Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal editor, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, marketing consultant, legal consultant, business development

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Over the years, law firms have learned that quality service alone isn't enough to attract and retain clients. Now, delivering quality merely gets you in the door. The new focus is on client retention.   The association offers 5 key client service techniques in a highly-polished, professionally-read podcast.  You can also read the article "Create a Winning Client Retention Strategy in 5 Steps" covered in the Podcast above (click the start arrow or download the MP3 file).

To see the same podcast with video visit http://www.envoyglobal.net/elawmarketing/cba. It's a Flash video that shows a slide show that is synchronized with the sound.  Way cool. It's perfect for today's ADD, short-attention-span, reading by skimming Web visitors.

The podcast was created by the skilled experts at eLawMarketing, which creates lawyer blogs, podcasts and Web sites.  If you'd like to have a podcast like this one, contact Josh Fruchter at josh@emailmessaging.net and (718) 793-7168.

The following is a true story.  Only the names of the marketer and the law firm have been omitted.  The marketer has more than 25 years of marketing experience, including 9 at law firms. Most professional staff marketers at law firms have horror stories to recount, but this one makes others pale in comparison. An experienced veteran, this marketer had previously worked at a major metropolitan firm with more than 500 attorneys with numerous offices.  The average tenure of a law firm marketer is 3 years, but this marketer was able to endure less than two years at this 350-lawyer firm in a major metro area. After you read the story, you'll know why.

It is a long, ugly story. In a nutshell, my 15 months at the law firm provided me with the worst professional experience in my legal marketing career. I was the third CMO in 2 ½ years and in spite of working my heart out to make the job a success, I literally became their "intellectual punching bag." They were taking their anger at the previous CMO out on me. She had quit after less than a year and tried to recruit their best associates as she was leaving.

It was a totally schizophrenic environment. I was told I was doing my job too well and that caused the partners to revolt. Huh?  I never knew what was wrong. I was just wrong. Even when I thought all was going well. Here's an example of one of many encounters: the Managing Partner called me into an office with the COO.  The Managing Partner ("MP") told me that another partner complained about me and we had to address the issue.

Me: I'm sorry to hear this. Can you tell me about problem?

MP: No.

Me: Can you tell me the partner's name?

MP: No.

Me: Can you tell me the practice group?

MP: No.

Me: Can the three of us meet with the partner so he/she can tell me what happened?

MP: No.

Me: If I don't know the who, what and why, I can't know how to fix it.

MP: Well, that's your problem.

Me: I'm sorry, I'll make an effort to be more sensitive in the future.

Exit.

I swear this is a true encounter and one of many similar encounters.

Made up rules as they went along

The firm has no formal marketing policies or guidelines, so they made up rules as they went along. The MP would also change the rules in the middle of the game. Naturally, I was not advised. As a result, I actually became quite adept at crisis management. I also took to carefully monitoring every activity that came into and out of my department.

• The MP cancelled contracts that were approved by the Executive Committee in the middle of their run.
• The MP entered into sponsorships only to delay payments until the organization threatened the firm with collections agencies.
• The MP would overrule practice group leader marketing budget requests and led the PGLs to believe that the decision to veto a marketing expense was mine and not hers.
• If I recommended an expenditure of $10,000, the MP would demand that I make it $25,000. When the Executive Committee would not approve the higher figure, the MP would turn around and demand that I reduce the expenditure to $7,500, even though she knew that $10,000 was the minimum.

And so on.   

Although the Executive Committee approved my hiring, the MP hated me from day one. She was totally indecisive and easily swayed, whereas I am very comfortable making decisions and taking control of given situations. She decided to create a Marketing Committee and appointed partners who were demonstrably hostile to any marketing effort and completely ignorant of even the basics of law firm marketing. The head of the Committee believed that "glad-handing" was the only way to market and didn't know the difference between a design firm and a P.R. firm.

I would go to meetings and be completely ignored. They would talk around me as if I weren't there. Naturally, being me, I wouldn't let them ignore me and even went out of my way to offer meeting agendas so that they would have something to work from. I circulated marketing articles that I thought would be helpful and informative only to find them thrown away in the meeting room garbage can. However, one of the members of the committee decided to make crib notes on 10 marketing books she thought would be useful to the Committee. She produced 47 pages of notes, with chapters, sub-chapters and sub, sub chapters.

Add to this mix, a back-stabbing, undermining manager who wanted the CMO position but was considered not capable of doing the job and you start to get the picture. For the record, I tried to fire her and had enough data on her to fire anyone else, but was not allowed to do so. She was and still is very close with a male member of the Executive Committee and therefore untouchable.

In spite of this, I accomplished quite a bit in the 15 months that I was there:

• I completed and launched their first national advertising campaign
• Restructured the marketing department
• Hired 5 marketing professionals in six months
• Redesigned and repositioned the firm's intranet newsletter
• Developed an internal attorney referral site for cross-selling purposes
• Finished and launched their Web site
• Worked with the Strategic Planning Committee on issues of law firm leverage, making presentations to the offices and practice groups on the strategic use of leverage in generating revenues
• Created a marketing budget accountability process
• And more. 

I was determined to make the best of an ugly situation, but it was grueling and I put on 30 pounds out of sheer frustration. I was treated so badly that I didn't even know how to address it.

I stayed only because during my tenure at the firm, I found and bought wonderful house. It is my dream house. I fell hopelessly in love with the place, pure love at first sight, and I decided that I would do whatever it took to buy it. If you've ever fallen in love with a house, you will understand why I would do nothing to compromise or jeopardize this purchase. The house continues to be one of the great joys of my life and is my sanctuary from a cold, cruel world.

Backstabbing manager

They fired me two days before the backstabbing manager returned from vacation and turned the department over to her. I was told to leave immediately. I was stunned. I heard rumors that they would pull something like this, but gave the firm credit for more class. I was wrong. They treated me like a criminal. They wouldn't even let me transfer my files or notify people that I was leaving. The HR Director let me get some of my personal things and some of my staff assured me that they would take care of my things. Members of my staff were equally stunned and couldn't even talk.

I did nothing to deserve this kind of treatment. It is my understanding that most of the partners were not told.  I've never been fired before and became extremely depressed and extremely angry. I wasn't fired because I wasn't competent. I was fired because the firm and I were a bad cultural fit and an incumbent was hell-bent on getting my job, and there was nothing I could do about it.  I am consoled by the fact that she was not given the position and was named "Acting Director" until they decide on another CMO.

There's so much more to my trip through Hell, but I think you get the picture. By two months after I lost the job, I was over the anger and depression and was truly glad to be free of the place. I want to find a firm that needs a proactive CMO to run their department. I have an impressive resume and an otherwise sterling track record in legal marketing. Hopefully, I won't be out of work for too long. For now, I am enjoying the rest and catching up on my readings and writing.

Wouldn't it be awful is someone set up at "you suck" site?  Apparently they can get away with it, according to New York lawyer Martin H. Samson of Phillips Nizer.  In his e-newsletter he writes:

Respondent Permitted To Continue Operating Protest Site At Home Depot Sucks.com, Homer TLC, Inc. v. Green People, Claim Number FA0508000550345 (NAF October 25, 2005).

In this domain name dispute resolved in accordance with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ("UDRP") the Panel refused to direct Respondent Green People to transfer the domain name Home Depot Sucks.com, at which Respondent operated a "protest site," to Complainant, owner of the famous "Home Depot" trademark.  Rejecting the majority view, the Panel found that the disputed domain was neither identical nor confusingly similar to Complainant's mark because it included the pejorative term "sucks" in addition to Complainant's trademark. The Panel further held that Respondent had a legitimate interest in this domain, which had not been registered in bad faith, because Respondent had used the domain for seven years as the home of a web site critical of Home Depot.  The Panel accordingly found that Complainant had failed to establish its entitlement to relief under the UDRP, and denied its complaint. 

When you take in marketing nutrition, are you getting healthy information?  Or are you going to high-fat local marketing trade association meetings and listening to vendors hawk their own products?  Why do this when you can get nourishing, high-fiber content online, by e-mail and from your bookstore?

What prompted this thought was a letter from my doctor: my cholesterol is 159 (less than 200 is good), HDL cholesterol is 53 (over 45 is good), LDL cholesterol is 91 (under 100 is good) and triglycerides are 77 (under 150 is good).  "Everything looks great," the doc wrote.  To quote Ren and Stimpy:  "Happy happy joy joy!"

Now that I'm mature enough to make withdrawals from my IRA, I make a point of eating oatmeal for breakfast, salads for lunch, salmon for dinner (full of Omega-3s), no desserts, no alcohol and no smoking.  Sometimes I even go to a gym to exercise. I avoid high-risk activities like mountain biking because I broke my collarbone doing it last year.

I recommend you apply these principles to your marketing intake.  Keep your mind sharp by reading nutrient-rich blogs that will help you resist stress from dunderhead partners and enrich the body of your marketing strategy.  Read newsletters from other professions to learn new tricks.  Try the blogs in my blogroll.  Attend a Webinar. Subscribe to the LawMarketing Newsletter. These things will keep your mind healthy.

Go to meetings where you actually learn something.  Avoid the local marketing trade association meetings where the advertisers are the speakers.  I decided to drop out of one marketing organization because they elected a vendor as their president.  With the fox in charge of the hen house, I got out, and you should too. Instead I attend conferences about new and cutting-edge techniques to keep my mind sharp, like those offered by the Business Development Institute.

Actually read a book.  Yeah, sure, we're all busy. We're exhausted at the end of the day.  But take a can of gasoline, pour it on the TV (do this outside) and set it on fire.  Throw your DVDs in to the bonfire. Stop watching the damn thing.  Instead read a book that will fire your imagination.  For work, I am reading the new book by uber-blogger Robert Scoble called "Naked Conversations -- how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers."  He's got a chapter about people like me. For inspiration I'm reading "River of Doubt" about Theodore Roosevelt's fateful journey on an unexplored river in Brazil. This was the last adventure of the energetic ex-president, and it led to his death.  I want to know where he went wrong.

I absolutely, positively guarantee that if you enrich your diet of incoming information, you will be better at your job, your will make more money and you'll be much happier all around.

Dr. Ralph Wilson identified 7 reasons that many Web sites don't turn up in search engine results.  It's the result of using old-fashioned technology and the wrong cutting-edge technology --ignorantly, at the same time.  In a nutshell, he examined the site of a large church in a city of 5,000 and found these flaws:

1. The homepage has a "splash page" made up of a single GIF image and no text content that is spider food for search engine spiders.  [I see this a lot on professional firm sites too.]
2. The navigation system on the splash page is an image map. It contains no text links on the homepage, but since search engines can't read image maps, the search engine is stopped in its tracks. It has nowhere to go and nothing to index.   
3. The site is built using HTML frames, a technique that was the rage of website developers in the 1990s, now rather widely denounced for its search engine unfriendliness.   
4. The homepage within the frame system contained no text content, just a title and a frame system.   
5. NOFRAMES tags stopped search engine spiders. Because this was the main frameset page that contained no content or navigation links whatsoever, the search engine spiders are stopped again. They have no URLs to go to, no links. Nothing.
6. The interior webpage URLs all point to the website developer's domain, such as:
   http://account.developer_domainname.com/acct/10664-8591/tmpl/
7. None of the interior webpages can be bookmarked or linked to. Not only are search engines prevented from entering, but humans can't link to parts of the site that interests them.

Read the full story on http://www.wilsonweb.com/art/design/invisible-website_htm.htm.

According to marketer Sam Decker, "Saying "no" is the most strategic decision we can make. By saying "no," we focus and improve quality of the 'yes' areas. We improve ourselves and our firm's effectiveness. "No" empowers people because it simplifies. Our businesses succeed on the basis of what, where and how we say "no."

Find the entire list on his blog.  Here are the highlights:

1. What strategies, initiatives and activities will you say "no" to? This is a big one for me.  For a long time I got sidetracked into a business that I was not naturally adept at.

2. What measurements will you ignore? From now on, I will measure myself against my own personal best performance.  Staying later at the office is going to drop off #1 on the list.  I will stop comparing my insides to other people's outsides.

3. What customers will you not target?  No more clients who request my advice and then never get around to taking it.

4. What people will you not keep?  No more people who are users.

5. What competitors will you not follow?  Never occurred to me to follow.

6. What will you remove from your web site? This is a good reminder for me to take a closer look at Lawmarketing.com.  I need to simplify it and follow my own advice on Web marketing.

7. What money will you not spend?  No more individual stocks.  No more print magazines published at my own expense. No more memberships in associations I get nothing out of but flak.

8. What meetings will you decline?  There's a big one in March that I'm going to skip.  I will focus on the conferences where I learn cutting-edge ideas.

9. What trips will you not make?  No more trips to please someone else.

10. What slides will you not create?  No slides without a picture.

11. What will you not say?  No more online squabbles.  I will, however, continue to tell the truth, point out when the Emperor has no clothes and when the fox is guarding the hen house.

12. What thoughts will you not entertain?  Anger, or at least not acting on anger.

Tom Antion offers a very interesting way to use flip charts. Put one on both sides of the stage and pop back and forth between them. You can have an audience member volunteer at each flip chart helping your record input from other audience members. This has a tremendous Wake em Up value.  Check out his Great Public Speaking blog.

Even though I've been saying for years that law firms need to put 3 things on their Web sites to attract business clients, the message isn't getting through.  I've been making these points in speeches, articles and blog posts.  At a very minimum your Web site must list:

1. Industry experience
2. Representative clients
3. Success stories

Now comes an article researched and written by Greenfield|Belser brand design, "From Bland to Brand" on page 42 of the November/December 2005 issue of Law Firm Inc. that says, "Simply put, law firms are failing to create Web sites that effectively market their organizations."  See http://lawfirminc.law.com/display.php/file%3D/texts/1105/web1105 (registration required.)  Among the failures are:

• No "Industries" button on the site. Less than 25% of firms display their industry experience, which is "surprising, because our research consistently shows that a firm's industry knowledge factors into a client's decision to hire it."
• 20% of practice area pages do not link to relevant content such as articles, updates, newsletters and the like.
• Only 44% of the sites surveyed display a slogan or tagline.
• Blue or white dominate 66 % of large law firm sites. "Why? Studies have shown people associate blue with trust."  That's nice, but it makes all large firm sites look the same.
• Only 13% of firm sites offer in-depth case studies, and only 5% percent put case studies on their home page.
• 28% of sites use stock legal images such as spectacles, gavels, columns, scales of justice sheafs of paper and laptop computers.  Borrrring. Triteness is bad marketing.
• Skyline shots are popular on large-firm sites.  As a result, their sites end up looking almost exactly alike.
• Only 31% of the home pages included a link to the firm's extranet.
• Only 17% had information for law firm alumni, who are a great source of referrals.
• 97% of sites displayed at an 800x600 screen resolution, even though the most popular setting on people's computers is 1024x768 now.
• 35% of sites incorporate Flash.  Flash is search engine repellent; it's a graphic that search engine spiders and bots cannot index.  In my opinion, nothing on a law firm web site should be moving, because it distracts the eye away from text.  On amusement park Web sties, Flash is OK.

In conclusion: "Law firm Web sites are more alike than different.  That's not surprising given an industry bias towards precedent.  But it's lousy marketing."