If you’d like to receive more content like this, join 4,700+ other lawyers and legal marketers who subscribe to my Legal Growth email newsletter here. This article was originally published on Attorney at Work. As the old saying goes, clients buy legal services from lawyers, not law firms. Accordingly, selling legal services is relational not transactional. It takes time. It requires consistency. Unless you’re selling a commodity, which means you’re competing on price, you need to invest in relationships to attract and keep clients. So, how do you go about this? In their book, The Go-Giver, B ..read more

If you’d like to receive more content like this, join 4,600+ other lawyers and legal marketers who subscribe to my Legal Growth email newsletter here. In April, 1970, NASA’s Apollo 13 mission launched, with the goal of landing on the moon. After an oxygen tank explosion, that objective was scrapped and the focus shifted to survival in the face of long odds. The Apollo 13 crew and ground control had to devise a way to return the spacecraft safely to Earth with limited power, water, and breathable air. They used what they had available—duct tape and spare parts—to adapt the carbon dioxide remova ..read more

If you’d like to receive more content like this, join 4,600+ other lawyers and legal marketers who subscribe to my Legal Growth email newsletter here. I love creating content. And for the last four years, sharing a daily post on LinkedIn has been central to my content strategy. But, as I recently wrote on LinkedIn, I determined it was time for a change. I'm scaling back (not stopping) my content on LinkedIn. That means I’m only posting a couple of times per week on the platform, and may post even less in the future.  However, this doesn't mean I'm slowing down my content creation efforts ..read more

If you’d like to receive more content like this, join 4,600+ other lawyers and legal marketers who subscribe to my Legal Growth email newsletter here. Marketing and business development are not synonymous. Both are important tools in your toolkit for building your legal practice. The important distinction: marketing is communicating one to many (an article or LinkedIn post), and business development is one to one (sitting down for lunch and conversation). Marketing is useful and effective because you can create once and reach many. But the connection between you and your audience is distant. B ..read more

This article was first published on Law.com A recent International Bar Association survey reveals a striking reality: 54% of lawyers under 40 think they might leave their jobs within the next five years, and 20% are even pondering a departure from law altogether. The inescapable conclusion: there’s a persistent sense of dissatisfaction in the legal profession, especially among its more junior members—and that’s despite recent spikes in compensation and, according to Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group data, reduced billable hours expectations. There’s much that’s been said, and much more to sa ..read more

This post is a sample of my weekly email newsletter content. If you’d like to subscribe, you can do so here. In college, I worked as a restaurant prep cook. The chef had French training and emphasized the importance of “mise en place” — a French term for “everything in its place.” Mise en place (pronounced meez ahn plas) is a system chefs use to prepare themselves and their kitchens in the hours leading up to mealtime. The “meez,” as kitchen professionals refer to it, involves studying recipes, making lists of necessary ingredients, prepping food and assembling the tools for cooking that day’s ..read more

This post is a sample of my weekly email newsletter content. If you’d like to subscribe, you can do so here. Building a profitable legal practice is a result that’s achieved through a set of behaviors engaged in consistently over a long period of time.  There’s no one way—a single playbook—to build a practice that everyone must follow. However, there are not infinite options either. The choices you make, or don’t, related to the actions you take, or don’t, matter greatly. These principles apply no matter what goal you’re striving for. Nick Saban, perhaps the greatest college football coac ..read more

This post is a sample of my weekly email newsletter content. If you’d like to subscribe, you can do so here. My wife and I often marvel at the lengths to which our 10-year old twin daughters will go to avoid doing their chores. Make your bed. Unpack your lunch box. Set the table. There’s consistent resistance. But when I really think about it, this isn’t the least bit surprising. I’m 48-years old, and there’s plenty of work that I resist doing, even though I know deep down that I shouldn’t.  What about you? What is the work you are resisting, avoiding, delaying? Take stock, because the ou ..read more

This post is a sample of my weekly email newsletter content. If you’d like to subscribe, you can do so here. Throughout my career, as both a practicing lawyer and consultant, the best new business opportunities have almost always arisen at unexpected times and from unexpected places. Shortly after starting a small law firm, I reluctantly said yes to an invitation to attend a fundraiser in my community. I wanted to say no because I was stressed about a lack of work and felt like I needed to keep grinding instead of “wasting my time” at the event. I went and met an estate planning lawyer who int ..read more

This post is a sample of my weekly email newsletter content. If you’d like to subscribe, you can do so here. According to the internet (dubious, I know), Albert Einstein once said, "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn't... pays it." This principle doesn’t just apply to finances. The universal law of compounding applies everywhere, including in your legal practice. Achieving small, incremental gains, consistently over time, can yield enormous results. Time accelerates returns. And so the question becomes: What are the assets you ..read more