Judge Elbert Parr Tuttle’s View of a Lawyer’s Professionalism

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Several times over the last six years, I’ve shared one of my favorite passages from one of my legal heroes, the Hon. Elbert Parr Tuttle.  Judge Tuttle served on the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals from 1954 until his death just a month shy of age 99, in 1996.  He’s remembered as a model attorney and judge, one who represented the absolute best in the profession.

Judge Tuttle was a champion of civil rights, both as a lawyer and a judge and, along with other members of the Fifth Circuit (John Minor Wisdom, John Brown, and Richard Rives) was instrumental in bringing effective desegregation to the South.  (The anecdote at the beginning of this story about Judge Tuttle illustrates not only how he came to play such a role; it also illustrates the power that parental example can have on children, and then children on the world.)  For more on Judge Tuttle’s life and accomplishments, see any of the memorials and articles written about him and read Jack Bass’s phenomenal book Unlikely Heroes.

Judge Tuttle gave a commencement speech at Emory Law School in the 1950s that defines professionalism.  It has informed my understanding of what it means (and what it should mean) to be an attorney.  I make it a habit to read through Judge Tuttle’s speech at least once a year.  It seems particularly appropriate now.  The full speech is not available on the Internet, unfortunately.  But here’s an excerpt, provided by the Washington Realty Group:

The professional man is in essence one who provides service.  But the service he renders is something more than that of the laborer, even the skilled laborer.  It is a service that wells up from the entire complex of his personality.  True, some specialized and highly developed techniques may be included, but their mode of expression is given its deepest meaning by the personality of the practitioner.  In a very real sense his professional service cannot be separate from his personal being.  He has no goods to sell, no land to till.  His only asset is himself.  It turns out that there is no right price for service, for what is a share of a man worth?  If he does not contain the quality of integrity, he is worthless.  If he does, he is priceless. The value is either nothing or it is infinite.

So do not try to set a price on yourselves.  Do not measure out your professional service on an apothecaries’ scale and say, “Only this for so much.”  Do not debase yourselves by equating your souls to what they will bring in the market.  Do not be a miser, hoarding your talents and abilities and knowledge, either among yourselves or in your dealings with your clients…

Rather be reckless and spendthrift, pouring our your talent to all to whom it can be of service!  Throw it away, waste it, and in the spending it will be increased.  Do not keep a watchful eye lest you slip, and give away a little bit of what you might have sold.  Do not censor your thoughts to gain a wide audience.  Like love, talent is only useful in its expenditure, and it is never exhausted.  Certain it is that man must eat; so set what price you must on your service.  But never confuse the performance, which is great, with the compensation, be it money, power, or fame, which is trivial.

…The job is there, you will see it, and your strength is such, as you graduate…that you need not consider what the task will cost you.  It is not enough that you do your duty.  The richness of life lies in the performance which is above and beyond the call of duty.

Elbert Parr Tuttle, Heroism in War and Peace, The Emory University Quarterly.  1957; 13: 129-30.

Your Leadership Matters

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I’ve been struggling with how to address last Friday’s tragedy in Newtown. Perhaps you are from the Connecticut area; more likely, you’re a parent from another part of the country or world.  I am neither, and yet last Friday’s events have shaken me to my core.  My thoughts and prayers go out to those directly affected, as well as to those of you who have had to explain what happened and why to children and then to send those children back into the world, knowing that safety may be more illusory than we had imagined.

There’s been much discussion about what we as a society should do in terms of gun control, making treatment more available for the mentally ill, and protecting our children.  This blog isn’t the forum for me to promote the solutions that seem most appropriate to me.  The bottom line for me is, as expressed by Nelson Mandela, “We owe our children — the most vulnerable citizens in any society — a life free from violence and fear.”

As lawyers, we are in a unique position.  We are not “more equal” in any Orwellian sense, but we are often de facto leaders in our communities.  There’s been a great deal of discussion about whether this is the time for mourning or action, but I personally believe that the stakes are so high that the two should not be separated.

Please, use your leadership and your voice to advance the solutions that you think stand the best chance of creating the life our children deserve.  I will be doing the same in my community.  And whether we agree or disagree about the “how” of building a safer society, I believe that the free and open dialogue joined with action will advance that goal.

I wish those of you who will be celebrating Christmas next week a peaceful and joy-filled holiday with those you love.

Addressing Burnout: Your Productivity Depends On It

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Burnout is a real issue for lawyers.  Just about every lawyer has at least an occasional period in which it seems that work is pressing 18-20 hours a day, and most of us know intuitively that it’s important to recover following that kind of exertion.

But what about the kind of day-to-day grind that can cause low-level burnout?  Especially in the economic environment that’s existed over the last few years, many of us are delaying or even skipping vacation and working as much as possible, in part from fear that even a tiny “misstep” could jeopardize an entire practice.

Back in 2007, Chuck Newton posted on the “Cure for Lazy Lawyer Syndrome”.  It’s a terrific article that describes with a visceral clarity what it’s like to struggle with low-grade burnout:

You know something is wrong.  You intend to get to work early to catch up, but fail to do so.  You just cannot seem to make yourself finish that brief that is due in a week.  You avoid phone calls you know you should take.  You take a phone call and you know you should make a note, but you just cannot make yourself get around to it.  Then you forget the necessary details.  You know you should call your client, but it is so-o-o-o inconvenient.  You start to feel overwhelmed and you cannot find a starting place from which to even begin to catch up.  You are just feeling tired, depressed and rundown.  Vitamins do not seem to help much.

Does that sound all too familiar?  As I’ve noted before, the issues that arise in consulting with my clients tend to be cyclical, and this level of burnout seems to be pervasive right now.

Low-level burnout is especially challenging in the context of business development, especially for reluctant rainmakers.  If you’re not seeing enough results (or not seeing them fast enough), it’s easy to get sucked into taking on more activity — often without pausing to create a strategic plan — that gets almost frenetic.  Without a good plan, it’s often random activity that leads to random results, which leads to burnout plus a sense of I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a rainmaker failure.

Chuck’s post offers a solution, and he’s hit the nail right on the head:

My suggestion is that you will feel better about yourself, your practice and your competence if you will concentrate harder on the practice of law for shorter periods of time.  When you are in the zone, be in the zone.  Focus, but not so long that you get eye strain.

***

Short times away from your work (and I mean absolutely disconnecting from your work) will help you to be more productive and energetic back at your work.

Chuck emphasizes that this advice is especially important for “home office lawyers, connected lawyers and Third Wave Lawyers”.  (As a sidenote, Chuck’s Third Wave Lawyer blog always has interesting observations.)  But to my mind, it’s critical for all lawyers, especially since most of us are now “connected” most of the time.

The idea of short periods of intense focus alternating with periods of complete disengagement can be applied in any practice setting.  The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz uses the analogy of sport to promote the proposition that “full engagement” requires selective disengagement from work.  If you’re feeling burned out, set aside a weekend to read and reflect on this book.

The risk of low-level burnout is that it makes everything less pleasant; it leads to reduced energy, reduced efficiency, and reduced productivity; and if left “untreated”, it can lead to major burnout.  My father, who’s practiced law since the mid-1960s, has given me much good advice, but one piece is especially relevant here.  Make it a habit — an occasional habit, but a habit nonetheless — to escape from the office midday, whether it’s to see a movie, to visit a bookstore or museum, or to take a walk somewhere.  Although the escape is great therapy to cure burnout, it’s even better applied to avoid it.

 

Would you prefer slow-yield or high-yield activity?

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Last week on Twitter, I posted this innocuous (I thought) statement:  “Writing and speaking tend to be time-sensitive activities with low immediate payoff.”

And then the firestorm started.  It seemed that people just had to remind me that writing and speaking are good long-term strategies for business development.  To which I’d respond, of course!

When you write and speak in your area of practice, you create objective evidence that you know the subject on which you were writing or speaking, and you demonstrate that others want to learn from you.  Is that valuable?  Absolutely.

When a potential client or referral source compares two biographical sketches, one with a long list of publications and presentations and one with a short or nonexistent list, guess who looks better?  The long list builds credibility immediately, even if the person reviewing the list lacks the knowledge to make any kind of substantive determination about the lawyer’s competence.

Objective evidence of competence, built through publication and presentation lists, is valuable.  Done well, that work can deliver dividends for years, both as reputation enhancement and as good content for following up with new contacts.

But…

If you’re looking to bring in new business as quickly as possible, writing and speaking are unlikely to deliver the return you’re seeking.

Preparing a publication or presentation usually takes a lot of time.  When you know how, you can limit the time required to some extent (you may even be able to have a junior colleague do some of the heavy lifting for you) and you can shape your work product to be both informative and marketing-friendly.  But before you put your name on a publication, or before you stand up to speak to an audience, you’ll put in a lot of time to make sure you have everything straight. It isn’t light duty.

Most lawyers find that speaking generates contacts but usually not an immediate influx of business and that writing rarely even generates contacts.  That’s because there’s a distance (physical or conceptual) between you and your audience, even if you’re writing and speaking to the ideal audience.  There’s a barrier that a potential client would have to scale to consult with you about a specific matter.  And most people simply won’t scale that barrier in the ordinary circumstance.

So, in summary, writing and speaking can help you to build a great reputation, and you can harness the benefit of your work in a variety of ways over time…  But you probably won’t see a quick uptick in your business.  Does that mean you should not write or speak?  Absolutely not.  Every lawyer can benefit from writing and speaking, if that work is done well and with an eye toward its use in marketing.

But too many lawyers get stuck in the trap or wanting to build such a good reputation that clients will seek them out.  It’s a nice fantasy, and at one time it might have been closer to reality — but not now.  Just as a wise farmer plants crops that will mature at different times, you should plan marketing activities that will deliver results at different stages.  And you must recognize that, in most instances, writing and speaking are long-term strategies.

So, what’s a short-term strategy?

If you need business today, close your email right now and go meet with your clients, former clients, and those who have referred you business in the past.  When you finish those conversations, meet with people you know well who need your service but haven’t yet given you business.  Talk about what’s going on for them, share what you’ve been working on, and explore where need meets ability.  Listen more than you speak.  Hour-for-hour, those conversations will deliver a bigger and faster payoff almost every single time.

Writing or speaking vs. building relationships?  You must do both.  Choose which activities to do when based on what your goals are.  Just don’t convince yourself that you can sequester yourself in your office and write a great article that will deliver a steady stream of clients to your door right away.

(Incidentally, if you aren’t following me on Twitter, you might want to begin, since I share useful resources there on a daily basis.  Follow me @juliefleming.)

 

You’ve got to face reality

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I’d intended to share quotes about recognizing reality as a path to creating change, but I keep bumping into powerful quotes from Jack Welch.  And so, I offer you these three quotes that are, in themselves, a good guide to business planning.

“Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.”

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

“Change before you have to.”

~Jack Welch

You’ve Got to Conquer Your Resistance. Here’s How.

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Until recently, I was most familiar with Steven Pressfield as the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, though he has written a number of other well-received books.  And then a year ago, I ran across The War of Art.  Curious, since I’d just finished The Art of War, I started reading and found myself drawn into a world that I quickly recognized as my own.

“It’s not the writing part that’s hard.
What’s hard is sitting down to write.”

“Most of us have two lives.  The life we live, and
the unlived life within us.  Between the two lies Resistance.”

Pressfield’s thesis is that we all have something within us that both seeks and runs from expression.  The book is written expressly for creatives, but even a cursory read reveals that it applies to everyone who has a big goal or calling of some sort.  Pressfield speaks specifically to divinely-inspired genius, and the latter part of the book delves into the role of the divine in genius and talent.  Whatever the source of this talent, however, Pressfield’s focus and his brilliance lies in explaining the role of Resistance and how to recognize and ultimately vanquish it.

Pressfield defines Resistance as “the enemy within”, a “repelling force” that “prevents us from doing our work”.  Resistance comes in many forms:  procrastination, personal drama, and “plausible, rational justifications for why we shouldn’t do our work”.  As I read, it became clear to me that “our work” refers equally to writing or any other form of art and to the work of practicing law, including building a book of business.

In The War of Art, Pressfield introduces the pro, meaning one who combats Resistance and is determined to do the work.  The pro knows that “if he caves in today, no matter how plausible the pretext, he’ll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow.  The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you’re finished.  The pro doesn’t even pick up the phone.  He stays at work.”  In Turning Pro, Pressfield further distinguishes the amateur from the pro and offers insight into making the shift.

The concept of Resistance (and Pressfield’s specific identification of its dangers) prompted me to read The War of Art through a lawyer’s eyes.  As I did, I discovered that Pressfield describes almost every one of the key mistakes I see among would-be rainmakers.  For example:

  • Would-be rainmakers often plunge headfirst into activity, frantically doing everything that seems like it might lead to new business.  Pressfield identifies the cause of this hyperactivity as Resistance:  “Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion.  It knows we can’t sustain that level of intensity.  We will hit the wall.  We will crash.”  Instead of the pedal-to-the-metal approach, he counsels, look on the work as a marathon, and prepare for the long haul.
  • Likewise, engaging in over-the-top activity leaves little time for study and developing skills.  Like firing up a new gadget without reading any of the instructions, jumping from one activity to another can yield superficial success but will never lead to the level of success that results from truly mastering skills.  “The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.”
  • Fear can paralyze the aspiring rainmaker, resulting in too much planning and little, if any, action.  We lawyers don’t often talk about fear in a professional setting, but the truth is that stepping up to build a book of business can arouse fears of saying or doing the wrong thing, looking dumb, seeming pushy or desperate, being rejected, being perceived as unprofessional, and so much more.  Preparation can reduce some of those fears, but as Pressfield observes, anyone who succeeds in doing the work “knows that once he gets out into the action, his fear will recede and he’ll be okay.”  The only way out of fear is to move through it.

What’s in it for lawyers?  The War of Art and Turning Pro both address a problem that often goes unaddressed in the business literature.  Self-sabotage is rampant, and Pressfield nails both the why and the solution in his description of Resistance.

While you may not feel that your practice rises to the level of a calling, committing fully to becoming a rainmaker (through study, planning, and action) requires deep dedication to the goal and a compelling reason to continue despite the inevitable setbacks and difficulties.  Success requires conquering Resistance.

Nearly every successful author adheres to the discipline of daily writing.  Even if the writing for the day is dreadful, the act of writing makes the flashes of inspiration possible.

Parallels exist for every pursuit you might imagine.  In the context of business development, daily activity ensures that something happens each day.  On some days, that something may be fairly meaningless, but showing up and doing the work every single day creates the opportunity to be in the right place at the right time to meet a key contact or to have a conversation with a potential client just after an unmet legal need has popped up.

The War of Art and Turning Pro are poetic, juicy books that might be best consumed on vacation or over a glass of wine.  They speak to the mind, but they influence the heart.  Having read the books, you will be better able to identify and combat Resistance.  You’ll also find yourself inspired by the drama that Pressfield describes.  Although the books are somewhat light on step-by-step “how to” instructions, you’ll find gems throughout.

How effective is your website?

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Recently, I’ve searched several times for a lawyer (or other client service provider) only to discover that he or she doesn’t have a website, or that it’s woefully out of date. In the past, websites were expensive to create and difficult to maintain, so web developers tended to charge quite a lot for their work. Indeed, many would hold the websites hostage so that only they could make updates and changes. No more! 

The bottom line is that you must have an up-to-date website. In today’s market, the failure to do so tends to sends the message that you aren’t in step with today’s economy or even our modern culture. Period. 

Your website must connect with your potential clients and address their needs and questions. For years, websites functioned as pretty (or not) online brochures. No more.

Your website must let potential clients know that you understand their needs. Programmers created a word I love: grok. To “grok” (as best I, a non-programmer get it) means to understand on a deep, almost visceral level. Your website needs to let your clients know you grok them and their concerns. 

The first way to communicate deep understanding is to use website copy that talks to your clients about their concerns, not at them about your experience. Which approach do you find more persuasive and helpful when you’re searching for something online you need? 

Far too many websites open with something like, “Here at Black & White, our lawyers have 500 years’ experience in handling real estate, intellectual property, and personal injury matters.” A potential client needs to know that you understand something about their concerns before they care about your experience or credentials. Start where your clients are. 

Two effective ways to communicate with potential clients via a website: describe client concerns using declarative statements, or ask “pull” questions. “Pull” marketing is marketing that is intended to prompt someone to self-identify as your potential client or to repel them if they don’t meet your client profile. The purpose of these two formats is identical, and both can be effective. 

As you’re drafting your website copy, pay attention to the number of times words like “you” and “your” are used compared to the frequency of “I”, “we”, “mine”, or “our”. You should have many more “you” and “our” words than “I”, “we”, “mine”, and “our”. Otherwise, you’re most likely talking at your readers, not to them. 

What if you’re in a big firm and you have no control over your website? If you’re in management, this is an issue you should examine. If not, recognize that the website is unlikely to change based on the input from a single lawyer — whether associate or partner — and figure out how to make your biographical sketch more attractive to a potential client. 

What should your website feature? 

  • A home page that talks to your potential clients.
  • Biographical sketches of each key player, focused on appropriately detailed descriptions of the individual’s experience that will show a potential client the match between that experience and the matter he or she is considering. The sketch should also include experience and credentials that serve as objective indicia of your competence.
  • If the firm is small, shorter sketches of the firm personnel that a client is likely to meet, especially those who are likely to be the client’s first or frequent contact points.
  • Articles written by or about the firm’s key personnel.
  • Presentations made by the firm’s key personnel.
  • Links to blogs maintained by the firm or its staff.
  • A subscription form for the firm’s newsletter, with a description that lets subscribers know what they’ll be receiving and an offer that will encourage subscriptions.
  • Directions to the firm’s office(s), including narratives for the most common approaches and a map.
  • Full contact information.
  • Appropriate language to comply with your state’s ethics rules.

Review your website today through fresh eyes. Ask someone who’s never read it to take a look. And then develop a time-based plan to ensure that you fix what’s broken. If you don’t have control of your website (meaning that you or a staff member can update the website on a moment’s notice), you need to correct that immediately. (Large firm lawyers are, of course, excepted from that rule.) 

If you don’t have a website, or if your website is out of date and you need to start from scratch, drop me an email and I can make some cost-sensitive suggestions. 

Create good marketing content…easily!

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Clients often tell me that they understand the importance of writing articles and making presentations, but they hold back for fear of having nothing to say. Not an unreasonable fear, since we all sometimes sit, staring blankly at an empty screen, willing the Muse to enter and deliver a great idea… And moaning when the Muse just won’t come.

If you’d like to raise your professional profile, however, and if you’d like to prepare something suited for networking follow-up and for increasing your value to contacts and clients, you’ll find that it’s hard to beat generating good marketing content by writing and speaking. So, how to ensure that you’ll always have an idea for your upcoming blog or post or other piece of marketing content? Simple. Try these ideas.

  • Keep a running list of questions you receive from clients and contacts. If you get a question often, know it’s a ripe topic for an article. Moreover, you’ll develop a second sense of what will interest your contacts over time, so you’ll be able to spot not just good questions that can lead to great content, but also the question behind the question, meaning the question that your client (or audience) didn’t even know to ask. These question lists are gold, since your article will meet your ideal client where he or she is.
  • Listen on social media. What are your contacts discussing? What articles are they sharing? What are they complaining about? What topics related to your practice are trending? All of these indicate subjects that you might cover.
  • Be a contrarian. What commonly accepted knowledge can you challenge? What myths or misunderstandings can you expose or correct? When you take a contrary point of view, you’ll catch your audience’s attention. Make a note when you disagree with a proposition that has some bearing on your practice or your clients, and keep a list that you can mine.
  • Use a case study. Stories are one of the best communication tools going, because stories create engagement. There’s a drama and an arc of a story that draws readers in and keeps listeners on the edge of their seats. When you share a client’s experience (or a case study based on several clients), you’ll likely connect with your audience, and you’ll find it easier to get writing since you’re describing and explaining something that actually happened.
  • Step onto your soapbox. What drives you crazy about what your clients or colleagues are doing? What aspect of the law relevant to your practice needs to be revised? When you share something that gets you going, you’ll find that some subset of your audience will cheer along with you and appreciate your point of view. Just be sure that you’re willing to stand by your comments, since taking a stand on anything runs a risk of alienating some members of your audience. When you use this approach carefully, that’s actually a positive effect, because those who don’t resonate with your message (at some level) aren’t your ideal clients.

Using any of these methods increases the chance that you’ll have something to say every time you sit down to write an article or a presentation. I often recommend that my clients keep this list of idea generators on their desks to remind them to watch for these opportunities. Most importantly, though, keep a document or a notebook (tangible or virtual) with your ideas. Every time you think, I should write about that, make a note of your idea and even add a few bullet points. For most of us, getting started is the hardest part of writing, and when you have a menu of ideas to choose from, you’ll find your content creation gets a lot more simple.

Enthusiasm matters in rainmaking and in client service

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How enthusiastic are you about building your practice? Not how motivated, how determined, or how skilled, but how enthusiastic? 

Enthusiasm has a bad reputation in our society and in professional circles specifically. It’s often knocked as naive or overly eager. But the truth is, we enjoy enthusiasm. Don’t you want to work with and for people who are lit up about what they’re doing? 

Your clients want to work with someone who’s enthusiastic about working with them. Whether you’re representing individuals or the largest corporations in the world, your clients want to know that you’re invested and even proactive… In other words, that you aren’t just dialing it in.

When I was in law school, I had a professor who was so enthusiastic about tax law that he infected all of his students. We did the reading and showed up to class engaged and looking forward to his lecture and our discussions. About tax. (The now-me shudders just a little at the thought, but I was drawn in like everyone else at the time.) In contrast, I had a few professors who were smart and knowledgeable, but their lack of enthusiasm left me feeling eh about their classes. And I suspect that was ok with them. 

Enthusiasm engages audiences and motivates action. 

And that carries through to rainmaking. Sure, it’s easy to create a “paint by numbers” business development plan that you execute without any particular sense of relish. But when you find a way to get fired up — whether it’s because you are passionately interested in your work or your clients — that’s when you become invested and when things can shift on a dime. 

So, how enthusiastic are you? It isn’t an idle question. Read the featured quotes below as you give this some thought. 

 

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson 

 

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, which takes the imagination by storm; and, second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.
~Arnold J. Toynbee 

 

[One] can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.
~Charles Schwab 

 

For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.
~Zig Ziglar 

5 Ways to Generate Great Content

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Content marketing refers to the process of generating articles, blog posts, presentations, and more that are centered on your practice area and that share substantive information useful to your audience. This newsletter is content marketing, for instance. When you teach a seminar to a room of clients, potential clients, or referral sources, that’s content marketing. When you speak for a CLE program, however, even though you’re presumably delivering useful information related to your practice area, it isn’t content marketing unless you stand to get business or frequent referrals from lawyers.

Content marketing is a reluctant rainmaker’s friend. When you offer valuable information to an interested audience, you’re demonstrating your knowledge, skill, trustworthiness, and approachability, among other qualities, without imposing on your audience. You’re marketing with information that’s beneficial, and your audience usually appreciates your efforts. (If they don’t, they’ll quickly leave your audience.) 

Content marketing is effective because your audience is actively interested in the information you’re sharing and you’re demonstrating your value while marketing. 

But content generation can be the bane of a lawyer’s existence. The content needs to be timely (or evergreen), relevant, easily consumed, and — most importantly — good. If you imagine sitting in front of an empty computer screen, wracking your brain for an interesting topic you can cover effectively in the time allotted, trying to squeeze in one more activity in your already-overburdened schedule, you aren’t alone.

The good news is, it doesn’t have to be so painful. Most of my clients find that coming up with ideas is the most difficult part of content marketing. Here’s how to make it easy: 

  1. Use listening tools. Twitter is great for tracking trending topics. Skim or read periodicals relevant to your industry as well as some from outside your industry. One of my favorites is Zite (available for the iPad, iPhone, and Android phones) a “personalized magazine” that pulls news from a variety of sources grouped by the categories selected by the user.
  2. Use your clients’ questions and concerns. You probably field questions day in and day out. What themes do you notice? What questions should your clients be asking? If you’re stumped, skim your outbox. You’re almost certain to find topics suitable for content marketing.
  3. Ask your clients what they’re thinking and wondering about. Not only will you learn more about your clients’ needs, which is a great business development activity in itself, but also you’ll notice themes that interest your clients and are ripe for content generation.
  4. Review a book or service that your clients will find useful. Chances are that you’re aware of sources that your clients don’t generally follow. (That’s why I review business books in this newsletter. Most lawyers don’t read these books, and I often get notes of thanks for highlighting useful information.) Bringing information they might not discover otherwise adds value.
  5. Myths, misunderstandings, and outright lies. Chances are that there are some incorrect but commonly-held beliefs or approaches related to an issue that your clients face. Sometimes it’s a simple factual misunderstanding or misinterpretation, and sometimes it’s all about the deeper truth. Debunk those misapprehensions or challenge the common wisdom. When you explain myths and truths, you can quickly get the attention of your audience.

Whatever methods you use to identify content topics, keep a running list of your ideas. You’ll probably find that the best ideas occur to you while you’re exercising, showering, watching TV — anything except sitting at your desk. Use Evernote or a simple Word document to list your ideas. That way, when you are in front of the blank computer screen, you’ll have a list of ideas ready to go.