RJon Robins

Caroline Elefant over at My Shingle recently posted a discussion about small law firms “joint venturing” with larger firms to help the larger firms get more business in RFP contests, etc.  The title of her post is “Could You Be A Front For A Firm?”

Here are some tips to keep in mind if you’re in a small firm and
you’re thinking about “cooperating” with a larger firm as Caroline
described above.

First of all it may give you some confidence to know that small and
minority law firms have actually been “cooperating” with larger firms
for a long time. There is no such thing as a “full service” firm. They
ALL have gaps. I once helped a small franchise specialty shop with deep
roots in the restaurant industry joint venture with a 50 lawyer firm to
go after and win an RFP from a major national restaurant franchise that
paid for my client’s kids’ college tuition with all the fees the
relationship generated.

Second of all, you can help eliminate alot of client confusion if
the larger firm will give you your own email extension that forwards to
you and your own extension on their pbx phone system. This gives
clients a HUGE sense of comfort.

Third, be sure you take the time to document not only the terms but
schedule an hour with the larger firm’s Administrator to work out the
mechanics of how the relationship is actually going to operate. For
example, will you be able to schedule use of the firm’s conference room
for client meetings? Will they assign you a cost code for the copy
machines,etc. and will the big firm’s copy room support you? Usually
it’s just a matter of asking to leverage their economy of scale and
they’re happy to accommodate us.

Don’t be afraid to bring RFP’s to a larger firm and suggest
cooperation. And don’t wait until they have an RFP to go over there and
suggest how you may fit into their strategy. 8 times out of 10 I find
the larger firms are very receptive to this “Integrated Of Counsel”
type of relationship with smaller firms with interesting niche
practices.

p.s. Don’t forget to sign-up for my upcoming FREE teleseminar entitled “How To Double The Revenue Of Your Small Law Firm And Play Golf Every Friday”

I need to get something out of the way up-front. . . lawyers “sell”.  We may call it “marketing” or “rainmaking”.  But we do it.  And we need to learn how to do it well if we're going to have enough business to keep ourselves and our staff busy with enough new work to both achieve our financial goals and have the courage and the resolve to turn-down cases and clients that are not a good fit for our personalities or our practices. 

I also have an admission to make. . . I love to read “junk mail”.  I also watch home shopping and tune into infomercials with a pad of paper and take notes from time to time.  Because we may wish the world was different than it is, but the fact of the matter is that the producers of those pieces invest millions of dollars for just one reason: it works. 

Now with that out of the way, I have the following excerpt from a lesson to share with you which I recently wrote to one of my “Platinum” coaching clients.  Don't bother looking for an application or for information about “Platinum” level of Membership on my website.  It's by invitation only.

Now Here's The Good Stuff. . .  First, I generally ignore the “one page” rule.  If it takes six pages
to make a persuasive argument, then it takes six pages.  If you capture
the reader's attention and if they have an interest in what you're
communicating about and if you keep them hooked with compelling and
enticing content in every paragraph that feeds their interest they will
read a book. 

But if you miss a single one of those “if's” you might as well save the postage. 

Too many people in my experience an an avid reader of my “junkmail”
shortcut the “if's” and just shoot for brevity instead.  As if they can
impose on me to read a brief and irrelevant and boring message and that
somehow that will move me to buy their product or service.  Instead if
I'm interested in a subject, I'd rather read a ten page message if it's
well-written, tells me what I want to know (notice I said “want”, not
“need”) and especially if there are built in “hooks” that draw me in
and make we want to turn the page to discover what comes next.

Second, every message is different.  Like a sculptor tells you the
stone tells him what it wants to become, when you get your head into
the message it tells you what and how much it needs to communicate in
order to be persuasive.  If your message isn't telling you that, you
haven't got your head into it enough yet.  It takes time.  And it can
be a painful process.  But the rewards are well worth the effort. I
promise.  

Third, you don't persuade someone to action by artificially or arbitrarily limiting the number of pages from the outset. 

And fourth, yes, after we have the whole message laid-out (that is all
three parts of it)  we'll put the whole thing aside for a week and then
come back and agonize over what can be eliminated because it's in there
for us, vs. what needs to stay because it's in there for the reader.

An except from a project I'm helping a client with.  This is potentially a multi-million dollar stream of business for them. . . .

See attached.  I've done a ton of Powerpoint presentations and sold
hundreds of thousands of dollars using Powerpoint.  I've also been
professionally trained on how to use Powerpoint and to recognize it's
limitations.  As a rule I generally prefer NOT to use Powerpoint. 
Because too often it becomes a distraction rather than a tool to
facilitate communication of ideas.  Too often it is used to communicate
facts instead of ideas.  When you think of your Powerpoint you need to
think of it as a “co-presenter”.  And just like you wouldn't simply
repeat the same thing your co-presenter just said likewise you
shouldn't do that with Powerpoint either.  Most Powerpoint
presentations contain too much information which leaves it's live
co-presenter with nothing to do up there except be redundant.  And
leaves the audience to wonder if it might have been a better use of
their time to just skip the presentation and read the hand-outs.

Begin with the end in mind.  The GOAL of this presentation is to get
audience members to come to the booth.  The sale is going to be made at
the booth.  Trying to make the sale in a Powerpoint presentation
results in a very tedious Powerpoint presentation, a very weak sale and
no reason for the audience to come to the booth.  Instead what we
should be seeking to accomplish with the Powerpoint presentation is to
whet the appetite of the audience.  To capture their imaginations.  But
leave them wondering.  And then tell them that they can satisfy their
curiosity by visiting the booth.  Then they come directly to the booth
feeling excited.  Instead of wandering over to the booth just to see if
there's anything they missed.

The Greatest American Lawyer has a neat discussion going over at his blog on this topic.  Below is my comment.  Suggest you click the link above though to get the full perspective. 

The “History” of the billable hour might be of some interest and
help attorneys to understand why it seems that billing clients
by-the-hour when we are supposed to be their advocate & trusted
advisor seems like such a square peg in a round hole.

In point of fact, for more than a thousands years lawyers did NOT
bill by the hour. Instead it was always value based billing. Then in
the 1960's the insurance companies came along and hired efficiency
experts to reign-in their legal expenses. . .

If you're interested in learning “the rest of the story”, send me an
email to rjon@howtomakeitrain.com and I'll send the you the whole thing
back in an email. Complete with some pretty interesting citations.
Fascinating stuff. Really puts everything into perspective I think.

But for me, the worst thing about the billable hour is that it takes
all the fun out of the practice of law and causes lawyers to make LESS
money than they otherwise could with a properly-designed value/flat-fee
billing system. (Remember, before I was the Rainmaker I was a Practice
Management Advisor with The Florida Bar's Law Office Management
Assistance Service.)