We’ve talked a lot on this show about sales and marketing and how selling legal services is different than selling a product. That’s good news for those of us in the legal industry because many of us don’t like the thought of being a salesperson.

Selling legal services is about relationships building.

The challenge, however, is that clients generally don’t need your services all the time. You don’t know when a client, potential client, or referral source will have a need or hear of a need.

That’s why it is important to stay top of mind over a long period of time. But how do you do that? How can you make yourself memorable whether you are delivering a pitch, giving a presentation, or simply building relationships in the community.

In this episode, Merry Neitlich talks about that.

I’ve know about Merry for years, but we only met more recently through the ProVisors business network. Back in the early 1990s when legal marketing was starting to take off, Merry was one of the pioneers in the legal marketing community.

Merry Neitlich has over 25 years of experience in law firm marketing, business development, and strategic planning. She provides attorneys and law firms with tools to grow their business and to successfully identify, court, and convert targets into clients.

She has conducted hundreds of client feedback interviews and has a lot of experience helping firms with branding,

Merry has been an active member of the Legal Marketing Association. She is a frequent national speaker and author. In 2017, she was inducted into the Legal Marketing Association Hall of Fame.

She is also an accomplished nationally ranked adult competitive figure skater.

Additional Resources

If You Are Not Memorable, Don’t Expect to Be Remembered

I've had a number of guests on this show speaking about leadership. A large part of this is that I'm very interested in the subject. But I also feel that this is a skill set that is often neglected in the legal profession.

As lawyers, we learn a lot about our craft in law school and even more once we are in practice. As professionals, we are taught to analyze the law and help our clients to identify legal risks.

Our job is to be skeptical and to apply dispassionate reasoning to the situation so that our clients can protect themselves from legal exposure and comply with the law. We work to get our clients the best possible outcome whether it is in a litigation matter or in a corporate or real estate deal. We help our clients to achieve their personal or business objectives in a way that avoids legal risk or accomplishes their legal objectives.

But the same skills that we cultivate in practicing law can interfere with our ability to be an effective leader.

Whether you are a managing partner, a practice group leader, running your own law firm, serving as a general counsel, or managing other members of the legal team as an assistant general counsel, you need a different skill set to be successful.

In particular, emotional intelligence is one skill that you need to cultivate in order to be successful in a leadership role.

In this episode, Susan Schwartz provides great insights on that subject.

Susan Schwartz is a leadership coach and management consultant. She equips technical experts and teams with the skills they need to become excellent leaders. Her tagline is : Transforming expert professionals into emotionally intelligent leaders.

Additional Resources

• Episode 129-Law Firm Leadership with Kristi Royse
• 15 Tips For Leadership Success
• Episode 121-John Buckley on Building Your Executive Presence
• Episode 103-Ben Sachs on Building High-Performance Legal Teams
• Episode 80-Leadership for Lawyers-Moving Up in Your Law Firm or Corporate Law Department

The practice of law has evolved a lot in the three decades since I graduated from law school. Technology has replace many monotonous functions and computers have replaced paper. The internet has revolutionized how legal research is done and how law firms market themselves. It has enabled remote work and interaction in a way that was unimaginable in the 1980s.

At the same time, there are some fundamental things that have not changed. The practice of law is still a service business that requires a lot of human interaction.

Law firms are still challenging places to work. Clients can be demanding, the stakes can be high, and the billable hour can create unwanted incentives.

In addition, lawyers like their autonomy. Managing a group of lawyers is not for the faint of heart and takes a skill set that is very different than the skill set needed to practice law.

So what do you need to know to be an effective law firm leader? How can you inspire partners, associates, paralegals, and administrative staff to give it their all?

Kristi Royse joins me in this episode to answer those questions.

Kristi Royse is the CEO of KLR Consulting. She is a nationally recognized speaker, facilitator, management consultant, executive coach, and trainer. Since 1987, Kristi has been coaching executives to be stronger leaders and helping organizations optimize their most vital resource - their people. Kristi works with law firms and other organizations to help their leaders build the skills they need to thrive in rapidly changing circumstances. She helps leaders, teams, and leaders-to-be tap their potential, improve their leadership abilities, and strategically shift their perspective.