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

Barnes & Thornburg has cooked up a new way to win new business from clients: it published a 318-page cookbook composed of recipes from their cuisine loving lawyers.  Entitled "Great Tastes of Law," the book sells for $16 and all the proceeds go to charity.  Mmmmm good.

Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins immediately caught my eye, as did the entire sections devoted to desserts, and cookies & candy.  I could live on a diet of ice cream and funnel cakes, did I ever tell you?

Director of Business Development Mary Bedke said that the recipe book also has separate sections on appetizers & beverages, soups & salads, vegetables & side dishes, main dishes, bread & rolls, and "This & That." 

Each recipe is signed by the author, and lists their office location.  The cookbook puts a nice human face on a law firm that has 450 attorneys in 7 offices in Chicago, Indiana, Michigan and DC.

The best way to a client's heart is through their stomach.

What exactly is Web 2.0 and how can law firms profit from it?  This was the central question that Canright Communications of Chicago and The LawMarketing Portal asked in a survey conducted in June with Evalueserve.

Web 2.0 will boost law firm revenues, support marketing efforts, improve communication with existing customers and help get new clients, according to the survey.

At the same time, the survey shows that lack of knowledge and expertise of Web 2.0 techniques provides the greatest challenge for organizations.

The term "Web 2.0" refers to a wide range of online services, networking techniques, and software systems applications to foster communication and participation. The techniques and technologies of Web 2.0 are transforming marketing, public relations, and publishing. The shift is generally characterized by websites that feature dynamic media and active networks designed to generate conversations.

To demystify Web 2.0 and fill the knowledge gap, the next Canright Speaker Series will explore survey results more fully while defining Web 2.0 terms and showing examples of such techniques and technologies as:

• Social networking (LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace)
• Social bookmarking (del.icio.us, Digg, Sphere)
• Blogging (Blogger, WordPress)
• Content Sharing (Flickr)
• Wikis (Wikipedia)
• RSS feeds (Feedburner)
• Mashups (Google Maps)

Our survey results show that respondents mainly have a surface understanding of Web 2.0, with just 24% familiar with the term (Table 1). Overall, companies see marketing as the key way in which Web 2.0 will affect revenues (Table 2). At the same time, some 62% of respondents see that the greatest challenge to using Web 2.0 techniques is lack of knowledge and expertise (Table 3).

To combat these challenges, companies and individuals need to learn how they can make Web 2.0 work for them. At our next Canright Speaker Series, on Aug. 16, we’ll define and demonstrate key Web 2.0 techniques and discuss the results of the survey in greater detail. Watch your inbox for an invitation to the event in August.

Register for this complimentary event here. Attendees will receive a report on Web 2.0 and full survey results.

What exactly is Web 2.0 and how can law firms profit from it?  This was the central question that Canright Communications of Chicago and The LawMarketing Portal asked in a survey conducted in June with Evalueserve.

Web 2.0 will boost law firm revenues, support marketing efforts, improve communication with existing customers and help get new clients, according to the survey.

At the same time, the survey shows that lack of knowledge and expertise of Web 2.0 techniques provides the greatest challenge for organizations.

The term "Web 2.0" refers to a wide range of online services, networking techniques, and software systems applications to foster communication and participation. The techniques and technologies of Web 2.0 are transforming marketing, public relations, and publishing. The shift is generally characterized by websites that feature dynamic media and active networks designed to generate conversations.

To demystify Web 2.0 and fill the knowledge gap, the next Canright Speaker Series will explore survey results more fully while defining Web 2.0 terms and showing examples of such techniques and technologies as:

• Social networking (LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace)
• Social bookmarking (del.icio.us, Digg, Sphere)
• Blogging (Blogger, WordPress)
• Content Sharing (Flickr)
• Wikis (Wikipedia)
• RSS feeds (Feedburner)
• Mashups (Google Maps)

Our survey results show that respondents mainly have a surface understanding of Web 2.0, with just 24% familiar with the term (Table 1). Overall, companies see marketing as the key way in which Web 2.0 will affect revenues (Table 2). At the same time, some 62% of respondents see that the greatest challenge to using Web 2.0 techniques is lack of knowledge and expertise (Table 3).

To combat these challenges, companies and individuals need to learn how they can make Web 2.0 work for them. At our next Canright Speaker Series, on Aug. 16, we’ll define and demonstrate key Web 2.0 techniques and discuss the results of the survey in greater detail. Watch your inbox for an invitation to the event in August.

Register for this complimentary event here. Attendees will receive a report on Web 2.0 and full survey results.

A study to be published in the Journal of Marketing that covered 167 companies including Procter & Gamble, Microsoft and Apple over a five-year period concludes that CMOs on top management teams don't have any effect on a company's financial performance, according to a recent issue of Advertising Age.

"The disheartening finding in "Chief Marketing Officers: A Study of their Presence in Firms' Top Management Teams," slated for the January 2008 issue, is sure to reignite the longstanding debate afflicting the suite: Should a CMO be judged on tangible or intangible metrics? On solid stats such as sales, or on more amorphous concepts such as brand equity or even awareness?"

The authors themselves -- Pravin Nath, a professor of marketing at the LeBow College of Business, and Vijay Mahajan, a professor in the department of marketing at the University of Texas at Austin -- admit the study is limited because it focuses on financial-performance metrics, such as sales growth and profitability, and not brand equity, and both were quick to offer caveats to the conclusion.

The common financial metrics used to measure the performance of CFOs and CEOs don't apply as well to the CMO position, Mr. Mahajan argued. "Those are very short-term," he said. "You cannot use short-term metrics to measure the performance of someone who is supposed to have a long-term impact."

Other findings:

• Only 40% of companies had CMOs in their top-management teams.
• A CMO would be in top management "when they have relatively high levels of innovation and differentiation, when they follow a corporate branding strategy, when the CEO is an outsider, and when the marketing experience of the senior management team is relatively high.
• CMOs are expended to understand how to use new media, align with the rest of the organization's imperatives and make sure the consumer is at the heart of marketing.

America's richest law firms do the worst job, when it comes to their websites, in 5 areas:

1. Communicating their branding message. “Firms are missing out in making a good first impression,” said Deborah McMurray, CEO of Content Pilot LLC in Dallas, TX. The home page should reflect your positioning strategy or what’s special about your firm. It should be client, practice and industry-focused.
2. Displaying narrative content about their practices and industries experience. “Content should be visitor and client focused, but it’s difficult to do that if you have 35 practice descriptions. You should talk about your audience as opposed to talking about your firm," she said.
3. Web site interactivity and outreach.  This including blogs, webinars, podcasts, RSS feeds, an alumni center and e-newsletter sign-up forms.
4. Lawyer Biographies. “Photos should be re-shot every 3 years, so if I hire you, the client will say that it actually looks like the lawyer. Put the list of admissions, education and publications out of the way so it can be scanned quickly.   Also, visitors don’t want to know what you’ve done for the last 20 years. Only include those things that are reputation building and want to be known for."
5. Site optimization for online search engines. You can do many things in-house: optimize page titles, display a current site map, put content in metatags, keywords and page titles.
6. Site “hygiene” – this includes images that don’t display, error pages, broken links, misspelled words, and printability of pages.

MacMurray spoke recently at the Chicago Legal Marketing Association Chapter about research her firm conducted about the websites of the AmLaw 100 -- the nation's top-grossing law firms.

The websites were assessed on McMurray's ten foundational best practices.  The megafirms score well on graphics and design, ease of navigation, availability of contact information, site search function,

"There is giant room for improvement," she concluded.

Hot off the presses:

Federal Court Rules New Lawyer Advertising Rules in New York Violate Free Speech

Public Citizen Wins Injunction Against Unconstitutional Rules

New rules governing lawyer advertising that took effect in New York on Feb. 1 cannot be enforced because they violate the First Amendment right to free speech, according to a ruling issued today by a federal court in New York.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York ruled in favor of Public Citizen's request for an injunction against many of the new rules. The organization represented its members and attorney James L. Alexander and his law firm, Alexander & Catalano. The New York firm was forced to change its advertisements to comply with the more restrictive rules.

The new guidelines were part of a revision of the rules contained in New York’s Code of Professional Responsibility for lawyers, which is designed to protect consumers by prohibiting false and misleading lawyer advertisements.  Public Citizen contended in its lawsuit that the rules’ broad language unconstitutionally prohibited truthful communication of information about legal services to New York consumers. The court heard oral argument on June 18.

In a victory for First Amendment rights, the court permanently enjoined enforcement of most of the challenged rules against attorney advertising, including rules against attention-getting techniques, the use of nicknames and mottos, the use of client testimonials, the portrayal of judges and the use of Internet pop-up ads.

"The New York rules went too far in imposing burdensome restrictions on legal free speech that do not protect consumers," said Greg Beck, an attorney for Public Citizen who litigated the case. "The court rightly recognized that the First Amendment prevents states from arbitrarily restricting advertising just because some may find it distasteful."

In today's ruling, the court held that the advertising at issue in the case was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, and it categorically rejected New York's argument that advertising considered by the state to be trivial or irrelevant was not covered by free speech rights. It noted that the state had not produced any evidence that its restrictions on speech were necessary to protect consumers and found that the prohibitions were much broader than necessary to accomplish the state’s claimed objectives.

Public Citizen also challenged the rules' application to non-commercial speech, such as offers by lawyers to represent clients without a fee in civil rights cases. And in what amounted to another victory for free speech, the court construed the challenged amendments not to apply to nonprofit attorneys.

"The main beneficiaries of this decision are New York consumers," Beck said. "Truthful advertising promotes healthy competition between lawyers and allows the public to learn about their rights and available legal services."

To read the decision, visit http://www.citizen.org/documents/alexanderorder.pdf

The ABA Journal, which is read by more than half the nation’s 1.1 million lawyers every month, has radically revamped its website. "It aggregates and filters breaking news from the nation’s best legal journalists and daily analysis from lawyers who are experts in their fields. It’s a place where the legal community can comment about today’s developments, and learn from each other," said Edward A. Adams, Editor and Publisher.

The revamped site has three major components that compete directly with Law.com:

Law News Now: www.abajournal.com  The home page features the latest legal news stories by lawyer-journalists. It’s updated continuously every business day with 25-50 summaries of and links to legal reporting from around the web. The top of the home page displays the top legal stories right now, "whether it’s today’s Supreme Court decision, yesterday’s law firm mega-merger, or Paris Hilton’s latest scrape with the law," Adams said. Lawyers can find just the news about their practice area or state at (www.abajournal.com/topics).

The Blawg Directory: www.abajournal.com/blawgs  This section indexes more than 1,000 lawyer blogs, sorted by author, what they cover, and excerpts from their 10 latest posts. The blog list can be sorted by subject, who writes the blog (partners, associates, judges, law professors, etc.), or by the state or court they blog about. Readers can suggest blogs at www.abajournal.com/blawgs/submit

The Magazine: www.abajournal.com/magazine  The site includes every story from every issue of the ABA Journal back through 2005,  The editors plan to post issues from previous years as well. New issues will go online the day they are published, and they’ll be augmented with Web-only exclusives like court opinions, white papers and interview transcripts that add depth to the printed stories.

The site also has some useful tools:

• Visitors can comment on every story.
• The list of most-read stories, appearing on almost every page, shows what the legal community is reading right now.
• You can e-mail any story to friends and colleagues.
• You can subscribe to a free daily and weekly e-mail newsletter. www.abajournal.com/subscribe
• You can a news feed to your RSS feed reader. www.abajournal.com/subscribe/#rss
• You can even keep up with the latest news on your Internet-capable cell phone or BlackBerry with our mobile edition. www.abajournal.com/subscribe/#mobile

The entire site is free and available to anyone, whether they belong to the ABA or not.

CMO Jim Durham says he has the figures to prove that clients are more loyal to his law firm, 900-lawyer Ropes & Gray, than to the average professional services firm.

Jim told the global marketing magazine Professional Marketing, (a members-only site), “In the typical law firm, the top 10 clients might change in three years. At Ropes & Gray, for the top 25 clients the average tenure is 15 years – and for the top 100 clients, it is four years.”

How does the firm do it?  Jim has been at the firm for three years and spells out the basis for his success in his booklet The Essential Little Book of Great Lawyering. You can get your own copy in the LawMarketing Store for a mere $11.95.  Better yet, buy a copy for every lawyer in your firm today at http://tinyurl.com/2utaf4. (The web page features a review.)

Let's say you've walked out of a bar and had a few too many.  To make it bad, let's say you decide to drive home.  To make it worse, let's say the police lights and siren go off behind you, and you're pulled over.

What do you do? What do you say?

If you're a client of criminal defense lawyer Anthony J. Colleluori of Woodbury, NY, you reach for his business card, which recites detailed directions on the back, and you hand the card to the policeman.

Colleluori passes out the "Attention Bar Patrons" flyer and card at drinking spots on Long Island.  The card is a perforated tear-off from the flyer that reads "Over the past few months Nassau County Law Enforcement has been targeting local bars in an attempt to crack down on DWI, DUI and drug offenses."

Among his tips:

• Be courteous to all police officers
• Avoid profanity and rude gestures
• NEVER volunteer information
• DO NOT exit your car unless instructed to do so
• Utilize the attached card by presenting it to the officer

and the most important tip is the last: Contact an attorney (presumably Colleluori) prior to submitting to any tests, verbal or otherwise.

Here's the situation: you want to buy a web domain.  You check an online registrar and see that it is available.  You think about it, return in a day or so, and it's taken.  A domain squatter detected your interest and bought your URL out from under you.

They call it "Domain Sniffing," and I first heard about it from Aviva Directory:

“I had a really great domain name idea, which was available when I searched through the registrar, but then five minutes later when I went to buy the name it was gone.” Anyone who has been in domaining for more than a month has heard dozens of versions of that same story. Although not everyone buys that domain sniffing actually exists, there is mounting evidence that domain sniffing exists in some form or another.

Blogger Larry Seltzer writes: "It all started with a message from a reader. She was planning to put a Web site up and needed to register a domain name. She chose to use her first and last names for the domain (just as I own larryseltzer.com) and checked it on at least one service for availability. She went back in a day or two to register it and, lo and behold, it had just been registered to an outfit named Chesterton Holdings. It's obvious that Chesterton Holdings is a domain squatter. The domain was not just registered, there was a Web page up on it.  The page was covered with the sorts of ads you usually see on squatted pages, and the ads were all syndicated through information.com."

Here's the best advice I've heard so far: "Mistra" writes at Webmaster World: If you have any domain in mind, please do not use Whois to check for its availability. Key in the name in your browser or use Google to search for it. If nothing shows up, you can assume that the domain is available. Only then should you go to Godaddy or any other registrar to buy that domain. If you did not buy it immediately at Godaddy (Godaddy because that is my main registrar), then you will be disappointed later to discover that the domain has been taken.

I got a letter from my trademark lawyer, John A. Clifford of Merchant & Gould, re: Secret Trademark Searching Tool.  I had always wondered how he researched the millions of marks. He even enclosed a copy of the tool for my use!

"For many years we have tried to keep our methods of performing preliminary trademark screening services as a trade secret," Jack wrote. "However, there was a significant breach of security at the recent International Trademark Association annual meeting in Chicago where thousands of people learned how we perform preliminary screenings. In case you missed the publication of that secret I am happy to share it with you now."

You simply ask the "Magic M&G Predictor Ball" a question and it responds with:

• "Worth a Try"
• "Opposition Likely"
• "Unmarketable"
• "YES"
• "Nice Strong Mark"
• "You can do better"
• "Available in U.S."
• "File Now"
• "Are You Kidding"
• "Ask Again Later"

and my favorite: "Who the Hell Knows."

I was reading the July issue of Corporate Counsel magazine when I happened across the interesting map below.  The US Chamber of Commerce surveyed 1,600 in-house lawyers, who said that the litigation hellholes were the southern states plus California (see the states in green below.)

A few pages later I came upon the Lathrop & Gage advertisement, displaying a similar map.  The ad demonstrated that the 180-lawyer firm had won favorable verdicts for clients in all 10 of the states with the worst "state court liability systems."  Was it a coincidence?  No, in my opinion.  It was marketing genius.

Lathrop & Gage mastered the art of being at the right place at the right time. I've seen their ad before and remembered it.  The firm knows that successful advertising depends on the frequency that the ad appears.  The marketing genius is running the ad continuously, so that when a coincidence like the matching maps appear, it appears as if it were all planned in advance.

From a variety of news sources:

This morning, Incisive Media announced it it had agreed to acquire ALM, the Bruce Wasserstein-owned media company for about $630 million.

American Lawyer Media, now known as ALM, owns 33 legal publications, including American Lawyer, the National Law Journal, Law.com and several local legal newspapers. The company generated about $200 million in revenues in 2006.

Some of the newspapers and magazines owned by American Lawyer Media include Corporate Counsel, IP Law & Business, the Minority Law Journal, the Fulton County Daily Report, the Legal Times, the National Law Journal, the New York Law Journal, the Recorder, Texas Lawyer.

The newspapers were formally owned by U.S. Equity Partners, controlled by Wasserstein's private equity fund, according to a press release. Wasserstein, also the top dog at investment bank Lazard, paid $200 million for the company in 1997. Wasserstein, a Harvard Law grad, began his career as an M&A attorney at Cravath.

At least four private equity firms had been in the final round of bidding for ALM, Reuters reports. Other bidders included Avista Capital Partners, Dolan Media, Source Media and Elevation Partners, according to the London Telegraph.

William L. Pollak, president and CEO of ALM, will join Incisive Media’s board after his company is acquired. "ALM will provide a sizable platform for Incisive Media to grow in the U.S.," he said in the press release, "and becoming part of Incisive Media will enable us to pursue a range of global opportunities that have not been fully available to us to date."

Incisive Media, publisher of Legal Week, provides specialized business information focusing on financial services, risk management, professional services and marketing services.

This blog has been ranked among the top blogs in legal marketing in the soon to be announced Legal Marketing Reader at http://legalmarketingreader.com/.

I'm honored because I love writing this blog. This is where you'll find live reports from marketing conferences, honest opinions about what works (and what doesn't) in generating new business and practical tips and techniques I learn along the way.

The Legal Marketing Reader "is a web page that collects headline feeds from the best of law firm marketing related blogs, combines them with other worthy resources and presents it all in an easy-to-use format for law firm marketers everywhere," said Amy Campbell, a marketing communications consultant based in Charlestown, MA  "Legal Marketing Reader was designed with the overwhelmed legal marketer in mind who doesn't necessarily have the time/desire to set up such resources for themselves."

Happy 4th of July, my fellow patriots!

When you're a marketer, you've got to go where the clients are.  Regrettably this means traveling on the country's uncaring, incompetent and overbooked airlines, and staying in overpriced, undercleaned and uncomfortable hotels. A one-night stay in the financial district of Manhattan costs $400-$600, so you want to spend your money wisely.

Happily I just got the July 2007 issue of Consumer Reports magazine, which surveyed 35,000 readers about 52,000 hotel stays and 31,455 domestic flight experiences. The magazine makes short work of finding the best airlines and hotels:

Best "fancy" hotels: Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont.  (Note that Four Seasons didn't make the list).

Best business ("luxury") hotels, in order: Renaissance, Embassy Suites, Westin, Marriott, Omni, DoubleTree and Hilton.

If you're like me, I avoid the expensive hotel when I'm going to a conference and stay at a really nice, inexpensive hotel around the corner.  Consumer reports calls these hotels "upscale": Homewood Suites, SpringHill Suites by Marriott, Harrah's Residence Inn by Marriott, Hilton Garden Inn, Hawthorn Suites, Courtyard by Marriott and Crowne Plaza.

The top airlines were on a short list:

1. JetBlue Airways - serving 54 cities. (the researchers conducted a follow-up survey in April, soon after the highly publicized, weather-related blunders of JetBlue in February, which left passengers stranded and fuming.  It turns out that JetBlue's winter troubles had little effect on the airline's overall levels of satisfaction.) 
2. Midwest airlines -- serving 50 cities.  They bake chocolate chip cookies for passengers in flight.  Midwest has solid service but not necessarily a low fare.
3. Southwest Airlines -- serving 63 cities.  You have to search the airline's own website at www.southwest.com to find the fares, because they don't share them with Expedia, Orbitz or other travel sites.
4. Frontier Airlines -- serving 60 cities.  I personally flew on Frontier from Chicago to Denver in June and recommend the airline.

Below that, the best airlines were very small, such as Hawaiian, Aloha and Alaska Airlines.  Down at the bottom were Delta, American, Northwest ("Northworst"), United and US Airways -- all of which I've had terrible experiences with.

I was recently on a United Flight that had so little legroom, my knees were jammed into the seat in front of me during two arduous flights from Chicago to New York.  The flights were both delayed, each way, with no good explanation given.

American was even worse.  I was flying on Aadvantage miles from Chicago to Dallas, which I booked via American "reservations."  When I wanted to change to an earlier flight out of Dallas, they told me I had to call "customer service," which was closed after 5 PM.  I called "customer service" the next day at 7 AM and they told me I couldn't make the change because my trip was already underway.  So I went to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport -- their hub -- and my scheduled flight was delayed for 5 hours, in 20-minute increments.  When the plane finally took off, the interior was falling apart, notably the tray table that was attached by only one hinge.  They lost my luggage and I had to wait in another long line to arrange for delivery of my suitcase.  I got home very late at night without so much as a toothbrush.  

United and American have become terrible airlines.  Look for me on a JetBlue, Midwest, Southwest or Frontier flight.