Should We Teach Law Students “How to Sell Law,” Including Elder Law?
Recently, a long-time friend, a successful business person, sent me a link to an Inc. article about an interesting course at the University of Chicago called “Entrepreneurial Selling.” The course was taught in the Business School and the Inc. article included the course syllabus. My friend asked “should lawyers — and by extension law students — be taking this kind of course?” Reading the first line of the article made me shudder just a little, because it made the distinction between learning “how to sell,” versus mere “marketing,” especially for small businesses. But, the more I read, the more I was intrigued. My friend (a non-lawyer) argued that selling is the art of effective communication and lawyers are or should be all about effective communication.
That got me thinking, and I realized that some of the most effective “sellers” of law are Elder Law attorneys, who regularly engage with the public in social and business contexts, always with their eyes open for new relationships and new clients. As examples, I’ve witnessed (and participated in) an interesting variety of educational seminars for the public or other professionals that were sponsored by Elder Law firms or Elder Law attorneys.
Elder Law is still a relatively young (and evolving) field. Most members of the public have little understanding of what might be covered by the term. Indeed, two summers ago, a group of law students and I were sharply reminded of that fact while doing a state-wide research project with focus groups of older adults and their families, asking them to talk about access to trustworthy legal advice and information. We frequently encountered people who thought of Elder Law as “writing wills for old people,” or similar amusing, if worrisome, definitions. Thus, “selling” the field is perhaps especially important and necessary.
But, of course, that leads to more questions. Is there an ethical model for “selling” a particular field of law, particularly a field that may not be well understood by the potential client base? Is so, what are the elements of that model?
What is necessary, for example, to avoid the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s concerns about manipulation of potential clients, as addressed in an earlier post on this blog about investment products marketed to seniors? I’m tempted to say that one possible element of an ethical model would be to de-couple the educational programming from the client-retention meetings, but perhaps I’m being very naive, trapped in my ivory tower.
Silvia Hodges, who runs a blog subtitled The Legal Firm as a Business, recently published “I Didn’t Go to Law School to Become a Salesperson — The Development of Marketing in Law Firms.” in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. She argues that “lawyers [often] mature in their professions without marketing training and therefore are … ill-prepared to handle both the business and the professional part of their profession simultaneously.” She refers to the problem as “market disorientation,” where lawyers “consistently underrate the importance of clients’ selection clues and criteria.” She concludes that law firms “need to aspire to have marketing embedded in their firm culture, independent of whether the firm is a professional partnership or a managed professional business.”
Perhaps the first step to that culture change should occur in law school, and thus “selling law” should also be addressed specifically in Elder Law classes.