I wrote last week about developing skills and linked to a Seth Godin post on the subject. So, now you might ask what skills are most important.
Most lawyers aren’t very good at it. I wasn’t very good at it. I tried to get better, but I still had a long way to go.
If
I recently read a Seth Godin blog: Should schools reward skills or talent?
As you may remember, I have written about this subject many times over the last fifteen years, including a Practical Lawyer article titled: Rainmaking: Talent Is Overrated.
I’ve written about the two summer associates who worked for me one summer.
The
Many years ago when I was the Construction Law Practice Group Leader at my firm, we had a practice group retreat at a ranch about an hour from Dallas. After dinner, one of my junior partners, who had been drinking a great deal, paid me what he believed would be the ultimate insult.
He said:
Every potential rainmaker wants clients, prospective clients, and people who can refer business to us to become evangelists for us.
I first heard the term “remarkable” when I read a Seth Godin article. He explains in a blog post from 2007 titled: How to be remarkable. I urge you to click on it and learn
If you subscribe, you know I have been giving clues on how to ask for business/close the sale. Here are the clues so far:
How do I ask for the business and close the sale?
That is among the questions I am most frequently asked. The lawyers I coached frequently added that they had built their profile and relationships, but they simply had not found a way to convert it to business.
Do you have the same question?
I
I recently read Seth Godin’s blog: People Don’t Change. It is only a few lines and it applies to several lawyers I have known and some I have coached.
As Godin says the hard part is not changing. It’s wanting to change.
I have written that the only way you will make a change is
I am still thinking about blogging today. Recently the Harvard Business Review posted a blog titled: The Moment Social Media Became Serious Business I was fascinated reading what Harold Adams Innis said about the reduction in the cost of communication in 1951, long before anyone was blogging. What he said applies to blogging today.
Practicing law has changed dramatically since I started now long ago. We made far less money, ($12,000 when I started), but we never worried about making partner and the law firms demanded less of us. If we worked hard, it was more a choice we made not a demand from our law firm.
Years ago
It was late fall 2001. The internet bubble had burst. A stock I owned that had traded at a record $130 per share was on it way to single digits where it remains today. I foolishly bought shares all the way down.
I remember a conversation with our law firm’s financial officer. He told me