Career Development & Wellness - Persistence and Confidence: The Conditions for the Rainmaker’s Perfect Storm

Developing a brand is key to your ability as an attorney to practice law in the setting you want, in the area of law you want, and with the clients you want. It gives you career freedom from any one job. Distractions and detractors (including your self-doubt) will be the most common challenges to building a brand. Having confidence and persistence, with those terms properly understood and applied, will overcome any obstacle.

Early in my career, I watched many of my contemporaries leave the practice to pursue more lucrative positions at financial institutions and family offices. Even for me, a fourth-generation practicing attorney who only wanted to practice law, I could see the temptation as the positions offered interesting work without the pressure of building and maintaining a practice. Although they had less autonomy, I perceived these positions as more secure than practicing at a law firm with inconsistent financials and struggling to eek it out every year. A senior partner at my prior firm gave me an important lesson—if you have a client base who knows you and has bought into you (i.e., your brand)—that is your security and freedom. He didn’t just give me the message—he showed me in practice. When he felt the firm was not adequately valuing his contributions, he and his clients simply left. Many of his former partners tried to talk him down to me, but all I heard was bitterness rather than a compelling brand from these attorneys who lacked confidence and, in turn, the freedom to leave themselves without the ability to generate business. Building a client base isn’t about persuading clients to hire you—it is about unabashedly showing who you are. For the clients who need you and will appreciate you, presenting your brand will bring them in. The brand will also serve as a necessary filter for the unworthy client or the client your firm isn’t the right fit for.

The biggest impediment to younger attorneys is the modern world’s distractions. The profession is not immune from the bleatings of influencers. In our profession, we see this in the ramblings of LinkedIn charlatans proclaiming the false gospel of their services and (frequently misguided) methods while seeking to persuade readers of their greatness by making up parables about things they never did or could do and encouraging you to mimic them. These people don’t know you or care about you—they care about clicks and likes. So why give them any heed? Distractions can also exist inside organizations with marketing professionals. I have been fortunate to know some incredible marketing professionals who are often underappreciated. They can’t do the job of selling you because clients want to know the attorney, and it’s your job to sell yourself. They can, however, add tremendous value by bringing unique insights from their experience of what has and hasn’t worked for others. At the same time, I have seen marketing staff who dedicated their time to justifying their value and getting perks rather than developing or deploying any skill set that could add value to the attorneys in learning how to pitch effectively. Discerning the difference between the two while navigating internal politics in a firm can be difficult for junior attorneys. The point is this—while there can be people who can help you build a brand—it is on you. If you don’t take that responsibility, you will have excuses or a few parroted phrases with no depth and not a brand—one you can monetize and the other you can’t.

Confidence

The word “confidence” has multiple connotations. In the negative sense, it can be a nicer way of saying “cocky” or to justify recklessness. That’s not what I am talking about. Confidence is not simply an outward showing—it is the unshakeable internal knowledge of one’s values and worth (including the potential and ability to evolve). So, the first question in building your brand is: Who are you? What you value, what you like doing, and who you enjoy working with (as well as the opposite of all of those things) requires careful discernment. Building a brand around who you are and not what you perceive others want you to be requires confidence. This is not a one-time exercise but one that requires periodic reflection.

I don’t pretend to know how you go through this process of self-discovery and discernment for you, but I will share what worked for me. First, give yourself some grace—it is not easy because it is so personal. When I was building my firm, there were many people and resources to provide guidance on what software, compensation model, insurance, etc., but your values and desires are on you alone. So, expect some trial and error to find what process works for you. My method was to start writing. I dug up an old notebook and just started writing, which led to many revisions of what I wanted. I wasn’t sketching out a marketing plan; this was creating the North Star (i.e., my brand) that all future decisions (including marketing) would uncompromisingly follow. Don’t dismiss or deride such an exercise as being soft or touchy-feely. My plan included how much money I wanted to make, the type of schedule I wanted, the environment that would allow me to be a good husband and father, the type of clients I liked and didn’t like, the type of projects I liked working on and those I didn’t, the methods of marketing I enjoyed, the volunteer efforts I wanted to pursue, and much more. The point is this: how can you sell what you don’t know? So, know thyself.

Confidence is not just an internal reflection exercise—looking to external examples is essential. Being humble enough to recognize there are lessons to learn from others is a showing of confidence—pretending you know it all or being too timid to ask for advice and mentorship is cocky and reckless. Ask attorneys you have admired for some time to share their experiences and to bounce ideas off of. As a junior attorney, watch those senior to you, not to mimic but to evaluate different approaches and find what works for you. There is also life outside the law—I discovered that I had lessons to learn from clients of mine who had built their businesses and were living fulfilling lives.

Persistence

Building a brand takes time. It is not linear, and you will encounter unexpected challenges and opportunities. Overreacting or course-correcting away from that North Star you developed means the one thing you are sure to avoid achieving is what you set out to do. Indeed, it would help if you reflected on the results of your methodologies but give it time. Why should something that can define and benefit your career over decades take a moment to make? This is where the LinkedIn charlatans and unhelpful marketers produce the most distracting background noise by giving the false impression that anyone can do it and that there is a simple method that if you do X, Y, and Z, there is your brand. Instead, be grateful it is a grind because if it weren’t, you set the bar too low given your potential. The message here isn’t to plow ahead no matter what. It is to ensure you go far enough to judge your results and make appropriate adjustments accurately.

Also, it is essential to realize that consistency is key to branding and success because of how the outside world perceives you. For my practice and firm, our clients and our networks read from the same hymnal when they tell others about us. Because my colleagues and I are persistent and consistent in how we serve clients and carry ourselves inside and outside the firm, there is no mixed messaging, and we can be seen as authentic more easily. If you tell different sources different things in hopes of telling them what they want to hear and not what you want to say—then that approach, which derives from a lack of confidence, will filter out so that the message the market receives is not that you are good at everything but that no one (including you) knows what it is you do well.

Putting Confidence and Persistence in Practice

I encourage you to get an old notebook (or whatever works for your thought process) and start the process of planning and then building your brand. Being confident in who you are and how you live it while being persistent in doing so makes you authentic. Being authentic will make you happier and more attractive to your clients. After all, why should a client trust your legal advice when the client can’t trust who you are? Through confidence and persistence, you can build a brand and, in turn, make it rain business whenever you want, which means your practice and life won’t be subject to the currents of others who don’t share your values or value you.