How Good Attorneys Become Great Rainmakers
A Breakthrough Referral Marketing Process
While many law firms can rely upon repeat business from large corporate or insurance entities, most law firms need a constant flow of new clients to keep the doors open. Regardless of whether your goal is getting any type of case into your office, or getting only the best cases in, a firm must keep client acquisition a top priority to achieve success.
While digital marketing, including social media, has become the preferred marketing method of most law firms, studies by the world’s leading marketing researchers show that word of mouth marketing continues to be the most effective way of securing business. In How Good Attorneys Become Great Rainmakers, Atticus law firm consultants Mark Powers and Shawn McNalis discuss the method Atticus perfected over twenty-five years of obtaining repeat referrals for law firms in every type of legal practice. They discuss a variety of effective marketing methods firms including:
- Creating a top twenty referral source list
- Creating “signature events”
- Twenty-one assets every attorney needs to succeed
- The benefits of offline social networking
- And much more
Implementing these practices will help you achieve referrals from untapped resources that other lawyers are likely ignoring.
Note: While digital marketing methods such as web sites, blogging, social media, (and the often elusive goal of a #1 ranking on Google) are discussed, this book does not focus on those methods.
What Legal Leaders Are Saying
— J.R. Phelps, former director of LOMAS at the Florida BarWith thousands of newly graduated lawyers being added to Bar membership rolls each year, the need to learn and apply solid marketing principles grows increasingly more important as the field becomes saturated. Mark Powers and Shawn McNalis have penned a ‘star’ in an already overcrowded constellation of marketing texts. Their work dedicated to ethical marketing for lawyers presents, in 326 pages, the ‘nuts and bolts’ of easily mastered marketing assets and habits that every lawyer, whether a newly admitted associate or seasoned senior partner, should possess. Professional service providers by necessity must adopt a different marketing approach due to ethical constraints in ways others need not be concerned. Therein lays the key to the value of this work. Powers and McNalis outline a process to becoming a rainmaker that demonstrates their mastery of professional service marketing that is both ethical and adoptable by working lawyers. Bottom line—If YOU want to become a successful rainmaker, then adopt new habits to gain referrals, embrace new routines and change your customary way of approaching client development as outlined in this work. As a Law School Professor teaching practice management, I fully intend to include this work as a ‘must read’ for my 3L students about to graduate and join the ranks of this profession. Each of them will benefit from the wisdom, habits and forms outlined in the text.