Jan. 6, 2010 – On April 18, 1775, under cover of darkness, Paul Revere and William Dawes rode out of Boston. They each took a separate route to warn the colonists of the pending march of the British army. By the time they met in Lexington two hours later, Revere had a network of patriots spreading the word and rallying militias as far away as 50 miles. William Dawes warned a few people along his route but most did not hear the news until morning and many local militias missed the first battle of the Revolutionary War. Why did Paul Revere’s ride become one of the most dramatic examples of effective networking while William Dawes faded into oblivion? The secret to Revere’s success can be explained by the “Human Web” theory or, as it is more popularly called, six degrees of separation.  

Six degrees of separation  

The theory is that if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on earth. In 1967, American sociologist Stanley Milgram tested the theory by selecting 160 people in Omaha, Neb., to each send a package to a stranger living in Sharon, Mass., using only personal contacts. The senders knew the recipient's name, occupation and general location. They were instructed to send the package to someone they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely to know the recipient personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until the package was personally delivered. The majority of the 160 packages reached their destination in six steps or less.

Six steps to finding a client 

Here is an example of how a new client, completely unknown to me, was really only six steps away. This past summer a friend of mine (one) recommended a local recruiter (two) as a network contact. This recruiter introduced me to the education committee chair (three) of a legal association. When the committee needed a resource for a program, I was connected to the law firm administrator (four) hosting the program. At the conclusion of my presentation, I was approached by one of the attendees (five) who ultimately set up a meeting with her firm’s managing partners (six). That firm is now my client.

The Law of the Few 

In John Guare’s play “Six Degrees of Separation,” one of the main characters observes that if “everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people, I find that extremely comforting, that we're so close, but I also find it like Chinese water torture that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the connection.” In Stanley Milgram’s experiment, more than half of the packages delivered went through the same three people. In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell calls this the Law of the Few. “Sprinkled among every walk of life are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors.” Gladwell goes on to explain that connectors are important to have in your network not just because of the quantity of people they know but because of the quality of the people they know. Paul Revere succeeded because he knew the right people to contact in the towns outside Boston to spread the word. William Dawes did not.

Six steps to career transition 

Here is an example where six steps to a successful career transition depended on the quality, not the quantity, of the connections. A few years ago, a law student was about to graduate with very limited job prospects. His father (one) talked to their neighbor (two) who happened to be a friend of mine (three). He asked me to meet with the student and see if I could help him advance his career. We developed a strategy whereby the student spent one year at a firm (four) gaining experience in a position he did not like. At the conclusion of his first year, I was able to introduce him as a qualified lawyer to a managing partner (five) at another firm. He impressed the lawyers (six) at that firm, made the transition, and is now on the verge of becoming a partner himself.

Six steps in the Information Age  

In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, repeated Stanley Milgram's experiment on the Internet. Using an email message as the "package,” Watts selected 19 targets in 157 countries. This “human web” eventually grew to more than 48,000 people, but the average number of intermediaries between originator and target ended up the same as in Milgram’s “snail mail” experiment (six). One of the main goals of this project was to determine why people choose the people to link with they do. Participants were asked to identify why they picked the person and what their relationship was with that person. The two most common reasons were geographic proximity and similarity of occupation. The two most common relationships were friends and co-workers. Duncan Watts’ conclusion was, “Despite enabling almost instantaneous global communication, email and the Internet is simply the tool used to transmit messages and does not appear to have made the world a more close-knit community. Compared with offline interactions like work, school, family, and community, I don't see email as being a particularly compelling medium for generating social ties."

We know an effective network is necessary to build a legal practice. To be effective, our network will include connectors, people who know the right people and lots of them. It will be necessary to find these critical links. Both social networking and technology are valuable tools, but our most effective relationships will come from traditional sources like work, family, and community. Building social capital (relationships) as well as cultural capital (knowledge and experience) will positively impact our ability to create financial capital. And it’s all just six steps away.

Michael Moore, Lewis and Clark 1983, is a professional coach for lawyers and the founder of Moore’s Law, Milwaukee. He specializes in marketing, client development, and leadership coaching for attorneys at all levels of experience. Moore also advises law firms on strategic planning and resource optimization. He has more than 25 years’ experience in private practice, as a general counsel, in law firm management, and in legal recruiting. For more information, visit www.moores-law.com.

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