Successful Attorneys Understand This One Truth
The following is adapted from The Game Changing Attorney by Michael Mogill.
I was at a legal event once when I heard the former chair of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association — a friend of mine — give a terrible piece of advice:
“Don’t worry about marketing,” he said. “Just be a good lawyer. I got all my business through word of mouth. I never had to market, and you shouldn’t have to either.”
I’d heard this same advice from plenty of other attorneys his age.
When you’ve been in the game for thirty or so years like he had, you can start to develop blind spots and forget the work you did to bring about your success.
As I reminded my friend, he is marketing when he:
- Represents A-list celebrities and professional athletes
- Gets recognized as a past president of the Bar Association
- Appears as a subject matter expert on CNN or Fox News
- Publishes a bestselling book
- Speaks at business lunches
These are earned marketing opportunities that advanced my friend’s career, whether he realized it or not. He might not have spent money to seize these opportunities, but he did work hard for decades to earn such a large platform for marketing himself.
Either way, his advice at the seminar was dangerous. Being a good attorney is not enough in today’s world, nor is it prudent to only pursue earned opportunities.
To remain competitive, attorneys must utilize paid marketing as well.
The reason is simple: the best cases go to the best marketers.
This is a truth attorneys don’t want to admit, but it’s a stone cold fact. By and large, clients go with the attorney who marketed to them the best. If you’re invisible, you’re leaving them no other choice but to go with someone else.
Let’s take a closer look at the reality you’re facing.
Sometimes Great Reward Requires Great Risk
You can be the best attorney in your area, but if you’re just throwing up your arms every time you miss out on a case, then you’re not doing much to help your cause.
Don’t get mad at those other lawyers because they figured out how to attract attention. Get mad at yourself for not trying. As the cliché goes, be the change you wish to see.
You can sit on a soapbox all day talking about the way things should be, and you could even be right. In an ideal world, the best cases should go to the best attorneys.
But if your market can’t find you, they can’t call you and they can’t hire you. Your competition might not be as good as you, but if they’re doing a better job getting the word out, they’re going to keep getting all the best cases, deserved or not.
Many attorneys are hesitant to get into the marketing game because they’re afraid it won’t work. If you believe you’re out of the fight before you even get into the fight, then it’s probably true. It’s hard to achieve success when only failure is on your mind.
The best attorneys are willing to risk great failure for great reward. They rise up and disrupt their market because they believe, no matter their circumstances or resources, they can land any client, and they’re willing to risk failure to prove it.
To be sure, failure does happen. No career is without its share of beatdowns. I knew an attorney whose practice tanked after he was diagnosed with cancer. After successful treatment, however, he went back and rebuilt his practice brick by brick.
When you hear a story like that, you have to ask yourself: how bad can failure be?
Are your obstacles really so insurmountable that you’re going to let an inferior attorney steal your business simply because they had some flashier marketing?
Get Over It and Learn How to Market
If you’re tired of missing out on cases, I’m here to tell you that you can compete, and there’s no better time to get going than the present.
Every attorney I’ve helped began by accepting a simple, inalienable fact: if they wanted to capture their market, they had to learn how to market. The best cases go to the best marketers, but the best attorneys and the best marketers can be one and the same.
The first step is getting over the attorney advertising stigma.
I was speaking with an attorney at a conference, and she was telling me all the things she wouldn’t do in support of her practice, such as having a billboard.
To a degree, I understood. She saw attorneys doing goofy things, and she didn’t want to lump herself in that group. However, attorneys like her who adopt a restrictive mindset — instead of an open mindset — inevitably encounter two problems:
- Prospective clients don’t find them.
- They give an edge to all the attorneys out there producing good, quality advertising and allow them to attract prospective clients away from them.
The game has changed. If you do not market, you are invisible.
If you really want to grow to any kind of serious level and scale your practice, you’ve got to be your own advocate. Referrals alone are an unpredictable form of client acquisition. Sometimes the calls come in, and sometimes they don’t.
Not all advertising has to be degrading. Plenty of attorneys have already figured out how to market themselves in a classy way that improves their brand perception.
Sophisticated people have their attention fixated on different channels too, and when you advertise at a level that matches their sophistication, you begin to attract more discerning clients, stand out from the noise, and become a difference maker.
If you’re struggling and stressed the hell out, then maybe it’s time to reconsider what you will or will not do in order to better your situation. If you’re in that situation, here’s my advice: stop limiting your opportunities and drop the stigma around advertising.
Once you’ve done that, then you’re ready to move forward.
For more advice on standing out from your competition through marketing, you can find The Game Changing Attorney on Amazon.
Michael Mogill is Founder and CEO of Crisp Video Group (www.crispvideo.com), the nation’s fastest-growing legal video marketing company and the author of the “The Game Changing Attorney”.
