Reinventing The Law Business: Blend In At Your Peril; You Need To Stand Out

According to managing partner Bruce Stachenfeld, you don’t need all customers (clients or lawyers), just a few who really want you badly.

I give credit for the inspiration of this article to a writer named Seth Godin who wrote a book called The Purple Cow (affiliate link). My law firm benefited hugely from this book.

The theory of the Purple Cow in a nutshell is that you should try to STAND OUT like a purple cow would stand out from the other mere brown cows. If you don’t STAND OUT, then you just blend in, and you are nothing at all.

Okay, so that is a good point – as if you didn’t know that already. But it is not that simple. And here is why. Our instincts and everything we learn every day – our emotions, our colleagues, and our loved ones – all lead us in the safe (and wrong) direction.

And the reason for this is very simple:

If you do something that stands out, then by definition it has not been done before or at least isn’t being done now and it is therefore risky.

You might just fail.

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And worse yet, you might get laughed at.

Trying something new that stands out is by definition dangerous and scary – you could be totally humiliated.

And really – who is going to tell you to risk it all and take a chance to do something no-one is doing or has done?

But here is the good part: when you do something no one else has done before and you succeed, you often attain exceptional upside.

A quick example is that family law firm in Chicago that caused a major ruckus by posting sexy ads on prominent billboards of men and women in provocative poses. And it said:

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Many people were offended. Everyone had an opinion – and many of those opinions were very negative. But there were also many other people that called the law firm up to retain them as counsel!

And this brings us to the mathematical contradiction of the purple cow – and the main place where your instincts lead you astray. When you think about marketing or evaluating an idea your instincts tell you:

Don’t offend anyone.

Don’t turn off anyone.

Don’t do anything wrong.

Because the person you offend could be the person you want as a customer or, in a law firm, the lawyer you want to join your firm!

But that absolutely is the wrong way to think. Because in almost no business do you need everyone or even close to everyone as a customer. You just need some customers to really in the worst way want to be your customers. This applies in just about any business, and it certainly applies in the law business.

If you get nothing else from this article, this is the key point: you don’t need all customers (clients or lawyers), just a few customers who really want you badly. Those who you inspire and who inspire you are the very few you want to deal with.

So far this is very theoretical; let me now apply this to my law firm and show you what I mean in a bit more depth.

So, as you probably know, I am a lawyer – I am the managing partner of Duval & Stachenfeld. We are an approximately 70-lawyer law firm in midtown Manhattan that is entirely centered around real estate; indeed, we call ourselves the “Pure Play in Real Estate,” since all of our practice areas are centered around real estate. And things are pretty good right now – business is great.

However, long ago, when I started out things weren’t good at all. Like any fledgling business, we were struggling.

And I devised a plan – to build a law firm based on the theory that we would sincerely care about our clients. It was kind of a law firm built on “love” in a way.

Everyone – and I mean everyone – told me this was about the dumbest idea ever. This included almost all of my partners, my employees, my friends, and my family.

But I didn’t give this up. I knew that most lawyers weren’t happy and most lawyer/client relationships were uninspiring. There had to be a better way to do things and maybe this was it, so I kept at it.

Eventually this evolved into our “hedgehog principle,” which in a nutshell is that we deeply care about our lawyers and our clients not just because lawyers bill hours and clients pay money but because there is something special about the relationship.

Fast forward – now it is the centerpiece of our firm. We have a hedgehog committee, dedicated to just making our firm a great place to work, and a hedgehog logo, which reminds us why we are in business. And all lawyers and clients get stuffed hedgehogs to remind us.

Things are going very well right now, and the reason for that is simple – everyone loves to be loved.

Yet when I started this out, it was an idea that everyone told me was just plain stupid. It was a foolish sounding idea that seemed utterly crazy and has now become the heart of my business and the depth of the reason for its success.

We took a big chance here. We did something no one else was doing – something that was scary and daring – something that made us stand out. And it worked out very well, but of course it could have gone the other way.

. . . .

Ultimately, we all have two choices in our legal lives:

We can go through our lives and our careers in the legal world as people who always play it safe, and we can make all sorts of excuses why playing it safe is the right and smart thing to do, or we can go for the gusto and take some chances.

What I have learned over time is this: if I try to do exactly what players who are bigger and stronger and more established than me are doing in exactly the same way they are doing it – and I try to do it better – e.g., if I try to be like Cravath, Swaine & Moore, only better — the only things that will be happen are:

I will fail.

I will fail slowly.

I will never be embarrassed.

And I will not really ever even know why I failed – I will just gradually fade away.

And you too – you could indeed play it safe in your legal life – or you could come up with some genuine ways to STAND OUT that play to your strengths and see what happens.


Bruce Stachenfeld is the managing partner of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP, which is an approximately 70-lawyer law firm based in midtown Manhattan. The firm is known as “The Pure Play in Real Estate Law” because all of its practice areas are focused around real estate. With over 50 full-time real estate lawyers, the firm is one of the largest real estate law practices in New York City. You can contact Bruce by email at thehedgehoglawyer@gmail.com.