Meaning, get out of your office, meet people, and Grow Your Practice! This can be a real struggle for small firm lawyers generally and particularly for people who tend to be introverts…and if you don’t face the problem it can be a practice killer. Here’s an older post, Do You Make These Mistakes, describing the conflict between the “worker bee” mindset conflicting with the business owner/rainmaker/CEO mindset. And if you’re like me and lean a tad toward being an introvert, it’s often easier to do that great legal work than it is to get out and meet people.
But unless you’ve got a critical deadline tomorrow, you MUST put those social engagements and professional networking events ahead of your day-to-day legal work...because you never know who you’re going to run into.
Here’s a personal example and a true story:
Some two years ago my wife and I attended a 1st birthday party for the child of some friends of ours. Quite frankly they aren’t particularly close friends of ours and they live a fair distance away from us…but we went anyways. And I met another person there who was very personable who happened to be a financial planner and we struck up a conversation and subsequently got together for lunch. Shortly thereafter he referred a friend of his to my office to represent this guy buying a home (he’s actually referred several clients to me over time). Then at the closing I met several other colleagues who had also been referrals of the financial planner to the buyer…both the Realtor and mortgage lender. Interestingly, this Realtor who I met through the financial planner has also become a great referral source for me. I’d also expect that the 5 or so clients who I’ve worked with as referrals from the financial planner and Realtor have been pleased with our work and likely the sort of people who will get my name in front of their spheres of influence over time. This financial planner and Realtor are now probably among my top 5 business referral sources.
So one dumb birthday party has turned into some $6,000 in legal fees and likely considerably more to come in the future. One new client or new case or new professional referral source can literally change your life. How many law firms out there just sort of took off simply from the success of one individual client or business? It can happen. There’s always time to do more work, but you may never have an opportunity to meet that single person again if you don’t GET OUT THERE!
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