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Yours eyes meet across a crowded room. She seems interested so you introduce yourself, a little nervously but full of hope that this could be the one. But within seconds those hopes are shattered.
She’s not a potential client at all. In fact, she turns out to the last person you want to meet at a network meeting: another solicitor, just like you. You can hardly do business with each other.
She seems equally disappointed but now you’re stuck with each other until someone else joins the conversation and gives you an escape route. Unfortunately, this is not your lucky day. When your escape route arrives it’s in the shape of an accountant who only wants to sell his services and has no interest in what you have to offer.
Dejected, you wonder why you bother with these meetings when you’re already tired from the daily grind of your caseload. It’s so hard to strike up a conversation and you’ve never been comfortable with the idea of “selling yourself” anyway. And worst of all, it never seems to produce the goods. Do you really have to go through this to get yourself known?
Well, no actually, you don’t. An aspiring networker might do better to stay in the office and think about placing a news story in his local paper.
Who knows, maybe that’s what solicitor Louisa Jakeman did a few weeks ago when she and her firm Williamson and Soden featured in a story in the Birmingham Evening Post.
Ms Jakeman was quoted as being a commercial property specialist in an article outlining what private clubs have to do to comply with new regulations coming into force as a result of the Disability Discrimination Act.
She came across as a person who knew what she was talking about and if I were involved in the running of a club in Birmingham then I would seriously consider turning to her first if I needed advice.
I would probably respect her far more than a solicitor I’d never heard of who came spinning me a line at a network meeting. And why wouldn’t I? Networking owes more to the gift of the gab than it does to being a good lawyer. But if someone’s good enough to appear in the Birmingham Post then maybe she might be good enough for me as well.
But isn’t it difficult to place stories in newspapers? Nothing like as difficult as some solicitors seem to think. And nothing like as time consuming as networking. Local newspapers and business magazines regularly carry stories featuring lawyers explaining the likely impact of some new piece of legislation or court ruling.
No matter where your practice is based, it’s highly likely that in the last few months your local press has featured articles on civil partnerships, age regulations, the Woman and Work report, the need for landlords to get licences for houses in multiple occupation, and many other recent developments. If there’s a change in the law that affects people, then you can be sure there’s a story about it somewhere.
Most of those stories will have come directly from press releases sent out by law firms. As often as not, the press releases are printed word for word without any changes. Like everyone else these days, journalists are always busy. Contrary to what you might think, they don’t want to waste time altering stories if they can avoid it.
You don’t have to do a lot of research to produce these articles. They’re all based on the work you do everyday as solicitors. All you have to do is explain what some new development in your field will mean and send off a press release to your local paper. Don’t be afraid to talk yourself up. You’re not meeting people face to face when you do this so there’s no need to be self-conscious.
Of course, getting media coverage doesn’t have to be seen as an alternative to networking. The two can go hand in hand. The only difference is that now when you turn up at the meeting you’ll have a head start over most people. You’ve been in the papers. You’re becoming a name, an authority in your field, maybe not to fellow solicitors but definitely to potential clients and that’s what counts.
The way they’ll see it is that you must be good or the papers wouldn’t quote you.
They won’t realise that the article is little more than a press release sent out by your firm. You’ll have a profile and gravitas that other solicitors can't match. See it from the client’s point of view. All else being equal, who would they rather work with, someone they’ve never heard of or someone quoted by your local business magazine?
You can bet a few people will have seen your article and they’ll mention it to each other, if only to fill an embarrassing gap in conversation.
If this seems a bit ambitious then you can achieve a similar effect albeit on a smaller scale by sending out such articles as a firm’s newsletter. Many firms adopt this approach because it enables them to target potential clients very specifically rather than use the more scattergun approach of placing stories in the media.
And then, perhaps when you least expect it, you will meet the girl of your dreams. Ok, she may not want to marry you but she may want to engage you as her solicitor. And that’s all you ever really wanted isn’t it?
back to Solicitors Journal articles
This article first appeared in the Solicitors Journal.
Nick Kehoe is a former News Editor with ITV. He now runs Media Coverage, a company offering CPD accredited media courses and providing press releases and newsletters for law firms.
Contact Media Coverage, Suites 1-13, Imex Business Park, Shobnall Road, Burton on Trent, DE 14 2AZ.
www.media-coverage.co.uk Email: nk@media-coverage.co.uk.
Phone 01283 566270.
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