1. Lawyers are trained skeptics.
Marketing requires faith and patience. Lawyers like to push and push a marketing effort until they can demonstrate with great satisfaction that there is no way it will work.
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2. Lawyers love to argue.
Most lawyers are smart. When it comes to embarking on unfamiliar endeavors, such as marketing, they find it difficult to “be stupid” and benefit from the wisdom and experience of other experts.
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3. Lawyers are risk averse.
The wisest (and safest!) Advice lawyers give is: “Don’t do it!” They live in a universe where mistakes result in liability, negligence, and grand judgments. In marketing, mistakes are a necessary part of growth. Taking and managing risk are essential elements of marketing and growth. Lawyers like contracts and guarantees.
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4. Lawyers often know little about business.
Law school did not offer courses on business owners. Any high school business student knows that marketing is an important and required part of any business. This surprises lawyers who often think of themselves as belonging to some kind of 19th century guild. The lawyers were brought up in an anti-marketing culture. They learned that they were in a “profession” in which refined ladies and gentlemen made no unseemly efforts to secure business. These people were “ambulance hunters”. (The practice of law is a profession, but that practice takes place within a business entity called a “law firm,” subject to the laws of economics like any other business.)
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5. Lawyers look at costs.
Most attorneys hate when a potential client sits in the attorney’s office and starts with “How much is all this going to cost?” However, that is the first question the lawyer asks about marketing. Focusing on costs causes paralysis. Law firm owners need to focus on generating income and driving revenue.
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6. Lawyers like to hesitate.
High “fact seekers” on the Kolbe index, they like to analyze things. They want to do thorough due diligence. They want to consult with all their colleagues. They enjoy thinking about action more than acting, with the risks that it entails. Action with objectives conquers fear. Life rewards action and punishes inaction. Fortune favors the daring.
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8. Lawyers lack perseverance.
If the lawyers try to prove some form of marketing,
any bumps in the road will divert them. And there are always potholes in the road. Lawyers get excited about a new marketing program and jump into it with passion. Then after about 45 days, life happens. A great case explodes. One of the children falls ill. No check goes in. Marketing did not produce instant wealth. The lawyer decides he made a big mistake and gives up.
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9. Lawyers are uncomfortable with the idea of making money.
Most attorneys are motivated by a desire to serve people. Most subscribe to some form of the Judeo-Christian ethic that is full of conflicting messages about the pursuit of wealth. Most are in conflict, if not guilt-ridden, over the reason for the gains. Many secretly think that what they do is not worth the fee they charge, since it does not involve hours of hard physical work. These attorneys might be more motivated if they thought of marketing and growth as “being able to serve the greatest number of people” rather than “making more money” or “being more successful.”
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10. Lawyers define themselves as lawyers, not as owners of a law firm.
This is the most important error and is a contributing factor to all the others listed here. Lawyers fail to understand that these are two completely different roles that require two completely different mindsets and two completely different skill sets. What attorneys believe is your greatest asset – your ability to practice law – is actually your greatest responsibility. They are too busy working on their business to work on it. To develop a practice and be successful, it is necessary for lawyers to conceive themselves first as the owner of a business called a law firm, and only secondly (if at all) as a practicing attorney.
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11. Lawyers are obsessed with what other lawyers think of them.
In no other business does the owner care about how the competitors estimate him. Lawyers are often afraid to do the slightest marketing effort for fear of being deemed “unworthy” or “too aggressive.” Let me assure you that a lamp store owner does not care what the competition store owner thinks about anything.