Law Firm 4.0 Blog

Marketing Technology is the new Black – but success in a law firm requires some rules

I just spoke at the sold-out-standing-room-only LMA Tech Midwest (#LMATech) conference in Chicago. It was the first Legal Marketing Association tech conference held in the Midwest, but it followed in the very successful footsteps of its older brother, LMA Tech, which takes place in San Francisco each year.

The audience was comprised of hungry, passionate marketing tech and other legal marketing/business development professionals, and those providing services and products to this crowd. If you are interested in quickly immersing yourself in the terrific content, search for #LMATech on Twitter and read the seriously good nuggets consumed and shared by tweeting attendees.

I moderated a panel on experience management, “Demystify Experience Management and Turn it into one of your Most Powerful Allies,” with panelists: Mikala C. Stewart, Global Director of Business Intelligence and Global Director of Litigation Development for Kirkland & Ellis; Deborah R. Grabein, Director of Business Development for Andrews Kurth; and Adam Stock, Chief Marketing and Client Services Officer for Allen Matkins.

Our premise, which is fueled by both many years of experience and passion, was that experience management is one of the most strategic – yet paralyzing – “initiatives” in today’s law firm.  (See my earlier Law Firm 4.0 post, “Experience Management is not an ‘Initiative’ – it’s got to be in your Firm’s DNA.”) It’s a universal problem for firms of every size, but it’s obviously a more painful concern for global and other multi-office firms. 

Every law firm shares the same over-arching and unifying problem:  they all want to win more profitable work. And the only way to get on the short list to win more and better work is to quickly present a list of specific deals or cases with a lot of detail that is relevant to the buyer of the legal service.  Buyers want to know: what have you done, for whom you have done it and what you can do for them.  This formula is predictable and simple. You have to win this short list test before you can make it to the actual hiring phase.

Experience management requires the perfect marriage of marketing and information technology (and oftentimes finance, too).  For too many years, these functions in a law firm have been impenetrable silos, where the different races or classes seldom mix, let alone respecting each other’s contributions.  CRM started the need for convergence, but even that is typically managed exclusively by the marketing/business development team. However, building a strategic and powerful experience database requires a comfortable union between marketing and IT – and in the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of the hybrid and "bridge" professional – marketing technology specialists.

Harvard Business Review projects that by the end of 2016, 89% of large companies will have a Chief Marketing Technology Officer. Two years ago in an article called “The Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist,” HBR quoted Gartner research that said, “… by 2017, a company’s chief marketing officer would be spending more on technology than its chief information officer was.” 

The HBR authors (Scott Brinker and Laura McLellan) wrote, “Acting as the connective tissue between different constituencies, these executives engage with four key stakeholders: the CMO and other senior marketing executives, the CIO and the IT organization, the broader marketing team, and outside software and service providers."

All fine and well, but how do they do that?  Ted McConnell, a featured contributor to Media Post OnlineSpin, in his June 23, 2016 post called “The Marketing Technology Culture Clash Prevention Guide,” describes the marketing technologist as: “scientist, marketer, tinker[er], politician – not exactly a typical skill mix.”  His next statement, “it’s hard to find people that can respect the old and imagine the new, but that’s what it takes,” precisely applies to law firms.  THIS is what’s required – and expected – of these marketing technologists in organizations where people sell their brains for a living. I might add “nerd” and “geek” to this list, a' well as “sales person.”

McConnell says, “You will need a big thinker to help identify the new opportunities, a diplomat to calm the waters, and a pilot to turn the ship. With luck, the triumvirate plays well together."  He devised a rule-book of sorts that speaks directly to every marketing technologist, which I have included in its entirety below.  Note to these MTs – if you are naturally more scientist than you are marketer, then you should identify the skills you must develop to elevate your role even further. Likewise, marketers – if you are a creative visionary, but behind when it comes to your geekiness, climb in and learn about the top software products and vendors, and how they can help save your sanity (and help your lawyers be more effective and competitive).

Ted McConnell’s rule book to bridging the cultural divide between marketing and IT is below.

1. “Do ban buzzwords. 'Analytics' is a way to describe any activity that might involve math. It does not describe a business outcome or process. 'We need analytics' is a poorly formed request, and 'We have analytics' is equally lame. Sharpen your vocabulary and insist that others do the same.
2. Do focus on the 'so what.' The most useful information feeds the processes closest to the place where decisions are made. Does IT know how communications planning or media buying decisions are made? Each side can guide the other. Be gentle.
3. Do calibrate risk to reality. The IT world is filled with Sarbanes-Oxley-driven horrors -- go-to-jail stuff. But I’m not aware of anyone who went to jail for a bad marketing decision, or sending an ad to the wrong person.
4. Do know the size of the prize. Is a claimed 20% efficiency improvement for an item that’s 10% of your budget worth falling on your sword for?
5. Don’t dismiss agency capability. Brands often look to their agencies to make the right decisions regarding creative and media. Most agencies have measurement people and analytic teams. Advertisers might need the internal IT people and the agency to collaborate -- which doesn't seem to happen very often. 
6. Do invest in talent. Top talent might come from either marketing or IT, or both, or from the outside. Require top talent, enable them with tools, and constrain them to solving your most important problems. Find practitioners. Take them under your wing. They come in all shapes and sizes.
7. Don’t boil the ocean. Systems thinking often leads to the urge to design the perfect machine. That’s dangerous. Get real-world experience with people, platforms, and agencies that already do this before designing your own thing. Plan to evolve. 
8. Don’t nod as though you understand if you don’t. The current level of misunderstanding (both ways) is significant.  Worse, the risks of getting a market wrong are significant. 
9. Apply startup rules. Fail early and often. Use 'minimum viable product' thinking. Be market-aware. Favor real world over PowerPoint.

"The people who can bridge the cultural divide are curious, eclectic, articulate, humble, and thoughtful. They might not speak up. They might not come in the package you are used to, but that’s a risk you can live with.”

I couldn’t be more excited about this development in our industry.

When millennials become law firm leaders, how will they communicate to clients?

It's no surprise that millennials like to text. I do, too, and often I prefer it - and the more deliberate emailing - to speaking on the phone. It just depends on what I need to accomplish. My goal of effective communication (i.e., understanding and being understood) always trumps the medium - if it's a quick logistical issue that needs clarification, great. A quick text or email is perfect.  If there is a problem to solve, an opportunity about which to brainstorm, or if my fellow communicator simply prefers a phone call - the phone wins.

In a recent OpenMarket survey, conducted nationwide, which polled millennials on their communication preferences, it was found they have an overwhelming desire to text. According to the recap by Center for Media Research, which reported on this survey, "75% of responding millennials would rather lose the ability to talk versus text."

This infographic pretty much sums up how millennials feel:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are 77 million millennials in the U.S., now having surpassed the Baby Boomers as the largest population group. The brightest rising stars will run companies (or they already do) that hire law firms, and the millennial lawyers will soon become the largest population practicing law in their firms.  C0nsider these questions:

• What does their privileged client communication look like?  
• How do they form enduring client relationships where they can serve as the "trusted advisor" (the term that still so many lawyers hold up as the gold standard for their practices), when they find a voice call "disruptive?" 
• And, what do their clients do when they get the millennial lawyer's voicemail - leave a message knowing the call may never get returned?

The practice of law and delivery of services continues to evolve.  Just this week, Baker Hostetler announced that it has hired IBM's AI "Ross," the world's first artificially intelligent attorney, to be a part of its 50-lawyer bankruptcy team.  Artificial intelligence is coming fast, whether law firms are on board or not. Ross will monitor the law around the world and around the clock - something that's hard for even the most ambitious and sleep-deprived lawyers to do. Clients have to love this. 

And I imagine the millennials will love it, too. Ross is really the perfect millennial. No talking, just doing.

Lawyers and CPAs - This January, resolve to make your bios move the needle - Make them 3-D

Doing anything that moves the needle is hard.  All the "I resolve to do this and that (eat more kale / break a sweat / cook more / drink less)" business requires so much diligence and determination that, by now, most resolutions are on the cutting room floor.  I used to have a cartoon on the magnetic face of an old file cabinet, "At least I am protected by the goodness of my intentions." You know what?  No, I'm not - and you aren't, either.  Good intentions do not move any needles.

According to the analytics we track, your website biographies are by far the most visited pages - averaging 40-70% of total visits.  What kind of an impression does your bio make on these visitors who are taking their valuable time to check you out?  Most biographies for lawyers and CPAs are stale, not engaging or dynamic, and don't tell a compelling and relevant story about what these people have done.  In the latest (2013) "AmLaw 100 Websites: Ten Foundational Best Practices" research study conducted and sponsored by Content Pilot, the AmLaw 100 firms scored 75 (or a mid-range Good) on a 100-point scale on the 4th Foundational Best Practice, "Lawyer Biographies." In the prior study (2010), they scored 66 or Fair. A good improvement, but every firm should score 100.

The attributes on which these firms - and on which you should measure your basic bio effectiveness - are:

1. First 150 characters of the bio are current, compelling, and relevant for SEO benefit. Count all letters, punctuation and spaces and ensure that your most important keywords about your practice are appearing first. Avoid starting your bio like this: John Smith is a partner and chair of the labor and employment practice at ABCXYZ law firm. This is likely what will appear in the Google and other search engine results when searching by that lawyer’s name. These details are not important – don’t waste this valuable real estate on your titles (your titles will appear elsewhere in your bio). Rather, tell what you do for clients and who they are. The AmLaw firms’ average score was 77 out of 100 on this attribute.
2. Overview paragraph – first two to three sentences are descriptive of the work the lawyer does and the types of clients the lawyer represents. After the 150 characters, focus on enriching your bio with additional keywords, such as types of clients, industries, and subject matter strengths. If you are a noted expert in SEC enforcement matters, Family Medical Leave Act claims, or SBICs and BDCs, this is where it should live. The AmLaw average score was 84.
3. Bio does not use Mr. or Ms. Lastname throughout – it uses the lawyer’s first or nickname. What is more unfriendly than forcing a visitor to call you Mr. Schwartz or Ms. Davison? The AmLaw average score was 35. East coast, white-shoe firms are the biggest culprits in protecting this tradition.
4. Photos are current and convey personality. It is critically important that your photos look like your lawyers today, not 20 years ago. The AmLaw average was 87.
5. Full contact information for the lawyer is easy to find and links to a v-card. Make it easy for people to contact you. But – avoid the large, blinking buttons that scream “CALL ME!” Personal injury law firms often think these are a good idea – but they aren’t. The AmLaw firms do much better here than accounting firms – the AmLaw average was 100.
6. Bio includes links to the lawyer’s social media profiles and pages. This creates relationship “stickiness”. Understand your state bar rules about social media, but having the links on your bio page so visitors can easily connect with you is smart. The AmLaw average was 32. These firms are not taking advantage of the relationship leverage and syndication strength offered by social media.
7. Bios list and crosslink to practices/industries, articles/ news/ events. These encourage visitors to easily dig deeper into your qualifications. The AmLaw average was 84.
8. Bios include detailed experience and matter lists. The reason that bio views are so high in all the analytics is because buyers of legal services want to know what you have done, for whom, and what you can do for them. You must answer these questions before you can advance to the shortlist and ultimately get hired. Period. Use client names if you have permission to do so, and be as specific as your state bar rules allow. The AmLaw average was 74.
9. The page technology supports elegant content organization that enables visitors to quickly scan and access what they want (e.g., Ajax, jQuery, javascript). The AmLaw average was 93.
10. Associates have full biographies. It was a many-year trend for New York and certain other East coast firms to list associates’ names, but not include a bio for them. In client interviews, buyers complained about paying $600 per hour for a senior associate that they could not even find on the firm website! This has changed, and most firms now include them, with the AmLaw average being 88.

OK - these are the basics. Let's take it further.  Last year - for a panel presentation at the 2015 Legal Marketing Association conference in San Diego - I created a concept called the "3 Dimensional Bio" or "3-D Bio."  I swear that this is the answer (at least one of the answers, the start) to you being more successful in your business development in 2016.  Don't hesitate and don't delay.

Given that the majority of your visitors are going to these bio pages, a firm’s goal should be to keep visitors on your professionals' bios longer – and convert visitors to viewing more of them each visit. This is where the cash lives in your firm. Study Google Analytics or whatever tracking program you use and see how many different bios any one visitor opens, and check the average length of time a visitor spends on your bios. Then, focus on improving this number and duration.

In today’s landscape where competition among professionals is stiff, lawyers and CPAs must provide more insight into why they should be hired. Why are they the expert? What makes them the perfect fit for a client’s problem? You must prove you are the right fit, and there are three ways to do this.  Create "3-D Bios" and focus on the following:

1. Demonstrate expertise
2. Prove relevancy
3. Show humanity

All three “dimensions” must be present for your biography to work hard for you.

Dimension 1:  Demonstrate expertise:

1. Show specific experience: Remember the three questions: What have you done? For whom have you done it? What can you do for me?
2. Include client case studies or stories that prove what you know and your approach to getting things done. This often gets into how you did what you did, not just what you did.
3. Depending on the nature of your practice (for example, if you represent a lot of start-ups or technology companies), include client logos, with their permission, of course.

Dimension 2:  Prove relevancy:

1. Important keywords that are relevant to your practice should appear in the top 150 characters (characters, not words) of the bio overview. When someone is Googling, or otherwise searching for your name, it is important that the 140–150 characters that show up in the search engine description are those most relevant to your practice– and the expertise that people are buying from you –  today. Consider the disconnect for your future buyer if you are supposed to be the expert in global trademark protection and your Google search description does not even mention it.
2. Feed current blog and Twitter posts into your bios. Social media that proves you are current and on top of the subject matter in your practice gives the people evaluating you comfort and confidence in your intellect and grasp of today’s issues.
3. Feature a book the lawyer has written—or something else notable, such as white papers, an important speech, a short video about a trending topic.
4. Design an infographic, which highlights trends in the lawyer’s practice or industry. For example, number of patents in the energy industry over a ten-year period of time, or a US map showing the number of states in which the lawyer has handled litigation.

Dimension 3:  Show humanity (to get hired, look for ways to short-cut the pathway to trust):

1. Shoot new lawyer photos – “magazine-style” (large format) photos that show personality and approachability. Some lawyers do not like getting their photos taken, so they use the same tired photo decade after decade. In today’s world of selfies, where current photos are pervasive, it is critical that the firm website posts current photos that actually look like the lawyers who work there.
2. Include a short video that tells a memorable story about a case and how you handled it. Of course, do not name a client name unless it is public record and you have your client’s permission, but do discuss unique issues or circumstances. For example, did the case come in at 8pm on a Sunday night and the court filing was due Monday morning at 10?
3. Include an “after hours” tab or feature – content that describes the lawyer’s passions outside the office. This can include community board service, volunteer work, travel, sports and events, books you are reading, the fact that you are training for a triathlon, or your family and pets. Show how interesting you are!
4. Prove accessibility – include your assistant’s name/info, your team’s contact names/info (if you aren’t reachable, it ensures that your client has access to team members without you being a bottleneck), and instant messaging contact information. Law firm and CPA firm technology staff will sometimes prohibit instant messaging, but certain types of clients rely on it – and they want their lawyers to use it.

If you want to move the needle early this year, change your bio by January 31. You still have 20 days. . . I am counting.

 

 

 

Law firms+data+marketers: the love-hate relationship between marketing and math

The first "marketing and math" presentation I gave was for the now-defunct Marketing Directors' Institute conference 15 or so years ago. It was, looking back on it, rudimentary - but it was a start. I told the law firm marketing audience to care about client and matter profitability, realization and billing rates, staffing ratios on particular types of matters, alternative fee arrangement scenarios (yes, even then), RPL, PPP, PPEP, and more.

Thank heavens, law firm marketing and business development has evolved to high levels of strategy, analysis and sophistication.  But, as this Marketoon from clever business illustrator Tom Fishburne illustrates, there is still a struggle. For some, data is akin to Brussel sprouts (wonderful!) and for others, data is akin to Brussel sprouts (horrifying!).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fishburne describes the conundrum as tension that exists between marketing and math. I think it's more black and white than that. Some days marketers love data and other days they hate it. Occasionally data works in our favor (i.e., supports our point of view - see "acceptance" in the illustration above), and sometimes it works completely against us - (see "anger" above).  

"Big Data" is getting bigger. According to research firm IDC, big data services and technologies will grow at a compounded rate of 27%, exceeding $32 billion by 2017.  The greatest challenge is knowing what to do with it:  How can we learn from it, affect change with it, make progress and grow revenue?

Because Big Data is intimidating and can be paralyzing, I like “Lean Data” better – it makes more sense for law firms.

The Guardian says: “The dirty secret of big data is that no algorithm can tell you what’s significant, or what it means. Data then becomes another problem for you to solve. A lean data approach suggests starting with questions relevant to your business and finding ways to answer them through data, rather than sifting through countless data sets.

Here are a few Lean Data opportunities for law firms:

• Google Analytics and other tracking of your website assets
• SEO statistics – how are you doing? Be specific in your improvement goals
• Experience databases filled with intelligence about expertise, clients, lawyer qualifications
• Litigation and corporate databases that reveal who else is representing your clients and for what (then do something about it)
• Client loyalty interviews - who else are these clients hiring and for what?
• Financial data about your top 50 clients, then next 200 clients
• Process improvement analyses – where can you streamline, save time and get better results?

This is just a start and the tools are readily available to most firms.  The key is to start - Roll up your sleeves and say, "I'm going to love me some Brussel sprouts today."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get inspired: How working together makes World AIDS Day a true celebration

Most of us know someone who knows someone who loved someone who died of AIDS.  Someone's father, brother, son or husband.  Today is World AIDS Day, and, after nearly three decades of death and sadness, I think today is a day worth celebrating.

World AIDS Day was first conceived by the World Health Organization in 1988 to increase awareness of the disease and support those and their families affected by it.  This year's theme, which will extend to 2015, is "Getting to Zero" (zero new HIV infections).

Given that many of us are weary of the enormous political divide we hear, read and see on talk news, talk radio and in print, read this uplifting op-ed in yesterday's New York Times by Bono about how well the world can work when we work together.  The best line in this article is, "America led.  I mean really led." 

And that really inspires me.

Have you heard about "Twitterology?" It's the latest hot new science.

Ben Zimmer is a self-described all-around word nut.  He is the former On Language columnist for The New York Times Magazine, the executive producer of VisualThesaurus.com (an entirely useful tool when you're looking to add color to your prose) and vocabulary.com.

In a recent New York Times Sunday Review column where he claims that "Twitterology" is the latest hot new science, he writes that "Twitter is many things to many people, but lately it has been a gold mine for scholars in fields like linguistics, sociology and psychology who are looking for real-time data to analyze."

He continues, "Twitter’s appeal to researchers is its immediacy — and its immensity. Instead of relying on questionnaires and other laborious and time-consuming methods of data collection, social scientists can simply take advantage of Twitter’s stream to eavesdrop on a virtually limitless array of language in action."

Zimmer discusses a University of Texas study that ensued immediately before and after the death of Libyan dictator Gadhafi.  Linguists and researchers were able to gather thousands of Arabic-language tweets in minutes - before and after the event - used Twitter's system of geocoding, and create a current picture of Libya's Twitter traffic, both good and bad.

In a study that might hit closer to home for everyone reading my blog, Zimmer writes, "Two sociologists at Cornell University, Scott A. Golder and Michael W. Macy, recently published a study in the journal Science that looked at how emotions may relate to the rhythms of daily life, across many English-speaking countries. They observed a gradual falloff in positive terms from the beginning of the workday, bottoming out in the late afternoon."

Has Twitter become our self-intervention therapy?  We're having a bad day and we don't want to have it alone, so we type about it in a few, short keystrokes to hundreds (maybe thousands) of our followers?  If you think that no one is noticing (except for those followers of yours - oh, and those who retweet your post about your bad day), think twice.  The Dean of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science points to the following real-world application of harvesting tweets to study regional  language use across America, "The key finding was that seemingly meaningless slang and jargon can reveal important properties of an author's identity, a point of interest for both corporations and the intelligence community."

Corporations, major law firms and other large employers can hire these linguistic sleuths to uncover unwanted and unwelcome proclamations and traits about current and future employees. Litigators can harvest tweets in real-time to discredit witnesses, defendants and plaintiffs.

Zimmer concludes, "Regardless of how unserious Twitter may appear on the surface . . . linguists are discovering that Twitter can help uncover truths about our social interactions that are quite serious indeed."

Borrowing a classic quote from Sargeant Phil  Esterhaus of Hill Street Blues (advice that we should all  take many times a day), "Hey, let's be careful out there."