Legal Marketing -- by Larry Bodine

The Carnival of Marketing

I've been selected to be the host of the Carnival of Marketing this week on the Professional Services Marketing blog. The catch is the person hosting the carnival will only post their favorite 7 from the week. No more, no less since carnivals are getting out of control with over 30 links.

Today's selection is the gethuman Web database that a technologist set up to get past the corporate voicemail maze by using the secret codes to reach a live human being.  Read about it here.

How does it work?
Once a week, a different site will host a bunch of links from other sites that are talking about marketing. The topics can be case studies, interesting ideas, cool examples, things not to do, exposure for a product, etc… People can send in any new articles for the week from their blogs and Web sites to me at Lbodine@aol.com.

Why should I host or submit to the carnival?
Submitting articles is a great way to get exposure to people interested in marketing. As well, hosting will draw lots of traffic to your site. Plus it is fun and you get to be a part of an online marketing community.

Additional Hosting Rules:

1. Don’t submit an old post. The post needs to be from at least the past couple of weeks, and preference will be given to posts from the past week.

2. Submit posts that are actionable. Tips that people can actually apply will almost always win out over abstract stuff. “How” beats “Why”.

3. Submit posts that are complete. As a corollary to the above, posts that refer out to articles or other sites for more information, or that have anything to the effect of “Watch this space for more information” are going to be among the first to be cut.

4. Don’t submit posts that are nothing more than a pitch. It’s possible to sell subtlety within a good, actionable post. But a couple of the submissions were basically an ad for the company’s product. An occasional post like that may work in the context of your blog, but if you think it’s a good idea to submit that for a carnival, you’ve definitely got a thing or two to learn about marketing via blogs.

The Five Biggest Marketing Mistakes

Nora Lockwood Tooher of Lawyers Weekly (ntooher@lawyersweekly.com), talked to four marketing consultants about how many law firms waste precious marketing resources. Jim Calloway, Tom Kane, Gerry Riskin gave excellent answers, and I too was asked "what are the five biggest marketing mistakes that law firms make?"

Here are my top 5:

1. Not having a marketing strategy.

According to Bodine, many firms wait until their rainmakers are about to retire before they suddenly realize no one else in the firm has ever opened a file. It's crucial, he said, to have a written plan that addresses overall marketing goals and has specific objectives. It's equally critical to review the plan regularly - say every six months - to see what has actually been accomplished.

Bodine advises firms to identify their most profitable practices and focus their marketing efforts on those areas. Marketing can start with simple things like visiting clients at their offices, taking them out to lunch and other relationship-building activities.

2. Focusing on yourself instead of your clients.

Instead of describing the firm's practices on a website and in printed materials, present the firm in light of how it can serve the industry or client it hopes to represent.

3. Failing to mention representative clients.

"Spelling out your client roster is a great way to distinguish yourself and flag appropriate clients. Don't be shy about asking your best clients to show the flag - they may well be honored to be asked, and delighted to be listed," he said.

4. Failing to list success stories.

Most marketing materials consist of vague brochures touting the firm's "excellence." Instead, Bodine suggests that these materials describe each lawyer's accomplishments and the firm's major cases.

5. Repeating mistakes.

Some firms make the same marketing mistakes year after year - like buying tables that go empty at a local charity event, mailing thousands of holiday cards nobody reads or sponsoring expensive events that attract freeloaders, but no new clients. Bodine advises firms to tally marketing expenditures and track which items actually produced results. If no result has been achieved, the activity should be scrapped.

Write a Book, Charge Higher Fees

I just got a copy of RainToday’s most recent study, "The Business Impact of Writing a Book: Data, Analysis, and Lessons from Professional Service Providers Who Have Done It." It covers how publishing a business book affected 200 authors' ability to generate new leads, close deals, charge higher fees, differentiate themselves from competitors, improve their brand, and more.

RainToday found that writing a business book is an incredibly effective way of growing a business. They surveyed the authors of more than 590 business books and published the results in the report.  Furthermore, authors provided details regarding the specific benefits they received from publishing books, including:

• Improving brand (85% indicated a "strong" or "very strong" influence from publishing)
• Generating more speaking engagements (75% indicated a "strong" or "very strong" influence from publishing)
• Charging higher fees (53% indicated a "strong" or "very strong" influence from publishing)
• Generating more leads (56% "strong" or "very strong" influence)
• Generating a more desirable client base (48% "strong" or "very strong" influence)

"Conventional wisdom says that if you're a professional service provider, regardless of your specialty, you should write a book. It'll be great for helping you to better market, better sell, and even better deliver your services,” says Mike Schultz, Publisher of RainToday.com. “In this study, we uncovered the details of whether or not this is true and to what extent.”

The 71-page PDF book sells for $149 in the LawMarketing Store. It includes similar data on the effects on generating speaking engagements, brand improvement, and growing a business. There is also data on how many books these authors sold, whether it was worthwhile to use an agent or PR agency, and more about how publishing a book can impact your business.

For more info on the research, click here.

New Marketing Blog for Associates

There's a new blog -- the Associate Marketing Mentor -- which is the only  blog online that focuses on business development for law firm associates.  It's at http://pm.typepad.com/associatemarketing/.

Marketing expert Mike Cummings and I started after we conducted research showing that, for the first time, an associate's marketing skills are essential to making partner and being a success in the legal profession.

The blog contains:

• Practical tips on how to be a rainmaker.
• Interviews with "Associate Marketing All Stars" identified by marketing directors across the country.
• Announcements about marketing education programs tailored specifically for associates.

If you are a young lawyer and want to become a rainmaker, take a look at http://pm.typepad.com/associatemarketing/ and build a practice around yourself.  Your trip to partnership will be speeded up tremendously.

The Benesch Beat

One of Ohio's leading law firms -- Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff -- has launched a regular podcast series, "The Benesch Beat." The 115-lawyer Cleveland-based firm offers podcasts such as "Doing Business in China," "Taking Your Business Online" and "Raising Money And Other Issues Facing The Aspiring Entrepreneur."

Opening with a snappy drumbeat, the podcast series discuss topical legal issues. A professional announcer interviews firm attorneys in a highly-polished recording. So far, the podcasts feature the voices of lawyers Allan Goldner, Megan Mehalko, Peter Shelton, Ira Kaplan, Mark Avsec, Marc Blubaugh and Jeff Jones.

Kudos to firm CMO and marketing veteran Jeanne Hammerstrom for getting the shows online. Click here to see more of Jeanne's prior excellent work.

Marketing DNA

Do these scenarios sound familiar at your firm when it comes to marketing?

• Passive-Aggressive (“everyone agrees, smiles, and nods, but nothing changes”): entrenched underground resistance makes getting anything done like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
• Fits-and-Starts (“let 1,000 flowers bloom”): filled with people pulling in different directions.
• Outgrown (“the good old days meet a brave new world”): reacts slowly to market developments, since it’s too hard to run new ideas up the flagpole.
• Just-in-Time (“succeeding, but by the skin of our teeth”): can turn on a dime and create real breakthroughs but also tends to burn out its best and brightest.

According to Suzanne Lowe, it may mean that your professionals lack marketing DNA.  "Over the past year, I've been struck by the amount of marketing-oriented dysfunction that I continue to see in professional service firms, regardless of professional sector:  poor internal marketing communication; diplomatic and political ineptitude regarding garnering leaders' endorsement of marketing strategies; counterproductive and sometimes truly baffling marketing reporting relationships; not implementing client-endorsed differentiation strategies; under-resourced marketing teams; inexperienced marketing partner leadership; and more "ready-fire-aim" marketplace programs than you'd believe," she says.

"Some of my past research findings, and the painful marketing struggles that I've witnessed recently, suggest that for most professional service firms a true Marketing DNA is not a given, and that too little is being done to improve effectiveness in achieving substantive marketplace gains," she says.

I agree with Lowe: "It's clear that many professional firms simply don't have a market-driven DNA; they are undoubtedly driving their CMOs and senior marketing leaders crazy as a result."

What to do?  Here's what:

• Management must issue an edict: we now have a marketing strategy and we expect everyone to play a role in carrying it out.
• Each lawyer must compose a personal business development plan and file it with the marketing director and firm management.
• Create a carrot and stick.  Every partner should have a certain amount of points at risk in their performance review for completing or failing to complete their personal marketing plan.  At least $50,000 in points should be at risk.
• If the partner fails to complete a marketing plan two years in a row, they should have their pay cut by $100,000, and asked to leave.  There's no room for "library lawyers," grinders and minders who expect to inherit clients.
• Change your recruiting criteria and don't hire lawyers who are non-rainmakers.  Give them a personality test to check out their nascent marketing skills.  If they have none, don't hire them.

Do these scenarios sound familiar at your firm when it comes to marketing?

• Passive-Aggressive (“everyone agrees, smiles, and nods, but nothing changes”): entrenched underground resistance makes getting anything done like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
• Fits-and-Starts (“let 1,000 flowers bloom”): filled with people pulling in different directions.
• Outgrown (“the good old days meet a brave new world”): reacts slowly to market developments, since it’s too hard to run new ideas up the flagpole.
• Just-in-Time (“succeeding, but by the skin of our teeth”): can turn on a dime and create real breakthroughs but also tends to burn out its best and brightest.

According to Suzanne Lowe, it may mean that your professionals lack marketing DNA.  "Over the past year, I've been struck by the amount of marketing-oriented dysfunction that I continue to see in professional service firms, regardless of professional sector:  poor internal marketing communication; diplomatic and political ineptitude regarding garnering leaders' endorsement of marketing strategies; counterproductive and sometimes truly baffling marketing reporting relationships; not implementing client-endorsed differentiation strategies; under-resourced marketing teams; inexperienced marketing partner leadership; and more "ready-fire-aim" marketplace programs than you'd believe," she says.

"Some of my past research findings, and the painful marketing struggles that I've witnessed recently, suggest that for most professional service firms a true Marketing DNA is not a given, and that too little is being done to improve effectiveness in achieving substantive marketplace gains," she says.

I agree with Lowe: "It's clear that many professional firms simply don't have a market-driven DNA; they are undoubtedly driving their CMOs and senior marketing leaders crazy as a result."

What to do?  Here's what:

• Management must issue an edict: we now have a marketing strategy and we expect everyone to play a role in carrying it out.
• Each lawyer must compose a personal business development plan and file it with the marketing director and firm management.
• Create a carrot and stick.  Every partner should have a certain amount of points at risk in their performance review for completing or failing to complete their personal marketing plan.  At least $50,000 in points should be at risk.
• If the partner fails to complete a marketing plan two years in a row, they should have their pay cut by $100,000, and asked to leave.  There's no room for "library lawyers," grinders and minders who expect to inherit clients.
• Change your recruiting criteria and don't hire lawyers who are non-rainmakers.  Give them a personality test to check out their nascent marketing skills.  If they have none, don't hire them.

"I went to law school so I'd never have to sell"

When I was in law school, I'd ask my classmates why they had chosen law. Many came right out and said it was because they never wanted to have to sell. Certainly, most were attracted by the intellectual stimulation, but the anti-sales motivation is now causing many lawyers grief. The contract has been broken because times have changed. It's too competitive in the profession now to have lawyers who are merely grinders and minders. They must be finders too.

Caroline Poynton, editor of Managing Partner magazine, hit the nail on the head in her white paper, "Strategic Marketing in the Legal Profession":

"In the future legal business, lawyers will not be able to profit off the back of technical expertise alone. They will increasingly have to become commercially-minded, business-development gurus who understand the profit imperatives of the modern age, and look to ways to secure firm-wide advantage through winning clients and nurturing existing relationships."

"This concept still horrifies many lawyers who did not join the profession to do 'sales.' Indeed, the thought of a lawyer acting as some kind of business entrepreneur appears like a juxtaposition; the quiet, independent expertise of the legal professional is wildly at odds with the go-getting determination of the corporate manager. And yet, in many firms it is a vision that is beginning to be realized, as corporate structures replace partnership models and lawyers find themselves learning techniques as seemingly outlandish as cross-selling."

The handwriting is no longer on the wall, it is chiseled into stone. It's time for the "library lawyers" to stop eating lunch at their desk, and find their way to a trade association meeting where clients congregate.

Jim Hendrix and the law firm

I ran across this delightful, insightful article by Simon Slater, managing director of First Counsel in London comparing client service and business development to the music of my all-time favorite rock guitarist, Jimi Hendrix. Here is an edited version of it:

---

Jimi Hendrix. Great guitarist. Some people argue that he was several decades ahead of his time. What is incontrovertible, however, is that his influence over the last 35 years has been nothing short of astonishing both in its reach and its durability. What I like about Hendrix is that he let is “axe” do the talking. He also seemed to thrive on breaking the mold. Boundary was a word that didn’t appear in his vocabulary.

So what can he teach the rest of us about life? And what can he teach lawyers in particular? There is a clue in the name of his band: The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It’s as if he knew that his music would have an impact on people. Lawyers are also in the business of selling an experience; not through music but through the rule of law. Granted, the subject matter is by comparison somewhat dry and certainly less emotive, but this makes the experience of providing it, or rather buying it, all the more important.

We all know instinctively that buyers of legal advice distinguish between law firms not on the basis of technical expertise, but on what else is added to that advice in terms of service. It’s the experience. Jimi Hendrix may not have been the most gifted guitarist in technical terms, but it was what he did differently that won him so many admirers and followers over so many years. What is it that your firm does so differently to win not just the loyalty of your clients but also the respect of your peers? If you can’t answer this question, you are not providing an experience.

Another reason I am such a fan of Hendrix can be found on the back of my business card. These five simple words have, in recent years, become my credo for life: “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens”.

Having met close to 100 General Counsel and board members of FTSE 350 companies and financial institutions over the last few years, one message has shone like a beacon above all others: “lawyers should listen more intently to what we have to say about their service and then do something about it.” It is a deceptively simple message and yet whilst many firms have begun to try listening actively to their clients, the clients themselves tell me that they have yet to notice any discernible change in service delivery.

So my message to you, dear Managing Partner, CEO, Marketing, HR and Finance Director, is also very simple. Just for once, break the mold. Once you’ve listened to what your clients want, put a plan into action. That’s all they’re asking. Give them what they want; don’t do what other law firms do, which is to ignore them. Stop playing your guitar the same way as everybody else and your clients will love you for it. You might even build a fan-club!

Simon Slater is managing director of First Counsel’s strategic resource consultancy. He can be reached at +44 (0)207 332 6336; simon.slater@first-counsel.co.uk.

Fired for Failing to Market

Because of a drop in revenue and profit, 440-lawyer Chadbourne & Parke in New York is planning to fire some partners.  If you read between the lines of the memo from managing partner Charles K. O'Neill, can can see that a failure to develop new business was a part of the reason they getting the axe.

According to the most recent AmLaw 100 survey by The American Lawyer magazine, a Law Journal affiliate, Chadbourne had gross revenues of $241 million and profits per partner of $1 million in 2004. O'Neill said in an interview with Law.com Tuesday that revenue had fallen around 5 percent in 2005.

O'Nei'lls memo to the firm stated:

• The partnership also would be pared to better fit the firm's "present strengths and targeted areas of growth."
• Tthe firm's structure, which gives practice groups and individual partners great autonomy in making client development and practice management decisions, will change.  "We're going to have to be more businesslike in the way we approach things," he said, citing an increasingly competitive environment.
• Management would play a larger role in client development and relationships.

The morale of the story is market or get fired.

CMO Magazine Croaks

After only 16 months of publication, CXO Communications has pulled the plug on CMO Magazine. January 2006 is the last issue.

As the former editor of a now-dead marketing magazine, I felt the pain of editor Rob O'Regan as he wrote his swan song. You can have a fantastic magazine, but if you can't pay for the production and distribution, and take in enough money through subscriptions and advertising -- you're dead.

"We will keep the website lit up so you can continue to access our existing content, O'Reagan said.

Certainly CMOs can use information about their field, and they'll find it here, the Professional Marketing blog and all the blogs in my blogroll. In the meantime, good luck to the CMO team.