I just read the following post SCOTUSblog Won Readers, Not Clients: Popular blog didn’t work as marketing tool for law firm but was a hit with readers, founders tell UGA audience.

I have to disagree.

In general, and in most cases, a corporate legal blogger might not be able to point to a particular piece of business and say, “I brought that in from writing this blog post on that date.”

However, if written correctly, the attorney can most likely point to their practice and see a correlation between their increased business and the launching of their blog.

I just don’t think the folks at SCOTUSblog are correctly measuring its value.

A corporate legal blog is NOT a business development (read SALES) tool in and of itself. It is there to provide what Nancy Myrland calls “digital breadcrumbs“:

Blogging, just as all other content scattered across the Internet, is what I always refer to as “digital breadcrumbs.” The words, thoughts and opinions we share in these spaces serve to help others find a path to us when they happen to need us, or at least when their interest in our areas of expertise is heightened.

A blog, done right, is an educational tool that will position the author and firm. Avvo‘s Josh King agrees:

Too many attorneys and firms treat them like outbound marketing vehicles, doing more overt sales pitches than information and thought leadership.

Blogs are about value, and education. They are about telling the story you want the general counsel to read as they are doing their due diligence on the attorney and the firm. They are about having the right results on page one when your name is Googled.

Getting back to the softer ROI that we’re talking about, Virtual Marketing Officer, Jayne Navarre, points out that the SCOTUSblog article contradicts itself: Continue Reading How NOT to measure the value of a legal blog

I began my discussion of generational marketing with Talking ’bout My Generation:

In short, generational marketing recognizes that the different generations make purchasing decisions in different ways from one another.

The different life phases we are in presently, coupled with our upbringing and societal norms, provide us with different perspective than those we follow, or those who follow us.

I immediately got an email from my friend and legal marketing peer, David Bruns. He recommended I download and read “I Would Die 4 U:  Why Prince Became an Icon,” by Touré.

In short, the book discusses how Prince, a Baby Boomer, became such a huge icon for Generation X.

No icon is so talented that they don’t need the right generation to receive their message. Of course, some icons transcend their time, but that’s nearly impossible without first connecting deeply with the generation that’s consuming culture when you’re at your peak. The difference between being famous and becoming an icon is, in part, having the good fortune to have a generation that’s interested in your message. Pg. 17

It’s the Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, theory of 10,000 hours of experience to achieve mastery, plus the luck of timing when that knowledge/skill is needed, the audience is ready, as in the case of Prince.

The author goes on to discuss Prince’s less than welcoming response when he opened for the Rolling Stones on October 9 & 11, 1981, here in Los Angeles. He was pelted with garbage and drinks, and literally booed off the stage. Twice. (FYI. The Sports Dude and I were at that concert. He even saved the ticket stubs).

Controversy was just too controversial for the crowd of hippies and boomers. We up and coming Gen Xers got it, though … we were waiting and ready for the Purple Revolution that was about to come out with “1999.” And we were really confused why the adults in the crowd didn’t get it.

So what does Prince have to do with legal marketing and generational marketing? It’s all in how we interpret his experience to our industry. Continue Reading Prince, A Revolution, and Legal Marketing

On August 29, 2013, the webinar “Overview of the New Florida Bar Rules with Florida Bar Ethics Counsel Elizabeth Clark Tarbert” was presented to the Legal Marketing Association Southeast Chapter members.

A fellow Coolerite wrote the following recap of one very important point of the presentation, asking that his/her name not be used:

As we all have read over the past few months, Florida Bar Rules of Advertising are quite challenging.  There are two rules discussed today that stood out from today’s presentation:

  • Seminars. Florida law firms are not permitted to pass out firm brochures or any other information at a firm hosted seminar. Instead, the Bar suggests firms just leave the information on a table in the back of the room and have the attendees pick it up, if they choose to do so.  But wait, there’s more. Remember our training and plain ole “good manners” to send a post-seminar thank you letter to attendees?  Not in Florida, the Bar prohibits such letters. Firms can only send a post seminar letter if the attendee asks for additional information. If a firm chooses to send a letter, they must follow the direct mail rule – for ease of reference, see the Bar’s five-page checklist for direct mail.
  • Social media.  Twitter and LinkedIn was discussed. The Bar is still discussing LinkedIn endorsements and will update their website once a ruling comes down.  The Bar rules state that:
    • Any communications that a lawyer makes on an unsolicited basis to prospective clients to obtain “followers” is subject to the lawyer advertising rules, as with any other social media as noted above. Because of Twitter’s 140 character limitation, lawyers may use commonly recognized abbreviations for the required geographic disclosure of a bona fide office location by city, town or county as required by Rule 4-7.12(a).

What does this mean? The lawyer or firm should carefully capture firm (or lawyer) name and geographic location in Twitter handle as all that information needs to appear in 140 characters in every tweet. The guidelines for law firm social networking sites can be found here.

You may also want to read a previous post by our LMA friend, Nancy Myrland, “Legal Advertising Rules – How About That Florida Bar.”

Bottom line:  While we understand the Bar is trying to protect consumers from the “bad guys,” some of these rules are quite challenging and make us scratch our heads and wonder.

My hat is off to all of my colleagues who take on the challenge of marketing in Florida.

My question to those in Florida would be from the first point:

If we host a client seminar in Florida, we cannot hand out our own brochures to the attendees upon arrival. They need to pick them up from a table in the back of the room. What happens when we are sponsoring a program via DRI or ACI, which host numerous legal programs in Florida. Can our brochures be placed in the conference bags? What about a squish ball? Or flash drive with materials?

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
Wake up and smell the coffee people.
Wake up and smell the coffee: Google matters. Google counts. Copyblogger said so this morning (Seriously. Go get some coffee and click on the article. It’s a must read today):

A forewarning from Google’s Chairman

Just 19 days after my predictions for 2013, the Wall Street Journal published its comments on The New Digital Age, a book written by Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt. These comments included this quote (bold is mine):

Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.

This is a powerful statement by one of the most powerful people in Google. Schmidt makes it clear that Authorship will be a very material factor in search ranking.

For those of us operating in the legal community this is REALLY good new. Why? Because lawyers have content. Lots of it. The job of the legal marketer is to help them get that content into digital, and connect with the Google game. I’m not talking about gaming Google, but realizing that Google has a strategy to promote good content, and we legal marketers and lawyers need to stay awake and on top of it. Continue Reading Google Profiles + Google Author Ranks + Google In-Depth Articles = WAKE UP!!!

CME_logo Full disclosure: I’m on the conference committee of the Legal Marketing Association Los Angeles Chapter‘s annual Continuing Marketing Education (CME) Conference: BIG IDEAS Brought to Life. I am very proud of the conference, the quality of speakers, the topics, and I cannot wait for the West Coast premier of the Legal Mocktail presented by Catherine MacDonagh and Roberta Montafia. While I was on the LMA-LA board (2001-2004) I started this one-day conference to bring to our local members, especially our coordinators and managers, ideas from our annual conference.

BBoP3
LMA-LA’s Big Board of Prizes.
Can’t win if you don’t register.
To see something you started in the training room at LexisNexis grow into its current incarnation is inspiring. When we say “Big Ideas” we’re not joking. In a TED-style format (1 hour topic sessions. 4 speakers @ 15 minutes.) you will hear new and inspiring ideas. With our networking breaks, you will have the opportunity to meet new people and expand upon those ideas. Thank you to all the speakers who are taking the time to come to the program and bring us such great content. Thank you to the sponsors who make it possible. Thank you to Jonathan Fitzgarrald for inviting me to join the committee. He is always so hard to say no to when he calls. I hope to see many of you there. If you cannot attend, please make sure to pass along the links to your local marketing professionals.

Where they Boomers got their name.

Generational marketing is a term that I picked up at the Chief Marketing Officer Institute earlier this year, and something Jonathan Fitzgarrald and I continue to toy with in terms of how this applies to legal marketing.

In short, generational marketing recognizes that the different generations make purchasing decisions in different ways from one another.

The different life phases we are in presently, coupled with our upbringing and societal norms, provide us with different perspective than those we follow, or those who follow us.

Roger Daltry is now 69. What happened to not trusting anyone over 30?

For example, I’m an earlier member of Generation X (born 1961 – 1981). I came of age during the Cold War.

I was raised by my Silent Generation parents (1925 – 1942), who came of age post-WWII. Only one of their five kids are a Baby Boomer (1943 – 1960). The rest of us are Gen-X.

And my parents were raised by their G.I. Generation parents (1901 – 1924), who grew up during, and were shaped by, the Great Depression.

One of the greatest challenges I face in the work place is working with the Millennial generation who were raised with technology at their fingertips (sometimes referred to as Gen Y; 1982 – 2000). The Baby Boomers really don’t get them at all.

Continue Reading Talking ’bout my generation

A fellow legal marketer recently brought up Avvo in my Legal Marketers Extraordinaire Group on Facebook (message me on the Legal Watercooler’s Facebook page if you would like to join).

She was wondering about the value.

Avvo has always had its distractors, but I’ve always taken a “meh” position. Why? Because I’m in corporate law.

Here’s what I had to say about Avvo:

Avvo has incredible sway amongst consumers and has high search results.

If I was counseling a consumer lawyer (PI, trusts & estates, criminal, etc), I would definitely recommend Avvo and every Best, Super, lawyers.com they could get into. 

For my corporate lawyers, not so much.

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I also believe Avvo will grow in its prominence. Lisa Bloom, Gloria Allred‘s daughter, is a CNN contributor. Just flipped the TV on and there she is with “Avvo Legal Advisor and Spokesperson” under her name.

Kevin O’Keefe had several things to say, but he touched on something that should not be ignored:

Do not worry about search in the sense of getting your lawyers found, worry about what people see when they search the name of your lawyer. That’s the most important search. Avvo profiles will come up near the top on a Google search for the lawyer’s name.

To me that’s the value. If it is popping up in search results when you type in Attorney Name and Law Firm, then it is important.

That is key here. If you Google and Avvo pops up, it is important to that lawyer. Period. The less they do in social the higher it will rank, and there will be nothing to balance it out on the first page. So for that lawyer who doesn’t write or do media, doesn’t blog, doesn’t tweet, not on LinkedIn, Avvo might be the only thing other than their firm’s bio for a legal purchases see when they do their due diligence search.

I typed in the name of one of our partners, Larry Golub. Page after page of great content. He’s a frequent blogger, speaker at conferences, and media source for the firm.

He has an Avvo profile, but after page three of Google I stopped searching for it.

I did the test with a different partner, Marina Karvelas. While she does blog here and there, and has been a media resource, she is not a prolific blogger, speaker, content creator.  Her Avvo profile shows up on page one of Google.

Larry does not have to worry about Avvo. Marina should to a minimal extent. She just needs to make sure that the information is accurate and up to date. Same with anything else that is popping up in the first 1-3 pages of Google (although recent surveys are showing fewer and fewer people are clicking to page 2).

Now, my college roommate is a family law attorney and getting ready to hang up her shingle. She knows where all the dead bodies are buried, so to speak, so she will be getting lots of free legal marketing advice. Towards the top of my list for her is that she create and maintain a robust profile on Avvo. Why? Because consumers are using Avvo to research and conduct their due diligence.

In short, if you are a consumer attorney in any way, shape or form, care a lot.

If Avvo is showing up in your Google search results, but you represent corporate counsel, just claim your profile and make sure the information is accurate. If you don’t like the results, work to raise your profile ranking in Avvo, or create more highly indexed and original content to bury it.

If it’s not showing up in your search results, you don’t worry too much about it.

However, do not make the mistake of dismissing the good folks at Avvo. They are providing a much needed service to consumers out there. Time will only tell if that service will trickle over to being a resource for the business world and corporate counsel.

raised handSeriously. Can the one person who likes the billable hour please raise your hand?? I’d like to know what about it you like? Is it the math? Junior partner Susan is standing in line to purchase a frappuccino and decides to check her e-mail. If it takes Susan 3 minutes to read and respond to the e-mail from Client A, and 2 minutes to read and respond to the e-mail from Client B, how much did her $6 frappuccino cost? Or is is the ego thing? Corporate partner Bill is billing $600/hour and working in a Class-A highrise while that know-it-all he went to law school with, who thought he was oh so smart, is only billing out at $275 as a family law specialist in a Class-B building on Ventura Blvd.? They both drive the same BMW series and live in similar suburban neighborhoods. Can you guess which one is fully engaged, and manages to make it home for dinner every night with the family? It can’t be the stress that is bringing on an ulcer at 32 from trying to bill 2000 hours/year as an associate because that was the deal made with the devil for that starting salary out of law school at $145,000 – $160,000/year? He’s still driving that POS used car he got in college, just praying to pay off the last of his student loans before the next round of layoffs. The New York Times today has an article, What’s an Idea Worth? that challenges the business as usual behind the billable hour. One of the major flaws of the billable hour model that I see from my office is that it not only rewards the biller for being less efficient, it brings on a lot of stress and lack of enjoyment for your day-to-day work. Jason Blumer, the accountant example in the story, shook things up when he took over his father’s accounting practice:

There would be no time sheets, no dress code and, most radical of all, no billable hours. He was convinced, in fact, that the billable hour was part of a series of mistakes that took all the fun out of his profession. To him, it seemed like a relic of a dying economic age and one that was depriving his industry of billions in profit. (skip) Just as Apple doesn’t want to be in the generic MP3-player business, Blumer didn’t want to be just one more guy competing to charge a few hundred dollars an hour to do your taxes. A few years ago, he said, he realized that the billable hour was undercutting his value — it was his profession’s commodity, suggesting to clients that he and his colleagues were interchangeable containers of finite, measurable units that could be traded for money. Perhaps the biggest problem, though, was that billing by the hour incentivized long, boring projects rather than those that required specialized, valuable insight that couldn’t (and shouldn’t) be measured in time. Paradoxically, the billable hour encouraged Blumer and his colleagues to spend more time than necessary on routine work rather than on the more nuanced jobs.

And for those attorneys who are more senior, and are selling their efficiency along with their years of intellectual capital, how long will you limit your value to the 1/10 of an hour? In discussing the article, my friend Ann Lee Gibson posed the following question:

What is the value of the legal services necessary to save a client $10 billion in revenue over the next 20 years, and achieve the stakeholders’ goals? Is it the $300,000 in non-discounted fees?

Some will argue yes. Some will argue no. But the intellectual capital necessary to bring that deal to fruition is most definitely worth more to the client than the $300,000 billed in this example. But our current billing and valuing systems do not take into account these types of deals. Sure the example is to an extreme, but what about a divorce, or a merger, a criminal trial? They are all worth a certain amount to the client, and to the lawyer. Will an attorney or law firm get the pricing right every time? No. But over the years law firms and attorneys should have a good understanding of how much it will cost to achieve the client’s goals. Yet we’ll continue to break down the value of work, experience and intellectual capital of the most minute activity to the 1/10 of an hour. And we will neglect to reward the successes achieved through experience and knowledge. Sadly, while the article rings truth paragraph after paragraph, the author doesn’t have any solutions. He refers to the few — what he calls — “Cliff Jumpers” out there leading the charge to dump the billable hour, but no one has figured out how to accurately price intellectual capital and productivity:

Perhaps without realizing it, the Cliff Jumpers are at the forefront of one of the great challenges of modern economics. Measuring productivity is central to economic policy — it’s especially crucial in the decisions made by the Federal Reserve — but we are increasingly flying blind.

I don’t know if we are any closer to getting rid of the billable hour then we were a decade ago. I don’t know if a law firm of any notable size (10 or more attorneys) will be daring enough to take on a different model. But like so many rhetorical questions, it is definitely worthy of a discussion around the water cooler. (ht to Tim Corcoran for posting this article to my legal marketers group on Facebook — PM me you’d like to join … He’s on vacation too this week)

woman-drinking-coffee-computer-283x200In Let’s not be like the lawyers (Let’s not attack the example), I responded to what I thought was a deflection in the responses to Noam Scheiber‘s article, The Last Days of Big Law. At the bottom of that post I have a collection of “read these” articles that I keep updating. Here’s that list if you’ve missed it:

I will continue to update both lists as I find new articles.

In response to the attacks on Noam Scheiber‘s article, The Last Days of Big Law, I wrote Let’s not be like the lawyers. In other words: Let’s not attack the example.

For today, I’m going to pull out several points from the article that are worthy of discussion around the water cooler today:

What are we going to do about partners hoarding work and the internal competition?

And the competition isn’t just external. Partners routinely make pitches behind the backs of colleagues with ties to a client. They hoard work for themselves even when it requires the expertise of a fellow partner. They seize credit for business that younger colleagues bring in.

Is a law degree worth the debt? Why are law school churning out so many associates who will never find a job in legal?

The odds are increasingly long that a recent law-school grad will find a job. Five years ago, during a recession, American law schools produced 43,600 graduates and 75 percent had positions as lawyers within nine months. Last year, the numbers were 46,500 and 64 percent. In addition to the emotional toll unemployment exacts, it is often financially ruinous. The average law student graduates $100,000 in debt.

If legal technology is replacing associates, where are we going to find the future partners, and rainmakers?

Many of the tasks they performed until five or ten years ago—like reviewing hundreds of pages of documents—are outsourced to a reserve army of contract attorneys, who toil away at one-third the pay. “All these people kept on going into this empty office,” recalls a former associate at a Washington firm. “No one introduced them. They were on the floor wearing business suits. … It was extremely creepy.” Still, any associate tempted to resent these scabs should consider the following: Legal software is rapidly replacing them, too.

How many $1000/hour attorneys do we need?

But the biggest problem is that there are simply many, many more high-priced lawyers today than there is high-priced legal work.

Are there more layoffs coming?

The crisis in the profession isn’t likely to improve, either. In late June, the New York–based Weil Gotshal, one of the most alabaster of white-shoe firms, announced it was laying off 60 associates, about 7 percent of its total. A few dozen of the firm’s 300 partners will see their pay cut, in many cases substantially. … Almost as disconcerting as the firings was the way the firm’s executive partner, Barry Wolf, explained them. “We believe that this is not just a cycle, but that the supply-demand balance is out of whack across the industry,” he told The New York Times. “If we thought this was a cycle and our business was going to pick up meaningfully next year, we would not be doing this.”

The business model of purchasing legal services has changed. How will this continue to impact the industry? What will happen to those firms that do not adapt?

The overwhelming majority of these still operate according to a business model that assumes, at least implicitly, that clients will insist upon the best legal talent instead of the best bargain for legal talent. That assumption has become rickety. Within the next decade or so, according to one common hypothesis, there will be at most 20 to 25 firms that can operate this way—the firms whose clients have so many billions of dollars riding on their legal work that they can truly spend without limit. The other 200 firms will have to reinvent themselves or disappear.

All of these are great and meaty topics for conversation, and they all come directly from the pre-Mayer Brown discussion in Mr. Scheiber’s article. But you’d never know it from the majority of the posts, tweets and comments out there.

I’m trained to look for the similarities, not the differences. Maybe that’s why the article resonates well with me. Why the attacks? I think it’s that same identification. It makes people uncomfortable. And hence the defensiveness.

I’ll share with you a little secret from inside my firm: We’re talking about all of these issues and more.