In recent years, firms have been hungry to grow, and grow quickly, by merging laterals into their ranks. Firms that were literally unknown on the legal horizon have risen up in record time to all of a sudden become sizeable players, and firms long respected and venerated have disappeared from view in the blink of an eye.

Among the reasons for this phenomenon, are that more and more clients have looked to meet their legal needs with fewer firms, and of course the globalization of the world economy has played a significant role in this drama.

As a marketing consultant to law firms for the past 25 years, I have encouraged firms to pursue opportunities when the proposed laterals complement the existing initiatives of the firm, and when new opportunities are created as a result of the union. I call this Quantum Leap Marketing, and some of my clients have quintupled in size as a result of utilizing this approach. A word of caution: merging for the purpose of reducing overhead and saving administrative costs is rarely worth the aggravation and rarely remains a true savings, as costs quickly begin to climb back up. The advantage needs to be a marketing advantage, and a significant one at that.

As I say in my four-CD set, “Quick Advice on Improving Our Relationships”: “Relationships are very expensive in every way and need to be worth their price.”

But attracting laterals is often a frustrating endeavor for firms. The reason for this is that firms often improperly assess the nature of the task. Getting a professional to leave his/her existing home is a frightening notion, and there are many obstacles to the sale that must be dealt with. Prospective laterals have many questions, many concerns and many fears, and each one of these issues must be successfully resolved before a sale can be made.

Most often recruiters hear, “Our firm has a great reputation. We are nice guys. C’mon, bring us top attorneys with big books of business!” This approach does not work and will never work. If someone is going to come to your firm, you are going to have to answer a lot of tough questions – as you properly should. Here are a few of those questions:

Law firms, largely speaking, are unprepared to answer these and other questions, and therefore their efforts at attracting laterals produce paltry results. The development of a script for attracting laterals to your firm and sales coaching can be very helpful in this area.

Make sure to read upcoming parts 2, 3 and 4 of Marketing Your Firm To Laterals.

Comedy Corner

Two beggars in Rome – one holds a large cross in front of him; the other, a large Star of David.

A priest comes by and watches as throngs give money to the beggar behind the cross, but none to the beggar behind the Star of David.

Finally, the priest says to the beggar behind the Star of David, “My poor fellow, don’t you understand? This is a Catholic country! People aren’t going to give money if you display your Star of David while sitting beside a beggar who is displaying a cross. In fact, they might give money to him just to show their support for the cross over the Star of David!”

The beggar behind the Star of David spoke to the beggar with the cross: “Murray, look who’s trying to teach the Goldstein brothers how to market!”