<b>Corner Office: </b>Growth: An Imperative For Survival

The Case for Organic Growth

The question is how to grow your firm? While the recent spate of mergers by major firms would suggest that merger must be the answer, merger is no panacea. Although the merger route might look like a quick fix, most mergers are born out of weakness and create more problems in the long run than they solve in the short run. Actually, mergers divert management attention and firm resources from addressing the real problem ' the inability to grow the firm organically.

Growing the firm with your own people, which I call organic growth, is the only viable long-term solution. But it is not easy, because growth means marketing. Growing a law firm organically requires that all of the partners participate in activities designed to expand the practice and increase the visibility of the partners and the firm in the marketplace. Success requires building a marketing mindset into the fabric, or culture, of the firm.

Can Your Partners Be Made
Into Organic Gardeners?

To answer this question you need first to examine the qualities of your equity partners. Smart, technically competent, willing to work hard, sound lawyers ' great, we'll take all that for granted. But do they act as if they are personally responsible for growing the business?

All too many partners in large and mid-sized firms view the practice of law as a profession ' not a business. They conduct themselves as if the firm is an institution, and they stand ready to handle any work that magically comes through the door. Ask yourself how many sound lawyers you can afford to carry as equity partners who cannot 'market' themselves or the firm? In spite of what many lawyers would like to think, a law firm, regardless of its size, is a business. And the owners of that business have an obligation to grow the business by keeping the pipeline filled with new work and new clients.

Successful entrepreneurs who have built their own businesses understand not only the process for making the product or providing the service, but the importance of getting and keeping customers, hiring and training good people and controlling costs. Without the ability to access potential buyers, the product or service would just gather dust on a shelf, or in the case of a law firm just sit in the office waiting for the phone to ring. So how do your partners stack up as entrepreneurs?

Create a Marketing Mindset

In order to grow the firm, you, as managing partner, have got to engender an entrepreneurial spirit in your partners and change their attitudes toward marketing. This kind of change can be implemented only if you send a clear message that equity partners must act like owners. And owners must take responsibility for growing the business.

You must create an environment in which marketing is the means of implementing a strategic plan for overall firm growth, with each practice area setting growth goals and coordinating and monitoring the activities of each of its partners.

Creating a marketing mindset means that every partner must participate in marketing, and marketing must be acknowledged to be an important part of every partner's responsibility. For many firms this will be more than a change in culture ' it will be a cultural revolution.

So What Is Marketing?

Marketing professional services requires an understanding of the current and future needs of existing and prospective clients and the ability to explain how you can fulfill them better than anyone else. Clients buy legal services from lawyers ' lawyers they meet in person. A lawyer may have a great reputation and come highly recommended, but only with face-to-face contact can a client see how a lawyer will react to him or her and the situation. Much as most lawyers are loathe to admit it, marketing is, as Betiayn Tursi, our Editor-in-Chief describes it in the MLF 50, a 'contact sport.' You've got to be out there, where the clients are, to meet and engage them. A client relationship is one of trust, and trust can be built only on a personal relationship.

Profile of a Rainmaker

Except for a tiny supply of natural-born rainmakers, most lawyers don't really know how to market themselves or their firms. Even those with good intentions always defer marketing and seldom get around to it, because client matters always manage to get in the way. If you have a few rainmakers in your firm, you will probably recognize these traits:

• They've developed a niche or specialty, and they write and speak regularly at professional and industry forums.
• They take leadership positions in organizations, go to events and work hard at meeting new prospects.
• They are never too busy to help on a matter or do a personal favor.
• They are always available to their clients and are genuinely interested in their clients' satisfaction.
• They frequently mix their business and social lives and develop close personal relationships with their clients.

But aren't these the qualities that every equity partner should have? And shouldn't you encourage the development of these qualities in all of your partners? You have probably also found that even rainmakers willing to share their contacts have difficulty teaching younger partners how to emulate themselves. Often too, the generational chasm between their contacts and the younger partners is too difficult to bridge.

So would you rather bet your firm's future on the backs of a handful of aging rainmakers or try to encourage your partners to think like entrepreneurs and develop a marketing mindset in all of them?

Getting Partners to Build
Marketing into Their Daily Lives

The law business is driven by billable hours, and firms that track only billable time send an unmistakable message that only billable time is important. So if you want your partners to spend time marketing, you must assure them that time and effort spent in marketing activities will be tracked and evaluated just like billable hours.

In order that partners understand the level of marketing activity expected of them, you will need to set a minimum number of hours that each partner should devote to marketing. An appropriate level is 250 hours per year. Although many partners would take exception to this, who could reasonably argue that an equity owner of a business should not spend five hours per week exploring how to provide additional services to existing clients and seeking out new ones.

Now comes the hard part. Where will the time come from? That will depend upon your current standards for billable time. If you hold your partners to 1900 billable hours, adding 250 on top of probably 100 hours for other administrative duties, would push them up to about 50 hours per week. Not an inordinate level for a partner in a major firm, but you could suggest that more billable work be pushed down to associates, where it probably belongs anyway, to get them to spend 250. On the other hand, if your standard billable hour objective is lower, asking them to spend five hours per week growing the firm's business is far from unreasonable.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that to get partners to build marketing into their daily lives, they have got to be confident that the hours they spend marketing will be considered to be as important as billable time. For many firms, this will be a cultural revolution, but anything short of this would be futile. Unless you are willing to commit to this kind of change, you might just as well not start because there would be little chance of success.

Evaluate Effort, Not Achievement

The focus of a marketing program must be on effort, not achievement. Marketing, like gardening, takes time; you plant today, you reap tomorrow. The payoff is seldom immediate, and success requires perseverance. Can everybody become a rainmaker? No. But everyone can participate in activities that will add value to the firm's marketing program.

At the beginning of the year, every partner should complete a written personal marketing plan that sets forth how the time will be spent; e.g., target prospects, speeches, articles, organizations, personal contacts, etc. One size does not fit all, and each partner's plan should be tailored to his or her strengths. Your partners will need coaching in what, and how, to market, and will need help both planning and implementing their marketing activities.

While it's easier to sell additional services to existing clients, access to new clients is best achieved by developing recognition for your partners in the marketplace, which I refer to as developing their 'star power.' Clients always want to retain the best, and encouraging your partners to develop their reputations as leaders in their practice areas will enhance their star power. Your partners will soon come to realize that what's good for the partner is also good for the firm.

How to Motivate Your Partners

There are only two ways to motivate partners in a law firm: peer pressure and compensation. You can create peer pressure by holding every partner to the same standards of marketing activity and creating forums for them to share their activities and achievements. Since most partners will usually climb on the bandwagon, those who do not will tend to be pressured, either directly by their practice heads, or indirectly by their visibility.

But if, after a period of time, peer pressure doesn't work, you may have to use the ultimate motivator: compensation. If partners know that their marketing activity, of lack of it, will be factored into their compensation, marketing will undoubtedly take on a higher priority.

How Can You Make This Work?

Your chances of success will be directly proportional to your level of commitment. This is not a process you can start and leave unattended. You've got to be steadfast. It's a long-term program that will require regular reinforcement to maintain its momentum. In addition to coaching for the partners, you may also find that an outside advisor could be very helpful to you in developing the program, helping with its implementation, and pacing and monitoring its progress. What is needed is the equivalent of a coxswain in the back of the boat to steadily beat the drum, until the partners embrace the change and it becomes ingrained into the firm culture.

You should also enjoy the added benefit that comes from the fact that partners in a firm that is growing feel a sense of euphoria, which encourages them to stay with the firm because they feel it provides the best vehicle for them to achieve their professional goals and dissuades them from seeking opportunities elsewhere. Just imagine all your partners out there in the marketplace developing new contacts and new business. For any managing partner, that would be law firm nirvana.

Do your current clients provide a steady stream of work that keeps all your lawyers busy? Are new clients constantly knocking at your door with new work based solely upon your firm's reputation? If that's your situation, stop here and read no further. You are in law firm nirvana.

Unfortunately, the other 99% of you managing partners are not so lucky. Your firm's clients are probably taking an increasing amount of work in-house, putting work you used to take for granted out for bids, and just seeming to want more work for lower fees. You probably have competitors who are getting more aggressive and who seem to be developing relationships with some of your best clients, or seem to be courting some of your best partners. And you may even have partners who complain that the firm's earnings should be much higher and that they should be earning more. Welcome to today's world of law firm dynamics.

If you're going to respond to these market forces, you can't stand still. Inaction is not an option. As managing partner, you have got to recognize that growing the firm is the key to survival, because in today's environment, a firm that does not grow will be overtaken by the competition and wither.

The Case for Organic Growth

The question is how to grow your firm? While the recent spate of mergers by major firms would suggest that merger must be the answer, merger is no panacea. Although the merger route might look like a quick fix, most mergers are born out of weakness and create more problems in the long run than they solve in the short run. Actually, mergers divert management attention and firm resources from addressing the real problem ' the inability to grow the firm organically.

Growing the firm with your own people, which I call organic growth, is the only viable long-term solution. But it is not easy, because growth means marketing. Growing a law firm organically requires that all of the partners participate in activities designed to expand the practice and increase the visibility of the partners and the firm in the marketplace. Success requires building a marketing mindset into the fabric, or culture, of the firm.

Can Your Partners Be Made
Into Organic Gardeners?

To answer this question you need first to examine the qualities of your equity partners. Smart, technically competent, willing to work hard, sound lawyers ' great, we'll take all that for granted. But do they act as if they are personally responsible for growing the business?

All too many partners in large and mid-sized firms view the practice of law as a profession ' not a business. They conduct themselves as if the firm is an institution, and they stand ready to handle any work that magically comes through the door. Ask yourself how many sound lawyers you can afford to carry as equity partners who cannot 'market' themselves or the firm? In spite of what many lawyers would like to think, a law firm, regardless of its size, is a business. And the owners of that business have an obligation to grow the business by keeping the pipeline filled with new work and new clients.

Successful entrepreneurs who have built their own businesses understand not only the process for making the product or providing the service, but the importance of getting and keeping customers, hiring and training good people and controlling costs. Without the ability to access potential buyers, the product or service would just gather dust on a shelf, or in the case of a law firm just sit in the office waiting for the phone to ring. So how do your partners stack up as entrepreneurs?

Create a Marketing Mindset

In order to grow the firm, you, as managing partner, have got to engender an entrepreneurial spirit in your partners and change their attitudes toward marketing. This kind of change can be implemented only if you send a clear message that equity partners must act like owners. And owners must take responsibility for growing the business.

You must create an environment in which marketing is the means of implementing a strategic plan for overall firm growth, with each practice area setting growth goals and coordinating and monitoring the activities of each of its partners.

Creating a marketing mindset means that every partner must participate in marketing, and marketing must be acknowledged to be an important part of every partner's responsibility. For many firms this will be more than a change in culture ' it will be a cultural revolution.

So What Is Marketing?

Marketing professional services requires an understanding of the current and future needs of existing and prospective clients and the ability to explain how you can fulfill them better than anyone else. Clients buy legal services from lawyers ' lawyers they meet in person. A lawyer may have a great reputation and come highly recommended, but only with face-to-face contact can a client see how a lawyer will react to him or her and the situation. Much as most lawyers are loathe to admit it, marketing is, as Betiayn Tursi, our Editor-in-Chief describes it in the MLF 50, a 'contact sport.' You've got to be out there, where the clients are, to meet and engage them. A client relationship is one of trust, and trust can be built only on a personal relationship.

Profile of a Rainmaker

Except for a tiny supply of natural-born rainmakers, most lawyers don't really know how to market themselves or their firms. Even those with good intentions always defer marketing and seldom get around to it, because client matters always manage to get in the way. If you have a few rainmakers in your firm, you will probably recognize these traits:

• They've developed a niche or specialty, and they write and speak regularly at professional and industry forums.
• They take leadership positions in organizations, go to events and work hard at meeting new prospects.
• They are never too busy to help on a matter or do a personal favor.
• They are always available to their clients and are genuinely interested in their clients' satisfaction.
• They frequently mix their business and social lives and develop close personal relationships with their clients.

But aren't these the qualities that every equity partner should have? And shouldn't you encourage the development of these qualities in all of your partners? You have probably also found that even rainmakers willing to share their contacts have difficulty teaching younger partners how to emulate themselves. Often too, the generational chasm between their contacts and the younger partners is too difficult to bridge.

So would you rather bet your firm's future on the backs of a handful of aging rainmakers or try to encourage your partners to think like entrepreneurs and develop a marketing mindset in all of them?

Getting Partners to Build
Marketing into Their Daily Lives

The law business is driven by billable hours, and firms that track only billable time send an unmistakable message that only billable time is important. So if you want your partners to spend time marketing, you must assure them that time and effort spent in marketing activities will be tracked and evaluated just like billable hours.

In order that partners understand the level of marketing activity expected of them, you will need to set a minimum number of hours that each partner should devote to marketing. An appropriate level is 250 hours per year. Although many partners would take exception to this, who could reasonably argue that an equity owner of a business should not spend five hours per week exploring how to provide additional services to existing clients and seeking out new ones.

Now comes the hard part. Where will the time come from? That will depend upon your current standards for billable time. If you hold your partners to 1900 billable hours, adding 250 on top of probably 100 hours for other administrative duties, would push them up to about 50 hours per week. Not an inordinate level for a partner in a major firm, but you could suggest that more billable work be pushed down to associates, where it probably belongs anyway, to get them to spend 250. On the other hand, if your standard billable hour objective is lower, asking them to spend five hours per week growing the firm's business is far from unreasonable.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that to get partners to build marketing into their daily lives, they have got to be confident that the hours they spend marketing will be considered to be as important as billable time. For many firms, this will be a cultural revolution, but anything short of this would be futile. Unless you are willing to commit to this kind of change, you might just as well not start because there would be little chance of success.

Evaluate Effort, Not Achievement

The focus of a marketing program must be on effort, not achievement. Marketing, like gardening, takes time; you plant today, you reap tomorrow. The payoff is seldom immediate, and success requires perseverance. Can everybody become a rainmaker? No. But everyone can participate in activities that will add value to the firm's marketing program.

At the beginning of the year, every partner should complete a written personal marketing plan that sets forth how the time will be spent; e.g., target prospects, speeches, articles, organizations, personal contacts, etc. One size does not fit all, and each partner's plan should be tailored to his or her strengths. Your partners will need coaching in what, and how, to market, and will need help both planning and implementing their marketing activities.

While it's easier to sell additional services to existing clients, access to new clients is best achieved by developing recognition for your partners in the marketplace, which I refer to as developing their 'star power.' Clients always want to retain the best, and encouraging your partners to develop their reputations as leaders in their practice areas will enhance their star power. Your partners will soon come to realize that what's good for the partner is also good for the firm.

How to Motivate Your Partners

There are only two ways to motivate partners in a law firm: peer pressure and compensation. You can create peer pressure by holding every partner to the same standards of marketing activity and creating forums for them to share their activities and achievements. Since most partners will usually climb on the bandwagon, those who do not will tend to be pressured, either directly by their practice heads, or indirectly by their visibility.

But if, after a period of time, peer pressure doesn't work, you may have to use the ultimate motivator: compensation. If partners know that their marketing activity, of lack of it, will be factored into their compensation, marketing will undoubtedly take on a higher priority.

How Can You Make This Work?

Your chances of success will be directly proportional to your level of commitment. This is not a process you can start and leave unattended. You've got to be steadfast. It's a long-term program that will require regular reinforcement to maintain its momentum. In addition to coaching for the partners, you may also find that an outside advisor could be very helpful to you in developing the program, helping with its implementation, and pacing and monitoring its progress. What is needed is the equivalent of a coxswain in the back of the boat to steadily beat the drum, until the partners embrace the change and it becomes ingrained into the firm culture.

You should also enjoy the added benefit that comes from the fact that partners in a firm that is growing feel a sense of euphoria, which encourages them to stay with the firm because they feel it provides the best vehicle for them to achieve their professional goals and dissuades them from seeking opportunities elsewhere. Just imagine all your partners out there in the marketplace developing new contacts and new business. For any managing partner, that would be law firm nirvana.