A week ago I wrote about my New Year’s Resolution. I wrote about my plan.

Well, people, the first week is over. What did you accomplish?

Did you make a short list of your 2009 goals? If so, did you move the plan forward at all?

Did you make a list of your key 2008 clients, and call them to say “thanks” for giving you business last year?

Did you call and thank those who wrote you personal notes in their holiday cards?

Did you make those phone calls that you swore you’d make when you returned to the office?

Have you identified conferences you would like to attend this year? Any great topics that you’d like to write/present on?

Did you take a few moments and update your bio, making certain that you have added your recent articles and speaking engagements from 2008? Is the work you’re doing today, for the clients you want, reflected in your bio? Did you update your representative matters list?
Come on people, get moving. The week isn’t over yet. You’ve got time to get your marketing on! Even for those of you on the East Coast, there are a few hours left in the day!

Don’t let this first week drift by without taking control of your job and your career. No one else is going to do it for you.

Me, I signed the paperwork for our first blog on Tuesday and have already had the “creative brief” call with LexBlog. I’ve been asked to speak on a panel for the ABANet on social networking. I got approval for our second blog yesterday, and I’m going to meet with a partner about a third one right now.

I’m planning three client events/seminars for the Spring, and have a lunch scheduled for today to map out our client interviews for the first quarter.

And I actually bought the birthday card for my dad and am sending it out today.

It’s like the mother of all perfect storms.

And, according to the comment section following Bartlitt’s post, this brewing storm is going to hit hard and when it does hold tight.

You probably know the jist of what’s being said, but for those who don’t, read on. (random, un-attributed and paraphrased highlights of the recent discussions)

  • Over staffing and a wage-earning mentality are the anti-thesis of efficiency and merit-based results.
  • With contingency based fees, where the value is low, the cost is low and where the value and quality turns out high the cost is high.
  • With billable hour based fees, if you are successful and win a case early on, you put yourself out of work. If you get bogged down in a land war in Asia, you make more money. That is frankly nuts.
  • When a firm’s business model is based on selling hours rather than results, profitability requires having a lot of hours to sell. Many of those hours can be generated by inexperienced, inefficient hour machines.
  • In a non-billable hour business model, inexperienced associates, [sic] the inefficient hour machines, are a barrier to success. Smaller, more highly experienced teams whose only focus is on winning, quality and efficiency, not generating hours, is essential for success.
  • The ACC Value Challenge seeks to reconnect value to costs for legal services. Our aim is to provide networks, tools, and dialog for both in-house and outside counsel to help us all better manage our clients’ legal affairs.

The business model for delivering legal services in America has a distinct legacy. It has developed through a series of significant transitions particularly those related to how clients are charged. While digging around for sources to support my memory, I found that:

Most of the colonies did not welcome lawyers and did not allow them to practice for they did not trust them. It was hard for a lawyer to make a living in the early colonies; therefore, not many lawyers made the trip from England. In most cases lawyers were not even allowed to charge a fee for representing someone. In extremist colonies, lawyers were not even allowed to practice. When lawyers gained the right to charge for their service, they requested that they be allowed to bargain with the client over a price; this right would not be allotted until the middle of the nineteenth century. Until then the legislative body set the price of what a lawyer would be paid. Most of the time it was a mere pittance.
Excerpt from an article by law students at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in 2001 that documents Law in Colonial America 1607-1783.

I once was told that lawyers in the mid 19th century billed by the word. Thus we had [and still have today] legal documents that are long and overly wordy. When that became too transparent and clients disapproved, around the early 20th century, lawyers transitioned to billing by the hour. Does the past repeat itself? It’s the 21st century and it’s transparent; hourly billing is a business model that requires lots of hours to be profitable. The quest for those hours is not always in the best interest of the client or even the case.

The storm is brewing and when it hits it’s gonna be ugly, but should leave us with a peaceful landscape, at least for another 75 years until things get transparent again.

Change is in the air. Change is all about us. And change is hard. But hang in there. Don’t close your eyes to the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the year that TV changes from analog to digital. Is your TV ready? Did you know that the U.S. government has spent $1.34 billion preparing those without cable or satellite for the change? Yet, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, there is only 92% awareness of the change. With 72 million TVs operating on rabbit ears, that’s a lot of people who will be without their Oprah on February 17th.

Law firm websites, blogs and Google searches have changed the way we search for and find lawyers. While some companies are adapting well to the change, others are withering on the vine.

The same holds true for print media. With circulation down and stock prices tanking, how will print media survive? Some innovative editors, such as BusinessWeek.com’s editor-in-chief and “Digital Journalism Advocate” John A. Byrne, are embracing the change.

The Legal Marketing Association is also in the middle of change in regards to their listserv technology. In December, the Association rolled out LMA-Connect, which will soon replace the listserv.

Since its inception, the listserv provided an e-mail ready tool for the membership to ask questions and receive replies from their peers. There were no opportunities to customize the delivery of messages, and the archive/search capabilities were poor, to say the least.

With his permission, below are Per Casey’s, chair of the LMA Technology Committee, comments on the transition:

By way of some background, the decision of the LMA to move away from the listserv to LMA Connect was not made in haste. From what I’ve experienced and heard, it’s been a topic for discussion for years as many members voiced frustrations with the ‘serv’. It was only last year that we found something (eGroups) that seemed like it could meet our needs. eGroups is from HigherLogic a company that makes software for associations like ours and they’ve taken into consideration many of the needs and challenges we face.

In the end, the main reason for the decision to change systems was efficiency. Numbering over 3000, the LMA membership can’t effectively communicate using one straight listserv. We simply have too many different interests and the potential for too many discussions to cram it all into one thread. The listserv was (or is) great for its directness, everything coming through one pipe, but consider that there are 800 people subscribed to the listserv and, typically, only one to three conversations happening at any one time. That seems anemic to me.

With LMA Connect there are several topic-oriented groups and each could have several different threads, all of which can be easily pulled out and reviewed independently without having to read through a long string of emails, footers, disclaimers, HTML and other distractions.

I know it’s going to be a bumpy migration. We have anticipated that. But in a few months, if not sooner, I think that most of us will look back on the listserv with nostalgia for a bygone application that didn’t hold a candle to the new system. If not, we can always subscribe to Larry [Bodines]‘s listserv and have the best of both
worlds.

Upgrading technology and adapting to change is never easy, but that is not a reason to avoid doing it. Change is different and change is hard. But hang in there. The light at the end of the tunnel might just be the sun.

I hate marketing budgets, marketing plans and anything that limits my ability to move forward, and move quickly.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t have a budget or a plan, it only means that I want my plans to be fluid enough to allow me to change course and act quickly when necessary.

In October 2007, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was hovering around 11,000 points and going up, and when most of us were planning our 2008 budgets, how many of us were forecasting the collapse of the worldwide financial markets, government bailouts, the collapse of Lehman Bros., law firm layoffs and dissolutions?

How many of us projected the rise of Twitter, and what might be the beginning of the collapse of print journalism, as we have known it?

Seth Godin had a great post today, Do ads work?, where he asks why have a budget for ads, if the ads work?

So, why, precisely, do you have an ad budget?

If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don’t work, why are you running them?

Can we not extrapolate this for most marketing activities? If it works, if we can measure the return on investment (ROI), or return on objective (ROO), should we not continue to do more?

How often do you hear the marketing person say, “that’s a neat idea, but we
don’t have the budget this year”?

Shouldn’t she say, “We have an unlimited budget for ads that work”…

In no way am I advocating the spending of money with wild abandon, but I am also not advocating the closing of the purse strings. I have a 2009 EMP (Evil Master Plan). It is driven by four key components:

  1. “Face Time” w/ clients, prospects & referral sources
  2. External communications driven by social media
  3. Internal communications
  4. Prepare to rebrand firm for 2010 anniversary

The details … well, that’s what they pay me to do.

Kevin O’Keefe asked his followers this morning what Twitter means to us as legal professionals.

I could write 140 characters, 10 times over, on what Twitter means to me as a legal professional.

But for brevity sake I’ll limit it to the concept that Twitter is a true melting pot of ideas. For those of us who believe that diversity is more than skin color, Twitter is a Godsend.

Twitter brings together “Big Law” and solos, 1st tier and 3rd tier graduates, West Coast/East Coast, and gasp, Gulf state & fly-over state perspectives. This one little program has become a beacon for in-house professionals, law students and consultants.

Twitter is the great equalizer. No attorneys and “staff” here. On Twitter we — lawyers, marketers, techie, librarians, paralegals, and assistants — equally contribute to the conversation, adding our unique perspectives.

Twitter allows me to quickly branch out from my personal limitations of industry (law) and “practice” disciplines (marketing & business development).

By casting a wide net, I now follow people from different industries, practice disciplines, political persuasions, philosophies, religions, regions and countries. Through Twitter, I am learning how you are applying new concepts, tactics and ideas to your businesses and industries, and play with how I can interpret them to the practice of law.

As Twitter continues to take hold and grow as a business tool, Twitter-etiquette is starting to evolve as well.

Should you automatically DM people who follow you? Write a personal “thanks for following me”? Or, in my case, do nothing?

I’m not so concerned about that conversation, as the one taking place over whether you should unfollow the people who don’t follow you back.

Twitter is all about the conversation. It is not about how many followers I have, or how many people follow me back.

According to @zappos, Twitter is more about being interested than being interesting.

I think lots of marketers have trouble understanding Twitter b/c they try to be interesting rather than try to be interested.

I think it’s about both.

If I am interested in what YOU have to say, how blessed am I to have a venue like Twitter where I can listen in on your conversations? After a time, I might even contribute to your conversation. Who knows, maybe after contributing enough to YOUR conversations, you might come to find me of interest as well.

What other tool out there allows us this type of access to politicians, radio hosts, CEOs, media types, authors and thought leaders? Where else can we listen in on the likes of Shaquille O’Neill or MC Hammer?

While I find that @chrisbrogan and @johnabyrne have something interesting to say, it does not automatically follow that they will find me (legal marketer, mom, wife, girl scout leader, tired) interesting in return.

Why on earth would I automatically disengage from their conversations because they could care less about what I have to say? Is it not my responsibility to be interesting to the 375 people who are following me?

So follow the people you find of interest. Twitter about the things you find of interest. And, don’t be so concerned about those who don’t follow you in return.

Thank you all for joining me this year around The Legal Watercooler for our chats. All I wanted to do was spark some conversations, and yet so much more came out of it all.

I am so grateful for the new relationships that have been built, and for the old relationships that continue to deepen.

I will be posting throughout the holiday season, but hopefully just things that we can enjoy with a cup of coffee.

I wish you all a very, Merry Christmas.

Linus and the true meaning of Christmas

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKk9rv2hUfA&hl=en&fs=1]

I received an e-mail on Friday from a peer at LexisNexis’ Martindale division notifying me that not only was she let go, so was her entire department.

I want to let you know that I will be leaving Martindale-Hubbell at the end of the month. The Rating Specialist positions for Martindale-Hubbell have been eliminated, so that means that I will not be coming to visit you to review your firm’s ratings initiatives. I am told that some of the other people who visit your firm from Martindale or LexisNexis may add the ratings items to their meetings with you.

I don’t know if this is a case of chicken or the egg, but by eliminating the Rating Specialist positions, LexisNexis has shown what their commitment to the Martindale-Hubbell Ratings System product is. Or, was it our lack of support for the Ratings product what prompted LexisNexis to abandon it?

Either way, it appears that the Martindale-Hubbell AV Ratings System is officially dead, or, at the least, on “dissolution watch.”

For the past few years there has been a debate in legal marketing circles in regards to e-holiday cards. I’m holding on strong to the opinion that, with few exceptions, they should be avoided at all costs. Very few firms will get it right, leading most recipients to immediately hit the delete button.

The trouble with e-holiday cards is that there is no excitement about opening up an e-mail. You can’t paste an e-holiday card to your door or file cabinet. They’re not going to linger on, for days, weeks or months, until I get around to cleaning up my office in late January or early February. There is nothing memorable about an e-mail.

So, unless you are going to create a viral, humorous or otherwise creative e-holiday card, such as Fish & Richardson, don’t do it.

I also have to give big kudos to my former creative colleagues at Pillsbury for creating this e-holiday card. Not only does it capture the levity and tongue-in-cheek humor that the firm enjoys, there was a space in my e-mail for a personal note from my colleague.