Rodrigo Amancio Amancio itibaren Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire, UK
BOOK REVIEW THE NAKED LAWYER- Volumes 1-12 RIP to XXX How to Market, Brand and Sell YOU! www.thenakedlawyerebook.com By Chrissie Lightfoot ISBN: 978-1-907787-30-0 Ark Group www.ark-group.com UNCOVERING A NEW APPROACH TO LAW WITH A ROAR OF APPROVAL! An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers This project is a new endeavour which marks author lawyer Chrissie Lightfoot as very much a legal trend-setter with this novel approach to legal services. Just before the General Election, there was a flurry of activity about the business of Law and the new technologies we should be using for the second decade of the 21st century. The predominant view remains that within18 months the face of much that we do will be changed forever… that is probably true, but how are we going to approach these dramatic changes? Chrissie Lightfoot offers us her highly original take with a “Reach Out And Relate” (ROAR) model so despised for its open pushiness by earlier generations who conducted business relationships in such a different way. The book is also online and, when you read it, the experience is slightly different from what we would call conventional titles. Lightfoot describes it as a real-life story (make that real-time also) and is a ‘sales blueprint’ or ‘life manual’. Yes. Many readers will be aware of such titles and the issue has always been whether they work or not: for some they do, and for others, certainly not. It worked for us. “The Naked Lawyer” does work as a patchwork of ideas, activities and the ‘how to approach’ which many more ‘conservative’ lawyers would find outlandish. Primarily, it’s a sales book for lawyers in 230 pages with12 individual chapters or ‘volumes’ covering a journey through 11 activities after the initial introduction. Each volume has a ROAR summation or conclusion and plentiful referencing throughout to give the book the feel of a lawyers’ training manual… but it is more than that! Years ago, there was a policy that children (and probably many adults, or “employees” as we can call them) “should be seen and not heard” so the concept of reaching out and relating was a bit difficult to pursue as one had to be quiet all the time. Those days have gone away with the general subservient society, so the ROAR model and how to go to market in 2011 replace conventional sales and marketing with IT and rather a lot of modern vocabulary which is both exhilarating and irritating depending on the age of the reader. The worth of the book is its sheer originality because Chrissie Lightfoot excels in those areas the current generation of post-geek social networkers find themselves occupying under the Damocles sword of political correctness, ‘equality’, and all things hip and “groovy”…in the original 1930s sense of being in the groove of modernity. And it succeeds! Forget entrepreneurs like Lord Sugar and the awful ‘You’re fired’ concept, volume10 gives you continual stimulation which is what successful entrepreneurs are all about. The problem with the lawyers is that the answer to anything they ever wanted to do was invariably ‘no’. With Chrissie, the invariable answer is ‘yes’ linked with ‘we can’ (Obama) and the final ‘yes, yes, yes’ which means always be positive, amongst other things. Richard Susskind gets a few mentions for ‘The End of Lawyers’ which started a trend when the real title for today should be ‘The Beginning of New Lawyers’ as both the Bar and the high street solicitor enter the entities era and life will never be the same again… and with Chrissie it never will be, so thank you for such a refreshing sparkle of computer driven intellect as we face the cuts, the competition, and the change to the way we do our legal business this decade with the help of ‘The Naked Lawyer’- so it is clearly a roar of approval.