Lawyers Hear How to Court Clients
JM Associates of Irvine teaches ‘rainmaking’ to legal firms, which are under intense pressure to increase billings.
Last year, Leland McKenzie, the fatherly senior partner on television’s “L.A. Law,” announced that he was going to stop taking so many cases and instead spend his time “rainmaking.”
In that TV moment, viewers were clued in to an activity that consumes more and more of the workday for real-life lawyers: drumming up new business. A glut of new lawyers and business shrinkage from the recession combine to generate intense pressure on law firms to increase billings.
It’s not something they teach you at Harvard Law School, and many lawyers never expected to spend much time luring clients.
“For a long time, it was viewed as dirty, as beneath the professionalism of lawyers to market their services,” said Bill Steel, managing partner of Hamilton & Samuels in Newport Beach. “But in the competitiveness of these recessionary times, they have to.”
Enter Merry Neitlich, president of Irvine-based JM Associates, who teaches rainmaking to lawyers. A consultant whose chief occupation is lawyer placement, Neitlich is not alone in recognizing the demand in the legal profession for marketing specialists.
But she brings a fresh perspective to her work; most other rainmaking consultants are former lawyers. Neitlich’s background is as a teacher of strategic planning, presentation skills and client development to business executives.
“She makes us lawyers realize we’re just another business,” said Steel, whose firm hired her in December to teach marketing seminars. His business is up 10%.
Neitlich began offering the seminars about 18 months ago. “I started noticing that attorneys were struggling with client development,” she said. “I was giving them advice for free.”
She recently finished writing a formal outline for a rainmaking course and had it approved by the California State Bar.
To deepen her understanding, she is interviewing county lawyers who are generally acknowledged as the most successful at generating new clients.
Neitlich said rainmakers have common qualities, though they may be unaware of what they are doing right. For example, they:
* Focus on helping clients or potential clients in ways that may seem unrelated to the legal business. For example, if the client is searching for new offices, the attorney might recommend a real estate broker.
* Are creative about finding new ways to win business later when a prospective client first tells them no.
* Return phone calls.
* Are experts in their fields.
Karen Kubin, one successful county rainmaker, agrees especially with the last point. She is the partner in charge of the Newport Beach office of Cooley, Godward, Castro, Huddleson & Tatum, a San Francisco firm that specializes in business litigation.
“To me, the best way to generate business is to be known for high-quality legal work that is cost-effective,” she said. “Of course, you have to be out there, be known in your community, network. But if you produce a good result for one client, that client will refer someone else to you. That’s what works.”
Kubin acknowledged that female lawyers, especially young ones, seem discouraged about seeking new clients. “They don’t go out on the golf course the way men do, so they think they’re missing out,” she said. But more and more clients are women today, which creates new opportunities for female lawyers.
Neitlich said women traditionally have been encouraged to develop social skills perfect for rainmaking: developing and maintaining relationships.
Also, female lawyers still tend to stand out in a crowd. At last count, just 20% of U.S. corporate lawyers were women, Neitlich said.
She went to one meeting recently, she said, where there were 120 people; just three were female.
“The next day, when I called one of the people I met, I was easy to remember,” Neitlich said.
