Great Legal Marketing

What Can Car Manufacturing Teach Us About Law Firms?

Taiichi Ohno, the architect of the Toyota Production System, used the five Why's technique to solve problems. In a manufacturing environment, the Five Whys might work like this:

Manufacturing Example Problem: The Production Line Stopped Again

Why did the production line stop? Answer: We blew a fuse.

Why did we blow a fuse? Answer: Because the bearings overheated.

Why did the bearings overheat? Answer: Because there is insufficient lubrication on them.

Why is there insufficient lubrication on the bearings? Answer: Because nobody oiled them.

Why did nobody oil them? Answer: Because we don’t have a preventative maintenance schedule.

Followed by Silence............ideally somebody should then pipe up with "we need a preventative maintenance schedule - I'll get it sorted for tomorrow."

In legal services marketing, you need to ask lots of Whys.

Mike Schultz, a US marketing consultant gives a law firm example.

Legal marketing problem: We Don’t Have Enough Leads Coming In.

Why don’t we have enough leads? Answer: Because the partners aren’t getting enough referrals to build their practices.

Why aren’t the partners getting enough referrals? Answer: Because the partners and the marketing group aren’t taking the actions needed on a regular basis to generate referrals and new business leads.

Why aren’t they doing what they’re supposed to do to generate leads and referrals? Answer: Because work expectations focus on keeping them billable, and lead generation isn’t a top priority in the marketing department.

Why are the partner jobs aligned so narrowly to billing, and why doesn’t marketing focus on lead generation? Answer: Because the managing partner hasn’t historically perceived revenue generation as an issue, and so across the board—from marketing to billable staff—there isn't much concerted lead generation effort, and, in marketing, there’s no budget.

Why? Answer: Now that it’s an important business problem to solve, why hasn’t he addressed this?

Why? Answer: Silence.

Without leadership support it doesn’t matter if you come up with the right answer because nothing will happen anyway. So Partners - it's up to you.

What I like about this technique is that it is common sense, easy to do, and gets actionable solutions. It’s also a way of “becoming your own consultant “and seeing things through fresh eyes. Very important if you want to improve what you offer.