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

There's some buzz about a new client-lawyer matching service called "WhoCanISue.com." Some have called it a terrible idea that brings disrepute upon the profession, on the other hand, others say it borders on barratry, which is the unethical stirring up of quarrels and lawsuits.

My viewpoint of WhoCanISue.com is summed up by a hilarious video on YouTube that satirizes bad lawyer advertising, brought to you by the fictional law firm of Swindel & Scheister.  "We will sue everybody," says the ad, if you've ever been misunderstood, stung by a bee or annoyed by pop-up advertisements.

As somber music plays, the actors wear dress shirts, ties -- and shorts. Their buzz haircuts are right out of middle school, and one guy could sure use a shave.  But the mock-u-tisement says you can call them at 1-800-We-Will-Sue. 

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Quote from a dissent by Chief Justice Roberts in a Supreme Court decision issued June 23:

The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing. "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose." Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone," on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records, 1965).

The coolness of quoting Dylan is dissipated when you realize that Roberts -- like an English teach school marm -- tidied up what Dylan actually sang: “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

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Kudos to Frank Lopez, marketing director of 130-lawyer Hanson Bridgett in San Francisco, the firm put up a delightful video,  "The World Accordion to Hanson Bridgett."

Using music it demonstrate the firm's diversity, showing that people of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds cab play wonderfully together.

(I'm playing the video for the 7th time -- being part German, I love the oom-pah music, the Zydeco beat and the Hispanic enthusiasm.)

The brilliant move is part of a "new look" and new tagline -- "inspired" -- including a video of managing partner Andrew Giacomini  leading an accordion band through the streets of San Francisco.

"Want to see a law-firm managing partner walk down Market Street in Lederhosen and knee-highs, banging a bass drum to accordion music? Check out this YouTube link: http://inspired.hansonbridgett.com/," a firm announcement states.

"The Northern California firm formerly known as Hanson, Bridgett, Vlahos, Marcus & Rudy LLP again employs a progressive campaign to differentiate itself from the competition. This time the firm harnessed the power of the Internet and popularity of social networking to spread its new look and feel by "word of mouse."

"We examined the viral video medium and quickly recognized it was a great way to reach a new generation of people," Giacomini said. He in particular desires pervasive distribution of the video because "I want people all over the world to see me in Lederhosen."

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Here's a joke book for lawyers written by Giovanni Diviacchi, and "independent entertainment professional" in the Washington D.C. Metro Area: humor by lawyers about pain-in-the-neck clients.

It's a 38-page book you can get on Amazon.com for $9 at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805970398/ref=dp_bib_1

Here's a review from Amazon: "This short book serves as an excellent training guide for the all too serious novice lawyer about to embark on the real world of client-lawyer relationships. With a keen eye toward the peculiar personalities that afflict the human species and the blatantly outrageous behaviors that defy reason, Diviacchi reveals a bit too much of what may truly go on in the mind of the client and the daily world of the lawyer. The tales/jokes in this book will lighten up any stuffy dinner party."

And another: "I'm buying this book for all my friends in Law School and those already in the legal profession. It's refreshing to see the humor from the Attorney's perspective, since we always seem to be the butt of the jokes. It's one funny book!"

Giovanni's day job is being a Senior Business Analyst at Fannie Mae, but he's also standup comic who appears with the name Slimm Slappy.  He says the book has been awarded been awarded the prestigious The Stephen T. Colbert Award For The Literary Excellence, which is good enough for me.

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Inside Counsel magazine is giving its readers a chance to rate law firms on 8 factors, such as "quality of service" and "responsiveness." There are dozens of firms to choose from, and if your firm is not on the list -- you can yourself to it.  It's like voting for your favorite restaurant or TV show.

Editor-in-chief Robert Vosper asserts that only registered users who are in-house counsel can rank a firm.  However, It took me only 60 seconds to register and vote.  I am the corporate executive who selects the lawyers for one of several corporations I operate, so I am the VP and General Counsel.  I added one of my favorite client law firms to the list and gave it top rankings in value of service, quality of service, client/customer service, billing accuracy, adherence to budget, willingness to negotiate fees, value-added services and breadth of services.

I suppose some nasty person could pick out their competitors and give them low rankings. But people wouldn't do nasty things on the Web, would they?

The mag used to be called Corporate Legal Times and you can get a free subscription to Inside Counsel by clicking here. As of this moment, the top firms for value of service are:

1. O'Melveny & Myers
2. Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue
3. Seyfarth Shaw 

For quality of service the top three are:

1. Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue
2. Perkins Coie
3. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal

Ironically, Vosper says in the "From the Editor" column in the January 2008 issue, "I've always found this whole ranking thing to be a bit unsavory.  Many of these lists are either pay-to-play or are based on data supplied by the law firms themselves."   [ I couldn't agree more.]

He goes on: "Few, if any, of these lists are helpful to in-house counsel.  Why is it important , for instance, that a firm is ranked among the top 100 grossing firms in the country (other than the fact these firms should be more willing do reduce their rates)?  And can you really trust that the data submitted by these firms is accurate?"  [You said it buddy!]

Then he totally blows it by saying, "With that in mind, we devised a law firm ranking that can't be gamed and is actually useful.  We are calling it the IC-I list."  [Sorry, you lost me.  Didn't you just say these phony-baloney rankings are "unsavory"?]

So tell your clients, consultants, marketers and buddies to register and vote for you. Call up a friend at another law firm and agree to vote for each other.  The results will be published in October.  Maybe then the publishers will start to give up on these silly rankings.

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There must be something in the River Charles that gives one Boston law firm a great sense of humor. Wolf Greenfield, a larger-than-life 75-lawyer intellectual property firm, has dealt a deck of holiday cards -- hilarious branded playing cards.

The deck includes their greatest hits of Christmas past including their Mad magazine fold-in card, patent bar (of candy), "Better Patents and Trademarks" magazine, gingerbread house, Advent card and advertising campaigns ("wicked smart" and "Smarts Illustrated").

The cards feature joke patents for crazy items like an alarm fork, all terrain stroller, pet petter, neck fanny pack, jet propulsion golf club, electro fishing (standing in water with a battery powered electric pole), and U.S. Patent No. 6,826,983: a light bulb changer with hundreds of moving parts.

You know the firm has a sense of humor when the Joker card features shareholders David Wolf in a Three Stooges pose with George L. Greenfield.

Sally Crocker, one-time stand-up comedienne and Director of Client Services, and her marketing team are lucky indeed to work for an inventive firm like Wolf Greenfield.  Known for her tagline, "only the cops call me Sara," she has an innate skill to create legal holiday cheer. 

The world, filled with ultra-serious legal marketing, would be a duller place without the firm's unique and festive marketing. Long may you run.

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Blogger Peter Darling has launched the First Annual WTH ("What The Hell?")  awards at his blog, Business Development.

2nd Prize
The runner-up is an intellectual property partner at a large, very prominent firm in Silicon Valley who sent him a holiday card that he did not sign. Instead, he had his secretary rubber-stamp his name at the bottom. "It wasn't even straight. Nothing conveys sincere wishes for a peaceful, happy holiday season like a Christmas card that looks like an internal California DMV memo," Darling writes.

Grand Prize
Darling received a holiday card from a very large law firm in the Midwest. They didn't sign the card. "But these guys did something extraordinary on top of it. I did a small consulting project for them, and as I sometimes do, because I like to eat, I sent them a bill. Which they just ... ignored. Yup, they just plain stiffed me. And then they sent me a Christmas card." 

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You know the holiday card is from Hamilton Brook Smith Reynold, the intellectual property law firm in Concord, MA, when you see Thomas Edison serving the turkey with Mmm. Marie Curie.

The card also includes jokes about eight famous inventors. It refers to Edison's "unfortunate failures including the remote control turkey baster and the electric gravy delumpifier."  How does Marketing Director Audra Callanan  come up with this stuff? How does she get the partners to go for it?

The card shows the inventors sitting at a table lit by bunsen burners and graced with a fresh "pi."  See if you can match the caricatures with the following inventors (answers set out at bottom of post):

1. Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

Having obtained over 1500 patents, Edison's successes include the first commercially available x-ray machine, the incandescent light bulb, and the phonograph. Unfortunate failures include the remote control turkey baster and the electric gravy delumpifier. *

2. Mme. Marie Curie (1867-1934)

A pioneer in the field of radioactivity, Mme. Curie was the first female professor at the University of Paris, first twice-honored Nobel laureate, and the discoverer of Polonium which she named for her native Poland. Equally skilled in the laboratory and the kitchen, Mme. Curie was a renowned chef and is credited with inventing the Asian-influenced turkey seasoning now known as Curie Powder.*

3. Hedy Lemarr (1914-2000)

Considered "Hollywood's most beautiful woman" in the 1940's, this Austrian-born starlet learned about the interference of wartime communication during dinner conversation as atrophy wife to a powerful Hitler ally. Lemarr put her knowledge to work as co-inventor of U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387, a radio frequency technology which served as the basis for foxes, cellular phones, and other wireless communications used today.

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The new magazine Despicable Lawyer has been launched, depicting David Gotlieb, a partner at Parsinen Kaplan Rosberg + Gotlieb in Minneapolis, on the cover. Click to see the full-size cover.

If you look closely, you'll see that the title is preceded with "Not Just Another."  And the law firm itself published the 34-page magazine.

The 28 lawyers at the firm "are well aware of the general public's perception of the distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the bar." And by way of their client communication for the holidays, they address the issue head-on. In its magazine, PKR+G poses the question: perception or reality? "The reader is left to decide just how despicable lawyers -- at least PKR+G lawyers -- really are," the firm says in an announcement.

Inside are highlights of pro bono activities by firm personnel:

• "Work + Play = Howard Rubin" -- about the lawyer's work with the Alzheimer's Association.
• "Unlikely Alliance with a Cow" -- about secretary Deb Tanner's church mission trip to Guatemala.
• "Connections That Make the World Smaller" -- a briefing by the Global Citizens Network.
• "The Sensitive Side of Steve Katz" -- about his travel to Kenya with his family.
• A center spread with photos of firm personnel who were givers, connected by lines to pictures of people who are receivers.

PKR+G's annual tradition is to connect with its clients via a unique communications vehicle -- a favorite gift catalog, a lifestyle magazine, or a newly launched web site that showcases the personal side of attorneys and staff.

"We don't think of ourselves as money-grabbing, conflict-instigating lawyers, which is a common public perception," Rubin said. The goal of the publication is to connect with clients on a more meaningful level. "We don't have a problem with revealing who we are as human beings," he said. "Clients want a relationship with real people. So here we are, warts and all."

Kudos to PKR+G for their superb marketing and for making the world a better place.

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Order your copy today:

Brought to you by the band that gave us the classic albums "Merry Lexmas From The Lawtunes," "Legal Holidaze," and "The Lawyer's Holiday Humor Album," the new LawTunes CD is a broader take on the law, lawyers, and legal practice through ten original rock-and-roll tunes in an album not limited by content or style to any particular season. It even includes a few "love songs," although expressed in the language of an attorney.

Premised as a "live" concert at "Blackacre," the legendary parcel of land so often referenced in eternally-painful law school examination questions and scholarly legal treatises/articles, the new album includes:

"(She's An) Electronic Discovery”

There's probably no "hotter" topic in the law today than the review and production in litigation of e-mail and other electronic documents. But that context and its developing terminology (including data accessibility, preservation, spoliation, retention policies,

metadata, embedded images, the recent Federal Rules of Civil Procedure amendments, and the leading Zubulake line of cases) are appropriated with gusto to tell the tale of a lawyer falling in virtual love.

"Lawyers' Blood Is Typo"

A lawyer is called upon after-hours (assuming there is such a thing anymore) to provide guidance to a "client" seeking a reliable life partner, and explains why he is qualified to do so.

"Della Street"

A tribute to the most famous of legal secretaries, in a style appropriate to when "Perry Mason" first aired.

"LawMan"

A hard-pounding and blunt explanation of exactly what it is that lawyers do.

"Orderin' In"

The pleasures of working late and eating at your desk. To the extent there are any, this song extols them.

"Cadillac Cab"

The big-city law firm/corporate perk with double-edges, as detailed herein.

"Little Bluebook"

A lawyer frustrated in love desperately seeks guidance from the legal citation style manual, invoking a generous helping of the jargon of that treatise.

"Livin' Life In Six Minutes"

A new acoustic version of a popular Lawtunes song lamenting the reduction of legal practice (and life) to billing increments of tenths of an hour.

"Everywhere There Is A Client"

As close to an anthem for lawyers as there is, explaining some of why lawyers do what they do.

"Santa's G.C."

Well, old habits die hard. The album concludes with this whimsical tale about a lawyer who goes in-house to become General Counsel at Santa, Inc.

Order your copy today

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