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Marketing The Law Firm
The Importance of Social Skills: Technology and Data Are Not Enough to Grow Your Firm’s Business
Jamie B. Field
Data is taking over our lives. And preceding that is all of the applications and technology that exists that helps us measure that information. But technology and data are not going to be the only growth drivers of a firm in the future. What’s going to become most important in the face of the technological changes that are occurring in law firms is a lawyer's "soft-skills."
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Marketing The Law Firm
Are Online Reviews Threatening Your Online Reputation?
Melanie Trudeau
An attorney’s reputation may be one of the most important factors that clients consider before hiring counsel. In today’s world of online reviews, managing your reputation can be challenging. How should you manage online reviews to ensure your reputation and trustworthiness are intact?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Litigation Expense Deductibility: New Appellate Court Decision
Daniel Mayo
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued a decision that explains some of the requirements for deducting litigation expenses. The facts of the case are bizarre, but the controlling legal principles are not.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Voice of the Client: Hearing the Client Through the Noise
Jennifer Simpson Carr and Amy Knapp
At the end of the day, a lot of noise is created in the effort to hear the voice of the client. We propose that while these efficiencies and innovations in law are valuable, the clients keep asking for something different: a lawyer who deeply understands their business and their specific issue — at the time they need it.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Competitive Intelligence: How Client Intelligent Is Your Firm?
Stacy Rowe
Ready, Set, Benchmark!
Underlying great client service is a strong understanding of the client’s business and goals. There are many barriers to success when it comes to helping lawyers develop a strategic client mindset. So, how do you break down these barriers to create a Client Intelligent Law Firm?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Best Ways To Expand Key Client Relationships from the Lawyer and Firm Perspectives
Julie Savarino
Part Two of a Two-Part Article
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firm Revenue Rose as Demand Dropped in the First Quarter of 2019
David Altuna and Gretta Rusanow
The legal industry saw greater revenue growth during the first quarter of 2019 than it did to start the strong year of 2018. However, the drivers of that growth were much different, as the demand growth that characterized 2018 gave way to a demand decline during the first quarter of 2019, and much of the revenue growth came in the form of cash collections from 2018 inventory.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Professional Development: Why an Online “To-Do” List and Notes Are So Important
Brett Spodak
If You Want To Do More, Go Paper-Less
he secret to increased productivity and a powerful agenda process is to finally ditch the paper and move to a more flexible system for both your daily to-do list and notes. This article makes the case for why moving to a digital platform for a to-do list and notes will increase your productivity.
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Marketing The Law Firm
5 Ways to Optimize the Attorney-Marketing Relationship
Mike Mellor
With an increase in partner laterals, the advent of increasingly sophisticated procurement teams, greater transparency into pricing models, and more law firm mergers every year, the dynamics have certainly shifted. Attorneys can no longer simply wait for their phones to ring and to expect million-dollar books of business by executing and providing superb client service. That ship has sailed, and client expectations have been raised across the board.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
“Don’t Do Stupid”
J. Mark Santiago
6 Common Law Firm Accounting Practices That Need to Be Re-evaluated
There are a number of tried and true practices in law firms that need more thinking. Not because law firm managers are stupid; it’s just that some practices need to be periodically re-evaluated and adjusted to reflect the changing times.
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Marketing The Law Firm
In a VUCA Environment, Empower Your CMO to Collaborate and Lead
Tammy Mangan
VUCA is an acronym we don’t often hear in the legal industry. It stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and was coined by the U.S. Army to describe the post-Cold War world. Buyers of legal services are more sophisticated than ever and are redefining the meaning of value, some are involving procurement professionals in the buying process.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Best Ways to Expand Key Client Relationships
Julie Savarino
Part Two of a Two-Part Article
This two-part article defines the specific and best actions lawyers and law firms can take to expand client relationships. This second part covers what law firms as institutions can do to help the firm’s departments, practice groups, teams and lawyers expand client relationships.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Best Ways to Expand Key Client Relationships from the Lawyers’ and Firms’ Perspectives
Julie Savarino
Part One of a Two-Part Article
For a variety of reasons, many law firms and lawyers struggle to effectively cross-sell or cross-service. This article defines the specific and best actions lawyers and law firms can take to expand client relationships.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Marketing Tech: 7 Habits of Effective Online Marketers
Larry Bodine
The advantage of online marketing is that it is one-to-many, as opposed to in-person marketing which is one-to-one. By adopting the seven habits of effective online marketers, CMOs can generate more business for their law firms.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Lawyers: Being Paid Shouldn’t Be Like Pulling Teeth!
Peter A. Johnson
What Lawyers Can Learn From Dentists
Nobody enjoys visiting the dentist, but everybody knows you still must pay him or her on the day of service. Attorneys, however, have historically let the client lead the payment dance. Lawyers do the work and hope/expect to be paid without waiting too long or discounting the invoice too steeply. What can we do differently?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Best Ways to Expand Key Client Relationships from the Lawyers’ and Firms’ Perspectives
Julie Savarino
Part One of a Two-Part Article
This article defines the specific and best actions lawyers and law firms can take to expand client relationships. This first part includes specific actions individual lawyers can take to expand client relationships.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Five Ways to Maximize Marketing Efforts
Richard Bracken
With every request for external exposure, there is also an assumption that one effort of marketing will result in millions in new revenue. Yet, we all know that the responsibility to implement all marketing initiatives is on the lawyers.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Marketing Tech: Why Should Marketers Care About the Blockchain?
Deborah Dobson
Technology is playing an ever-increasing role in our lives, personally and professionally. One of the emerging technologies that has caught my eye is blockchain.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Competitive Intelligence: Creating a Culture of Intelligence
Patricia Ellard
We hear that clients hate to be cross-sold. However, this does not mean that clients are not interested to be introduced to new colleagues who can provide insight. Rather, cross selling must be thoughtful and tailored to clients’ needs
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Marketing The Law Firm
Sales Speak: Maximize Your Chambers (and other) Rankings
Linda A. Hazelton
While ranking directories are rarely the only tools used to find a firm or lawyer, in-house counsel and CEOs often turn to them as informative research sources. For these reasons alone, preparing materials and references for submission, even though time-consuming, may make sense under the right circumstances.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Farewell, For Now: I’m Cheering You On!
Kimberly Rice
In nearly 30 years as a legal marketing professional, I have seen firsthand so many changes and developments in law firms’ perception and treatment of business development and marketing as a business practice. Here are a few takeaways that I trust will be uplifting as you continue to pave your professional journey in legal marketing.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Lawyers: Being Paid Shouldn’t Be Like Pulling Teeth!
Peter A. Johnson
What Lawyers Can Learn From Dentists
Attorneys have historically let the client lead the payment dance. Lawyers do the work and hope/expect to be paid without waiting too long or discounting the invoice too steeply. Yet, here we are at the beginning of another year with many law firms still waiting anxiously for overdue checks to arrive. Shame on us for letting this happen. What can we do differently?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Sales Speak: The Reason Companies Aren’t Buying Is How Lawyers Are Selling
Eric Dewey
Conventional business development methods ignore an important part of the legal services selling process: the legal services buying process.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Voice of the Client: So Important, It Comes First
Catherine Alman MacDonagh
It is vital to have effective marketing and communications, but if legal and business professionals don’t listen for — and hear — the Voice of the Client, we risk missing the mark in our strategy, messaging and positioning.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Digital Dive: How to Create (at least) Nine Pieces of Content in One Hour
Spencer X. Smith
In just one hour, would it be valuable to have at least nine pieces of content that your lawyer clients may use on your website and on social media?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Planning for the Crisis That Will Strike Your Law Firm
Gina Rubel
Reputation is everything. It only takes one misstep to cause irreparable damage to a law firm and its attorneys. As we get into 2019, it is imperative for law firms to plan for the effective management of myriad incidents that may have an adverse impact on the business of law and the reputation of the firm.
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Marketing The Law Firm
The Confounding Paradox of Marketing Investment for Struggling Law Firms
Bill Josten
“You have to spend money to make money.” Or, so holds the well-worn cliché. For those firms struggling to find meaningful growth in today’s market, where do they find the funds they need to spend in order to spur growth?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Professional Development: 10 Performance Tips for Your Presentation
Sharon Abrahams
Finally, it has happened. You have reached the stage in your career that others want to hear from you and learn what you know in your area of expertise. You have been invited to speak at a conference. What now?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Competitive Intelligence: The Wolf of Law Firms — Sell Me This [Insert Legal Service Here]
Stacy Rowe
While we can’t always create the need; we can work to identfy a need. Clients buy because they have a need or want, and successful salespeople do their homework to uncover this intelligence.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firm Profitability: The Art and Science
Timothy B. Corcoran and Marcie Borgal Shunk
The Manner in Which Law Firm Leaders Measure Profitability Has the Potential to Have a Profound Impact on Behavior and Motivation, Particularly As More Firms Integrate This Metric Into Their Compensation Systems
The manner in which law firm leaders measure profitability has the potential to have a profound impact on behavior and motivation.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Media & Communications: Advising a Client on Crisis Communications — The Three Rs and Three Fs
Janet Falk
If you have not already encouraged your partners to advise their clients of the need to develop a crisis communication plan in advance, and provided some guidance on best practices, do so immediately. As a complement to a well-developed plan, here are two mnemonic approaches to managing communications in a crisis: the three Rs and the three Fs.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Big Law’s Trojan Horse: Are the Big Four Preparing an Invasion?
Dan Packel
Law Firms Partner With the Big Four to Serve Their Clients, But the Accountants Pose an Existential Threat. What Will Happen If — or When — They Turn Competitive?
For law firm leaders, rank-and-file partners and everyone else in the law firm ecosystem, the Big Four shouldn’t be a laughing matter. They are serious about selling legal services, and clients are listening.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Confounding Paradox of Marketing Investment for Struggling Law Firms
Bill Josten
“You have to spend money to make money.” Or, so holds the well-worn cliché. Nevertheless, for those firms struggling to find meaningful growth in today’s market, where do they find the funds they need to spend in order to spur growth?
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Marketing The Law Firm
A Chief Client Service Officer in Action
Kimberly Rice
Marketing the Law Firm recently interviewed Jennifer Papantonio, Chief Client Service Officer of Peckar & Abramson about her significant role, which includes the successes she and the firm have achieved in recent years, how she works collaboratively with firm leadership to create innovative solutions, and her recommendations to law firms which may be considering engaging a Chief Client Officer.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Three Simple Steps of Marketing Mentoring
Aly Lynch
As experienced marketers, we can help coach newer attorneys in their marketing pursuits through mentoring. With the right assistance, newer attorneys can find ways to market that they actually enjoy and are, therefore, more likely to do. And it doesn’t need to be complicated.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Social Media Scene: The Easy Path to Success on Social Media — The 1% Rule of the Internet
Spencer X. Smith
You may have read a dozen “How To” articles about cracking the algorithms — which sound very mathematical — of any social media platform, but at the end of the day, you’re communicating with people.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Women’s Initiatives: Women’s Initiatives Create Opportunity and Benefits in Law Firms
Vivian Hood
One of the most significant means of support law firms can have for women lawyers is adopting women’s initiatives that provide a means for women lawyers to support one another within a firm and deliver a commitment to the advancement and understanding of unique issues that women face at their firms.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Media & Communications: PR and Marketing — Like PB&J
Elizabeth Lampert
Why They Are Different but Must Work Together
In today’s environment, any divide between marketing and communication can diminish even the most benevolent marketing and PR efforts. The intersection between them can reveal a pot of gold of useful insights into how we should “manage” all of our legal marketing strategic efforts.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Reminders for Successful, and Enjoyable, Holiday Networking
Kimberly Rice
Each year, we receive inquiries on how to socialize with friends and family while being mindful of networking opportunities. Follow these steps below to initiate discussions with friends or social acquaintances — without seeming awkward or risking personal relationships.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Voice of the Client: Put Your Best Foot Forward in the New Year — Revaluating Content Strategy
Jen Betterncourt
While reputation goes a long way in attracting new clients, having a solid content strategy is a critical component of the legal sales cycle at all turns, including retaining the clients you have.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Unmasking the Impostor Syndrome
Cynthia Sharp
Many talented lawyers shortchange themselves and their law firms by failing to implement a strategic business development plan. Some claim that they don’t have time to market while others lament that marketing doesn’t work — for them. While these and a variety of other excuses are common, it may be productive to dig a little deeper to determine whether other factors are at play.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Competitive Intelligence: Become More Relevant – Meet Your Clients’ Needs Every Time
Patricia Ellard
Becoming and staying relevant is a process. It is not static but always evolving. Your clients change, their needs and requests change, you change, and, throughout these experiences, you learn steps to implement and how to implement them in given situations.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Media & Communication: 3 Ways to Drive Higher ROI from Press Releases
Nicholas Gaffney
In an age where law firms can quickly disseminate news to target audiences via multiple social media platforms as well as their own websites, is it finally time to put the press release out to pasture? The press release is a valuable PR tool that deserves to live on. Executed correctly, the benefits outweigh the cost.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Active Listening Wins Clients
Kimberly Rice
All too often, we read studies, which report clients’ pet peeve with their services providers whom do not listening to them. Or, cited another way, clients…
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: Stop, Collaborate and Listen -- Collaboration Tools Are a Brand New Invention
Michele C.S. Lange
Today’s workplaces require tools that enhance employee productivity and provide the flexibility to never miss a critical business opportunity. Organizations in other industries have already experienced the benefits of enterprise collaboration, and now this technology is making its way into the legal sector. The rise of enterprise collaboration is redefining the modern law firm and legal department.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Only 30% of Workday Is Spent on Billable Hours, Report Says
Brenda Sapino Jeffreys
U.S. lawyers are still spending too little of their workday on billable hours, a year after an eye-opening report found lawyers devoted only 29% — 2.3 hours — of each eight-hour workday to billable hours.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Valuation Implications of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017
Ronald L. Seigneur
This article focuses on the impact of tax reform on C corporations and looks at the significant and complex changes to pass through entities.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firms Are More Profitable Than Ever. How are They Doing It?
Nicholas Bruch
Given the Obstacles Law Firms Are Facing, Profitability Shouldn’t Be Increasing
Rising competition from alternative service providers and the ever-forward march of technology adoption should be having a similar, negative, effect on profitability. This raises an obvious question — how are law firms doing it?
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Marketing The Law Firm
‘Cause We Are Living in a Digital World …
David McCann
As with traditional branding, a digital brand is simply the perception individuals have of a business or organization online. Digital branding is a brand management technique that uses a combination of Internet branding and digital marketing to develop a brand over a range of digital venues, including Internet-based relationships, device-based applications and media. The objective is to establish and build trust with potential clients, especially while they are in the decision phase of the selection process.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Sales Speak: Grow Your Clients: MLF’s Challenge
Beth Cuzzone
As you approach your clients during the upcoming holidays and new year, think creatively. This Q&A with Aon COO Audrey Rubin provides more than a dozen examples of ways to add value and build stronger relationships with our clients. The MLF team challenges you to undertake one or two of these in your next go-to-market strategies.
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