Lawyers wanting to use a business model to analyze their law firm profitability should read the recent post by fellow legal blogger Tom Collins who writes morepartnerincome.com. It describes the Law Firm Business Model, as originally created by David Maister, and as amended by Tom to include factors like unbilled fees and uncollected receivables. Great way to get hard data about your firm’s profitability–and measure your firm against the competition.
“I’d never hire him has my lawyer”: The words no lawyer wants to have said about him/her.
Just last week I heard those words spoken by a potential client about a young male partner at a prominent firm. We were at a cocktail party, and the law firm partner, the potential client (in house general counsel) and I had been chatting. We had known each other over the years and there was a level of comfort among us.
Yet, try as he might, the partner–who has long been seeking the general counsel’s business–could not manage to keep eye contact with the potential client (or with me). His gaze strayed; his conversation was superficial; and he made no effort to ask the general counsel anything about his work, company, needs or the like.
No surprise that when the partner wandered away, the general counsel muttered, “I’d never hire him.”
The partner’s work may have been excellent and his law firm’s reputation (and rates) highly favorable, but the partner had failed to develop any rapport with his potential client. And so all of the other favorable qualities were outweighed by this failure.
If you are also having trouble connecting with potential clients, there are lots of good books available on social skills, including Instant Rapport by Michael Brooks. I like the latter because it’s inexpensive and easy to read–just don’t get bogged down in the examples of following your client’s eye movement cues. Gleaning the book’s general NLP (neurolinguistic programming), rapport-building tips is valuable enough.
