Law Firm Marketing Consultant : Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, sales training, practice development, training, marketing consultant, legal consultant, individual lawyer coaching, business development, client team, practice development, business development, law firm coach

Lawyers need to send "status obvious" gifts to clients, according to Kathryn E. Brown of The Write Word LLC.  If you send cheap monogrammed  gifts like hats or T-shirts, they can wind up in a charity thrift shop priced at 25 cents.  There's nothing worse than seeing a homeless guy wearing your law firm baseball cap.

"Gifts aren't worth giving if they aren't useful as well as impressive. In addition, gifts are sometimes better received if the tokens of appreciation aren't branded with a logo or name of any kind, which sends a message of selflessness," she writes.

Here's her top 10 list of best client Christmas gifts:

1. The Open-Top Tote by Lands' End
2. L.L. Bean's Weekend Blanket
3. A sophisticated Levenger fountain pen
4. Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies
5. The Greenbrier's fruitcake, made by real pastry chefs
6. An autographed cookbook by famous caterer Ina Garten of the Food Network's popular show, "Barefoot Contessa."
7. Dylan Lauren's Candy Bar of New York City (she is the daughter of fashion designer Ralph Lauren), available at Saks Fifth Avenue
8. Red Envelope Asian money tree in a sculptural pot
9. Vera Bradley  leather MP3 cases
10. Tiffany robin's egg blue Swiss movement clock.

Meanwhile, head out to that thrift shop and buy your cheap merchandise back!

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More than half of all corporate clients have fired one of their key law firms, according to research by The BTI Consulting Group in Boston.

61.1% of clients have replaced at least one primary law firm according to the research report, "Key Trends in Client Relationships and Satisfaction with Law FIrms: Market Opportunities for 2007."  If you have corporate clients, it's time to start visiting their offices, holding regular business update meetings and sending client satisfaction surveys.

On the other hand, this is great news for law firms trying to crack a major corporate account.  The odds are now in your favor that the target corporation will have an opening for a new law firm.  Happily, corporations are shifting more dollars to hiring secondary law firms, as the in-house counsel try new law firms, according to the BTI study.  In fact, 51.3% of their spending will be on secondary law firms.

The time to act is now.

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By Charlie Miller and Ronna Cross, Patton Boggs

Charlie Miller is Deputy Managing Partner and Ronna Cross is Director of Business Development at Patton Boggs,  Patton Boggs is a law firm with 500 attorneys based in Washington, D.C. with six additional offices worldwide.  

Most thriving law firms today understand how important it is to:

• Thoroughly understand your clients’ and potential clients’ businesses;
• Identify existing and prospective clients’ problems, opportunities and changes; and
• Create value-added solutions

At Patton Boggs, we collectively call these habits of thought and action, “capturing the voice of the client.”  Capturing the voice of the client has generated revenue for us far beyond everyone’s expectations.  But building that ability into our culture took some effort and habit-forming.

In this article, we draw on our experiences and analyze the “what, why, when and how” of capturing the voice of the client. And how you can start doing the same within your firm. What we found is that the “little things” make the big difference. 

For the rest of the article visit the Originate newsletter.

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I was reading the latest issue of the ABA's Law Practice magazine and saw Matt Homann's 17 Tips for  Lawyers.  They are definitely worth repeating if you want to keep the clients you have:

1.  Whenever your clients don’t understand what you are doing for them, they think about what you are doing to them.

2.  Many of your clients remain your clients because it is a pain in the ass to find another laywer – not because they love you.

3.  Every time your clients get your bill, they think about how beautiful your office is and about the nice car you drive.  And they wonder if you are worth it. 

4.  If your office is a dump and you drive a wreck, they wonder about that too.

5.  If your client doesn’t pay you, fire them.  Don’t ignore them.

6.  At least once a year, tell a client, “It’s on the house.”

7.  Taking a client to play golf doesn’t show how good a lawyer you are.  It shows how good a golfer you are.

8.  Quit being a pompous, demanding jerk around the office.  If you can’t keep good staff, you don’t deserve good clients.

9.  Your clients will always know their business better than you do.  They may even know the law better than you.  Make sure to seek their advice before giving yours.

10.  A lawyer charging extra for stamps and copies is like a car wash charging extra for water.  Stop it now.

11.  Your clients have wants.  Your clients have needs.  They often don’t know the difference.

12.  Whenever you interrupt a client meeting to take an “important” call, your client thinks about hiring another lawyer.

13.  Imagine a world where your clients knew each month how much their bill from you will be so they could plan for it.  They do.

14.  If you hate being a lawyer, be something else.  You are smart.  You’ll figure it out.

15.  A bill is not communication.  At least not the good kind.

16.  When is the last time you called a client just to thank them for being your client?  That’s what I thought.

17.    People don’t tell lawyer jokes just because they are funny.  They tell lawyer jokes because they think they are true.  Spend your career proving them wrong.

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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.)

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"The hourly fee is going away, because clients are demanding fixed fees," said Ron Barger, VP and General Counsel for Archon Group, LP, speaking at the Legal Sales and Service Organization conference taking place now in Dallas. He and two other general counsel addressed law firm business development from the client's perspective. "Lawyers are in for a change," he continued.  "In 15 years will see a radically different law firm billing structure."

Barger recommended that law firms develop ways to capture their costs so that they are able to write budgets for corporate clients.

Jerry G. Bradford, Associate General Counsel at Alcon Laboratories, Inc., routinely asks law firms for budgets.  He finds, however, that law firms propose outrageous budgets or are unable to produce a budget.  "My mind boggles at how few lawyers call me up to say, 'I'm having difficulty with the budget process, could you talk me through what you are looking for so I can give you what you want?"  He added, "Picking up the phone is the simple way to figure things out." 

Barger related the best experience he had seeking a law firm: "We interviewed 77 law firms after circulating an RFP.  One law firm had a presentation ready based on the fact that they worked on the DuPont Model.  They took the time to think about how they could serve us.  The best sales calls are when a lawyer shows how they'll serve a specific need of my company."

"The worst case was when I got a call from a law firm partner, who requested to get on the "short" list after our RFP process.  Their proposal had been submitted late and it didn't respond well to the RFP.  I told him we had paid his firm $4 million in fees, and this was the first time he called had called me.  That was the worst."

I had a lawyer call me to solicit business a few weeks ago," said Kimberly Elting, VP and General Counsel of Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc.  "Three minutes into the conversation he asked me, 'what is it exactly that your company does?'"  She recommended that law firms "get their heads out of legal publications and read trade magazines and the Wall Street Journal, so they can learn about my business before they call me."

Barger added, "Train your lawyers to use news aggregators and subscribe to the RSS feeds of clients.  Clients like it when you've read an article about us, or can send us an article about the industry.  Teach your lawyers how to use it."

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Ignore client complaints at your peril, say Sally Glick, CMO of Sobel & Co and Leisa Gill, director of marketing for Lattimore Black Morgan & Cain, in the March issue of the Ioma Partner's Report.  They identified the four worst complaints:

1. "I can't get them to call me back (or return my e-mails)."
2. "They wait until the last minute to deliver reports"
3. "The service level is less than acceptable."
4. "They do not understand my business needs."

Even if the complaint is baseless, "you don't want them telling their story about you on the street," Gill said.

The solution is "romancing" the client, according to Glick. "Romancing the client is a never-ending job.  It includes paying attention, really listening and maintaining communications--all things that go along with any other successful life relationship."

Glick says her firm has a rule requiring that any client call or email be answered within four hours, and that clients be told how they can reach you.

Clients are always judging you by missed deadlines, Gill said. "We try to map out a date of delivery and follow the receipt of the data from the client so we can tack it and remind the client if information is missing," she said.

If there is a problem with service, solve it with finesse, Gill advised. Fee disputes don't improve over time, so handle these immediately.   Sometimes clients don't speak up, so it's important for partners to visit clients.

Finally, stay informed about each client's business or industry. It helps if you can be the one to bring a development in the industry to the client's attention.

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On average, law firms experience a decline in billable hours from existing clients at a rate of 1% a month, according to a new study by Redwood Analytics. Eventually many good clients leave, switching to another law firm.

Happily, research shows that law firms can identify clients that are at-risk of leaving, and that firms can control whether they stay.  Here are the four markers that identify whether your firm is likely to retain a client.  This client:

1. Provides the firm a large amount of legal work.
2. Has a mature, established relationship with the firm.
3. Sends the firm work in more than two practice areas.
4. Has more than two firm partners significantly involved in the management of the client's matters.

No. 3 and 4 are the key indicators.  Firms that successfully cross-sell clients are going to keep them.  On the other hand, firms that allow partners to hoard clients and keep other partners away are likely to lose those clients.

The more varied the legal services provided to a client, the less likely they were to leave. Less than 15% of clients using a firm for three areas of law are likely to leave the firm within two years.  Less than 5% of clients that had retained the firm for four or five areas of law are likely to cease using the firm.  On the other hand more than 35% of clients that used the firm for only one area of law left within in two years.

For the full story, see "Client Attrition Analytics: Firms Can Control Whether Clients Stay or Go."

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According to a new survey, 70 percent of corporate counsel surveyed--most from Fortune 1000 companies--were dissatisfied with their primary law firms. A little more than half of the corporate counsel reported they had replaced or demoted at least one of their primary law firms in the 18 months prior to the survey--largely without any more notice than a reduction in assignments.

The survey found a 30.7 percent satisfaction rate, representing a drop from the prior year's rate of 43.5 percent, a five-year high. If law firms would just listen to their clients (see "Listening Your Way to New Business") or pay a visit to their offices they would know what was on their client's minds.  The survey report, How Clients Hire, Fire and Spend: Landing the World's Best Clients, attributed the decline to three key factors. The law firms:

• Fail to keep up with clients' changing needs.
• Do not articulate the value they deliver.
• Do not communicate well with clients.

As for articulating value, there's only one thing clients card about: "did you help my company make more money?"  Or did you save them money?  Or did you protect their assets?  You have to think in terms of business results and actually tell the client what you did for them.  They will not infer this from your great legal pleadings.

The results show customer service in a corporate-client relationship is paramount, and it is "not just about returning phone calls," says BTI president Michael B. Rynowecer. "The major components of client satisfaction are the ability to make legal expertise client-specific, to understand the client's business, to go beyond what's anticipated and to achieve the client's goals."

The survey was conducted by BTI Consulting Group, a Wellesley, Mass.-based market research and management consulting firm. The results were drawn from more than 200 interviews between July and October 2005 with corporate counsel at large and Fortune 1000 companies across more than 15 sectors, including banking, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and high-tech.

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Our firm advises a lot of law firms on business development.  One point we always make is: visit your clients.

One law partner we are advising found out the hard way what happens when you don't.  His No. 1 client had been sending him hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal work.  Then his sole contact left the company.  Afterwards, his work was cut by more than half.  This was a brutal financial blow to absorb.

We recommended that he climb onto a plane, visit the client at their offices 530 miles away, spend several days there, and get to know all the executives and in-house lawyers.  In making the arrangements he discovered that the individual who slashed his work had left the company.  This is good news.  He's in a position to recoup the loss.

He also has another client -- a real estate investment firm that owns more than $100 million in commercial and residential real estate.  He has never actually met his client, the founder and owner who lives in the same city as the lawyer, in person.  He's currently getting nickle-dime matters from client, which has ambitious growth plans.  Yes we are recommending that he visit his client, to get more and better files.

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