PBS has a great series running on evolution. What does Darwin’s “dangerous idea” have to do with marketing and managing your law firm? In a word, everything. The evolutionary concepts matter more to law firm marketing today than ever. They can explain the history of your law firm’s past and predict its future.
Survival of the fittest
Lawyer Numbers: 60,746 people took the law school admission test in October 2009. 53,186 new lawyers entered the market in 2009. If those numbers don’t stir up your evolutionary survival juices, you belong in a museum.
So what’s your plan? Raw competition? Intense cooperation? The truth is that both are essential to your law firm’s survival. Differentiating your practice from your competition is at the core of survival. While being different and trying different strategies may take you outside your comfort zone, it’s the only proven method for increasing success.
Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
-Albert Einstein
While this may seem obvious, we talk to lawyers every single day that are living this insanity. They will stick with marketing strategies, services, and consultants that produce the same results, year after year. Then they ask, “What is wrong?” “Why does nothing change?”
Follow The Money
The first step in breaking this vicious cycle is taking inventory. This means taking a look at every dollar you are spending. There is simply no way to determine what’s working and what’s not without knowing your investment.
Once you’ve tracked down every dollar, it’s time to separate the successful from the unsuccessful. Anything for which you are paying that hasn’t generated a positive return on investment in a year, is automatically cut. It’s the only way to change.
While change doesn’t happen overnight, the decisions that impact change do. Like everything else, the first, and most difficult step, is admitting something has to change.
Gyi Tsakalakis, is co-founder of AttorneySync Law Firm Internet Marketing. "Develop great search-mindful content and get it in front of people who are ready, willing, and able to link to and further publicize it." Follow @gyitsakalakis
