One of the best things that I’ve discovered since I started thinking about running my own law firm is a podcast on selling and running creative firms, professional firms, not law firms. This is law firm adjacent. It’s called Two Bobs by David C. Baker, No Relation and Blair Ends. And these are two of the smartest people that have ever hooked up to a microphone and done a podcast. I have learned more about how to think about running my firm from listening to these two guys, even though there’s nothing about this that is legal at all. And one of the things that they talk about, which helped me get a lot of clarity on how to brand and position myself is the difference between what they call vertical positioning and horizontal positioning. And my firm is a vertically positioned firm. In other words, it means that I am extraordinarily deep doing everything for a particular kind of client.

I represent people that design and build, architects, contractors, design builders, institutional property owners like universities and hospitals. I represent utilities. I represent real estate developers and everything that they need, I do. And I’m just kind of vertically positioned like this. So while I shouldn’t say that everything that they need, I do because I don’t do their HR, I don’t do their taxes, I don’t do their corporate work. But within the ambit of we are going to build a building and somebody’s got to hold their hand from beginning to end, this is what I do. And it’s great to be vertically positioned because I’ve very rarely run into things that I’ve not seen before. And it gives me a framework for my thought leadership. I am extraordinarily narrow and deep on what I do and I’ve really leaned into it. And one of the great things about being vertically positioned is that every time an employee leaves the senior management of one of my clients, say an architecture firm to go to another architecture firm, I typically pick up a new client and that’s wonderful.

There’s something about vertical positioning, niching down. That is a wonderful thing. I’ve really enjoyed it. And the way that I enter the market, the way that I think about what should be on my website, the way that I think about what my brand is, about who my ideal clients are, the way that I think about the kind of content that I want to create, the way that I think about advertising and marketing and who I want to meet in the world as potential clients, it is really all driven around the fact that I am vertically positioned. And that is different than somebody who’s horizontally positioned. And there are advantages to horizontal positioning too, even though it isn’t my thing. A lawyer that’s horizontally positioned might be a lawyer that advises any kind of business out there about anything that has to do with ERISA or 401k.

And it doesn’t matter if it’s an airline or if it is a lemonade stand or a grocery store or a manufacturing facility, they will do this kind of work horizontally across all different industries. And as I’ve talked to a bunch of people over the years who are thinking about starting their own law firm and they’re thinking about, how should I advertise? How should I enter the market? How do I niche down? Who’s my ideal client? What should I do? Am I doing videos? Do I need a Substack? It helped me a lot to try to get in my mind. Are they vertically positioned or are they horizontally positioned? Because it tends to lead to different sort of things that you would want to do to take your law firm to where you want to go in terms of branding positioning, client acquisition. And so I wouldn’t profess to be any kind of an expert in marketing, even though I get a kick out of it.

I will say that like the Two Bobs podcast with David C. Baker and Blair Ends is brilliant. It is so brilliant that a year ago I decided I was going to go all the way back to their first podcast, like maybe like seven, eight years ago and start listening to them again from start to finish. Again, not because this has anything to do with the law, but it has to do with running small professional service firms, creative firms. There’s a lot of analogies to be drawn and how to sell, how to sell expertise, how to position yourself, how to think about what to do. The vertical versus horizontal positioning frame is really useful. And it is rarely the case that I get into a conversation with somebody who’s thinking about starting a law firm, that we’re not beginning to explore what they do within that frame as a jumping off point for many other parts of the discussion about what they should do next and what they should do after and what they should do in a week or a month or a year in order to try to maximize the odds if they’re going to achieve their goals.