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Counsel to Counsel is a podcast for attorneys who are looking for insights to help increase their overall career satisfaction.  You can find it on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.  You can also listen to episodes from this home page.  In each episode, I introduce you to consultants who have been shaping the legal industry and attorneys who have done interesting and sometimes unconventional things with their careers.  My guests will share with you tips on how to achieve greater career and marketing success.

Jun 4, 2019

Deb ScaringiGenerating legal business requires a healthy mix of sales and marketing.  For many attorneys, marketing is the easy part.  If you publish articles, give presentations, send out client alerts, post on social media, and participate in bar association committees, your reputation will grow.

Building your reputation and developing your niche are important.  But as any marketing professional will tell you, marketing is not a substitute for sales.  If you want to build your law practice, you need to build relationships with clients, potential clients and referral sources.  Marketing can support relationship building. However,it is not a substitute.

For many lawyers, relationship building is less natural than getting involved in reputation building activities.  Marketing activities can feel a lot like practicing law.  Speaking and writing about your practice area is a comfortable complement to providing legal services.  The brief you write today might become the basis of an article you write or a client seminar you deliver tomorrow. 

Building business relationships is entirely different.

There are many ways to build business relationships. One of the simplest things to do is to meet someone for coffee or invite them to a social function at your firm. Introducing them to professionals they want to meet is particularly effective, especially if those individuals become their clients.

Other common relationship building activities include taking someone to a basketball or baseball game, helping one of their children find a job, or sending them articles you think may be of interest.

Growing Your Network

If you want to increase the size of your referral network, getting involved in trade associations and non-profit causes is often effective.

But what happens when you are just starting to get involved and don’t know many people?  What if you attend networking functions where you don’t recognize anyone in the room?  How do you get the conversation started?  How do you approach strangers in a way that feels comfortable and which may lead to referrals down the line?

In this episode, I speak with Deborah Scaringi, who has some answers.  Deb is a talented marketing and business development thought leader with over 25 years of experience in the legal industry.  As an outside consultant and in-house professional, she has advised a broad mix lawyers and law firms on all aspects of selling legal services.

Through her consulting business, Scaringi Marketing, Deb helps her clients to undertake strategic business development, build marketing plans and coaches attorneys to execute upon their plans. She also works with lawyers and law firm to develop effective websites, blogs, and social media programs.  She manages events and helps firms to transition established marketing programs during mergers. 

Deb functions as both a fractional CMO and as an on-call project manager. She has worked with many of the major law firms in Massachusetts and has served as President of the New England Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association and the Immediate-Past President of the inaugural Board of Directors at the launch of the LMA’s Northeast Regional Chapter.

Additional Resources

Other episodes of Counsel to Counsel

Using Affinity to Build Your Network

Business Planning for Lawyers

The Social Media Maven

Blog posts

Starting the Conversation at Networking Events

New York, New York

Be Interested; Be Interesting

Tapping Your Tribal Connections

Overcoming Fear of Networking

Documenting Your Networking

What’s Your Story?

Focus Your Marketing Message Like You Focus Your Camera

Building Business Relationships 101-Where to Begin

In Building Your Referral Network, Look for the Bright Spots

Making Introductions that Generate Referrals

If You Want to Build Business Relationships, Go for Small Gatherings

Don’t Be a Stranger

Articles

Inexpensive Ways to Build Business Relationships