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It Ain't Easy: A Review Of 'The Practice' By Brian Tannebaum

Successful lawyers don’t make it to the top through social media and search engine optimization. They get there by working hard, knowing their practice area, building a reputation, developing a network, caring about their practice, liking what they do, and using good judgment. It’s old fashioned and it doesn’t require glittery new toys. So says Brian Tannebaum in his recent book, The Practice...

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Brian-TannebaumSuccessful lawyers don’t make it to the top through social media and search engine optimization. They get there by working hard, knowing their practice area, building a reputation, developing a network, caring about their practice, liking what they do, and using good judgment. It’s old fashioned and it doesn’t require glittery new toys.

So says Brian Tannebaum in his recent book, The Practice (American Bar Association 2014). It’s a collection of short pieces, many from his Above the Law column or his blog. The finished product reads more like a blog archive than a cohesive whole, and as a result has a lot of overlap and repetition. He complains again and again, for instance, about the overemphasis on online marketing, Google rankings, and other new tech toys, claiming it’s driven by unemployed lawyers who sell themselves as online marketing consultants. These self-proclaimed digital gurus prey on lawyers young and old who want a quick route to success. Those lawyers are, however, more likely to find instead, at best, an unmanageable volume of low-paying commodity clients.

Tannebaum scoffs at those who want to practice law in their shorts from Starbucks and compete for commodity work from clients who scour the Internet for the cheapest lawyer. Those lawyers may occasionally know what they’re doing, he cautions, but more often than not they don’t, because they take whatever work they can get, whether or not they know how to do it.

Much of The Practice will seem obvious to a reader with any degree of sophistication. Like other “obvious” guides by experienced and knowledgeable authors, though, the book does a nice job of collecting a set of good ideas and presenting them in one place and in a reasonably organized way. Tannebaum’s snarkiness adds some spice to the proceedings, though his bashing of online marketing grows tiresome after a while and makes the book longer than necessary. Notwithstanding that objection, the book is full of great suggestions for lawyers who want to start a law practice or improve an existing one.

So how does Tannebaum think lawyers should build a successful practice? If you are a nerd who likes doing legal research, writing law review articles, and reviewing vast piles of paper, he thinks you belong in some overpaid job in BigLaw, because you probably aren’t cut out to develop a practice at all. But he prefers a law practice that involves dealing with real people – not companies – with real problems.

Rather than attract those clients through online marketing, Tannebaum says lawyers need to develop and nurse a network that will refer work. But that involves more than handing out business cards. In fact, he’s opposed to business cards. Instead, it requires a lawyer to take a few consistent steps with an eye on the long run. Create relationships, he advises. Wait.

Make sure your referral sources know what you do (and don’t do “everything”). Get to know those referral sources slowly. Give them time. If there’s work you can’t do, refer it out; it will lead to reciprocal referrals. Lawyers in other practice areas can become great referral sources.

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Tannebaum advises lawyers to build a reputation as well as a referral network. And, of course, reputation-building means more than figuring out how to come up on page 1 of a Google search. It requires a lawyer to focus his or her practice area, become more visible in that area, and consider the priorities of prospective clients. The lawyer should try to become a go-to person for a particular kind of work. That often requires speaking and writing about topics that future clients will care about. Tannebaum acknowledges that some of that writing will appear online and drive web searches, and he’s okay with that. But online marketing is not the main event. A lawyer needs an online presence primarily so potential clients can validate the recommendations they receive from one of those all-important referral sources. Handled correctly, a well-built reputation will feed the referrals and then satisfied clients will send along more clients. That’s very different from using social media and online advertising to troll for clients.

Perhaps surprisingly, Tannebaum does favor maintaining an intelligent and substantive blog, but without search engine optimization and other measures to drive traffic. He thinks consistent and targeted blog postings, at least one a week, can help build a reputation, but again, it shouldn’t be the main event. The yeoman’s work of reputation-building happens away from the computer and ideally in person.

Tannebaum urges lawyers to get involved in something other than law – politics, a community group, even just a hobby. He points to his own experience as a member of a wine lovers’ group where he made friends, built connections, and eventually obtained some terrific clients. It’s amazing what happens when you get out of the office.

Although most of the book focuses on developing business and the care and feeding of clients, Tannebaum also offers some good advice on other things a lawyer should do to build their career. He emphasizes that lawyers need to know what they’re doing. He encourages young lawyers to find mentors and even work for free with older practitioners if necessary. Sometimes lawyers actually need to know the law and how to find it, and they need to know how to do more than running Google searches or sending out mass emails looking for forms and precedents.

Some of his advice seems platitudinous, but many platitudes are accurate and well worth remembering. Lawyers should be nice to clients, non-clients, and opposing counsel. They should speak well and have good manners and good clothes. Lawyers should take vacations and don’t really need to be available 24/7. By responding to client requests in the middle of the night, a lawyer just asks for more of the same.

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Get to know clients as people. Care about their lives, not just their legal issues. If you can solve a client’s problem quickly and efficiently, do it, even if it means less revenue today. It will mean more referrals tomorrow. Integrity and the moral high road matter.

Sometimes, Tannebaum says, a lawyer’s best client development decision is the decision to turn down a client – someone who will not pay (often the one who says “money isn’t a problem”) or will make you crazy. He also advises against being lawyer number two after a client fires lawyer number one for no good reason. And the client isn’t always right.

The Practice is on the whole rather traditional. Tannebaum may overstate the degree to which the world thinks online marketing has eclipsed good old-fashioned hard work, legal skills, and relationship building. Still, his book is well written, fun to read, and a great reminder of some timeless truths about how to succeed in the practice of law. It ain’t easy.

The Practice [American Bar Association]

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