Law Firm Marketing And Your Firms Vision Article

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Law Firm Marketing and Your Firms Vision

One way to begin sculpting a new firm is to picture your ideal firm in your mind’s eye. The goal, of course, is to carve that vision into existence—to chisel down to that beautiful elephant which, for the moment, is hidden from your view. Firm sculpting is all about finding and articulating what is hidden.

Author: Allen Dahut

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An ancient story tells of a student who sought to learn from his master the secret of becoming a great sculptor.

“Master,” the student said, “ I want to make a great and beautiful statue, but I do not know the methods of your great work.”

The master replied, “What exactly do you seek to make?”

The student paused, and then said, “I seek to sculpt a most beautiful elephant.”

The master then pointed a few feet away to a large block of stone and a mallet and chisel. “That is your marble and those are your tools. All you have to do now is carve away everything that does not look like a beautiful elephant.”

When I first read this story, I thought about how frustrating this experience might have felt for this poor student. How would any of us know what was not a beautiful elephant? How would we know, at first, what to keep and what to carve away?

Only after many careful strokes of the chisel against the stone can sculptors begin to see their visions take form. Likewise, it requires great effort and determination to match our visions to reality, so we must begin by knowing both: not only what we wish to create, but also what exists now—what separates the vision from the reality.

Know Thy Law Firm

Creating a whole new culture cannot be done halfheartedly. You wouldn’t expect to reveal a beautiful elephant by making a few random chips into the stone from time to time, hoping for the best. Likewise, you can’t dabble or tinker your way to effecting firm-wide change. While the chiseling begins on the exterior, what emerges from deep within the firm’s core are the inspired values of the firm’s leadership. Firm sculpting is the process of removing everything that is not your ideal vision of the firm.

One partner I spoke with had approached the issue of change by having the firm’s stationery redesigned, hiring a few new lawyers and buying new furniture for the staff. He even changed the color of the walls and installed a speaker system that played music in the hallways.

Needless to say, while some at the firm enjoyed the new vibe, the changes were superficial at best. This partner made the common mistake of trying to effect change from the outside in rather than from the inside out.

A “tinkering” approach will not create lasting change; a profoundly different approach is needed.
Surprisingly, most partners I spoke with agreed with this notion completely. A partner of a midsize San Francisco firm shared this -observation: We all read the latest and greatest practice management books. They all talk about meaningful change. We’re not naïve. We all want the same thing. But after it’s all said and done, we’re still doing the same things in the same ways as before.

Developing New Questions

The point here is to not focus on what you already know, but on what you don’t know. This is accomplished not by finding a new set of answers to the same types of questions, but by finding different questions that will lead to new insights and new ways of thinking. Conventional questions generate conventional answers, which will lead to the same place you are now.

In order to create fundamental change, you must move from the familiar to the unfamiliar. New thinking requires a new mind-set and a new context. New perspectives require new levels of questioning that will encourage you to shake loose from old barriers and self-imposed limits.

Said another way, we need to alter our inquiry by changing our mental reference point, and this requires thinking about how we think. For insight on these issues we turn to brain science.

Our capacity for knowledge and variation is astonishing. Neuroscientists believe that our minds have reached less than a third of their evolutionary capacity and that they are developing at a faster rate today than at any time in our history (see A User’s Guide to the Brain by John Ratey, M.D.). There has never been a better time for us to embrace new ways of thinking and relating to others—our brains are primed for it.

Legal reasoning works best in closed systems, where there are accepted rules and outcomes. But in our quest to build a firm that is profoundly different, we cannot be constrained by such rules. Responding successfully to change demands that we cultivate more than logic if we want to thrive. We must encourage and foster intuition and creativity to discover new ways of approaching problems and new rules that will make it possible to adapt to the unexpected forces of change.

It’s true that rational thought works best within the boundaries of rational systems like law, where we rely on a stable foundation of rules and processes. Clearly, in this environment, it works to have rational, logical structures by which to model our thinking.

But our brains have the capacity for so much more. No matter how accustomed we become to thinking within the closed system of a particular domain, we are constantly engaged in dynamic mental processes that maintain the remarkable agility of our minds.

If you doubt the capacity of even the most stolid, unimaginative member of your firm to think in new ways, consider this:

In everyday speech, the number of different types of sentences an ordinary person is able to produce is astounding. Let’s assume a person is able to formulate a sentence made up of just twenty words, such as the first sentence of this paragraph. The number of different types of sentences a person could be expected to formulate with these cognitive abilities can be expressed mathematically as 1020—or a hundred-million trillion different sentence variations.
The limits of our memory are unknown. But we do know that the mind of an average college graduate can process and store up to ten thousand distinct pictures without any attempt to memorize them—and then, within a few days, recognize those pictures with more than 90 percent accuracy.

Compared to the commonplace feats of versatility your mind exhibits every day, the challenge of developing new questions about your firm seems much more manageable. And it is well within the capacity of your firm if it is willing to consider the possibilities. Consider what it might mean if you were able to reinvent your firm from values that inspired you as well as your firm’s leadership.

The Illusion of the Status Quo

Getting others to recognize their capacity for change is not always easy. Paul Frecker, a managing partner in a firm with more than seventy lawyers, described his frustration with his partners: “Without real change, this firm is slowly heading for extinction. Most of our partners are in denial. They ignore all the warning signs and give only lip service when the other partners come up with new ideas. They don’t like change. They are married to the old ways of doing things, even if it means the rest of the profession is passing us by.”

It is easier to resist change than to engage it. Unfortunately, most people develop themselves around goals that lead to stagnation rather than growth. People tend to first view change as threatening rather than empowering. This is especially true in larger firms, where people tend to think job security is contingent on maintaining the status quo.

Both inside and outside the firm, people avoid rocking the boat. Maintaining the status quo, however, is simply a way to avoid change and justify stagnation. The reality is that change is the only constant. Nothing stands still—not even law firms. You either move forward toward your goals or give in to inertia and drift backward. The backward movement may occur slowly. You may not be able to see it, but it is taking place.

Resisting change is normal for most people and, therefore, for most organizations. It is a form of complacency—it comes upon us like slow death, and all too often we can’t see its results until it’s too late. Then all we can do is try to pick up the pieces.

If you embark on a mission to change your law firm, you must understand the serious nature of change. You need to know the playing field—not just at the organizational level, but at a visceral and emotional level.

Change, like time, cannot be suppressed or made to stand still. Often our resistance to change is motivated by nothing more than our fear of not knowing what the outcome will be. Yet change is as natural as growing older. It happens whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not.

Whether or not an opportunity for change exists and, if such an opportunity exists, whether it appears as a daunting barrier or an appealing challenge, depends more upon the mind-set of the person confronting it than on objective material conditions. What is needed, therefore, is a keen sense of clarity in your approach to change.

Why We Need Clarity

The visions you create today will become your firm’s traditions tomorrow. Creating new traditions in the face of resistance and stagnation takes a very clear sense of purpose.

You need not only to see where you are going, but also to know why you’re going there. And when you get there, you will need to know what will happen next. Thus, clarity of purpose within your firm must be aggressively managed—and it must reach every member of the firm.

Law firms, like any other enterprise confronted with the need to change, are faced with the challenge of recreating themselves or risking being stuck in the dormancy of stagnation—trapped in the legacy of someone else’s firm, someone else’s traditions, someone else’s dreams. Intelligent and well--intentioned people—even those with great financial wealth—can find themselves living their professional lives in quiet desperation.

About Author

Http://www.gottrouble.com. Allen Dahut is an attorney and marketing strategist who works with some of the largest law firms in the world. He is the author of the best selling practice development book, "Marketing The Legal Mind" and offers consulting services in the area of strategic branding and law firm marketing. Henry is also the founder of the legal online help-portal www.GotTrouble.com - the award winning site that helps people through serious legal and financial trouble.

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Law Firm Marketing and Your Firms Vision