Marketing legal services can be cut throat. And yet I often write that while attorneys should keep an eye on their competition, they should not fear them. Competition makes us better lawyers. It educates and expands the market for our services. And it provides us with a way to convince prospects to choose us by showing them how we are different or better.

But there is one competitor that no attorney can afford to ignore.

This competitor is stealthy. If you aren’t careful, he will steal clients from under your nose and you will never know it. There is no competition more powerful, or more deadly than this one, and you need to be prepared.

Who is he? He goes by several names: apathy, indecision, and fear.

Your biggest competition isn’t the other attorneys in your market. Your prospects have another option, as Seth Godin reminds us: the option of doing nothing.

You may do a good job of showing prospects why they should choose you instead of any other attorney, but you must first show them why they need to hire any attorney. If they don’t see the need or their fears preclude them from making a decision, you’ve lost the client, just as surely as you would had he hired the guy down the street.

The good news is that you can defeat this competitor. Make sure your prospects understand the risks of doing nothing and the benefits for making the right decision. Tell them the facts and share the stories.

Once they know why they need to hire an attorney and are persuaded to do so, then show them why the attorney they hire should be you.