legal sanity

As we were driving from one weekend activity to the next in our small New York suburb, my middle child looked up from her cell phone and, in an iPod-induced-too-loud-voice, said, “I love this town. It’s pretty, friendly and makes me feel safe.” I think she gave voice to what many of us feel and experience in our personal and professional lives.

When people engage lawyers – especially in contentious matters - they often arrive at our door feeling unsafe and insecure. As much as they want our legal advice and guidance, they’re also expecting that we’ll help them gain/regain a sense of safety and security. The problem is that many lawyers are unaware of their clients’ emotional needs. As a result, clients quickly frustrate and the attorney-client relationship becomes stressful and unproductive all around.

One good solution stems from knowing what it means to be a village lawyer. Put a bit differently, lawyers benefit from understanding what millions of people, including my daughter, so positively respond to about the villages in their lives. With that knowledge and understanding, we can focus on figuring out how to recreate that village sensibility for our clients’ (and our own) benefit. 

Addressing this topic, one of my favorite bloggers, Sonia Simone, writes that it’s a great time to start and nurture a village business.

While village businesses aren’t bound by brick and mortar or geographical limits, they are “personal, intimate, and human-scaled” and “serve a relatively small number of people.” Even if you’re a lawyer in a large firm, you can still be a village lawyer because you’re likely dealing with a small number of clients. As village lawyers, we share a common bond with our clients because we understand and relate to their common needs, interests and concerns.

When it comes to client service, Simone notes the importance of giving people “a place to get together. To know you better, and know one another better.” We can accomplish this virtually or face-to-face.

If you’re excited by the prospect of creating an online community for your villagers, you’ll find some thought-provoking considerations in this Social media Strategy Checklist by ClickZ’s Sean Carton. Chris Brogan enhances the dialogue by detailing 5 Things Small Business Owners Should Do Today Online.

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At this very moment (and now …. and now), thousands of lawyers are wondering where to go and what to do next.

You’ve been laid off.

You just graduated law school and can’t find a job.

You’re an associate in a firm where morale is at rock bottom and you never see daylight.

Finances, family obligations, pride and other real and imagined forces compel you to take some sort of action.

So, you weigh your options: You can network (on social sites and old school). You can identify and build your personal brand. You can go solo and start your own practice. Or, harnessing you interests, passions, concerns and lawyer skills, you can lead a tribe and create a movement.

According to thinkers/experts like Seth Godin and Spike Jones, most of us – yes, including most of us lawyers - yearn to connect around common interests, goals and passions. People sharing this kind of common bond form a single, but scattered, tribe. Tribes are everywhere.

And, today, leadership is about recognizing a tribe (either because you’re in it or committed to its goals) and helping its members satisfy their desperation to connect. You don’t have to reach out to thousands of people at once. You just need to make the initial connection to a small group (Godin calls them the True Believers) and the next group will follow, and so on, bit by bit, until you have a genuine movement.

So …

If you’re a lawyer who’s navigated the difficult road to adopting a child overseas and are passionate about helping others involved in that journey, there’s a tribe for you to lead in your personal and professional capacities.

If you’re a cycling enthusiast who’s seen one too many preventable accidents that caused major injuries, there’s a tribe for you to organize and lead by engaging your legal skill set and other talents.

If you’re a lawyer who loves animals and believe that they deserve to be treated humanely in life and after, you have a tribe that’s waiting for your leadership and the positive change that can come from it.

Whether you lead your tribe as a solo practitioner, a partner in a boutique firm or a biglaw associate, the opportunity is there to challenge the status quo, build a culture and forge a career path that’s rewarding on many levels.

If you want to learn more about tribal leadership and igniting a movement, you can watch Seth Godin’s TED conference talk and read his interview with Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

Later this month, I’ll post on the dialogue I recently had with Spike Jones as part of my Legal Sanity Mentor series on redesigning legal services around the client experience. In the interim, you can read the ChangeThis Manifesto his company, Brains on Fire, just published on Igniting Word of Mouth Movements and this follow-up post.

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