Trish Carroll, of GALT Advisory, had an article of hers published recently (February 26, but I didn’t get the email notification till today) in the Australasian Law Management Journal‘s Law Management Hub titled: ‘Get up close and personal to improve your business development‘.
While Trish’s article contains a number of really useful tips, I found it notable because of the following very thought provoking line:
“It is not about being the best; it is about being the preferred.”
99 times out of 100, I totally agree with Trish. And it is a really important lesson for high achieving lawyers to learn: being the best at what you do is no longer a guaranteed successful business model. In today’s legal market there are a lot of average lawyers making very serious amounts of money because they are the preferred ‘go to’ lawyer.
The one exception I would make would be for top-end, bet the bank, niche advisory work where being the best still trumps.
So the question you need to be asking yourself everyday is:
“What will I do today that will make me my clients preferred lawyer?”
RWS_01's B[D]log 
Richard
I’m not sure how any clients know the difference. As to best/preferred, until we see something akin to Trip Advisor for lawyers — that’s reliable — I don’t think it’s going to be straightforward for clients to determine much.
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Thanks for the comment mate.
I think we have moved [or are moving] into an era of the ‘Informed Purchaser’ (see http://www.justice.nsw.gov.au/legal-services-coordination/Pages/info-for-govt-agencies/info-purch-training.aspx), something I will be blogging more on in the near future.
R
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I happen to agree with this Richard. Although striving to be the best is no bad thing all you need to be is the first person a client thinks of when they have a need.
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Thanks for the comment Mike
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