Our Sales Vision
What we're hoping to accomplish
My Perpetual State of Confusion
I’ve long been confused by the legal profession.
It took me a while to figure out why I was so confused about how lawyers did things. Why they didn’t think in a systems-focused way. Why they were reluctant to use technology. Why the concept of being managed or managing people was so foreign to them.
After spending enough time working in law, the answers became pretty obvious. It’s 50% an incentive problem. 50% an ego problem. And 50% an ignorance problem.
(lawyers are also bad at understanding basic math and opportunity cost, which doesn’t help).
Depending on the day, I fluctuate between which piece matters the most. And while I suspect most firms suffer from all 3 issues, it’s hard to think of established firms that don’t suffer from any.
The Billable Hour
The billable hour is at the route of many problems in the legal profession, and it rears its incredibly ugly head when it comes to why lawyers are bad at selling.
If you bill too few hours this year (because you’re focused on BD), your compensation will be reduced (or at least not increase). Lawyers don’t tend to get compensated for their BD potential - only their actual revenue generated that year
It’s easier to bill hours than it is to find work. Most lawyers naively believe the work will always be there, so therefore it makes sense to become good at doing the work.
Billable work takes priority, and firms are very good at telling their junior lawyers that their focus should be on doing the work not finding the work (that’s good for the firms; not so good for the lawyers long-term)
Lawyers work too much (in part because of fear of not working enough/being judged for poor hours), which leaves little time to do consistent BD
At many firms, building a book isn’t rewarded until you can prove your book is sustainable for several years (ie short term pain for the possibility - but no guarantee of - long term gains)
Ego
Then there’s the ego piece. Lawyers are notorious for having low resiliency. For a profession that is already a mental health disaster, what kind of fool do you have to be to sign yourself up for rejection after rejection (if you enjoy repeated rejections, I highly recommend trying to sell to lawyers). Selling is all about being rejected.
Far too many lawyers believe that their success was the result of their efforts - not the result of a healthy dose of good luck (eg a specific market booming at the right time) or their many advantages in life (eg being born into an affluent family, which can be both the fast-track to becoming a lawyer but also to landing clients).
And of course because of their inflated sense of self-worth, many lawyers have managed to convince themselves that everything they do is complex and must be handled in a bespoke manner. They are of course completely incorrect in most cases (despite what they’ll try to tell you), but it lends itself to some disasters when it comes to selling legal services.
Lawyers are terrible at productizing what they do, because they don’t realize that they engage in a series of repetitive, systematizable tasks. That’s not to say that the tasks aren’t complex - but as I have learned, most lawyers don’t think in terms of decision trees and systems. Thinking that way makes you seem less important and more replaceable. Much easier to bury your head in the sand and ignore all the AI developments.
It’s a lot harder to sell things you can’t productize, and it’s also a lot harder to have happy clients when everything is “impossible to quote”. Lawyers struggle at seeing the 90% of commonalities and instead tend to focus on the 10% that is truly different each time. That is not how salespeople think - and it’s not also how business people tend to think.
Ignorance
Most days, I think the biggest challenges in this profession are just pure ignorance (or perhaps wilful blindness, if I’m being less charitable).
The profession’s lack of diversity is an enormous problem - and I don’t just mean it important areas like race or gender.
Law firms tend to be run by lawyers who all went to law school and have spent their entire lives working in law firms. That is a diversity disaster.
To become involved in law firm management, you typically need to be a successful lawyer (and probably one who has clients). As other professions have realized, being a good IC (individual contributor) does not make one a good manager. The legal profession has yet to figure this out (or to realize that many lawyers are in fact managers, yet without any management training).
To make things worse, most of the people leading other functions at law firms are former lawyers - eg professional development, student programs, HR, etc. Lawyer upon lawyer upon lawyer.
Talk about a lack of diversity of thought.
The result unfortunately is that so many people in this profession have absolutely no idea about the best practices that most other industries have embraced. On topics like leadership, management, culture, and HR.
If even those things aren’t well known (and certainly not followed), then it will come as little surprise that sales best practices aren’t followed.
Why?
Why must it be that way? Why can’t we follow best practices, with minor tweaks as required to take into the account the few things in this profession that are unique.
The answer (duh) is that of course we can follow best practices. But to do that, you must (i) know what they are; (ii) be open to embracing them; and (iii) have colleagues that are also willing to embrace them.
Good luck finding that combination at most firms - remember, you’re normally dealing with incentive issues, ego issues, and ignorance issues.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
There’s no reason a law firm can’t embrace sales best practices and allow their lawyers and salespeople to sell authentically.
There’s no reason that salespeople can’t be trained to sell legal services.
There’s no reason that lawyers can’t learn the value that properly-trained salespeople can bring to the table.
Our Vision
I built out my 1-year vision for our sales team, and while I’m not going to share that publicly (at least for now), it’s all about:
Lawyer Happiness
Allowing our entire team to spend more time doing the work they like, by bringing in the work they like to do
Allowing our lawyers to work with clients who they enjoy working with, by bringing them those clients
Data-driven improvements to lawyer happiness (which we measure on a monthly basis and will start publishing publicly later this year)
Client Happiness
Higher NPS scores
Reducing misunderstandings about fees by having clear understandings of all parties’ expectations
Ensuring that we’re servicing clients in the way they want to be serviced, and in a manner in which they feel like they’re getting good value
Equityholder Happiness
Ensuring a profitable, sustainable law firm through systematization, standardization, and following best practices
Not having all your assets walk out the door every night (through a relentless focus on documentation and systematization)
This is all completely doable. Just because it’s not easy doesn’t mean it’s not doable.
Worst case - we fail completely, learn a lot in the process, and tackle this in a smarter way down the road.
Best case - all our key stakeholders are thrilled and we continue to prove that their are smarter, much more modern ways to run a law firm.
Time will tell - stay tuned to hear how our journey progresses!