It is no surprise to anyone who regularly reads The Legal Watercooler that I am a Twitter fan.

I follow legal marketers, lawyers, PR consultants, members of the media, corporate tweeters, and “gurus.” I follow big law, solos and “recovering” lawyers. I track news, trends and politics on Twitter. Through my follows, I receive insights and diverse perspectives from various parts of the country and the world.

So when I came across the Twitter mosaic, I had to make one. And there they are … my first 300 or so follows. These are the Tweeps I listened to, learned from, and explored with as we all were trying to figure out Twitter and how it applied to our businesses.

These Tweeps represent what I most appreciate from Twitter: diversity of thought, actions and deeds.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Now that “Layoff Friday” has given rise to “drop in profit Tuesdays” the conversation continues to migrate over to hourly billing rates. I wrote here about how Linklaters’ chief, David Cheyne, rejected the call to cut legal fees.

Legal OnRamp’s Paul Lippe has a great piece in today’s The AmLaw Daily, Welcome to the Future: Quality, Suicide, & LawBall where he questions: does quality = cost?

When I was a summer associate twenty-five years ago, quality meant the absence of typos or grammatical errors, correct and complete citations, adherence to proper document forms, and identification of low probability issues. As a general counsel, quality meant managing legal issues to maximize opportunity and minimize losses by understanding the interplay of business, law, and people. Quality had to be measured in outcomes, not intent; in terms of relevance, not cost. What I found was this–the less I spent, the better the quality, and the more profitable the firms who worked with us.

If quality = cost, then the only way to improve quality is by spending more. But clients are going to be spending less. Does that mean an inevitable decline in quality? Not at all. Cost reduction will almost certainly result in an improvement in quality, because it will force clients and lawyers alike to get serious about defining and managing quality, and move beyond the sterile rate increase–rate discount discussion to real shared understanding and win-win. And the firms who move first will gain work and improve profitability.

As a consumer of legal services, I look at the project at hand, the hourly rates of the attorneys, and estimated costs associated with the case. What I have found is that I can get great representation for $375 an hour, or $575. The decision for me, as a consumer of legal services, is not whether or not either attorney can do the job (they both can), but to decide if there is value in spending the additional $200 an hour.

Is that not the question all of our clients are asking these days?

I’m reading Kara Smith’s post Social Media ‘Teaches’ Legal Marketers to Promote Themselves the Right Way.

Her points are spot on. Social media forces us to focus on what we should have been doing all along:

  1. identify your niche
  2. listen
  3. be transparent
  4. build relationships
  5. always lead with benefits rather than your firm’s capabilities
  6. become positioned as client service leader
  7. better communicate and articulate what you know.

And while everything we do in promoting our law firms, practices and attorneys, does not take place in a 2.0 environment, Kara’s points always apply.

Warning: Shameless Self-Promotion Alert

This Thursday I will be participating on an ABAnet Webinar, Online Social Networking Gets Professional: The Pitfalls vs. the Rewards.

There will be a live Twitter feed available at #LPMsm


Program Description:

There is an enormous amount of buzz today about the myriad uses of online social networking and social media: to provide more efficient and effective client representation and communication; to reach new clients and reporters; and to network and collaborate with colleagues. Most lawyers, however, do not understand how to use these new tools effectively. This teleconference and webcast will review the various tools available online and how to use them effectively.

This teleconference and integrated visual webcast will cover the following topics and more:

  • The social networking and media tools available online, and their differences
  • The potential ethical pitfalls and how to avoid them
  • How to identify the best tools to meet your practice, marketing and networking objectives
  • How to use the online tools effectively, including how to sift through the “noise”
  • How to keep your networking social, yet maintain professionalism

This program will use the Internet to deliver live program content, including slides and audience polling. The program is delivered via Microsoft Live Meeting, which most computers support. In order to access the interactive components, participants’ computers must be connected to the Internet. Links to test your system and install the Live Meeting plug-in will be provided. The optimum way to participate in the program is as a webcast. You should consider the audio-only teleconference only if you cannot be at your computer.

Faculty:

Aviva Cuyler (Moderator), Founder, JD Supra, LLC, Marshall, CA

David Barrett, Hulien & Barrett, LLC, Boston, MA

Steve Matthews, Founder and Principal, Stem Legal Web Enterprises, Mission, British Columbia, Canada

Heather M. Milligan, Director of Marketing, Barger & Wolen LLP, Los Angeles, CA

I’m flipping through the e-alerts I get and today alone law firm layoffs are hitting DLA Piper and Dechert.

According to the American Lawyer, Revenue is flat and profits are down at Skadden, S&C, Davis Polk, and Dewey.

And the news isn’t better across the Pond. Redundancy talks are on (again) at Clifford Chance and Linklaters.

So I was surprised to read that Linklaters chief, David Cheyne, rejects calls to cut legal fees.

“You have to be very careful you don’t treat your best clients worse than you treat those you are trying to get work from – it is a habit of lawyers to try to do that, and I think it is a particularly stupid one. Clients are not foolish themselves – they get wind of what’s going on, but they do not necessarily respect a law firm that comes round and says we will do the work that your existing law firm will do, but for a third less, because they might have doubts as to whether a firm is really able to deliver quality at a suicide rate.”

Really? I just completed an RFP for a Fortune 20 company, and not the first, which basically asked, can you do X and for how much. No examples of our success in these areas. No prose describing our breadth and depth of experience. Just, can you do it? How much? And what kind of alternative fee arrangements are you willing to provide. Period.

I’m sure a Round 2 “beauty contest” will tackle these finer issues and more, but to make the first cut, it’s your rates.

Slaughter and May partner Nigel Boardman thankfully countered Mr. Cheyne:

“Supply remains constant for employers pretty much, but demand is going down. That means you have to move your price. Good quality firms can move their price down and still be busy.”

As legal marketers we are challenged with wanting to promote our firms and attorneys v. legal ethics established by our individual states and the American Bar Association.

Legal Marketing 101 is that we don’t print it without the client’s WRITTEN approval. This includes publishing a list of clients on our websites or in the firm collateral, including a “recent verdict” in a newsletter, client alert or brochure, or publishing a press release.

So I was shocked to see the headline: Quinn Emanuel Brochure Spills Value of Confidential Facebook Settlement.

Lawyers in the heavyweight fight had expended great effort to keep the settlement secret — even going as far as persuading a judge to clear the courtroom of reporters on one occasion. But ConnectU’s former lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges published the settlement amount in a firm advertisement trumpeting the firm’s prowess.

“WON $65 million settlement against Facebook” appears, along with dozens of other Quinn outcomes from last year, in the firm’s January business litigation newsletter.

It appears that the client, who is suing the firm at the moment, isn’t happy.

So, here’s my rule:

  1. if you publicly disclose a client’s name, get written approval from the client;
  2. if you publicly reference a case by name in your collateral materials, get written approval from the client;
  3. if you include a recent victory in a press release, get written approval from the client;
  4. if you are in doubt, at any time, get written approval from the client.

With the downturn in the economy, dollars are tighter, especially for professional development.

Yet, continuing education, professional development and networking are more important than ever … for the attorney and the legal marketer.

Times they are a changing, and we need to change along with them. Conference organizers need to realize that we need innovating speakers. We need HOT topics. We need real life case studies. We need to walk away with SOMETHING we can implement on Monday morning when we return to the office. We need tangible value for dollars spent.

And vendors should not control and spam the audience from the podium. PERIOD.

Kevin O’Keefe sums up the failure of allowing a LexisNexis control over the agenda and speakers on the their sponsored panels at Legal Tech this past week:

LexisNexis sponsored the Web 2.0 trek at LegalTech New York. As such, LexisNexis, I am told, got to pre-approve all speakers on the panels at the sessions. I was invited and accepted to speak on one the Web 2.0 panels months ago but was ‘apparently bumped off the panels‘ by LexisNexis when LexisNexis reviewed those invited to present.

The result of LexisNexis sponsored panels was taking exciting topics such as blogging, social networking, and social media and turning them into pretty boring sessions. I’ve seen record attendance at similar sessions the last year for legal professionals in Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Portland. At each of those events no one left and many crowded the stage to ask panelists questions.

This is unacceptable. Kevin is calling on all of us to voice our complaints (and our praises), and force the conference organizers to provide us with the best possible products:

It’s not enough that bloggers are critical and that the twitter discussion makes fun of the panels. Email conference coordinators and demand better. Email the conference presenters and the CEO’s of their companies, especially those promoting their products from the stage and complain. Comment on the presenter’s blog posts telling their readers how great the presentation was. Voice complaints through comments on their corporate blogs.

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Ultimately, it comes down to us in the legal community as a whole to speak out and demand more.

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Imagine open and engaging education sessions about social media, effective Internet client development, online word of mouth marketing, effective PR online, effective blogging, and online networking. It can happen if we demand it.

Hey everyone. Sorry for the silence for the past couple days. It’s been a wee bit busy at my firm, and I am working on a proposal, getting ready to launch the first blog, with two and three to follow. We have lots of events coming up, and seminar or two. I’m speaking on an ABANet webinar, Online Social Networking Gets Professional: The Pitfalls vs. the Rewards, Thursday, February 19, 2009. And let’s not forget the LMA national conference, April 1-4 that’s coming up.

Not to mention, it’s Girl Scout Cookie season!

So this week is just a reminder for me, and now all of you, that “marketing me” all begins with doing a great job on the job. Which is what I need to do now; edit a client alert.

On Friday I was giving an overview of how marketing and business development in law firms evolved from the Bates v. State Bar of Arizona decision to today. At some point our conversation turned to the phenomenon of the growth and acceptance of lateral partner movement.

When I started in legal marketing in 1998, it was still rare for a partner, let alone a rainmaker, to leave their firm for greener pastures. And who can blame them? As we have seen over the past few months, especially since the mass layoffs have begun, law firms are a business where everyone is expected to carry their own weight.

This article discusses in detail what they are calling the Flight to Quality syndrome of the rainmakers.

“Flight to quality,” a term used in the investment world, refers to investors moving their money from riskier to more stable investments. This usually occurs during times of fear and uncertainty. And given that “fear and uncertainty” sum up the sentiment of many law firms, and that many are bracing for a less stable year, major revenue-generating partners may well launch their own flight to quality this year.

When defining a “partner,” Merriam-Webster includes: a person with whom one shares an intimate relationship.

As law firms have grown from local to mid-sized, from big to mega, and now global, I have seen attorneys lose touch with the intimate aspects of what it means to be a partner in a law firm. For many today, these “partnerships” are just a piece of paper.

When I was at big-law, the partners on one coast did not have personal relationships with those on the other, or Europe, or Asia. With nearly 1000 lawyers and hundreds of partners, how could they? The partners had personal relationships with those down the hall, in their same practice, or maybe across the state. And let’s not go into what happens, or doesn’t happen, when a mega firm gobbles up another.

Which is why I so enjoyed working with industry groups and client teams, as they brought together attorneys from across the firm, and across multiple practices, who had a common focus and interest. With an Outlook distribution group and a little bit of communication, we were able to uncover, cultivate and develop those relationships between our partners.

Law firms too often focus only on “cross-selling” as a way of protecting and insulating the firm’s relationship with a client.

I would like to offer that another way to protect the firm’s relationship with a client is to encourage personal relationships and better communication between its partners.

How many firms have cancelled their partner retreats to save money? How many encourage industry group, practice or client team meetings, or are these seen as a drain on billable hours? How many have cancelled their summer picnics and holiday parties, viewing this as part of their “cost saving” strategy??

If we do not start cultivating a level of “intimacy” amongst the partnership, I will go out on a limb and predict that in 2009 “flight to quality” for rainmakers will continue to build momentum, and will be the final blow to many a good law firm.

 

I’ve been speaking with my friends in the legal industry, and there is a new sense of panic starting to set in.

  • Linklaters has let go 270, including 120 lawyers, and 150 professionals. That’s 17.5% of the non-partner fee earners.
  • 200 lose jobs at MoFo, including 53 attorneys and 148 staff. That’s 5% of the attorney ranks gone.
  • The Marketing Partner Forum is being held this week in Dana Point. A key conference in the legal industry and paid registrations are said to be down significantly from years past (250 total attendees, approximately 125-150 paid).

In this time of uncertainty, I would encourage all of us to take a few moments each day and see what we can do to pay it forward, to be kind, to think of those about us who might not be as secure in their jobs as we are in ours (for now). It really doesn’t take but a moment to look outside ourselves and see what is happening in our immediate, and extended, worlds.

@jaynenavarre forwarded me Jason Calacanis’ post today, We Live in Public (and the end of empathy). It’s long, but worth the time to read.

One point that struck me is how Jason is challenging our loss of empathy in the world of technology. How quickly we can flame a person, causing such harm. How quickly we can bitterly use our keypads to rip to shreds another human being. How quickly we can gossip about layoffs, not recognizing the lives destroyed.

Where have our empathy and humanity gone?

About now you might be asking, “What does this have to do with panic in the legal industry?” So here it goes:

So often we discuss the layoffs in our industry as either gossip, or as an opportunity for “our” firm to take advantage of another which is weakened. Yet, law firm layoffs are more than gossip. These are real people, as I wrote about here. No one is immune. No job 100% secure.

In time, the economy will recover, our clients will recover, and our industry will recover.

My question is, “what will YOU be like when that day comes?” Will you be able to hold your head up high and say that you conducted your business dealings with dignity, compassion and empathy?

I have been in legal marketing for 11 years now, and I have never seen the industry in such a state. Many of us work with lawyers. They are far more skeptical, autonomous and rank lower in sociability. For those of us with a seat at the table, I would encourage us all to bring that voice of compassion and empathy with us to our discussions and strategy sessions. We might be the only voice of reason at the table that day.