You Don’t Have to Put in 100 Hours a Week to Be a Successful Lawyer

One of the most pernicious lessons taught to impressionable law school students is that “the law is a jealous mistress”—that is, being a successful lawyer means working 100 hour weeks and spending a minimal amount of time with your family…if you manage to find time for a family in the first place. The fact is that, if you market your law practice the right way, your life as a lawyer doesn’t have to be a constant, joyless grind, and you can spend plenty of quality time with your loved ones.

Why Is the Law Different from Other Professions?

Think about it for a second. Many small business owners run successful companies, pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year without even having gone to college. Do you hear anyone saying “plumbing is a jealous mistress?” Sure, a successful law firm owner will spend more time at his store than any of his employees, but no one will think less of him if he makes room for a growing family and the occasional vacation.

For some reason, though, the expectations are different for lawyers. If an attorney’s spouse complains that he spends more time in airports than he does with his own kids, he’s likely to respond by saying, “You don’t understand, this is the way it’s supposed to be!” That’s because he’s parroting the line that has been handed down by the generation of lawyers that preceded him:

Even Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, speaking at a law school graduation ceremony, warned all those newly minted lawyers about a future dominated by their “masters,” i.e., their clients.

Like other received truths, this one can take a long time for the average lawyer to shake off—and most attorneys never achieve the insight that they don’t have to work 100 hour weeks and take in every client who comes through the door in order to be successful. For this reason, they’re resigned to the same old marketing grind, in which they plaster their faces across impersonal Facebook ads and send out cookie-cutter e-newsletters to prospective clients. Life is mostly hard work, so why should marketing be any more fun or innovative?

 

Starting over can be scary, but it can also be exciting, revitalizing, and motivating. That’s why many people daydream about what they would do if they could “start over.”

In fact, that’s one of the (few) things I enjoyed about golf! You start from zero at each hole and have a fresh opportunity to excel.

This was my mindset when I wrote the report, 10-Step Program for Marketing Success. I set out to answer the question, “what are the steps I would take if I were rebuilding my practice from the ground up.

Inside this report, you will discover everything I’ve learned since opening the doors to my law firm and all the big-picture tactics I teach the attorney members at Great Legal Marketing.

YOU can get this special report FREE just by clicking the button below and requesting your copy. This is the “gateway” report to Great Legal Marketing, where you will learn our marketing philosophy. You will probably find the information in this report refreshing compared to all the junk information about marketing supplied by marketing vultures who want to sell you a new social media campaign.

Ben is a nationally recognized expert in attorney marketing and the owner of Great Legal Marketing.

Most attorneys start their firms assuming that being a really, really good attorney should, in and of itself, be a marketing advantage. Those attorneys believe that joining a whole bunch of committees and putting their name in lawyer directories is “marketing,” and they never bother to ask if there is a better way.

Attorneys are catching on, however, and those who succeed learn to leverage their current resources to create effective (and ethical) marketing. What they discover isn’t a magic pill or silver bullet but a different approach to marketing that your competitors haven’t considered.

If you want a peek at what successful attorneys use to market their practice, the HERO Starter Kit is your logical next step.

We’ve put together a FREE (and potentially life-changing) kit for solo and small firm attorneys that will show you a better way to reach potential clients and get them excited to call your firm. Request your HERO Starter Kit from Great Legal Marketing!

by Ben Glass

Ben is a nationally recognized expert in attorney marketing and the owner of Great Legal Marketing.

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  • Ben is a nationally recognized expert in attorney marketing and the owner of Great Legal Marketing.