Why should I refer to you?

If your clients are anything like mine, they will ask you, ‘Do you know anyone who...?‘

It’s always a bit of a sticky moment because, firstly, we can never be totally sure of any outcome and, secondly, often we only know another professional in a sort of cursory way. We have to rely on feedback from other professionals or the clients themselves. At best, we are only suggesting that this client-professional might be a good fit, whilst truthfully hoping like hell we aren’t sending them to an idiot. 

We build our referral networks through brief contact and conversation, and gradually create our ‘little black book of trusted others‘, but it’s slow and sporadic and basically still a ‘shot in the dark‘ because we never generally get to see our counterparts ‘in action‘. 

Now that’s fine when we are dealing with ‘easy win‘ cases, but add in complexity – child protection, mental ill health, Difficult Divorce – and I know, at least talking from my own perspective, I want a bit more in the way of ‘governance‘ checks.

Yeah, you might have an industry (paid) award and a podcast and post daily on social media and be on various committees  – but you still might be a complete expletive. How could I possibly know? And with my clients who are vulnerable, the risk is not negligible.

Legal professionals face the same dilemma. How can you know that your clients and your reputation are safe with me? Where would you even start to find out?

Well, here’s my solution. I am developing a whole range of free resources dealing with lawyers’ well-being, so that you get to road-test my work before you even think about sending a client my way.  You get to do your governance and quality check yourself. If you get some benefit, good chance your client will too.

What’s in it for me? Well, for one, it makes collaboration easier. I get to be reassured that you have some of the basic knowledge of how I work, making it easier for us to work in tandem. Secondly, I get to see who takes their client’s well-being seriously and isn’t just hijacking some buzz words for ‘the look of it‘. 

So, with that in mind, read on and enjoy an extract from my book The Tiger Survival Book of Anxiety