Society benefits when knowledgeable people produce thought leadership. Get off the sidelines, get in the game, and start producing thought leadership.
There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come out and say it: Shame on you for not producing more thought leadership.
If you have knowledge and wisdom and insights to share, you’re a selfish jerk for not regularly producing thought leadership content.
The world is a better place when knowledgeable people—particularly professional services providers, but especially attorneys—take the time to share their knowledge, insights, and wisdom with the world. Society benefits when knowledgeable people produce thought leadership.
Don’t believe me? Here are just some of the groups of people who suffer when you do not regularly produce thought leadership.
1. Current clients and 2. Prospective clients
Your current and prospective clients need to learn about relevant legal and business/industry developments that could impact their day-to-day business operations or lives.
When you fail to regularly produce thought leadership, you’re robbing current clients and prospective clients of access to additional information to help them navigate whatever issues they might be facing, especially ones that your firm is not helping them with at the moment.
3. People who might never be your clients
When you’re not regularly producing thought leadership, you’re failing to educate and make the world better for people who might never be a client of yours, but who could use the information you’re putting out into the world to help them with their legal issues or business issues.
They might never be able to afford you. They might never be able to afford a lesser attorney than you or a lesser law firm than yours.
But your thought leadership could help guide them through a difficult legal or business issue they’re facing without having to engage you or another attorney or law firm. Your thought leadership could provide the key to helping them work through a difficult situation and changing their life for the better.
4. Politicians and regulators
Ok, look, I realize politicians and regulators aren’t the most beloved groups of people in society.
But when you don’t produce thought leadership about certain legal or business issues that are fixable through legislation or regulation, you’re robbing politicians and regulators of the ability to understand those issues and you’re keeping them in the dark about them.
When you produce thought leadership regarding issues that can be resolved through legislative or regulatory means, that content can inform and educate politicians and regulators about these issues. More importantly, that content can also persuade those politicians and regulators to take action and actually do something to resolve those issues.
5. Mission-driven organizations
Mission-driven organizations need to stay aware of wrongdoing and other problems and issues they exist to combat so that they can take up those battles.
When you produce thought leadership that spotlights this wrongdoing or these problems/issues, you provide a service to mission-driven organizations. Not every organization will have the financial and human resources to monitor all of the legal and business developments that touch on the work they do.
But their ability to monitor your and other attorneys’ and law firms’ thought leadership regarding those developments will allow them to stay apprised of the developments they need to know about in order to mobilize their organizations’ resources and fulfill their missions.
6. Pro bono legal services organizations
On a related note, your failure to produce thought leadership content also negatively impacts pro bono legal services organizations that provide legal services to the public.
These pro bono organizations benefit from the thought leadership content you produce. They learn from the knowledge, wisdom, and insights you share, which they wouldn’t normally have access to unless they were working with you on a particular pro bono matter.
Your ongoing thought leadership content helps educate them and keep them apprised of legal developments and best practices they should be aware of when they’re not actively working with you on a matter.
7. Your employees
When you choose not to produce thought leadership content, you’re negatively impacting your employees. Your employees benefit from the increased revenues that flow into your firm when your thought leadership leads to more client matters.
Those revenues allow you to pay your employees more. They allow you to offer them more benefits. And, they allow you to invest in providing them a better work environment.
(By the way, these expenditures should help keep your employees happy, which should help keep them working for you as opposed to searching for greener pastures.)
8. Your fellow equity partners
On a related note, when you abstain from engaging in thought leadership, you’re neither helping to increase the size of the revenue/profit pie you share with your fellow equity partners, nor the size of the pie that belongs to you.
This is a problem if you’re the biggest rainmaker among your equity partners. If you don’t produce thought leadership and bring clients in, your firm might not survive.
But it’s also a problem if you’re not the biggest rainmaker. If you can’t keep up with your equity partners’ revenue expectations for you, you could cause discord within the group of partners, and perhaps even be ousted.
9. Your family
You didn’t think I’d go there, did you? Well, I did.
Your family suffers when you do not engage in thought leadership content.
You’re preventing them from gaining access to more resources and benefiting from the opportunities those resources may afford.
Why?
Because your lack of thought leadership is limiting your ability to bring more client matters into your firm, which limits your ability to bring more money into your household.
10. You
Last but not least, you suffer when you don’t regularly produce thought leadership.
When you don’t engage in thought leadership, you’re preventing yourself from getting to a higher level of professional satisfaction.
Perhaps that’s in the form of more revenue you’re bringing in and more compensation you’re taking home.
Perhaps that’s in the form of only working on client matters that interest you.
Perhaps that’s in the form of more personal and professional freedom that comes from being able to hire people to delegate work to.
Perhaps that’s more freedom in the form of taking more time off or exploring other professional or personal interests.
When you do not regularly produce thought leadership, you’re preventing yourself from enjoying your life more than you do currently.
Regularly producing thought leadership helps you do well by doing good
Don’t be a selfish jerk.
The world is a better place, and society benefits, when you create thought leadership content that thrusts your knowledge, wisdom, and insights into the world.
And guess what? You and your family will benefit as well.
Stop complaining about your lack of time to create and publish thought leadership content. Find the time to do so.
Work with a colleague.
Hire an outside ghostwriter.
Or simply do a better job of managing your time.
Do whatever you have to do to regularly produce thought leadership.
You’ll do well by doing good.
Thinking about bringing on an outside writer to help your law firm strategize and create compelling thought-leadership marketing and business development content? Click here to schedule a 30-minute Content Strategy Audit to learn if collaborating with an outside writer is the right move for you and your firm.