Law Firm 4.0 Blog

Richard Hsu - a master communicator who happens to be a lawyer

I just read Richard Hsu's blog post about Life Sciences Collaboration Agreements. You might wonder why my usual interests in marketing and technology (or food/wine) are veering in that direction. When you watch his presentation, you'll know why. Watch the one with the music (the music Apple used to introduce the MacIntosh). I first blogged about him on January 25th, when I read and embraced his description of "strategy."

Everyone has heard the pejorative phrase "death by PowerPoint." If you want a great example of how a presentation about a substantive area of law should be done, take five minutes and watch this.

Prezi, the program he used, makes compelling presentations much easier, by the way. It's worth stepping away from your Microsoft tools and giving this a try. This is how Richard Hsu describes himself - I'm certain he's a lawyer who is sought after:

Richard Hsu is a Silicon Valley Technology Lawyer who believes we are so overloaded with information that if you cannot be brutally pithy and honest, it won't get read. Even though I spend most of my time negotiating complex licenses and wrestling with thorny technology issues, I want to use that experience to provide --hopefully-- useful information which can be summarized on no more than ONE PAGE.

And he concludes his "bio" with this quote:

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein

Attorney business development: Here's proof - it's all about face time.

In my last post, I wrote about metrics and reports you can create to get your arms around the value of various forms of attorney business development. My post prompted a phone call from the President of a leading training company, where we discussed digging deeper into these business development metrics.

He has worked with law firm partners and tracked their business development activities and success since 1988. With more than 16,000 data points in his database, his company tracked partners' marketing and business development time (as lawyers reported it) as follows:

1. Creating visibility
2. Gathering market intelligence
3. Face time with clients and prospects in targeted business development activities.

The findings are staggering: Among all the 16,000 partners tracked, the average of all partner face time is only 30 hours per year. The median is 21 hours per year, less than one hour every two weeks. I think if law firm partners realized they were spending so little time face-to-face with clients and prospects, they'd be startled - and perhaps, embarrassed.

The next step, this consultant said, is to "Measure face time as an accounting code by client/prospect and by lawyer." You will be able to track the in-person touchpoints for your clients and prospects, as well as determine how well your partners are doing.

He continues, "There is a direct correlation for those firms that have this as an accounting code to greater revenue growth. Where firms were spending 80% of their time on non-face time activities (numbers 1 and 2 above), it has now shifted to 80% of their time focused face-to-face." He mentioned two firms that have created accounting codes for this, and noted their revenue increases. I hope to interview one or both of them for a future post.

It can also be tied directly to new clients and matters, so the often-elusive return on investment is palpable.

Finally, he said, "This is a trust-based business development model." I like it because it's the most real - the most authentic.

How valuable is each hour of attorney business development time? The answer: It depends.

Last month I attended a panel workshop called “Building Reporting: Marketing and Business Development Metrics” at the 2012 Marketing Partner Forum in Miami. Presenters were Steve Bell, Chief Client Development Officer, Womble Carlyle, Adam Severson, (then) Director of Business Development & Marketing at Faegre (and now Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer at Baker Donelson), Jim Stapleton, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Littler (and panel moderator) and Silvia Hodges, Principal, Silvia Hodges LLC and Adjunct Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law.

I wanted to learn more about what Jim Stapleton had done at a previous law firm, so I interviewed him this week. Not every firm will embrace what Jim’s firm did, but I think it’s revealing in a way that could incite altered behaviors – and ultimately, altered outcomes. That’s why I’m sharing it here.

First, Stapleton's firm took a nine-month look at thousands of data entries logged by partners in the time and billing system that were flagged as “business development.” He created a matrix where the X-axis was Business Development Hours and the Y-axis was Dollars--Originations that accrued as a result during the nine-month period of time. Then he plotted the partners in a scatter-dot matrix where each dot represented a partner's activities.

Interestingly, Jim says, “If you looked at the graph – fifty hours v. 250 hours – you could credibly say that the amount of time a lawyer spends doesn’t correlate to revenue growth. For many lawyers, there wasn’t much difference in the size of their originations – regardless if they spent fifty hours or 250. Unfortunately, if they were inclined, lawyers could use that as an excuse not to invest more time.”

To discourage lawyers from using this as justification for not engaging in business development, the firm further dissected and divided the thousands of hours into five major categories of “time” and then attached a “value” to them. The value was based on the likelihood of resulting in new revenue.

1. Time spent with current clients not doing legal work, but trying to understand their issues and help the client in new ways (not on the matters or areas for which they were originally hired).
2. Chasing prospects – specific targeting of specific prospects, including RFPs and proposals.
3. Trying to develop a referral base – lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, etc. Note that this included time spent by lawyers who developed a referral base inside the firm, as well.
4. Passive marketing activities – writing articles, giving speeches, public relations, general networking, updating your website, etc.
5. Marketing administration – internal firm management relating to marketing and BD, such as attending meetings.

I have ordered these five categories in their value order.

Stapleton’s firm then broke it down further into (a) direct targeting time v. (b) non-targeted time. They determined that the ideal amount of time spent by a lawyer directly pursuing individual clients, prospects and referral sources was 70-80%, with the balance devoted to building lawyers’ personal brands.

Stapleton’s analysis led the firm to two important conclusions.

1. It stands to reason that if lawyers go out and do something, they will get higher revenue than if they do nothing. It sounds overly simple, but if all partners engaged in business development in one or more of the five areas, firm revenue will grow.
   
2. Certain kinds of activities produce greater results. We all assume this, but that has never been enough of a prod for lawyers to actually focus only on the highest value activities. With proof in hand, Stapleton could coach individual lawyers in more meaningful ways. He said, “I met with them and took every feasible step to improve attorneys’ business development success. We had conversations around relationship management, client service, timeliness, communication skills, work quality, managing leads, developing a personal brand, and more. All the things that are included in the highest value categories.”

So, what was the success of analyzing the business development activities in these ways? Over four years, this AmLaw 200 firm experienced significant growth in its Revenue per Lawyer and its Profits Per Partner. And remember that this included the recession years of 2009-2010.

Given lawyers' predilection for proof and precedent, this analysis should provide a jumping-off point for future conversations/coaching about business development and the results you hope to achieve.

What law firms can learn from my wonderful experience at Davio's in Philadelphia.

For the second year in a row, I spent Valentine's Day in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. (Appropriate enough on this holiday where "love" is front and center.) And, for the second year in a row, I had dinner at Davio's.

Davio's is billed as a Northern Italian Steakhouse. Last year, I sat at the bar alone having dinner. Given that devoted couples were surrounding me, I felt a bit like I had a giant "L" in the middle of my forehead. But the bartender - and the patrons at the bar - were welcoming, warm and fun.

First point I want to make to law firms: Davio's was certainly defined by its great food and service. But it was also defined by its clientele - not a snooty person in the bunch. How is your firm defined by your clients? Do they represent the best of your firm?

That was last year. For Valentine's Day 2012, I invited a Philadelphia friend, Cheryl Disch, to join me (I was still worried about the "L" carrying over from last year). We sat at the bar, and we agreed it was one of the finest experiences we've had in a long time.

What made it great? Here is a list:

1. I ordered a Pinot Noir and the bartender said that the Merlot was a part of Happy Hour and he thought I might enjoy it. I was game, so he helped me save $10 for each glass of wine I ordered.
2. He brought a signature appetizer as a thank-you for being there (much more generous than the typical amuse bouche) - the Philly Cheese Steak Spring Rolls - Davio's is known for them. They are as extraordinary as they sound.
3. My friend arrived and another bar server recommended a different type of calamari than what she first ordered - giving her another option. She chose what he suggested and was thrilled with it.
4. We lingered a long time - much longer than the loving couples - talking over wine and dinner. They checked on us in a courteous way, but we never felt prodded or rushed.
5. Before our check arrived, we were each given a long-stemmed red rose and a cellophane bag of fresh delights, such as chocolate-dipped strawberries, biscotti and more. It was probably clear that we were business friends, not a "couple" in the Valentine sense of the word, but we appreciated the restaurant's attention and generosity just the same.
6. Then, our check was presented. We turned to each other and were stunned at how reasonable our bill was. My friend double-checked it to ensure all our selections were represented.

What else can law firms learn from our experience?

1. Corporate counsel always say they hate surprises. No, they don't - they just hate the bad kind. Surprise your clients with the service-equivalent of an amuse bouche or lower-priced Merlot (which was excellent, by the way).
2. Surprise your clients by submitting an invoice that is lower than your clients expect. It's not that hard.
3. Be sensitive to the pace of your clients - don't impose your Type-A impatience or Type-B laissez-faire tempo on your relationship. Adapt to their styles and speed.
4. Whether your clients are internal or external, ensure that the experience they have with you is positive start-to-finish. One of my favorite quotes about the lawyer-client relationship was by a general counsel of the European arm of a Fortune 100 company. He said, "My lawyers commit little acts of murder every day."
   
   What does that mean? Unmet expectations, missed deadlines, unreturned phone calls, and otherwise a series of relationship disappointments.
   
   Don't do that.

Last week I blogged about my disappointing experience at Del Frisco's in New York. It's a pleasure to share this Davio's story with you.

What is the dollar cost of directory referrals to your law firm website? And are the visitors worth it?

Senior marketers have been questioning the value of Martindale-Hubbell listings with increasingly loud and passionate voices. For AmLaw 100 and 200 firms, the cost ranges from a bare-bones listing in the $20,000-40,000 range to a comprehensive contract that costs well into the six-figures. And many firms have eliminated it altogether, saying “Enough is enough.” In fact, in a meeting in Houston last Friday, an AmLaw 200 executive director said, "nearly everyone on my ALA listserve across the country have dropped Martindale."

Martindale costs serious money, and it’s no wonder that the skepticism of marketers about return on investment is mounting. Martindale has never done a good job of aligning its offerings with the changing face of legal marketing and business development – especially for large firms. (As an aside, it recently eliminated the most popular and successful large firm program, Counsel to Counsel, because, I was told, Martindale executives are "focused on small law." More on this development in another post.)

Interestingly, when Chambers and Partners fully entered the U.S. market with its directory last decade, it had credibility out of the box. (According to its website, Chambers has been researching the U.S. legal market since 1999, but the U.S. directory followed later.) Because of Chambers’ solid methodology, numerous interviews with buyers of legal services about lawyers, practice groups and law firms that started in the U.K. in 1989, senior marketers and law firm management of U.S.-headquartered global firms approved the Chambers’ expenditures (and enormous investments of time each year by the marketing team - time commitments that are amebically growing) – almost without a second thought.

Last month, I participated in an American Lawyer Media webinar moderated by Elizabeth Lampert about the value of surveys, directories and rankings, which included speakers from Chambers, Best Lawyers and Morrison & Foerster. My part in the webinar was to give the corporate counsel perspective, and answer the question, “Do corporate counsel pay attention to these rankings and use the directories?”

In our world of business, we understand the rules of supply and demand. When there is market and client demand, it’s good to increase the supply of services to meet that demand. It’s a simple maxim. We now have a supply of 150 to 450 (or more) annual law firm surveys and rankings. Mine isn’t a perfect list (on the low end of that range), but I counted 38 experience or practice-based rankings, 17 lawyer rankings and directories, and 90 surveys sponsored by magazines, publications, the NLJ, ALA, ABA, NALP, Corporate Board Member and many other organizations.

What demand suggested that we needed this blizzard of statistics? A need by clients for more information? More transparency? Or do they actually cloud the true picture of a firm?

Of these 150-plus rankings and surveys, I am told by marketers that Amlaw 100-200 firms respond to an average of 25-50 requests each year. These include surveys measuring substantive experience like the Thomson League Tables and American Lawyer, feel-good surveys such as Best Places to Work and Working Mother magazine type submissions – practice and lawyer elevating ones, such as Chambers, Best Lawyers and SuperLawyers – and that is just scratching the surface.

What good are they to the law firm? At the Marketing Partner Forum last month in Miami, one leading consultant posed to the audience, “What’s the ROI on this investment of money and time on all these surveys and rankings?”

And I ask:

• Do they boost the reputation of the firm in the eyes of clients?
• Do they attract new business from prospects?
• Do they grow revenue or increase profits?

Firms typically have two diverging approaches to the individual lawyer rankings: “We will build a campaign around it and ensure that as many lawyers as possible are noticed and ranked.” Or, “Hell no – it’s frivolous and not worth the paper they’re written on.”

Most firms fall in the middle – choosing those that best elevate core practices and boost the reputations of top lawyers.

Can anyone reading this post claim that the Martindale, Chambers and other surveys and rankings have driven new clients to your firm? Or that a prospect chose your firm over another one because you had a top ranking and they didn’t? (Please post a comment if you have such a story to tell.) Note that I am not including the Thomson League Tables reporting here - I think buyers of legal services of those financial transactions do pay attention to those lists.

Ask yourself this: Do your clients and prospects read your website press releases about your 40+ lawyers ranked in this directory or that? Your website analytics will reveal how often those pages have been visited and you may be able to tell how long your visitors lingered on those pages.

How far is the divide between what lawyers want when it comes to rankings - and what buyers of legal services care about?

I first asked the questions of corporate counsel in 2007, when I interviewed more than 60 counsel in global companies around the world about how they use law firm websites. I specifically asked whether they use Martindale, Chambers and other rankings in evaluating outside counsel.

Then I asked “Do you notice law firm posts about rankings on their websites?”

In the 2007 survey, corporate counsel were using Martindale occasionally to evaluate firms and find new ones in new cities or regions where they hadn’t done business before, but no respondents said they used Chambers to find or evaluate counsel. Since 2007, conversations and interviews have suggested that after these in-house lawyers have created their short list of lawyers or firms, they may validate the referrals or seek supplemental information from Martindale and Chambers, in particular. But they also seek it from the law firm website, a Google search and LinkedIn.

In the last four years, I have had three-dozen or more discussions with corporate counsel about how they use law firm websites and what they notice on the home pages, lawyer bios and practice pages. Chambers is getting noticed only incrementally more and no one has ever mentioned Best Lawyers.

Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan LLP wanted to test the referral traffic from these three directories to their website so the marketers could make smarter investment decisions – Sutherland wanted to know, are these directories producing any tangible return? Andrea Christman, Director of Communications, ran a calculation (that she calls “unscientific,” but in my view, it’s directionally correct) of the total cost of the directory listings divided by the number of visitors referred during calendar year 2011. This resulted in a cost per website visitor (or RFI - Referrals from Investment - instead of ROI). Then she determined the cost for each ten seconds that visitors spend on the Sutherland site based on how many total minutes they stayed on the site.

I have always said that Martindale is consistently a high referrer of qualified traffic to law firm websites – even AmLaw 100-200 firms. Read my January 4, 2010 blog post called, “The Efficacy of Martindale.com as a Referrer to your Website.”

Christman found this to be true. Martindale’s per visitor cost to the firm was $12 and the cost per ten seconds of page-viewing cost the firm 52 cents.

The per visitor cost of Best Lawyers and Best Law Firms was $61 and $5.00 per ten seconds.

And the per visitor cost of Chambers was $538 and $17 per ten seconds.

Interestingly, the Martindale visitor stayed on Sutherland.com 2.8 times longer than the Google-referred visitor, and the Chambers-referred visitor spent almost 5 times longer on the site than Google.

Sutherland now has one more metric on which to evaluate its directory investments beyond what corporate counsel have said in interviews.

Any ROI calculation should be weighed against the political and cultural preferences of your partners, your reputation management goals and other factors that have nothing to do with ROI. But if you want to answer the simple question, “What are we getting for our investment of money and time?” – You now have one way of getting to a simple answer.

Mobile apps or mobile websites: What's a law firm to do??

When my company, Content Pilot, last conducted the AmLaw 100 Websites: Ten Foundational Best Practices research in Q2-3 2010, there were only four of the country's largest law firms that had mobile apps.  A few more had mobile websites, which were typically poorly designed, bare-bones renditions of their big site.  (Learn more about the Ten Foundational Best Practices by keyword searching on this blog.)

We will conduct the research again this summer, and I expect we'll see more of both.  (More on our upcoming research study and the findings about mobility and the other Foundational Best Practices later.)

Jakob Nielsen, the Internet expert on usability, writes in today's Alertbox: 

"Mobile apps currently have better usability than mobile sites, but forthcoming changes will eventually make a mobile site the superior strategy."

On its face, this is great news for law firms, which don't have the multi-million dollar Internet marketing budgets like major corporations.  The skeletal apps that we first saw from law firms had budgets estimated at $30,000 - 75,000.  I wonder if those firms think they got their money's worth - other than being among the first to bring "cool" to market.  As app development and expectations for user experience have matured, that cost is going higher and higher.  Remember, one app doesn't fit all devices - if you want your app to reach everyone, you need to design it for iPhones, Androids, BlackBerrys, and all forms of tablets (iPad, Kindle Fire, Samsung, etc.). 

If your law firm has an actual application that it wants to push to buyers of legal services, design an app.  If you simply want visitors to have a great experience with your website on a mobile device, then design a highly usable mobile website.

Nielsen says that today, apps perform better in usability testing:

"As of this writing, there's no contest: ship mobile apps if you can afford it. Our usability studies with mobile devices clearly show that users perform better with apps than with mobile sites. (Mobile sites have higher measured usability than desktop sites when used on a phone, but mobile apps score even higher.)

The empirical data is really all you need to know. It's a fact that apps beat mobile sites in testing."

Nielsen continues though, and says:

"In the future, the cost-benefit tradeoff for apps vs. mobile sites will change.

Although I just said that computers will become 100 times more powerful, this doesn't necessarily mean that the iPhone 14 will be 100 times faster than the iPhone 4S. It's more likely that hardware advances will be split between speed and other mobile priorities, especially battery lifetime. So, a future phone might be only 10 times faster (but will be thinner, lighter, and able to run much longer between charges), whereas download times will be cut by a factor 57.

The expense of mobile apps will increase because there will be more platforms to develop for. At a minimum, you'll have to support Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Furthermore, many of these platforms will likely fork into multiple subplatforms that require different apps for a decent user experience."

Jakob Nielsen advocates up to three mobile websites for optimal usability - one each for Smart Phones, mid-sized tablets and for larger tablets.

"It's only realistic to expect even further UI diversity in the future. This will make it extremely expensive to ship mobile apps.

In contrast, mobile sites will retain some cross-platform capabilities, so you won't need as many different designs. High-end sites will need 3 mobile designs to target phones, mid-sized tablets (like Kindle Fire), and big tablets. Using ideas like responsive design will let you adapt each of these site versions to a range of screen sizes and capabilities. The same basic UI design will work for both a 6.8-inch tablet and a 7.5-inch tablet if you simply shrink or stretch things a bit. (A 5-inch phone would require a different design, with fewer features and abbreviated content.)"

So - today, my advice to law firms that want to optimize access of their websites and can afford to invest in mobility is to design the best mobile website for the highest used devices.  According to the website analytics that we follow, iPhones and iPads are still a low percentage of visitors to law firm websites.  But those visitors have steadily increased, and we believe this traffic will grow exponentially.  So - design mobile sites for Smart Phones and large tablets.

For law firms that don't have Internet mobility locked into your budget, then ensure that your current website is "mobile friendly."  Every website launched today should, at a minimum, be designed for easy access on a mobile device.

A final piece of advice about mobile website design:  Don't let a developer take your current desktop site and simply scale it back.  Those sites are typically ugly, don't perform well or deliver what visitors want, and developers are not invested in what buyers of legal services are looking for from your firm.  Hire a designer who understands buyer behavior and the plusses and minuses of website mobility and user experience.

 

What law firms can learn from my disappointing experience at Del Frisco's in New York.

I met LMA friends after work at Del Frisco's last week in New York.  It appeared that most of Manhattan was in the tight surroundings - we were elbow-to-elbow and four or five rows of people back from the bar.  Patience and a booming voice were required.

That isn't the lesson for today's post, though.

We sat down for dinner and I wanted something lighter than traditional steakhouse fare.  I asked our server if I could have a wedge salad cut up with a tenderloin steak sliced on top.  (I convinced myself that this was indeed "daintier.")  Our server paused and said, "Hmmm, I don't know if we can do that.  I don't think the chef will do that."  So I asked her to visit with him about it. 

She never returned with a report from the kitchen, and when we next saw her, she placed a full wedge on one plate and a steak on another plate in front of me - with no reference to my original request.  Here is how I saw this:

1. The chef was too busy or too rigid to take two standard menu items and combine them to make a patron happy.
2. The server had no power or authority to make me happy while she was taking our orders. I can think of countless restaurants where servers would say, "Of course! My pleasure."
3. She forgot to report in about the unsatisfactory conversation in the kitchen, or was embarrassed that she had no power and that he was so unaccommodating.  He, in fact, made her look bad and she wasn't happy about that.  Our service progressively got worse.
4. The food wasn't that great, especially for the price.
5. I am now blogging about it.

Law firm leaders:  Please embrace a client service culture to such a degree that each partner is empowered and accountable to keep clients happy.  Please instill a culture of flexibility, and nimble thought and action on the spot. This proves that management respects and trusts both its lawyers and its clients.  Please encourage your various departments who serve clients --especially finance and billing, IT and all the secretaries and assistants -- to understand that their job is to serve clients, to help clients feel welcome and special (internal and external clients).

And if clients ask you to change how you do something (think: salad + steak = a steak salad), do what you can to adjust to their requirements and desires.  The pay-off will be immediate satisfaction and ultimately, greater loyalty.

 

 

The strongest law firm brands - a 2012 brand survey by Acritas

"Brand" and "branding" were words that were nearly eliminated from our lexicon during the recession.  A respected stalwart in corporate strategic business planning, law firms, when slicing initiatives and the budgets that supported branding the last two - three years, quickly erased those line items.  There was almost no looking back . . . until now. 

Acritas, a leading legal research company based in Newcastle, England that conducts credible law firm brand research studies, recently released its "U.S. Law Firm Brand Index - 2012."  You can request a copy of the free report by clicking on the link on the Acritas home page. Every law firm wants to be on a list like this, but few firms rise to the top. 

This is the article by Aric Press, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, ALM.  My favorite bottom-line in this post is, "Clients can't hire law firms they haven't heard of."

The Strongest Law Firm Brands in the Land

Posted by Aric Press

Which law firms have the strongest brands in the United States, the world's largest legal market? According to a study released this week by Acritas, the brand research company, Skadden, followed by Jones Day, Kirkland & Ellis, Sidley Austin, and Wachtell, lead the big firm pack.

Acritas compiled its list based on answers to phone interviews with 902 clients, 667 headquartered in the U.S. These are big clients: 58 percent report revenues of at least $1-billion. They answered the following inquiries:

        • What are the first five law firms that come to mind?

        • Which three firms do you feel the most favorable toward?

        • Which firms are you most likely to consider for major M&A work ?

        • Which firms are you most likely to consider for bet-the-company litigation 
            matters?

        • Which firms do you use most for "high value" work?

        • And for overseas clients: which firms do you use most in the U.S.?

Each mention was worth a point on the Acritas ranking except for the top-of-mind question.  On that question firms earned five points for being mentioned first, four for second, etc.  Skadden has the most first mentions—40—followed by Jones Day (24); Sidley (16); Baker & McKenzie (14); Mayer Brown (13) and Hogan Lovells, Kirkland & Ellis, and Sullivan & Cromwell (12).

The fame and favorability rankings were similar but not identical.  On that ranking Jones Day placed first with 45 mentions followed by Skadden (39), Sidley (33), Morgan Lewis (32), Baker & McKenzie (30), DLA Piper and Fulbright & Jaworski (25), Hogan Lovells (24), Kirkland (23), and Gibson, Dunn and Wachtell (22).

A list of the top 25 ranked firms is included at the end of this story.  Acritas is a leading legal research company based in Newcastle, England. Much of its data is collected by phone interviews each year with general counsel and their deputies around the world.  Full disclosure: ALM Legal Intelligence sells the Acritas suite of products in the United States.  Both The American Lawyer and ALM LI are part of ALM Media. For a copy of the Acritas US Brand Index, go to www.acritas.com or request one by email from research@acritas.com

Law firms have brands, the only question is whether they are strong or weak.  That truism is not universally recognized however. "At the most basic level, strong brands have the power to help firms win business, build client loyalty and generate client referrals," says Lisa Hart Shepherd, the chief executive at Acritas. "Why would a law firm ignore an easily accessible aid to securing these important growth factors? Yet so many do so."

Norm Rubenstein, a partner at the Zeughauser Group, specializing in branding and marketing, is another interested party. In his view, clients are "finally objecting to the seeming fungibility of [law firm] marketing and law firms are awakening to the importance of differentiation. Firms that effectively communicate their strengths ultimately can earn the new holy grail: the short-listing advantage of unaided, top-of-mind name awareness." Or, to put it a bit more simply, clients can't hire firms they haven't heard of.

Not all clients are created equal and the Acritas rankings vary a bit based on their size. For instance, among the 122 clients interviewed with revenues greater than $6 billion, the top-of-mind order was: Skadden, Sidley, Kirkland, Gibson,Dunn and Jones Day (tied), Cravath, and Morgan, Lewis.

For all the effort and talk about building national—and international—firms, some old regional differences continued to be seen in the answers. In the western region, for instance, Gibson, Latham & Watkins, and Morrison & Foerster scored the highest, while in the south, three Texas firms—Baker Botts, Fulbright & Jaworski, and Vinson & Elkins—vied with Skadden and Jones Day for most mentions.  And traditional powerhouses showed up in certain practice areas. Most likely to be considered for big-ticket litigation: Skadden, Kirkland, Jones Day, Gibson, and Sidley. Most likely to be considered for major merger and acquisition work: Skadden, Wachtell, Jones Day, Sullivan, and Latham.

The report also underlines, again, the splintered nature of the big firm legal marketplace. The clients were asked to name three firms they’ve used for "high value" work. Together the top five—Skadden, Kirkland, Baker & McKenzie, Jones Day, and Sidley—were mentioned by only 12 percent of the clients.  That leaves a lot of clients to go around, assuming, that is, they know your name.

The Leading US Law Firm Brands 2012

1. Skadden

2. Jones Day

3. Kirkland & Ellis

4. Sidley Austin

5. Wachtell

6. Latham & Watkins

7. Baker & McKenzie

8. Morgan Lewis

9. Gibson Dunn

10. Sullivan & Cromwell

11. DLA Piper

12. Mayer Brown

13. Hogan Lovells

14. Fulbright & Jaworski

15. Cravath

16. Weil Gotshal

17. Baker Botts

18. Shearman & Sterling

19. K&L Gates

20. Vinson & Elkins

21. White & Case

22. Morrison & Foerster

23. Davis Polk

24. Wilmer

25. Simpson Thacher

Experience Management - It's been elevated to mission critical.

I have had more than a dozen conversations with AmLaw 100 and 200 firm leaders starting in Q4 2011 and continuing through January 2012.  They identified cross-selling and revenue growth as their top priorities for 2012.

As resolved as they are about that, they also admitted that they aren’t entirely sure how to increase cross-selling success.  After all, lawyers have tried cross-selling since my first in-house legal marketing position in 1987 (and likely before then) – and at its most successful, it has had tepid results.

We all understand the obstacles to cross-selling.  A well-conceived experience database can’t fix all of them, but done right, it can fix these two age-old complaints:  “I can’t cross-sell, because I don’t know what my partners do.”  Or, they say, “I don’t trust the data.”

One more thing on the minds of managing partners that causes them to lose sleep at night: How can they fully integrate the lateral partners they’ve hired over the last year (read: so they can be profitable as quickly as possible)?  In 2011, we saw 60 law firm mergers, up 54% over 2010.  Every one of the partners who changed firms brought Excel spreadsheets and other documents filled with matters they’ve done, hoping their deals and cases would quickly be incorporated into the new law firm’s experience coffers.  This past January, in less than a two-week period of time, five U.S. mergers were announced.  If we keep up this pace, we’ll have more than 130 mergers this year (source: Altman Weil).

In the short lifetime of these experience management tools, they have gone from being an IT-only project, then they moved to the knowledge management team, then on to the marketing/business development department – and now, to the law firm’s executive office. We hope this means that the project teams will get the resources (people, time, technology) to do them right.

Results from the ILTA Experience Management Survey

To prepare for a January 31, 2012 International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) webinar on experience databases (It’s worth listening to the recording of the entire webinar on the ILTA website - with Lisa Simon and Kathrine Cain, it was excellent. ), we conducted a short survey.  We wanted to know:

• Where are firms in their experience database life cycle? Of 48 respondents, 29% were in the implementation stage, 23% were in each of the planning or maintenance phases, 17% were upgrading/replacing their systems, and 8% were still at the very beginning – thinking about it.
• Will they build it or buy one from an outside vendor? 53% said “Buy” and 45% said, “Build.”  The “Buy” group noted primarily two companies as their vendor, Hubbard One and Content Pilot each received seven votes, two other companies were mentioned once or twice, and several said they were still investigating options or “unsure.”
• With what systems will they integrate?  “Financial” had 70% of the responses, with conflicts and records receiving 23% and 30% respectively. “Other” received a high percentage of responses, and included systems such as CRM, website, ERM, proposal tools, document management systems and HR databases.
• Who is the content owner of your experience database?  Marketing and business development were the two largest groups, scoring 77% and 40% respectively. The IT department only received 4% of the votes and knowledge management (KM) received 6%.

Is this a big firm only initiative?  It doesn’t have to be, but 63% of the respondents were in firms 350 lawyers and larger.  37% were in firms 50 to 349 lawyers.

Your Tool is only as Good as the Content

Given the promotion of experience management from back-office-tactical to strategic, what’s the best way to ensure the trusted nature of your content?  One over-arching answer is to start your planning in the right place.  (That sounds like an over-simplification, but we regularly see firms with messes on their hands because of no strategic understanding of the project and its objectives, and ultimately poor planning, start to launch.) Whether a brand new system, a refresh or upgrade, or just adding new practices – start with these questions:

1. What data gathering processes and workflow already exist? 
2. What data are already accessible in documents or other databases? How clean is it?
3. Who will input new matters and how often?
4. How many fields per matter are too many – and therefore a barrier to entry and use?
5. Post-launch, how much lawyer time will be required for each new matter?
6. Who is the ultimate owner of the database and who will ensure the ongoing efficacy of the data?

Knowing the answers to these questions before you start building the tools is imperative to your successful launch and the ongoing vibrancy of your system.  The answers will dictate your strategy and the choices you make.  After launch, it’s often too late.

I can't stress enough that successful technology implementations are equally about people, process and technologies.  Often in experience database projects, strategy is missing entirely, and people and process get short shrift. 

What’s Next?

Given that it’s taken us a good 10-20 years to get where we are today, what’s next?  All the lawyers and marketers to whom I’ve spoken about this agree that for cross-selling success to improve, lawyers must learn to strike while the iron is hot.  Meaning, when lawyers are with clients and prospects at a conference, at lunch or having a drink, or riding together in a cab and the prospect asks, “Do you have anyone who does XYZ in the software industry?” – the lawyer must be able to facilitate a relevant conversation around that topic.  Right then and there. 

Waiting 24-48 hours for responses to the in-office email, “Does anyone handle XYZ in the software industry?” is not going to grow firm revenue.  The opportunity is long-gone.

Therefore, trusted mobility is next.  Look for a mobile app that integrates with your experience database and that is instantly accessible on your Smart Phone or tablet.  Clients and prospects think this is cool; consequently lawyers will think it’s cool, too.  Learn more about Content Pilot’s mobile app, Velocity™.

I also predict greater investment in these tools by law firms (in people, processes and technologies), and that there will be increased pressure from the top rung of leadership for lawyers to use them.  Hopefully daily.

How would you transform the legal industry?

Ayelette Robinson, Director of Knowledge Technology at Littler Mendelson, did a guest post on the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog a couple days ago asking, "How would you transform the legal industry?"  It got me thinking and I thought I'd carry her idea to my blog and pose it to all of you before you start your weekend. 

Here is her original question and my comment on her post. 

How Would You Transform the Legal Industry?

What resource (technological or not) would you invent to transform the legal industry?

This question isn't about what you think will transform the industry, but rather what you would, if you were all-powerful, create to do so.

Share your thoughts. And don't just step outside the box, get so far away from it that you can barely see it with a telescope.

And here's what I think:

How would I transform the legal industry? At some of the toniest restaurants, the kitchens are entirely open and visible. Patrons see all the chefs scurrying about at a dizzying pace, can peer across some specially designed barrier and watch all sorts of food prep, from searing tuna to whipping foam to garnishing a plate.

We have talked around transparency the last few years - buyers of legal services clamor for it. I envision a law firm set up like this kitchen - an entirely open environment, where clients enter the law firm space, work side by side with their lawyers, share resources, experience and intelligence.  Technology projects, at their heart, would be about openness and collaboration.

Everything in today's law firm would require rethinking - not the least of which is the architecture and office design. No more private offices for individuals. This isn't about throwing privacy and confidentiality out the window - it's about balancing transparency and privacy to better serve our clients.

Please share your ideas!