Skip to main content

The new year’s resolution every associate should make


Our firm's associates are a talented bunch. They graduated top of their class, have backgrounds as musical theater performers and soccer players, and are multilingual and multicultural. But brains and talent can only get one so far in today’s legal profession. Regardless of what their future career goals are - to make partner, start their own firm, join a government or nonprofit organization - everyone needs a roadmap to get where they want to go. Help your associates to make it their new year’s resolution to create a business development plan in 2018. Here’s how to coach them:
  1. Create a written plan. Writing down your goals makes you accountable to them and more likely to achieve them. Also, you get the satisfaction of crossing your action items off your list as you complete them. Find a sample template online and use it.  
  2. Don't fret that you have written down your goals and are now tied to them. Think of your plan as a living, breathing document, and correct course as you go. You are also a work in progress, so it makes sense that your plan should evolve as you do.
  3. “I don’t know what my long-term goals are.” No problem. An evergreen action item that can be part of any good plan is as simple as getting involved. Join an industry or practice group within your firm, the board of a community organization, or a section of your local bar organization. 
  4. Make sure your goals are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound). Choose things that interest you, and that match your personality. If you hate presenting, better to find something that achieves the same purpose, but works for you. Similarly, don’t bite off more than you can chew. 3 goals maximum, and 3 action items for each goal. 
  5. Befriend your firm's marketing team. We are full of ideas and here to assist with your business development planning.
Once your plan is drafted, carve out time to work on implementing it. You’ll soon find that business development becomes a habit, and part of your practice. That's when you'll know your new year's resolution was a success.
Here's to a wildly successful 2018. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to get listed in Best Lawyers

The deadline for the next edition of Best Lawyers is coming up on April 15, so here's the rundown on this publication. It is entirely based on peer review, which means that the listings are based on votes by lawyers. But only lawyers who are already listed are eligible to vote. So, you'll need to first get on the ballot, and then do some campaigning. Here's how to approach it:  First, you need to get nominated . Nominations are open to anyone, but they ask that lawyers not nominate themselves, so the easiest approach is to have your marketing person nominate you. They can find the link here . Once that's done, you will be on the ballot for voting. One nomination is sufficient. The ballot . I mentioned above that only currently listed lawyers are eligible to vote. But there's a catch: not all lawyers are listed on every ballot, so lawyers can't choose exactly who they vote for. The ballots are designed based on the voter's geographic region and practice a
3 comments
Read more

Book Review: Accelerating Lawyer Success

What does success look like in law firms? The authors, frustrated with the abundance of anecdotal evidence and lack of empirical evidence to answer this question, set out to solve it with research. Their findings are based on studies including a comprehensive, 75-item survey completed by 343 lawyers at U.S. AmLaw 100 firms.  They examine, among other things, the differences between lawyers who made partner in less than 10 years and those who didn't.   Accelerating Lawyer Success: How to Make Partner, Stay Healthy, and Flourish in a Law Firm. By Lori Berman, Heather Bock, and Juliet Aiken.  The authors have uncovered the recipe for how to make partner in less than 10 years. In short, it involves  hard work and quality work, strategic relationship building, planning, help from mentors, and a mind-set of being the master of your own fate. You gotta build relationships strategically, invest in them, and leverage them. You need goals, to make plans, and to stick to them for the
6 comments
Read more

Profile raising in South Florida: making the most of the Daily Business Review

Profile raising is an important aspect of your marketing and business development efforts. Demonstrating that you are a thought leader in your practice area - whether by writing articles or being quoted in news articles, can go a long way towards helping you stand out. There are many publications out there of course, but the focus of this post is the Daily Business Review (DBR) in South Florida. Writing an article The DBR is an ALM publication reporting on the legal market in South Florida. An excellent opportunity for lawyers to write an article is through the DBR's Board of Contributors column. Articles should be about 800 words, and can be case-specific, about a specific area of the law, a trend, legislation affecting a particular field, or the business of law. If you have a topic to suggest, even better, as the DBR welcomes new content. You'll also need to include a 1-sentence bio and a high resolution headshot, and will be required to sign the DBR's standard rights
1 comment
Read more