Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

Good time management list from the Oklahoma Bar Association here. I think I am most guilty of the procrastination problem and/or not setting aside enough pure work time. I don’t tend to utterly waste time, rather, I try to do a lot of little (often non-billable) tasks just to check a lot of things off of the to-do list at the expense of bigger, more important and BILLABLE work.

I’m at the end of month five as a sole practitioner and concerned about bringing in new clients. I suppose at some level I just need to have a bit of patience. Some of my marketing strategies (see August 20, 2005 post) clearly need some time to really sink in. I have been accepted into the Chicago Bar Association’s Senior Citizens Will Program which allows me to serve at various Chicago area senior centers and get some income and name recognition. I am also thinking very strongly about joining the LegalMatch.com attorney/client matching system. They seem to have a pretty powerful matching system and are a very heavily trafficed Website…they’re not cheap though!

There’s a telling post on the Law Practice Management blog regarding the need of associate attorneys to build their “book of business” yet the lack of marketing training given to young attorneys.

Most firms still have a “sink or swim” attitude about developing marketing skills. And that’s just plain wrong on so many levels. It’s wrong because the marketplace has changed dramatically in terms of competition and the sophistication of clients. It’s wrong because business development has become much more sophisticated. And it’s wrong because attorneys must learn by example, and by repetitively performing behaviors in order to master them. And it’s wrong especially because a leading cause of associate dissatisfaction and turnover is lack of training and mentoring!

There are resources available, but at many firms, attorneys must find them on their own. My articles Becoming A Successful Rainmaker and Getting More Business from Existing Clients: Five Easy Strategies That Really Work, may be of assistance as a starting point. Beyond that, there are excellent books, articles, CDs, teleseminars, and other resources to help the enterprising attorney get assistance in mastering the business development skills necessary to career success. Visit the marketing consultant web sites of Larry Bodine, Sally Schmidt, Robert Denney, or some of the law firm consulting company sites like Altman Weil, or Joel Rose, or Hildebrandt Consulting, or Freedman Consulting for more articles, and possible assistance for your firm in creating a training and mentoring program in business development.

Take heed, law firm managers and marketing directors. If you won’t teach your young attorneys what they need to know, they’re going to go somewhere that will, or go out on their own and apply what they’re learning to their own benefit.

The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin writes in its August 29, 2005 issue that the toney address for law firms is now WACKER DRIVE. And guess who just signed a lease for an office at 125 S. Wacker? The (“toney) Olson Law Firm, LLC! Okay, so it’s not toney because we’re there but still, I’m excited. See my earlier post, but we decided to go with the executive suite concept that also has locations in Schaumburg and Oak Brook Terrace.