LEGAL ADVISORY · TOBY GOODMAN
Strategic communication for lawyers whose best thinking never leaves the room.
I work with law firms, chambers and legal tech founders to build the communication infrastructure that reaches referrers, instructing solicitors and prospective clients before the first conversation happens.
One season of work. Years of use.
Your advice is already excellent. The question is… who was in a state to hear it?
The best work most lawyers do stays in the room where it happened.
The clearest account you have ever given of what is about to happen to somebody: it stayed there. And the one person who needed it was frightened, had not slept in a fortnight, and took in almost none of it.
A well-positioned body of work changes both halves of that. It reaches the right referrers and prospective clients before any conversation begins. And it reaches the clients you already have a second time, later, when they are finally able to listen.
Who this is for.
✓ Family and private client firms whose clients arrive at the hardest moment of their lives
✓ Employment practices acting for people who are rarely calm when they call
✓ Chambers and barristers who need to be known by instructing solicitors rather than by the public
✓ Legal tech founders selling to a small, specific and sceptical market
✓ Partners expected to originate work who would rather not network for it
✓ Firms building business development that does not sit in one person's address book
✓ Practices preparing for succession or sale, where the enquiries need to belong to the firm
What the engagement includes.
This is advisory work, built around two established frameworks you get full access to for the duration and beyond.
The Profitable-Pod Method
The complete method behind Narrow Podcasting, my number-one best-selling book. Video and audio lessons, worksheets and implementation resources across three phases: positioning before you record, producing episodes that reflect your expertise, and building the work into a long-term asset. Yours to keep.
The Book Yourself Solid© Client Companion Audio Course
I am a certified Book Yourself Solid coach. BYS is a client-getting system trusted by over half a million business owners, and this is my own private course built on it: delivered in audio with worksheets, covering how to define who you serve, become the obvious choice in your field, and build a practice that fills through reputation rather than pursuit. The client-getting discipline that sits underneath everything we build together.
Two disciplines.
One is how your expertise reaches the right room.
The other is what happens once it does.
How the work is structured.
Every engagement starts with positioning and ends with a targeted body of work. The vehicle depends on your audience and your working style. The framework is the same.
Step 1
Positioning
What the practice stands for, who it is genuinely for, and what distinguishes it from every other firm of similar size and standing. Most firms can name their practice areas. Very few can name this.
Step 2
Message
The language and positions that reach referrers and the client researching you at one in the morning.
Step 3
Medium
Podcast, authored content, structured speaking, or a combination.
Step 4
Reach
Distribution aimed at the people who actually send work. Accountants, financial advisers, therapists, mediators, other firms.
This is advisory work, not a course. The vehicle we build toward depends entirely on your audience and your practice. A podcast may be the right answer. Authored content or structured speaking may serve you better. We determine that during our initial meeting or in the positioning stage.
What your regulator allows.
You cannot discuss a client. You cannot promise an outcome. You cannot compare yourself to the firm down the road.
You have professional indemnity insurers with opinions, and a handbook that was never written as a marketing manual.
Those constraints are the reason ordinary content advice fails you, and the reason this approach does not.
I have done this work with a surgeon who is not permitted to show a single before-and-after photograph, and with an oncology group where every sentence is reviewed before it goes anywhere.
None of it requires a client, a case, or a claim. It requires a professional willing to talk like a human being for twenty minutes.
My mother was a solicitor, which is probably why the world feels familiar.
If audio is the answer.
Start with ten episodes. One season. Then you stop. No treadmill, no weekly commitment, no guests to chase. A family practice would record something close to this:
You have decided. Here is what actually happens next.
The first meeting, and how to get the most out of it.
What this will cost, and why nobody will give you one number.
How long this takes. Honestly.
What reasonable looks like when you do not feel reasonable.
Telling the children.
For the person supporting them: what helps, and what makes it worse.
Full and frank: what has to be disclosed, and why hiding it always costs more.
The day in court, and why most of you will never see one.
Six months on: what clients say they wish they had known.
Yours would be different, because it would come from the questions your clients actually arrive with. Working that out is the first thing we do together.
The same season can also have a private counterpart. Client care standards, how this firm handles a difficult first meeting, the matter post-mortems your senior people carry in their heads and never write down. Trainees arrive already sounding like your firm. Lateral hires understand how you work in week one rather than month six.
The shape of it.
A three-month engagement. Two to three calls a month with me, each running an hour to ninety minutes. Every call recorded, with an action plan sent afterwards. Email support throughout, alongside full access to both frameworks from the start.
Enough contact to keep the work moving. Enough structure to keep it accountable.
Built to fit around a senior professional's actual week.
What you walk away with.
A defined body of work that positions your thinking at the right level and reaches the right referrers and decision-makers in your field. Built to compound over time, not to perform once and disappear.
Ché Bolden
Inter Astra Institute · The Charles F. Bolden Group · VA, USA
Toby is a master at solving 'today' problems while putting 'tomorrow' challenges in context and setting them up for optimised solutions. He has a unique way of turning complex ideas into clear, actionable strategies that drive real progress. Working with him has been a high-value experience, and I would gladly follow that path again.
Dr. Kathy Sullivan
Fmr. NASA Astronaut · Fmr. NOAA Administrator · OH, USA
Thank heavens I met Toby. His insights and clever method made my
podcast a powerful relationship-building tool.
Chris Colbert
Fmr. CEO Harvard Innovation Labs, Speaker, Advisor & Author • MA, USA
A motivating force to me. An expert at the ways of marketing, podcasting, engaging audiences. He’ll help optimise the online presence of your voice. A wonderful human being.
WORK WITH ME
Apply here
The engagement is selective. I take a small number of clients at any one time, and the application is the first filter.
Investment is discussed once we've spoken. If the application looks like a fit on both sides, I'll reach out to arrange a short conversation, and we cover the numbers there.
Applications are reviewed within five working days. Takes about two minutes. I read every submission.
Not sure where you are starting from?
Work through the checklist first, then come back.