Three Marketing Tips for Trainee Solicitors

With many law firms freezing or reducing head count, 2009 was a difficult year for trainee solicitors and law students. Training schemes were put on hold and jobs weren’t available for NQs completing training contracts. Popular opinion is that the effects of the recession will be felt in the graduate recruitment market for several years to come, despite improvements in the economy at large. Competition for training contracts remains fierce, and prospects for those completing their training this year are also far from certain. It is from this standpoint that I’ve been thinking about how marketing skills can be developed by young lawyers as a way of making themselves more valuable players in the firms that employ them.

I strongly suspect that given the choice, most firms would rather keep good staff than let them go. With that in mind, I hope this newsletter will help marketing departments and HR personnel to design programmes that teach their young staff skills needed, not only for a profitable legal career, but which also lead to increased fee-income for the firm in the short- and medium-term.

Personal branding and differentiation are becoming increasingly important in an economy characterised by increasing competition and globalisation; not to mention the shake-ups that will inevitably happen as firms and clients grapple with the implications of alternative business structures and the commoditisation of the legal sector.

This newsletter is written from the perspective of giving advice to a student or a trainee solicitor. I do hope however that as a marketing or HR professional this advice will give you food for thought and you can use it to develop training and selection processes of your own.

1. Take Responsibility

The law has always been a competitive profession, but it is perhaps more so now that at any other time in history. For every educated, articulate, and rounded young lawyer there are now scores of other equally educated, articulate, and well-rounded young substitutes ready to take their place. Combine that with trends such as globalised out-sourcing and we find ourselves with truly challenging times in which to be starting a career. Challenging but not impossible.

The problem for most trainees and students is not the presence of substitutes per se, but rather the fact that any given person is indistinguishable from the next. Understanding that as the problem means you can start to take responsibility for it. Step one - eliminate the competition.

2. Specialise early

Traditionally, the advice to new lawyers is not to specialise too early. My advice is the exact opposite. The thinking goes that specialising too early results in you being pigeon-holed for the rest of your career. What people fail to realise though, is that some of those pigeon holes are stuffed full of the spoils of success, and are therefore exactly where you want to be. Your specialism is your USP. Its the thing that eliminates possible alternatives, and which makes you valuable and attractive to employers and clients alike.

Choosing something to specialise in doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be practicing in other areas. In fact, during a training contract you’ll be working in completely unrelated areas, and will probably have to maintain your specialism in your own time.

Remember the aim at this stage is to give yourself an edge over your competitors. You need to choose something where you can be fairly confident of being the most knowledgeable person in the world. Lofty ambitions for a beginning lawyer? That all depends how big your world is!

The recommended approach to choosing a specialism is to start with a general area in which you are interested and keep narrowing your focus until the idea of being the world’s expert seems feasible. An example probably makes this clearer.

Consider starting with commercial law and keep drilling down until the topic feels manageable:

• Commercial Law
• Technology, Media, and Sports Law
• Sports Law
• Football Contracts
• Players Obligations
• Clauses relating to the obligation to maintain a high level of fitness.

A new lawyer or student stands a good chance of becoming the world’s expert in “clauses relating to the obligation for football players to maintain a high level of fitness” after a few hours research and study. This could be broadened to “players obligations” over the space of a few months and over several years, a lucrative and fulfilling career can be built on being a leading authority on football contracts, or sports law more generally.

3. Build a personal brand

Lawyers who can bring a following of potential clients are highly valuable and can expect rapid progression in their careers. Building a following and personal brand is a lengthy process and can take many months, years even, to get fully established. The good news is that aside from the time commitment, websites like Wordpress and Twitter have made it inexpensive and very easy to get your message to the world.

If you are a lawyer or trainee and your firm offers good tools and management support that enable you to build a personal following then I strongly advise you to take full advantage. It is always better to have the support of your colleagues that to go it completely alone. If these things are not available to you then lobby hard to get them. If both those option fail you then go ahead and set them up yourself. I’ve included links to some good books that may set you on the right path.

Over the coming decade we expect the numbers of lawyers self-promoting, publishing online, and building personal brands to grow exponentially. The cost of entry is now so low that individuals don’t need the financial support of a large firm to build their own following. Firms may choose to ignore this trend, but those self-promoting individuals will likely be your most articulate, personable, and capable staff. Failure to recognise this trend and offer management-sanctioned support will ultimately lead to a weakening of the talent pool and dire consequences for the long-term health of your firm.

For examples of individuals already building personal brands with the endorsement of their firm check out Straun Robertson of Pinsent Masons, Andrew Sharpe of Charles Russell, or Deirdre Kilroy of LK Shields.

In summary

If you are a trainee, student, or newly qualified lawyer then I hope this newsletter have give you some ideas about how to set yourself up for a successful and fulfilling career. If you work in HR or marketing functions in a law firm then I urge you to consider how this trend will affect your firm and how you might consider helping lawyers to develop personal brands that are compatible with the goals of the firm as a whole.

Finally, and before the excuses start flooding in, I should say that this is a model for excellence. Not all lawyers will have the ability, skill, commitment, and/or determination required to see a programme like this through to the end. It can be very time-consuming and mostly non-chargeable. I would expect marketing professionals to see the long term benefits of such a programme, but partners quite likely won’t. Until your work starts generating fees, most old hands prefer that trainees help them develop their practice (which of course they should), but young lawyers must also lay foundations for their own. This is a difficult path but as the saying goes - there’s no gain without pain!

Further Reading

There are hundreds of good websites and books about building a personal brand online, but these are two I can personally recommend:

1. The Unconventional Guide to the Social Web
by Chris Guillebeau and Gwen Bell
http://unconventionalguides.com/socialweb.htm

2. Crush It!
by Gary Vernerchuk
http://crushitbook.com/