The goal of authority marketing for lawyers is simple. You want to be the first name that comes to mind for the type of legal work you provide for a specific audience.

Most people think of this in terms of building a referral network that’s responsible for most, if not all, of a law firm’s business in a particular practice area. That is valuable, but it’s a very old-school way of thinking about authority marketing.

A better approach is to look for ways to expand your inner circle of referral sources – people who trust you and refer you without hesitation. This would allow you to get business from a larger, more diverse circle of referral sources.

If you’re like most attorneys, you have precious few dependable referral sources. If one of them stopped feeding you business, it would probably be more painful than you realize.

Most attorneys only consider two models when they’re trying to grow their law practice. They either do everything themselves, or they hire an employee and delegate.

Neither model will get you very far. If you try to do everything yourself, it’s pretty much impossible to grow. If you don’t have staff or only have part-time staff, you won’t be able to delegate very much.

When it comes to legal fees, most attorneys figure out a way to charge clients when they start their practice. More often than not, they establish a fee structure, usually billable hours, based on what every other practice does.

Aside from the occasional increase, they don’t think about it. They set it and forget it.

It’s time to turn off the cruise control.

A lot of attorneys aren’t sure if it’s even possible to grow their practice. They’ve hit a ceiling and they’re not sure why.

Are you experiencing something similar?

I want to share a framework we use for describing how practices grow, and hopefully in the course of understanding this, you’ll discover exactly what’s limiting your practice.

This is the Practice Growth Pyramid.

A lot of attorneys think the practice of law has always happened the same way.

In actuality, the current model for practicing law is a relatively new invention, especially with smaller firms and solo practitioners. The paradigm of today which uses billable hours and modern firm structure is a product of just the last 50 years.

When we realize law hasn’t always been practiced this way, we see that the original model of practicing law didn’t really need to be fixed.

How much of yesterday did you spend on tasks that can help you grow your law firm? How much time did you spend treading water and keeping the lights on?

Don’t get all defensive on me, but you’re probably making excuses. Those excuses are keeping you from growing your law firm.

I can pretty much bank on it - because that’s the case with almost every lawyer I meet. It was the case with me, too.

Excuses slowed my law firm’s growth. I was set in my habits, which weren’t necessarily the right ones. I followed the same pattern of just showing up at the office, checking email, checking voicemail, and repeating this OCD-driven loop, like a hamster in a wheel.