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As anyone who has attended a four-year university can attest, "publish or perish" is the mantra for budding academics looking to secure the permanent, and virtually untouchable, position of tenured faculty. In modern academia, many have eschewed that thought ' claiming that it places too great an emphasis on research and not enough on actual teaching. <br>However, more and more lawyers are beginning to grasp the thought that its time for them to take the baton from their academic colleagues ' as the pressures of law firm consolidation and the necessity to stand out in a crowded field demand an aggressive visibility and communications strategy.
Consultant David Maister has observed: "Training is a great last step but a pathetic first step. It is sensible to make training available when the professionals are already convinced that they need a new skill, but you can't change people by first putting on a training program." <br>Jenkens & Gilchrist, a 500+ attorney national law firm with nine offices from New York to Los Angeles, has proven Maister right with our Women's Marketing Group. Now in its second year, the Group had its genesis with a female attorney who saw the need for business development mentoring and better communication among her peers throughout the firm. Her idea, developed with the support of a key Board member and with my help as an in-house marketing professional, has expanded to include a quarterly series of firm-wide videoconference meetings for female partners and associates, related business development activities, and an Intranet Marketing Library that we help the attorneys grow themselves.
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You can't sell legal service the way you sell doughnuts or shoes. But after we get done talking about how different the business of law is, let me suggest that we look at the goals, measurement practices and process management issues that marketing addresses in other industries.
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This is the second half of the article that appeared in our special July/August Women and Diversity issue. Women in Law initiatives and programs are not a new phenomenon. Many firms nationwide have programs that afford their women attorneys business development, mentoring and career counseling. In writing this article, we spoke to ten different firms (see insert which lists the firms in the order in which they are profiled in this article) to learn the how's and why's of their women's initiatives. In Part 2 we have profiled the last five firms.
Sometimes it seems easier to ask the correct questions, than to answer them concisely and it becomes harder to apply them to solutions that work easily. That said; let us see if we can do exactly that.
In June 2004, the American Bar Association's Legal Technology Resource Center completed its annual technology survey, published in five parts. The Litigation and Courtroom Technology volume serves as a sobering background for those who crave a total technology trial. Firms are slowly embracing litigation technology, but there is still a long road to follow before the technology is ubiquitous. Courtrooms have yet to provide much technology in the way of hardware or software, citing expenses and implementation as key barriers. Many lawyers are hesitant to spend thousands, much less hundreds of thousands, of dollars on sophisticated hardware and software. So what are the courts and attorneys embracing, and what are they putting off for another day?
Most law firms, regardless of size, have to outsource technology projects to consultants who have capabilities that the firm does not carry in-house. The smaller firms that do not retain a large IT staff must take this approach more often. Fortunately, outsourcing technology support can evolve into a more valuable model for working with outside consultants: "expertSourcing." When a law firm hires a company to assist on a technology project, generally they are bringing in technicians who will execute it within the narrow boundaries of the scope. The consultants may not ask, or even know to ask, crucial questions about how the technology fits into the law firm practice, how it facilitates other firm needs or if a better solution is available.
Our firm wanted a program that would not only organize our case files electronically, but improve workflow and allow for easy access from a desktop as well as remotely. Because of our team approach to handling cases, we also needed a product that would allow each of us to see what tasks or issues another person was handling, without having to inquire as to the status or physically look at the file.
The latest rulings of interest to you and your practice.
Important cases for you to consider.