Law Firm Management

The issues that I confronted a dozen years ago when I became a CMO for the first time are very much the same issues that my CMO brothers and sisters face today. Irrespective of whether you've had decades of experience or not, the job is tough. Well, the job is relatively easy, but ensuring that your team members get all the credit and your firm hits its success metrics, while maintaining your visibility and growing your perceived value, remains very much a challenge to even the most seasoned professionals.

Lawyers who exhibit "executive presence" are more likely to make partner, to gain clients' trust and loyalty, and to receive referrals from others. Executive presence is easy to spot, but difficult to define. A lucky few are born with it, but, in most cases, it is learned. This article discusses what executive presence is and how you can learn it.

For firms or teams with historically non-collaborative cultures (and that describes 99.9% of them), this "whole collaboration thing" has become a huge annoyance, an attempted interference with "how we've always practiced law." For these folks, the challenge is thorny: Convince everyone that their culture is changing with the times while continuing to conduct business as usual. When they fail, there is often a huge — and demoralizing — gap between the cup and the lip.

Dramatic Change Defines the Position

Perhaps no non-practicing lawyer position has changed as dramatically as that of the leading marketing professional, which bears no resemblance to the position in the 1990s. Twenty-five years ago, law firm marketing executives were asked to put together brochures and prepare seating charts for client and partner functions. It's a different world today.

When news breaks, reporters want a source immediately — not in an hour, later that day or first thing the next morning. Reporters who can get to a source first and fast — and are confident that source will provide reliable and insightful analysis — win the day. If you want to be considered and quoted as a thought leader on timely topics, understanding the compressed timing of the news cycle is critical. To get on a key reporter's speed dial, here are three tips you can incorporate into your PR and marketing activities.

The boomer generation — 75 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 — and a tiny cadre of over-70s Silent Generation lawyers currently make up just under half of partners at Am Law 200 firms. As partners with the greatest seniority, they constitute a majority in the equity and management ranks, and control an outsize share of client relationships. The impacts of retirement are amplified because a long surge in hiring and promotion that began when boomers entered law firms has halted since the financial crisis.

Although a handful of law firms has hired non-lawyer sales teams, most still rely upon individual attorneys or practice groups to generate new client matters (i.e., to sell) even though the majority of them have never received business development skills training. This article describes some of the important characteristics and habits shared by attorneys who have built successful practices.

Law firm leadership is at a proverbial fork in the road. The people running law firms can continue to do business as usual, or they can lead their firms toward a model of business that reflects the new and still evolving client expectations and market demands.