
To Lawyers Yearning for Work-Life Balance: Build a Book of Business
When lawyers ask how to have more balance between their professional and personal lives, my answer is always this: build a book of business. It takes a lot of time and a significant amount of effort. But of all of your work-related activities, there is nothing that leads to greater work-life balance then developing client…

Four Myths about Individual Lawyer Business Plans
Creating an effective personal business plan is critical to building your book of business. Lawyers and firms have had so many failed attempts or stops and starts in individual business planning that my coaching clients vent a great deal of frustration with the process. Ridiculously long forms to fill out and submit, no real follow…

The Top 5 Things You Should Do Right Now to Ensure a Great Year Ahead for Marketing and Business Development
The holidays seem long gone as everyone is back to work with full force for the new year. As you dig in and begin to make this new year your firm’s best for marketing and business development, here are the top five things you should do to ensure a great start:

Identifying The Key Factors To Measure The Return On Your Firm’s Marketing Investments
http://mantrapartner.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DRI-FTD-1511-Courie-Taylor.pdf In this article, published in the November 2015 issue of DRI’s For The Defense, Jay Courie, Managing Partner of MGC Law and Past President of DRI’s Law Practice Management Committee, and I take a comprehensive look at all of the metrics your firm should be tracking as part of its marketing scorecard. You can read…

At Last! A Call for Generalists
For years, thought leaders in law firm management have been telling lawyers that the days of the generalist are gone and that the most successful lawyers are those who specialize. While this may be true in terms of the substantive practice of law, a recent Harvard Business Review article suggests that today, generalists often play…

Your Marketing Scorecard – Client Satisfaction
Although most new law firm matters come from existing clients, many firms focus the overwhelming majority of their marketing resources on attracting new clients to the firm. Some firms with longstanding relationships with institutional clients understand that investing time and money into relationships with existing clients can provide significant returns, both in terms of client…

Your Marketing Scorecard – Web sites
A client will almost never hire your firm because of its web site. However, we know from countless studies, interviews and published articles that general and in-house counsel and other law firm clients use a firm’s web site to validate their selection, confirm qualifications, assess your areas of strength/depth (or lack thereof) and ultimately, make their…

Your Marketing Scorecard
In countless conversations with Managing Partners, Chief Marketing Officers, Marketing Directors and Marketing Operations Directors/Managers, the question I hear over and over is: “How do we measure return on investment for our marketing spend?” Said another way, “How do we determine if the marketing strategies we employ are working?” A corollary to this is, “How…

Your Marketing Scorecard – Branding
Branding is arguably the most important strategy for your firm and one for which success or failure can be the most challenging to measure. Over the last 20 years, branding has gone from a nebulous concept for law firms to a recognized, must-have asset. It is incontrovertible that firms with well-established brands have the ability…

He had me at “A Whole New Mind.” A Dan Pink primer for #LMAIntl conference attendees.
I am looking forward to hearing Daniel Pink speak at the LMA Annual Conference next week. My first introduction to his work was a few years ago, when a friend gave me, “A Whole New Mind”. At the time, I thought, “Oh great, another business book.” Then, a few pages in, I began to…