This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.
It is one thing that you know the work, but another that the world knows that you can do that work competently and then wants to seek you out for your expertise. The legal market is crowded with many incompetent charlatans, as you probably know, and clients find it hard to trust most lawyers.
Even if they know nothing about you, they begin with a lot of scepticism. You need to build a system to overcome this scepticism.
The biggest challenge you will have in developing your practice is to expose your knowledge and expertise in a demonstrable way to a large number of potential clients, and then to build trust with those people over time so that your name is the first one that pops up in their head when they think of that problem.
How can that be achieved?
Imagine you are going to hire an actor for a movie as a producer or a director.
Hiring the lead actor is a big investment. What do you want to see before finalizing the hire? His previous appearances on screen, of course. If he is new in the industry, you want to know if he has acted in theatres before at least. You want to see some kind of track record.
As a lawyer interested in high-quality legal work, you must be able to demonstrate some kind of track record. And the easier it is for the clients to discover your track record, on their own, without your intervention, higher is the chance that they will hire you.
In order to build a steady pipeline of clients, you need to build a system that markets your practice even when you are sleeping. People with the right set of problems should hear about you, discover you, and have a desire to reach out to you to start a conversation.
You also need a system to initiate and then nurture conversations with potential clients.
While you cannot advertise, it is important to demonstrate your expertise by writing and publishing articles on issues that your prospective clients may face, or through any other media such as YouTube, Linkedin, TV debates, Instagram, or even TikTok. The choice of the medium really depends on your target market. For example, if you are intending to give tax advice to newly rich Instagram and TikTok influencers, you better be present there!
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How do law firms look at marketing and business development?
(Click on the Play button to watch video)
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Priyanka Khimani, a lawyer to many Bollywood celebrities and founder of Anand and Anand and Khimani regularly offers knowledge sessions on Instagram. Why? Obvious. Her audience is more active on Instagram rather than LinkedIn!
This is also why you need to cultivate your social media network, build a substantial following, and engage in professional networking – because whether you believe it or not, and like it or not, your clients are probably on social media too! You need to post the right kind of content to appeal to them.
We provide dedicated training and guidance on writing and publishing articles, and sometimes even making videos or offering webinars in your chosen areas of expertise every month.
For most lawyers, writing articles is a very time-consuming process – they park it for the court vacations or some other period of free time, and never end up doing it in the volume that is necessary. Videos and webinars are not in the radar of most – these are alien concepts for them.
Others write articles on complex theoretical issues and judgments or prepare mere knowledge updates, which are read by other lawyers, but not by potential clients. That may work if your clients are other lawyers, such as for an advocate-on-record in the Supreme Court, but for others, fat chance.
Most lawyers do not have any structured business development strategy. They do not even narrow down to specific target groups and try to cater to everyone, diluting the messaging and value.
How Lawsikho helps at this step
At LawSikho, in every premium course, we provide you comprehensive guidance on creating business development strategies, article writing and publishing, topic selection, structuring of your article, research and editing.
We enable you to make writing and publication of an article a very rapid process under our guidance. More you write and publish, the more you expose your expertise to relevant groups of clients, and strategically done, this can open a flood gate of clients, sometimes in volumes that are more than what you can handle, forcing you to ramp up your workforce.
If your article is of good quality, we also support you in publishing your article on the right platforms, including our own blog iPleaders, which is one of the largest legal blogs in the world with around a million unique readers per month.
You are free to publish your article anywhere else as well, with the acknowledgement that it was developed while you pursued the program. We often assist deserving articles to be published in leading publications.
Those who are interested in developing this skill further have the option to receive guidance on how to write and even publish a book pertaining to their area of interest, which can generate further interest from clients and help to establish their authority as a domain expert.
In addition to writing articles, it is important to regularly keep posting on your professional network and social media accounts so that your network, including potential clients, is aware of what you are working on.
As you acquire technical skills, you must continue to build your online profile every week by pushing relevant content through your social media accounts. Most lawyers are extremely hesitant to do this. They simply do not know what content posting strategy to follow – should they post about some case law, a notification, a brilliant insight or brag about an article they recently published, or an award they recently received? What kind of online activity will be beneficial to their practice?
In our courses, you receive weekly coaching on how to share the insights that you are continuously learning, in a way that is relevant for your practice. Those who follow our networking guidance have seen traction on their social media profiles and receive requests to discuss issues and connect from potential clients, apart from generating multitudes of new followers.
To your success.
P. S. LawSikho is running hour-long webinars every day. Want to learn how to improve your learning skills? Prepare an LLM application to a foreign university? Career opportunities in new, upcoming areas of law? Don’t miss these high-quality webinars with industry and academic experts.
P. P. S. All our premium courses are covered under an unwavering 45 days full money-back guarantee.
After taking a course, if you feel like it is not working out for you, maybe you are not getting enough value out of it or it is not meeting your expectations, just get in touch with us. We will refund every rupee you paid for the course.
No questions asked, as long as the minimum requirements of the refund policy are fulfilled.
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