I Threw a Party but Nobody Came

• Author: David V. Lorenzo
• Pages: 80-81

§40. Client Attraction Secrets for Lawyers

80

§40.

I THREW A PARTY BUT NOBODY CAME

It was awful.

When I was in college I moved into a new apartment during my senior year. To celebrate my

move I invited about two dozen of my friends to my house to watch a basketball game.

I went to the store and got a platter of assorted sandwiches. I stopped at the bakery and got a

cake in the shape of a basketball. I went to the distributor and purchased enough adult beverages

to make sure everyone had a good time. I borrowed chairs from my neighbor and I set them up so

that everyone had a great view of the television.

Then I waited. And waited. And waited.

By the time the buzzer sounded to end the game, I felt pretty lousy. I rationalized that the

people I thought were my friends must have suddenly stopped liking me.

A few days later I found out that wasn’t the case at all. You see I invited these people over at

the last minute and most of them already made plans for the evening. A couple of them got stuck

at work and one of them didn’t have my new address or phone number.

My poor execution during a critical part of the party planning process lead to a disappointing

result.

I see this all the time in law firm marketing.

A lawyer will try one form of marketing and in doing so he will leave out one or two critical

components. This leads to disappointing results and the lawyer decides marketing doesn’t work.

In my case, I learned a valuable lesson in party planning. But I had to learn through trial and

error.

In the case of the lawyers, many of them totally give up on marketing and stick to “waiting

for the phone to ring.” They do this because they don’t want to relive the painful experience of

marketing failures from the past. Trial and error is just too costly.

There is another way.

Reach out to someone who has experience and follow their system.

You don’t need to go through the pain of trial and error over and over again. You don’t have to

compromise on the quality or quantity of clients in your law firm because you do not know how

to “get marketing to work.”