Your degree comes from law school. The office, the furniture, the phones and computers —that’s what the bank loan is for. Your colleagues and office assistants can come through recruiters or placement agencies. But your law practice won’t succeed unless you supply the most important thing: clients. Where do they come from?
For most small-practice lawyers striking out on their own building a client base requires a new approach. In addition to thinking like a lawyer, you have to start thinking like a small-business owner. But there’s plenty of help available for lawyers who need to add these new skills.
“You start with having a marketing plan, have some goals,” says Paul McLaughlin, practice management advisor with the Law Society of Alberta. “What is your business? If you think your business is to provide legal services to whoever walks in the door, that’s not a plan. It’s a dream.”
For most lawyers, the key to finding clients is through referrals, and most referrals come from networking. That means getting out and beating the bushes.
“A lot of it involves getting out of the lawyerly mode,” says McLaughlin. “You are running a small business. It is a personal services business. Your business is built in part with being professional.”
In addition to the repeat business and client referrals that sustain most mature practices, McLaughlin identifies two other types of referrals that can build young practices. Self-referrals are any clients you bring in yourself through your own marketing efforts. Symbiotic referrals are those you get from other professionals and businesspeople, lawyers and non-lawyers alike.
Self-referrals
One of the standard methods of self-referral is advertising, carried out within the limits imposed by provincial law societies. It can be expensive, though, and often leaves practitioners wondering about its effectiveness. But there’s one new, high-tech referral service offered by the CBA on its own Web site, free to any CBA member.
“It’s kind of like having your own little Yellow Pages up there,” says Heather Nowlan of the CBA’s national office, who helped set up the General Practitioners’ Conference’s on-line lawyer referral network last year. The service has caught on with at least 700 CBA members who have used the site to post brief, 100-word descriptions of their practices.
“It’s been up for a year now, so it’s still kind of in its infancy,” says Nowlan. “The aim was for one lawyer to let other lawyers know they’re out there and what kinds of files they’re accepting. We’ve now moved it onto the CBA Website [cba.org].”
The service is expected to gain more attention and more users following the publication of an article in the GPC newsletter, as well as a survey to be conducted by the CBA this fall.
While self-referrals from advertising will be important in the early stages of a practice, more essential is building a base of personal contacts that will help grow your list of clients.
“Personal contact is very important,” says McLaughlin. “This is where networking comes in. Networking is important for self-referrals, but it’s more to put you on display as a person than to promote you as a business.”
Networking activity includes the vast array of contacts, both formal and informal, that you should make while conducting your legal business. To network well, you have to meet and impress as many potential clients as possible.
And it’s a full-time activity. Remember that you’re engaged in networking every time you let it be known that you’re a lawyer— not only to the Chamber of Commerce, but also to the other parents at your kids’ Little League or minor hockey game.
“Just by joining a group, you’re starting to join a network,” says Mara Strickland, a lawyer with Dolden Walker & Frolick in Vancouver and chair of the Women Rainmakers Section of CBA’s B.C. branch.
The group was formed two years ago for women lawyers who wanted to build their client base by networking. The Section meets four or five times a year to help its members develop a business plan, set goals, and share ideas. Modelled after similar groups in the U.S., it has added a second chapter in Victoria and is planning a third in Toronto.
“Women just market differently than men,” Strickland observes. “Women tend to enjoy having much more of a one-on-one relationship. We get together once a year with another women’s professional group to expand our network. We try to pick a topic of interest to both of us.”
Symbiotic referrals
Such networking with other professionals is essential for all lawyers, according to McLaughlin, because that’s where many symbiotic referrals come from: professionals such as bankers, doctors or ministers who send clients your way.
“They have a business that requires them to refer their clients to a lawyer,” says McLaughlin. “It serves their purpose to have a good lawyer to refer their clients to. That’s where networking comes in.”
And that requires making personal contacts, because other professionals want to know they can trust the lawyer to whom they make referrals to do a good job for their clients.
“I don’t think people make symbiotic referrals based on advertising,” says McLaughlin. “It’s too important to the person making the referral. His own business depends on it. You do it through personal contact.”
The classic example of a symbiotic referral source is real estate agents. They usually can’t afford to have a lawyer on staff or retainer, but they still need someone dependable to whom home buyers can be sent for the legal paperwork. For that reason, networking with realtors can be a high-reward activity, according to McLaughlin.
“Push to become a member of the real estate board,” he suggests to lawyers interested in getting conveyancing work. “Get on the committees. Give free seminars. Teach courses.”
But the most important thing to remember as a lawyer trying to build a client base is that in the early stage of your practice, most client referrals will come from other lawyers. That means getting into the courtroom early and often, even if it means working pro bono.
Getting your name and face out there is essential when you’re just starting out. And referrals will come not only from partners, friends and law school classmates, but also from lawyers you meet as adversaries in the courtroom.
Making a good impression on other members of the Bar by being reasonable and collaborative can pay bigger dividends in the long run. And it’s just another good reason to be courteous to your colleagues.
Marc Edge is a freelance writer based in Vancouver.