What Do Lawyers Sell?
This post has been viewed 2,775 times.
The first time I heard Richard Susskind speak was at a Canadian Bar Association conference in Montreal in 2007. That was also the first time I heard one of the best parables about professional services ever told. I’ll try to paraphrase Richard’s delivery from memory:
“Black & Decker, the power tool company, had just hired a new CEO. He walked into his first meeting with his board of directors, held up a power drill, and asked, ‘Is this what we sell?’ The directors looked at each other and looked at the drill and said, ‘Yes, that’s one of ours; that’s what we sell.’ ‘No, it isn’t,’ replied the CEO, and he put down the drill and picked up a board with a hole in it. ‘This is what we sell,’ he said. ‘This is why the customer comes to us. This is what he wants.’”
That’s a magnificent illustration of the best way, the only correct way, to look at the process of buying and selling anything — that is to say, from the buyer’s perspective. Given the legal profession’s struggles to cope with a newly evolving market — as exemplified by the shocking cuts and wholesale retrenchment of many large law firms recently — it seems like a good time to apply that question to lawyers.
What do lawyers sell? Ask 100 lawyers that question and you’ll get, not 100 different answers, but a very narrow range of familiar answers, repeatedly proffered. “I sell my time,” some lawyers will respond. “I sell my expertise,” others will reply. The MBA types: “I sell solutions.” The ones who’ve been paying attention: “I sell value.” The ones who haven’t been paying attention: “I sell excellence.”
Read original articleTags: Black & Decker, professional services, Richard Susskind
