What's Your Story? [For Lawyers]

We are proud to sponsor a one-time performance of the Actor’s Charitable Theatre’s production of Bright Star, a musical written and composed by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, July 25, in Tuscaloosa at the Bama Theatre. The musical is set in North Carolina in the mid-1940s and is based upon an old folk story of the Iron Mountain Baby. The show weaves together the stories of its two main characters but shares those of numerous others in their lives. It is a story about the power of a story, on so many levels, as it tells the stories of the two main characters’ who themselves are writers.

Bright Star’s opening number is “If You Knew My Story.” In our first installment of this series, we told you ours. Now, what about yours?

Everyone has a story. Every life is unique. You may not think that your life has been exciting or noteworthy, but it is uniquely yours. Recognizing your distinctiveness helps you identify opportunities to find true satisfaction from your work and allows you to make connections with potential clients.

Our clients have a story. Each is unique. And they need to be heard. Clients hire lawyers to help tell their stories. But that uniqueness that we as attorneys work with every day with our clients has been absent from our marketing efforts. For years, those lawyers who were doing any marketing were forced by “marketing” firms to fit into one of their pre-existing templates or, for those who tackled marketing on their own, they resorted to emulating someone else’s marketing efforts. Effective marketing should separate you from the competition. Your uniqueness allows you to distinguish yourself.

Stories are powerful. Advertisers have learned that storytelling is much more effective than the techniques they had long been using. Advertisements today are less “in your face” and more in your heart and mind, more subtle. They seek to establish an emotional and intellectual connection. Compare the tear-jerking car, athletic shoe, delivery service, and even beer ads of today to those loud and flashy ones we saw only a few years ago. That’s the power of the story.

We want to hear your story. People want to know your story. They want to connect with you. Sharing your story helps them do that. After all, legal services are not a commodity and shouldn’t be sold that way.

What makes you unique? Your law degree? All lawyers have one. Where you went to school? That is not often a distinguishing feature. There may be some education, experience, knowledge, or work history that makes you unique. And those should be emphasized. But people want more. Who are you? What’s your story? How are you going to tell it?