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Get your copy of Some Assembly Required: a Networking Guide for Women in the LawMarketing store for just $22.95

Review by Margaret McCaffery:

This book is a sequel to Thom Singer’s Some Assembly Required: How to Make, Grow, and Keep Your Business Relationships.

It springs from a networking relationship: Thom’s publishers had suggested a book specifically for women and Thom realized he wouldn’t be able to write this one alone. Who should he meet in the airport but Marny Lifshen, someone who had been part of his network for years.

I have to admit, I cringed a bit about reading this pink- covered book in public places like restaurants or the subway. I mean, we should be able to network without needing lessons, right? And why should women need different advice from men? I needn’t have worried: the authors are refreshingly down to earth about the fact that yes, networking comes naturally to some, but even they can benefit from being more strategic with their efforts. And yes, networking is in large part the same for men and women, but women face both challenges and opportunities that differ from those men face.

There is much common sense in this 184-page, simply written book. I particularly liked the focus on the differences between personal and professional friendships. Being someone who likes to keep home and work reasonably separate, I’ve often struggled with the concept that you should develop client relationships into friendships (“make your friends your clients and your clients your friends”).This book looks that issue squarely in the face and defines the difference, recognizing that business decisions will often test friendships, especially if you have to give performance feedback.

Starting with a clear description of the four steps in networking, the authors lay the groundwork for the idea that you will always network, not just when you need a job, or clients. I liked their analogy that networking is like dieting: it doesn’t work if you stop. They list the four steps as Introduce, Educate, Build, and Maintain. I was pleased to see the emphasis on maintaining already strong relationships, having seen many lawyers take their biggest clients for granted (“Oh, they’re just putting out an RFP because the rules say they have to; the work will still come to us, don’t worry”).

For the rest of the review, please visit the LawMarketing Portal.

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Peter Bilfield gets it. He embraced business development enthusiastically, found a niche, markets in a disciplined way and is on the fast track to being an accomplished rainmaker.  

And he is delivering results that his firm respects: Peter has originated a significant and impressive level of fees for Withers Bergman in New York in 2008.

As an associate in the firm's commercial group, Peter made a commitment to becoming a rainmaker for the practice group and the firm at large.

The first step was to find a viable market niche to focus on. By targeting portfolio managers at established firms seeking to start their own funds, his goal is to build a funds practice. Getting in on the ground floor of these operations, Peter assists in the structuring of the fund as well as counseling the client on the expected evolution of the fund (i.e., where investors will come from and what their tolerance will be for certain fund characteristics).

As the attorney-client relationship grows, Peter assists clients in their fund investment activities – venture capital investments, PIPEs, asset sales, refinancings, acquisitions and other liquidity events.  He also uses his securities background to advise on securities filing requirements and other regulatory concerns.

Peter Bilfield is a winner of the Originate! 2008 Rainmaker of the Year Awards, judged by the Legal Sales & Service Organization (LSSO). To find out about all 5 winners, see the latest issue online at Originate! - the business development newsletter.

Throughout his firm, all attorneys are encouraged to offer fully integrated services for fund clients including estate and tax planning for the principals in order to minimize any gift and estate taxes they might incur.  Peter effectively coordinates with partners to cross-sell estate and tax planning for these principals and strongly believes that the firm’s private client services will create additional value to the client and translate into substantial, additional fee income to the firm. 

Peter splits his time between the New York and Greenwich offices allowing him exposure to a large number of attorneys in the firm, spread across several practice groups.  He also switched practice groups in 2007 which was beneficial to understanding the workings of the firm’s Funds & Tax group and building on those relationships to cross-sell services to their commercial clients.

Outside of the firm, he targeted two organizations for business development purposes: the CT Hedge Fund Association and Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity. 

While Peter’s originations are impressive, the inventory of specific wins shows how he worked hard ...

See the rest the story for free in the Originate! newsletter at http://www.pbdi.org/Originate/

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Peter H. Klee is the biggest rainmaker at Luce Forward in San Diego, bringing in between $10 - $15 million each year, and his insurance litigation practice continues to grow at a rate of 10 percent per year.  What sets him apart as a 2008 Rainmaker of the Year, in the category of partners who are litigators, is his unbeatable record:  no client represented in court by Peter has ever been found liable for breach of insurance contract, bad faith or any other tort.

“Your work product is your best source of referrals,” Klee said.  “Most of my referrals come from people in the insurance industry referring other people in the industry.  And they refer other people to us.”

His formidable record includes:

• He and his group have handled more than 1,500 cases over the last 20 years. They treat every single case as a life or death cause that cannot be lost under any circumstances.

• Peter Klee is a winner of the Originate! 2008 Rainmaker of the Year Awards, judged by the Legal Sales & Service Organization (LSSO). To find out about all 5 winners, see the latest issue online at Originate! - the business development newsletter.

  Klee has obtained defense verdicts in more than 500 cases in, including more than 50 cases in the last year alone.
• He has eliminated 80% of lawsuits filed against his largest client, a major property and casualty insurance company that had been sued in the past nearly 200 times per year.  “We took an insurance company that had been sued repeatedly in southern California.  But now, no one has successfully sued them for 20 years, nobody’s ever gotten a dime.  The plaintiff’s bar made a decision that it just wasn’t worth it,” he said.
• One-third of his current clients have been the results of client referrals.
• He has expanded each client account he has worked on significantly from the original scope of work. His client list includes most of the major insurance carriers, including the Allstate Insurance, State Farm, St. Paul-Travelers Ins. Co., and the Automobile Club of Southern California.  His reputation for no losses is especially attractive to large insurance providers.

Building a winning team

“I tell the associates if they come with me, they’ll be in trial within one to two years and they’ll be running their own cases,” he said.  When he hires an associate he encourages them to develop business on their own, but he provides them with all the work they’ll need. “I don’t want the person who is in the legal profession because they can make a lot of money; I want somebody who is passionate about what they do."

See the rest the story for free in the Originate! newsletter at http://www.pbdi.org/Originate/

 

 

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Wilton McDonald II had some special challenges in building up a small legal practice. Hired in November 2006 by a small to mid-sized firm in Grand Cayman as a senior associate, he was charged with bringing in his own work and full responsibility for the Investment Funds Department.

He couldn’t rely on a flourishing client base; billable hours for the department in January of 2007 were 43, total. Add to that challenge a clientele which is not local but global, and a daunting set of competing law firms.

Yet he built a successful business for the firm within two years, and positioned himself to surpass his goal of US$ 2 million in annual billings for the Investment Funds Department, winning him the title of Originate! 2008 Rainmaker of the Year in the category for associates. Our judges were impressed by the intelligence and commitment he brought to it, how well he took control of what he did, and how he challenged himself with rigorous goals by which he measured his progress.

Making it Work

Wilton McDonald II is a winner of the Originate! 2008 Rainmaker of the Year Awards, judged by the Legal Sales & Service Organization (LSSO). To find out about all 5 winners, see the latest issue online at Originate! - the business development newsletter.

In the face of all this, Mr. McDonald began with the right attitude. He found he had a zest for acting entrepreneurially. When offered the chance to leave a large firm and seize the opportunity to make something big happen, he eagerly did so. He knew he had to work hard at it, but he was open to integrating the getting of business with his practice of law and his daily life.

Even though he had full support from his new partners, and the latitude to set a marketing and work program in place, he knew he had some hard work before him. He admits that most lawyers can find this daunting: “In the profession, a lot of people expect to be given work. That’s like little birds waiting to be fed by the mother bird. But that’s not how it works in a small firm. There especially you have to feed yourself.”

As he set his course, he knew he needed four things to be successful. Let’s look at what he did...

See the rest the story for free in the Originate! newsletter at http://www.pbdi.org/Originate/

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The winner of the 2008 Rainmaker of the Year award for the category “Partner – Transactions” is H. Patrick Callahan of Baker & Daniels LLP.

The annual Rainmaker awards are sponsored by Originate! - the business development newsletter, and judged by the Legal Sales and Service Organizations (LSSO).

Pat stands out as much for his role in developing the rainmaking capabilities of his colleagues as for his individual business development efforts. He is a person for whom relationships and relationship building are central to his rainmaking. Nor does the commendation for a particular year quite capture what truly has been an ongoing lifetime achievement in serving his clients and his fellow attorneys.

Pat has been individually honored already this year by Indiana Super Lawyers in Mergers and Acquisitions, and by Best Lawyers in America for Corporate Law. However, much like the soccer matches he loves to watch his son play, Pat truly believes that business development is a team sport. His ideal is to gather his colleagues in the same room and make sparks fly by sharing experiences and discussing relationships in order to improve service value to clients.

H. Patrick Callahan is a winner of the Originate! 2008 Rainmaker of the Year Awards, judged by the Legal Sales & Service Organization (LSSO). To find out about all 5 winners, see the latest issue online at Originate! - the business development newsletter.

In the context of today’s law firm, Pat recognizes that all attorneys need to be involved in keeping existing clients and actively pursuing new ones.  Through his two guiding principles – relationship building and team play – Pat has helped make his firm truly sophisticated in its philosophy of client service and marketing strategy.
 

The Relationship Business: Are You Listening?

Pat sees himself in the relationship business: connecting people, incessantly building trust with clients, and through his mentoring helping other lawyers find their own style in doing the same.

Pat has mastered this effort so well that he appears to be a natural at it. A few years ago, he took Melanie Green, the firm’s new marketing director, to a local restaurant for lunch so they could talk about her new role. Just walking through the restaurant, Pat was greeted by many people he knew from the door to the table.

See the rest the story for free in the Originate! newsletter at http://www.pbdi.org/Originate

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Marketer René Stranghoner used an integrated marketing and branding approach resulting in her firm achieving a 28% increase in net revenue for fiscal year 2008, taking the firm to a record $51 million mark. Taking a 360° approach to marketing, Stranghoner simultaneously executed a variety of strategies, all with a common objective – grow the firm and build the brand. Efforts included telemarketing, public relations and direct marketing to name a few.

How did she follow up? By being named the 2008 Marketer of the Year at the Association for Accounting Marketing (AAM) Conference in San Diego. Judges included professionals in the advertising, public relations, professional services and marketing fields.

“René s thorough understanding of marketing and positioning strategies, her proven track record of successfully launching and expanding niches and service lines, her superior execution of marketing communications and promotion methods, as well as her strategic leadership, have allowed her to take her firm to a new level of growth and prosperity. Today she is recognized as the critical link in the firm’s growth of 162% over the past five years,” said Mitchell Reno, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer of The Rehmann Group.

The basis for 162% growth for firm

With offices in Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston, Texas, Weaver and Tidwell, L.L.P. is recognized as one of the largest certified public accounting firms in America. Practical Accountant magazine ranked the firm as the largest regional accounting firm in the Southwest. Moreover, Inside Public Accounting ranked Weaver and Tidwell among the nation’s Top 100 Accounting Firms.

Read the full story on the LawMarketing Portal at http://www.lawmarketing.com/pages/articles.asp?Action=Article&ArticleCategoryID=58&ArticleID=797.

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Get competitive intelligence on what the best law firms are doing and learn from their examples with the Legal Brand Blueprint. Business development expert Steve Hoeft shows you how branding can be your most powerful marketing strategy to win new clients. The Legal Brand Blueprint is your instruction manual to develop a competition-killer brand that is illuminating, engaging, and memorable. Click here to learn more.

Your #1 strategy for business development is a remarkable brand.

Legal Brand Blueprint™ will equip you to articulate your brand position and all brand components. You will know the “one thing” that you do better than any other law firm. It will be inspiring. It will be what you stand for. It will mean something to inquiring clients. It will tell someone in five seconds why they should talk to you and then reinforce that impression at every step as you build a relationship.

Legal Brand Blueprint™ sets the standard in branding because:

1. 50+ World Class Brand examples help you understand “what is great branding?”
2. 40+ Top 100 Law Firm Brand examples give you competitive intelligence on what the best of the best are doing.
3. 5 Drill down branding exercises to develop your own brand are simple, powerful and proven for some of the world’s best known brands.

To see the table of contents, click here.

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Five attorneys who have generated millions of dollars in new business for their law firms won the Originate! 2008 Rainmaker of the Year Awards to honor their outstanding business-development skills.

The winners are profiled in the September 2008 issue of Originate! -- the attorney business development newsletter at http://www.pbdi.org/Originate, to mark its first year of publication. The awards are sponsored by Originate! and nominees were judged by a panel of experts fielded by the Legal Sales and Services Organization (LSSO).

The winners – from Canada, the Cayman Islands and the U.S. -- demonstrated different approaches to business development, from marketing to a specific industry like high tech to concerted relationship building:

• Partner – Transactions: H. Patrick Callahan, Baker & Daniels in Indianapolis. 
• Partner – Litigator: Peter H. Klee, Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego.
• Woman Lawyer: Lorelei Graham, Miller Thomson in Ontario, Canada.
• Small Firm Lawyer: Wilton G. McDonald II, Truman Bodden & Co. in Grand Cayman.
• Associate: Peter J. Bilfield, Withers Bergman in New York.

“The winners personify the strongest models of effective business development and marketing,” said Originate! Editor Larry Bodine. “We aim to recognize and celebrate those lawyers who’ve put extraordinary thought, initiative and effort into their business-building programs.”

“The judges' job was difficult because we had to pick just one winner in each category, even though all the entrants demonstrated qualities that deserved recognition,” said Catherine Alman MacDonagh, J.D., President and Co-Founder of LSSO. “While a lawyer’s effort certainly was one consideration, those we selected as the best stood out for providing evidence of their clearly measured, tracked and demonstrated results.”

Originate! issued a call for entries in June, and LSSO selected the winners in August. Judges included a distinguished panel including Catherine Alman MacDonagh; Martha Fay Africa, Managing Director of search consultants Major, Lindsey & Africa in San Francisco; and Gabriel Miller, General Counsel of The Law Offices of James Sokolove in Newton, MA.

Winners will receive a striking “star” award.

Originate! is a subscription newsletter, but in celebration of its first anniversary, the articles in the September issue are free to all visitors. During September readers can save $50 off the regular price of a full 12 month subscription at http://www.pbdi.org/Originate/special.asp. Contact Larry Bodine at 630.942.0977 for free reprint permission (with conditions).

ABOUT ORIGINATE: Originate! is the premier on-line newsletter for lawyers who are serious about boosting their business development results. Each issue includes articles, tips and tactics on generating new clients and revenue, written by experts within the legal profession. Edited by Barry Schneider, Larry Bodine, Esq., and Michael G. Cummings, an annual subscription is $397.

ABOUT LSSO – The Legal Sales and Service Organization, based in Boston and found at www.legalsales.org, is the legal industry's only organization exclusively focused on sales, service and process improvement in law firms and legal departments. Founded in 2003, LSSO delivers the education and resources that lawyers need to improve their sales and client service skills with a searchable library, exclusive research, tools, LSSO's RainDance Conference, LSSO’s 2008 Women Lawyers Study, LSSO's Process Improvement Certification Programs and the Thomas H. Lee Award for Service Excellence.

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Beth O. Seabright, Director of Marketing at Tucker Arensberg, PC in Pittsburgh, PA, has been swamped with calls and emails about her article, Associates Develop New Business in '99 Days' Program, first published on the LawMarketing Portal.

The blog Quiver & Quill followed up with Beth in an interview by Zachary Braiker of Boston, MA:

1. Did you provide your team with additional resources to point them in the right direction? For example, did you create a list of possible speaking engagements for them to attend, or were they expected to research this on their own? 

I did provide additional resources for them.  I suggested publications for articles, speaking engagements, networking events and occasionally set up lunches with my contacts that I wanted my attorneys to get to know.   I coached them through phone calls when they were reaching out to contacts for the first time and walked them through various business development scenarios.  I helped the Associates to get to their goal in any way that I could.

2. Did you post people’s point score continuously and publicly?

I sent out the results every two weeks to our Associates and occasionally included our Managing Shareholder.

3. Did that create a competitive or a collaborative environment?

I would say more motivating than competitive.  A few Associates that were not making the time for the program initially saw that other Associates were making progress toward the goal and were inspired to meet with me to put together a plan to catch up with their colleagues.

4. What was the logic behind assigning which point values to which activities? 

The more difficult the task, the higher the point value.  I made a list of all of the activities included in the program and ranked them from simple to challenging.  For instance, meetings with me: easy - Associates received 2 points/meeting.  New clients were worth 10 points.

5. And lastly, have you been able to correlate a dollar amount to the biz dev challenge–ROI?

To be honest, I did not go back and correlate dollar values to the challenge, simply because a lot of the value in the program was planting the business developing seeds with the Associates.  While our more senior associates brought in new matters and clients, which I could easily correlate with a dollar value, our younger associates were setting up meetings and writing articles for the first time, activities that were not going to create instant new business.

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Visit the new August issue of Originate! - the business development newsletter, to read a very specific list of marketing pointers in-house lawyers Carolyn H. Clift, Esq. and Verlyn Suderman, Esq.  According to the duo, there are 7 specific things that law firms should know about so they can get corporate legal work.

Here's the beginning of the article. To see the whole article visit www.pbdi.org/Originate/ -- it's the lead article.

What do general counsels want from outside lawyers?

Imagine you are a general counsel or other person responsible for purchasing decisions for legal services. Then reflect on how your performance is evaluated in terms of the work product of your team. You’ll realize that your criteria for selection and retention of help from outside counsel will include: 

• Strong technical competence
• Cost-consciousness
• Results-orientation
• Responsiveness
• Flexibility
• Integrity
• Diversity
• Business acumen

And that implies these seven criteria for selecting our outside counsel.

1. Just OK can be good enough

Verlyn: The lawyers I engage must have a level of experience and competence in the area of law involved. I will not hire a lawyer or firm to handle something outside of their area of specialization, no matter how highly I think of that lawyer or firm. But the level of experience and competence I look for is highly dependent on the particular situation. Because it’s generally true that the very best lawyers cost the most, I don’t often seek out the very best lawyers. The work we don’t handle in-house is primarily employment and commercial litigation, with some real estate, transactional, or IP work thrown in, and most of our litigation is what I would characterize as routine, low-stakes, and/or low-merit. In these limited-exposure cases, I don’t need the sophistication, depth and research capabilities of a top-tier firm – I just need someone with some demonstrated practical experience and a strong business orientation. 

To me, a lawyer with a business orientation will help me create a strategy that produces the desired result at the lowest possible cost. This requires, for instance, a willingness to prepare and file a motion that may not be perfect, but is good enough to accomplish our tactical objectives. This kind of thing is anathema to some large firms I’ve worked with, apparently because they feel anything that has their name on it has to be the best possible quality. Fortunately, many smaller firms understand this, and one benefit of the lawyer glut for people like me is that you can find very capable lawyers with business orientations at smaller firms for half the cost of big-firm representation.

Carolyn: Given the reasons why we engage outside counsel, and based on the skill and technical background, training and knowledge of our staff, we generally look for outside counsel highly recognized in his/her field of subject matter expertise. Strong technical expertise and extraordinary professional competence is a basic requirement for outside counsel. We typically look to counsel who can add value to our complement of in-house talent. We want outside counsel who work well with our internal business partners and express interest in developing solutions to meet the business goals and objectives.  

GC Checklist:

Appropriate level of experience and competence Business results orientation Team player who works well inside Value for money

2. Firm reputation not so important

Carolyn:  As a practical matter, we generally hire attorneys....

For the rest of the free article, visit www.pbdi.org/Originate 

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