It's all very well having great academic credentials as a lawyer, but if you can't promote your services appropriately you'll fall behind, explains Yuri Rapoport

Although academic preparation is fundamental to legal practice, succeeding as a lawyer takes an altogether different type of education. In the real world legal practitioners must learn how to deal with the needs of individual clients, be savvy with business administration and regularly engage in creative advertising – the latter, of course, being a relative newcomer to the range of skills fashioned by modern-day practitioners.

Until deregulation of solicitor advertising in the mid-1980s, self-promotion through advertising was an entirely foreign concept to the legal sector. Traditional methods of sourcing clients involved developing a reputation for delivering results, and providing sound advice and excellence in service. Today, however, many of these ideals have faded behind the bright lights of law firm branding. While television campaigns, directory listings, and newspaper and radio advertising have done much to bolster the image of some law firms, the hype generated by their marketing departments often fails to reflect the reality in terms of what individual lawyers can provide.