Legal Marketing & PR

GCs Offer Law Firm Marketing Tips

By Larry Bodine

Three GCs speaking at the LMA New England annual conference spelled out what marketing tactics they ignore, how to get their business and how to annoy them and get fired. 

Marketers and law firms can cross the following items off their list of marketing initiatives, because in-house lawyers don't pay attention to them:

1. Holiday cards (mailed)
2. E-cards (e-mailed)
3. Martindale-Hubbell and other lawyer directories
4. PowerPoint presentations at beauty contests
5. The history of your law firm
6. A newsletter sent out so late that it is the 5^th one on the same legal topic.

That is the consensus of a trio of in-house corporate lawyers speaking at the program 'The Art of the ‘Pitch'' presented yesterday at New England LMA annual conference in Boston.  However if you want to get corporate legal work, here's what in-house counsel like:

1. White papers that are well-researched and written directly sent to a GC facing that exact issue.
2. Lawyers who attend trade association meetings with clients.
3. Likeable lawyers who are easy to work with and who don't aggravated the opposing lawyers.
4. Client feedback surveys by telephone.
5. Quick answers to quick questions.
6. The first law firm newsletter on a timely legal topic.
7. A lawyer who has specific expertise on a legal issue facing a client.

John Remsen, Jr., founder of The Remsen Group in Atlanta moderated the lively discussion among:

• John Affuso, Jr., Senior Transaction Counsel of the Massachusetts Port Authority. This quasi-governmental agency has 17 lawyers in-house, who do 60% of the authority's legal work.  It spends $1 to $3 million per year on 25 different law firms.  
• Steven J. Roberts, Esq., VP of Real Estate Law at Stop & Shop supermarkets, which has 750 stores. The company has 17 in-house lawyers and spends $7 to $8 million per year on 15 law firms.
• Margaret W. Chambers, Executive VP and General Counsel, Boston Private Financial Holdings, Inc.  The legal department consists of 3 people and the company uses Goodwin & Procter for almost everything. The company spends $1.5 million per year on outside counsel.  She is a member of the Association of Corporate Counsel.

For the entire article, please go to the LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/drra7b

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on November 19, 2010 (boomark / email).