According to Legal Futures’ website http://tinyurl.com/cb44eds Riverview Chambers are marketing a fixed-fee divorce service to high net-worth couples who have assets worth in excess of £500,000. This got me thinking. I wonder how many couples with a house, pensions and other bits and pieces worth £500,001, believe themselves to be in the high net-worth category?

The high-net worths are much sought after divorce clients it seems. If you had the time to look at profiles of half the family lawyers in England & Wales, I reckon  between 33-50% would say something about specialising in high net-worth cases. Which always makes me wonder who is marketing themselves at the no, low and medium net-worths?

It’s odd because divorce stats show that people with money tend not to divorce. Crudely speaking, people with less money are more likely to divorce. Not only is it rather demeaning (for them and the lawyers) to identify target customers so blatantly by their wealth, but doing so suggests a lack of understanding about a diminishing divorce market.

So long as most lawyers don’t know how to market effectively, that gives their competitors a real advantage. So please don’t tell anyone about this blog. Let’s just keep it between ourselves.

I come across many colleagues who  tell me that they would love to have more collaborative clients. In a brief conversation it’s sometimes difficult to get to the bottom of their particular difficulty, but few seem to believe that it has anything to do with them. It’s the type of case, the client, the client’s partner or the client’s partner’s lawyer. Rarely is there any acceptance that they might somehow have some responsibility for their predicament.

I’ve lost count of the number of website profiles I’ve read ( and I read a lot of them)  of collaborative lawyers and of lawyer-mediators who describe themselves as a “trained collaborative lawyer” or a “trained  mediator”. To me these descriptions suggest two things: the individual has had training but no experience; or they see the skill as being inferior to their standard role as a regular lawyer -doing what regular lawyers do, which isn’t collaborating and isn’t mediating. Solicitors’ negotiations is what this skill is euphemistically called. Haggling is what I call it, but that’s besides the point.  And the point is, if you want your clients to buy into your skills as an ADR specialist then stop sending the subliminal message that you’re trained in but not practising these arts. Most clients will no more want a trained collaborative lawyer than they’ll want a trained surgeon or a trained therapist.

So , please give your clients a sporting chance of giving you the chance to screen them into collaboration or mediation. Let them believe in you before they meet you, and you might just believe in yourself.