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The One Thing You Can Do to Be More Profitable in 2010
Anita Campbell, the Founder of Small Business Trends, an online community of small business owners, polled some of her business owner contacts to see how they would answer the following question:
“What is the number one thing you can do to be more profitable in 2010?” Ten business owners gave their answers:
Meet the Client’s Pain Points – says Jonathan Fields, Author of “Career Renegade”
“The pain points for a lot of markets have moved in a substantial way in 2009. Problems have changed, needs have evolved. Look back, ask how the points of maximum pain have moved for the market you serve. Then adapt your solutions to better serve those new points in 2010.”
Hire a Cost Containment Firm – says Gene Marks, Author of the “Streetwise Small Business Book of Lists”
“Consider hiring a cost containment firm. My clients have used Alliance Cost before but just use Google to search "cost containment solutions" and you'll find plenty of others. These firms will analyze what your spending and suggest ways to reduce your overhead. They'll renegotiate supplier contracts or (with your permission) replace your suppliers with their lower cost suppliers. Most of these firms take a cut, sometimes up to 50%, of the first year's savings and then leave the rest of the future savings to you. I've seen companies cut their overhead by as much as 10-20% using these companies. Be careful though - they'll turn your place upside down looking at invoices and talking (with your permission) to your suppliers."
To read what the other 9 business owners recommended, visit the LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/caQb6a
Judicial Hellholes Are a Law Firm Marketing Opportunity for Plaintiff Lawyers
There are six "judicial hellholes," five jurisdictions on the "watch list," four "dishonorable mentions" and 16 lawyers in the "rogue's gallery" in the list of plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions named by the American Tort Reform Foundation (ATRA). "Judicial Hellholes are places where judges systematically apply laws and court procedures in an unfair and unbalanced manner, generally against defendants in civil lawsuits," the organization's new 64-page report says.
Viewed another way, the jurisdictions are marketing opportunities for plaintiff lawyers battling big corporations. “West Virginia was a ‘field of dreams’ for plaintiffs’ lawyers. We built it and they came,” the report quotes West Virginia Judge Arthur Recht as saying. It also quotes Mississippi trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs describing them as "magic jurisdictions."
ATRA is a pro-business organization that is supported by major industries and Fortune 500 companies. It is a "business-led effort to take away consumers' legal rights," which attacks judges and juries, according to the Center for Justice and Democracy (CJD). "ATRA’s unscientific report attacks a number of poor communities in the United States" using "no actual or scientific data" a CJD statement says.
Conversely, defense lawyers can make it a marketing distinction that they've kept clients out of these jurisdictions. Making the argument that justice can be controlled by location, the report also lists defense-oriented "points of light." Corporate defendants are favored in these jurisdictions by getting additional appeals (Maryland and West Virginia, which is hellhole #2), reduced verdicts (New Jersey, which is hellhole #4), rejecting emotional harm damages (Vermont and California), adding burdens to cases for asbestosis victims (U.S. Supreme Court), and raising hurdles for the admission of expert testimony (Arizona).
The "ATRA Gold Medal" went to Oklahoma, for enacting tort reform by reducing appeals bonds for defendants, requiring experts to file a "certificate of merit for professional negligence," limiting class actions, limiting joint and several liability, limiting noneconomic damages, exempting fast-food outlets from obesity cases, and lowering and delaying prejudgment interest.
For the complete law firm marketing angle, visit the LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/bQA6L2.
Lexis for Microsoft Office to be Offered FREE
You can't get it yet, but when Lexis for Microsoft Office (LMO) comes out by June 2010, there will be no extra charge for the additional functionality. You have to have a LexisNexis subscription that lets you access the information LMO can get, but otherwise the company will waive the cost on the first iteration, according to Clemens Ceipek, Vice President and Managing Director of "New Lexis."
"We don’t think the market right now tolerates a lot of price action, customers want more value," he said, noting that clients are demanding more value and no price increases from lawyers.
Simply having LMO will give law firms a marketing point of distinction, because they will be able to say that they can be more efficient and work more quickly. "Corporate clients are saying 'how can I get my law firm to use this?'" Ceipek said.
Key features of the new software allows lawyers to work in Word or Outlook and:
- Search - get one-click access to LexisNexis, and separately, the Web and a lawyer's own internal document-sharing system. "We've integrated Bing, Google search and Lexis Web search. We’re trying to make it as easy to find the relevant stuff."
- Get Background Information - by clicking on hyperlinks the software creates for people, companies, organizations and cases. Clicking on a case citation will Shepardize it. "When you get a document from opposing counsel, you can instantly see if there is any bad law cited in the case. If you click on link. a window opens on the right - but you’re still within Word - and you'll get a whole Shepard’s report. You don’t have to switch programs, don’t have to cut and paste," Ceipek said.
- Get a Suggestion -- "Let's say you're writing a brief. You just type out in Word what it’s about and click 'suggest,' and a window on the right and analyze the text you typed in and give you relevant example documents that accomplish what you’re trying to do."
Lexis began surveying lawyers about the difficulties they had in creating documents -- such as cutting and pasting, running searches and switching between programs. Microsoft's formidable program writers did the development work in 18 months.
"The reaction has been phenomenal," he said. "I've been in development sessions myself, and we ask the lawyers "on a scale of zero to 10 how likely are you to recommend this to your firm or client?" We get 8 to 10s. Hundreds of lawyers have tried it. It’s so easy, so intuitive. What impresses people is how simple it is," he said.
Click Continue Reading below to see screen shots of the new software.
Online Conversations Incredibly Widespread
"I find it’s always interesting to go back and review the old against the new. So, I’ve collected as much as I can from my previous insane snippets of data and benchmarked it against the here and now, alongside rooting out some new stuff for you to mull over," said 
Jake Hird, a Senior Research Analyst for Econsultancy, which recently published following mind-boggling statistics on their blog.
- Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours.
- Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis.
- LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide..
- Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m…This means over 40% growth in less than 6 months.
- Flickr now hosts more than 4 billion images.
- More than 35m Facebook users update their status each day.
- Wikipedia currently has in excess of 14m articles, meaning that its 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months.
- Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5bn uploads to the site each month.
- Back in 2009, the average user had 120 friends within Facebook. This is now around 130.
- Mobile is even bigger than before for Facebook, with more than 65m users accessing the site through mobile-based devices. In six months, this is over 100% increase.
- There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.
- There are now 11m LinkedIn users across Europe.
- Towards the end of last year, the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million.
- The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.
- 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging, according to Technorati’s new State of the Blogosphere.
- At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10 billion tweets in a single year.
- About 70% of Facebook users are outside the USA.
- India is currently the fastest-growing country to use LinkedIn, with around 3m total users.
- More than 250 Facebook applications have over a million combined users each month.
- 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog.
- 38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.
- More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60m Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.
Think how the statistics will change in next 2-3 years! We will literally be living our lives online rather than offline (just as teenagers do today).
Memo to Senior Partners: Motivating Younger Lawyers to Generate New Business
“You will motivate more people by capturing their imagination with an idea than with money.” – Cornelius Bodine, Jr., 1916-1987 – my father.
As you have noticed, there is a generation gap in your law firm. You and your fellow partners would like to plan your exit strategy, but meanwhile the younger generation is not ready to step up to become the new leadership.
The associates may resent being asked to generate new businesses. They say they want “work-life balance” when you suspect they just want to go home early. Some of the associates don’t even care if they become a partner! Some will leave just after they finish paying off their student loans – perhaps to enter another field entirely.
How do you motivate these “drone” lawyers who view their position at your firm as just a job?
The Solution: you have to make your practice cool again.
In the field of law, you need to bring back the élan of Perry Mason getting a confession on the witness stand, or Paul Newman winning in “The Verdict,” or how a personal injury lawyer represented families whose children died of leukemia in “A Civil Action.” What they’ve seen so far are slimy lawyers played by George Clooney in “Michael Clayton,” and “Boston Legal” with the bloated William Shatner playing the unethical Denny Crane, and brilliant yet ruthless lawyer Patty Hewes in “Damages.”
The younger lawyers already understand that running a law firm is a business. They’ll take a pay cut to work at a different place that they think is a happening office that’s fun to work in. What they need to understand that being a lawyer is a great profession, that in the past the halls of Congress and our national leaders were once primarily lawyers, and that being a lawyer comes with a lot respect and authority.
For the rest of the story visit the LawMarketing Portal at www.lawmarketing.com
Lawyer Quadruples Work from a Client with Fixed Fees
from the Chicago Tribune:
Fixed-fee arrangements between lawyers and their corporate clients are gaining popularity, but are they economical for both sides?
For Lake Forest-based Brunswick Corp., its flat-fee contract for national litigation has exceeded expectations, said Kristin Coleman, general counsel. The maker of boats, billiard tables, and fitness and bowling equipment cut the amount it spent on outside lawyers working on litigation by 30 percent in 2009.
On the flip side, David Rammelt, a partner at K&L Gates, said the volume of work he did for Brunswick last year quadrupled, a positive outcome in a year that was slow for many lawyers. But Rammelt had to switch law firms to make the arrangement more profitable.
Coleman and Rammelt's flat-fee contract is in its second year and includes product-liability and breach-of-warranty cases. Their experience provides some lessons to other lawyers and companies considering alternatives to the industry standard of billing clients at an hourly rate.
They debunked several myths regarding fixed-fee arrangements, including the notion that lawyers working under fixed fees will not work as hard."The lawyers who provided the service did a great job," Coleman said. "There were some skeptics among my team."
The contract also forced Rammelt and his team of five lawyers to be efficient, an anomaly to the law-firm business model that incentivizes attorneys to rack up hours.
"Brunswick said, 'This is your all-in pot of money. You be efficient now,'" Rammelt said.
Cost savings also came via technology. Kelley Drye built Web-based case management software for Brunswick. The database contained every document for every case Rammelt's team worked on, eliminating the need to ship documents overnight. Brunswick lawyers could access the system at any time, eliminating the need for quarterly status reports from Rammelt. When Rammelt left for K&L Gates, the firm bought the software from Kelley Drye.
On the downside, using metrics based on the traditional hourly-fee model, Rammelt's realization rate — the rate of collection versus hours billed — is not as high as he would like. He and his team still keep track of the time they spend on Brunswick matters to have a benchmark to compare to the fixed-fee contract.
The two sides tweaked the contract in its second year to provide some protections for the law firm. For example, if a case hits a ceiling on fees then it gets removed from the fixed-fee program and gets billed by the hour.
The Top Five Reasons Why Clients Leave -- and How You Can Prevent It
Your legal work may have been stellar, but unhappiness with cost and billing, lack of response, incompetence, failure to understand client needs and a conflict with a partner or staff will make clients leave, according to Jeffrey Miller and Jill Kohn, Ph.D., marketing consultants at Kohn Communications.
Lawyers often mistake a lack of complaining from clients as a sign of satisfaction. This may be an overly optimistic conclusion. Research indicates that most clients won’t express feelings of dissatisfaction; they’ll just leave. This is particularly true for consumers of services, who are less likely to complain than those who purchase a tangible product. For every client who does give you an earful, research indicates there are 26 others you won’t be hearing from. Ten of their friends and associates, however, will be told about their unpleasant experience with you and your firm in high-definition detail.
Maybe you have done nothing technically wrong. In fact, the legal work may have been stellar, but for some reason the client is unhappy. This is because it can be difficult for clients to accurately assess what you have done for them. They may not understand the complexity of issues involved with their matters or lack the technical knowledge to effectively evaluate services rendered. The client’s expectations can vary greatly from the attorney’s in nearly every aspect of the relationship, including the amount of time the matter requires, the scope of the issue, and the likely outcome.
Based on interviews with a wide variety of law firm clients across the country, there are five complaints clients express most frequently -- and there are strategies you can employ to effectively address your client’s top concerns, thereby preventing client loss and enhancing client loyalty.
1. COST AND BILLING. Dissatisfaction with cost and billing can take several different forms, but the following are the most common.
For the rest of the story visit the LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/cBJHbI
Arnold & Porter Creates an iPhone App for Law Firm Marketing
Arnold & Porter is the first AmLaw 100 law firm to publish an iPhone app, pioneering into new areas of marketing with technology. The firm publishes the Consumer Advertising Law Blog, which provides commentary and news on emerging legal issues in consumer marketing, advertising and promotional activities. The iPhone application takes the content from the blog and makes it more easily accessible with an iPhone. Additional features are included, such as:
- Offline access to the blog's postings.
- Saving “favorite” articles for viewing on or offline
- An easy sharing of articles via Email, Facebook or Twitter
- Viewing of web content without leaving the application.
To distribute the blog’s content as widely as possible to current and potent clients and readers, the firm distributes versions of blog postings via RSS feed, Twitter, and Kindle. In addition, Arnold & Porter publishes a Consumer Products Marketing Newsletter. That newsletter contains blog content as well as additional features for those clients and readers who prefer that format (printed or not).
"The iPhone app provides clients and interested readers a unique way to access the high-quality reporting and analysis created by our multi-disciplinary consumer protection and advertising practice group," said Neil Rosenbaum, New Business Opportunities Manager for the firm in Washington, D.C.
The idea for the blog was an extension of that approach. The blog editors and Rosenbaum discussed the concept of creating the mobile application in connection with the blog.
Why create an iPhone app?
To read the rest of the story, visit the LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/a9gyyu
Applying Disney World's Techniques to Law Firm Marketing
The one thing everyone remembers about their visit to Disney World is how clean it is. That's because it is every employee's job -- from the VP of Marketing to Captain Nemo -- to pick up any piece of trash they see and throw it away.
The marketers at Disney World know they are not selling rides, parades or cartoon characters. They are selling an experience. "What do we want our clients to say about their experience? Our brand is what our clients say about us, it’s not our marketing or logo. At most places it happens by default. We need to make it happen by design," said speaker, trainer and consultant Dennis Snow, who worked for 20 years at Disney World. He spoke at the 2010 Marketing Partner Forum in Florida.
"We want them to say in order to get repeat business:
- It was a magical experience
- They paid attention to every detail.
- They made me and my children feel special."
It's the experience that matters.
To read the rest of this story visit The LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/7bRD0Y
