Do What You Do

Once upon a time, there was a partner in a law firm. His firm wasn’t quite large enough to have its own in-house marketing function, so his partners put him in charge of marketing. Partner had majored in finance in college. And he’d earned his law degree from a prestigious university. He had never taken so much as a workshop on marketing.

But Partner knew how to write. He wrote briefs all the time; surely he could write blog posts for the firm website. And attorney bios — how hard could they be?

Partner is also very smart, and is, well, a partner at a law firm, so he assigned each attorney to write their own website bios. His assistant collected them — the ones that were actually submitted — and posted them on the website. Who cared if none of them matched? Who cared if the voice and tone varied widely? Who cared if the content was wildly inconsistent? One attorney won all kinds of awards in junior high school; another enjoys participating in weekly drag shows; a third spends their off-hours at the gun range. Good stuff.

Partner also delegated responsibility for the blog posts in rotation. Each attorney was only responsible for writing one post every few months. Of course they could do that. And one even did! With footnotes and obscure legal terms their clients and prospects wouldn’t readily understand — or read. The attorney spent the better part of three days writing her post — totaling about 22 hours, during which she was not doing billable work. At her rate of $650 per hour, that 800-word blog post had cost the firm $14,300. Is your hourly rate higher? Good for you; that post would have cost you even more.

Partner decided he could do better himself. He set aside time every week to write blog posts. He spent that time staring at a blank screen. For three months. He couldn’t bring himself to calculate how much that lost time cost the firm.

There is a moral to this story: Partner is a lawyer. He should be lawyering. Other people are copywriters. They should be copywriting.

Partner’s assistant astutely pointed out that copywriters tend to make less money than attorneys. The firm would save a whole lot of money if Partner were to concentrate on billing hours as a lawyer and pay a copywriter to write content. The writing would actually get done. And the firm would finally have a consistent brand voice that would reassure their clients and convert their prospects — all with little effort from the attorneys and no lost billable hours.

If a partner at your professional-services firm is charged with doing your marketing, just stop it. They should be billing lawyer hours. Let’s talk about outsourcing your marketing communications.

For tips on smart ways to outsource your writing, please read “Why You Should Outsource Your Writing, Plus How to Do it Well.”