INSIGHTS + GUIDANCE ON
THOUGHT-LEADERSHIP PR FOR LAW FIRMS
As with any area of professional development you want to improve, creating high-impact content requires thinking strategically, developing new skills, and making it a consistent practice. You can’t keep doing the same things and expect different results. If you want to take your results to the next level, you need to up your game. Here are four ways to take your thought leadership to the next level.
Labor Day is behind us, marking the unofficial end of summer. As we approach Q4 2020, there is no better time to reassess where this past year has taken you, and to be more purposeful about how you finish the year—and perhaps look ahead to 2021 with a clearer picture of what you want the future to look like.
I’m firmly of the opinion that most lawyers would benefit from business coaching. That probably sounds self serving since I’m a coach myself, but in sharing this opinion I’m drawing mostly on my experience as a “coachee” while running my own small law firm in 2010. For me, having the opportunity to consistently work with someone who held me accountable to the goals I set for myself was critical to my success.
During a recent podcast conversation with my co-host Jay Harrington, we covered a variety of indices and both leading and lagging indicators of legal marketing efficacy, until I switched gears near the end and surprised Jay with a plot twist. This, in essence, framed the answer to a listeners question, “If you could measure only one key performance indicator, what would it be?”
A lawyer who succeeds at business development typically has learned to enjoy the process itself, while a lawyer who struggles tends to fixate on failures, doesn’t feel in control of his circumstances, and blames externalities for poor outcomes. In other words, lawyers who succeed over the long term approach business development with a “growth mindset” and not a “fixed mindset.”
“Too many attorneys are unhappy." Five lamentable words that headlined an article by Jay Harrington at Attorney at Work served as the precursor and pretext to Tom Nixon's first read of "The Productivity Pivot," a book just released by Jay Harrington that identifies and endeavors to overcome the root cause of career dissatisfaction for lawyers. Read Tom's review to learn why he claims the book "...will change your mind. It will change your daily routine. And, yes...it may even change your life.”
Although the era of quarantine and social distancing has limited our business development programs, thought leadership content remains unscathed. To wit, here are six critical components to a successful business development program that you can’t achieve without thought leadership content, to add to the list of all of the other obstacles the current pandemic has erected along your path to professional growth—things you can’t do, but content can.
The media industry is depending on outside sources for content and ideas while publications are shrinking, so there’s less room for some of the “fluff” that used to run. What’s needed in this best-worst environment is what I like to call “modern PR” — a blend of strategic thinking, thought leadership insight and business acumen, with a dash of understanding of the modern media landscape mixed in. To realize these benefits, law firms must put themselves in the shoes of the reporters — the gatekeepers — standing between a firm and the audience it hopes to reach.
When we launched The Thought Leadership Project podcast one year ago, Jay Harrington and I kicked off of our very first episode discussing the importance of targeting a narrowly defined niche. Since recording that first episode, Jay and I have gone on to interview and chronicle a number of success stories that prove the rule. Reviewing them just might give you the courage to go small, in order to hit it big.
