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Anyone starting a new law firm or starting out on their legal career could take several lessons from Ed Sheeran’s approach to promoting himself.

It’s slightly tongue-in-cheek, but let’s see if we can design a business model that is doomed to struggle and which will ensure that we miss out on the profit and cash opportunities that come with providing high-value services at high prices in a near-monopoly situation.

“If we were running real businesses, we would be identifying future leaders in their 20s and 30s and fast-tracking them – whereas in most law firms people first have to prove themselves as a lawyer, and earn high fees, and only then, when they are probably in their 40s or 50s might we think about whether they have what it takes to lead the business.” This was a casual, almost throw-away comment from a colleague co-facilitating a managing partner retreat with me back in February, but it set the scene for the next 24 hours – how should law firms identify and then develop their future leaders?

In 1984, a non-profit was established in Sacramento, California, by a group of scientists to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (called SETI). I could not help comparing this with my experience of working with law firms, where there is often an expectation of almost immediate results from any marketing communications initiative. My heart sinks every time I hear “Oh, we didn’t get anything from that initiative, so we will not do that again”. This betrays a misunderstanding of the effort that is often required to break into a new market, win a major client or develop a profitable source of referrals.