I came across this post, I Tweet, therefore I am, by Jeffrey Gitomer on Twitter that I found interesting. Take the time to read the whole post, but Jeffrey has great advice on what we should be including in our Tweets:

Here are a few of my ideas for future tweets: (Feel free to use them, or alter the strategy to suit your situation.)

  • Post a daily sales tip.
  • Give information as to my travels and where people can register for my public events and see my live seminars.
  • Post information regarding new ideas.
  • Post personal recommendations of every sort – from restaurants to books, from people to places, from shops to hotels. Maybe even airlines. Maybe.
  • Ask for information and help when I travel to a new city.
  • Create local gatherings.

I would add:

  • share links to what you are reading
  • post personal (but not “TMI”) information on YOU
  • never hesitate to ask for help

What is Twitter to me? It’s a chance to deliver short personal messages to business connections and friends to let them know what you’re thinking and what you’re doing.

Like today, I tweeted: Sunday. A day to reflect on what was, what is, and what will be. Gitomer.

What are you thinking about today? What are you writing about today? What are you blogging about today? What are you tweeting about today?

As I prepare for the Los Angeles County Bar Association Small Firm and Solo Practitioner Conference, beginning today, I’ve come across some great information and statistics for my presentation, Social Networking for Lawyers: A Roadmap to Success, which I’ll share with the readers of The Legal Watercooler on Thursday.

The panel, which includes Adrianos Facchetti, Gordon Firemark, H. Scott Leviant, and Victoria Pynchon, will be discussing their experiences, successes and missteps as they embarked on their social networking and social media marketing plans.

You can follow the conference on Twitter via #lacba and #solo09.

Another law firms, Howrey, announced this week that they too will begin an apprentice program for their 1st and 2nd year associates.

Starting this fall, Howrey will begin selling recruits on a new program at the firm in which associates will spend their first two years serving as “apprentices” before taking on significant client work.

As part of the two-year program, associates will spend the majority of their time at the litigation-heavy firm attending training seminars where they will learn the practical skills of lawyering, said managing partner Robert Ruyak in an interview.

During their first year at the firm, associates will take classes on legal writing and research and will work on pro bono projects to give them hands-on experience without charging clients. In the second year of the program, associates will be embedded at client sites for several months at a reduced billing rate of between $150 and $200 an hour. They will also continue to take classes on litigation skills such as trial tactics, cross examination, and mediation and arbitration.

Howrey started working on the program about two years ago when the firm decided it was going to move away from lockstep compensation for its associates. (In January, the firm did away with its lockstep model for associates, instead paying them based on measured levels of competency.)

I, for one, am happy to see this trend towards an apprenticeship/internship for recent law school graduates continue.

Pollyanna warning: In anything bad, good can rise. Firms can either embrace the opportunity to change, or not. Today’s economic reality, the mass lay offs, and law firm dissolutions provide the kindling for good change to occur. What law firms do with these opportunities is yet to be seen.

I will be moderating a panel at the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Second Annual Small Firm and Solo Practitioner Conference, June 24-25.

Social Networking For Lawyers: A Roadmap to Success
Thursday, June 25. 9:15 – 10:30 a.m.

In this interactive session we will explore the buzz surrounding social networking and social media tools and how solo and small firms practitioners can effectively employ them to communicate with current clients; control your messaging as you reach out to new clients and the media; and to meet, network and collaborate with colleagues.

Our panel of solo and small firm attorneys will discuss their experiences with blogging as a social media tool, and we will spotlight several social networking applications, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. By calling upon their personal experiences, our panel will highlight best practices for how you can incorporate these and other Web 2.0 applications into your business development, PR and networking activities.

Speakers:

Adrianos Facchetti is an Internet defamation attorney and author of the California Defamation Law Blog.

Gordon P. Firemark is an Entertainment attorney with the Law Offices of Gordon P. Firemark and Entertainment Law Update podcast.

H. Scott Leviant is the practice group director at Initiative Legal Group, LLP and the primary author and editor-in-chief of The Complex Litigator.

Victoria Pynchon is an attorney-mediator and author of Settle it Now! Negotiation Law Blog.

You can follow us on Twitter @heathermilligan, @adrianos, @gfiremark, @hsleviant, and @vpynchon. Along with @LACBA and #solo09.

Headlines today are blasting: BigLaw Reluctant to Respond to Open Casting Call and Few Large Firms Answer FMC’s Calls for Help.

WARNING: Going Pollyanna on you.

Where’s the fire? What I read in the story, and what I think is incredible, is that the smaller and regional firms have greater opportunities and chances to make it to Round 2 in the RFP process.

Rather than sit and wonder why Skadden or Cravath didn’t participate, let’s hear it for Abbott Simses and The Law Offices of Tom Fulkerson for making it to Round 2!! Congratulations and good luck!

So a lot of BigLaw firms didn’t participate in the process. According to the above articles, of the 50 firms that downloaded the RFP, 17 are AmLaw 100 and 2 are AmLaw 200.

First of all, those percentages aren’t that bad. But why didn’t the rest of the AmLaw 200 participate? Maybe their rates are too high? Maybe they don’t want to deal with alternative fee arrangements? Maybe they didn’t fit the criteria that the CLIENT wants in the law firm that will represent them?

Whatever the reason, what I read in these stories is that the door is now wide open to a whole new crop of firms. Small. Regional. Boutique. It no longer matters. The questions are now: are you a good fit for the client? Can you meet the clients’ needs? And, that’s sounds good to me!

The following 32 law firms have made it to the next phase of FMC’s challenge:

Abbott Simses (a 16-lawyer firm in New Orleans)
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld
Andrews Kurth
Beirne Maynard & Parsons (a 60-lawyer firm based in Houston and Dallas)
Brown McCarroll (a 120-lawyer firm based in Texas)
Drinker Biddle & Reath
Fulbright & Jaworski
Law Offices of Tom Fulkerson (a four-lawyer firm based in Houston)
Gardere Wynne Sewell
Greenberg Traurig
Gruber Hurst Johansen
Hail (an 18-lawyer firm based in Dallas)
Howrey
Jackson Walker
Kirkland & Ellis
Lavin, O’Neil, Ricci, Cedrone & DiSipio (a midsize firm based in Philadelphia)
Littler Mendelson
Looper Reed & McGraw (a 90-lawyer firm based in Texas)
Legal Research Center in Minneapolis
McDermott Will & Emery
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius
Pepper Hamilton
Roach & Newton (a six-lawyer firm based in Texas)
Seyfarth Shaw
Strasburger & Price
Summit Law Group (a 32-lawyer firm based in Seattle)
Sutherland Asbill & Brennan
Thomspon & Knight
Valorem Law Group (a seven-lawyer firm based in Chicago)
Vinson & Elkins
Wildman Harrold
Wilson Esler Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker
Womble Carlyle

Like many legal industry pundits, consultants and visionaries, I am fascinated by what the legal industry might look post-recession.

According to The Legal Intelligencer’s article, Law Firms Post-Recovery: How They’ll Hire and Whom They’ll Serve, Global will be “Out,” and Regional, smaller will be “In.”

Industry consultants and firm leaders alike anticipate law firms will primarily model themselves to suit their clients’ geographic needs, rather than focusing on diversifying practices.

For those of us who’ve been on the business side of law, we watched as regional law firms opened offices in New York, London and Asia all the while branding themselves as “global,” when, in reality, they were great regional firms with even greater ambitions.

Managing and practicing law by office, region or geographic boundaries was out. We rebranded, externally, along practice and industry groups in the hopes of cross-selling and increasing our market share within the client’s legal spend.

We also watched (in frustration) as partners continued to represent their clients the same way they always did. Cross-selling (for the most part) never took off, relationships between the attorneys in the “home” office and the “satellite” offices were never developed … and the bureaucracy and rates continued to rise and frustrate.

While there will always be room for the true global powerhouses in the post-recession economy, there will not be enough work for every AmLaw 100 firm to grow with such aspirations.

So, what’s so bad about being smaller and servicing clients regionally?

According to Hildebrandt’s Joseph Altonji, he sees

opportunities for midsize firms to acquire laterals from the largest firms and said that is a good thing. While some may be getting pushed out of the large firms, many lawyers and clients are repositioning themselves. Why would a partner, even with a profitable, strong practice, stay in a firm with thousands of lawyers around the world — and the infrastructure that entails — when his practice is focused mainly in one geographic area, Altonji questioned.

“So I think what you’re going to start to see is some of the bigger firms will optimize around broad swaths of work that need that infrastructure,” he said.

“Other firms will start to optimize around more local practices.”

This isn’t to say that clients won’t use both types of firm, he said. But there are only a handful of firms that currently meet the truly global model and only a certain number of clients who require such a reach, he said.

So, let’s hear it for the regional law firms! The boutiques!! Smaller is the new “Big.” Regional is the new “Global.”

Whether it’s called an apprentice program, internship or fellowship, another law firm has joined the bandwagon.

Kudo’s to Louisville, Ky.-based Frost Brown Todd for launching their apprentice program.

Rather than raking in a full salary, these apprentices will spend their first 1,000 hours learning on the job at lower pay and under stricter scrutiny. The pressure to bill will also be relieved under the program. New associates in the apprentice program will earn $80,000, but only be required to bill 1,000 hours. That’s 800 fewer hours than previous classes were expected to bill, firm chairman John Crockett told the ABA Journal today.

(skip)

In the firm’s press release, Crockett addressed the ongoing debate over the current law firm hiring model. Paying top dollar for inexperienced lawyers and then immediately having them work for clients isn’t making sense to law firm managers or clients.

I am a huge proponent of these programs. So, come on, who’s next??

The idea of paying a recent law school grad $160,000 (oops, I mean $140,000), when they have no applicable skills has been a lose-lose proposition for the law firms, the associates, and the client.

Having been around legal marketing for more than a decade now, I have watched how our firms have tackled diversity and women’s initiatives. The Association of Corporate Counsel is highly vocal on these initiatives, and clients are driving diversity initiatives via the RFP process.

Microsoft made waves last July when it announced the launch of a legal department program that would pay out bonuses for outside counsel diversity, to both the firms and the senior in-house attorneys who work with them. The law firms can nab a 2 percent bonus for showing measurable results in diversity levels—either by increasing the hours worked by minority lawyers on Microsoft matters or by increasing the number of total U.S.-based diverse counsel within the firm. On the in-house side, 5 percent of the bonus that goes to senior Microsoft lawyers is contingent upon whether at least three-quarters of the firms that opted for the first bonus option meet their goal. The in-house component recognizes that matter staffing and management is often jointly handled by outside and inside lawyers.

Whatever your personal opinions are in regards to these types of initiatives, lawsuits like these, “Ex-Associate Claims Mayer Brown Used Her as ‘Marketing Tool,” make it more difficult for firm’s to actively promote diversity.

An African-American former associate at Mayer Brown’s office in Charlotte, N.C., has filed a discrimination suit that claims the law firm used her as a “marketing tool” before firing her in 2008.

Former associate Venus Yvette Springs, a magna cum laude graduate of Duke Law School, alleges that when she was hired in 2007 there were only two other African-Americans at the firm’s Charlotte office and no others in the real estate practice group where she worked. Above the Law was the first to post news of the lawsuit (PDF posted by Above the Law).

“Springs was hired, in whole or in part, because the Charlotte office needed to increase its number of African-American attorneys,” the suit says. “Upon information and belief, firm documents refer to the hiring of an African-American as a ‘marketing tool.’ Springs was used as a marketing tool, asked to attend on behalf of Mayer Brown bar and other functions where diversity would be perceived as a positive. As discussed below, the need for diversity gave way to the firm’s underlying discriminatory culture and practices.”

So, what’s a law firm to do? Not hire a magna cum laude graduate from a well-regarded law school? Bad law firm. What were you thinking? Sending an African-American to attend a program on behalf of the firm? For shame.

I hate to break the news to anyone reading this: EVERY lawyer in the firm is a potential “marketing tool” for the marketing department.

You write well? I’m making you editor of the blog. Tool.

You speak well? You are off to that conference. Tool.

You present well? You are representing the firm at the exhibit hall table at the industry conference. Tool.

You social?? I’m sending you to any and every cocktail party, table of ten I need to fill. Tool.

Grow up. We’re all tools of the firm because we are part of the firm’s success or lack thereof (yes, even I am a tool of the firm). We all have a role to play. Those who embrace these roles will find success within the firm’s political structure, and through their business development efforts. Those who reject it … we’ll, good luck finding a new job once your lawsuit hits the Internet.