Law Firm 4.0 Blog

Attention! Law Firm Marketers and MarTechs - 2019 ILTA survey is ready to take!

Content Pilot is proud to support the second annual ILTA Marketing Technology Survey. To complete the survey, click on this link or the link below. Your deadline to complete the survey is July 19, 2019 and it will take less than 20 minutes to complete.

In-house marketers: The survey is open to everyone, including folks who are not a member of the organization.  Please see the release from ILTA below for more information. I encourage you to have your firm complete the survey and share with others.  As stated below, the more participants, the better the data for all of us.  

 

                   

 

The 2019 ILTA Marketing Technology Survey is Ready!

 

For the second time ever – and because demand is sky-rocketing – ILTA has released its 2019 Marketing Technology Survey to further benchmark the state of our industry. You can access the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8CND9LR

Law firm marketing technology professionals, processes and tools have been increasing exponentially over recent years, and until last year, there had never been an industry-wide benchmarking survey or analysis done – well, we're doing it again!

Sponsored exclusively by Content Pilot, ILTA’s survey goals include:

• Learn what tools firms are using
• Identify what comprises a typical “marketing technology stack” by firm size in 2019
• Collect qualitative data that marketing tech professionals can leverage in their law firms and help them make more informed decisions
• Raise the profile of marketing technology within the industry and law firms

We know that marketing technology budgets are increasing, that new tools are being introduced each year and established systems have evolved to accommodate new needs. The survey results will shine a bright light on all of these things. We want to get as many firms to participate as possible over the next few weeks – firms of all sizes from all locations, regardless of whether you have a marketing department of one or 100. The more participants, the better the data for all of us. 

A few important answers to your questions:

• Who should complete this survey?A: The marketing technology leader in your firm.
• What if we don’t have a marketing tech person?A: The senior person in the marketing department should complete the survey, or the person who knows the most about the marketing technologies you deploy in your firm.
• We have several marketing tech people – can they all complete the survey?A: Just one respondent per firm, please.
• How long will this survey be live?A: The survey period is four weeks, ending on July 19.
• How much time will it take to complete?A: We estimate it will take 15-20 minutes to complete.
• When will the results be available?A: ILTA will publish a Marketing Technology White Paper this fall, which will include commentary and the results. Our goal is to have it in plenty of time for your budgeting season.
• Do I have to be a member of ILTA to participate?A: No – come one, come all!

Results - 2016 Global 50 Websites: Ten Foundational Best Practices – Executive Summary

INTRODUCTION

We have finished the 6^th analysis of the world’s top law firm websites based on Ten Foundational Best Practices. The first study in 2005 set precedent by identifying the top ten foundational things law firms must do to ensure their websites were satisfying what visitors wanted.  It was the first full-scale report on how the legal industry was faring with its online marketing efforts, based on an objective analysis of AmLaw 100 Web sites.

Taking a disciplined and rigorous look at more than 60 attributes of EACH of 100 law firms was a herculean effort, but we were committed to do it in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2013 and now in 2016.  Over the years, we have made the results broadly available, because we want the industry to improve, for law firms to get more bang for their website buck – and we want law firm website visitors to be happier and your lawyers, ultimately, to be more successful.

In 2016, however, we analyzed the AmLaw Global 50 law firms because we wanted to see just how “global” the Global 50 are.  Stay tuned for the full results of this very interesting Study.

The websites analyzed were those live as of July 1, 2016.  Any new launches after this date were not reviewed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OBJECTIVES OF THIS RESEARCH

We have several objectives in commissioning this research: 

1. Give marketing/business development teams and lawyers objective data to help them justify planning time, expense and “against the grain” recommendations
2. Give the website teams an unemotional, foundational basis for analyzing their current sites
3. Provide specifics to mktg/BD so they can hold their design/development teams accountable
4. Give mktg/BD a framework for measurable improvement in design, interactivity and engagement, searchability, content writing, creating an intuitive visitor experience and satisfying what sophisticated buyers of legal services want in law firm sites.

WHY SHOULD LAW FIRM LEADERS CARE?

Many websites are broken from a visitor experience standpoint – in fact, most of them are.  This research can benefit law firms of all sizes, not just the world's largest. Beyond the enhancement of specific features and functionality that are expected today, global – and other – law firms now have:

1. Access to data on how to create a better and more satisfying experience for their visitors
2. A snapshot of how leading law firms are doing and an understanding how your firm can better compete
3. A practical roadmap to view your website more strategically and to plan your website investments more thoughtfully.

Following the guidelines within the Ten Foundational Best Practices, visitors to your website will:

• Quickly find the information they want and need
• Easily see the differences in strategy, scope, reach and strengths from your firm to the next
• Return to your site to find out more

WHY THE GLOBAL 50?

“Global” is a word that defines the world’s largest law firms. In fact, all of the AmLaw 100 firms boast that they are “global,” as do the Magic Circle firms.  In the past we focused on the leading American-headquartered law firms, but the boundaries between local and international law are fading – and clients of these firms are doing business in hundreds of countries throughout the world.

These law firms have reputations that are built on decades of important client representation and advocacy. The firms at the top of the list are the closest the legal industry has to “brand name” firms. Virtually all of these firms set the standard in the legal industry against which others are judged and evaluated. In every Study since the beginning, we wanted to determine if the website presence of these firms was reflective of the excellence they achieve in other areas.

THE 2016 TEN FOUNDATIONAL BEST PRACTICES (FBPs)

The FBPs are refreshed each Study to take into account foundational changes that have been made in the broad web industry, changes in visitor expectations and the behaviors of buyers of legal services. Certain FBPs have been a part of the Study since the beginning (Communicating your Message, Design, Navigation, Site Search, SEO and Site Hygiene/Usability). Others have been updated (Biographies used to be called “Lawyer Bios” – but there are so many other professionals who are involved in the delivery of legal work and the running of the  law firm, we expanded it) and others have been added (e.g., all references to Responsive Design).

There are a total of 69 attributes within the Ten FBPs, but briefly, they can be described as follows:

1. Communicating your Message – clear and differentiating firm strategy, strengths and focus are apparent, geographic reach
2. Design – bold, distinctive branding, responsive design, intuitive information hierarchy and strong imagery
3. Navigation – global/local navigation are consistent and intuitive across multiple devices  
4. Professional Biographies – detailed experience, an overview that tells a compelling story of the person, current and larger-format photos, social media and other links
5. Content (excluding biographies) -- quality, clarity and organization of narrative content
6. Interactivity, Engagement and Social Outreach – how interactive and engaging is your site? Access to additional content including multimedia, blogs, social media, alumni portals, extranets and share functionality
7. Site Search – it’s about “finding” – easy access to and quality of the multiple site search options and search results
8. Site Optimization & Online Awareness (SEO) – is your site optimized for search engines?
9. Mobility / Responsive – brand integrity is high on mobile devices, intuitive and good user experience
10. Site Hygiene and Usability – site functions perfectly on the latest browsers, no error pages or broken links, site meets the W3C Level 1 accessibility standards.

SCORING

Each attribute is scored on a 100-point scale and each attribute is reviewed and scored separately.  For example, “Professional Biographies” has 10 attributes – each was scored separately. We average all the scores for each attribute to determine the law firm’s score for each FBP.  Once each FBP has its average score, those will be added, divided by 10 and that is the law firm’s total score.

Excellent:            85-100

Good:                   71-84

Fair:                      51-70

Poor:                    26-50

Unacceptable:      0-25

There were ten experienced website researchers who were responsible for one or more of the FBPs. They covered their particular areas of expertise, such as design, content, mobility and SEO. A special thanks to the research team: Doug Stern, Jeremy Ash, Paige Hornback, Keith Wewe, Emily King, Siobhan Davis, Stephanie Stone, Blake Davis, Anna Livia Mazzoni and Deborah McMurray.

2016 RESULTS  

One firm ranked excellent with a score of 85.4 – Morgan Lewis. 23 firms ranked good and 26 firms ranked fair.  This is the first year that no firm has ranked poor or unacceptable.  But more than half of the Global 50 firms ranked fair – there is enormous room for improvement.  The top 10 scoring firms are:

1. Morgan Lewis
2. Winston & Strawn
3. Weil Gotshal
4. Sidley Austin
5. DLA Piper
6. Perkins Coie
7. Squire Patton Boggs
8. White & Case
9. Reed Smith
10. Goodwin Procter

FOR MORE INFORMATION

If you’d like more information or would like to purchase the Summary Insights and Findings Reports for each of the Ten Foundational Best Practices, contact Deborah McMurray at [email protected] or 1-972-897-4921.

STAY TUNED for a lot more trends, findings and interesting tidbits from this 2016 Study.

The best description of "strategy" I've read in years

I am having lunch today with the "3 Geeks and a Law Blog" trio - Lisa Salazar, Toby Brown and Greg Lambert.  To prep, I am climbing into their award-winning blog of the same name and came across this description in a post by Greg.

He's talking about another blogger at his firm, King & Spalding, Richard C. Hsu, who writes his own blog, "The One Page Blog."

As the set up to this great strategy description by Hsu, Lambert writes this:

Richard discusses his thoughts behind why he is blogging in the section of his blog titled "Lawyer's Confessions" where he admits that, although he is a super techie (CalTech grad and experienced programmer), he has found himself somehow "out of touch" with the new generation's mode of communications. He reminds us that, despite our experiences, there seems to always come a day when someone younger comes in and makes us understand that in order to "get with it" we'll need to climb outside our own comfort zones. For Hsu, that meant playing to the strengths that comes with age/experience, and that is understanding strategy.  He says it best in his explanation of technology and technology strategy:

And here is what Hsu writes:

On the other hand, technology strategy is not technology.  It is strategy.  And strategy’s half-life is more like plutonium:  what worked a thousand years ago works today, and will work in a thousand years....  Invest in understanding strategy now, and you will understand it just as well — probably even better [in the future.]

It's true!  Law firms too often assume strategy discussions (and strategic planning) are a necessary evil, led by expensive consultants who leave you with nothing more than a weighty document that isn't actionable. 

And strategy is almost non-existent in most major tech project implementations in law firms - from websites to proposal centers, experience databases, mobile apps, client extranets, intranets, CRM, KM and more.  Every technology initiative in your law firm should have a clear strategy component.  It's the strategy that will drive goals, objectives and measurements of success.

True, some consultants do leave you with fat stacks of paper. But if firms viewed strategy as a combination of vision, ideas and business transparency - and then took fear out of it, these planning sessions would be infused with hope and life. And your tech project implementation would be successful, and your internal and external teams accountable for meeting your stated goals.

And, like Hsu says, strategy has a shelf-life like plutonium - or the last Twinkie you ingested.

 

 

 

 

 

Transparency: Beyond the Extranet (ILTA Presentation 2010)

The 2010 ILTA conference is still underway in Las Vegas.  My panel, "Transparency:  Beyond the Extranet," was late Tuesday afternoon, August 24.  Cheryl Disch (the extraordinary proposal manager at Duane Morris about whom I've blogged in the past) assembled our diverse ILTA panel that included:  Julie Kremer, Enterprise Technology Strategist from Microsoft, Jon Parish, Senior Client Systems Analyst/Project Manager, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, Steve McHargue, Senior Consultant, Project Leadership Associates - and me.

Before we could talk about "building a bridge to 2020," we wanted to measure today's usage of extranets in law firms.  How much more than document sharing were firms doing?  Here are the questions we asked - and you can access the survey results and our slides on the Content Pilot website - here.

1. How many client extranets do you currently have?

2. What platform do you use for your extranets?

3. What third party or other technologies feed into your extranet(s)?

4. How would you describe how your extranets add value to your clients?

5. Have you added features to your extranet in direct response to client requests? If so, what features were

added?

6. Do you "meet" with your clients on your extranet?

7. If yes, by what medium?

8. How are you measuring client satisfaction with your extranets?

9. Do you track how many clients you have won/retained based on your extranet capabilities?

10. For the following technology categories, indicate your firm’s use/adoption for each on your extranet(s).

-- File/Folder sharing extranets with clients

-- Wiki/collaborative knowledge generation collaboration

-- Task/Project Management collaboration

-- Docketing/critical date tracking

-- Social networking

-- Workflow automation that captures firm policies/procedures/checklists/etc for dealing with certain types of matters

-- Workflow automation that captures client policies/procedures/checklists/etc for dealing with certain types of matters

-- Performance Dashboards/High level reports for large clients

11. Please tell us the size of your law firm

12. Please tell us where your firm is headquartered

The survey had 49 respondents from a mix of small, medium and large law firms. 

The panel unanimously agreed that clients will (or are) demanding more than document sharing. They want seamless access to lawyers and intelligence that helps them day-to-day.  This elevates the extranet from a tech tool to a client relationship management asset - and it requires sophisticated thinking and planning if it is going to align with a law firm client's business and legal goals.  The power and potential of this is enormous for forward-thinking law firms. 

Julie Kremer told what large customers of Microsoft are doing with their extranets.  These customers view them as mission critical components of their business with their clients and customers.  These enterprise extranets are built on Microsoft collaboration tools, such as SharePoint, and are filled with interactive, get-business-done-in-real-time features, such as click-to-chat, mash ups, news aggregators, social media, blogs, wikis and much, much more.

Jon Parish shared the high level bones of a case study where Pillsbury had built a sophisticated extranet for a major client tailored specifically to its complex needs.  In a competition, the client defected to another law firm - but within months, returned to Pillsbury, because the new law firm couldn't duplicate the unique workspace that Pillsbury had designed for them.  A huge differentiator for Pillsbury with measureable bottom line value.

Question #8 in our survey is about measuring client satisfaction.  Only 5 firms that responded to our survey are measuring it, which left the remaining 90% of respondents who are not.  The more tailored and personalized that extranets become, the more expensive they are for the law firm - so client use and benefit becomes increasingly important to your business case.  Bottom line, the extranets have to save money for the client and drive revenue to the law firm.  If they aren't being used and used well by your most important clients, it means that your extranets aren't being viewed as an important part of your relationship.

Oh - and here is my definition of transparency:  i like viewing it in the more social context, which implies openness, communication and mutual accountability.  I like this definition because it isn't focused on only one party being transparent.  Mutual accountability for transparency means that both law firm and client are responsible.  I think this is what the law firms - and fundamentally - the clients are after.  More about extranets to come.