Came across an interesting WSJ blog post today on women and fashion (heels, really) in the courtroom. I especially liked one of the comments that really takes into account that fashion, and how we dress in general, can be significant and should not be ignored:

I once second-chaired a month-long civil trial (a highly charged corporate contract case) after which the jury deliberated for more than a week. We lost the case, and the jury was obviously spent after a long taxing jury room fight. After the verdict was delivered, both parties were able to poll the jury and were able to ask questions about their decision. After the whole jury generously shared their struggle with some of the factual issues, the legal standards and the attorneys’ handling of the witnesses and evidence, one juror wanting to add levity to the heavy discussion and said how much fun they had observing my fashion each day of the trial. Once he made that comment, one juror after the other jumped in calling out either a suit or shoe I wore on particular days, and they said it was a daily topic of chatter in the jury room. All but two had some remark about trial fashion (the attention was almost embarrassing), I’ve always wondered whether their attention to my fashion is what made our case even close and helped make their perception of our case a bit more positive. Bottom line, I believe fashion matters. And I think stepping outside of the black or blue skirt suit and dark low pumps uniform is not necessarily bad.

How does fashion play into your role in the legal bubble? I have always found that wearing a suit elevates me from “staff,” and I always wear a blazer if I’m going “business casual,” to maintain my professionalism.

In a “business casual” environment, how do you balance the need to maintain your professionalism with not sticking out like a sore thumb (or a dweeb, tight-ass, nerd, etc). We are often counseled to “mirror” your bosses, but what if you boss is the managing partner and her idea of “business casual” are a pair of khaki’s and a hawaiian shirt?

I heard through the grapevine that Liz Pava, Pillsbury CMO, has resigned from her position. Her last day is rumored to be May 30th. This resignation follows on the heels of the launch of the new Pillsbury corporate identity package (see earlier post of May 16). Rumor also reports that it was definitely her choice and the reason for her departure was “the ball just stopped moving forward.” Why do CMOs and Marketing Directors really quit? It can’t always be for “a better opportunity” (translate: more money, more power, more you name it) or can it?

I started thinking about my own departures. I was in 3 law firms as the top marketing professional over the past 13 years. Each time I left it was for “a better opportunity.” In hindsight it always seemed like a better opportunity because something in the relationship with the firm had begun to break down which caused me to look for that “better opportunity” in the first place. Oddly, I don’t think that what was broken could not have been fixed in any of the cases and may have actually been the better opportunity had I been able to confront my illusions. There was just something psychologically compelling about moving on. Here’s my water cooler analysis.

The beginning of the end was when the firms decided to launch a “major” change in their business model, management committee, or client service model, etc. etc. You name it. They wanted change. Their ability to change in a meaningful way was in question. With all this talk of change came a change in their perception of their self. In order to justify this change, they would find or create holes in existing relationships. Like suddenly the successes of the past and the time everyone had invested in building the business together was no longer enough. Tear up the foundation. Start over. It was almost as if they were ordering up a new car or sexier wife.

I love change – sort of. Especially when it’s built on respect and substance. But, whenever there was a change change was in the air and leadership’s perception of themselves grew, their trust and respect for marketing became the late model car or the old lady. Following this there was an unwillingness to “move the ball forward.” That triggers my flee instinct.

Changing law firms or geography or both can be great for career; especially for someone like me who gets bored quickly and thrives on all things new. Yet I can’t help thinking that if illusions were confronted, stronger and more effective results would have emerged. This throw away world we live in impacts attitudes of others and ourselves, and our career moves. Law firm marketing isn’t like product marketing. A constant influx of new blood to infuse creativity isn’t necessary as law firms are rarely truly creative. Once in 10 years maybe?

Do you have any thoughts on why CMO’s come and go so readily or any stories from your own experience that might shed light on this topic?

File this one under the “no duh” column. Lawyers are introverts.

Lawyers ranked sixth overall on a list of the 200 best jobs for introverts, just behind the loner braniacs who work as computer software engineers and accountants.
(skip)
Larry Richard, a consultant for Hildebrandt International, isn’t surprised by Shutkin’s findings. Richard specializes in law firms and lawyer personalities. Using the Caliper Profile personality test, he has found that lawyers rank astonishingly low in the sociability trait.
“Lawyers are thinkers,” Richard says. “[Consider] what a lawyer does–thinking, analyzing documents, editing and writing.” According to Richard’s research, low sociability scorers are less inclined to enjoy interaction with others” and “may prefer to spend more time with information.”

Question for the watercooler: how do you overcome/compensate for the introverted nature of lawyers in your day-to-day interactions?

One of the ongoing challenges I have in law firm business development is effectively side-stepping the equity partners and non-equity partners who have few, if any, business development skills and/or simply lack interest in it (“It’s unseemly for a lawyer to have to ASK a client for business.”). However, managing partners rarely let you forget about these lost souls. In both firms where I have hung my hat, I felt management washed their hands of these attorneys by assigning their biz dev efforts to me. In both situations, I have been able to work around these folks by enrolling them in a few business development classes, completing a barebones marketing and biz dev plan, etc. But the time and attention they eat up means I have less time to support the real rainmakers. Plus their performance tends to weigh on my annual review. I have discussed the situation with managing partners at both of the firms and while they nod their heads in understanding, I still feel like I get dinged during the performance review. I don’t like to spend too much money on training this group because I don’t anticipate much ROI coming out of it.

Any readers have similar situations? What did you do to make the situation work?

Well, another CMO has resigned his firm and the hunt is on for his replacement.

Makes me think about all the firms I have interviewed with and those red-flag moments … and a prior firm where I lived through several “interim” CMOs as they interviewed, and interviewed, and interviewed for a permanent CMO, only to have their top candidate accept another job and the process would begin again.

What advice would you give to the hiring committee at Ropes & Gray as they go about the process of finding Jim Durham’s replacement, or any hiring committee for that matter?

I’ve got a few to start us off:

  • The CMO has to work with people on many different levels and in many different departments. Start talking to your senior marketing/administrative professionals early on. What were the positives/negatives of the prior CMO? What was lacking in his or her skill set, both tactical and managerial? What did they have that you cannot live without?
  • Have the senior directors interview the candidates before the firm management has decided on who they want in the job … then actually listen to their input.
  • What are the top priorities for the person coming into the job? These will most likely be different than the last time you were hiring. Don’t recreate the “same” CMO to do a different job.

Talk about search engines! Powerset just went public with its Wikipedia search tool. I first mentioned Powerset last August in my article Web 2.0 Won’t Eat Your Mouse published in the New Jersey Law Journal. I wrote: “Powerset Natural Language Search hopes to be Google’s competitor by utilizing paraphrasing, compound nouns and hypotheses about the relationships between words. “

Now it seems, according to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, that Powerset may find itself as a valuable chess piece in the emerging search war between Google and Microsoft. A few weeks ago after Arrington demo’d the product, he said: “…I had something very similar to the ‘Aha!’ feeling that ran through me the first time I ever used Google. In short, it is an evolutionary, and possibly revolutionary, step forward in search.”

It is indeed. I signed up to participate in the beta testing and enjoyed playing with compound words, asking real research questions, getting Karma points for my participation, and sharing my feedback in Powerlabs, a wiki format with AI scientists and language lovers. One of my own favorite searches – Where is Penny Lane? – put an article at the top of the chart that highlighted the Beatles’ famous lyrics, Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes. Of course, if you really want to know, the street is in Liverpool, and it has a history all its own. But I loved the metaphorical context the best. Just imagine if lawyers could use a tool like this to drill down in their research by asking very specific questions instead of using keywords.

The semantic web will never quite give us a search engine like the mind of God, but we are getting closer. Check out the Powerset blog to follow the development of a marvelous tool.

Because my work involves recent technology, I use Wikipedia as a resource and frequently use definitions from Wikipedia in my presentations. Established encyclopedias and dictionaries do not cover many of the terms that I address. I recently attributed a definition to Wikipedia and received feedback from a critic in the audience stating that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. I disagree with this assessment and believe that the person who made the statement is probably not aware of the quality and caliber of Wikipedia contributors and editors. Yes, some entries need work and are questionable in their authority, but the editors are reasonable in noting this in those entries. Otherwise, I find the information to be accurate and sometimes exhaustive.

Does anyone have an opinion about Wikipedia? Do you use it as an authoritative source? There was a recent Wall Street Journal editorial opinion written by L. Gordon Crovitz (5/12/2008 Pg. A13) which applauds Wikipedia and other bottom up approaches to communications. Suggesting that it may be a technology tool to improve governing!

There are many examples of successful collaboration using Wiki tools, in industry, government, and technology. A very informative book which I recommend in this area is “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” by Tapscott and Williams.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts on Wikipedia and Wiki collaboration in general.

From a seat in the marketing department, what would you do?

This morning, I picked up the Daily Journal to find an article about a former Bingham associate who claims she (and others) were drugged at firm events. She filed a discrimination complaint alleging that “the law firm didn’t do enough to investigate alleged druggings of attorneys by a former employee and/or attendee of firm events and keep its female attorneys safe.”

According to Above the Law, the following internal email was circulated inside Bingham.

BINGHAM MCCUTCHEN LLP — MEMORANDUM — MCAD COMPLAINT AGAINST THE FIRM
From: William G. Southard Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 2:20 PM
To: zz personnel dc; zz personnel har; zz personnel hk; zz personnel la; zz personnel lon; zz personnel ny; zz personnel oc; zz personnel sf; zz personnel sm; zz personnel sv; zz personnel tk; zz personnel wc
Cc: zz management committee

Subject: MCAD Complaint Against The Firm
I’m sure many of you have seen or heard about today’s media reports concerning a filing yesterday by Michelle Moor with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Because the reports and the filing contain alarming allegations, we thought it appropriate to respond briefly about the personal safety issues raised in Ms. Moor’s filing. While we empathize with the concerns raised by Ms. Moor, we want to address the allegations contained in the media. Because of the pending legal process, we are constrained in what we can say, but we do want to stress the following.
First, Ms. Moor reported that at the 2007 associates Christmas party at an off-site location she was given a date rape drug which made her ill and required treatment at an emergency room. The events occurred in a public restaurant with a very large number of people present over the course of the event, including numerous people unaffiliated with the firm. Our initial desire was to begin an immediate investigation, however, Ms. Moor asked us to refrain because she did not want her privacy compromised and because she felt that it would be difficult to determine the identity of the offending party at such a public venue. Only after Ms. Moor was comfortable with proceeding did we undertake the investigation. Ultimately, we could not determine, and Ms Moor could not say, who might have introduced the drug, how the drug was ingested or whether the person who did this had any affiliation with the firm. We did, however, conclude that the events, whatever their genesis, furnished an important reminder to all of us that issues of personal safety arise in all aspects of present-day life. As a result, commencing in January we began to plan to better inform all of our personnel about safety measures that they can take, and are conducting personal safety training sessions for all lawyers and staff in the Boston office. We will expand the reach of those efforts to the rest of the firm. We also engaged in outreach to concerned personnel in the Boston office to detail what had transpired, and sent out an email to all Boston personnel informing them of the off-site incident and advising them of the need to be aware of these types of concerns. We have today in Boston issued a response similar to this one to address Ms. Moor’s allegations.
Second, Ms. Moor purports to describe a second incident that occurred at some point in the past involving the drugging and rape of an associate. We investigated this assertion, though Ms. Moor refused to identify the associate whose story she purported to relate. Without any identifying information we had no way of verifying the report or reaching any conclusions about it. We have very recently been contacted by the associate referenced by Ms. Moor. Without going into details, we have learned Ms. Moor’s information is fundamentally inaccurate.
Third, Ms. Moor complains of comments made in her presence by a firm staff member concerning date rape drugs and she accuses the firm of not acting appropriately in response to them. The allegations of a failure by the firm to act are unfounded. When the firm learned of the comments, an exhaustive confidential investigation was undertaken over a period of several weeks, not only because the reported comments were inappropriate, but also because of the prior events at the Christmas party. At no time in the investigation was the firm able to conclude there was any connection between the inappropriate comments and the events at the Christmas party. Upon completion of the Firm’s investigation, the staff member identified by Ms. Moor was terminated.
We are very disappointed that Ms. Moor resigned from the firm and that she has filed her complaint, and we disagree strenuously that there is any basis, factual or legal, for any of her claims. The thrust of Ms. Moor’s MCAD complaint — that the firm was unresponsive to the concerns she raised — is simply untrue. Despite Ms. Moor’s complaints, the safety of firm personnel is of paramount importance to us, as the current safety training efforts and numerous other programs reflect.
Given the pendency of the complaint, please maintain this information as confidential. Please feel free to contact Ralph Martin or me with any questions you may have.
Bill

When the media machine is out of your hands, what would you do in a situation like these?

We’ve all had them. That moment when you said the wrong thing, wore the wrong thing, got drunk at the wrong time, and now, you are no longer seen as a colleague by the attorneys, but as “staff,” or, in my case, a “honey” or a “chick.”

There’s a great article on professionals (primarily women) and dress in the WSJ.

“If my attorney bills out at $1,000 an hour, I want them to look like a lawyer, not a celebrity,” says Jonathan Fitzgarrald, director of marketing for Greenberg Glusker, a Los Angeles law firm.

It’s not just a matter of image; sometimes, there can be real trouble. Lisa Goldstein, an attorney and founder of consulting firm Rainmaker Trainers in Philadelphia, says that during a client dinner with spouses, a head of a law firm was propositioned by her male client and his wife. The client “suggested that they swing together,” says Ms. Goldstein, who was informally consulted on how to recover the professional-client relationship. The lawyer felt that her revealing evening dress had set the wrong tone, sending “signals that were misinterpreted,” says Ms. Goldstein.

Have you had a faux pas moment? If so, how’d you overcome it?