We are continuing to talk in these weekly articles about the concept that every business in the world needs five things to thrive:

   1. Clients;

   2. Administrative procedures;

   3. Procedures for getting the work done;

   4. A method to bill; and

   5. A way to collect the bill.

Hopefully these weekly columns should give you tried and true tips on law office marketing, management and economics regarding each of the above five categories as they apply to the legal profession. Implementing these ideas in your practice should make it more organized, enjoyable and lucrative.

Remember to score yourself at the end of each of these columns. At the end of each of the above categories, we will do a recap for you. You can add up your score and you can see how well you’re doing somewhere between being “In the Stone Ages” or operating on the “Cutting Edge.”

Last week we talked about writing congratulatory, “let me know if I can ever be of help,” letters. This week’s column continues to deal with the category of clients and customers. Let’s talk about the necessity of being really involved in your community or some activity such as your church and the benefits, both personally and professionally, from having this involvement as an ongoing activity in your life.

When one analyzes his or her life as a lawyer, one, more likely than not, would come up with the following seven categories that would make fairly convenient compartments to place your daily activities into one of these pigeonholes:

   1. Yourself;

   2. Biological family;

   3. Significant other;

   4. Children;

   5. Your job or career;

   6. Your profession (Bar Association); and

   7. Your community.

From what I have observed, there are very few people and especially lawyers who don’t see their lives in those seven categories. Most lawyers seem to relish diving into each and every one of the categories and participating to the utmost where possible. I am sure that there are some lawyers that don’t participate in every single category at the same time, but by and large, lawyers have a tendency to be people who are involved and sought after to participate in community and church activities over and above what one might consider as just the basics. No other profession seems to be sought quite so much as lawyers are.

Some years ago when the United Stated launched the war on drugs, the Drug Czar made the comment that lawyers and doctors were both public professions. He indicated that lawyers and doctors should be in the forefront of pursuing activities that would try to eliminate the scourge of drugs in the United States of America. He indicated that lawyers had a very significant role to play with regard to utilizing their skills and talents to work with community drug eradication efforts to try and minimize the amount of drug activity in our communities and schools. It struck me at the time that truer words were never spoken in terms of the legal profession being a public profession. It appears to me that lawyers in general are literally the only profession that is truly trained to specifically be “professional problem solvers.”

With all the foregoing in mind, the recommendation to become involved in one community activity or church activity on an ongoing basis is a way to generate clients for your legal business, which might be so obvious as to not be worthy of much comment. Unfortunately, there seems to be a tremendous misunderstanding about what seems so obvious!

Let me relate to you a story of an individual who called me recently and asked if he could come in and buy some of my time to see if I could give him some advice on why his law practice did not seem to be thriving and why clients were not “beating a path to his door.” When Mr. X came in to see me, he began to relate to me historically his involvement in the practice of law in the metropolitan area. I had known this individual for over 25 years and was familiar with his background. He went to a public school in the southwest part of Kansas City and went to an excellent college and law school. He originally worked in midtown Kansas City, but eventually ended up moving to a suburb to practice and after that to an even more distant suburb in terms of his practice. He continued, during this time, to live in southwest Kansas City. As he moved further and further away from the area that was his “natural geographical territory,” it appeared as though his business had become less and less and that he was relying upon others to generate his legal business more and more. I counseled with him regarding a phrase that probably best sums up what was happening to him and that he was clearly failing to understand, “you have got to dance with who brung you.”

People choose their lawyers by lots of different methods, but it is clear to me that one of the most tried and true methods of picking a lawyer is that people see lawyers operating in their problem solving capacity in community and church activities, and when they are in need of a lawyer, they remember those outstanding lawyer problem solvers, and decide that it would probably be a good idea to call those successful problem solving people and see if they are equally as good at solving legal problems as they are problems in the community and issues involving church activities. What better way to showcase your problem solving talent than to become involved in community and church activities? What better way to improve your community and your church than by lending your talent to their activities?

Everywhere we look we see lawyers serving on boards, holding public offices and volunteering their time for the betterment of their community and churches. All of this volunteerism needs to be done for the right reason, that is, trying to improve whatever activity it is that you are involved in, but you would be naïve not to recognize the potential benefit from being involved in such activities that will come from people observing you and your dedication and abilities in problem solving.

Becoming involved in at least one community activity or church activity will round out your life, give your life more meaning, improve the institution you are involved with and, just maybe, pay off with some unexpected dividends of producing some legal business for your practice.

The moral of the story is get involved!

Next week we will continue with tips dealing with clients by becoming involved in your profession as a way of giving back. Such involvement will often pay unexpected dividends in terms of developing a special expertise, developing leadership and speaking skills and having other lawyers refer you legal business where they have a conflict or where they are familiar with your particular expertise in a given area. We will explore this in more depth.

Talk with you next week!

Jim Wirken is a civil trial attorney and the Chairman of the Board of The Wirken Law Group in Kansas City.