Blogs

The following is a compilation of recent news in the legal industry and legal marketing/business development profession. LMA does not fact-check this content and accepts no liability for content contained herein; original publishers are noted at the top of each brief. LMA weclomes members and industry practitioners to share their news and commentary through this resource. To contribute to the LMA Intelligence Briefings, send your briefs, along with a link to the full article, to LMA Headquarters in care of Sara Giacalone.

Headlines

Companies Reset Legal Costs
Build Better Lawyer Bios
Law Firm Marketing: 5 Ways Attorneys Can Increase Referrals
Should Attorneys Outsource Social Media Marketing?
Used Properly, Social Media Outlets Can Help Drum Up New Clients
Web Branding Should Assure Potential Clients You Can Meet Their Legal and Nonlegal Needs
Essential Law Firm Technology Policies and Plans
Law Firm Marketer Makes the Most of Eye-Map Technology
Lessons Learned in Upgrading a Law Firm Website to SharePoint 2010
Law Firms Split Over Nonlawyer Investors
Do Elite Law Grads Disdain Longtime BigLaw Work? Stats Suggest Lower-Tier 'Strivers' Stick Around
Law Review: A Maryland Firm Finds Opportunity in Philadelphia

Companies Reset Legal Costs
Wall Street Journal (04/08/12) Smith, Jennifer
Alternative fee arrangements are becoming more common as clients press law firms for options other than traditional hourly billing. Such pressure was once just a sign of the recession, when law firms were more desperate for business, but now it is more routine. Critics, including many in-house lawyers, say that hourly rates encourages law firms to drag matters out. Now, an increasing number of law firms are working with set prices, or agreements that pay lawyers more if their client prevails. At large law firms, the percentage of revenue from alternative-billing arrangements is expected to reach 13.4 percent this year, nearly double the percentage in 2008, according to a Citi Private Bank survey of 40 U.S. firms. Law firms must establish a price that works for the client but is still profitable for the firm. The majority of firms still charge by the hour, and even corporate general counsels that use alternative billing agree that it does not fit all situations. Still, the number of companies looking for alternative arrangements is expected to increase further. In 2011, 61 percent of U.S. general counsel in a Fulbright & Jaworski survey reported using alternative-fee arrangements, up from 48 percent in 2009. The changes also indicate shifts in the relationship between law firms and clients, with more companies asking for greater detail about how law firms intend to carry out their work. Law firms have also used the practice of alternative billing to stand out from competitors and keep clients happy.
Return to headlines

Build Better Lawyer Bios
National Law Journal (04/12/12) Dayton, Adrian
According to law firm Web site company Great Jakes, between 55 percent and 75 percent of the time visitors spend on law firm Web sites involves bios. The audience for lawyers' Web site bios includes potential clients, potential new hires, and even competitors. Few firms, however, spend enough time on improving and updating these bios. Firms should establish a specific process and routine for regularly updating and improving their bios, whether on the firm's Web site, LinkedIn, or even Twitter. Partners should examine how persuasive their bios are, and consider employing the three types of persuasion as described by Aristotle: logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos involves logical arguments, such as "Hire this attorney; he attended Harvard Law School." Most potential clients want more information, which is where bios should use ethos. This involves an argument that makes an appeal to authority, such as "John Smith literally wrote the book on toxic tort litigation." Pathos, the third type of persuasion, refers to an emotional argument. For a bio, this involves features such as friendliness or trustworthiness. Law firm bios should not ignore the use of pathos in creating a bio. For example, lawyers can discuss why they decided to practice law and the types of cases they are most passionate about.
Return to headlines

Law Firm Marketing: 5 Ways Attorneys Can Increase Referrals
The Rainmaker Institute (04/09/2012) Fairley, Stephen
Attorneys need referrals for new business, but everyone realizes the effort it takes to create a system that generates referrals. A few strategies can make obtaining referrals easier and more reliable. First, get comfortable with asking people for business. If you believe the way you practice law benefits clients you should feel comfortable having clients refer you to others who may benefit as well. Second, referrals involve risk, so be in a position to mitigate that risk through effective communication, education, and strong follow-up. Third, create great client experiences. People who have great experiences with a product or service are more likely to refer it to friends or colleagues. This makes creating a culture of exceptional client service a must for obtaining referrals. Fourth, build trust and protect your reputation. Even if a potential client is given a great referral, he or she is still likely to do an Internet search. If the referral cannot find good content, reviews, or social network participation they will be less likely to contact your firm. Lastly, implement a referral process. Attorneys need to create a referral strategy that features a system for generating referrals, a way of educating referral sources, and a solid follow-up program.
Return to headlines

Should Attorneys Outsource Social Media Marketing?
JDSupra (04/08/2012) Fairley, Stephen
Outsourced social media marketing has grown from 14 percent in 2010 to 32 percent in 2012, according to the 2012 Social Media Marketing Report. Before signing up for an external social media management service, firms should ask themselves a few questions. Can social medial marketing drive business growth? How well is your social media working currently? Would outsourcing free up time to work on your business? How will you measure your return on social media investments? Ultimately, outsourcing social media efforts only makes sense if it will have a positive impact on your practice. Study your target markets to see if social media is something that will influence them. Social media takes time, and if it is something that is occupying too much of your firm's time, or is something you dread doing on a regular basis, then outsourcing may be appropriate. If you do choose a social media program, be sure they are experienced at working with attorneys. It is critical to maintain ethical standards when marketing your firm. Social media companies should be able to point to other attorneys they have worked with, and be able to provide a written blueprint on how they will generate leads for your law firm. Social media experts must also be able to clearly integrate blogs and other social media outlets to form a cohesive campaign, and have clearly defined strategies for tracking and measuring accurate results from your blog and social media efforts.
Return to headlines

Used Properly, Social Media Outlets Can Help Drum Up New Clients
Minnesota Lawyer (03/08/12) Heilman, Dan
As with other businesses, solo law practitioners can benefit from social media only when it is properly used. A 2011 American Bar Association survey of solo attorneys found that 62 percent used LinkedIn for professional purposes last year and 22 percent used Facebook, while only 6 percent used Twitter. Attorneys have used all three of these sites as part of a well-thought-out marketing strategy. An attorney can use a personal Facebook page to share videos, articles, and links related to his or her practice, or to build followers for a legal blog that can lead to new clients. "The best connections happen when the lawyer is offering something of value, versus selling something," says Amy Juers, founder and chief executive officer of Edge Legal Marketing in Minneapolis. "Leveraging their expertise and thought leadership and projecting that through social media channels to attract the right clients." For example, business-law attorneys can tweet, blog, or update a Facebook status to inform clients about a tax code change or a relevant court decision. This lets current and prospective clients know that the attorney is on top of the latest developments. For solo practitioners, LinkedIn is ideal as an online resume, but with a group function that allows people to connect to peers and prospective clients. However, social media may not be the best marketing tool for everyone. In areas such as family law or criminal defense, people usually only have an interest in law for one event, such as a divorce or arrest, which does not contribute to long-term followers online.
Return to headlines

Web Branding Should Assure Potential Clients You Can Meet Their Legal and Nonlegal Needs
ABA Journal (03/30/12) Hansen, Mark
Jeff Lantz, a lawyer and website developer in Oro Valley, Ariz., and Robert Ambrogi, a lawyer, journalist and legal technology expert in Rockport, Mass., explained how the Web can be used to drive prospective clients to law firms, during ABA Techshow. In a presentation titled 'Beyond the Basic Website: Proven Techniques to Expand Your Web Presence,' Lantz and Ambrogi said the first thing a firm needs to do is create an effective brand that differentiates it from others offering the same or similar legal services. Moreover, Lantz and Ambrogi noted that firms will need to focus not just on the legal needs of prospective clients, considering their nonlegal needs may be the most important factor in their hiring decision. Firms will need to communicate an effective brand in a way that resonates with prospective clients, by using strong and simple messages on their home page and showing how they are right for particular client matters on the other pages of their website. Lantz and Ambrogi also said firms should create short and compelling attorney bios that show how lawyers serve clients. A blog offers a way for firms to convey expertise and create a dialogue with prospective clients, and they also encouraged firms to explore Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social and professional networks. "Think of your website as the beginning, but by no means the end, of your online marketing," said Ambrogi.
Return to headlines

Essential Law Firm Technology Policies and Plans
Law Practice Magazine (04/01/12) Simek, John W.; Nelson, Sharon D.
Law firms should be reviewing their technology policies to determine whether they need updating, and thinking about developing plans for issues that they have not addressed. A law firm should know what it needs to do if it is sued and finds itself under a litigation hold, if a major earthquake or flood has suddenly left it without an office, or if someone has hacked into its servers. Law firms should create a document retention policy, and the simple rules are to follow federal and state laws or regulations, and abide by internal bylaws, other mandatory procedures, or industry standards. They should also assume all the documents in their possession will be the subject of a lawsuit at some point, and should give serious thought to what is best to keep and what is best to throw away. Law firms should have an incident response plan to deal with a security compromise, such as data breaches, security alarms and unauthorized access by employees. They will need to verify what happened, who will lead the investigation, solve the immediate problem while preserving the evidence, consider whether to bring in outside experts, follow the law and improve security. Law firms also should have a disaster recovery plan, and it should specify who is in charge and alternative ways to communicate with those who have specific job functions. The first goal is to save lives, but there are so many factors to consider to restore business continuity that law firms will need to revisit and revise their plan once the disaster is over.
Return to headlines

Law Firm Marketer Makes the Most of Eye-Map Technology
ABA Journal (04/01/12) Chanen, Jill Schachner
Eye-map technology can provide a valuable lesson to anyone who is preparing to launch a new marketing campaign, according to law firm marketer Ross Fishman. Although Fishman relies on more than 20 years of experience in the industry and intuition as a onetime commercial litigator, he decided to use the technology to support his ideas while working on a campaign for the new London office of Vedder Price. Fishman and Vedder Price settled on two images for the firm's website; one was eye-catching with a large beefeater hat dominating the design, and the other subordinated graphics to text. The technology tracks eye movement to the tenth of a second, and the data on what caught your attention first and how you lingered on a spot can be supplemented with answers to questions like those asked in focus groups. The eye tracking confirmed Vedder Price's choice of the more text-heavy image. "People are not browsing law firm websites because they find them fascinating," says Fishman of Highland Park, Ill. "We have to balance conveying our information with keeping [potential clients'] interest." Eye mapping used to be cost-prohibitive for all but the largest Fortune 500 companies, but recent innovations have enabled home computer users with webcams to take advantage of the technology.
Return to headlines

Lessons Learned in Upgrading a Law Firm Website to SharePoint 2010
Law Technology News (04/02/12) Gerow, Mark
During Fenwick & West's upgrade to SharePoint 2010 the firm learned a variety of lessons on project processes and management, as well as many technical lessons. Sharepoint 2010 is a complex platform with strong content management capabilities, but it also has several quirks and problems that can arise when the system is pushed to its fullest capabilities. During the transition to a new website, the firm's marketing team had two requirements: the site had to faithfully reflect the firm's design with no concessions for SharePoint's out-of-the-box appearance, and the website had to be fast performing, with a one-second page response time or better. The first lesson the firm learned was to adopt a CSS and JavaScript naming convention at the start of the project to avoid "colliding" with SharePoint's built-in definitions. Achieving a one-second load time was challenging for a variety of reasons, but ultimately page load times rely on how long it takes SharePoint to construct the page and return it to the user's browser, and how long it takes the user's browser to render a page. Anything that can be done to improve the SQL Server performance, or improve the connection between the SQL Server and the SharePoint web front-end servers, will have a positive impact on page response time. However, the most effective strategy is to minimize the number of request SharePoint makes to the SQL Server by caching as much content on the web front-end servers as possible. By storing copies of static data locally on the web front-end servers, preferably in memory, it is possible to dramatically reduce the time it takes SharePoint to construct a page.
Return to headlines

Law Firms Split Over Nonlawyer Investors
Wall Street Journal (04/01/12) Smith, Jennifer
The American Bar Association is considering whether to allow nonlawyers who work at law firms to own as much as 25 percent of a firm. The proposal comes at a time when the United Kingdom has phased in changes that allow British lawyers to partner with insurers or other businesses, and even solicit outside investments, which follow a similar move in Australia. Opponents of the ABA measure express concern about ethical lapses resulting from pressure to maximize profits, but nonlawyer partners would be subject to the same code of conduct as lawyers and would have no control over a lawyer's professional judgment. And opponents are concerned about the potential for more profound shifts; British regulators recently approved a license that will allow the Co-operative Group, a member-owned organization that runs grocery stores and offers banking and insurance services, to provide legal advice on divorce and other family-law matters to its seven million members. "It's the people who can't pay $500 an hour but could pay a $500 flat fee for a divorce who would benefit," says Thomas Gordon, legal and policy director for Consumers for a Responsive Legal System. Smaller firms are likely to have more interest in the issue rather than larger firms, which can usually obtain the cash they need from their partners or banks. The earliest the ABA could bring the measure up for a vote by its policy-setting body is next year.
Return to headlines

Do Elite Law Grads Disdain Longtime BigLaw Work? Stats Suggest Lower-Tier 'Strivers' Stick Around
ABA Journal (03/12/12) Weiss, Debra Cassens
It is tougher for graduates of lower-ranked law schools to get a job in a big law firm, but those who do may top their elite peers by landing partnerships in greater percentages, according to Indiana University law professor William Henderson, who analyzed BigLaw partnership data from the National Law Journal. He determined that Loyola University Chicago School of Law grads are six times more likely to make partner than grads from the University of Chicago. "The strivers tend to be more concentrated in the regional law schools," Henderson observes. "Face it, being a lawyer is a service job—it's cleaning up other people's problems, and a lot of people who go to elite schools don't want to do that." Henderson warns in a post for the Legal Whiteboard that he was examining a statistical snapshot in time, and such snapshots can be influenced by random variability. "So, to be crystal clear, we cannot draw the inference that Chicago-Loyola is a better partnership bet than University of Chicago," he notes. "To draw stronger, more reliable inferences, we would need to average across multiple years." But Henderson points out that a dependable statistical pattern is evident when the 2011 statistics are pooled for elite and nonelite schools. He says that at some point before partnership, associates from the highest-ranked 14 law schools "tend to get off the train in disproportionately high numbers." Among the theories Henderson provides for why grads from the top 14 schools are not dominating the BigLaw partnership ranks is that top law grads at non-elite schools are competing against any grad at a top-14 school. He also theorizes that elite school grads are more likely to come from richer families. Henderson also says the greater concentration that law school admissions panels are placing on undergraduate grades and the Law School Admission Test "has fundamentally altered the BigLaw pipeline with students who are [excessively] academic and lack significant brushes with real world adversity—not ideal grooming for a high stress professional service job." Another theory of Henderson's is that elite grads tend to go the most prestigious firms with higher wash-out rates, while grads all go to a diverse variety of legal careers regardless of the school.
Return to headlines

Law Review: A Maryland Firm Finds Opportunity in Philadelphia
Philadelphia Inquirer (04/08/12) Mondics, Chris
The law firm of Offit Kurman comprised only a handful of lawyers in a small office in suburban Baltimore when it began considering expanding seven years ago. The firm formed an expansion plan that would take it into high-income suburbs north of Washington and on into northern Virginia. Then, it set its sights on Philadelphia, a counterintuitive strategy given that Philadelphia is filled with lawyers and has a mature regional economy. When the firm decided to make a major move in 2009, financial markets were nose-diving, layoffs were wracking law firms, and work was drying up. Yet three years later, the firm has doubled in size, with incremental growth in its Philadelphia office. The firm says the trick is in its compensation and billing system, in which lawyers are permitted to discount rates where needed and get to keep more of what they bill clients. The firm allows partners who generate work to keep 25 percent of billings, on top of which they also keep 25 percent of hourly charges. The formula mapped out by the firm has been employed in varying degrees by other small firms. The idea is to hire lawyers with large books of business, then give them rate flexibility for smaller clients who may have blanched at the cost of larger firms. Lawyering is still the fundamental economic pillar of the profession, but the profession now has a substantial entrepreneurial element. Now, firms large and small are constantly on the hunt for new markets, whether that means expanding internationally or establishing beachheads in nearby cities. Either way, the market is much more dynamic than it was a generation ago. There are potentially big rewards, but also huge risks, such as soured mergers or botched expansions that can wreck firms. Partners at Offit Kurman charge between $300 and $475 an hour, a price point that makes it an economical choice for businesses looking for high-end labor and employment representation, insurance recovery, transactional, tax, and estate-planning work. The firm's flexibility on rates, as well as its commitment to allow lawyers to keep more of what they generate, that appealed to many of the firm's incoming lawyers.
Return to headlines