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

I was surprised how wrong the predictions were for an economic recovery in the legal profession in 2010. Instead we got the dismal "new normal" with layoffs, indebted law grads without jobs, cost-cutting, and gloomy expectations from managing partners.

"We believe the worst is over," said Dan Dipietro of Citi Private Bank on March 3, 2010.  Man was he wrong!

The National Bureau of Economic Research said the recession ended in June 2009, but nobody believed it. The only lawyers doing well were handling foreclosures, divorces and bankruptcies.

For 2011, economists (see http://bit.ly/i9usFB) predict more competition, pressure on fees, fewer partner-track associates positions, more non-equity service partners, fewer salaried and more temp positions, and more legal work outsourced overseas.

On the bright side:

• M&A activity is expected to jump 36% in 2011 (see http://aol.it/dcYS4M)
• Demand for legal services will also increase in healthcare, intellectual property, bankruptcy, corporate and security litigation, antitrust law, and environmental law (see http://bit.ly/gakp3z)
• Lawyers and paralegals with at least four years experience will be needed at midsize law firms, see http://bit.ly/hiyvyn. Law firms are looking for workers that will bring clients with them.
• CRM (client relationship management systems) will have to incorporate LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook information.
• Law firms will realize they can’t cost-cut their way to profit, and will seriously start training lawyers to do business development to increase the financial top line.
• “Innovate or die” will be the watchword for law firms, and they will offer new ways to offer new business services and value billing.
• Law firms will stop upgrading software and use SaaS offerings and cloud computing.

As for the rest, we'll see.

Gerry Oginski, a legal video pioneer, predicts that there will be no distinction between online video and TV. He advises lawyers not to create their own "shows," but instead create short educational video clips.  Why? Because attorneys are boring.

Register for his upcoming webinar, "How Online Video Will Increase Your Clientele" on January 14, 2011. Gerry is a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer, and he has produced and created more than 200 educational and informative videos to market his law practice successfully. In practice for more than 21 years, Gerry will explain why video is so powerful in business development, give examples of lead-generating, videos, and spell out the elements of a video that generates new revenue. Visit www.PBDI.org for more details.
 

Don't live with pain, disfigurement, disability, scars, broken bones, burns, paralysis or permanent injury. Berger & Green will get what's yours! A exploding car on fire!  (Somebody must have critiqued this video. Visit the firm's website and you'll see the current soothing and calming videos).

It is no surprise that calculated strategy is central to how accounting firms approach marketing and communications. But what may surprise you is that accounting firms have embraced social media as a standard tool for communications. They are using it to not only communicate with clients but also are using it to build business. In spite of the risks that social media presents such as technology security, and employee distractions, accounting firms are embracing this new media with enthusiasm and confidence. 

A recent study conducted by the Association for Accounting Marketing (AAM) found that approximately 60% of the firms surveyed are participating in social media and 42.8% have written social media policies to guide employees and govern its use.

The survey responses were received from accounting marketing professionals across the United States. Questions were posed regarding all of the major social media applications including Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs.

LinkedIn emerged as the leading application used by accounting professionals with 76% of firms using LinkedIn and of those not using LinkedIn, 60% have a plan to establish an account. According to Alice Grey Harrison, AAM member and Marketing Communications Manager for Dixon Hughes PLLC, the largest accounting firm headquartered in the Southern U.S., “LinkedIn has been identified as a valuable way to connect with prospects, clients and previous employees. We encourage the use of LinkedIn by providing web-based on-demand training to help our employees establish their profile and get started making connections.”

Accounting firms are using social media for:

• Thought leadership
• Recruiting
• Creating alumni networks
• Public relations
• Brand development
• Business development
• Employee communications.

Regardless of the accounting firm’s size or focus, this study shows that social media has emerged as a credible way to communicate brand and messaging.

A copy of the 2010 Association for Accounting Marketing Social Media Survey is available by contacting Pete Pomilio 856-793-0806 or ppomilio@ahint.com.

I was sitting in my study, reading Wikileaks to catch up on what our government was up to. To my horror I discovered a clear and present danger to our privacy as citizens, an incredible government program to spy on Americans, harvest and collect the information, and deliver consequences -- some really dreadful consequences. It involved having a terrorist spy run the government program.

The description was redacted, but here's what I made out:

• The spymaster can see you when you're sleeping.
• He knows when you're awake and monitors your activities.
• He knows if you've been "bad" or "good" according to some undefined standards.

This goes waaaay beyond stoplight cameras that issue traffic tickets, or food stores monitoring what you eat when you swipe your store card, or a GPS program that can tell exactly where you are.

Code named the S@ЙT@ program, it involved doling out rewards and punishments without any right to due process or equal protection.  The head of the agency is obese, so he's definitely an American.  He wore red garb so he was probably a Communist.

I called up my local Tea Party leader, who had already informed me about FEMA concentration camps, impending 'door-to-door' gun confiscations and that 9/11 was a government plot. And he knew all about the S@ЙT@ program. He whispered fearfully, "So be good for goodness sake!

Well it was fun while it lasted. On December 15, 2010 at 1:30 p.m., a group made primarily of Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP (Blakes) articling students, and a few partners, associates and staff, performed a Flash Mob dance at the Commerce Court food court in Toronto, to the song "I've Got a Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas.

Now the YouTube video has been removed at the request of Cherry River Music and Will.I.Am Music for using the song "I've got a feeling" by Black Eyed Peas without permission.  "Thanks for ruining Christmas," as Adrian Dayton wrote in his blog. 

Blakes is a 150-year old law firm with more than 550 lawyers in offices in Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, New York, Chicago, London, Bahrain, Beijing, Al-Khobar and Shanghai.

Wearing red baseball caps and office garb, the dancers started choreographed arm-swinging, and then cell phone cameras came out from the crowd, and shoppers started moving to the beat. By last week the video had been viewed nearly 9,000 times. 

Acritas has launched a new global survey to find out which are the 100 Top Law Firms to Work For. London-based Acritas is the world's leading source of evidence-based legal market insight. Please go here to take the survey.

The survey consists of 10 questions and takes less than 5 minutes to complete. It is measuring the firm people would most like to work for:

• Most forward-thinking
• Most effective work-life balance
• Best for all-round remuneration and benefits
• Most collaborative working culture
• Most renowned for technical and professional excellence
• Most ethical firm to work for
• Satisfaction at current firm based on a number of different criteria
• How they would rate their current working environment
• How important certain criteria are s when selecting a firm to work for

In the first two days hours they received 300 responses from the workforces at more than 100 firms worldwide. All respondents will be eligible to win either an iPad or one of 5 iPod Touchs that the research company will give away at the end of the survey, which closes on the January 31, 2011.

There is a huge number of law firm ranking tables available in the market looking at positioning from a number of different aspects, revenue, profits per partner, brand, and client satisfaction. "But we wondered why law firms across the world don't appear to be rated by the people who work for them," said Lisa Hart, the CEO of Acritas.

"For years we have been listening to what clients think of the law firm(s) they work with, now we want to listen to a law firm's most important asset -- their workforce," she said.

"That is why Acritas is trying to find out which law firm is the top to work for. We are asking for honest feedback from both lawyers and their professional and administrative staff on multiple aspects of working life within a law firm. We are also asking students to submit their views on which firms they are aspiring to work for."

Acritas will publish the results early Spring 2011. To find out more about Acritas click here).

2010 was clearly the year of social media:

• Twitter added 100 million new accounts this year.
• Facebook has 500 million users at last count.
• There are an estimated 2,250,000 lawyers on LinkedIn.
• There are at least 6,000 lawyer-written blogs, an all-time high.  
• I've read numerous books and dozens of articles about the best way to make the most of all these online marketing initiatives.

For 2011 I'm making a resolution that I will actually meet as many online contacts as I can.  There's a term for this: "IRL," which means meeting "in real life."  Rather than be satisfied with having 750+ LinkedIn contacts, I want to connect with people face-to-face.

The reason stems from a principle I teach at my business development training sessions: all new business comes in through relationships.  Further, relationships are maintained by meeting people in-person. (I'm not saying that I'm planning a bunch of sales calls.) Rather I want to grow the contacts I've initiated online into living, breathing relationships.

I remember as a kid I was a great networker. I'd just run to a friend's house and ask if he could come out and play. I knew every kid and adult in my neighborhood. I enhanced this familiarity by becoming the local newspaper delivery boy. I formed relationships back then that have lasted more than 50 years. That's how powerful it is to spend time with people in person.

What if I had just emailed the kids in the neighborhood? Or only texted them? Or merely connected with them on Facebook or LinkedIn? That wouldn't have been any fun, and it would be thin soup to feed a relationship. 

So in 2011, I plan to reach out to my contacts and say, "I'll be in your neighborhood. Can you come out and play?"

Need to prove to your partners that blogging is worth the effort in business development?  HubSpot has arrived to help, with "Marketing Data: 101 Charts & Graphs."

• Nearly 50% of people read blogs more than once a day.
• The most linked-to words in a blog are: recent, insights, soon, answers, analysis, facts, review, build, great and tips -- in that order.
• The most commented-on words are, in order: giveaway, recap, review, jobs, recruiting, events, gift, money, interview and comments.
• Bloggers should stay away from technical words like: franchise, episode, futures, conferencing, investment, estate, derivatives, virtualization, investing and backup -- they are the least-viewed words.

People read a lot of blogs, primarily in the morning, peaking at 10 AM. People also comment more in the mornings, peaking at 9 AM.

For more, see The Science of Blogging at http://bit.ly/ezRm8w

HubSpot complied this data from a variety of sources, including analysis of our 3,700 business customers, surveys with hundreds of businesses responding, analysis of the data in our free tools like Website Grader, Twitter Grader and Facebook Grader.

For the second year in a row, a majority in-house counsel indicate that their more satisfied with their law firms -- but they're assigning less legal work and expecting to pay fee increases of only 1.52%, according to the 2010 ACC/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey.

Other high points of the research:

• The most pressing concern of corporate counsel is reducing the cost of law firm fees.
• Clients want e-billing.
• Although hourly rates still predominate, the use of alternative fees is growing.
• A minority of in-house counsel are pursuing "convergence" (reducing the number of outside law firms) and a majority of corporations have increased the number of firms they use.
• Companies are issuing more RFPs.
• Clients expect discounts for early payment.
• Most corporations require budgets for at least some of the legal matters.

First the good news: For the second year in a row, the survey collected data regarding the ACC Value Challenge. In a reversal of last year’s results, for 2009, a majority of in-house counsel (59%) believe that the value of the work performed by their outside counsel, taking into account the cost of their services, did not decline during the past year, perhaps due to greater focus on value being brought to bear by in-house counsel through means such as the ACC Value Challenge.

Alas, more legal work is staying in-house. Law department spending as a percentage of company revenues increased by 35%, but spending on law firms as a percentage of company revenues increased by only 14%. "Over the last decade, the annual increase in law firm hourly rates has fallen dramatically from over 9% in 2000 to this year’s increase of 1.48%, the lowest in the survey’s history. Furthermore, in-house counsel predict that this record will hold at least for the coming year—projecting on average an annual increase of only 1.52%. These numbers clearly show the impact that in-house counsel and a weak economy are having on their law firms’ power to increase revenues each year simply by raising their rates."

For the full article, visit the LawMarketing Portal at www.lawmarketing.com.

Adrian Dayton, a blogger, lawyer and author of Social Media for Lawyers, has assembled a list of the blogs of the AmLaw 100, including hyperlinks to the blogs.

Many firms have numerous blogs, like Reed Smith, which has blogs on Adlaw, China, employment law, environmental law, global regulatory enforcement, global startups, the health industry, the  “Washington watch,” “Legal Bytes,” lending law, life sciences legal update, “ReACTS,” real estate law and The Policyholder Perspective.

Oddly, firms like Gibson Dunn, Sullivan & Cromwell, Gibson Dunn, Paul Hastings, MoFo, Simpson Thacher, Bingham McCutchen, Orrick and Davis Polk have no blogs at all.  How 20th Century of them.

Even Skadden Arps has a blog by laweyr J. Russell Jackson on Consumer Class Actions & Mass Torts. 

Shoul law firms have blogs for law firm marketing purposes? Just read Do Blogs Help Law Firms Get New Business? Absolutely.

From Law360:  As the demand for continuing legal education grows, a standoff is brewing between law firms and course providers that want credit for business development training and the regulators who maintain that the aim of CLE is not to churn out rainmakers.

For most attorneys, taking a certain number of hours of CLE classes every year is a fact of life, an unavoidable element of maintaining a license to practice law. Luckily, CLE comes in many venues and, nowadays, different types of media.

But with respect to the content of those classes, there is one area that CLE regulators have yet to embrace: the business side of running a law firm — including marketing, rainmaking and client development.

As the legal business changes, a growing contingent of CLE providers and law firms are calling for state bar associations to recognize the need for these skills by allowing business development courses to come under the umbrella of CLE accreditation.

In October two heavyweights of the CLE industry — the American Law Institute-American Bar Association Continuing Professional Education partnership and the Association for Continuing Legal Education — got to work drafting a model rule they hope states will adopt to do just that.

But that's easier said than done. On the other side of the CLE industry is a patchwork of regulators — made up of state supreme court commissions and bar associations — that decide on a case-by-case basis what programs qualify for CLE credit.

Providers are free to offer courses without getting them certified, and some do, but that tends to affect attendance levels, they said.

Each of the 49 U.S. jurisdictions that mandate CLE has a different standard for the types of nonsubstantive law classes it approves. About two-thirds give credit for law practice management courses, Belasco estimated. Almost all will allow some marketing content if it comes in an ethics course, providers said.

“It's how strictly or how broadly a jurisdiction would define CLE,” said Jill McCall, director of the ABA Center for Continuing Legal Education, which runs about 300 CLE programs annually. “And that's the fun part: Everybody has different rules.”

For more on this story, please see http://www.law360.com/topnews/articles/208530

In one of the most comprehensive and detailed examinations in the nation, the Supreme Court of Ohio’s disciplinary board has decided that judges may use Twitter and 'friend' lawyers who appear before them.

The advisory opinion from the Board of Commissioners on Grievances & Discipline advises judges that social media use is permitted but must be done with caution, and it offers wide ranging, specific guidance to judges on how to navigate the new waters of social media without violating judicial canons that require judges to avoid even the appearance of bias or impropriety.

“This is a topic of great interest to the legal community because, like the rest of the nation, more judges are experimenting with social media in both their personal and professional lives,” said Jon Marshall, the board’s secretary. “For those judges who choose to use this technology, we hope this opinion gives them practical guidance on how to do so and maintain their obligations under the Code of Judicial Conduct.”

A recent national study found that 40 percent of judges report using social media profile sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, a proportion roughly equal to that in the general U.S. adult population. Smaller numbers reported using microblogging sites like Twitter and other less popular social media, but the numbers are expected to grow.

Opinion 2010-7 finds that a judge may be a “friend” on a social networking site with a lawyer who appears as counsel in a case before the judge, but cautions: “As with any other action a judge takes, a judge’s participation on a social networking site must be done carefully in order to comply with the ethical rules in the Code of Judicial Conduct.”

For more, please go to the LawMarketing Portal.

Only 8% of online Americans use Twitter, according to new research by the Pew Research Center.

What's more, as SFGate.com notes, only about 36% of Twitter users actively use the service, while 41% hardly check their accounts if at all.  This is something that law firm marketers should keep in mind in their social media plans.

Meanwhile, Business Insiders notes that 6% of U.S. adults comes out to fewer than 15 million people, which doesn't jibe with Twitter's claims of about 65 million U.S. users.

"Unless 50 million American teenagers (Pew didn't count them) are on Twitter, there's a huge discrepancy there," Business Insider writes. "The problem is that when Twitter talks about how many users it has, it uses the total number of accounts it has signed up. That means everyone who tried the service and quit, everyone who has signed up for more than one account, and every account run by a bot is included in the total." 

Still, if not quite 50 million, couldn't teens make up a reasonable share of Twitter's user base? Not a chance, insists a 16-year-old ReadWriteWeb guest blogger. If you hadn't heard, "Teens don't tweet," the anonymous contributor explains. "Quite simply, why would teenagers bother using Twitter when Facebook exists, and offers so much more?"

James Mahon’s business card  can be broken into two equal pieces but preserves all the contact info for both parties in the divorce. I guess he doesn’t want the clients to fight over the card too.

A lot of regular folks are in dire need of competent legal representation because they have suffered a personal injury, been accused of drunk driving or need to get a divorce and fast. "Unfortunately, after watching some lawyers' local television ads, we're afraid those seeking competence might be out of luck," says the Asylum blog.  This video made their top 10 "worst" list for law firm marketing.

There's a new word for lawyers and law firm marketing professionals to know when they are working on their websites: Drupal.  While in Dutch it means "droplet," it also means good news for law firm websites.

When you update your website, chances are you use a content management system (CMS).  They can be very expensive.  Web developers have been licensing or selling their proprietary systems to law firms for $10,000 to $60,000.  (I know, because law firms have hired me to read through all developers' proposals to rebuild websites.)

No More. Websites are beginning to use the FREE, open-source Drupal CMS. With open source software, a global community of 900 developers is working on refinement of the code to make it better. With proprietary software, only the owner such as Microsoft or a website developer is permitted to modify the source code. Use of an open source CMS should create savings for law firm websites everywhere.

I learned at the Drupal Business summit held last week in Chicago that 7.2 million sites switched to Drupal as of July 2010.  They include major companies like Turner Broadcasting and The Cartoon Network, and even the White House and House of Representatives.

Drupal was invented in 2005 by Dries Buytaert, and version 7 is coming out in early 2011.“Drupal is unstoppable,” he said. It's getting so popular that 3,000 developers at DrupalCon in San Francisco last April. Web engineers love Drupal because it's easy and fast to work with.  It's simple to add modules and work with Flash.

Joel Hughes of Scranton Gillette Communications worked with Fred Salchli of DUO Consulting in Chicago to get the Construction Equipment website built in 24 days. “It's B2B market impact at the speed of light!” Hughes said. The company created several other websites for its magazines in weeks, instead of months. Housing Zone, an umbrella site with over 5 microsites with news, articles and blog went from a collection of articles to a live website in 63 days.

Remember this when you send out an RFP to rebuild your website: don't buy any proprietary content management systems.  There's no reason to when there's a free, open source alternative that works.

From Law360:

They are inflexible on rates, refuse to discuss alternative fees and delegate high priority communications to associates: they are the law firms considered most arrogant by corporate counsel. And 14 firms have won the designation this year for the first time, according to a new survey by The BTI Consulting Group Inc.:

• Arent Fox
• Bartlit Beck
• Cleary Gottlieb
• Fenwick & West
• Ice Miller
• Jackson Kelly
• McKool Smith
• Perkins Coie
• Simpson Thacher
• Steptoe & Johnson LLP
• Weil Gotshal
• White & Case
• Williams & Connolly
• Wilson Sonsini

Firms that made the list for the second year running include Baker & McKenzie, Kirkland & Ellis, Jones Day and Cravath Swaine.

The firms that dropped off the list this year were Latham & Watkins, Anderson Kill, Davies Ward, DLA Piper, Dykema Gossett, Finnegan Henderson, Foley & Lardner, Fulbright & Jaworski, Gibson Dunn, Greenberg Traurig, Hogan Hartson, Honigman Miller, Hunton & Williams, Jenner & Block, K&L Gates, Kaye Scholer, Linklaters, Littler Mendelson, Mayer Brown, McCarthy Tetrault, Milbank Tweed, Morgan Lewis, Ogilvy Renault, Orrick, Patton Boggs, Paul Hastings, Quinn Emanuel, Shearman Sterling, Sheppard Mullin, Sidley Austin, Slaughter and May, Thompson Hine, Wachtell Lipton, Wiggins Childs, Wilson Elser and Winston & Strawn.

The report noted that some aspects of superior client service can be perceived as arrogance by a number of in-house attorneys. For example, some firms made the most arrogant list for being overly direct with communications that want their advice sugar coated.

Other behaviors perceived as arrogant include:

• Having little experience on the other side of a matter
• Excluding general counsel in client communications
• Not including junior members of a company's in-house legal team.

The most arrogant list was built on the responses of nearly 300 corporate counsel at Fortune 1000 companies

Always the innovators, the marketers at Wolf Greenfield in Boston have sent out a novel holiday card literally wishing recipients a new year "filled with 'growing' opportunities."  They're serious. You can plant the greeting card in the ground and it will grow bee-friendly wildflowers.  The seeds are embedded in the paper itself (see the speckles in the graphic).

Inside the card has funny tips, like, "Our Electrical & Computer Technologies Group cautions you to NOT use your computer screen as a light to grow these seeds" and "A warning from out Pharmaceutical Group: there is no medicinal value in eating this card."

The card is produced by Sprouts at www.sproutem.com. A warning in the card states that "our Litigation Group members have secured a preliminary injunction from anyone else sending a card that looks like this." 

As it would turn out, my friend and CRM expert Chris Fritsch of ClientsFirst Consulting in Atlanta has for years been handing out business cards from Sprouts that if planted, will also grow wildflowers.

I guess there's no monopoly on a great idea!

Dorsey & Whitney, with more than 600 lawyers in 19 locations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia-Pacific region, just hired ten new partners.

At first I wondered why this was worth the effort of writing a press release.  Sending out new associate and new partner announcements is one of the routine chores of law firm marketing professionals. When I was an in-house marketer, I considered part of the scut work that came this the job.

Now I think differently. I was listening to an in-house corporate lawyer talk about the reasons that his company hires its law firms. He said, "we like to retain law firms that are hiring," he said. "It means that they a solid operation and in sound financial condition."

It turns out that telling the world that you're hiring is very effective law firm marketing.  To see some examples of my favorite announcements, please go to:

The Best Lateral Partner Announcement, Ever

A Law Firm Announcement that Clients Will Actually Read

Tydings & Rosenberg Announcement Hits the Mark

A new survey by branding firm Greenfield/Belser and The Brand Research Company, spotlights how, where and what executives search for online as they consider lawyers and law firms to advise them.

• 85% of executives consider professional service firm websites important sources of information in their search for professionals.
• Three in four say the quality of a firm’s site influences whether they put a firm on their short list.
• 53% have put a firm on a short list based on the information found on the firm’s site.
• Specific-industry experience tops the list of things executives find important on sites, with 78% saying it is must-have information.

Executive-level buyers are online, in droves

• 94% are online daily for purposes other than email.
• 82% report the Internet has replaced other methods of researching almost completely.
• 76% told us the Internet has replaced other methods of receiving news almost completely.
• 42% indicate the Internet has replaced other methods of securing business purchases almost completely.
• 78% surveyed say they go online to search for outside legal, accounting and consulting professionals, but the majority (59%) do so less than monthly on average.

Search engines are a key tool for learning about professionals

• 50% of executive decision makers say that search engines are important.
• 48% say that being listed near the top on Google matters.
• When they use search engines, one in two decision makers always include keywords with specific expertise and industry.
• Other critical, but less important keywords include general practice areas, city and state.

Newer media tools gain traction 

• Two-thirds of executives surveyed use social networking sites. For business, LinkedIn tops the list.
• 75% read blogs, with 37% reading them on a daily or weekly basis.
• Mobile phones are ubiquitous, but only 28% of executive decision makers view or listen to online content of any type on their phones; those who do, most often use it for news.