Making sales

March 14, 2023

The modern barrister needs to be able to articulate the value of her practice to clients. For some, the prospect is more terrifying than an appearance in the Court of Appeal.

Think about the difference your work makes to other people

I would bet a sizeable sum that you’re a very good barrister. You might have your off days but putting aside imposter syndrome, you might venture to say that you’re competent to solve simple, or complex legal problems.

There are people out there who need you to solve their problems because they can’t do it for themselves.

If you do a good job, a loving parent might get his kids back, or a family might receive compensation for a life-altering injury, or a small business owner might keep their business from going under.

That’s high-impact, socially-useful work.

Explain how you can help

If you were a great father who’d been let down by the system, were at risk of losing access to your children, and had no idea whether you had recourse, imagine stumbling on a chambers profile or website across which was written this:

“I can help you get your kids back”

If you were the father, you’d read on.

Imagine now that the statement is accompanied by an image of someone looking like a barrister, standing beside a smiling father holding the hand of a happy child.

That’s a powerful image to show the outcome of the decision to work with you.

Now imagine that underneath the picture there’s a one-sentence quote from one of your former clients, saying how much you’d changed his life with your work.

That’s objective social proof that your work is solving real problems.

You’re not selling. You’ve solving problems.

The hangover from a time when you were not permitted to tout for work lingers. You can change how you think about how you present yourself.

Take the time to think through the actual problem you’re solving for your client and then write down how you solve it.

The value to your client isn’t the hours you spend on legal research, or your technique to draft a beautiful skeleton argument, or the number of times in a row your witness says “yes”.

That’s your toolkit to get to the solution of your client’s problem.

The value to your client is the problem you solve and what that resolution will mean for their lives.

Start talking to clients in the language of problems and solutions and your ‘sales’ conversations will change overnight.