The Road To A Successful Pitch Is Lined With ... Practice

If practice doesn’t make perfect, it certainly makes your pitch focused, efficient, and memorable. More importantly, writes Andrew Murray-Brown in Nailing the Fundamentals: The Value of Rehearsing, practicing before a client meeting can mean the difference between winning and losing:

“It is often in rehearsals that a team’s chemistry, so vital to a client’s impression of who they will hire, is formed. It is also through this process that a team can refine its message to be crisp, on-point and effective.”

Murray-Brown’s post offers an eight-point checklist that will help you turn your pitch into a new piece of work. Read it, and start practicing.

Building a Law Practice: "Get famous. Make contact. Repeat."

Mark Herrmann’s “Inside Straight: Building A Practice — A Case Study” at Above the Law. In the nearly six months that has passed since my last post, I’ve read a lot of blog posts, articles, and other resources, many of which will show up on these pages in the days and weeks to come. But when I read Herrmann’s post in mid-December, I knew right away I would use to kick off the new blogging season. Why? There are several reasons, actually, but here are just three:

1. Because it describes specific steps Herrmann and his former colleagues took in their quest to build a drug and device product liability practice. It’s not vague advice of the tell-people-what-you-do-and-wait-for-them-to-hire-you variety, but rather “I wrote or co-authored three articles in 1998, seven in 1999, four in 2000, one in 2001, two in 2002, and five in 2003.” Big difference.
2. Because building a practice – any practice – in a saturated, highly competitive legal market is hard to do. Really. Hard. To. Do. And Herrmann did it, building with his team an eight-figure practice over the course of ten years (with meaningful client work only coming in the last three of those years).
3. Because the most important theme that you’ll take away from the post is easy to understand: building a practice is work. Hard work. Tiring Work. And a lot of it. But it’s the only thing that gets you from Point A to Point B.

Read the post. Lay out the steps for building your own practice, and get to work. And have a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2012.

It's 10:00 am. Do you know what your firm's new business intake procedures are?

Steven Burchell's "Rethinking New Business Intake at Law Firms" in Law.com's Law Technology News. Let's face it. Automating the new client and matter process generally doesn't sit in one of the top spots on a law firm's to-do list. But that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense: "A well-designed automated new business intake system will also improve business continuity, reduce cost, and improve the integrity of data across the IT enterprise." Burchell's post identifies the key challenges establishing and adopting a system, and provides the solutions you'll need to overcome them. Read it, even if you're convinced your firm doesn't need an automated system. Because you just might need one more than you think.

Managing for the future: what you need to know today.

Robert Denney's "What's Hot in the Legal Profession" at Law.com. More newspaper article than blog post, this piece warrants more than a quick glance as you skim the feeds in your reader. Read it for a comprehensive overview of the directions the legal profession is taking, in 2011 and beyond. It's up to you to figure out what all of them mean -- how outsourcing will affect the delivery of legal services, how a client interview program to can improve the relationship you have with your clients, how clients and competitors are using alternative fee arrangements -- but thanks to Denney, the trends you need to understand, those that will have an impact on your practice and your clients, just got a little more manageable.

From My Shingle: Sorry, But I'm Not Contrite About Ignite Law (Just a Little Late to Respond)

"Sorry, But I'm Not Contrite About Ignite Law (Just a Little Late to Respond)" from Carolyn Elefant's My Shingle.com. It's been less than a week, but there has already been a slew of debate around Matt Homann's Ignite Law session that took place on the eve of the ABA TechShow, and it's all good. Why? Because even if they disagree on the methods, the debaters are all motivated by a desire to make the legal profession better. For Elefant, it's a place where people passionate about the law can follow that passion and find success, not the "rich beyond your wildest dreams" kind of success but rather the "don't stop being a lawyer just because you don't know how to start and run a solo practice" kind. Read the post. And while you're at it, read Scott Greenfield's "Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud," Antonin Pribetic's "Star Trek, Social Media and Legal Ethics," Brian Tannebaum's "Watching Law Ignite into Flames," and Venkat Balasubramani's "Emphasizing Tech and Social Media at the Expense of the Fundamentals?" You'll be glad you did.