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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With the harsh changes in the economic climate and rising jobless rate, I’m hearing and reading a lot about the importance of personal branding. My introduction to the concept came through management consultant Tom Peters’ 1997 Fast Company article, The Brand Called You. In it, he stated this “simple” and “inescapable” truth: “We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”

There now are companies and consultants dedicated to helping us identify, establish and protect our personal brands. There are also experts who caution that it’s easy to misconstrue what this kind of branding is all about. As marketing guru Tom Asacker observes: “Being the head marketer of brand you is NOT about being interesting [ ]. It's NOT about cosmetics and ‘promoting a persona.’ It's about being interested in the dreams and desires of others. It's about creating an expectation and delivering on that expectation, such that people will trade their attention or money for it.”

While reasonable minds may differ on what personal branding is, I think most would agree that we are our own brand stewards and can’t delegate that authority to anyone else. Lawyer Shai Littlejohn recognizes this in her insightful article, Self-Marketing Is Key to Being a Top Lawyer. She writes: For those young attorneys who dream of becoming top lawyers, the key is to be three parts lawyer and one part marketing agent. [ ] Decision-makers give top jobs to the attorneys with the strongest brands. These are the brands that demonstrate shared values like reputation for responsiveness, accuracy, discretion, political savvy, family and participation in lofty priorities beyond day-to-day work.”

There are many ways to cultivate our personal brand. One that is gaining and holding enormous attention these days is online social networking. If you want to know more about social networking, like Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog, I’m a big fan of the video tutorials produced by Common Craft. Here’s one on social networking and another on social media.

I think this information pairs well with Jennifer Laycock’s piece on How Social Media (Didn’t) Change Business. Sharing personal, and very touching, anecdotes about her grandfather’s business ethic as an independent insurance agency owner in her small hometown, she observes: “My grandfather practiced the original form of 'social networking.' Back before everyone started focusing on making a bazillion dollars, people had time to make relationships without worrying about how those relationships might 'advance' their career. [ ] Social Media isn't some amazing new concept that's changing the way we do business. It's simply amazing new technology that's allowing us to return to the way people USED to do business.”

Laycock makes so much sense. We should keep her words in mind as we go about building the genuine relationships that, organically, help us cultivate our personal brands.

Postscript: After writing this post, I saw Kevin O'Keefe's recent commentary on personal branding for lawyers in the age of Google. Citing Seth Godin's post on the subject,  Kevin offers some really concrete and practicable ways for us to establish our personal brands online.

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