Find Your Niche – Lawyers

New lawyers starting out in the market place as entrepreneurs are often faced with the unenviable position of making life changing business decisions right from the start with no formal business training. 

Most lawyers attended law school with the primary aim being to have a career in law.    Hence the goal throughout law school and any previous education was focused exclusively on honing and developing fantastic legal skills. 

Marketing strategies, business strategies and all of the other elements required for successfully owning and operating a business do not form part of the skill set of most lawyers seeking to operate their own law practice.

How then do you navigate the world of business and also successfully practice law?  This is the conundrum. One of the keys I discovered in the fifteen years of operating my own law practice is that one can over reach.  Lawyers, like other business owners / entrepreneurs / business partners etc., must be mindful that creating one specialty product or skill and perfecting it can have more beneficial effects than trying to develop products or skills in multiple areas. 

Lawyers should seek to curtail their practice to minimum niche areas that they can successfully manage.  Establishing yourself as a practitioner in one, two or three areas creates focus in a number of ways:

1. It establishes you as a specialist in defined areas of law and as such makes you a more credible lawyer;
2. It allows you to market yourself in a very specific way to a more defined clientele; and
3. It gives you the opportunity to seek out and cross promote with your peers who have themselves created a separate niche.

So go ahead lawyers, find your niche and promote your practice!