and potential clients better than they understand themselves. If you don't understand what they need, it's impossible to give it to them.

In practice, it is the difference between blogging about things that are interesting to you personally and things that will be interesting and useful to your clients. You may find dissecting some novel, arcane piece of dicta in an appellate decision to be a fascinating academic exercise, but it may be something that will only affect 0.5% of your clients. The rest of your clients might be more interested in a checklist of things they need to do before a house closing or divorce.

I struggle with this myself with this blog. I could (and some might say, do) write endlessly about Twitter and social networking, because I find that stuff personally interesting. At the end of the day, though, I want this blog to be about helping lawyers, and particularly solos and small firm lawyers, to run their practices more efficiently. And sometimes in law practice, as I recall, an attorney has to do stuff besides Twitter...

Much like Goldilocks, attorneys have a choice of these three strategies for marketing their practices. Take a look at your marketing; which strategy are you using? Are you always talking or writing about yourself? Are you making contributions to your field of expertise? Are you giving clients the things they need?

You'll know you've got it all together when you find yourself exclaiming: "This porridge is just right!"

Comments

[Steve Matthews]

When did you start adding entertaining to insightful? Nice post Erik. Just the right amount of snark. :)