How to become an entrepreneurial legal professional

Hey Legal friends! Week 4 of the Designing Legal Influence series already and almost 5,000 subscribers! Thank you for your continuous support!

In this week's edition I'll cover something close to my heart because it has been at the core of my journey.. building an entrepreneurial mindset and why every legal professional should.

But first, what you may have missed

It links to this week's topic. A lot of people feel stuck about posting because they're worried that it will come across as self-serving, self-promotional if not even cringe.

We are in an industry full of self-promotional initiatives. The awards, the rankings, trying to impress our peers and seek peer's validation are very common.

Here is the thing. Your potential clients don't care about awards.

And not being recognised or awarded anything is not an obstacle to getting clients (see my post on this )

The LBH Rollercoaster

This week, a couple of interesting things have happened.

1. I had a sales call for the program and the person did not show up.
2. I had another call with a legal ops consultant for law firms who'll be joining the next cohort. She just started her business and already has a few clients she inherited from her last corporate job. I believe she is onto something very interesting in her niche.
3. I am letting go of a client for the first time since starting the Visual Legal Content Mastery . The program was just not the best fit. This kind of situation would have freaked me out in the past. Now I just try to focus on what can be learned from that experience. And qualifying clients is an important part of running a successful business. I will not hold onto someone's money for the sake of having a client. If what I do is not a fit, other options are available out there that will work better.
4. I've had a call with a provider of flexible talents for in-house teams to discuss partnerships, one of the things we discussed was the lack of entrepreneurial approach in the legal industry.

How to become entrepreneurial

At the core of every entrepreneurial venture lies one of the following things

1. a desire to solve a problem
2. a frustration with the status quo and develop a solution to do something better
3. identify an opportunity to create something new, to respond to a situation that has not been addressed yet

Examples where I cultivated these entrepreneurial traits

1. I helped helping French lawyers landing a job in the UK (solve a problem)
2. Creating resources for French lawyers to land a job (opportunity)
3. Developed ways to better practice as an in-house counsel using visualisation (frustration with status quo)

Not only I did these things, but I then documented the journey on social media with educational content.

This is turn attracted people interested in knowing more, getting advice until the day where someone wanted to pay me to solve similar problems.

Someone handing over $500 was the beginning of a mindset shift. So far in my career, I just thought that I could monetise my time with employers. I saw first hand that someone wanted to pay me for a solution I had developed.

How you can become entrepreneurial

No matter your current situation, you're sitting on a mountain of value that you have not yet turned into an asset.

Whether you're looking for a better paid job, a career change, starting a side hustle.. creating content about

1. how you've solved problems
2. something you've developed out of frustration with existing practices
3. an opportunity you've identified to do something better

Can lead you to unexpected places.

My in-house clients, Sara Ajmi Sarah Irwin Christine Uri are amazing examples of people who've started cultivating their entrepreneurial traits.

• Christine's superpower is in rolling out ESG practices as a Chief Legal Officer
• Sara Ajmi transitioned from in-house lawyer to legal operations and creates great content about this
• Sarah Irwin built a legal team in a scale-up from scratch and shares innovative ways of leading a 21st century legal function

Documenting their journey allowed them to grow an audience of thousands of people who may one day become an employer, a client, a sponsor. On top of being recognised for their niche.

Do not estimate the power of getting started asap. One of my client never posted before and she struggled with posting her first ever post.

???? Yet is what happened when she did. 7,800 people viewed it.

Where else in the world would you have the ability to reach 8K people, attract 15 qualified people from the comfort of your house under 7 hours? How many in-person events will you have to stack up to reach a similar outcome?

Do not think too much.. identify these opportunities and document.

Until next time!

Sarah

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