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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Preparing for the LIBOR Phase Out: Contract Remediation Starts with Contract Intelligence
Ryan Drimalla and Karl Dorwart
The London Interbank Offered Rate has long been the global basis for agreements that include a variable interest rate component. However, LIBOR would be replaced by other benchmarks by the end of 2021. Key to assessing risk of exposure, quantifying the financial impact, developing remediation plans and communicating material information to stakeholders will be the identification, analysis and remediation of LIBOR-based contracts.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How to Ensure Financial Health Ahead of an Economic Downturn
Derek F. Meek and Hanna Lahr
The economic downturn that is projected to come out of the shutdowns mandated due to COVID-19 is likely to be more wide-ranging than the Great Recession of 2008 in light of the non-discriminative impact of the virus. Given this outlook, now is a critical time for companies to reassess their business and finances so that they can be prepared for the future.
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Marketing The Law Firm
7 Steps to Pivot Your Business Now
Kimberly Rice
With national shelter-in-place orders in place now for several months with information on resuming business in the new normal changing every day, lawyers must consider pivoting how they operate their businesses in today’s sub-normal climate.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Match Your Business Development Plan With Your Personality
Glennie Green
It is critical that lawyers determine strategies that match their skills, personalities, and perceptions and experiences.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How Cultivating Existing Client Relationships Can Boost Business Development
Scott Wallingford
Strategic business development is critical to support firm growth, and CRM software is the backbone of a data-driven approach. It not only helps your firm prospect for future clients, but also helps you strengthen and expand existing client relationships.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Virtual Training & Mentoring for Summer and First Year Associates
Sharon Meit Abrahams
Conscientious development of associates through training and mentoring enables them to become dynamic, professional, and ethical attorneys who provide high quality service that clients expect.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Introducing Pricing Transparency to Legal Services
Nathan Cemenska
The COVID-19 crisis has caused a money crunch across industries, and CLD budgets are tightening. This downturn demands that CLDs stop writing blank checks for services of indeterminate scope and duration. Here are some ideas for law departments looking to do better.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Pouring Resources Into Business Development and Coaching Provides Mixed Results
Patrick Smith
The largest law firms are pouring substantial resources into business development training, cultivating leadership skills and professional coaching, according to a new report, and they’re fielding teams of marketing professionals and lawyers to court and maintain clients. But the report found that the efforts — and the results — have been uneven, especially when it comes to developing leadership and building effective client teams.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Legal Analytics and the Evolving Practice of Law
Josh Becker
While we may use analytics differently in our respective companies, one thing is certain: Legal analytics is the future and it’s time to jump on board.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
How Cultivating Existing Client Relationships Can Boost Business Development
Scott Wallingford
Advances in CRM software can help connect lawyers across the firm, allowing them to compete as one firm and build on the successful results they have already delivered for clients.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Jump-Starting Business Development After Living in a Socially Distant World
Deborah C. Scaringi
How do we go back to conducting productive business without seeming callous to the harsh realities many people are experiencing?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Jump-Starting Business Development After Living in a Socially Distant World
Deborah C. Scaringi
As leaders slowly pave ways to restart the economy, lawyers and law firms are looking for the safest route to getting back to work supporting clients who are trying to do the same. At the center of these discussions, an important quandary is brewing: How do we go back to conducting productive business without seeming callous to the harsh realities many people are experiencing?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Prosecuting PPP Fraud May Be Harder Than It Seems
Christopher M. Ferguson
This article discusses what tools the government has for pursuing seemingly undeserving PPP borrowers, the obstacles to bringing such cases, and the factors that may influence the government’s decision in pursuing criminal or civil cases.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Demand for Contract Lawyers Is Rising from COVID-19 Business Disruptions
MP McQueen
Recruiters say the demand for contract attorneys in corporate and government legal departments and law firms is rising as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic creates more of certain types of legal work.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Putting the “Social” Back into Social Media: Helping Attorneys Connect with Others
Jaimie B. Field
Most attorneys are expecting social media to be a panacea to bring in new clients during this incredibly unusual time in our history. As marketing and business development professionals and coaches, we know we have to teach our attorneys that, like any other marketing and business development tactic, there is no magic bullet. But that by using social media, it will help them create attention and assist in building relationships.
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Marketing The Law Firm
How to Write Digital Content that Gets Read
Melanie Trudeau
With over 1.7 billion websites on the Internet, you might say we have a content clutter issue. Adding to the pile should be done strategically, with creativity and careful consideration of how to write digital content. This article provides a step-by-step guide for attorneys and legal professionals to follow when writing blogs, articles, legal alerts, white papers and other online content.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Small Law, Big Changes: The Coming Disruption in the Legal Industry
Rinky S. Parwani and Greg Garman
The billable hour is still profitable from a transactional perspective, but from a strategic perspective, in today’s economy, that profitability has begun to erode. That’s because our economy has fundamentally transformed into a service economy that is based on leverage and scale.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
COVID-19 Downturn Likely Won't Impact Health of Law Firm Billable Hour
Frank Ready
Not even the economic downturn imposed by the COVID-19 virus may be able to take credit for eliminating the billable hour. While attorneys could be relying more on legal tech to help defray costs, transitioning to a new pricing infrastructure in the midst of so much uncertainty could prove to be a bridge too far.
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Marketing The Law Firm
8 Legal Marketing Strategies that Work Now
Larry Bodine
Many lawyers focus on business development only when they have downtime or when a matter concludes. And, when they do have time, they go to the same old networking events, write for the same old publications, and give the same old speeches. What is the solution?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Ask the Right Questions, Get the Right Hire Via Remote Interviewing
Sharon Meit Abrahams
Techniques and important guidelines that will help an attorney conduct remote interviews that are efficient and help to lead to quality candidates for hire.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Client Development During the Pandemic
Larry Bodine
The new normal under the plague has put pressure on law firms to simply operate, as well as thrive. However, law firms have a unique opportunity during the COVID-19 outbreak to capture new files and business. Now is the time to use a personal touch and double down on digital marketing.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Voice of the Client: Hearing the Voice of the Client
Deborah Farone and Michael Mellor
For the last decade, law firms have been touting that they are client-centered. While we generally agree that is the case, we also believe that there are still untapped opportunities to bring the “voice of the client” to additional aspects of the firm and improve the overall client experience.
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Marketing The Law Firm
COVID-19: Threats Abound: How to Protect Your Remote Workforce
Tomas Suros
If there’s an upside to this unsettling period, it’s that the same cloud that irrevocably changed the way companies do business in recent years will now help them navigate through this pandemic. By enabling remote work in response to this crisis, companies will emerge nimbler, more technologically sound and more productive.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Competitive Intelligence: “Dear Marketing & Business Development Professional …”
Stacy Zinken
Letters from librarians on value and opportunities to work together to support firm goals.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Adopting COVID-19 Cuts, Law Firms Balance Image and Economics
Patrick Smith
Firms Are Applying Communications Lessons from the Great Recession As They Deliver Bad News During the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Many firms have appeared in recent weeks to be signaling compassion, embracing (relative) transparency and sharing sacrifices across lawyers and staff. That can help make even painful cuts less harmful for a firm’s internal morale and outside reputation.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Adopting COVID-19 Cuts, Law Firms Balance Image and Economics
Patrick Smith
Firms Are Applying Communications Lessons from the Great Recession As They Deliver Bad News During the Coronavirus Pandemic.
As firms echo their response to the COVID-19 crisis, they are also showing they learned from the experiences of a decade ago, including the negative effects of delivering cuts unevenly, clumsily or with unnecessary secrecy.
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Marketing The Law Firm
COVID 19: Selling in Times of Uncertainty
Debra Baker
The natural instinct during times of chaos is to move into a place of scarcity. The single best gift you can offer clients is courage and confidence about the path forward.
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Marketing The Law Firm
How to Make Working from Home, Work for You
Sharon Meit Abrahams
In the legal industry it is time for a paradigm shift. Many firms have struggled with allowing people to work from home for a myriad of reasons. At this point, we have no choice. To help you get off on the right foot, the following are some best practices as we move forward into this new working environment.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Make It Stick: Eight Strategies to Make Your Business Development Training More Effective
Eric Dewey
One factor in the slack of demand for law firms that is not being talked about is the state of the business development training and coaching that firms use to build their business development capabilities in the firm.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Linking Partner Pay to Strategic Firm Objectives
J. Mark Santiago
In general law firms have been slower to adopt pay for performance systems. What law firms need now, and this article describes, is an approach to partner compensation that closely links a partners pay to their ability to contribute to the achievement of the firm’s strategic objectives.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Supreme Court Defers to State Law on Ownership of Tax Refund
Michael L. Cook
Federal courts should “turn to state law to resolve” a “fight over a tax refund,” held a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Rodriquez v. FDIC (In re United W Bancorp., Inc.).
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The State of Legal Finance in 2020
Ari Kaplan
Legal industry analyst Ari Kaplan interviewed 32 lawyers from Finland, France, Hong Kong, Norway, Singapore, the UK and the U.S. about the evolution of legal finance. He also surveyed 20 in-house lawyers at Fortune 500 companies and 18 law firm lawyers from Australia, the Cayman Islands, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, Sweden, the UK, and the U.S. about emerging trends in legal finance. Below are some of his findings and what they indicate about the current state of the sector.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firm Mergers and Predictions for the Year 2020
Marcus Dyer
2019 went down as another record year for law firm mergers. But what do the numbers teach us? Did the tendency to merge apply to law firms across the board? Is the merger mania likely to continue in 2020? What was the impetus for record number of mergers? This article breaks down the available data to answer these questions and attempts to give us a glimpse into the future.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Client Maximization: Doing Well by Doing the Right Things
Linda Hazelton
Making the most of your firm’s client base need not be a costly undertaking. There are several steps a firm of any size can undertake to improve client experiences, ultimately, while also increasing the firm’s chances of thriving.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Selling in Times of Uncertainty
Debra Baker
The natural instinct during times of chaos is to move into a place of scarcity. The single best gift you can offer clients is courage and confidence about the path forward.
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Sales Speak: Selling in Times of Uncertainty
Debra Baker
The natural instinct during times of chaos is to move into a place of scarcity. The single best gift you can offer clients is courage and confidence about the path forward.
Read More ›
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Marketing The Law Firm
Client Maximization: Doing Well by Doing the Right Things
Linda Hazelton
Making the most of your firm’s client base need not be a costly undertaking. There are several steps a firm of any size can undertake to improve client experiences, while also ultimately increasing the firm’s chances of thriving.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Competitive Intelligence: Helping Your Client Know Their Client
Patricia Ellard
We hear more and more that exceptional client service and in-depth knowledge of the clients’ business and industry are the differentiators in keeping current clients and winning new ones. Value far outweighs cost when it comes to long-term client relationships, bet-the-company work and ongoing client success.
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Marketing The Law Firm
In the Know: Top 5 Legal Technology Trends for the 2020s
Deb Dobson
Technology is changing more rapidly than ever impacting our work, and personal lives. With technology playing such a huge role, it is important for legal marketers to be familiar with technology trends to understand the potential impact on our clients and law firm.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How Law Firms Are Overcoming New Business Development Challenges
Julie Savarino
With the intense competition for new legal work, demands on lawyers’ available time and the increasing discounts clients demand, it’s getting harder for law firms operating under a billable-hour business model to support the consistent development of new legal work by investing in and maintaining a marketing department alone.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Better Law & Better Life Through Emotional Intelligence
Rich Bracken
As more and more attorneys realize that turning to mental awareness education and consulting is a sign of strength and not weakness, the ship of despair is beginning its turn toward better days of mentally strong and agile teams. So, where does one start this new practice? Enter emotional intelligence.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Law Firms Adopt a Legal Operations Perspective
Megan Miller
Law firms are clearly in important player in the legal services value stream; as the legal operations movement continues to take hold in corporate client organizations, in-house teams are looking to outside law firms to join them in their efforts to reduce operating costs, improve staffing, take greater advantage of technology, and improve project management processes.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Linking Content into the Client Journey: Why Content Experience Matters
Jennifer S. Bankston
One of the most effective components of legal marketing is thought leadership content. With today’s available palette of media tools, law firms are able to design, build and customize the content that their client’s experience like never before. Ensuring that this “content experience” is profound and impactful is a necessary and critical endeavor.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Sales Speak: Strategies to Avoid or Reduce Billing Rate Discounts
Eric Dewey
Requests for discounts have become a routine step in the legal services purchasing process. Lawyers face the uncomfortable task of defending their billing rates in both RFPs and client pitches. But too often, lawyers don’t make an effort to resist giving a discount when asked. Mostly because they haven’t been trained in how to do it.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Why Accountability in Law Firms Is So Challenging
Marcie Borgal Shunk
In an era of “what’s in it for me,” leaders seeking to ensure the long-term well-being of the firm and its talent often find change initiatives especially challenging.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Digital Dive: The Not-Doing List: Focusing Your Strategic Marketing Plan
Sometimes, we over-engineer solutions. And most often, we don’t need to.
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Marketing The Law Firm
How Law Firms Are Overcoming New Business Development Challenges
Julie Savarino
With the intense competition for new legal work, demands on lawyers’ available time and the increasing discounts clients demand, it’s getting harder for law firms operating under a billable-hour business model to support the consistent development of new legal work by investing in and maintaining a marketing department alone.
Read More ›
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Marketing The Law Firm
Competitive Intelligence: Identifying Business Indicators That Lead to Legal Needs
Stacy Zinken
It’s not enough these days to simply react to clients, the best attorneys are those who can anticipate a legal need before it happens and be proactive in reaching out to clients. To be first to a client, lawyers need a keen understanding of how business indicators connect to legal needs and have a strategy to track and analyze the path as it unfolds.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Leadership in Law: Getting a Seat at the Table
Peter A. Johnson
How Law Firm Marketers Can Assume a Leadership Role
The marketing director needs to gain “a seat at the table” in order to have a voice in planning, and to be viewed as an integral member of the firm’s management team. How do you go about earning that seat?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Marketing Tech: 5 Challenges Facing Firms Trying to Boost Marketing With Tech
Frank Ready
Firms are embracing new technologies to help drive marketing efforts and reach new audiences, but doing so may require some uncomfortable changes to the ways that attorneys have traditionally thought about building their brands.
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