It’s one thing to be a stellar lawyer, but it’s another to have the guts to ask someone to hire you. That’s why John B. Quinn is pushing young associates at his law firm to improve their marketing skills.

And there is an added incentive: If one of his associates doesn’t complete a marketing project before year’s end, he or she will not be eligible for a bonus.

Quinn’s law firm might be the first to withhold bonuses to lawyers who lack pitching prowess; at least, some informed sources said they had not heard of it before. But several think that lawyers will be prodded to market themselves much more in the future, and Quinn unabashedly believes that.

“It’s very important for the success of the law firm. You have to learn to be comfortable with marketing and promoting yourself,” said Quinn, founding partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in downtown Los Angeles. “Being able to say the words, ‘I would like your work,’ a lot of people – lawyers, especially – have a hard time saying that.”

Associates at the firm must come up with a marketing idea that’s approved by a partner. The lawyers can do anything from writing an article for a trade or general interest publication to researching a business-development pitch to a potential client. While the informal criteria is fairly flexible, Quinn said it was important to tie in bonus eligibility to get higher participation.

Ian Larkin, a professor of business strategy at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, said it’s increasingly common for law firms and other professional service providers to base employees’ compensation on how much business they generate. But he had not heard of law firms withholding bonuses if workers fall short of marketing expectations.

“It seems like a punishment if you don’t do something, rather than a reward if you do,” Larkin said. “But I totally understand it. … In the long term, the firm is only going to survive if they’re able to have a steady book of business walk through the door.”

For generations, law firms relied on reputation alone to drive business. Those days are long gone.

Today, the emphasis on branding and marketing legal services has caught up to that in other service industries, said Jonathan Fitzgarrald, managing partner at Beverly Hills marketing firm Equinox Strategy Partners.

“Because competition is more and more steep every year, you’re starting to see firms be more aggressive,” Fitzgarrald said. “The legal industry today, in terms of compensation and incentivizing professionals, is where accounting firms were two decades ago.”

Aggressive approach

Quinn Emanuel, founded in 1986 with only four attorneys, now boasts more than 700 lawyers in 18 offices around the world. Specializing in high-stakes business litigation, the firm has mustered a reputation for its aggressive and no-nonsense trial attorneys.

That reputation, historically, has served Quinn Emanuel well as it regularly ranks among the most profitable law firms in Los Angeles. In 2013, it reported nearly $4.5 million in profits per partner. It would not disclose financial results for last year, which saw its local attorney head count fall more than 8 percent.

Despite the decline, with 142 lawyers in its downtown office, Quinn Emanuel is the 10th largest law firm in Los Angeles, according to Business Journal data.

Marketing, Quinn said, has always been important to the firm, but he finally decided this year to take it to the next level as competition has heated up industrywide.

“Especially since 2008, which I think was the watershed, the legal profession as a business has become extremely competitive,” he said. “It’s great to be very good at what you do, but there’s a lot of very good firms competing for the same work. So alerting clients about what you do and what you have to offer – which might be called marketing – is essential for law firms.”

That’s why Quinn sent a firmwide email out in March announcing the requirement that associates and counsels participate in at least one marketing project during the year.

The initial response was mixed, especially after some associates balked at the idea after they were told the extra work wouldn’t count toward their billable hours.

“The day we got it, we were just like, ‘What the hell?’” said one associate in the L.A. office who asked to remain anonymous. “People were kind of annoyed by it because it came off a little unappreciative for what we do. We’re just busy with a lot so we’re concerned about another requirement.”

Still, most associates interviewed are onboard with Quinn’s plan.

Ryan Landes, an associate in the downtown office, said he already completed his project.

“I helped with a pitch to defend a car company in a class action, which involved about 10 to 15 hours researching and helping write our pitch materials,” Landes said. “The truth is I do a bunch of pitches anyway, so this new requirement didn’t change anything for me.”

Changing tides

A hypercompetitive market means attorneys no longer have the luxury of relying solely on reputation to bring in business.

Indeed, a keen focus on short-term results is a common problem for professional service providers, said UCLA’s Larkin. To stay in business, firms demand workers become marketers on the side.

“It is true that lawyers and consultants are not trained as marketers,” he said, but “marketing is so important to professional service firms. At any top law firm or consulting firm, the ability to attract and retain new clients is absolutely the heart of sustainability.”

Marketing will inevitably come more easily to some lawyers than others, Quinn said, but he plans to implement more training sessions to help bridge the gap. Attorneys, he believes, can no longer rely solely on professional marketers.

“In the legal profession, I really think the only effective marketing is done by lawyers,” he said. “There’s certainly a role for marketing professionals and they are important, but when it comes to buyers of legal services, they want to talk to lawyers.”

Fitzgarrald said it was likely that other firms would follow Quinn’s lead.

In fact, Quinn Emanuel’s new program brought a lot of buzz to the annual Legal Marketing Association conference, held last month in San Diego.

“I could not get through any kind of discussion with my peers without someone bringing up what John Quinn had done,” Fitzgarrald said. “This is one of those events in history where someone draws a line in history and says, ‘We are different as an industry because this happened.’”