Marketing Your Practice as Part of a Successful Legal Career

To make strategic choices without regard to competition, a few relatively simple concepts are often overlooked. Many attorneys are responsible for developing their own clientele. This is obvious for sole practitioners, but is also true in firms of all sizes. Certainly, individual attorneys are responsible for legal service that will satisfy the client and retain them as future sources of business. Attorney salary and progress are determined, to a great extent, by his or her success in satisfying clients.

An approach to obtaining and retaining an attorney's clientele is to develop a "niche strategy." Attorneys are hearing many colleagues say, "I think I have found my niche." In short, finding a niche means focusing on a narrow market and delivering only what it needs.

The essence of marketing based on an understanding of niches is to interpret sociological trends so that goods and services can be tailored to meet specific needs and desires of the marketplace. Taking this one step farther, "niche" marketing starts with segmenting or breaking the marketplace into identifiable groups or segments with consistent characteristics. Successful manufacturing companies use niche strategies extensively.

This has come about because significant sociological developments occurring in the last few years changed the way people do business, both as buyer and seller. People no longer are apt to accept generalists to provide products and services. They want specialists, which allowed them choices. Providers of goods and services could no longer just say "here it is" and expect customers to be satisfied. Customers have come to expect more. It is reasonable to assume that law clients expected the same. Providers of legal services are guilty of not thinking in terms of market segments.

MARKET SEGMENTS

Market segmentation is the process of dividing the market (existing and potential clientele) into logical homogeneous groups. A market segment is a uniquely individual component of a more general market. A niche is a specialty within a small segment. For example, real estate for commerical developers includes finance, land use, and environmental niches within the smaller segment.

Some attorneys avoid niche marketing in favor of "full-service" practices. The usual end result for small- to medium-sized practices that try to be full service is an overextension of too few resources and poor results in filling a broad range of needs. With over 100 practice areas and many subspecialties (niches) identified by P.I.C.'s National Law List, edited by Altman & Weil, Inc., how can one firm or even one attorney possibly expect to cover all the bases?

CLIENTS WANT PERSONALIZED SERVICES

Everyone who provides a product or service must think in terms of segments, according to Theodore Levitt, author of Marketing Imagination. The point is to focus on a group to serve, not the whole market. Avoiding niche marketing is to ignore indicators pointing the way to increased practice success.

Niche marketing allows attorneys to offer their clients personalization of service. By knowing and understanding the segment of society to which a client belongs, the attorney can tailor services, that is, practice area, to meet exact needs and expectations. Clients want services which particularly suit them. This follows the trend for the general buying public.

Four doors and four wheels is not enough anymore—car buyers want a product that expresses their personality and are willing to pay for that personalization. Today, everyone wants personalized attention, whether they are retail consumers, decision makers for large corporations, or law clients.