Description
- Effective Networking Strategies: Explore strategic networking for legal career growth with insights from Harrison. Learn how to leverage networking tools for enhanced effectiveness.
- Key Actions for Attorneys: Discover the successful habits of attorneys who excel in networking. Actions include reaching out, offering assistance, providing valuable information, and building relationships without expecting immediate returns.
- Giving Something for Nothing: Differentiate yourself by being a giver without expecting reciprocity. Stand out by offering assistance, sharing information, and being genuinely helpful, creating a positive reputation in your professional network.
- Learning from Successful Networkers: Gain inspiration from renowned networkers like Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger. Learn the art of remembering details, showing genuine interest, and making personal connections that endure over time.
- Strategic Approach to Networking: Implement a systematic approach to networking by staying visible. Volunteer for boards, remember birthdays, and maintain contact with a list of key connections to continuously build and strengthen professional relationships.
- The Power of Personal Connection: Understand that networking is about making personal connections. Show genuine concern, highlight someone's strengths, and make others feel important. Create a lasting impact by providing authentic compliments and recognition.
- Networking as a Lifelong Skill: Acknowledge that networking is an ongoing process. Develop the ability to make personal connections consistently, offering a unique and genuine approach to building a network that lasts throughout your legal career.
Transcript:
Networking has been critical in my legal journey, but I wondered how to leverage it more strategically. What strategies do you advise for attorneys looking to build lasting professional relationships that can fuel their careers or businesses? Okay. So that's great. There are a lot of people who are very good at networking, and there are also some networking tools that I think are perfect things you can do to make you much more effective.
Networking in terms of others is not networking. This is an effective networking. Most compelling is being able to go out and help people. And what does that mean? That means. The most of the most successful attorneys that I know have a lot of business, and I know a lot of them are, and there's different types of people, a lot of business, but for the most part, attorneys that can get a lot of business do a couple of things very well.
One of the things that they do. Are they finding people that could use their service that is inside of companies or whatever or entrepreneurs, and they start just contacting them, being nice to them, offering them things for free, being a source of information, just being nice? And maybe if they get in trouble, help them with something and never ask for anything in return, but just do those things.
So that's also what a lot of people do. That people join all of these different associations, like trying to Children's Hospital, Ronald McDonald House, like all these things. And all they're doing is giving their time for free, but then also, at the same time, they're networking.
So you, to network, what that means is that means. Just meeting with people, helping people with things, and providing information. I will always remember when I was practicing law. I was on this case with this attorney, who was from a different firm at Morgan Lewis, and he was very interested.
So, it was a class action case. The numbers were huge, and probably 30 or 40 different law firms were involved. And this guy, and again, we're talking about there was like Latham and SCADA and all these big firms involved. This guy would continually find little nuggets, little articles, and things written about this practice area and things going on and things related to our case.
It would go, and he would photocopy these articles and developments and then send it out. Mail it out to everyone, even mail it to everyone. All the attorneys are on this case. And I'll never forget that because no one else did anything. He was just putting his name out there.
And I remembered him. I remembered him years later. So most people don't do things like that. Most people need to offer information or offer help. Everyone wants to offer something. Expecting something in return, which is very dull. Most people who could do the pro quo and the people who get ahead and network effectively can always be seen as giving something for nothing, giving something for free, being a source of positive information, and being just lovely.
And then a couple of things with networking. So there are a lot of very famous networkers, such as Bill Clinton. He was a good networker. I also talked about Henry Kissinger, an incredible networker, and there are a lot of excellent networkers out there. So Bill Clinton would keep note cards of everyone he knew, of everyone he met, everyone he met and he could see someone years later, meaning 20 years later, and he would ask, how was your child, even though he hadn't seen, he'd only met them once.
And he would keep those, study them, and remember things about people, everyone he met. And that was just how he did things. And that's a form of networking. And then he could reach out to those people or call them. Then there's Henry Kissinger.
So Henry Kissinger had this ability to; I guess he's 99 years old. So he's still alive, but he could meet people and then very quickly ingratiate themselves to them by asking them questions that made them feel necessary and then good about themselves and like he wanted to reciprocate.
So they would introduce him to very well-known people who were above that. I have much experience with people who network to do that effectively. There's also a very famous, I've written an article about it, but a way to get jobs that I think is very effective that people do and also to get business is you write down all of a hundred plus people.
And then, it could be people, parents, but your parents, friends, people you met in law school or college, people you've met in the past. And then, after you write down those people, you keep writing down the names of people, and you figure out a way to just. Stay in touch with them and be seen.
So a lot of what attorneys do, by the way, to get business and to get ahead is all they're doing is you're just being seen. So if they're part of a go and volunteer to be on the board of a hospital, they're just being seen. If they. If they network with friends or different people they know and wish them a happy birthday, there's networking.
So all these different things people do are networking, but they have a system for it and continually do that. And networking is more about making personal connections. And when you make a personal connection, that's what everyone needs. Everyone needs a connection and wants to feel like they're around; there's some connection with people.
And that's what networking is. It makes people feel important when others care about them. And that's one of the more essential things about how that works. Okay. Yeah. So networking, there's a lot to networking, and I want to, I and this is, there's been, this is a kind of a long answer to your question, but the big thing that I would say about networking is it's about making personal connections.
Very few people get personal connections in their lives. And the more you can get and give people a personal connection, the better off you'll be. You show some concern for them, show that they're interesting, or notice something that they're doing right, and tell them that because very few people can do that.
And you might just say to someone, you're the only person I know who takes this type of work so seriously. These are just little things that are honest and don't seem like you're trying to build people up in a different way than you should.
