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

From Hubspot: We all know our website is a key part of our marketing and lead generation strategy. But when prospects visit your site, what are they looking for? What do they want to see, and what do they consider most important? To find out, RainToday surveyed more than 200 buyers of B2B services -- in companies of all sizes -- to rate the importance of various elements of a service provider's website.

The top 4 elements should come as no surprise:

•  Service descriptions (87%)
•  Description of industries served (78%)
•  Success stories / case studies (73%)
•  Professional website design and presentation (69%)

These elements are the core of most firms' websites. If something is amiss here, it will raise major questions with buyers from the get-go. Getting these elements in place is just the price of entering the game.

However, if you want to win clients, don't overlook the remaining six elements. Even podcasts and audio content, at the bottom of the list, were rated by 40% of decision makers as being "extremely" or "very important" when deciding to make initial contact with a service provider. 

Whatever marketing you are doing, the first stop for most buyers is a visit to your website. It can either draw them in further with online resources and content, podcasts, videos, and news, or it can say the same thing as your competitors' sites, providing a laundry list of services and a nice look, but neither helping nor hurting your chances to start or enhance a relationship.

Web Elements Working Together - An Example

Say you are going to run a webinar. You may send an invitation by email (a top way to generate attendance at webinars), directing buyers to register for the event on your website. During the registration process, you can ask them to sign up for your newsletter, allowing you to add them to ongoing marketing communications. And, on the confirmation page, you can direct them to blog posts, case studies, or podcasts on related topics to the event, further engaging them with your brand and thought-leading content.

Pull People to You

You can go a step further and share information about the webinar and the related content items via social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Doing this allows you to reach your followers and fans, some of whom may not be on your email list, as well as enhancing your Web presence. As more people use the Web to find services, you want to make sure you have compelling content that is findable in search engines and draws people to you.

Buyers may not indicate elements such as blog posts, podcasts, and video as being the most important features of a website, but leveraging content can really help your product or service stand out in a crowded market space.

What type of content do you have available on your website?

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A giant nutrition label grabs your eye at the Minnesota airport. It's not for an energy drink or pack of lunch meat, its an advertisement for a "100% Lean Law Firm.  Newbreedlaw.com."

As a general counsel or client executive, I'd like what I see: 0g fat. Equally divided among six key practice areas. Putting clients first: 100%.  And my favorite: Obnoxious lawyer schtick: 0%.

It's the innovative new ad campaign by Halleland Lewis Niland & Johnson. The airport ads are so clever it makes people stop in their tracks and pull out their cell phone cameras.

Marketing genius Dustin Sanick, of the ad agency Kohnstamm Communications Inc. in St. Paul, explained: "The campaign highlights the specific practice groups and how their client-focused approach along with their applied business practicality maximize their clients' business results.  The ad doesn't bloat the groups, but keeps them 'lean" for their clients."

It's  smart marketing approach, because most law firms promote all their dozens of practice groups, and as a result doesn't promote any of them at all.  By targeting six practices, the firm has created a comprehensible idea for clients to wrap their minds around.

It helps that the firm was founded as recently as 1996, and thus is not burdened with hundreds of years of stultifying tradition.

The firm's unconventional website states, "A look around our firm will tell you a great deal about the way our people work. All attorneys have offices of equal size. We’ve invested heavily in the quality and efficiency of our common and meeting spaces. We focus not on hierarchy, but teamwork — because you get better results that way."

Partner Keith Halleland sums it up, "What could be harder than creating a brand around a law firm?  But Kohnstamm's relentless PR efforts have truly helped take us to a whole level of business."

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"We are painfully familiar with client complaints that large law firms charge too much for new associates who know too little about the practice of law to be worth it," said Prof. Silvia Hodges, who is a full-time faculty member at Emerson College in Boston, where she teaches professional/legal services marketing. She is also an adjunct associate professor of law at Fordham University in New York.

"The clients may have a broader complaint. For all their glittering academic records, these young lawyers not only don't know much about the realities of the practice, they know even less about the business world.

The new LexisNexis survey reveals that law school students are feeling the impact of the current turmoil within the legal industry. More than half of law school students surveyed (54%) say that the current state of the legal industry has made them consider career alternatives, while almost two-thirds (65%) believe law school does not teach the practical business skills needed to practice law.

As a former litigator, I remember that law school was several years of reading statutes and appellate court opinions. Absolutely nothing was taught about running a law firm and getting clients. It makes sense that the survey found that one fifth (21%) of students say that based on the changing legal marketplace, they regret attending law school.

"Law schools have also started down this road. Some have long offered joint J.D. and MBA programs but as a practical matter that effort is too long and too expensive to attract all but the most obsessed. Instead, by my count, at least 17 schools have created courses that purport to teach basic practice management concepts," Hodges says.

She makes sense when she says a model "law business" survey course should include:

• A taste of business concepts and strategy
• Finance and economic indicators
• Firm governance and organization to firm ownership
• Law firm economics
• Client relationship management
• Marketing and business development
• Human resources

"The financial collapse of 2008 has given this discussion new urgency, and a do-or-die burden on legal practitioners. The young generation is called to take a fresh look at their profession and how they approach client needs, because, to vary the cliché, it's the business model, stupid. And no one wants a stupid lawyer," she says.

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The LMA national confererence is coming up on March 10-12 in Denver.  However, some marketers are having trouble getting approval to go because of the poor economy and cost-cutting at their firms.

It's not cheap.  Registration for a regular member is $995, and non-members pay $1445.  Rooms at the Hyatt Regency are going for $209 to $249.  This makes law firm CFOs choke, because they understand nothing about law firm marketing.

To the rescue, the LMA has created "A Customizable Letter To Your Manager" that marketers can customize and use in support of their attendance. See page 8 of the document at  http://bit.ly/7zeuWJ  Here's an excerpt:

I appreciate that my attendance will represent a considerable investment in terms of time and money so you’ll also find a breakdown of expected costs and my plan for keeping the expense to an absolute minimum. You’ll also read my plan for providing you and the team with a full post-conference report to ensure we get maximum value from the investment.

The LMA Annual Conference is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for the entire legal marketing community to learn from the leading practitioners in the sector. The event is in its 24th year and regularly attracts more than 1,000 attendees from firms just like ours.

 

This year’s event is especially important because in such changing economic times, we need to learn how to best respond.

This is persuasive stuff!  If you get to go, I hope to see you there. I already got the OK from my boss, my wife/CFO who guards the family grocery money.  But then, she used to me a marketing director herself, so it was an easy pitch.

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Gerry Oginski, Esq., has written a tip-packed article on markeing yourself online with video.  A New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer in practice for more than 21 years, he has produced and created more than 200 to market his law practice where he explains to consumers how lawsuits work in New York.

You've made the choice to jump right into video to market your legal services. The move is a good one. It will help you distinguish yourself from everyone else. Here now, never before released, is Gerry's definitive guide to video marketing for lawyers.

Nine Benefits to Using Video:

1. Viewers get to see you.
2. Viewers get to hear you.
3. Viewers get to know you.
4. Viewers begin to trust you before they ever walk in your door.
5. You become the wise man at the top of the mountain.
6. You are viewed as the legal expert.
7. You are giving away information in order to gain an audience.
8. Viewers see that you are a real human being.
9. The image of a grumpy unapproachable stuffy lawyer dissipates when a viewer sees you on video.

“What should I talk about in my video? Create an educational message.  What do I mean?

Do not use online video the same way lawyers have used TV commercials since 1973. A 30-60 second commercial on YouTube does nothing to help you get new clients in your door. Take advantage of the web’s unlimited capacity for video.

 For the rest of the article visit the LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/8IbGE 

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Article from: Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL)

It reads like a typical MBA student class schedule: performance management, the global organization and creating value.

Only the students are not future CEOs or CFOs. They are lawyers wanting to learn to think like business executives.

While today's biggest law firms may resemble multinational corporations with offices worldwide, most lawyers are ill equipped to manage such complex entities. They usually learn management on the fly, and also tend to be poor at working as a team, which increasingly is necessary in today's business world.

"Legal education hasn't adequately adapted to the changing needs of the profession," said Deborah Rhode, a law professor at Stanford University and the director of its Center on Ethics. "One of the most critical failures is the whole area of managerial skills."

A few law firms have stepped into the gap and designed mini MBA classes for their lawyers, often in partnership with business schools.

Chicago law firm Seyfarth Shaw, for example, began a management program for partners last year at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. Its lawyers live on campus for three days and learn marketing and strategy at one of the nation's most prestigious business schools.

"This sensitized the partners to some of the critical business issues going forward, such as mergers, bringing on laterals [lawyers from other firms] and opening new offices," said Michael Levinson, a trial lawyer and partner at Seyfarth Shaw.

Such training is expensive. A five-day program at Kellogg costs $7,500 per person, including food and lodging.

Another Chicago firm, Baker & McKenzie, designed something similar with Kellogg for its partners a few years ago, and began to understand their clients better.

"It really helped our partners appreciate how clients are organized, how they manage and how we can serve them better," said Christine Lagarde, chairman of Baker & McKenzie, which has more than 3,000 lawyers worldwide.

Still, executive education for lawyers is rare.

"I don't know that a lot of other firms are doing this," said J. Stephen Poor, Seyfarth Shaw's managing partner. "I discuss this at managing-partner meetings and get a lot of blank looks around the table."

Beyond ongoing legal training, law firms do not have the tradition of other professional services of business development.

As accounting firms expanded internationally, the larger ones established collegelike campuses where recruits were transformed into well-scrubbed accountants and consultants and returned later for management classes. Some, like Ernst & Young, have turned to business schools for education. It has offered a program through Kellogg since 1987.

In contrast, most lawyers have never taken a management course even though corporate clients want knowledgeable business advisers who can provide counsel on everything from marketing to mergers and acquisitions.

And they want advice that is cost-effective or they will take their business elsewhere.

"Although we see ourselves as being excellent lawyers, we don't necessarily think like businessmen," said John Smith, a partner at Pittsburgh firm Reed Smith.
"We don't understand exactly their analysis of a business situation," he said.

Starting in October, Reed Smith hopes to change that by offering courses in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Offerings will include instruction in managing and developing business relationships as well as leadership training for the firm's future managers.

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The Association of Corporate Counsel just launched a secret database where in-house lawyers can anonymously rank their law firms on a scale of 1 to 5. It combines the controversial features of Yelp.com and Avvo.com. 

It’s like Yelp.com, the popular restaurant-ranking website where customers post their frank and sometimes devastating comments about where they dined.  Launched on October 20, 2009, the ACC Value Index has been a year in development and already has 1,000 evaluations, reviewing almost 300 law firms.  The difference from Yelp.com is that the law firms have no ability to see the reviews about them. See Information for law firms on the ACC site.

So, it’s time to get friendly with your in-house counterparts, and ask them to print out what’s being said about your firm.  The average overall rating is currently 3.88 with a maximum rating of 5.00 and minimum rating of 1.50, so not many law firms are getting top ratings.

The value Index “is also an instrument to help shape the thinking and dialog between firms and in-house counsel about what constitutes ‘good value’ in legal services,” according to an ACC document.

The one-page evaluation inquires into only 6 areas:

1. Understands objectives/expectations
2. Legal expertise
3. Efficiency/process management
4. Responsiveness/communication
5. Predictable cost/budgeting skills
6. Results delivered/execution.

In-house lawyer can score their law firm 1=poor, 2-fair, 3-good, 4=very good and 5=excellent.

The form also asks “Good value; would use this firm again?” with the options “yes” or “no.”  In-house lawyers can make and review comments online by visiting http://www.acc.com/valueindex  or sending an email to accvalueindex.@acc.com.

Just beneath that in-house lawyers can publish their free-form comments, and put a caption or title on it.  Commenters can choose whether to show their full contact information or remain anonymous.  In some ways it resembles the easily-gamed rating system at Avvo.com uses, where a profile is created about a lawyer – whether he wants one or not – and a ranking between 1 and 10 is produced. 

For the rest of the story visit the LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/49KDpx

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In this snippet from my presentation at the Get A Life Conference in Chicago, you'll hear how you can:

• The three places where new business comes from for law firms.
• Why effective legal selling is not "selling."
• Questions to ask in a new-business call.
• Why you should not make cold calls.
• The No. 1 way for a lawyer to establish their credibility.
• How to find the time to do marketing and business development.
• Why you should join a trade association - not a bar association.
• Why doing business development activities will generate results.
• How to get new files by visiting clients.
• Learn who the lawyers are that clients will buy services from.

It's on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl8G3LYCMoM

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Blogger Adrian Dayton, author of the “Marketing Strategy and The Law” blog, interviewed me about business development strategy for law firms.

Among the topics we covered are:

• Three key elements of a marketing plan.
• Practice group profitability.
• Proving a return-on-investment for marketing initiatives.
• Focusing on clients by industry, not by practice group.
• LinkedIn, which has 850,000 lawyer profiles.
• Blogging, which includes some 4,000 attorney blogs.
• How a narrow focus makes a blog succeed.
• Caveats about lawyers going online.
• The role of Twitter.
• A prediction for the future.

You can read it on the LawMarketing Portal at www.lawmarketing.com.

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The recession in the legal profession appears to have bottomed out, according to a new Hildebrandt Peer Monitor Report for the second quarter of 2009.

The bright spot is that demand growth, defined as growth in billable hours, for bankruptcy is up 22% compared to a year ago. Business bankruptcy filings increased from 14,319 nationwide in Q1 2009 to 16,014 in Q2, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.

However, hours billed to litigation, patents, IP litigation, labor & employment, M&A, tax, corporate and real estate are all down.

"However, litigation appeared to be strengthening, especially for more premium matters. If this trend continues into the second half of the year, it will help mitigate – though not completely make up for – the shortfall in other practice areas,” the report states.  “Demand growth, should show signs of recovery in the second half of the year if the general economy continues to improve. However, any such improvement, if it occurs, will be modest at best.”

For more on this story, visit the LawMarketing Portal at www.lawmarketing.com

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