One of my clients described his situation as having a time horizon of about two days. Needless to say his frustration level was high and satisfaction with his practice was low. If you constantly operate in a reactive mode driven by urgency, your practice will experience highly random results. I speak with many attorneys who feel their practices are not where they would like them to be, yet they feel powerless to change the situation. Many would prefer to be practicing in a different area but feel trapped by their income requirements, fearing a change might lead to financial instability.
Attorneys traditionally use a passive and reactive marketing approach.
This causes many of them to be victimized by what I call Marketing Drift. They drift into an area of law or a type of client simply because that is who has been on the phone. If their first client lived in a trailer park and liked their work, they get an inordinate number of trailer park referrals. If they handled a divorce with a favorable outcome, suddenly half their business is coming from divorce. Most attorneys are susceptible to Marketing Drift because of the Security Imperative.