Your Platform Firm Is Not Your Marketing Department
The single biggest misconception consultant solicitors carry into their first year.
Most new consultants assume that joining a platform firm with a recognisable name means the firm will handle their visibility. Some level of central marketing exists, after all — there's a firm website, there are LinkedIn announcements, sometimes a directory page or a profile in firm collateral. Surely that produces enquiries?
It doesn't. Or rather, it produces enquiries to the firm's most established consultants in the most marketable practice areas, and the new arrival sees almost none of it. Six months in, the consultant is wondering why the dream isn't materialising. The dream isn't materialising because they outsourced their marketing strategy to a firm that doesn't consider it their job.
What the firm actually does
Provides a regulatory wrapper. Holds the PII. Manages compliance. Runs cashiering. Maintains the central tech stack. In some cases, runs an internal referral channel. Almost always provides a biography page on the firm site. Sometimes does a LinkedIn announcement when you join. That's the marketing offer in most platforms. It is genuinely useful but it is not, in any meaningful sense, a client acquisition system.
What the firm doesn't do
Build you a personal website that ranks in search. Write your practice area pages. Run your SEO. Manage your Google Business Profile. Build your LinkedIn presence. Maintain your reviews. Cultivate your referrer relationships. Convert your enquiries. These are the things that produce instructions, and they are all on you.
The reframe
Treat the platform firm as your back office and your own brand — site, content, network, visibility — as your front office. The firm handles compliance and infrastructure so you can focus on front-office work. The minute you start treating the firm as the front office, you stop building the assets that will actually pay you.
The good news
Once you accept this, the path is clear. Build the front office properly, once. It compounds. The consultants who do the front office work in their first year are the consultants who are comfortably busy in year two and turning work down in year three. The consultants who wait for the firm to deliver are still waiting.