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How Important is Strategic Intelligence Gathering to the Marketing Efforts of Your Firm?By Ellen Freedman, CLM Article from Law Practice Today recently had the pleasure of interviewing two candidates for the position of managing partner at a mid-sized law firm. The partners at the firm were evenly divided in their preferences. Both candidates were highly qualified. My “mission” during the interviews was to, among other things, assess the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate relative to the perceived needs which were most critical to the firm’s ongoing success. One of the needs highest on the list, not surprisingly, were skills in marketing, as well as the ability to train associates and young partners to be more successful in this area. Only one of the two candidates had actual past experience in building his own book of business. My assumption going into the interviews was that this candidate—let’s call him Bob—would be much stronger in this critical area. The other candidate—let’s call him Larry—had never been in a position where developing a book of business for himself or any of the attorneys he managed or dealt with was appropriate. Since marketing is so often a hands-on developed skill, my assumption seemed logical. But you know what they say about assumptions. Bob had strong ideas regarding what marketing was about. It was about client service and quality issues like prompt return of calls, consistent work product, accurate fee estimates, the ability to offer billing arrangements other than on an hourly basis, and so forth. Bob spoke of a well-designed firm brochure and Web site. He spoke of seminars for other attorneys to facilitate referrals. He spoke of involving younger partners to a higher degree in the work of senior partners’ clients to assist in transitioning clients to the next generation. All were good, solid ideas. When it came to teaching young partners and associates to market, Bob was more pragmatic, even pessimistic. Bob felt that marketing skills, for the most part, were not something most attorneys could be successfully trained in. He felt that “service partners” would likely never become rainmakers, even if the compensation system is designed to reward rainmaking. But Bob felt that there was a place for service partners in every law firm nonetheless. This viewpoint is widely shared. And while the need for service partners is definitely evident at many firms, particularly mid-size and large firms, it begs an important question. The demographics of the typical firm today reveal a layer of baby boomer rainmakers who essentially feed work downward to fill the plates of service partners and associates. What happens to the future of the firm when the baby boomers start to retire, die, or scale back? Who fills the plates of the service partners? If young partners and associates are not or cannot be trained to fill their own plates, at least in part, isn’t the firm doomed to eventually fail? If you look around you at what has been happening at firms of all sizes, you know this is a real threat to the future viability of a firm. And at what point, with a finite amount of work to fill other plates, does the rainmaker decide that the firm is better off taking the work from a loyal service partner and handing it off to a newer, younger attorney who shows more promise of becoming a future rainmaker? So listen up, if you’re one of those service partners, because your future is certainly not assured no matter how long you’ve put in at your firm, and no matter how good a technician you are. You are vulnerable. And your vulnerability may become an issue just at a point in your life when you want to scale back yourself and work less hard. At just that time in your career you may find yourself having to prove yourself all over again at another firm, and having to work harder than you’ve worked in years. Click here for access to the article. |
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