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Legal Marketing Books: Our Readers’ Choice Awards

Amy Campbell — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 19:34:53 +0000

Want to know what your fellow legal marketers know? Want to know which books they are reading? Did you know that every time you buy a book through an amazon.com link on Legal Marketing Reader, you help support our website? The books below represent the tried and true titles that are most frequently bought through Legal Marketing Reader. There are LOTS of great books available for lawyers and marketers on how to grow more and better business, but these are the ones that stand out for showing up again and again. Have you read them all?

Legal Business Development: A Step by Step Guide
By James Hassett, Ph.D.
This book will help lawyers at large and mid-sized firms to get immediate and practical results from their limited marketing time, by building stronger relationships with current clients and with new ones. It includes step by step instructions to help you decide how much time to devote to business development, to identify the most productive activities that can be accomplished within that time, and to assure follow-up. The book is built around exercises and quick references that will guide you to take immediate and practical steps that fit your practice, your personality, and your schedule.

Managing The Professional Service Firm
By David H. Maister
Professional firms differ from other business enterprises in two distinct ways: first, they provide highly customized services and thus cannot apply many of the management principles developed for product-based industries. Second, professional services are highly personalized, involving the skills of individuals. Such firms must therefore compete not only for clients but also for talented professionals.

Rainmaking Made Simple: What Every Professional Must Know
By Mark M. Maraia
Rainmaking Made Simple: What Every Professional Must Know is the definitive how-to guide for professionals on growing their business. It demystifies the process of building client relationships, making it simple to grasp, retain, and put into practice. Mark Maraia is a lawyer turned relationship development coach who has worked one-on-one with thousands of professionals at some of the world’s largest professional service firms.

The Law Firm Associate’s Guide to Personal Marketing and Selling Skills
By Catherine Alman MacDonagh, Beth Marie Cuzzone
This practical book focuses on personal marketing and sales skills, and covers these topics: building a practice; how to create a personal marketing plan; how to find people within a target market; how to prepare for a prospective client meeting; strategies when meeting with clients; how to ask for business; how to use the end of a matter as a marketing opportunity; how to retain clients; and how to effectively network inside and outside the firm.

The Rainmaking Machine: Marketing Planning, Strategies, and Management for Law Firms
By Phyllis Weiss Haserot
This comprehensive book provides advice on gaining new clients, improving services, and expanding existing business. It is a step-by-step guide for planning, executing, and managing a marketing process that is designed to help you build your client base. Topics include focusing your marketing efforts; motivating yourself and your partners; how clients choose a firm; creating new services; hiring and maximizing the efforts of marketing professionals; improving your firm s image through public relations; forming personal selling networks, business ventures, and professional connections; securing and retaining lucrative and satisfying clients; and current and emerging trends.

The Trusted Advisor
By David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, Robert M. Galford
David Maister, Charles Green, and Robert Galford–consultants on professional-service management and customer-relation issues–believe nobody can become successful as a business guru until they first gain the confidence of their clients. In The Trusted Advisor, the authors effectively build their case through anecdote and illustration, then relay a solid series of relevant suggestions applicable to both would-be consultants and those already active in the field. Among their most potent suggestions is a practical, five-step development process that encourages outsiders to engage clients by focusing attention on the issues and individuals at hand; listening both to what they say and what they leave unsaid; framing the immediate problem from their perspective; envisioning with them how a solution might appear; and committing jointly to the actions and resources that will bring it about.

Business Development for Lawyers: Strategies for Getting and Keeping Clients
By Sally J. Schmidt
Whether you’re launching a practice or trying to expand your book of business, this new guide gives you the help you seek. From developing a reputation to developing relationships, from retaining existing clients to generating new business, Business Development for Lawyers: Strategies for Getting and Keeping Clients examines all the available techniques, providing you with the expert insights and practical tips you need to make them work for you. You’ll learn how to write for publications, make effective presentations, network, handle the media, get results from participating in conferences and social events, follow up with contacts, build relationships with referral sources, close the deal with prospective clients, and more. This new book from a leading law firm marketer and consultant is an excellent starting point for anyone developing a personal marketing plan or for the lawyer who wants to improve personal marketing and business development skills.

Do you have a book you think is especially useful for law firm marketers? If so, we’d love to hear about it. Please add your comments!

Most Popular Articles – Our Top 5

Amy Campbell — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:06:07 +0000

Legal Marketing Reader’s feature articles draw lots of readers to our site. We thought you’d like to know which articles are the “most read” on our site. Even though some of these were written a few years back, they continue to address relevant questions and concerns attorneys and law firm promoters continue to wrestle with. Here they are:

1. Ten Habits of Highly Successful Law Firms - By John O. Cunningham

2. Small Law Firm Marketing: Do-It-Yourself Marketing Tips - By John O. Cunningham

3. How To Create Attorney Sales and Marketing Plans - By Beth Marie Cuzzone and Catherine Alman MacDonagh

4. Six Facts About New Business — What Every Lawyer Needs to Know – By Jim Hassett, Ph.D.

5. Linkedin for Lawyers: Top Ten Tips – By Amy Campbell

Advertise on Legal Marketing Reader

Amy Campbell — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:34:32 +0000

Do you sell a product or service to law firms or attorneys related to marketing and business development? Then consider advertising on Legal Marketing Reader — one of the few destinations on the web focused exclusively on time-saving information tools for the law firm marketing and business development audience. Our rates are reasonable. If you’d like to learn more, please send an e-mail to: ads [at] legalmarketingreader.com.

Legal Marketing Reader is read around the world!

Great Resource: SEO in 30 Days

Amy Campbell — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:32:04 +0000

We’ve just added an article to our Legal Marketing 101 section, which essentially points to some of the best articles around the web on topics for law firm marketers. SEO in 30 Days is really more like 30 articles — a full course on search engine optimization for law firms. Check it out.

Also, if you know of an especially useful and instructive article for law firm marketers, please let us know. Leave a comment here for any article you’d like us to consider adding to the list. Thanks!

Good Article on Social Media Policies for Law Firms

Amy Campbell — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:57:37 +0000

Should you, or should you not, have a social media policy for your law firm? Some of the social media experts say, no. That social media is just an extension of the professional and it is professional conduct that should govern use of social media. But then again, law firms are employers, and they need to make the same consideration regarding how social media impacts folks inside workplace in addition to the public perception of a firm. Social-Media Policies for Law Firms By Molly DiBianca in the ABA’s Law Practice Today takes a serious look at the question — that’s why we’ve added it to Legal Marketing Reader’s Legal Marketing 101 articles from around the web.

Writes DiBianca:

“If your law firm does not yet have a social-media policy, shame on your law firm. Law firms, like any other business, are accountable for the conduct of their employees. And employees are using social media. Ignoring this reality will not reduce your firm’s exposure to risk. The only way to manage exposure is to tackle it head on. And the best way to tackle social media is to educate employees about the firm’s expectations with a well-drafted policy.”

Check it out here: Social-Media Policies for Law Firms.

Budget Essentials for Law Firm Business Development

Amy Campbell — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:18:51 +0000

Please excuse the summer hiatus, but new content can now be found on Legal Marketing Reader! Thank you to author Deborah Scaringi who writes on the “must have” budget items for your law firm’s business development budget. Deb polled some industry leaders to determine what tops their lists of indispensable budget line items.

Click here to read the full article: Budget Essentials for Law Firm Business Development.

Social Media Round Up – 4 Great Articles You Might Have Missed

Amy Campbell — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 20:31:03 +0000

If you are a regular follower of Legal Marketing Reader, then you may have already seen these articles — some of the most recent links from our Legal Marketing 101, which documents some of the best articles from around the web. Recently, we featured these four articles on social media topics.

Just in case you missed ‘em!

Changing of the Blogs – Trust Matters is Back!

Amy Campbell — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:06:50 +0000

Just a note that the RSS feed problem related to the Trust Matters blog from Charles Green and Co. is back in action. We are happy to report its feed now appear under the “Top Blogs” tab, bottom row, center square. It replaces Patrick Lamb’s excellent blog, In Search of Perfect Client Services (which was filling in for the broken feed), and now lives under the “More Blogs” tab, top row, center square. Sadly, we retired the In-House Rants feed for lack of updates.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.

Direct Mail Strategies in a Web 2.0 World?

Amy Campbell — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:14:33 +0000

With all the buzz surrounding social media and web technologies and how cheap and effective they can be for professionals (even lawyers) to build and enhance relationships that lead to more business — you’d think something as old school as direct mail marketing would be dead in the water, or at least circling the drain. But not so, says John O. Cunningham. He writes in our latest feature article, Direct Mail Strategies in a Web 2.0 World, that direct mail is alive and well and thriving in the world of professional services. He interviews long time direct mail pro Rachel Hayes, former vice president and principal consultant for Wellesley Hills Group, a management consulting, marketing and lead generation firm that serves professional service firms. The article provides both evidence of and advice for direct mail success. Check it out at: Legal Marketing Reader. And come back here to comment if you want to add to the conversation.

Thanks for patiently waiting for this latest LMR feature!

Legal Marketing 101 – Best of the Web

Amy Campbell — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:15:44 +0000

Legal Marketing 101 is the section of Legal Marketing Reader that collects the best articles from around the web on legal marketing topics that we find especially useful and practical. We catalog them on the site for handy access. Here are 5 of the latest entries…

If you know of a recent resource that you think your peers will find of value, please recommend it here in our comments section. Thanks!