Small Law Firms, Technology

Reinventing The Law Business: Online Marketing – Yes? No?

Managing partner Bruce Stachenfeld writes in defense of networking the old-fashioned way.

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In our tech-driven world, rarely do people settle on the idea that the old-fashioned way of doing something outweighs the snazzy new tech-savvy way. For example, a cell phone wins out over an old-fashioned landline; the internet beats out looking up information in the Encyclopædia Britannica; and email crushes its long-forgotten competition known as the letter and now even better known as “snail-mail.” So, I have been wondering about how this might apply to building business and relationships in the legal world. Here are my thoughts:

On the one hand, I think about how I have been successful as a lawyer. My personal belief is that the biggest reason I have been successful in my career is that I spend a great deal of time out with clients. I get to know them; I learn what they are trying to accomplish; I learn what they are looking for and try to help them get it (e.g., a lot of them want connections with other clients); I come up with strategies and ideas to help them build their businesses; and, finally, I have a good time just being with them. A “relationship” is built by personal contact.

On the other hand, I hear about all these newfangled technological toys. Everything from LinkedIn to Facebook to iPhones to texting to things that are “even better” than LinkedIn and probably many other tech offerings that I don’t even know about. And I hear how these are going to make my old-fashioned way of doing business obsolete. For example, I could either press a button and “link” with a thousand people or spend a year meeting those same thousand people. Am I out of step with the times and out of touch with the new technological reality?

As I think about this, I will admit to being not that much of a tech whiz. Twenty years ago I thought email was a “fad” (and people still make fun of me for that), I cannot “text” (although I have seen it done), and I think I am the only person left in the United States who is not on Facebook, etc. However, I am capable of learning from past mistakes, and sometimes I wonder if I am missing something.

I tried to take a first step into the technological world with LinkedIn. I had heard that LinkedIn is “sort of like Facebook but in the business-world” — right? I figured this should be up my alley. The company has a purpose to “link” people together. This, I thought, is the same thing as the connecting that I do. So, I reasoned that LinkedIn could be amazingly helpful to me. It seems like scarcely a day goes by that someone doesn’t ask to connect with me, and I always “accept” the request. I even got my assistant to help me set up a “bio” on LinkedIn, thinking that all sorts of amazing things were now bound to happen.

I continued by asking people I know who are more tech-savvy than me how to actually “use” LinkedIn. There were vague answers, like: “Oh it’s useful when you look for a job.” I asked if anyone had actually made a “useful” connection on it. But no one that I spoke to had actually done that (other than a headhunter, I much respect, who said he uses LinkedIn to research parties to see what contacts they have in common before reaching out).

I recall now that someone had indeed connected with me on LinkedIn recently who I really wanted to speak to, and it popped up through my old-fashioned email account. I figured he must be a real LinkedIn aficionado. So I had my assistant come into my office so that we could figure out how to respond to him on LinkedIn (as opposed to using that old-fashioned email fad that people occasionally still use). After figuring it out, we duly sent out a responsive message to him on LinkedIn, but there was no response. Initially, I thought the counterparty just didn’t want to talk to me after all, but then I learned anecdotally that a fair number of people don’t seem to actually check messages on LinkedIn. So I don’t really know if he was blowing me off or never heard from me in the first place.

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So let me stop picking on poor LinkedIn and get to my point. I guess I cannot prove it, but I don’t see LinkedIn or any of the other technological contraptions replacing the most critical component of what lawyers need to do to be successful in their careers: namely, they have to get up out of their chairs and away from their computer screens and go out and talk to people face to face and interact with their contacts in person. That is where things happen.

We have a saying that we have adopted at my firm, which is this: “If you get out and about and mix with people, there is admittedly a good chance that nothing may happen. However, if you don’t get out and about and mix with people, it becomes a virtual certainty that nothing will happen.”

Ultimately, I see this time and again and again and again. Those who get “out and about” become rainmakers and very successful in their legal careers. Those who do not do that occasionally succeed, it is true, but it is much rarer.

So, where I come out is lawyers should get out and about in order to succeed.

By the way, if you disagree with me, I urge you to send me an old-fashioned email rather than a LinkedIn message because, sorry to say, I don’t actually check my LinkedIn inbox…

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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.

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