1. Lawyers are trained skeptics.
Marketing requires faith and patience. Lawyers like to push and shove a marketing effort until they can prove to their great satisfaction that there’s no way it’s going to work.
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2. Lawyers love to argue.
Most lawyers are smart. When it comes to embarking on unknown ventures such as marketing, they find it difficult to “be stupid” and benefit from the wisdom and experience of other experts.
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3. Lawyers are risk averse.
The wisest (and safest!) advice lawyers give is “Don’t do it!” They live in a universe where mistakes result in liability, negligence, and broad lawsuits. In marketing, mistakes are a necessary part of growth. Taking and managing risk are essential elements of marketing and growth. Lawyers like contracts and warranties.
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4. Lawyers often know little about business.
The law school did not offer courses on how to be an entrepreneur. Any business high school student knows that marketing is an important and mandatory part of any business. This surprises lawyers who often consider themselves to belong to some kind of 19th century guild. Lawyers were raised in an anti-marketing culture. They learned that they were in a “profession” in which refined ladies and gentlemen did not go to unseemly efforts to secure business. Those people were “ambulance chasers”. (The practice of law is a profession, but that practice is carried out within a business entity called a “law firm” – subject to the laws of economics like any other business).
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5. Lawyers look at costs.
Most attorneys hate it when a prospective client drops into the attorney’s office and starts with “How much is all this going to cost?” However, that is the first question the marketing lawyer asks. Focusing on costs causes paralysis. Law firm owners need to focus on generating revenue and driving results.
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6. Lawyers like to hesitate.
High “fact seekers” on the Kolbe Index, they like to analyze things. They want to do extensive due diligence. They want to consult with all their colleagues. They enjoy thinking about the action more than acting, with the risks that this entails. Purposeful action overcomes fear. Life rewards action and punishes inaction. Fortune favors the bold.
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8. Lawyers lack perseverance.
If the lawyers try some form of marketing,
any bump in the road will bring them down. And there are always bumps in the road. Lawyers get excited about a new marketing program and throw themselves passionately into it. Then, after 45 days or so, life happens. A large box explodes. One of the children gets sick. A check does not enter. Marketing did not produce instant wealth. The lawyer decides that he made a big mistake and gives up.
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9. Lawyers are uncomfortable with the idea of making money.
Most attorneys are motivated by a desire to serve people. Most subscribe to some form of Judeo-Christian ethic that is full of mixed messages about the pursuit of wealth. Most are conflicted, if not guilt-ridden, about the profit motive. Many secretly think that what they do is not worth getting paid for, since it does not involve hours of hard physical work. These attorneys might be more motivated if they thought of marketing and growth as “serving the most people” rather than “making more money” or “being more successful.”
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10. Lawyers define themselves as attorneys, not owners of a law firm.
This is the biggest bug and is a contributing factor to all the others listed here. Lawyers don’t understand that these are two completely different roles that require two completely different mindsets and two completely different skill sets. What attorneys think is their greatest asset (their ability to practice law) is actually their greatest responsibility. They are too busy working on their business to work on it. To grow a practice and be successful, lawyers need to think of themselves first as owners of a business called a law firm, and only second (if at all) as practicing attorneys.
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11. Lawyers are obsessed with what other lawyers think of them.
In no other business does the owner care about how competitors rate him. Lawyers are often afraid to make the slightest marketing effort for fear of being thought of as “unworthy” or “too aggressive.” Let me assure you that one lamp shop owner doesn’t care what a competitor’s lamp shop owner thinks about anything.