Features

How Many Excess Partners Does Your Firm Have?
It is widely recognized that Big Law has surplus partner capacity. What is less well recognized is just how massive this surplus has become, how unevenly it is spread across firms in different profitability cohorts, and what it portends for when the next downturn hits.
Features

<b><i>Voice of the Client:</i></b> What Does 'Different' Mean?
As firms turn their focus to revenue generation, some of the more progressive firms look to their clients to help them create their strategic priorities. In some cases, they even ask their clients to be involved in the planning process.
Features

Engaging Lawyers in a Follow-Up Initiative: A Case Study
A look at a recent group coaching initiative at a major law firm. Having had success with group coaching in the past, the CMO established a six-month pilot program and chose eight attorneys to participate. Here's what happened.
Features

<b><i>Sales Speak:</i></b> Award Winners: What Can We Learn?
In every issue of <i>Marketing the Law Firm</i>, we read about best practices and new trends. However, not even that prepared us for this year's LSSO (Legal Sales and Service Organization Inc.) Legal Sales and Service Awards winners — specifically, the long-term success established in a short amount of time at two law firms.
Features

<b><i>Leadership:</i></b> Never Lose Heart: Appreciating the Human
<b><i>The Impact of What We Do as Marketers and Lawyers</b></i><p>Sometimes the legal profession can seem to be too much about money and the chase thereof. So, maybe it is time to talk more about the human impact of what we do — we almost never talk about what could arguably be the most important aspect of our professional lives: How what we do as professionals impacts the lives of real people, in meaningful ways.
Features

The Administrative Services Hat Trick
At the ALA annual conference in Denver, I was speaking on how law firms could provide better administrative support for their attorneys and how alternative strategies were being deployed by some law firms to achieve those goals. After my session, the discussion continued with a group of participants and the hat trick metaphor was born.
Features

<b><i>Marketing Tech:</i></b> Data Science for the Law
"Data Science" and "Artificial Intelligence" are terms being thrown around in every field, including legal. But what are they? Why are they generating so much excitement these days? There are many definitions out there, but Data Science is really just statistics of the real world, including business and customer data. The question is how do you get the right statistics?
Features

<b><i>Professional Development:</i></b> Getting 'Gig'gy with It: The New 'Gig Economy'
<b><i>Law Firm Marketing Teams Need to Adapt!</b></i><p>For the most part, law firms continue to structure themselves in a traditional operating and employment models with a dedicated workforce of talent arranged in an organizational hierarchy. In today's Gig Economy, however, this will unlikely hold. Here's why.
Features

Alternative Fee Arrangements in Complex Litigation
<i><b>The Case for Value Billing</i></b><p>Alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) are about value, a benefit legal departments are increasingly pressured to bring to their companies. When hiring an outside lawyer, clients are not looking for "hours," and they certainly are not looking for tenths of hours. They seek value.
Features

Professional Coaching: A Gift That Keeps on Giving
This article offers a case for legal marketers to consider when strategizing how to best support their lawyer clients on a level that they are personally unable to do on their own, given the many diverse demands within a busy marketing department.
Need Help?
- Prefer an IP authenticated environment? Request a transition or call 800-756-8993.
- Need other assistance? email Customer Service or call 1-877-256-2472.
MOST POPULAR STORIES
- Protecting Innovation in the Cyber World from Patent TrollsWith trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.Read More ›
- Private Equity Valuation: A Significant DecisionInsiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.Read More ›
- Meet the Lawyer Working on Inclusion Rider LanguageAt the Oscars in March, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand made “inclusion rider” go viral. But Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll had already worked for months to write the language for such provisions. Kotagal was developing legal language for contract provisions that Hollywood's elite could use to require studios and other partners to employ diverse workers on set.Read More ›
- Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar InvestigationsThis article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.Read More ›
- The DOJ Goes Phishing: The Rise of False Claims Act Cybersecurity LitigationWhile the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.Read More ›