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

Last week, The American Lawyer 2012 Report on Growth of Am Law 100 Firms came out.  Here is a press release with its results:

NEW YORK – April 26, 2013 – *The nation’s 100 largest law firms achieved modest cumulative growth in 2012, gaining 3.4% in total gross revenue over the prior year to $73.4 billion, 2.6% in average revenue per lawyer to $844,245, and 4.2% in average profits per partner to $1.47 million, according to the 26th annual Am Law 100 report published in the May issue of ALM’s *The American Lawyer* and at AmericanLawyer.com.

However, 2012’s gains were uneven, with only 76 firms showing gross revenue increases, down from 80 in 2011, and 66 registering higher profits per partner, down from 72. In addition, profitability gains were concentrated among the higher-grossing firms. The 50 largest firms registered a cumulative 8.0% jump in profits per partner while the others fell 3.3%.

DLA Piper, powered by an 8.6% gross revenue spurt, topped the Am Law 100 with $2.44 billion, pushing former leader Baker & McKenzie, with $2.31 billion, into second place. Latham & Watkins with $2.23 billion took over third place from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom with $2.21 billion. Kirkland & Ellis retained fifth place. Jones Day took over sixth from Hogan Lovells, which fell to seventh. Sidley Austin held steady in eighth place as did White & Case in ninth. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher moved up to 10th place from 12th in 2011.

The law firms that prospered last year “tended to have an international footprint, a strong transactions group, and a diverse set of practice areas," wrote Robin Sparkman, Editor in Chief of *The American Lawyer*. "The boutique labor and employment and immigration firms were the exception.”

"Many of these firms also have a strong brand and are known by clients for standout work in a particular area," Sparkman added. "The firms that did well also held the line on their equity partner head count and continued to raise rates, increase billable hours, or both. Some stood out for capitalizing on high-growth industries.”

Among the stand-out firm performers, for better or worse, were:

   - Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, whose profits per partner leaped 36.5% due to a contingency class action payment in a Native American royalties rights case.

   - Bracewell & Giuliani, which scored the group’s largest profits per partner increase, 42.2%, based on high demand from their energy industry client list.

   - Immigration-focused Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, which rose 16 ranks to number 86, its first-ever appearance on the Am Law 100.

   - Barnes & Thornburg, Chadbourne & Parke, Cozen O’Connor and Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker fell out of the Am Law 100. Chadbourne was a 26-year veteran.

On his website, Mitch Jackson treats us with an analogy in the form of a five course dinner.  He shows how successfully negotiating and closing a deal is very similar to selecting and timing the courses of an important dinner party.

Mitch gets his point across with vivid imagery that will have your mouth watering and your stomach growling and maybe even the itch to go close that deal that has eluded you for months. Click here to read the full article.

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Closing a deal is a very similar experience. Go about things the right way and the negotiation will flow naturally and the deal will be one to remember. Skip a course or two and the other person just might get up and leave the communication table before the evening is over.

Start with the setting

You don’t serve a 5 course dinner on the lids of garbage cans in an alley behind the restaurant. Along those same lines, don’t try to negotiate an important deal over day old coffee in the parking lot of Wal-Mart while wearing a stained t-shirt.

Make sure that you’ve thought things through and have properly set your communication table—the place you’ll be serving your verbal meal– in a suitable fashion and location. Have your ducks in a row and remember to place your napkin in your lap, serve from the left, and clear from the right. Do what needs to be done to help ensure your surroundings are conducive to a meaningful discussion and presentation.

Now for the first course…

Start with something memorable. Tonight, we’ll be starting with essence of butternut squash, presented with a seared sea scallop, chive oil and young seedlings. Is your mouth starting to water? Mine is!

After a bit of small talk and building rapport, get immediate focus and attention by raising the problem or issue during the first course. 

Tip- Talk about the problem.

The second course

For your second course, we’ll be serving pan seared lump crab cake, presented with fire roasted corn and cilantro relish smoked chipotle aioli and butter poached leeks. While you enjoy this course and start to get in the mood for the main entre, spend some quality time talking in more detail about it the problem or issue. Discuss what bad things will happen if changes are not made. What are the short and long-term consequences of action or inaction? What will happen if things don’t get resolved and continue to drag on day after day and even year after year?

Tip- Discuss the short and long-term impact of the problem.

The third course

What better than to follow the crab cakes with a dish of roasted beet carpaccio, presented with seared goat cheese, beet syrup, aged balsamic reduction and mache greens. Do this correctly and your guest is already interested in what the next course will be.

You’ve got his attention. He knows why he’s sitting at the table and understands that action is needed or things will just get worse. Now is the time to show your guest how your idea will solve his problems. Working your way from the outside in, your utensils should include specific examples, metaphors and stories.

Tip- For the first time, reveal your specific solution to the specific problem of your guest.

The fourth course

Now that you’ve shared your solutions in the third course, knock your guest right off his chair with a fourth course consisting of something a bit more substantial. Let’s go with grilled fillet of beef, presented with caramelized shallot/red wine reduction, crisp truffle scented potato rosti, white asparagus and morel mushrooms. It might also be time to order another bottle of wine.

This course is all about substance and value. Show the other person exactly how your suggested solution will benefit him. Understanding that facts tell but stories sell, use the right utensils (words, pictures, testimonials, videos…) to continue showing your dinner guest how your product, service or idea will benefit and help him. Communicating and share major value and specific benefits, through stories and examples, are what the fourth course is all about.

Tip- Communicate the major benefits of your solution to your dinner guest.

The fifth and most important course

Click here to find out what is served for dessert!

Today's post is a press release that reveals which social media outlets are the most popular, therefore most important to utilize.

LinkedIn, blogs by fellow lawyers and Wikipedia are among the tools most frequently used by in-house counsel in their professional lives, according to a new survey released today by communications firm Greentarget, consulting firm Zeughauser Group and InsideCounsel magazine.

In-house attorneys use social media more than ever, for everything from building professional networks to consuming substantive content to conducting business and industry research.

This survey, referenced with the hashtag #ICSurvey on Twitter and represented visually by an infographic, suggests that many legal marketers are not yet making full use of the channels and platforms that can effectively reach the primary buyers of legal services. But it also affirms the wisdom of law-firm marketers who take an integrated, content-centric approach to incorporating digital platforms into their communications strategies, treating them as an extension of their thought leadership efforts.

The In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey, conducted for the first time in 2010, measures the changing perceptions, attitudes and social media usage behaviors of in-house lawyers and their impact on business development efforts. Earlier iterations of the survey are now hosted athttp://insidecounselsurvey.com. 

“The survey results suggest, in no uncertain terms, that the convergence of digital and traditional media is fueling the continued use of social media among the in-house bar,” says John Corey, president and founding partner of Greentarget. “Our 2013 survey makes it crystal clear — as evidenced by the sustained prominence of LinkedIn and attorney-authored blogs, the growth in mobile consumption of news and a continuation of the ‘invisible user’ trend — that in-house lawyers are using social media as part of their daily routines.”

The Highlights:

• New media use is now mainstream. The percentage of respondents who say they do not use new media has plummeted from 43 percent in 2010 to just 27 percent today.
• LinkedIn is still the “serious” social network. Sixty-seven percent of in-house counsel used LinkedIn for professional reasons during the past week, and 40 percent used it during the past 24 hours. It remains the most frequently used platform for professional reasons.
• Attorney-authored blogs are popular and trusted. Respondents say they read blogs by attorneys as often as they read blogs by professional journalists, and more than half (53 percent) say well-executed blogs influence hiring decisions.
• The “invisible users” trend is accelerating. Although social networks are designed to promote online engagement, most respondents (74 percent) are using social media in a listen-only mode versus commenting on posts and participating in discussions—up from 68 percent who identified themselves as invisible users in 2012.
• Use of mobile is prevalent. Fifty-three percent of survey respondents read business news on their smartphones daily, while 39 and 23 percent, respectively, use tablets and mobile apps for news every day.
• Wikipedia is emerging for business-oriented research. Sixty-five percent of respondents say they use Wikipedia to conduct company and industry research, up from 51 percent in 2012. This is one of the more significant jumps in the year-over-year data.
• Online video is largely unexploited. Many respondents report that they are watching online video from law firms, but they are doing so infrequently.
• Peer-driven rankings lack influence. Despite the energy and resources that law firms continue to invest in peer-driven rankings, they have minimal impact on the opinions of outside lawyers or hiring decisions, the survey data suggests.

To download a summary of the research report, click here. For more information, contact John Corey at jcorey@greentarget.com or 312-252-4100.

I was just reading a blog post by a lawyer who offered "5 easy marketing tips" for young and experienced lawyers. It offered the standard marketing advice but left out something crucially important.

The blog post advised staying top-of-mind with referral sources, making referrals, public speaking, joining organizations and doing excellent legal work. Check, check, check — this is all basic marketing information I've given to lawyers myself. It appeared to be standard advice until I hit the end of the article and found a titanic omission.

Pulling back, I thought to myself — you wouldn't market your law practice without paying attention to your website, would you? No — especially knowing that 76 percent of consumers seeking an attorney in the past year used online resources at some point in the process, according to TRiG research.                          

The standard marketing advice was right out of the 1980s, before the Internet went live. The guidance was tailored for a world with rotary phones, fax machines and VHS video cassettes. Today, the lives of consumers are filled with smartphones, iPads, computers, email, social media and blogs. These are marketing breakthroughs because they allow a lawyer to be many places at once.

In the old days, a lawyer could reach only the crowd he or she was addressing, talk only to the person he met at an organizational event and send a file only to referral source he had on the phone. Marketing efforts were limited as one-to-one activities.

But it's a different world today. Consumers are likely to look up your profile on the Web before they ever see you. They'll find you online before they ever hear your presentation or meet you at an event. When they look you up, consumers more are likely than ever to use their smartphones — smartphones are already outselling PCs and are regularly used by consumers to make purchasing decisions.

The Web has become an essential step in the way today's consumers really search for an attorney. Consumers don't start by looking for a lawyer — instead they begin by researching their legal issue. This naturally makes consumers seek out lawyer blogs and attorney websites that have detailed FAQ (frequently asked question) articles. Consumers will have a positive impression of a law firm if the website is mobile-friendly, and can easily be viewed on a two-inch screen on a smartphone.

So don't be fooled by the standard marketing advice from the 1980s. Get your website in shape so that it generates new business for you. Need some help?  Contact a LexisNexis Law Firm Marketing Specialist.

As a business owner, attending a rainmaker retreat may be a worthwhile investment of your time and money.

The LexisNexis Law Marketing Blog quoted me and included a clip from the recent LegalTech New York 2013 panel.  Below is a snippet, but you may view the original blog post here.

At our LegalTech New York 2013 panel — "Taming the Wild West of Social Media: The Secrets of Social Media Success in the Legal Profession" — Steve Mann (chief marketing officer of the Research & Litigation Solutions business at LexisNexis) noted that career development remains the leading purpose for legal professionals to use online communities (cited by 71 percent in 2011 and 72 percent in 2012). However, the ABA study found that the number of professionals who used online communities for purposes of client development actually dropped last year (from 53 percent in 2011 to 42 percent in 2012).

The panelists addressed this trend and offered thoughts as to how law firms can use online communities to support business development.

"I can see why career development and professional networking are increasing in popularity because social media lubricates professional networking," said Larry Bodine, Esq., editor in chief of Lawyers.com^SM and martindale.com®. "One of the ways attorneys can convert this networking benefit into a client development strategy is to use social media to get to know people online and then turn that into an in-person meeting."

The LexisNexis Law Marketing Blog quoted me and included a clip from the recent LegalTech New York 2013 panel.  Below is a snippet, but you may view the original blog post here.

At our LegalTech New York 2013 panel — "Taming the Wild West of Social Media: The Secrets of Social Media Success in the Legal Profession" — Steve Mann (chief marketing officer of the Research & Litigation Solutions business at LexisNexis) noted that career development remains the leading purpose for legal professionals to use online communities (cited by 71 percent in 2011 and 72 percent in 2012). However, the ABA study found that the number of professionals who used online communities for purposes of client development actually dropped last year (from 53 percent in 2011 to 42 percent in 2012).

The panelists addressed this trend and offered thoughts as to how law firms can use online communities to support business development.

"I can see why career development and professional networking are increasing in popularity because social media lubricates professional networking," said Larry Bodine, Esq., editor in chief of Lawyers.com^SM and martindale.com®. "One of the ways attorneys can convert this networking benefit into a client development strategy is to use social media to get to know people online and then turn that into an in-person meeting."

Today's post is pulled from the Law Firm Marketing Blog of LexisNexis.  It features a portion of the LegalTechNY Panel Discussion I participated in. Here is the link to the original post.

Most of us live in two worlds — one consists of our personal relationships with friends and family, the other is made up of our professional interactions with clients and co-workers. It can be very tricky to keep these worlds separate in the online world where comments and images are so easily disseminated.

Steve Mann, chief marketing officer of the Research & Litigation Solutions business at LexisNexis, was asked this "professional vs. personal" question by an attendee at our LegalTech New York 2013 panel — "Taming the Wild West of Social Media: The Secrets of Social Media Success in the Legal Profession" — and the responses from our experts were instructive.

I drew a distinction between personal and professional uses of social media. If someone looks me up on social media platforms, they will see lots of content about lawyers and law firm marketing — but you're not going to know what I had for lunch.

You can view a short video segment of this piece of the panel discussion. Stay tuned next week for more details from the session.