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The best law firm marketing program can be found at 800-lawyer King & Spalding, according to the new issue of the Marketing the Firm newsletter.

"Never before in the history of legal marketing have we seen such a powerful convergence of strategic marketing principles and today’s mind-blowing advancing technology. Social media, still in its infancy for most businesses (and definitely law firms), is coming into its own as a necessary component in the marketing mix. Blogging, tweeting, "linking in," and Facebooking have made their way into the law firm arena with a major blast," says an article by Kimberly Alford Rice, Wendy Stavinoha and Steven Salkin.

King & Spalding was named No. 1 in the seventh annual MLF 50 competition among law firms in marketing and business development. With the leadership of CMO Katherine D'Urso, King & Spalding has created:

• A secure client extranet with 400 users averaging 5,000 unique log-ins per month and housing more than 1.25 terabytes of data.
• Web-friendly URLs to optimize web pages for search engines. After a site optimization, organic search results jumped by 60%.
• Firm events that are searchable by practice and industry, with relevant lawyer contacts. Clicking an icon adds the event to your calendar.
• Free e-Learning webinars for clients, covering hot topics and offering CLE credit in many jurisdictions.
• A mobile intranet accessible by BlackBerry, Android, iPad and iPhone devices.
• QR codes in marketing materials.

Other law firms with top-listed marketing programs include:

• McGuire Woods
• Goulston & Storrs
• K&L Gates
• Goodwin Proctor

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’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 an easily-gamed rating system, 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