Law Firm 4.0 Blog

What lawyers can learn from CBS Sportscasting legend, Verne Lundquist.

I’ve written a lot of posts that start with, “What lawyers (or law firms) can learn from …”  Search by that phrase on my blog and you’ll find posts about fabulous and lousy expensive restaurants, unexpectedly terrific hotel experiences, travel, dentistry, vacuum cleaners, brand launches and more.  It’s always grounded and practical advice – and the common theme is, to be a better lawyer, pay attention to the world around you. 

You can learn something about how to better serve clients (and ultimately how to better serve yourself) in the most unlikely places.  I have linked several of the most popular “What lawyers can learn…” posts at the bottom of this one.

But, today’s post is about CBS Sports legend, Verne Lundquist, and why lawyers of all ages should not just revere his storied and stellar 53-year career, but why you should understand who he is – a passionate, hard-working man who loves his job.  Nicknamed “the Golden Throat,” Verne is the envy of sports fanatics the world over, because he knows all the current and past luminaries in virtually every sport – and he knows them well.

Glen, my husband and I met Verne and Nancy Lundquist on a Baltic cruise in August.  Verne was on board as the “celebrity speaker,” a gig he has done more than a dozen times on luxury cruises – much to the joy of those on board these ships.  I have to be honest, I didn’t know who Verne was (I am really embarrassed to admit this) – in fact, Glen went to hear Verne, and I enrolled in a Black Jack tournament. 15 minutes in, Glen texts me and says, “Verne’s great – you must come.”  I wrote back, “I’m winning,” and stayed at Table 3 in the Casino. 

When I met Glen later over our customary afternoon champagne (I love vacation), he was giddy in his animated retelling – almost verbatim – of nearly an hour of Verne’s stories. Well, I didn’t win the Black Jack tournament and I felt completely cheated having not heard him.  I had to get to know this Verne guy.

The next day our ship was forced to skip docking in Skagen, Denmark because of huge swells, so we had another unexpected day at sea.  Verne was invited to do another program, and Glen and I sat in the front row.  He entertained the standing-room-only crowd with new stories, sharing tales about many of the 20 sports that he has broadcast over the last 50-plus years.

I was rapt – as was the mostly male crowd in the room. Verne approached even the most controversial topics (with professional sports figures, there is plenty of gossip and controversy to go around) with delicacy, humor, no vitriol or snark – he was ever the professional.  Whatever ego Verne has was checked at the door – actually, having shared several meals with him after this speech, he always has his ego checked. He is as interested in you as you are in him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyone reading this who loves college football (especially Southeastern Conference football) knows and loves him, as Verne has been the play-by-play broadcaster for SEC football since 1999. (He has covered college football since 1974.)  Rabid SEC fans admit to being deeply emotional at the thought that this is Verne’s last season.  Every SEC team has honored Nancy and Verne with more his-and-her swag than they could possibly ever use or wear. But what a touching treat and an honor for him – for them both.

He and I have a lot in common:  born in Minnesota (check), lived in Dallas, Texas (check), loves to sing in the choir (check), is Lutheran (well, I am Methodist and Episcopalian, but I went to a Lutheran college in MN), he adores his spouse (check), he loves food and wine (check check).  Of course I am drawn to him.

So – what can lawyers of all ages learn from Verne?

1. Love what you do so much that you discover stories in your work that are universally appealing. I am not an avid sports fan, but Verne made me want to be one.  I want to belong to whatever club he is in.
2. Once you find your stories, tell them with such passion and enthusiasm that you set yourself apart. But don’t over-shadow others around you.  This isn’t about bragging – that’s the antithesis of Verne.  He is often self-effacing, and his stories combine both historical facts and his color commentary about the people and places he has encountered.  Too many people frame their stories with themselves at the center – don’t do that. Instead, be the observer, the play-by-play person who never forgets an interesting detail.  Humor. Grace. Class.  That’s how he’s always described.
3. Use fewer words and use the right words. Play-by-play commentary is riddled with high emotion moments – people win and lose. Over his entire career, Verne has famously said exactly the right thing – with just the right amount of words.  A favorite Dallas example is in Super Bowl XIII after Cowboys tight-end Jackie Smith dropped a touchdown pass in a painful 35-31 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers . . . Verne spontaneously blurted, "Bless his heart, he's got to be the sickest man in America!"  He has always been known for his genuine compassion and he showed it that day.
4. Learn something new every day that makes you a better lawyer. I said that Verne has covered 20 different sports – all in public arenas, on stage, on air and on television (i.e., there was no concealing what he didn’t know).  He modestly says that whether calling figure skating at the Olympics with Scott Hamilton, PGA golf at the Masters or NFL football with Terry Bradshaw, he was not the domain expert in the room. But, he cared enough to make sure he knew exactly enough to make CBS Sports look good – and to show respect to both the sports and athletes he was covering.
5. Don’t be a fake. Have the highest integrity, truest warmth and stay grounded in the values that you learned from your parents, favorite teachers and gifted mentors. He is always described as “What you see is what you get.” 
6. It’s never too early – or late – to start building your legacy. Verne has been inducted into several Halls of Fame and he won a Sports Emmy for Lifetime Achievement this past May. Treat yourself and take 30 minutes to watch this video of his introduction and remarks at the Emmy ceremony. You’ll learn a lot about how to build a memorable and successful career. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=verne+lundquist+emmy+youtube&view=detail&mid=61E3B4E44B9E5A869FC061E3B4E44B9E5A869FC0&FORM=VIRE
7. Surround yourself with people who can help you look and feel good – thank them often. And be a great spouse, friend, colleague and volunteer in return.
8. Finally, find joy in your work and exhibit it every day. Your clients and colleagues will notice and be drawn to you. Joy makes everyone more interesting and stimulating.  Have you ever heard Verne’s’ famous laugh?!  Let your laugh be infectious and legendary.

Our last evening with Verne and Nancy was at a terrific restaurant in Stockholm. I felt sad when we walked away from them after dinner. But I think of them often and know we will see each other again.  Certainly, I’ll see and hear him the next few weeks of college football – then we’ll just have to get their cruising schedule and make sure we’re on board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below are the other “What lawyers and law firms can learn” posts.

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2013/05/what-law-firms-can-learn-from-my-experience-with-the-strangest-dessert-in-san-francisco-maybe-the-wo.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2013/08/what-lawyers-can-learn-about-messaging-from-an-unlikely-source-dentistry.html (which includes one of my favorite lines I’ve ever written here:  Everyone is one tooth away from ugly.)

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2012/01/a-toast-to-differentiation-what-law-firms-can-learn-from-blue-hill-at-stone-barns.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2015/03/what-law-firms-can-learn-from-opentables-new-brand.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2014/01/what-law-firms-can-learn-from-our-new-years-eve-dining-experience-at-betony-in-new-york.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2012/02/what-law-firms-can-learn-from-my-wonderful-experience-at-davios-in-philadelphia.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2013/04/what-lawyers-can-learn-from-passage-des-crapeaux.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2012/05/what-law-firms-can-learn-from-dysons-think-vacuum-cleaners-anti-branding-slur.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2014/09/what-law-firms-can-learn-from-perfect-food-and-wine-pairings-at-beausoleil-in-baton-rouge.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2014/02/alice-died-last-week-what-law-firms-can-learn-.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2012/06/one-of-the-most-important-lessons-that-connected-lawyers-must-learn.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2012/07/back-in-america.html

http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2012/02/what-law-firms-can-learn-from-my-disappointing-experience-at-del-friscos-in-new-york.html

Competing On Intelligence

Originally published in Strategies, The Journal of Legal Marketing, issue no. V15.N02

Guest Post by Patrick Fuller

April is a great month for sports fans. It begins with the NCAA Final Four, followed by the start of the Major League Baseball season, the NCAA Frozen Four, the start of the NBA and NHL playoffs, and finally ends with the NFL Draft. April also marks the month where statistical analysis and intelligence may have the greatest impact on both the onfield and financial success of professional teams.

Peter Drucker’s famous quote — “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” — has slowly evolved into a “Moneyball” strategy that is now employed in various degrees by virtually every professional sports team.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the legal profession — which throughout the past 10 years has seen the collective revenue of the AmLaw 200 rise nearly 80 percent to roughly $90 billion — is now driving strategy with intelligence and analytics. But while the overall revenue is rising, the share of that revenue that is going to the “bottom 150” (numbers 51-200) of the AmLaw 200 continues to decline, from 48 percent of the total revenue in 2003 to slightly more than 42 percent in 2012. This means that 75 percent of the AmLaw 200 is getting a decreasing share of an increasing market, which creates the most complex of competitive environments.

Throughout the past decade, as technology continued to develop, law firms have been increasingly embracing various forms of intelligence. There are five basic points of intelligence that firms can use to power their strategy, limit exposure to risk and drive revenues: market intelligence, which includes the litigation, deal and IP aggregators; relationship intelligence, which is driven mainly by the relationship strength metrics generated by enterprise and customer relationship management (ERM & CRM) systems; internal intelligence, which primarily consists of experience records and knowledge management; financial intelligence, which consists of both external financial market intelligence and internal profitability analysis; and finally, social intelligence, gleaned chiefly from listening platforms and other social media monitoring programs.

Like a “Five Tool Prospect” in baseball (hits for average and power, has great speed, plays great defense, has arm strength), each of the Five Points of Intelligence are valuable on their own, but when combined with the other points, can be very powerful. Competitive intelligence, commonly referred to as “CI,” is often mistaken for both “commoditized information,” as well as “client intelligence.” Information such as dated news articles, company profiles on public companies, as well as historical representation trends for litigation, IP and M & A transactions is fairly easy to ascertain, and is readily available to the market. It is when this type of information is generated without any analysis or suggestions on how to leverage the intelligence that it becomes good-to-know, commoditized information.

Law firms can use the market intelligence platforms in a variety of ways to serve a variety of purposes. For business development, benchmarking the legal activity of clients or prospects against their industry or key competitors is a great way to identify potentially valuable trends, create powerful questions that engage,and demonstrate knowledge of both the client and their market.

Firms are also able to gather valuable insight into litigation and transaction representation patterns, which assist in helping to understand, in part, why clients buy. Are individual firms representing the client in multiple practices and through multiple office locations? Are the attorneys based in high cost markets performing rather commoditized legal work? Are smaller firms with limited capacity handling the repeatable, basic transactions
and matters, while the larger firms handle the more valuable, complex matters?

When professional sports leagues expand, there will often be an “expansion draft,” allowing the new teams to “draft” players not specifically protected by their current teams. As law firms begin to expand their footprint, intelligence becomes a key aspect of this strategy. Several of the intelligence platforms now feature the ability to create custom groupings of companies, firms, attorneys, investment banks, etc., allowing users to perform targeted macro analysis.

For example, the Houston market has seen a surge in new office openings in recent years as firms look to primarily expand their energy practices. In an effort to identify potential threats to both key clients as well as key talent, a firm could load their top 50-75 clients into one CI report, and then filter the results only to the firm that is expanding into Houston. This will help identify which of the firm’s key clients are also represented by the rival firm in various markets and practice areas and may also indicate the firm’s attorneys that are currently representing those clients that may be lateral targets for the rival firm. Conversely, firms can use those key client lists to identify potential markets for expansion as well as their own lateral target lists.

When professional athletes become “free agents,” they are free to sign with any team they’d like, and teams are hoping they’ll bring with them the assets and production to “outperform” the contract value. For law firms targeting laterals, and hoping for a similar result, it is important to leverage intelligence when evaluating the scope of representation in a book of business. Rather than concentrating solely on the attorney and  their representation of particular clients, focus on the attorney’s firm and the firm’s representation of the client. The greater, and deeper, the firm-client  relationship, the higher the counsel switching costs for the client, and as a result, the lower the portability of representation.

Game plans and scouting reports are a staple of sports. Teams will look for ways to create favorable mismatches, aligning their strengths against their opponent’s weakness. Law firms are able to do this as well, especially for firm, practice, industry or client team plans. By using intelligence platforms to identify historical needs, as well as the prior or current representation, firms can align their strengths and experience to effectively approach opportunities.

One of the oldest traditions in sports is attempting to steal signs, especially in baseball. In a sport where failing 70 percent of the time throughout a career will get you into the Hall of Fame, a batter knowing which pitch is coming no longer has to account for variable change, and now has the advantage. The rise of digital publishing, as well as social media, such as blogs and Twitter, has helped create the social intelligence function, which is driven by “listening platforms.”

While the traditional market intelligence platforms aggregate primarily historical events, such as lawsuit filings, patent applications or M&A transactions, the idea behind listening platforms is to discover what is about to happen. While this sounds more like something from a  government spy movie, law firms that can react the fastest to emerging market opportunities often benefit from their speed. Gone are the days of the big eating the small; it’s now the fast that eat the slow.

Finally, professional sports teams are always looking at pricing. Tickets for athletic events in New York and Los Angeles will be more expensive than in Milwaukee and Oklahoma City for the same event. It’s similar for law firms. Rates tend to be higher, on average, in certain markets. Financial intelligence tools provide firms with the ability to benchmark rates by timekeeper, industry, practice, market and more, while also  understanding the costs associated with delivering those services. This intelligence is critical for firms in a number of ways, both from the assessment of which opportunities to pursue to the creative structure of fee arrangements.

The use of intelligence in the legal profession is not that much different from the use of scouting reports in sports. Like athletic teams, law firms are constantly looking for a competitive edge that provides a clearer path to success.

Related articles

What Law Firms Can Learn From John Patterson

What law firms can learn from Banana Joe

On Monday, February 11, no one outside the dog-show world knew of “Banana Joe,” the affenpinscher who won Westminster Dog Show’s platinum crown – “Best in Show.” Two days later,the five-year old super-pooch is ubiquitous, appearing on all the major networks and in every brand name online and print news publication.

Jason Gay, the popular sports writer for the Wall Street Journal, penned an article for the February 14 issue  in the style of a call-in radio show. The article, entitled “Longtime Listener, First-Time Barker,” scripts “calls” from listeners named Snickers, Biscuit and Peanut Butter, among others, who happen to be Labrador Retrievers. (These dogs made the point that Labs are the number-one most popular dog in America – the most owned and trusted canine among all breeds.)

The Labs are in an uproar about losing at Westminster year after year, especially in light of their dominance in the popular vote.  Dog after dog gets on the line whining about how unfair it is – they even wonder if they should hire Phil Jackson to help turn it around for them. 

Then Banana Joe calls and weighs in (a/k/a/ trash talks).  When asked by the radio show host, " . . . what do you make of this whole Lab controversy?” 

Banana Joe says, “Champions win. Talkers talk." . . ." I am sick and tired of the Labs just whining on Westminster. Same goes for the golden retrievers, too.  All they do is talk . . . “

So what can lawyers and law firms learn from this? There is more talk among lawyers about business development and rainmaking than there is actual rainmaking. I do advocate effective planning, and not going out willy-nilly to try to expand your client base. But, if lawyers spent more time doing it and less time talking about it, I know the success rate would be greater. And I am confident it would be more fun.

Too much planning and talking is paralyzing. It sabotages the self-confidence that a lawyer needs to effectively engage in a conversation that will matter to a client or prospect. Find out what truly concerns your buyer, what his horizon issues are - hear his opportunities and challenges.The best rainmakers know how to gently guide and facilitate this discussion – with very little talking – so the person making or influencing the buying decision senses the lawyer’s authenticity and sees her brainpower uniquely applied to his issues. 

Let the prospect do the talking and you get to be the champion.

 

"Never, never let others define you. You define yourself."

Emmitt Smith said that in his August 7, 2010 Football Hall of Fame induction speech.  You can read the speech here. 

I don't love football, but I do like the Dallas Cowboys - most seasons.  I typically wouldn't hunt for legal marketing/management metaphors on a sports channel in the fall of any year. But I think the life lessons Emmitt learned on and off the field (and that he shared on Saturday) are simple, practical and can apply to what we as legal marketers do every day.  Emmitt spoke of consistency.  And balance.  And he went on to say:

The first and most important principle is to be of service. The hardest service is for everyone. The second principle is we all need a championship strategy to guide us to help make those dreams come true. The third principle is, claim your inner champion. When you claim your inner champion, you will learn to see, hear and feel differently than others. So what I most want to convey here is, never, never let others define you; you define yourself.

So - legal marketers, from the most junior in your department to the Chief Marketing Officer, take Emmitt's advice.  You define the contribution you can make, you approach your role and responsibilities with consistency, you set and reach your high goals and standards, you define yourself.

I was inducted into the Legal Marketing Hall of Fame in 2008, as a member of the second class.  Now, in 2010, there are only 14 Legal Marketing Hall of Fame inductees.  It's an enormous honor in our profession and among the 3,500-plus "registered" legal marketers.   When I became a fulltime member of this profession in 1987, I wish someone would have given me the advice that I use as today's blog post title. 

Here is what I have learned all these years later:  It's lazy to let others define you.  I challenge you to engage in the hardest work any professional faces:  you define the mark you want to make on your world.