Law Firm 4.0 Blog

The future of CMOs - according to FORBES

A Forbes blogger posted an article called, "Is the CMO Role Dying or Thriving?"  Here is how it starts: 

What’s happening to the CMO role? This question has been hot for a couple of years. Some suggest the role is nominal and “dying” while others suggest it is bigger, more complex, and more important than ever before.

I would love to know who claims it's dying.  According to executive search firms that serve the legal industry, there have been more law firms seeking highly qualified CMOs in 2012 (and now in Q1 2013) than there were in the previous three years combined.

Blogger Kimberly Whitler conducted a quick survey of CMOs before she appeared on a panel at the CMO Exchange conference.  She admits that the survey was more directionally interesting than methodologically sound - and it turns out that what she found in this survey is consistent with what I believe is happening.  Her panel was called "The Evolving Role of the CMO."

Whitler's survey respondents described their CMO world as "moving" and "changing" (not "shifting" - which seems a little hair-splitty to me) in tsunami-like proportion.  She says, "Consumer beliefs have radically changed with 76% of consumers not believing that companies tell the truth in advertising (Yankelovich 2005)." 

She's talking about consumer skepticism here - but what do we know about the beliefs held by clients of law firms and how they've changed the last few years?  We've read the stories, conducted the satisfaction/loyalty interviews, and understand fundamentally that there is less work to go around and less across-the-board loyalty awarded by clients to their law firms.  And our law firm CMOs are the ones on the front lines figuring this out. 

Whitler says, "CMOs have often been the leaders who harness this understanding and lead the requisite internal change to adapt to the market. If the market, consumer, and environment are changing dramatically, it’s a foregone conclusion that the CMO’s role is as well."  Amen.

So - what are some of the changes that Whitler and her CMO respondents predict?

1.     "The technology revolution has led to the CMO role revolution. Gartner, in fact, recently suggested that by 2017, the CMO will manage more of the IS spend than the CIO will."  Proving Whitler's statement about Gartner, I found this written by a Gartner researcher, "Marketing is purchasing significant marketing-related technology and services from their own capital and expense budgets – both outside the control of the internal IT organization and in conjunction with them." 

As the CEO of a company that sells marketing and business development technologies for professional services firms (websites, mobile sites and apps, experience databases, proposal systems), we are on the front lines of this trend. The law firm CMO is leading these initiatives with very specific and measureable goals in mind -- to save time and grow revenue. There is no other administrative or functional role in the law firm - outside of the lawyers - who has responsibility for client retention, expansion and revenue growth as does the CMO.  A deep understanding of technology processes and tools is critical.

2.    Whitler states that "If current CMOs don't change, a new breed will surpass them."  She continues, "Radical change requires significant growth in knowledge, skill, and competency.  Big data requires math, stats, and problem solving skills. A technology revolution requires an appreciation for systems, technology, and process.  Consumer belief and behavior change requires a thirst for – and knowledge of – stats, research, and deep, unique insight. Significant integration between technology, finance, and marketing requires superior leadership and strategy skills."

Smart law firm leaders are seeking CMOs who can rise to this level, who can effectively manage teams that cover the broad gamut of historical marketing communications and business development initiatives, and who can find, understand and synthesize financial and other data that gives the firm a competitive advantage. 

Whitler concludes by suggesting that the people who predict that CMOs are "dying" are those that are trying to cash-in on their demise in some way -- consultants and vendors perhaps.

I see 2013 and the next two - three years as the most exciting for our industry's smartest CMOs. Enormous amounts of work to do, but the possibilities for success will be tangible and measureable - more than ever before.

 

 

Embrace Life - The most moving YouTube video

Today's post is not about marketing and business development technology, knowledge or experience management, websites, marketing strategy, lawyers or law firms.  It's to share a link of a remarkable and powerful advertising campaign promoting the use of seat belts. 

It could be one of the finest, most moving ads I've ever seen.  http://www.youtube.com/embed/h-8PBx7isoM

Readers, please buckle up and enjoy your weekend.

Experience management/databases - best practices in content gathering

Gathering and managing content that is relevant to a firm's buyers of legal services is the bane of every marketer's existence.  I've seen this one activity paralyze entire departments.  The team is flummoxed by finding the most efficient way to engage lawyers so they provide the information that marketers need for pitches, proposals, Chambers, Thomson League Tables and other rankings/listings.

In my last post about experience management, I wrote about focusing on your top three use cases and on the people who will use this information.  Your clients are the ultimate consumers of experience data - how are they evaluating you?  What do they need to know about you to make the decision to hire you?

Effectively managing content requires the perfect marriage of people, process and technology.  But, as I noted in my last post, don't start with the technology tool.  Answer these questions about content contribution:

1. What processes do you currently have in place?  How are they working?
2. Who inputs new matters into your experience database?
3. How many fields per matter are too many (a barrier to entry)?
4. Post-launch, how much lawyer time is required for each new matter?
5. Who is the ultimate owner of the experience database, and who ensures the efficacy of the data?

In the Lex Mundi Americas experience management survey of CMOs that I conducted before a November presentation, the vast majority (nearly 80%) of respondents said the marketing/business development team own the process and database.  Lawyers own this process in several firms, as well as paralegals in others. 

Lawyers must "own" this data or they won't use it, but we still recommend that the marketing/BD team is the ultimate facilitator and controller of the technology and process. 

In the CMO survey, I asked the question: How many people on your team are directly involved in managing experience and keeping it current?  58% of the respondents said 1-2 people, but 32% said 3-5 people.  The right number depends on firm size, but we believe that larger firms should have several content contributors and managers.  Effectively gathering the right information is a sleuthing exercise and it's time-consuming.  Having more people dedicated to this mission-critical task is better - especially on the front end of a project implementation.

Lisa Simon, CMO of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and former international LMA President, is a long-time advocate for effective experience management. We worked together to implement an experience database at her firm and she says the firm has seen the enormous benefits.  Lisa has this advice for managing the content:

1. Less is more - having some data on a lot of matters is better than having lots of data on only a handful.
2. Stakeholders are not always partners - Paralegals and secretaries/admin assistants are as important to the process as the attorneys - their buy-in is key.
3. Look beyond the obvious sources - Utilize resources outside your own systems to begin generating content.  Sometimes you get more info from your clients' press releases than your own lawyers.

Interestingly, according to the CMO survey, some firms have a database, but they don't give lawyers access to it. I believe it's a best practice to let lawyers be hands-on - to pull data, sort and parse it.  Once again, if they see its utility, they'll engage with it, and be invested in its success and health.

I asked the CMOs whether they give lawyers access to the database to enter new matters. More respondents did not have lawyers enter content.  At Brownstein, we created a web form for the corporate/securities group - they were clamoring for it, wanting to populate the database themselves. They use the form several times a day and now other groups want forms for their practices.  Brownstein will launch these forms for its five main practice teams.

In other posts, I've written that lawyers don't trust the efficacy of the data if they don't own it. Brownstein has figured this out - the lawyers enter the data, and the marketing team reviews it before it goes live (on the website or for pitches/proposals). Lawyers trust it, so they'll use it, and they'll keep contributing to the Deals and Cases Tool.

In the CMO survey, I asked whether firms were adding the matters of lateral hires.  As I noted in my last experience management post, effective lateral integration remains one of the greatest challenges firm leaders have today. While it is challenging, I believe it's a best practice to merge laterals' experience with yours as quickly as possible.  There are easy ways to tag their experience, so if they leave, you can easily sweep it from your system.  Half of the Lex Mundi survey respondents merge laterals' data into their tools and half do not.

Finally, it is early January 2013 and you might be in a position to make the business case for an experience database. Whether a new one or continued investment in an existing database, the arguments for it are compelling:

1. It is guaranteed to increase revenue and make cross-selling/relationship expansion more effective.
2. It creates practice and lawyer stickiness to your firm.
3. As the owner of the experience database, marketing has more power than ever (knowledge really is power) - it leads to respect.
4. No more emails! (Does anyone know anyone who  knows anyone who does XYZ?) For 25 years or more, lawyers have been sending these dreaded emails.

Year-end website bio housekeeping for lawyers in 30 minutes or less

People don't like to start on new projects the last few days of December.  The pre-holiday bustle that focuses around family, food, faith, fa-la-la and folly has subsided, and we look ahead to the first full week of January to really start work.  This year, these last December days are "lost" days if we don't seize them and dedicate them to simple, yet constructive things. 

Like not letting one more minute pass before you update your website biographies.  Face it - it's long overdue.  Don't wait to make it a New Year's resolution (along with "I will lose 10 lbs, stop eating M&Ms, observe highway speed postings and call my brother more often"). Here are some things you can do in 30 minutes or less -- and a few other things you can do during your next website refresh.

Each year, Content Pilot publishes “Ten Foundational Best Practices” for law firm websites, and Lawyer Biographies is one of them. The company analyzes AmLaw 100 firms based on the Ten FBPs and will release the research findings in late January 2013. The housekeeping items below are the attributes of the Lawyer Biography Foundational Best Practice.  If you invest this bio update time during these lost December days, you'll start the year with a best practices bio to boot.

Things you can do in 30 minutes or less (You will need the help of your marketing team, but I know they'll be happy to help you.):

1. Rewrite the first 150 characters (not words, characters, which include punctuation and spaces) of your bio so that it is compelling and relevant to your practice.  Google and other search engines will pick up the first 100-150 characters - arguably the most valuable professional real estate you can own. What do you want potential clients to see when they Google your name?  Focus on that. 
   
   You know your practice. You know for what you want to be known.  This shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to write.
2. Rewrite the rest of your overview paragraph. Don't tell who you are (Partner in the labor and employment section of XYZ law firm, Board Certified, blah blah blah), tell what you do and for whom you do it. Here is a good example:
   
   John Smith represents trademark, brand and copyright owners around the world in disputes, enforcement efforts, trademark acquisitions and stopping counterfeits. His clients include consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, software companies, real estate developers, and service providers.
   
   It is loaded with keywords that are critical to John's practice.
   
   Again, you know what you do.  This shouldn't take longer than 12 minutes to write - you already have the first 150 characters done.
3. Do not use Mr. or Ms. throughout your bio.  It's so old-fashioned and impersonal.  If you want to get hired over your competitor across the country or down the street, humanize your bio.  Be approachable.
   
   This will take your webmaster 3 minutes to do.
4. Update your LinkedIn profile and keep your Twitter feed active. Then add your social media icons to your website bio. 
   
   Your webmaster and maybe your developer will need a few minutes to add these links/icons.  But updating your LinkedIn profile will only take about 10 minutes.
5. Study and be critical of your practice and industry lists to which you link on your bio. Too many lawyers have a long list of 10 or more links.  This does not add credibility to your profile. To pare this down, answer the questions:  what do I want to be known for?  What will I be known for in 3 years?  5 years?  Ignore the practices that occupied you 10 years ago unless those are still critical to your livelihood (and your firm's strategy) today.
   
   If you are comfortable self-analyzing, this won't take more than 5 minutes. If you don't like to self-analyze, get over it - at least for this.  Your marketing team can help you.
6. Visitors to every law firm website want to know 3 things: What you've done, for whom you've done it and what, specifcally, you can do for them.  So - update the experience on your bio and be as specific as your state bar association allows.
   
   If you haven't been keeping it current, this could take awhile.  This is the most important bio commitment you can make.
7. Finally, add your latest news articles, publications, e-alerts, etc. to your website and cross-link to them.  Your marketing team is most likely doing this already.  But confirm that they have everything that's relevant to your practice.
   
   Take a few minutes and delete links that are no longer relevant to what you are doing.  Including a long list of 30 articles that were written 20-30 years ago doesn't add credibility, either (unless they are seminal articles in important publications).
   
   All this will only take 10 minutes if you've been keeping it fairly current.

Now, if you have a website refresh on the horizon, you can work with your marketing team to ensure that your firm's bio pages are exemplary. Create "personal portals" or mini-sites for each lawyer, so the uniqueness of each professional can be highlighted.  Organize your content more elegantly using the latest technology tools, such as ajax, jquery and javascript.  Take new photos that are more "environmental" or as I like to say, "magazine-style." They are larger, more inviting and not your typical headshot. 

Please use these lost days of December.  When we roll around to January 2nd, you'll feel so much better about starting this new year.

 

 

 

2013 advice for law firms to ensure a bright future

My friend and colleague Leigh Dance published a terrific article in AmLaw Daily structured as advice for global law firms.  But most of it applies to law firms of any size.  I've linked to the article here, but I have also pulled the key points so you can scan them.

Leigh's advice comes from more than 20 years consulting to corporate legal departments in multinational companies and global law firms.  In addition, she recently conducted a major study for World Law Group with survey respondents from more than 30 countries.  Her "to-do's" are designed for law firms with international offices and how they can best serve domestic clients abroad and foreign clients at home.  For firms with local, regional and national practices, take this advice and extrapolate to find the nuggets that will work best for you.

1. Inhabit your client's world; they want you there.  "Your clients in corporations around the world are busy rethinking and reworking every aspect of making and delivering legal services. While they’ll proceed with or without you, they’d like to have their preferred firms at their side. Unfortunately many of you are simply not involved enough in their world. Their focus is not just the legal part—it’s how legal advice is sourced and delivered in the company."
   
   Spend the time and money to meet your clients on their turf.
2. Build project management tools, including financial accounting ones.  "Your clients want more certainty. Clients still love what you do for them, but many want to manage smarter so they can use you less. To nourish the relationship, your numbers must show you can deliver on your promises. Most of your firm’s financial and account management exists to give you (and The American Lawyer and the banks), productivity and profitability info. What’s in it for the client?"
   
   Clients want to know how you will ensure that you won't under- or over-deliver.  And they want to know this on the front end of a matter or engagement.
3. Use knowledge management and IT across borders to reinforce client relationships.  "Trust is a relationship thing, and your clients long ago stopped thinking of relationships as one-to-one. In multipolar business, relationships between international law firms and corporate clients are inevitably multipersonal. Across the time zones, organizational structures, legal systems, and compliance frameworks, trust is a network constructed with information and project continuity that supports good personal relationships."
   
   Law firms of all sizes struggle with client relationship and experience data.  Many are paralyzed because of inefficient processes - or even knowing what to do with the data when they capture it.  I'll write much more about this in 2013, but here are two recent blog posts that will further the discussion in your firms.  http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2012/11/experience-management-and-databases-the-results-of-a-survey-of-cmos.html and http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2012/02/experience-management-its-been-elevated-to-mission-critical.html 
4.  Demonstrate international know-how.  "Your firm should provide specific and compelling proof of your knowledge of laws and regulations across the diverse places where your clients are selling, buying, sourcing, or investing.  It seems so basic, but global clients say their most pressing concern in high-growth markets is: understanding local and regional laws and regulations. Hello? Big Law, step up to the plate."
   
   If your lawyers are effectively collaborating across practices and geographies, then you are heads and shoulders above your competitor firms.  This is what it takes to make your global clients happy with you and your firm. 
5. Show off your multicultural strengths.  "Since many of your clients are worldly, they can quickly discern your lawyers’ and your firm’s ability (or failure) to get things done with a diverse cultural mix of stakeholders, executives, employees, and regulators (many of whom have not mastered your language). Clients active in multiple new markets recognize that service styles and practices vary across cultures. They also know that great short- and long-distance service can be as important as technical legal skill in giving valuable counsel."
   
   Brilliant legal technicians who don't care about the human side of the relationship are not a good fit for many clients - domestic or abroad.  The human and cultural understanding are what causes firms and lawyers to get hired - and without it, fired.
   
6. Figure out what you do that's better or different and emphasize it.  "Big Law has aced the task of providing expert lawyers who speak brilliantly on their subject matter. It’s far harder, yet more important now, for lawyers to present the firm’s advantages in a way that resonates with the particular client. To do that, you need to understand better what your key clients worry most about, for the issue at hand. Is it meeting a deadline, managing a far-flung legal team, compliance monitoring, reducing costs, cross-border coordination, getting along with a prickly regulator? Only then can you present a differentiated offering that addresses the client’s specific needs."
   
   Your marketing and business development department can be a great asset here.  But, in addition to people who understand positioning and messaging, it requires effective processes and the right technology, such as experience management and proposal generation tools. 
7. Make your global brand real by aligning it with how you serve clients. "Given point Number 6, it frustrates me that many firm marketing efforts travel poorly to clients (and the firm’s own lawyers) around the world.  Global law firm branding tends to overemphasize visual identity and underemphasize how specific services and the firm’s resources are discussed with and delivered to clients. Many firms send promotional messages that don’t make sense across cultures and thus mean little to the clients you are trying to win." 
   
   Clients will see through "brand" messages that are distinctly different than lawyers' service delivery.  Ensure that your key messages resonate with buyers of legal services across all borders.  While your messaging might be aspirational, it surely won't ring true.

Here is Leigh's byline and a link to the World Law Group summary of the study. 

E. Leigh Dance is president and founder of legal services management consultancy ELD International, based in New York and Brussels. She speaks three languages fluently, and for more than 20 years has worked with global corporate law departments and law firms. The study referred to is the World Law Group Global Agenda 2012: Issues & Priorities for Senior In-house Counsel Worldwide, conducted in conjunction with LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell and ELD International. Download the study report on home page of www.TheWorldLawGroup.com.

 

Experience management and databases - The results of a survey of CMOs

Experience management and how to get one's arms around it surfaces in every conversation that I have with firm leaders and senior marketers.  As I noted in a February 2012 blog post "Experience Management - it's been elevated to mission-critical," cross-selling and revenue growth are the two top concerns of firm leaders as they see a future of shrinking demand for legal services and higher expenses.  These issues remain at the top as we approach 2013 - but firm leaders are no closer to having a handle on how to cross-sell more effectively and otherwise drive new revenue.

According to Altman Weil's MergerLine(tm), through the 3rd quarter there have been 68 law firm mergers completed.  In Q4, there are several high profile and notable ones in the works - Fulbright's merger with Norton Rose and SNR Denton's three-way merger with Fraser Milner and Salans are two that will create literally thousands of laterals.  Lateral integration is also at the top of firm leaders' list of concerns - how do they quickly embed and inculcate a few laterals into the fabric (and client base) of the firm, let alone many hundreds? 

The simplest answer is effective experience management.  Sure, but how?  It's not easy, but it's not nearly as paralyzing as you think.  Reframe your thinking about how to go about it - don't start with the lawyers and their many and assorted lists of deals and cases; start with the clients - the buyers of legal services.  What do they want and need to make buying decisions in your various practice and industry areas?  When your planning starts with the end in mind, it ensures that your focus, and consequently, your action is relevant.

To prepare for a recent experience management presentation to a Lex Mundi Americas group of senior marketing and business development professionals, I surveyed the group about their hottest button issues and concerns, wanting to understand where they were in the experience management life cycle.  Most of the 19 respondents were in mid-sized to large law firms.

Here were their burning questions:

1. What is the limit of experience information that can be published that doesn’t affect the confidential client information?
2. How can we motivate the lawyers to keep the experience database updated?  How do we keep it current?
3. How do we handle it when there are several practice areas working in one transaction? Is it better to consolidate as one big transaction, a transaction with different points of advice or several different matter entries?
4. Is it common to ask the client if the experience information can be published?
5. What is the best way to demonstrate the benefits of such a system to the attorneys, especially as an offset to its costs?
6. How are people doing this effectively? How do people connect to time and billing, follow-up, self-service, website, proposals, etc. What accountability share is there - lawyers vs. admins vs. BD/marketing staff?
7. Best practices, what systems are out there in the market, usability of system (lawyers, BD staff)?
8. How can we do this cheaply, but effectively?

I asked the senior marketers what their greatest challenge is regarding experience management:

1. Keeping the information updated
2. Leveraging data from other systems via integration
3. Getting the lawyers to cooperate
4. Which matters to highlight and capture
5. Convincing firm of the need for such a database
6. Resources to plan and implement it
7. Managing all the reports, rankings, pitches, web, etc. that need this data – and getting the right data to them all
8. Getting lawyers to think beyond the work they do (cross-sell)
9. The ability to capture specialized/unique skills
10. Disorganized process and incomplete data

Nearly 60% of the respondents do not have an experience database.  These firms are struggling with multiple data sources - Microsoft Word documents, mini-databases, Excel spreadsheets - and many of these documents are closely-held by the partners.  The ones that responded that they do have one are mostly "thinking about it" or are in the earliest planning stages.

Because the process of gathering thousands of matters into a single, flexible location is so debilitating, I thought it would be helpful to share best practices that we have developed for the launch of  a successful experience database.

Start Here.

1.    I previewed the secret above:  Start with your ultimate end users (your clients) and work backwards >> your lawyers >> marketing/BD team >> IT.

2.    Identify your top three use cases for your experience database (a few examples below).  Choose only three to start - you can always expand it post-launch.  Building a tool that satisfies the needs of all your use cases will take years - and the goal here is to get a workable tool launched in a matter of months - six months is average, depending on the quality of the data.

• Client pitches, proposals, RFPs
• Client expansion conversations – cross-selling
• Website – bios, practices, industries, more
• Surveys – Thomson League Tables,  Chambers, other
• Lawyers – KM
• Lateral integration

3.    Lawyers must use it or they won't keep it current.  They won't care about it if, in some way, they don't own it.  Build it to be used by everyone in the firm - not just the marketing department.

4.    Successful experience management is the perfect blend of people, process and technology.  Don't start with the technology tool. 

People.  Who needs this information? Who must be involved?

1. Clients – ultimate users of the information
2. Lawyers – practice group leaders, users of the information
3. Practice group marketers – consultants to the project for their practice/industry teams
4. Marketing/BD managers - users of the information for pitches, proposals, reports, surveys, rankings
5. Project manager in your firm – day-to-day oversight and accountability
6. Vendor partner – strategy, best practices, day-to-day project management, guidance, training, launch and post-launch.

Process.

1. Gather all the experience lists you have – scour pitches, proposals, website, personal matter lists – don't get bogged down in the formatting; different formats are OK
2. Analyze the efficacy of this data – do lawyers trust it?  (if they don't,  you can't move on to any of the next steps.  They have to trust the data first.) 
3. Create consistent presentation styles for matter and narrative format for your proposals, web, reports, case studies, surveys, etc. for the experience you have
4. Develop your strategy: Who will use it, for what will they use it?
5. Meet with your vendor/IT partner to review all of the above and plan your tech strategy/approach.

Technology and Integration.

1. Build v. Buy - 58% of the marketers said they are or are planning to build it in-house compared to 25% buying a third party tool.  In an ILTA survey we did in February 2012 of IT professionals, the results were the opposite - the majority planned to buy it.
2. What third party vendor to choose?  Choose a vendor partner who intimately understands what lawyers do, law firm project strategy, and the process and the people aspects of such an endeavor in a law firm.  This will make a huge difference in how smoothly the project goes and how much consulting value they can bring to the table.
3. Functional requirements - Your vendor partner will create these for you, and will design them based on your use cases and conversations with your IT team.
4. Integration – where does important data live?  It’s all about leveraging trusted data that lives elsewhere - time/billing, CRM, document management system, conflicts, website, HR database, etc.
5. Mobility – experience on-the-go - The most effective cross-selling takes place spontaneously, when lawyers and clients are on the move.  These opportunities are lost 80%+ of the time, because experience data lives somewhere back in the office.  Lawyers need it at their fingertips when standing in a movie line, riding in a cab with a client, and having lunch or a drink.  Velocity(tm) is the answer to this - it puts this trusted data into your lawyers' hands via their smart phones or tablets.

The next critical piece is content - who contributes to it, who owns it.  That will be my next post.

The Secret of CRM Success in a Law Firm - Guest Post by William A. Smith

Marketing technology implementations are challenging in a law firm for a variety of reasons.  The demand for trusted data for use by lawyers exactly when they need it is increasing, and the pressure on marketers to deliver just-in-time, relevant information and intelligence is greater than ever before. 

I recently spoke at the Lex Mundi 2012 Americas Regional Marketing Roundtable about Experience Management, which I believe is one of the hottest areas on a chief marketer's hot-plate.  Like CRM, which William Smith discusses below, experience database implementations are among the most challenging of all marketing technology initiatives - not because the technology is hard, but because gathering such data in a law firm culture is.  But the challenges and obstacles are far from insurmountable - I'll dedicate my next blog post to this.

The Secret of CRM Success in a Law Firm

Guest Post by William A. Smith

Fifteen years ago, if you asked someone at a law firm  what  is “CRM”  the responses could have been anything from a blank stare to  “isn’t that what our eyes do when you’re in a really deep sleep?” Today, client relationship management has become an integral and vital part of business organizations. Whether a law firm, technology company, or retail conglomerate, the ability to understand the value of your client/customer relationships-- who your clients are, how  the clients view you, benchmarking and monetizing the  value of those relationships-- has become a
core part of business management.

When I was child, my father would always say “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  That axiom is true in life, politics and business. It is the very heart of social networking. Businesses have recognized the value of this “who knows whom” paradigm, going as far to seek out and develop technology solutions to help define:

• what makes a suspect
• what turns it into a  prospect
• how to develop it into a customer/client, and most importantly,
• how to retain the customer/client.

There are numerous success stories out there where companies have experienced market share and revenue growth by utilizing this “business intelligence.”  Client relationship management(CRM) technology has enabled organizations to develop the key performance indicators and marketing strategies that speak to their sweet spots  and answers the question “how does our marketing investment  translate into revenue?”

So why do law firms have such a hard time with CRM technology?  You would think that it would be a perfect fit –a business model that leverages relationships, and a technology solution that helps to sort it all. Regardless of the brand of CRM, most firms have a love- hate relationship with their CRM platform. Love the concept, hate the execution. 

On one hand, today’s firms are much more techno-savvy than just a few years ago-- better  equipped to handle new technologies that seem to spring up daily. They are also better at understanding the concept of integrating systems and knowledge management—leveraging the information in proposal systems, experience databases, time and billing systems and personal information systems.

But on the other hand, the cleanliness of concept crashes head-on into the chaos of implementation. In general, a CRM platform’s greatest strength is also one of its greatest challenges. These systems can be quite flexible, integrating with other enterprise systems to the point where  implementation and maintenance can be quite a handful. Typically CRM systems do not act like a “normal” database. The data is constantly changing and updating (minute by minute) due to user interaction, and if it integrates with other systems (HR and experience databases, time and billing, proposal centers, etc.), it is not only communicating with those other systems but, in a perfect world, it might even update or be updated by those other systems.  

Ok, so if these platforms can do everything except make frozen margaritas, why aren’t they being used to their full potential?    CRM platforms tend to much more flexible than the environments in which they are placed. Face it --- you have one platform that can talk to time and billing, HR, email, Internet, intranet, and with the right tools can even send and manage its own e-communications.  All of these individual systems have their own individual experts.  If a firm is lucky enough to have someone with CRM system background, that person often does not have expertise in those other aforementioned areas.

Technical teams are not “marketing-y” enough and marketing staffs are not sufficiently “techie.”  In other words,  an IT department may have the expertise to keep all of the firm systems up running as well as application/reports development, but they are not going to have the resources available to focus solely on the needs and nuances of a CRM system —reports, KPI, user acceptance,  workflow, etc.  Marketing may have unique expertise in the “use cases” and managing the CRM system, but often they will have no knowledge of the platform’s impact on the firm’s other resources and bandwidth, let alone any challenges with system integration and data management/analysis.

And let’s not forget about the attorneys. They want client information, market intelligence and any other data that will translate into billable hours or bring in the next big client and matter.

Each group is concerned about doing what they need to do—attorneys are about attorneying, marketers are about marketing and  IT is about IT-ing. However, working in these separate silos illustrates a weakness in the business intelligence game plan.  If these groups cannot share information, find redundancies and provide common solutions that move the entire enterprise forward, you wind up with bad intelligence, wasted efforts and more problems than solutions.

But there is an untapped resource available to firms—if developed and utilized it can give an organization quite an advantage. Firms that have a person who understands CRM from the technical, marketing, legal and business analyst perspective have the upper hand here. The ideal person (or persons) is someone that understands how CRM works in our legal environment—that has experience benchmarking, managing the project and implementing the CRM solution efficiently and effectively from start to finish.  This is someone who is capable on the technical side; who can walk the IT walk, as well as speak to the end user experience.

In addition this person can provide key business analysis and intelligence rather than just throwing reports over the wall.  Want to know the return on investment of lawyers’ travel and business development meetings, or what practice groups’-client relationships generate the most revenue? Curious about whether your e-communications  are reaching your desired audience? Do those communications strengthen or weaken your bottom line? This person can find those answers.

Unfortunately most firms do not have such a person – they are hard to come by. Typically, there are several people who can provide different bits of information—but rarely do any of them have a single, holistic approach or share the same perspective.  The fact that this person is unique shouldn’t deter firms from having a goal of finding or developing someone with this combination of skills, experience and viewpoint—a valuable resource that could pay dividends for years to come.

William Allen Smith is the former VP-Marketing Information Systems, Walkers Global LLP, and can be reached at wmallensmith@branisonsmith.com or 877-696-3480.

 

Waller: A successful law firm website case study

Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP is a 200-lawyer firm headquartered in Nashville, with offices in Birmingham, AL and Austin, TX.  The work that “Waller” does in the healthcare industry belies its relatively small size.  It is known throughout that industry as the leader, the number-one firm, the “player” in that space.  Every other healthcare practice in America wants to be them.

When the new Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, Mark Greene, was hired in January 2011, he understood that while the firm’s reputation was superior, it wasn’t well known by many outside Nashville and beyond the healthcare industry.  The firm has other important practices and industry teams – it was important to “own” the healthcare strength, but make other areas more prominent as well.

A sophisticated user of technology and a veteran market researcher, Greene hired legal industry leaders to conduct market research, interview clients, design and launch a new positioning strategy and brand, and design and build a new website as the centerpiece of the brand launch.  The former website had little visual appeal, was overly generic and didn’t establish the firm as a market leader in any sector or industry. 

All the research culminated in a unique positioning strategy that supported all practice and industry teams in the firm, and built on the essence of what makes Waller extraordinary:

You’ve no doubt heard it said, or even said yourself, that nobody looks for a law firm—they look for a lawyer. Well, we like to think we’ve turned that around.

Just look at how many clients come to us for one reason, stay with us for something completely different, then do the same thing time and time again. True, these clients probably came to us with a specific lawyer or practice in mind, but that doesn’t really account for the longevity or depth of our relationships.

It’s not just the quality of the work we do. It’s how we go about it. We have all the experience and intellectual firepower you’d expect from a firm of our stature, but the feel is different. Clients say we’re more responsive, we understand their stresses. We make their issues our issues, their fights our fights. This could be why we rarely lose a client, and why so many engage an extraordinary number of our practice groups.

At Waller the atmosphere is comfortable, the people good-natured, easy-going. There’s a contagious quiet confidence—a feeling that no matter how complex the deal or fierce the litigation, these are people who can be formidable, who can deliver the results, yet still keep a sense of humor. It comes as no surprise that clients like the way they’re treated, and feel their treatment transcends any one attorney.

In other words, they come here for a lawyer, but they stay here for the firm.

Given this positioning and brand strategy, the challenges for the website were:

1. How do you demonstrate industry depth and experience and, at the same time, humanize the lawyers so they seem accessible?
2. How could Waller distinguish itself among other healthcare-strong law firms?
3. How does Waller ensure that the non-healthcare practices and industries have equal opportunity on the website?
4. How can the lawyers’ bios reflect their individuality, yet reinforce that they are an integral part of a firm and a team?
5. How does Waller prove its depth, reach and drive?
6. What can Waller offer healthcare clients and prospects that will be unique?
7. How can Waller leverage the social media and blog content – ensuring a 360-degree online strategy?
8. Finally, how do we build a site that is flexible, robust and that can grow with the firm as it grows and expands?

We designed and launched a website that answered these questions in the following ways:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Balancing industry/practice depth/distinction and personality is critical in a two-dimensional medium.  Buyers of legal services want to know three things when they come to a law firm website: what you have done, for whom you have done it, and what you can do for me.  Firms must answer these questions to keep a visitor on the site – they’re table stakes for making the short list of credible providers of the services they need. 
   
   But research shows that when they are selecting the one law firm with which to work, they are making an emotional decision, and that requires that the site effectively communicate the answer to “why us, of all the credible providers?” That’s where brand positioning is crucial. We must communicate who we are as people, not just what we are as a firm.  The site must communicate the brand as a compelling reason to choose this firm from the list of credible providers.
   
   The Waller industry, service and bio pages are infused with specific experience that answers those three expertise questions. An experience database will soon be populating the site, ensuring that the experience feeds are fresh and relevant (and easing the burden of the small team of marketers). 
   
   The lawyer bios have a flexible tab structure, where lawyers can choose the tabs they want to appear – tabs that will spotlight their specific interests and strengths.  In addition, many lawyers have an “Up Close” tab, which highlights pro bono work, personal commitments to
   charities and civic pursuits, or hobbies and other diversions.
   
   
2. The healthcare industry section of the website is broken out into 15 sub-practices, proving the depth and diversity of their strengths.  These range from dialysis and urgent care, dental and orthodontics, healthcare REITS and life sciences, and much more.  Any industry executive would see this list and immediately recognize substance.
   
   Healthcare services (the practice areas) has 13 sub-groups under it, including commercial finance, compliance and operations, M&A, real estate, securities and tax, litigation and patient privacy, plus other areas that are vital to the successful running of healthcare organizations.
   
   
3. Because the site is broken down into industries and services, other industry teams are featured in ways that are important to Waller.  Eight non-healthcare industries are presented, plus eight service areas that each have several sub-groups.
   
   
4. The bio photography is fresh and “environmental,” suggesting that these lawyers are nice, accessible people.  In addition, all lawyers have included their assistants’ names and contact information on their bios.  As mentioned before, lawyers personalize their own bios with what makes them unique – their experience, involvement and passions outside the office.
   
   
5. Drive is hard to prove in this medium, but we believe that showing depth and diversity of experience is the best way to show it.  In addition, the home page features and rotates case studies and photography that prove that Waller isn’t your average law firm with a few lawyers who do a little of this and that.
   
   
6. One of the most unique visitor benefits of the home page is “Market Intelligence.”  This is a live feed of industry intelligence from ShiftCentral (www.shiftcentral.com).  Visitors type words or phrases in this predictive or type-ahead search box and results immediately appear.  Waller offers this sophisticated tool free to its visitors – and it’s never before appeared on a law firm website.
   
   
7. A 360-degree content strategy is a centerpiece of Waller’s business development strategy. This ensures that up-to-the-minute blog content is fed into the News/Events section of the website (with a link available from the home page).  Waller also feeds offline content – lawyer speeches, event appearances, webinar participation and print – to its online content and vice versa.
   
   
8. Waller chose Content Pilot as its technology provider for its “evergreen” approach to technology maintenance, among other reasons.  Through its planned maintenance and service program, Content Pilot ensures that its platform is as current post-launch as it was at launch.  New web features and functionality will be considered by the firm as long as it fits into the Waller strategy.  Waller will never hear, “You need to buy the new version of our product if you want to do that.”

Measureable Results

The Waller marketing and business development team regularly monitors traffic patterns and visitor analytics.  For the one-month period August 18 – September 17, 2011, the former website had total site visits of 6,096.  One-year later, the new site during the same period had 9,949 visits – a 62% increase. Nearly 44% of the visits were from returning visitors – a remarkably high percentage when compared to other law firm websites.  Three-plus pages were viewed by each visitor on average during this period.

The high visitor engagement demonstrated by these numbers is a direct testament that Waller’s positioning strategy “Come for the lawyer, stay for the firm” is spot-on.

Waller Website Team - Internal

• Mark Greene, Ph.D., CMBDO
• Kathy Phelps, Director, Marketing Operations
• Aimee Moore, Design Specialist
• Mike Moss, Webmaster
• Rebecca Howald, Director, Practice Group Business Development
• Vikki Carter, Director, Healthcare Business Development
• Scott Manners, Manager, Healthcare Business Development
• Ruth Freeland, Manager, Practice Group Business Development 
• Lesley Kibler, Market Intelligence Manager

Waller Website Team - External

• Allison Market Research
• Right Hat Design
• Content Pilot LLC

CMO or Super Hero? (Guest blog post by Aleisha Gravit)

One of my favorite blogs, 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, originally posted this on September 25, 2012.  It was posted by one of my favorite bloggers, Toby Brown (one of the 3 Geeks and the Director of Pricing and Analytics at Akin Gump) and written by one of my favorite legal  industry marketers, Aleisha Gravit (Chief Client Services and Marketing Officer at Akin Gump). 

Aleisha's post is inspired by a recent Deloitte article entitled, "From Mad Man to Super Woman."  It is worth reading for any professional services marketer (male or female) or anyone considering professional services as a career path.  The one strange feature is that it is focused on the "super woman."  As Aleisha points out, it is a misplaced generalization.

        By Aleisha Gravit

My friend and colleague Jennifer Manton, CMO at Loeb & Loeb, shared with me a great article, ublished by Deloitte Review, titled “From Mad Man to Superwoman: The inevitable rise of the chief marketing officer in the age of the empowered customer.” I am still scratching my head about the reference to Superwoman because, while maybe once dominated by females, that is no longer the case - especially in the legal industry. Maybe Superhero would have been a better analogy.

The article discusses the evolution of marketing and the CMO and how the rise in the role of the customer impacts the marketing ecosystem.  The article resonated with me because my role has evolved significantly over the last few years as a result of clients becoming more selective in their purchases of legal services and demanding more from the relationship with their outside counsel. Philip Kotler, an influential marketing educator, said, "Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value."

The article really got me thinking about the law firm CMO and how the role is evolving.  Regardless of how one defines value, for the CMO of today and tomorrow, it comes down to metrics, analytics and critical thinking—core elements of any strategy.  There is a great reference in the article to CMOs gaining credibility “not by touting taglines, but by crunching numbers.”  I love this because I have always preferred to work with something tangible as opposed to ethereal.

Consider a book: the raw data/metrics are just words on the page.  Only when you begin to analyze them by looking for trends, outliers, gaps, etc, do they come alive and provide context for what is/might be occurring in the story/client relationship.  The data provides a backdrop to engage in conversations with lawyers and clients alike about the overall relationship; where, and if, it needs improving; and how to accomplish that in a mutually beneficial manner.  That’s adding value.

Are we on the verge of change in how the marketing ecosystem works within law firms?  Will firms and CMOs alike seek out more differentiation between traditional marcom and strategy?   Only time will tell. 

How law firms can grow revenue in a more client-friendly way

In a catch up conversation with Ed Schecter this morning, we discussed a subject about which we are both passionate:  how law firms can strategically grow revenue.  This isn’t a new conversation at all.  In fact, it’s a tired one that we’ve both had countless times in our careers.  The economy is slowing and mid-sized and global law firms in the U.S. and abroad are feeling it.  Double-digit revenue increases and profit margin upswings are unlikely over the next unpredictable number of months.

But firm leaders are still buoyed by the possibility of revenue generation above and beyond what they reported last year.  Here is a quick rundown of the most popular options you have available:

1. Work harder
2. Raise hourly rates
3. Improve client relationship management so you are mining all the opportunities at existing clients (a/k/a/ form client teams)
4. Hire laterals with large, portable books of business
5. Conduct business development training
6. Shed practices that are producing lower margin work
7. Shed lawyers and staff
8. Reduce overhead with wholesale cost-cutting
9. Merge and/or acquire

But for #3 above, there is no mention of clients – the very people that partners are hoping will write bigger checks to their firms.  And, other than mergers and acquisitions, there is nothing very strategic about most of these approaches, even though most mid-sized and global firms have all of them in their quivers – and at any given time, have embraced every one of these tactics as the solution to declining or flat firm revenues.

Here is one initiative that is not on the list. It is strategic, has significant revenue generation potential and can effectively influence all of the nine opportunities above.  It’s an initiative that marries people, process and technology and focuses all the attention and effort around two things:  saving lawyers time and making them more money.

(For several years, I have described what I do in that very nutshell.)

It’s a fact that the requests for proposals (RFPs), RFIs, pitches and other materials have skyrocketed in the last four years.   Marketing and business development professionals estimate the increase as four to five times higher today than in 2008.   As a result, AmLaw 100 and 200 firms are taking a fresh look at how they respond to the volume, the demand for different types of information, and practically, how it gets out the door to the prospect or client.

Proposal center and experience management projects are typically initiated by the marketing/BD/proposal team, yet often controlled (management and budget) by the IT department who are, arguably, the most removed from the buyers of legal services and the lawyers who hope to serve them.)  Consequently, these project planning sessions are too often focused on the tactical features and functionality that a particular proposal writer or business development manager wants, rather than a strategic discussion about how the firm can compete better, improve its service delivery, get closer to clients and win more often.

How does knowing what buyers of legal services want from their lawyers influence the proposal center and experience management planning process?  Consider this:

1.  Content is the most critical aspect of any proposal.  How compelling and relevant is your content around legal project management in the M&A industry, for example?  And how does it differ from your LPM content for patent litigation?  Clients say they want LPM because it has the potential of streamlining workflow, creating efficiencies and saving them money.  How are you responding to this requirement, and anticipating their next one?

2.  Experience is the most vital subset of content, but most firms struggle with how to find it, parse and sort it, and package it.  Given that buyers of legal services want to know what you’ve done, for whom you’ve done it and what you can ultimately do for them, having ready and easy access to the most germane experience should be your top priority.  In an earlier blog post, I noted that the ownership of experience management has moved from the IT department up through the firm and is now on the desks of your executive committee members.  Effectively gathering, managing, manipulating, leveraging, overseeing and packaging lawyers’ experience is one of the most strategic and client-friendly things you can do, and it will increase revenue over time. 

3.  The proposal template has significantly evolved over the last five years from a simple firm-logo-in-the-header Word document to a complex, magazine-style PowerPoint or Word document that presents the firm’s material in a graphically pleasing, visually striking way. The firm’s branding is assured, and the firm is differentiated simply because many of its competitors are way behind this design curve.  The template is created to best showcase what clients want to know about you. 

4.  Of your X-number of proposals that you’ve submitted since the first of the year, how many have you won?  How many times was your patent litigation team for the pharmaceutical industry featured in proposals that had a China component in the last 12 months?  How many proposals resulted in a formal beauty contest or in-person meeting?  Of those, how many did you win?  When you lost the litigation work to a competitor firm, how many times in the last year did you lose to that firm and that lawyer?  (Don’t you think that lawyer would be an ideal lateral candidate?  You can calculate with some certainty the dollar-amount of the business you’ve lost to him.)  Why did you lose?  When you won, why did your competitors lose – what was it they did that you should know?  (If you conduct a formal win debrief, your clients will tell you.)

If you can’t answer these questions within seconds (yes, seconds), take a step back and view your proposal center/experience management people, processes and technologies more strategically.  Every answer to every question is business intelligence that you can use to craft smarter responses that can drive future revenue.

These are just four aspects of a comprehensive proposal and experience management solution that are designed around your revenue and growth goals, and making your firm more client-friendly; but, there are many others.  Such are the planning conversations (among others) that should dictate features and functionality, and guide the design of your tools and processes.