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What Are Law Firms Doing to Develop The Next Generation? It’s a brand new year. What are law firms doing to develop the next generation of successful lawyers and rainmakers in 2011 and beyond? The answer to that question depends in part on how the firm is doing in the current economy and whether the firm views the development efforts to be a cost or an investment. |
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Practical Tips For How And Why To Use Social Media What is social media and why should it matter to you? It is really pretty simple; social media, blogging, podcasts, and webinars are “tools” that enable you to become visible and credible to your target market and referral sources and enable you to build, maintain, and expand relationships. Potential clients will also more likely find you if they search your legal specialty on Google. |
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How To Prepare A Business Plan That Will Make You More Successful As we approach 2010, have you started to prepare your 2010 business plan? If not, you are not alone. You may be wondering: Why should I prepare one? The answer is quite simple: Time and energy are your most important assets, and you must use your time and energy wisely. I like a quote attributed to Jim Cathcart and others: “Most people aim at nothing in life and hit it with amazing accuracy.” Preparing a business plan will help you identify... |
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Leadership For The Recession And Beyond The Practical Lawyer - Practical Sucess, October 2009 |
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What Does It Take To Make Rain? The Practical Lawyer - Practical Success, August 2009 |
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Rainmaking: Talent Is Overrated The Practical Lawyer: Practical Success June 2009 |
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Practical Success The game plan for successful client development is having the clients come to you. In a world where law firms and lawyers look alike, how can you stand out from the crowd? |
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Path to Partnership Making partner is an event. Becoming a successful partner is an achievement. |
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Becoming Remarkable The Practical Lawyer - Practical Success, April 2009 |
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The Path to Partnership Making partner is an event. Becoming a successful partner is an achievement. |
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Client Development - In a Nutshell Clients are a lawyer's most important asset. Yet, many young lawyers do not know where to start. I have some thoughts I call client development in a nutshell. |
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Unlocking the Secrets to Developing Your Future Rainmakers Each associate comes to a point when their ability to produce good work is not enough for them to have a successful and fulfilling career. While they want to become successful at developing business, the transition from focusing on getting hours to focusing on getting clients is daunting. It's all about learning how to change. |
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TYLA eNews, July 2007: Focus on Your Future Throughout my legal career, helping younger lawyers achieve their own career success and satisfaction is important to me. Since I owe much of my own success to knowing what I wanted to achieve in the future and focusing on that, I have always stressed the importance of setting future goals and having a plan to achieve them. Many young lawyers have wondered why setting goals and having a plan to achieve them is important. I hope what follows will give those who wonder an idea. To read the rest of this article, download the pdf. |
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Developing Peak Selling Practice Groups and Rainmaker Junior Partners: A Game Plan for the Business Development Professional - LSSO Review Q307 "Cordell, you are not a real lawyer. You are nothing but a salesman." With those words, a former partner thought he had paid me the ultimate insult. Instead, he helped me understand what you, as business development professionals, deal with every single day. Business development for lawyers is frankly not very complicated. I think your biggest challenge is finding creative ways to get lawyers away from their desks to actually do it. As a lawyer who has spent a career "selling," I believe you can make a significant impact with practice groups and junior partners by starting with the basics. In this article I want to share with you how you might help them get started. To read the rest of this article, download the pdf. |
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ALM's Marketing The Law Firm, August 2007: Career Success and Life Fulfillment Discover how attitude and vision will affect your career development, and learn what to do. Plus, get "Top 10 Tips for Career Success and Life Fulfillment." |
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NYSBA Perspective, Spring 2007: Making 2007 Your Best Year Ever Interestingly, many of the people who are truly successful also have a great personal life and are very family oriented. How can this be so? You'll find the answer, and much more, in this article. |
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The Practical Lawyer October 2007: Developing The Next Generation Of Remarkable Lawyers Learn how to connect with the "next generation," the business case for developing them, and specific ideas on how to do it. |
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The Practical Lawyer April 2007: Building The Next Generation Of Rainmakers Good rainmaking doesn't require a "personality type"; it requirres planning, mentoring, and a continuing effort by the firm and its lawyers. |
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Top 10 Tips for Law Students Ten helfpul tips for every law student to consider. |
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Recruiting and Motivating the Millennium (Y) Generation Today's young lawyers are entering the profession with different values, attitudes, expectations and demands than the partners and recruiters who will hire them. Although generalizing about any group is a dangerous practice, I believe it can fairly be said that the Millennium Generation demands more - interesting work, fair treatment, continuous feedback -than previous generations - and are far more likely to vocalize their needs. It will take more than wining and dining - and boasting about billable hours - to attract the best of the new lawyers to your firm. |
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How Well Do Mentors Know Mentees? I maintain that law firms too often distinguish associates by billable hours, class, practice group and office. We don't get to know them as people and without doing so we can't know what buttons to push. John Wooden, the most successful coach of any sport ever, coached two of the best centers to ever play in college-Lew Alcinder and Bill Walton. They played the same position and they played it the same way, but as people they could not have been more different. John Wooden recognized that and coached and motivated them differently. |
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So You Want to be a Mentor: What We Can Learn from John Wooden So you want to be a mentor for a young lawyer? It is a great responsibility with an opportunity to make a difference for the firm, its clients and most importantly the mentee. What does it take to be an outstanding mentor? Perhaps looking at the most outstanding coach in the history of sports can provide us with some meaningful clues. |
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Specific Tips on What You Should Do as a Mentor Most senior lawyers had mentors when they were starting practice. Few of us at the time called the senior lawyer a mentor. He or she just simply answered our questions, let us watch them, watched us, offered advice and was our champion or sponsor within the firm. The best mentoring we received generally occurred on the spur of the moment. It was totally unplanned. |
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What Makes a Great Mentor Choose your mentors wisely. I've been fortunate to have a number of valuable mentors in my life, people who have helped me professionally and personally in important ways. Each of my mentors was unique, but all possessed traits I believe common among effective mentors. Based on my history, discussions with senior attorneys about their expereriences with mentors and extensive reading about the subject, I've drawn up a list of forty characteristics I believe the best mentors possess. |
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Encouraging Associates In most firms, associates are distinguished by: (1) their number of billable hours; (2) their class; (3) their practice group; and, (4) the office location. Before someone can coach or mentor an associate, he must know them not only as lawyers but also as people. |
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Investing In Your Lawyer: Firm Mentoring And Personal Planning For Associate Retention And Business Reward The Lawyers Competivie Edge: Young lawyers who are challenged by their goals, receive immediate feedback, feel in control of their career and become immersed in their law practice experience the same type of optimal performance. |
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What Law Firms Need to Tell First Year Associates Recently I met with a young lawyer who advised me that he feels first year associates, especially those who have never had a "real" job before, show up for work unprepared for the "real" world and orientation does not answer some questions that arise later. I decided to put together a list of questions that may arise. I don't know if orientation is the time to deal with these, but I do know I have heard each question over my years working with young lawyers. Hope you find the list useful. |
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Successful Law Firms of the Future I frequently seek to learn lessons from other businesses that can be applied to the practice of law. After all, we represent businesses. As a result, their successes and failures are worthy of our understanding. |
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Law Firm Leadership Did you ever dream of being the best at something or playing for the best team? I always have. As a result, I have always wanted to learn what separates the best from those who are really good. |
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What We Can Learn from the Wizard of Westwood (John Wooden) What can a law firm learn from a former UCLA basketball team? If they pay attention, they can learn and apply the principles of success, how to win in the legal marketplace. The UCLA teams coached by John Wooden, "The Wizard of Westwood," remarkably won the NCAA championship 10 out of 11 years from 1964 through 1975, with a wide variety of different players and different teams. In those days there was no 45-second clock. Some teams tried to beat UCLA by stalling and holding the ball until the last second of the half. No matter what the opposition tried, UCLA prevailed. |
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Avoid Bush League Mistakes When I was playing baseball we used to refer to those who were not at the top of their game as "bush leaguers." Here are some bush league mistakes lawyers make in client development. 1. They lack integrity and credibility... |
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Marketing Differentiation On their web pages, in their brochures and, most critically, in the eyes of potential clients, most law firms look alike. To successfully distinguish themselves from their competitors, law firms should heed the dictates of legal marketing experts. |
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TOP 20 IDEAS TO IMPROVE CLIENT SERVICE 1. Learn about the client's company, business and industry at your expense. 2. Identify clients' needs that have the greatest impact on their business success and develop a solution to meet those needs. 3. Ask clients to identify their objectives before beginning work and then develop a plan to achieve those objectives...... |
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Some Thoughts on Work-Life Balance and Client Development Recently I had the opportunity to speak to the women lawyers in a medium sized firm. Prior to speaking to them, I asked them to give me 1-3 questions I could help answer for them. Many of the questions I received focused on work-life balance. Many others focused on how to develop clients. I thought it might be helpful to others if I shared my thoughts on these two important topics. |
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Foundation - A Personal Practice Marketing Philosophy Marketing is about connecting. It isn't about activity, or brochures, or ads, or even visibility. All those can play a role; but marketing is about making contact with those who will take your practice where you want to take it. So, when we talk marketing philosophy, it is far from an esoteric discussion. We're talking about what lies at the heart of a quantifiable, effictive, and efficient approach to growing your practice. |
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Energizing Associates for Improved Client Service As I travel around the country I find fewer instances where young lawyers are excited about their firm, the work they are doing and their future. Law firms need to address this issue because it will ultimately impact client service. |
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Important Points on Client Development It takes a lot more than being the best lawyer in town to become a rainmaker. Client development demands focusing on your client's needs instead of your own and branding yourself as a lawyer who is distinguished from - not merely better than - the competition. |
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Building Client Relationships I have frequently wondered why Super Bowl winners struggle the next year. In 2002, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a spectacular season, culminating in a 48-21 rout of the Oakland Raiders. In 2003, they did not even make the playoffs. In fact, the Bucs ended the season with a losing record. They were the second straight Super Bowl winner - 11th overall - to fail to make the playoffs the following season and the sixth that followed a Super Bowl victory with a losing record. So, what accounts for this phenomenon? |
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Client Development Coaching for Young Partners Most lawyers my age never had coaching on client development when they were young partners. So, naturally many ask why it is important for young partners now. There are several reasons. First, developing business now is way more challenging than it was 25 years ago. The competition is greater, client expectations have increased and the time available for business development has decreased. |
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Law Firm Attorney Development Program n the book Aligning the Stars, the authors, Jay W. Lorsch and Thomas J. Tierney point out that: "Starmaking" is more important to a firm's long-term success than "rainmaking." Talent is the only source of a firm's competitive advantage. |
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Some Thoughts on Differentiation When I was a practice group leader with Jenkens & Gilchrist, I frequently read books and professional journals on marketing and other issues that affected my construction and government contract law practice group and my firm generally. A few years ago, I read several articles on marketing professional services by differentiation that caused me to wonder if my practice group and firm were conducting their marketing efforts consistent with the suggestions and if we not, should we consider the suggestions. |
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A Letter to My 5th Year Associate Friend Dear Sam, I enjoyed dinner with you and Judy several weeks ago. I have had time now to reflect on the thoughts you expressed about starting over and, possibly, abandoning your law career entirely. You are the best associate who has ever worked with me, and I find it a shame that your thoughts have taken this turn. |
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What Firms Can Do to Help Associates Take Responsibility for Their Careers Isn't it ironic that many lawyers spend more time and energy planning their vacations than they do planning their careers? Isn't is also ironic that, when asked, they can explain clearly why they want to go to a particular vacations spot, what they need to do to get adequately prepared for their upcoming trip, and exactly what they plan to do while there? |
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Presidential Debates and Law Careers I don't know about you, but I hate watching Presidential Debates. First we all know they are not debates at all, but rather staged events where each candidate waits for the opportunity to get into his answer the sound bite his handlers have told him will sway the voters. I also don 't like the tactics. Each candidate tries to convince the public that if the other guy is elected the voter and his or her family will be at great risk and suffer in some way, but if the speaker is elected the voter and his or her family will be safe and will gain great benefits from making the right choice. |
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Personal Performance and Development Plans Recently I was asked why lawyers should prepare Personal Performance and Development Plans. I was surprised by the question, in part because I have prepared such plans from my first year as a lawyer. When I clearly understand my purpose, I am energized, committed and disciplined about my career -- I know where I want to go and have a plan to get there. To not plan is to risk getting lost. As Yogi Berra once said: "If you don't know where you are going, you are likely to end up somewhere else. " |
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Goals and Career Planning Recently I spoke with a young partner named Lisa about her career. I learned Lisa had some ideas about what she wanted to do, but had not written any goals or a plan to achieve what she wanted. When Lisa described what she wanted from her law career, her description was fuzzy and ambiguous. I wanted to suggest she would never achieve her career dreams without clearly defining what they are and developing written goals and a plan. But, I bit my tongue and decided to listen and get to know her better. |
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Construction and Careers During my 33 year law career focusing on construction law and the construction industry, I have learned how the approach taken to design and construct a magnificent project is similar to the approach taken by successful people to build their careers. |
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Why Associates Do Not Set Goals I have set goals since childhood. When I was young, I set goals related to my sports activities, such as free throw percentage in basketball, strike outs and earned run average in baseball, and average yards per carry in football. When I started law school, my goal was to finish in the top five of my class. When I became a lawyer, my first goals centered on what I wanted to learn and what I wanted to experience. I remember one year I wanted to have five jury trials. Having goals motivated me, stretched me and forced me to prioritize my activities. |
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Top 10 Questions Law Students or Lateral Associates Should Ask a Prospective Law Firm Employer Before you decide to join a law firm, you may want to ask these ten questions. |
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Crossroads: Texas Bar Journal, February 2006: Strategy for Career and Life Oct. 9, 1978, was the coldest October 9th in recorded history in Roanoke, Va. I had been married for eight years and had practiced law for seven years. Although I had a good life and career, the events of that day brought me to a crossroads that motivated me to map out my future success and a plan for how to achieve it. |
