A pair of reports that came out this spring, one by the ABA Journal, and another by the American Lawyer, show that a slow but steady economic recovery has not done much for law firm revenues or growth.

Clients are still exerting downward pressure on pricing in their search for value, and big firms are not able to make it up on volume.

The ABA noted that the top 350 law firms collectively grew their head count by only 1.1 percent, down from a tepid 1.7 percent last year, as associate hiring remained soft at these firms. Furthermore, 40 percent of these firms actually lost lawyers last year.

Similarly, the American Lawyer reported that revenue per lawyer increased only 2.6 percent last year among the AmLaw 100, despite the use of more sophisticated marketing and business development techniques at these firms. In addition, only 76 percent experienced any gross revenue increases last year, down from 80 percent in the prior year.

The challenges of serving clients faster and more cost-effectively to maintain revenue, market share and profitability are only getting greater with time. Next up on this blog – some highlights from the Legal Sales and Service Organization’s June 4-5 RainDance conference on the latest innovations that are growing sales and improving client service at law firms.

 

 

This is my 9th post in a series of monthly features that I have dubbed “Best of My Blogroll.” The concept is simple – each month I peruse my own blogroll (see that column on the right) for material created by other bloggers that I think is most worthy of sharing with others, and then I report on it here.

For the month of May, I have chosen to highlight an elegantly simple post by Gerry Riskin on his “Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices” blog, which links comments upon and links to an excellent bit of advice from Geoffrey James at Inc. magazine.

In his piece entitled, “How to Write a Convincing E-mail,” James offers six simple rules for writing a concise and effective e-mail communication, including:

• Knowing the decision or goal you have in mind;
• Stating your request related to the decision or goal you have up front (starting with the conclusion);
• Structuring your supportive statement into digestible chunks (think bullets);
• Using evidence;
• Repeating the conclusion as a “call to action;” and
• Highlighting the benefit to the reader/client, etc. in the subject line to get attention.

These are all excellent points, and consistent with my experience in dealing with all kinds of people, but especially busy executives and decision-makers. They don’t have time to read long, rambling e-mails (or for that matter, long and rambling communications of any kind) and so they want to know the bottom-line up front, and they want to see supporting data summarized neatly and quickly. They also love a “headline” in the subject line that screams out what this e-mail is about so that they know how to prioritize and categorize it in their already cluttered cerebral space.

Sometimes, the most obvious and simple solutions are the most elegant and effective. That is how this bit of advice from Geoffrey James struck me. Thanks to Gerry Riskin for sharing it, and for his observation that lawyers are “not known for economy of language.” Very well put, Gerry, and something lawyers should work on correcting if they want to score points with business clients in the C-suites.

At the start of this month, I had the privilege of speaking on the subject of “content marketing” with members of the Marketing Committee of the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants.

We had a good discussion about how to develop content, as well as how to develop a content marketing strategy, covering a variety of topics along the way, including:

• Why content is king right now;
• What to consider and what to do in developing a content strategy;
• What clients and prospects value in the way of content; and
• How to promote and deliver the content so that clients and prospects see it.

If you would like to see an overview of my presentation on content marketing, feel free to click on this link to: “ContentMarketing.”

Many thanks to Kristen Shepley, Director of Marketing for CBIZ Tofias & Mayer Hoffman McCann P.C., who invited me to speak to the group.

With millions of Americans traveling over the Memorial Day weekend, which kicks off the start of the summer travel season, I thought it would be fun to do a posting inspired by the often-repeated saga of failures to communicate between pilots and ground crews, who are responsible for maintaining aircraft.

If you are a fan of classic movies, you might recall the title of this post as a well-known line from the film, “Cool Hand Luke,” where Paul Newman plays the part of a prisoner who is repeatedly punished for failing to understand how the prison system operates and for not living within its Draconian rules. But this line could just as well apply to the way in which pilots and airplane mechanics communicate with each other through notes exchanged before and after flights and inspections.

Some of these stories may be somewhat apocryphal, but they serve to illustrate just how important it is to choose the right words with care and forethought to insure that different parts of one team understand each other well enough to achieve their common goal – in this case the safety of an airplane.

Here are just some of the excerpts of written communications via exchanges of notes in the cockpit between pilots (“P”) and mechanics (“M”) at one air transport company:

P: Something loose in cockpit.  M: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Aircraft handles funny. M: Aircraft programmed to straighten up and fly right.

P: Number 3 engine missing. M: Number 3 engine found on right wing after visual search.

P: Left inside tire almost needs replacement. M: Left inside tire almost replaced.

In each instance illustrated above, the pilot was no doubt in a hurry, did not take the time to explain fully what he or she was experiencing in flight, and so left the mechanic to guess as to the pilot’s meaning. The flip responses provide in-kind demonstration of what the mechanics heard.

So if you want your team-mate to understand what it is you are trying to correct – with his/her assistance – take that little bit of extra care and time to choose the right words in an e-mail or note to let them know exactly what kind of assistance you need.

In the case of the mechanics, perhaps they would like to know what kind of sound the “loose” component in the cockpit made, where the sound was coming from, how loud it was and whether the sound occurred in response to certain switches or was constantly there. Or maybe they would like to know just how the airplane handled “funny,” whether that be because it shivered on banking, was slow to respond to throttle or stick, or was inconsistent in response to other controls. I am also assuming that when the pilot stated that “an engine was missing” he/she did not mean that literally, but what was the mechanic to think? Was an engine light just out on the dashboard, or was the engine not responsive to the throttle or autopilot controls?

Well, you get the idea. Everything moves smoother, safer and faster when we all take the time to communicate with the other person’s needs in mind !

Recently, I stumbled across a great post on brand thinking by Maria Popova, who neatly summarized the views of several of today’s leading marketing mavens on the subject of branding.

Popova pulled quotes from Debbie Millman’s “Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits” that came from such notable experts as Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink and Millman herself.

Millman’s explanation of the etymology of branding is great, reminding one of the days when “brands” were clear and permanent marks on the hides of cattle, created by fire, and putting the world on notice as to which ranch owned a steer.

Brands started out as designs, but for marketing purposes, the value of a brand was always based on the quality of the livestock, products or services associated with the brand.

In that regard, I am personally aligned with the thinking of Pink, Gladwell and Godin, who described their thinking on “brands” in terms of:

• Reputation;
• Expectation; and
• Promise.

The design of a brand can work to complement the promise or expectation of quality created by a brand, but by itself, the design is worthless. Thus, I am not at all inclined to fall for the message of designers and ad gurus, such as Alex Bogusky, who talk about “design instructing culture.” Design must follow culture and the values and promises associated with it. If it does not, then it is nothing more than false advertising.

This is where many professional service firms stumble on branding, investing lots of money in cool designs, or neat slogans, but little or nothing to insure that the clients or consumers of their branded products and services get the quality and superior experience that they expect by reputation or promise linked to the brand.

If you think about it, the words “IBM” and “Google” and “FedEx” are essentially arbitrary. They have value in our minds because we have come to associate them with certain character traits of the brand that are the result of years of hard work and investment.

In the case of IBM, one instantly thinks of Watson, technology solutions and high-quality tech services associated with “building a smarter planet.”

In the case of Google, few people know that Google is the term for a number with one hundred zeroes following a number one, and nobody would put any value on that, by itself. But we have come to associate Google with innovations related to search and sorting capabilities for massive amounts of information stored as words, data, video, photos, maps and other ”bits” we want to find.

In the case of FedEx, most of us clearly associate the brand with the promise created by the ad: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”

Law firms and other professional service firms need to start thinking about their brands as promises, and they need to figure out just what they are promising to consumers (other than “we’re the best”) and just how they are going to deliver it. After all the value in a brand is not the cool design, it is the really cool and RELIABLE delivery of the unique value proposition that the brand promises.

A recent post on “Social Media Today” by Brianna Smith provided a great summary on the best times to post to social media sites.

Those who are posting material for themselves or their organizations might want to take advantage of research showing that the best times to get your post noticed are:

• Between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. for Linked-In (looks like everyone checks those boxes just before work);
• Between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. for Google-plus (maybe these are quick-peek coffee break looks);
• Between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. is a great window for both Twitter and Facebook (perhaps users are coming off a “social high” at lunch); and
• Between 5:00 p.m and 6:00 p.m. is another good window for Linked-In (looks like people take a quick peek there at end of the day too).

Of course, if you make use of sophisticated analytic programs, you can learn even more about when people are reading material on your blog or your Website, and you can discover whether people are being driven there from your blogging, tweeting or posting on social media.

What is your experience? Does it match up with the research? Try checking for yourself when your tweets and blog posts are most effective, and you can use that information to improve your return on effort !

Until recently, it was accepted practice for lawyers to advise their clients to prepare a comprehensive social media policy for their employees, but recent actions by the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) have turned that wisdom on its head, according to a recent article by David Rubin of Boston’s Nutter McClennen & Fish published in HR Magazine entitled, “Get Antisocial.”

Some of the NLRB’s actions defy common-sense, but they create lots of legal opportunities for disgruntled employees to sue their employers.

Rubin spells out, for example, the consequences of the following NLRB actions:

• A consistent pattern of filing complaints against union and non-union companies that have social media policies, finding those policies implicitly to prohibit discussions or complaints about working conditions (a violation of the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the NLRA); and
• Taking actions against companies that terminate employees for posting negative comments about their bosses or employers on the basis that social media policies prohibiting such publications are overbroad and unlawful under the NLRA, inhibiting protected speech.

Rubin, in his article, also offers helpful information about:

• How to prevent employees from disclosing confidential material through social media;
• How to deal with a situation involving alleged harassment via social media; and
• How to deal with workers bad-mouthing the employer in social media.

Some lawyers still believe that social media policies can be crafted carefully to avoid many pitfalls associated with the NLRA, but Rubin’s article provides substantive food for thought on the crafting of policy related to the use of important and emerging forms of social technologies.

This is my 8th post in a series of monthly features that I have dubbed “Best of My Blogroll.” The concept is simple – each month I peruse my own blogroll (see that column on the right) for material created by other bloggers that I think is most worthy of sharing with others, and then I report on it here.

For the month of April, I have chosen to highlight two posts by Nancy Myrland at The Myrland Marketing Blog about the use of social media by in-house counsel. Nancy’s intriguing April 18 posts include:

• An interview with John Corey, the CEO of PR firm Greentarget, which published the 2013 New Media Engagement Survey; and
• A summary of the key results from the survey.

Some of the intriguing results include:

• The number of in-house non-users of social media tools has dropped to nearly 1/4;
• 55 percent of in-house counsel read lawyer blogs, and nearly the same percentage say they would hire outside counsel based on excellent blog content; and
• 66 percent reported they had used Linked-In in the week prior to the survey for professional reasons.

Nancy’s summary of her interview with Corey is worth reading too, as he describes how lawyers and law firms engage on social media and what forms of media they most use to connect.

The bottom line seems to be that Blogs and Linked-In are the best tools for sharing content and making connections, but Wikipedia is surprisingly used more and more often, while videos still have not gained the attention of many in-house respondents.

The 10th annual RainDance conference of the Legal Sales and Service Organization (“LSSO”) is just four weeks away as of this posting (May 6, 2013) and promises to deliver some very unique and useful information for attendees about leading-edge sales and services practices among law firms who are competing for clients.

On June 4th and 5th in Boston, the conference will feature, among other things, presentations by nationally known speakers and breakout sessions related to:

1. Trends in Hiring and Utilization of Chief Strategy Officers;
2. Emerging Pricing Tools and Competitive Metrics;
3. Tools for Process Improvement that Enhance Revenues;
4. Tips on Leading and Managing a Sales Team (from a top-ranked sales leader); and
5. An Overview on Formulating Effective Sales and Service Strategies.

Take a look at the complete 2013_RainDance_Conference_Agenda_-_Final_Agenda if you are interested in coming to Boston for the springtime.

As previously reported on this blog, the 2012 Chief Legal Officer Survey by Altman Weil demonstrated that, on a scale of 1 to 10, CLOs rated “understanding of our business/industry” as a 9.6 factor in hiring decisions, far outpacing the quality of a law firm or lawyer’s written work or Website content, and even ranking a full point ahead of referrals from valued colleagues.

Another 2012 study by HubbardOne on “Building Relationships With Global General Counsel” similarly concluded that a law firm’s knowledge of a prospective client’s industry and business is of greater importance than flexible pricing and almost all other key factors in choice of counsel.

Thus, it is pretty clear by now that lawyers and law firms competing for corporate clients should be well-informed about their industries, as well as the laws affecting them.

Furthermore, this task of learning about client industries is not one that can just be delegated to law librarians or marketers. Those professionals can help do the research, but the lawyers, as service providers, need to review the highlights of that research and take it to heart and memory. The client’s business is the client’s love and passion, and you can no more ignore it than you could ignore their children at a social event.

Besides, it is not that hard to learn about an industry, and it can be fun to figure out the role it plays in the economy.  So here are just a handful of practical ideas for lawyers and legal marketers who want to know how to learn more about a client’s industry:

• Try reading the top trade publications in that industry;
• Try reading Google Alerts on the industry (click the “More” tab on Google search, then click “even more” and then click on “Alerts” under specialized search);
• Try attending an industry trade show or educational seminar;
• Try “following” thought leaders in an industry on Twitter (many CEOs and industry analysts are avid Twitter users) to get into their heads;
• Try subscribing to custom Web material, such as that you might find in SmartBrief; or
• Try going to lunch or dinner with someone from the industry you want to follow, and asking them for advice on “getting up to speed.”

There are many ways to learn about an industry quickly now, for no or relatively little expense, and there is no excuse for not doing it; and oh by the way, even if you don’t do it, I guarantee that one of your competitors will. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you care about your client’s business?