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Well, it’s that time of year. The legal marketing community is headed off to the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference. The conferences keep getting bigger and better. Pretty soon we’ll be saying goodbye to conference hotels, and hello convention centers. A few things to note:

  1. Whether or not you are attending the conference, or have a Twitter account, the hashtag to follow is #LMA14.
  2. I am still looking for anyone who would like to help blog on sessions. Just send me a message on Twitter @heather_morse.
  3. I know EVERYONE reading this will be in my session on Generational Marketing with Jonathan Fitzgarrald on Thursday. It’s a competitive time slot, so I will forgive you if you attend any of the other sessions. Especially if you write a recap for this blog. LMA Session
  4. Don’t just bring your business cards. Immediately connect on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Half the conference is about networking and building relationships. Don’t miss out on that.
  5. Start making your connections now. The conversation and connections have already begun on Twitter.
  6. The LMA Technology Committee will have a couple tables set up at the Friday Networking Lunch. I’ll be there, along with my co-chair, Laura Toledo. Stop by and say hi. We’ll even buy you lunch :D.
  7. Wear comfortable shoes.
  8. Oh, and rumor has it that a group of us are staying over on Friday to get our social time in with friends. You’re welcome to join us.

I’ll see you at the kick-off reception Wednesday night. Looking forward to the #Swag and Passport to Prizes.  

An era-appropriate reference.

Nothing like an Above the Law post to get the LME going.

Today’s late-breaking post, Biglaw Firm Holds Associates To Strict Social Media Policy, is brought to you by the good folks at Milbank.

Where to begin? Where to begin?

A four page memo that can be boiled down to: “Don’t be an idiot.” Or, the more professional, “Conduct yourself professionally on social media and networking sites as you would in any professional setting.”

ATL goes into detail of everything wrong with this policy, and I agree with it all.

But what they miss is the generational implications of such a policy.

What a bunch of killjoys. Who under, oh, 60, would want to work there?

Seriously where do they plan to recruit new associates?

Harvard? You know, that school that brought us Facebook?

Stanford? Where Google’s co-founders (and your client), owner of YouTube, Blogger, and countless other social sites, met?

Nothing says “welcome” to the Gen Y crowd as Big Brother:

The Firm reserves the right to monitor the activities of lawyers and administrative employees on Social Media Sites and may at any time request or require the removal of any posting or content on a Social Media Site. If conduct is in violation of Firm policies and/or is seen as compromising the interests of the Firm, the Firm may take appropriate disciplinary action.

Yikes. And don’t update your Facebook status from work. That is prohibited at well.

Hello. Bueller?? Bueller? The world has changed. Social media is as much of our culture as cell phones and e-mail.

The genie is out of the social media bottle and is not going back. If you have honest concerns, deal with them, but by trying to lock down social media you have now identified yourself as the least cool law firm to work for on the planet.

Which might be fine with your over 60 partners … but wait until their grandchildren get them a new iPad or tablet for Christmas so they can connect and start communicating with the other folks in the fastest growth demographic for Facebook and Twitter.

On the bright side, per the above link, social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web. At least one HR problem has been solved.

I’ve been working on the business side of law for a long time now. I have attended NUMEROUS general counsel panels. I have read study after study. And I have to ask, “Are any of you listening?”

I was at a presentation yesterday with the good folks at Thomson Reuters. They put up a slide of the general counsel’s top concerns. And then they put up a slide of the managing partners top concerns.

I, being me, raised my hand and asked: “What do you have to say about the complete disconnect between what the GCs are concerned about and what’s keeping the MPs up at tnight?”

I think I caught them off guard with that question because the next slides had nothing to do with bridging the gap between the disconnect.

According to a recently released Altman Weil Chief Legal Officer Survey:

Inside – Outside Relationship
When asked to select the service improvements and innovations they would most like to see from their outside counsel, three of the top four CLO responses involved costs and pricing. CLOs’ first choice for change in law firm services was improved budget forecasting, followed by greater cost reduction, more efficient project management and non-hourly based pricing structures.

However, Chief Legal Officers appear to have little hope that law firms will rise to the challenge. For the fifth straight year, the survey asked CLOs to rate how serious law firms are about changing their legal service delivery model to provide greater value – and for the fifth year, the median rating was a dismal ‘3’ on a scale of 0 (not at all serious) to 10 (doing everything they can).

To balance the picture, CLOs were also asked how much pressure corporations are putting on law firms to change the value proposition. CLOs rated themselves at a median 5 on the scale, as they have for four of the last five years.

After five years of similar responses to this pair of questions, it’s seems pretty clear that Chief Legal Officers have decided to tackle these problems themselves, rather than rely on outside counsel to partner with them on change.

Yet survey after survey of managing partners still show law firms are way too focused and concerned about how to increase rates and billable hours as a strategic goal. Yes, they understand that they are under pressure to increase value to the client, but they don’t want to do so at the expense of their rates and hours.

Tim Corcoran wrote a great piece this week on Big Data: Big Deal or Big Win? I will pay him the highest compliment I can and say that I circulated the post to all my partners with a ‘MUST READ” in the subject header.

Tim breaks down how corporate legal departments and law firms can use their data to make predictive costs to manage projects, and clients.

I’m going to say it again, “Until a law firm places as much emphasis on achieving their clients’ highest goals, we will continue to run around in circles.”

Clients do not want us to not make money or be profitable. They want us to be efficient. They want to know where the hell their money is going. And they want to know that THEIR money is well spent.

They want to know, before they sign on the dotted line, what the project will cost, what the deliverables are, and what they can expect.

Clients do not want surprises.

Law firms want to be profitable. But sometimes they don’t know what that means or how to measure it. Working in a cost-center, I get that. You want to make money, so you often times look to where you can save money, or where the ROI does not directly link back to revenue.

Yes, it costs money to launch a new website. No, I will never be able to link back, with certainty, where we brought in a new client because of a website launch. Just like I cannot tell you how much business or opportunities you have lost out on because you haven’t updated your web bio in 15 years. How many people have clicked on and clicked off because there just wasn’t any content there to read? (Memo to self: send out annual reminder to attorneys to update bios with this year’s wins and accomplishments.)

Times they are a changing.

The habits of the new generation of decision makers is nothing like the prior ones. We all have to adapt to one another. To listen to what the other is saying. Private practice attorneys HAVE to pay attention to what their client are saying and what they want. It is just too easy in this 2.0 world to find someone else who will.

pointing-finger-vector1I was at a conference earlier this week, hanging out with the other exhibitors. Speaking with different marketing, business development folks from different industries. There were seasoned professionals. Entry level sales people learning the ropes. A mixed and diverse crowd from product to service providers. Inevitably the conversation would turn to the state of business and how we were gaining and retaining clients/customers. I started testing out my generational marketing positions, to see if others are seeing and experiencing what I am seeing and experiencing. Is my hypothesis of the generational shift in management impacting direction all in my head, or am I on to something? I spoke with one gentleman about 10 years older than me. A true Baby Boomer. He was being asked to do things differently than he’s been doing it for decades. He didn’t get all this marketing and outreach. What about relationships and how they used to do it? He wanted to go back “there,” wherever “there” was. He was being challenged by the times and he was definitely outside his comfort zone. When I referenced the Millennials, his retort was: “Is that the ‘entitled generation’ they’re always talking about?” And then he went on a mini rant.

You are running around, lamenting the advent of technology, the evolution of business practices, your resistance to change, and “Why can’t we go back to business as usual?” and you call THEM entitled?? Is it not as arrogant and entitled to expect the business world to never shift its axis because it will force you to change and evolve? To grow? Learn new things? Is it not entitled to expect your clients to use a certain software because it will be too expensive for you, the service provider, to upgrade and train your staff? And, besides, no one in your office wants to learn how to use it anyway? Is it not entitled to expect your clients to receive information the way YOU want to send it, not the way they want to receive it? Is it not entitled to expect your clients to slow down because you do not want to catch up? And when I start playing with the numbers, are not these members of this so called “entitled” generation the spawn of the Baby Boomers and older GenXers? The same ones who are now lamenting their existence? In my program we discuss making others feel less than to make you feel better about yourself. And is that not what you are doing every time you dismiss a Millennial as “entitled”? Are you not attempting to make yourself feel better in your own limited world by refusing to open yourself up and see where the Millennials and younger GenXers are getting it right? Millennials put family and personal life first. They want a true work/life balance. They cherish experiences. They don’t want to waste all of the daylight hours in an office with artificial lighting. They are happy to get the work done, they just don’t see why it has to be done between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. (or 8:00 p.m. to prove how “loyal” they are), or within the walls of your ivory tower rather than from their laptop at home. And they are not necessarily driven by the same dollar that you are. While my peers bitched, moaned and complained about their Blackberrys interrupting their personal lives back in the ’90s, I embraced mine as liberating me from my desk so I could go have a life. And I never looked back. I don’t want to go back to the “way things were” any more than my great grandparents wanted to go back to the horse & buggy days once they bought the first automobile on their block, or the telegraph v. telephones, or rail travel v. air travel, or landlines v. cellphones, or card catalogs v. Google. Every generation will bitch and moan about the next. (Really?? Twerking??) But it’s not going to stop it from coming, changing, or the world evolving. And, yes, it’s happening at a quicker pace. So be careful when pointing that one finger towards “they” who are “entitled.” I was taught that when you point one finger out, there are three more pointing back at you.

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 Tuesday night I blogged here about an incident with my NOOK and my feeling that I, a loyal customer, wasn’t being taken care of by Barnes and Noble.

I got into a war of words with some loyal customers on Facebook who felt I should be satisfied with the offer I was being made by some mid-level managers (who were all very nice, by the way).

These managers were offering me the best “deal” that they were authorized to make. Which is fine.

But it wasn’t enough for me.

James Kane, whom you know I respect immensely from my post Why do some people stay, and some people leave?, talks about the difference between loyal and satisfied customers.

  • Loyalty is not a brand. It’s not about rewards programs. You cannot bribe someone to love you.
  • Loyalty is not about satisfaction. Dogs are loyal. Cats are satisfied.
  • Relationships with our clients is satisfaction. They are transactional. We do something, they pay us, and they are satisfied. They owe us NOTHING.
  • Satisfaction is a mood.
  • Loyalty is a behavior.
  • Satisfaction is the past. What you did for me yesterday.
  • Loyalty is about the future. What I will do for you tomorrow.

Loyal customers will promote you and sell your products for you. Satisfied customers will use your products because they don’t have a choice.

Sunday afternoon I was a loyal customer of NOOK.

By Tuesday evening I was a POd customer who might have been lost for good.

After speaking with Danielle in the Corporate Customer Relations Department this morning, who has resolved my issues with my NOOK 100%, I am back up to a “satisfied” customer.

So how does Barnes and Nobel return me to the loyal customer who has encouraged her immediate family to purchase,  or personally purchased for them, SIX different NOOK products in the past 18 months (2 NOOK first generation, 1 NOOK Simple Touch and 3 NOOK colors)?

Simple answer: I don’t know. I guess we’ll see how things go over the course of the next few months.

However, we’re off to a good start.

My new NOOK has already shipped, and I cannot wait to read the new Hunger Games book my daughter is lending me. Hopefully I’ll be finished with it in time for my new Sookie Stackhouse guilty pleasure coming out on May 1.

Either way, summertime reading is upon us, which is why I purchased my NOOK in the first place. For the e-ink. You can’t read from an iPad outdoors by the pool or at the beach.

ETA: please click here to expand the post and read my comment on how Danielle in Corporate Customer Service saved the day.

What do the Ewings, Top Chef and the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) all have in common?? DALLAS!!! Woo hoo. I just booked my flights for the LMA Annual Conference to be held in Dallas (ok, Grapevine), Texas, March 15-16, 2012. I’m looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues, along with the programming and networking events (including LMA’s Night Out, followed by the Akina Night-Cap event). If you haven’t done so, save the conference search #LMA12 over at Twitter to follow along, AND don’t forget to introduce yourself to the on-line crowd there. Many of us will be live tweeting from the conference for those who cannot attend, or cannot be in two sessions at once. LMA also has the official conference group on LinkedIn, so start connecting with your peers now. In fact, I just RSVPd to my first event on Tuesday night hosted by Siteimprove. It’s open to all us early-birds. So go register at their LinkedIn event page. Have you seen the Texan Station there??? When they say they have the largest TV screen, they mean it. Perfect for MARCH MADNESS!!! And the smoked brisket was to die for!

Hot guys NOT included
I arrive on Monday night as we have an LMA board meeting on Tuesday, so I’ll definitely be attending the pre-conference programs (still can’t decide which. QuickStart, SMORS or the CMO Summit) and the post-conference session: Achieving Measurable Lead Generation, Increased Brand Awareness and Business Development through Social Media. And for those asking, why, yes, I will happily deliver Girl Scout Cookies! Just place your order via Twitter or leave a message in the comments below. I do advise everyone to wear your flats and comfy shoes; it is a Gaylord Property after all. And I would definitely download the App for the hotel as it contains a much needed property map. And, for those of you too young to remember DALLAS … the Kardashians have NOTHING on the Ewings. Lucky for us, there’s a whole new generation of Ewings on their way to the small screen. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wl8wPLEqKA&feature=fvsr]

Sometimes I hear someone say something and it just resonates with me. It sets the stage and explains it all better than anything I could have come up with on my own. It becomes the cornerstone to an upcoming presentation, but it’s so good, I have to share it with everyone. I had one of those today. I was watching Meet the Press this morning, and hadn’t made it past the first segment when I had to hit the pause button and rewind several times to listen more closely to Thomas Friedman‘s opening statement. When preparing to write his new book, “That Used to be Us,” he checked the index of “The World is Flat” and noticed something missing. Facebook:

When I said the world is flat, Facebook didn’t exist. Or for most people it didn’t exist.  Twitter was a sound.  The Cloud was in the sky. 4G was a parking place. LinkedIn was a prison. Applications were something you sent to college. And, for most people, Skype was a typo. That all happened in the last seven years. And what it has done is taken the world from connected to hyper-connected. And that’s been a huge opportunity and a huge challenge.

And, to top it all off, there is the generational shift from WWII’s “Greatest Generation,” through the Baby Boomers, Generation X towards today’s millennials  that we are awkwardly confronting. To put the time frame in context that Mr. Friedman is referencing, I bought my SUV in 2004, and I’m still driving it (albeit with a new transmission). In 2004, my older daughter was finishing up preschool and I thought she was a big girl. I still have paintings on the wall in the kitchen that she would bring home. 2004 wasn’t that long ago. Only seven years. But look at what we have packed into those seven years. It’s way more than an itch. Keeping in mind this idea of a hyper-connected world, there are a few questions I think we need to ask ourselves:

  • Am I up to the challenge?
  • Am I willing to invest the time, money and resources to advance my practice/my business?
  • Am I willing to let the world continue to pass me by at hyper-speed?
  • If I do nothing different, what results will I achieve?

I am amazed at how often I speak to people, not too much older than I am, who are unwilling to get with the times. They just can’t, or won’t, get the hang of the Internet or Facebook, even to supervise their children who are out there traversing the Super Highway all alone well before they can drive a car. These people remind me of my grandmother who never could master the cordless phone, and we had to reinstall her rotary dial. If you allow one piece of technology to pass you by, okay. But when you allow a whole reconfiguring of how the world now communicates to pass you by, then you are antiquating yourself and limiting your ability to prosper. I cannot tell you how THRILLED I am to see my parents working their smart phones and laptops. And, when my mom comments that she knew we had a great time on vacation it was because she was keeping up with us on Facebook. Staying current with technology does not have to be overwhelming. Just start with something simple, learn it well, then layer on top of it.

  • Start with Facebook. It’s fun. Your friends are most likely already there. Your kids.
  • Then add LinkedIn to connect with your current and lost business contacts.
  • If you read something interesting, share it on Twitter.
  • If you have something interesting to say, or want a stronger voice in the conversation, start a blog.

Just don’t sit by and watch the world pass you by … because it will happen in the blink of an eye.

Prince - The man, the music. What you want to enjoy
What does Prince have to do with legal marketing? Keep reading, I promise to tie it all together … If you haven’t heard, Prince (the purple one himself) is hosting a 21-night stand of shows in Los Angeles. Ticket prices begin at $25 (with no fees). Each show has been unique, including special guests (Sheila E, Chaka Kahn and Stevie Wonder) and celebrities to wow the crowd (Halle Berry, Whitney Houston … before getting shipped off to rehab for erratic behaviors at Prince concerts last week). If you’re not in L.A., or don’t have friends in L.A. who are over 40, you probably haven’t heard much about it. Why?? Because Prince won’t go social. Prince has declared war on the Internet and taken down his website, and he’s hired a Web Sheriff to come after those daring to share the purple love. He goes after anyone and everyone who posts a video to YouTube. There is only a limited selection of his music on iTunes. And I am not even going to comment on choosing a location with the crappiest 3G access EVER. We had friends all over the arena and we couldn’t connect because we couldn’t get on Facebook.
Security going after the crowd - Not so enjoyable
To throw some salt on my wounds, at last night’s concert (my third attendance :)), security was all over the audience, forcing people to put away their iPhones and Blackberries, making people delete pictures and <<gasp>> videos. In this new social world, sharing our experience ENHANCES our experience. It’s also FREE marketing and advertising. I promise, if Prince had a Facebook page, he’d sell out each show. People would fly in from around the country to see him perform. But the tickets quietly go on sale, and through word of mouth, we local fans are spreading the word amongst ourselves. I can’t help but compare my experience seeing Prince with my favorite band, The Airborne Toxic Event, which actively uses social media to build and engage their fan base. Continue Reading In a socially connected world, Prince is not king

RIP. 1870-2011
Way back when I went off to college, my mother bought me a new dictionary, a new thesaurus and a brand new Brother electric typewriter. For you younger Gen-Xers, and Millennials, we didn’t go off to college with computers, laptops or iPads. We were happy to just have a typewriter with the auto-correct tape installed. Yes, personal computers were around in the mid-80s, especially at UCSD which I attended, but they appeared to be limited to the EECS-GEEKS. We writers still used paper and pen, and tapped-tapped-tapped out our 10-page papers, double-spaced, on electric typewrites, sometimes using carbon paper to make that extra copy. It wasn’t until my senior year that one of my roommates got a home computer that appeared to be the size of HAL. No one wanted to go near the thing. It was too imposing. I don’t know what became of my Brother typewriter after college. It followed me around for a few years, but soon gave way to my first home computer. But I became a bit nostalgic yesterday to read in the elevator that only 200 typewriters remain on the factory shelves, ready to be shipped out and sold. Production ended in 2009, but it has taken until now to sell off the stock. As I rode in the elevator, I was remembering the late nights spent typing out papers. My college boyfriend and I were both writers, and we would use that time to edit one another’s writing, to discuss the themes and characters of our papers. It’s a magical memory for me. Then the elevator doors opened, and I hopped into another elevator to make my way up to my office on the 47th floor, all the while checking my e-mail, accepting a couple new LinkedIn connections, and reading some comments on my Facebook page.  I grabbed a cup of coffee, fired up my two computers and my day was off and running. I used Open Table to make lunch reservations (no need to call around and find out if the restaurant had any openings). I listened to my favorite band‘s new album that I prepurchased and downloaded via iTunes. It had dropped that morning and was waiting for me when I synced my iPhone. While drinking my coffee, I checked the delivery status of my concert tickets for said band (turns out they’re on will-call). I caught a notice on Facebook that Prince (who has no website, but that’s for a different post) has another set of tickets going on sale this morning. I checked my bank statement after a long weekend away, and transferred money from one account to another. All of which took me a few minutes … and I never picked up the phone. During my day, I confirmed the details for a client dinner, e-mailed out logos for a conference we’re sponsoring, and reviewed the design for the firm’s newest blog. The only “blast from the past” I had was getting a fax. Probably the third fax I’ve received since starting at my firm in 2007. I signed it, scanned it, and emailed it back to the original sender. I completely understand the comfort and security of old technology, and the old way of doing things, and missing the pleasantness of this or that. But it’s really nice to be able to zip through my to do list with a smart phone while on an elevator, approve documents while standing in line at Disneyland with my kids, or troubleshoot a situation on the East Coast before I take a shower in the morning. I am sure that current technologies that we are marveling at will die off as well, replaced by something newer and more advanced, and we’ll feel nostalgic for those too. Will the laptop be replaced by the tablet? Proskauer Rose is issuing iPads to all of their attorneys. I believe the business card is in the midst of an evolutionary transition. QR codes are now being introduced on law firm business cards, but will they eventually lead to the demise of the brochure or the physical business card itself? Time will tell. As I ran out for lunch yesterday, I grabbed a couple business cards. This was my first time meeting with Faith Pincus live (we “met” when I live-Tweeted a webinar she was leading for Lexblog). While dining, we realized that exchanging business cards was not necessary. We already had one another’s contact information. We connected on LinkedIn immediately upon making our original connection. This experience is becoming more common for me. I’ll still carry business cards, but I rarely need to exchange them anymore. We can hold onto the old technologies. They are safe. But as the next generation graduates college and law school and join the ranks of the business world,  eventually become the hiring client, we — the legal services provider — need to meet them in their technology comfort zones. Things that marveled me as a youth are now so obsolete that my kids have no awareness of them at all. All of this became telling to me as I yelled to my daughter to grab her Walkman as we were rushing out of the house. With a bewildered look on her face she responded, “What’s a Walkman” <<sigh>> And just last week my 8-year old brought me a cassette tape that she found in the house. She was worried that it was something incredibly important, although she didn’t know what it was. For Judgment Day, we streamed Terminator via Wii and Netflix. My 11-year old shouted out: “Is that a Walkman?” while pointing at Sarah Connor’s roommate. And while I miss the MTV of my youth (when they actually played videos), YouTube allows me to share my favorite songs and videos. From The Airborne Toxic Event – Changing. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59bLUwYONEI]