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

The ABA Journal and the website Out-Law.com by the UK firm Pinsent Masons won the 2008 People’s Voice Webby Award in the Law category, it was announced today.

Described by the New York Times as the "the Internet's highest honor," the Webby Awards are administered by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, and received almost 10,000 entries this year.

“It’s enormously gratifying that thousands of our readers took the time to show their support for the site,” said Edward A. Adams, the Journal’s editor and publisher. The site features legal news updated continuously every business day, a directory of more than 1,800 legal blogs, and archives of the magazine.

The IT and e-commerce legal advice site Out-Law.com, states it "has 8,000 pages of free legal news and guidance, mostly on IT and e-commerce issues. These issues can affect any organisation, and OUT-LAW is as much for those in a software start-up as it is for the compliance team at a bank. If and when you need further advice, we hope you'll choose Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM."

To see all the winners, visit http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=12.

At the June 10 ceremony in Manhattan honoring the winners, Stephen Colbert will receive the Person of the Year award and Black Eyed Peas member will.i.am will receive the Artist of the Year award. The Webby Awards famously limit acceptance speeches to just five words. In recent years, they’ve included Al Gore (”Please don’t recount this vote”), the Beastie Boys (”Can anyone fix my computer?”), and Prince (”Everything you think is true”).

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The US economy lost fewer jobs than expected and unemployment nudged up.  “It strongly argues that this downturn will be mild and short- lived,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “As long as businesses hold the line on their layoffs, the economy will weaken, but it won’t unravel.”

This is especially true for law firms that represent energy companies, specifically oil companies.  In recent weeks:

• BP reported that its profit increased 63%, to $7.62 billion.
• ConocoPhillips posted a 37% percent increase in profit, to $4.37 billion.
• Royal Dutch Shell net income in the first three months of the year rose 25%, to $9.08 billion.
• Exxon reported its net income rose by 17% to $10.9 billion.
• Chevron said first-quarter profit rose 9.5 %, to $5.17 billion
• A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform Brazil into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world’s oil cartel.

And for law firms, there's even more good news: the companies have all sorts of difficulties that require the hiring of lawyers:

• They are in an increasingly difficult business environment, marked by rising costs, tightening access to oil fields, and declining profits for refineries.
• Truckers and drivers are angry at the oil companies, so much so that the price of gasoline has become an issue in the presidential campaign.
• They may face windfall profits taxes and end to subsidies.
• There is a drop in oil production due to international contracts, under which oil companies must give a larger share of the oil they produce back to the host governments as prices rise.
• Exploration and production costs have doubled in recent years.
• In refining, profit margins have dropped as refiners were unable to pass through all the price increases in crude oil prices.
• Oil executives have been called before Congress to defend their profits in the last two years.

It's time to stop focusing on real estate, construction, banks, mortgage companies and airlines. Go where the money is: energy, steel, industrial metals, coal companies and railroads. See the 10 Best Performing Industries on MarketWatch.com.

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In an article titled, "Chief Marketing Officers Are Dropping Off at Some Law Firms," (subscription required) the Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer is reporting:

• Stephen D. Barrett will be leaving Drinker Biddle, but has yet to provide an exact date of departure.  He joined Drinker as its CMO in September 2005 and has been commuting from his Boston home to Philadelphia each week. He would spend the week in the city and travel back to Massachusetts for the weekend.

   

• Since January 2008, Duane Morris has seen the departure of its senior marketing manager, Holly Lentz Kleeman, and its senior director of marketing/CRM manager, Pat Purdy now works for Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in New York.

   

• Mark P. Trice, announced in August 2007 that he would be leaving the firm to move to become Chief Marketing Officer at vcfo, a financial consulting and administrative infrastructure support services company in Austin, TX.

   

• Blain Banick started at Ballard Spahr in October 2004 as the firm's CMO. He left the firm in the fall of 2007 to take a similar position at Dallas-based Haynes & Boone.

   

• Morgan Lewis lost its director of communications, Paul Webb, and decided to do away with the position.

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To survive in business, law firms must adapt to the market.  Accordingly you don't necessarily pursue industries that are in a downturn like real estate, luxury retailers, small retail stores, construction, manufacturers, automakers, financial advisors and banks, publishers and broadcasters.  All these industries are laying off employees.

Instead, law firms should go where the money is: technology, especially companies doing business in cell phones, the Web and software.  Look at these results:

• Google reported revenues of $4.23 billion -- an increase of 57% compared to the third quarter of 2006 and an increase of 9% compared to the second quarter of 2007.
• Apple reported it earned $1.05 billion, or $1.16 a share, on $7.5 billion in sales for its second quarter. The results were led by sales of 2.29 million Macintosh computers, a 51% rise from a year ago.
• Yahoo beat expectations. The company reported net revenue of $1.35 billion, slightly ahead of analyst estimates of $1.32 billion, and 14 percent higher than $1.18 billion in the year-ago period.
• Microsoft topped profit estimates with income for the period ended March 31 totaling $4.38 billion. Revenue for the quarter rose to $14.45 billion.  Recent data showed better-than-expected sales of PCs containing Microsoft's software in the quarter.
• Verizon added 1.8 million net additional subscribers for a total of 63.7 million. Revenues of $23.77 billion beat Wall Street's bet of $23.6 billion. 

The high cost of oil -- which crested at $116 a barrel -- is a huge burden on the economy.  But the New York Times declared there is a "bubble" in the price of oil, because the cost rises abruptly based on no significant news.  Added to this, there has been a gigantic discovery of oil in Brazil, enough to supply the US for 20 years.  Some analysts say we can look forward to $80 a barrel oil prices.

For marketers, the next step is obvious: deepen relationships with tech companies that are making money and add tech companies to your hunting list.

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I believe we are at the bottom of the economic downturn that I first spotted last August, Get Ready for the Coming Recession .  I have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, and better economic times for law firms are approaching.  Here's the evidence:

• Real estate lawyers are adapting -- learning to handle workout transactions, taking on foreclosure work, tax appeals, commercial transactions and zoning work; holding "fix my credit" seminars for first-time home buyers, and targeting real estate investors and foreclosure specialists as clients.  NB: I'll be speaking on "Innovative Marketing Strategies for Real Estate Lawyers" sponsored by Attorneys' Title Guaranty Fund on May 20 in suburban Chicago.
• Law firms shut down spending and cut costs sharply during the first quarter.  This ended on April 1, when the second quarter began, and law firms are beginning to spend money on marketing gain.  I've seen this among my own law firm clients.
• Google reported that its earnings of rose 30%, which was better than stock analysts expected. This is important in two ways -- first it shows that despite the real estate marketing, other parts of the economy are doing great.  Second it gives clients a sense of optimism, which is a key element in ending the recession. See Earnings Optimism Boosts Stocks
• Some Wall Street bosses now profess to see light at the end of the tunnel, and they may be right. “The worst is behind us,” Richard Fuld, Lehman’s chief executive, told the New York Times. See Worst May Be Over. Still, It’s Not Pretty
• Investors Intelligence editor Michael Burke says that the stock marketing is bottoming. This will cause clients to make investments, because nobody wants to miss the buying opportunity. "We could be moving pretty much to the upside starting in July or so," he predicted.
• Marvin Appel, editor of Systems & Forecasts, a biweekly investment newsletter said, "My general market outlook is that the worst is over," Appel said. "Not that the consumer is doing great, but the bad news is out."  Consumer discretionary spending, which had dropped sharply, typically is the first to fall heading into recession,but it also rebounds earlier than other market sectors.

So I think we're at the bottom of the recession now.  There's only one way to go from here -- up.

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This miserable airline battered my trusty rolling suitcase into uselessness and then blew me off.  Join my email campaign (see bottom) to let United know that we customers won't put up with this abuse.

They told me they had no liability for wrecking my luggage!

• It didn't matter that I travel a lot in my business and am a target customer. 
• It didn't matter that I have been a Mileage Plus member since the 1980s.
• It didn't matter that I've flown hundreds of thousands of miles on United.

Marketing Lesson No. 1: Treat your long-time clients well.  Don't do things to make your customers hate you.

I knew I was in for a bad time when I landed at the airport and my suitcase was not on the conveyor belt.  I reported my lost luggage and the United Airlines agent, who gave me an 800 number to call if my bag wasn't found soon.  When they later delivered it to my house, the extendable handle was jammed shut.  The suitcase would no longer roll, which was the point of having it.  Plus the metal zipper pull had been torn off.

Marketing Lesson No. 2: Don't damage your customer's belongings.

I called the 800 number, which led to a voice mail maze.  All I could learn were the hours the United luggage office was open way back at the airport.  There was no way to call ahead to find out if they would fix the suitcase.  So I had to drive 45 minutes, park my car half a mile away, and carry the damaged bag to the United office.

Marketing Lesson No. 3: Make it easy for your customers to reach you. Adding a personal touch by not hiding your contact information is what people want.

The moment I showed the United agent the bag, she blurted, "we're not responsible for damage to the luggage exterior."  I asked, "then what are you responsible for?"  She pulled out heavily-photocopied form (click on the image to see it full-size) that said the airline was not responsible for broken wheels or feet, lost pull straps, pockets, pull handles, hanger hooks and more.  It was outraged.  "Just because you say so, now I have to incur the cost of a new suitcase."  Then I added, "I'll be flying Southwest from now on."

Marketing Lesson No. 4: If you make a mistake, take responsibility for it.  Don't tell the customer "that's just too bad.".

If you have ever had a bad experience with United's baggage handling, please join me in emailing

Graham Atkinson
United Airlines Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer
Email: graham.atkinson@united.com

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The recession which is hitting law firms has caused 600-lawyer Thelen Reid to lay off 26 associates and 85 members of its support staff, including members of the west coast marketing staff.  

In my opinion, laying off marketers during an economic downturn is like dumping fuel when a plane is trying to stay in flight.  The layoffs support Betiayn Tursi's op-ed piece in which she said marketing is undervalued by law firms.  Tursi, who is Editor in Chief of Marketing The Law Firm, went on to say that "as soon as profits start to fall or management takes a hard long look at staffing--bye, bye marketing department."

Identities of the marketers hit by the layoffs were not immediately known.

Above the Law broke the layoff news, noting that Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner has 234 associates still named on its website, so the firm cut over 10% of their associates.

Co-chairman Stephen O'Neal told the Recorder and Above the Law that the associate layoffs are in response to the economic downturn, which has cut into its capital markets practice. He also said some of the staff cuts were partly because of redundancies following the firm’s 2006 merger, which combined Francisco-based Thelen Reid & Priest and New York-based Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner.

"We are being prudent businesspeople,” O’Neal told Above the Law. “When you are dealing with recessionary pressures, you adjust your business so you will have—and maintain—a strong level of profitability, notwithstanding those pressures."

At least one associate has been cut in each of the firm’s nine offices. Both junior and senior-level associates are being laid off, mostly in the firm’s business and finance, litigation and construction practices.

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Professor Silvia Hodges, of the Department of Marketing Communication at Emerson College in Boston will soon launch the first university-level for-credit course in law and professional services marketing.

"I am in the midst of prepping my upcoming course in professional services marketing for graduate marketing students at Emerson (heavy on the legal marketing side, thanks to several years in the industry). A visionary administration at the university and lobbying from my side made it possible that this May a group of graduate marketing students will read the first-ever (to my humble knowledge) 4-credit university course in our industry.

"There is no textbook yet, so I have to put together a reader with excerpts from a number of books and articles. A number of thought leaders from our industry will come and volunteer their time to make this idea come to life.

"In lectures, case studies and workshops we will examine how the professional services sector has undergone greater transformations during the past two decades than in the last two centuries and traditional conduct and approach no longer guarantee the success and survival, thus forcing the firms to compete in new ways, that is, embracing a service and marketing orientation. We will look at the fundamental concepts and strategies that differentiate the marketing of professional services from the marketing of tangible goods and non-professional services.

"Marketing challenges that arise due to these differences will be identified as well as the factors necessary for the creation of the right service experience and possible solutions for the management of the service experience. Client satisfaction and service quality issues, such as methods for tracking service failures and recovery efforts as well as retention strategies will be covered to ensure the assessment and improvement of the professional service delivery system that will lead to a seamless service experience for the client. The focus will be on strategy, which you will surely appreciate, not on operational tactics.

For the rest of the story, visit the LawMarketing Portal.

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The following letter to the editor from Jennifer Johnson, president of the New York LMA chapter, appeared in the March 13 issue of the New York Lawyer.  It came in response to an op-ed article by Elizabeth Anne "Betiayn" Tursi, Editor-in-Chief of ALM's Marketing The Law Firm. Among other points, Tursi wrote, " I dropped my membership because as time went on, I found the organization to be lacking the type of educational give and take that an organization is supposed to provide its members." 

To the Editor:

We here at the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) find ourselves compelled to respond to the recent forecast of the death of our industry and alleged lack of leadership in our Association as outlined on this Web site on March 6, "Law Firm Marketing: R.I.P.?." It is clear to our members that this is anything but a field in decline. The facts point to just the opposite: law firm marketing is alive and thriving.

The LMA is a group of more than 3,100 marketing, business development and public relations professionals worldwide whose members are dedicated to growing the business of law firms globally. The Metro New York Chapter, with nearly 500 members locally, believes it is necessary to deliver hard facts not only to counter the provocative opinions of the author of the March 6 column, but to provide a clear and accurate picture of the reality of law firm marketing today.

The Association, in direct correlation with the industry of legal marketing, has grown more than 53% over the past five years due to law firm's investment in building more sophisticated platforms - many of which mirror those of their clients. What is the reason for such tremendous growth? It is because law firms have seen positive results in their bottom line. The firms who utilize marketing resources have seen increased efficiency with internal cross-communication resulting in more business from existing clients; brands that are differentiated from their competitors; increased partner business generation thanks to individualized marketing plans and coaching; geographic expansion due to the research of competitive intelligence teams; heightened realization rates because of improved matter management; and the list goes on.

A recent study by the author of this rebuttal shows that 61% of Chief Marketing Officers report to a Managing Partner or Chair of their firm. The average tenure for a Chief Marketing Officer was merely 18 months in 2005 and has grown to more than four years today. This compares favorably with other industries and can be taken as a strong gauge that marketing professionals are not only accepted, but very much valued by their firms.

Wait - there's more. Over the past five years the LMA has been led, whether at the International or Chapter level, by 24 c-level marketing professionals and by 125 director-level professionals, all of whom are volunteers. More than 30% of our members possess advanced degrees (which is a far cry from the days when firms plucked any warm body from the staff pool to lead marketing efforts). With 17 Chapters in the United States and Canada and members spanning the globe, the LMA has held approximately 1,000 events over the past five years that are not only educational but also afford important networking opportunities. These activities enable legal marketing professionals to learn from each other, form alliances and refer business which, ultimately, benefits their firms.

As to the substance of our educational efforts, the keynote speaker at today's LMA conference, for example, is noted attorney and human rights activist Cherie Booth Blair. After graduating with the highest honors from the London School of Economics, Ms. Booth Blair pursued a career as a practicing lawyer at Matrix Chambers Law Group in London while championing international causes along with her husband, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

As legal marketers, our mission is to ensure that our clients, the lawyers, are able to invest all of their energy and intelligence into providing the best possible service to their clients. With our help, lawyers have to worry less about where the next new matter will come from. It is the volunteers of the LMA who provide crucial resources to supplement the already marketing-savvy professionals in the industry.

If legal marketing as a profession is in decline, why are we able to point to so many successes? Ms. Tursi's column suggests that the law firm leaders who hire us, pay us and retain us are missing the mark. We could not disagree more. The increase in c-level positions, the diversification of roles within marketing departments and, frankly, the increased profitability of law firms in recent years can be attributed to the investment in legal marketing professionals.

The members of the LMA in discussion have been unable to grasp the motivation behind Ms. Tursi's comments, and we welcome a reasoned opposing view (we work for lawyers, after all),

But we will not stand by without responding to an attack that is not constructive, and we feel is blatantly without merit.

For many years to come,

Jennifer Johnson
President of the Board of Directors
Legal Marketing Association
Metro New York Chapter

Jennifer Johnson is Vice President of Recruitment & Strategy at Wisnik Career Enterprises, Inc.

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Bingham was one of 20 winners of California's Best Places to Work, as chosen by the Los Angeles-based Employers Group, a human resources consulting and educational company for California employers.

It's most recent recognition of the firm’s culture and working environment. Bingham, with nearly 1,000 attorneys in 13 offices, was selected  in the large company category out of more than 400 entrants. Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp won in the medium company category.

“This is the second competition that has named Bingham as a Best Place to Work this year, after being named for the fourth straight year to FORTUNE magazine’s ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ list. We hope to build upon this momentum in 2008 and beyond,” said Bingham Chairman Jay Zimmerman.

The ranking was based on more than 400 companies’ responses to a survey of employers and employees in nine categories, including: pay, benefits, training and advancement opportunities, work-life balance, diversity programs, turnover, perks, employee voice and workplace culture, and community involvement.

• In January, Bingham was named for the fourth straight year to the FORTUNE magazine “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. The firm ranked 41st on the list, up from 94 in 2007, with the percentage of women and minority employees noted as a main factor for the firm’s selection.
• In September 2007, the Los Angeles Business Journal ranked Bingham’s Los Angeles and Santa Monica offices No. 7 on its “Best Places to Work” list.
• Bingham also was the only large law firm named to the Boston Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work” list for 2007, ranking fifth. The firm was one of only four companies that has made the newspaper’s list each year since it was launched.
• In August 2007, Working Mother magazine named Bingham one of the top 50 law firms for working mothers and flex-time lawyers.
• Bingham was one of only 30 law firms and 195 major U.S. companies to score 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2007 Corporate Equality Index, which rates companies on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, customers and investors.

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