How to become an expert in your field

In one of Tom's lawyer magazines, there is an article about marketing tactics for small firms to attract new clients. Seventh on the list is to self-publish a book and thus establish yourself as an expert. The author doesn't even suggest you actually write the book, but that you hire a firm that will interview you and then put your babble into clear English. (I suppose the author assumes lawyers will be unable to manage this burdensome task on their own.) Then he says you give hard copies to clients to impress them, because no one will ask how many you actually have sold. And you can sell the ebook version on your firm's website, a handy way to get email addresses and phone numbers to use for further marketing of your services.

What can I say? It seems a bit iffy, though perhaps not totally unethical. And given the glut of television advertisements that are the present-day version of ambulance chasing, do we expect anything else?

But if your new lawyer hands you a book extolling his expertise, you might want to ponder the implications ... 

Full disclosure: Not only is Tom a lawyer, but so is his son John. And I worked in a law office for several months after we moved to Wisconsin Dells.