Legal Marketing & PR
Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog 
News, opinions and insights into professional services marketing.
Post Frequency: 2/day Last Entry: November 20, 2009 at 07:00:00 Recent Entries: 679
By Larry Bodine, Esq.
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RainMaker Software, Inc.'s Law Firm Economic Assistance Package Awards +$430,000
Posted on November 20, 2009RainMaker Software announced that it has has awarded more than $430,000 in funds to 33 different firms in its $1 million Economic Assistance Program for law firms. The program was originally announced to law firms back in March and continues to increase applicants as the December 31st deadline approaches...
Unlock the Power of Social Arbitrage
Posted on November 19, 2009Following is a guest post from lawyer coach Martha Newman. What goes into the complex formula we call SUCCESS? Success involves leveraging the strong relationships you have built through your networking to OTHER people's advantage. Strive to make everyone around you successful - and you'll find success yourself...
Trouble At Twitter: U.S. Visitors Down 8 Percent In October
Posted on November 18, 2009From TechCrunch.com: Ever since last summer, Twitter's growth in the U.S. has been stalling. But in October, the number of people who visited Twitter.com from the U.S. actually declined for the first time by 8 percent month-over-month. Estimates released today by comScore put Twitter's domestic unique visitors at 19...
How Plaintiff Tort Lawyers Can Generate High-Value Leads
Posted on November 17, 2009Plaintiff tort lawyers can use a NEW marketing technique to generate qualified leads in a highly-efficient cost-per-lead advertising model. Marketing experts Michael G. Cummings and I will host this LIVE presentation at the bargain price of $30 per connection...
Bring Your Client to the Final Hearing
Posted on November 16, 2009A great marketing tip I picked up from a partner at a West Virginia law firm is to bring your client to the final hearing of his case. If the judge or jury rules in your favor, you look like a hero to the client. If they rule against you, the client will be angry at the judge or jury -- not you...
Seyfarth, Baker & Reed Smith Send Lawyers to Business School
Posted on November 12, 2009Article from: Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL) It reads like a typical MBA student class schedule: performance management, the global organization and creating value. Only the students are not future CEOs or CFOs. They are lawyers wanting to learn to think like business executives...
How to Make Networking Events Work for You
Posted on November 12, 2009Networking works best if it is done with "marketing aforethought." Here's your game plan for an effective networking event. Where to Go The best meetings for networking are the ones your clients and referral sources go to. Every person in business belongs to a trade association...
Only 24 hours left to register for ACC Value Challenge Webinar - don't miss out!
Posted on November 11, 2009Womble Carlyle Prospers by Adopting Association of Corporate Counsel Value Challenge Only 24 hours left to register - don't miss out! Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, a firm respected as a pace-setter in the legal profession, has adopted the Value Challenge made by the American Corporate Counsel Association -- and prospered as a result...
A new design for LinkedIn
Posted on November 09, 2009Some of you may have noticed a new site navigation experience on LinkedIn. According to Kevin Bury, Principal User Experience Designer at LinkedIn in San Francisco, LinkedIn is in the process of testing a new design. During this testing phase, some users will see the new design, while others will not...
N.J. Supreme Court Eases Restrictions on 'Super Lawyer' Advertising
Posted on November 07, 2009The state Supreme Court put New Jersey back in step with the rest of the nation Wednesday and changed the ethics rules to allow lawyers to mention their inclusion in Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America or Martindale-Hubbell AV rankings. The changes take effect immediately...
The November issue of Originate! is now online
Posted on November 06, 2009The November issue of Originate! is now online. Here's the list of articles – and the lead article is always free. Learn More About Subscribing to ORIGINATE! What does it take to get new clients and generate more work? Put the best ideas and advice to work for you with ORIGINATE! – the online business development newsletter for lawyers...
$50 Discount Ends Tomorrow for Early Registrations to ACC Value Challenge Webinar
Posted on November 05, 2009Womble Carlyle Prospers by Adopting Association of Corporate Counsel Value Challenge DATE: November 12, 2009 • 10 AM Pacific time • 11 Am Mountain time • Noon Central time • 1 PM Eastern time Register Now and get the $50 early-bird discount...
Story of the Year: Alternative Fees Are Now Prevalent
Posted on November 04, 2009Far and away the biggest development of the last 12 months is the prevalence of alternative fees. Dan Currell, Senior Member of the General Counsel Roundtable, told me that law firms that offer alternate fees are "eating the other law firms' lunch...
Get Your Copy of Google Wave
Posted on November 03, 2009Google Wave, Google's new real-time communication platform is now available to the public. It is a new in-browser communication and collaboration tool that is already being hailed by some as the next evolution of email. To make sense of it all, Mashable...
Think Halloween is scary? Try getting a bunch of lawyers to move by December 15
Posted on November 02, 2009I just LOVE this: Think Halloween is scary? Try getting a bunch of lawyers to move by December 15...
Proskauer Takes Top Honor in Marketing Ranking
Posted on November 01, 2009For the third year in the row, the law firm Proskauer Rose was named as the first with the best marketing program, winning first place in the MLF 50 ranking of law firms. The competition, sponsored by ALM's Marketing the Firm newsletter, evaluates the marketing, business development and communications programs of law firms...
Angry Electronic Pumpkin has me Psyched for Halloween
Posted on October 31, 2009SymetriColour has mystically transformed this benign plastic toy into a creepy electronic jack-o-lantern with flashing eyes and creaking theremin sounds, sure to scare away those pesky trick-or-treaters. Halloween for audio-hackers never looked (and sounded) so good...
Hogan & Hartson agrees to Merge with Lovells
Posted on October 30, 2009With 1,100 lawyers in 27 offices, the law firm of Hogan & Hartson has agreed to merge with the giant British law firm Lovells. The transaction is expected to close in Mid-December and become effective in May 2010. This will create a 2,500 lawyer firm with 40 offices across the world and revenue of $2 billion...
Lane Powell Lets Subscribers Update Their Own Information
Posted on October 30, 2009In a perfect example of using technology for efficiency, the law firm Lane Powell has sent out emails asking subscribers to their email alerts to update their contact information. "As more communication has shifted to electronic distribution, we believe it is important to maintain up-to-date contact information on our clients, colleagues and friends...
Latest in Micromanagement: Clients Evaluate law firms on Flextime
Posted on October 29, 2009You can tell it's a buyer's market for legal services, because corporations are evaluating law firms on strictly internal practices, such as offering flextime. Next thing you know, corporations will be specifying what lawyers should eat for lunch and what colors to wear to work...
Last Chance to Register: Alternate Fees -- Current Best Practice and Likely Trends
Posted on October 27, 2009D Don't miss your last chance to register for this Thursday's Webinar! Three leading lights from the corporate community will get into detail about how alternate fees work in law practice -- including Paul Lippe, Founder of Legal OnRamp, Jeffrey Carr, General Counsel for FMC Technologies and Dan Currell, Managing Director, General Counsel Roundtable...
Lawyers Should Check E-Mail Hourly
Posted on October 26, 2009After doing a great job on a rush project, a relatively new associate at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges made a mistake. He didn't check his e-mail. As a result, he missed a senior partner's instruction that he should send out a draft document for client review before calling it a day...
Lighted Vehicle Wrap Draws Clients to Florida Law Firm
Posted on October 24, 2009From the Florida Herald Tribune: In one of the starchiest professions, lawyer David Haenel stands out like neon as the area's most innovative self-promoter. .art_main_pic { width:250px; float:left; clear:left; } His car glows at night with his firm's Web site, fightyourtickets...
Legal Marketing Association's Bay Area and Toronto Chapters Partner with Concep
Posted on October 23, 2009Integration of Concep's Campaigner Simplifies Chapters' Communications and Marketing Efforts The Legal Marketing Association's (LMA) Bay Area and Toronto Chapters have partnered with Concep, a global provider of digital communications solutions, to deploy Concep Campaigner, an interactive e-mail marketing solution...
Alternate Fees -- Current Best Practice and Likely Trends
Posted on October 21, 2009Three leading lights from the corporate community will get into detail about how alternate fees work in law practice -- including Paul Lippe, Founder of Legal OnRamp, Jeffrey Carr, General Counsel for FMC Technologies and Dan Currell, Managing Director, General Counsel Roundtable...
Many Law Firms Exhibit at ACC Conference
Posted on October 20, 2009Now with 25,000 members, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) has become a force to be reckoned with, especially in the current buyer's market for legal services. More than 30 law firms filled booths on the exhibit floor at the annual conference in Boston...
ACC Launches Controversial "Value Index" Ranking of Law Firms
Posted on October 20, 2009The Association of Corporate Counsel just launched a secret database where in-house lawyers can anonymously rank their law firms on a scale of 1 to 5. It combines the controversial features of Yelp.com and Avvo.com. It's like Yelp.com, the popular restaurant-ranking website where customers post their frank and sometimes devastating comments about where they dined...
Bad Economy To Cause Increase in Litigation in 2010
Posted on October 18, 2009Fulbright & Jaworski released its annual litigation survey, which is considered a good barometer of activity in the legal profession. The good news for litigators is that many companies expect bankruptcy, class actions, personal injury and regulatory actions to rise in the year to come; regulatory work is up, as are foreign bribery investigations...
Class on Business Development with Online Social Networking
Posted on October 15, 2009Program Faculty: Larry Bodine, Esq. A 15-year veteran on the Web, Larry operates some of the top online destinations: • The LawMarketing Portal Web site, www.LawMarketing...
How Women and Diverse Attorneys Can Succeed in the Legal Profession through Personal Marketing
Posted on October 14, 2009In her 30 years in law practice Holly J. Fujie, immediate past president of California Bar Association and a Shareholder at Buchalter Nemer, learned business development These rainmakers have learned the hard way. Now an accomplished woman rainmaker, she reveals what lawyers can do now in business development to advance their legal careers...
Latest Issue of Originate! Online -- Featuring the Definitive Associate Law Firm Marketing Checklist
Posted on October 13, 2009The newest issue of Originate! -- the newsletter devoted to lawyer business development and law firm marketing -- is online at www.pbdi.org/Originate. Most lawyers who aim to build a strong, vital career realize there's no alternative to bringing in business...
First Ph.D. in Legal Marketing Awarded
Posted on October 09, 2009In a milestone for our community, the first Ph.D. in legal marketing has been awarded. This fact brings the recognition and respect of academia to our noble profession. Congratulations to Silvia Hodges, who has taught for three years at Emerson University in Boston, and who successfully defended her Ph...
Increase Your Billings with Alternative Fees
Posted on October 08, 2009This web seminar is proudly sponsored by Legal OnRamp, the online social network for 14,000 in-house lawyers and 5,200 lawyers in private practice. An effective way for lawyers to distinguish themselves is to offer clients alternative fees...
Boycott Growing Against Best Lawyers + US News Survey
Posted on October 07, 2009A groundswell of dread and opposition is growing among law firms against the ongoing joint survey by Best Lawyers and US News. Current online discussions are calling for a total boycott. There are 950 surveys and rankings of law firms already, which have an imperceptible impact on business development...
In a Coup, Goulston & Storrs Chosen to Advise GCs on Attorney-Client Privilege
Posted on October 07, 2009Www.LegalOnRamp.com has picked their third law firm -- Goulston & Storrs of Boston -- to provide its 14,000 in-house counsel members with articles and FAQs on attorney-client privilege and work product protection. This is a coup for the 200-lawyer firm, because of the 400+ law firms participating in Legal OnRamp, the only other law firms that were chosen to provide content are megafirms -- Allen & Overy with 5,000 staff, including over 450 partners in 31 cities worldwide, and Latham & Watkins, which has 2,000 attorneys in 27 offices...
'Creating a Business Development Action Plan' on Blog Talk Radio
Posted on October 06, 2009For your info, I just recorded 'Creating a Business Development Action Plan' on Blog Talk Radio at http://bit.ly/PMsbM Get a cup of coffee during the first 5 minutes of the program and come back to listen to: The element and mentality that rainmakers have that enables them to bring in business...
New OnLine Social Network: TotalPMA
Posted on October 01, 2009A brand new online social network launched today: Total Practice Management Association (Total PMA) at www.totalpma.org. Total PMA is dedicated to the advancement of attorneys, paralegals and other legal support staff in their struggle to build and manage a profitable practice without sacrificing their personal life...
Catch the FREE Blog Talk Radio Show on Business Development
Posted on September 29, 2009Mark your calendars for this Thursday, September October 1 when I'll be taking questions about business development and law firm marketing on the FREE Total PMA blog talk radio show -- see http://bit.ly/PMsbM Our topic is "Creating a Business Development Action Plan...
Good lawyers. Good leaders. Are they mutually exclusive?
Posted on September 25, 2009Lawyers are skeptical, autonomous, introverted, resistant to new ideas, urgent and easily discouraged by setbacks, says marketing consultant Mark Beese. Leaders, on the other hand, tend to be trusting, team-oriented, social, open to new ideas, strategic and resilient...
"Green is Good" at LMA Midwest Conference
Posted on September 25, 2009I'm at the LMA Midwest (new name) conference in Chicago. The theme is "Green is Good" as "promoting environmentalism is good for your law firm." The nametag can be planted in the ground and flowers will grow. All the conference materials are recyclable...
Proving Marketing ROI in One Page
Posted on September 24, 2009The bane of marketers is proving their value to their law firms. Unless they can do so, they'll be viewed as overhead and a potential cost to be cut. A clever solution is to send management a regular report on marketing initiatives -- and do so in one page...
Internet on Fire about Social Networking Article
Posted on September 23, 2009For a passionate response by renowned blogger Kevin O'Keefe to the article, read Twitter for client development for lawyers : Being an intelligence agent as good as it gets Shucks, I didn't mean to cause a fuss when I wrote the article Where to Focus With Social Networking for Marketing the Law Firm Newsletter...
Class on Business Development with Online Social Networking
Posted on September 22, 2009Program Faculty: Larry Bodine, Esq. A former litigator and 15-year veteran on the Web, I operate some of the top online destinations: The LawMarketing Portal Web site, www...
ALM and Incisive Media Split and Stand Independently
Posted on September 20, 2009It a little-noticed news item, the little blue Incisive Media frog will be hopping off ALM publications -- most notably The American Lawyer and National Law Journal -- and three dozen newsletters, newspapers, conferences, and web sites that London-based Incisive bought in 2007 for $630 million...
Five Smart Marketing Steps for Challenging Times
Posted on September 18, 2009According to Susan Van Dyke, the opportunity exists now to take business planning in your firm to the next level. When you have done so, you and your firm will benefit in the short and long term. By focusing your marketing efforts on high-value, revenue-driving programs, you'll be forced to evaluate all your current activities against the following five criteria: Non-billable time and what you do with it...
$1,200 Fine for Lawyer Who Flamed Judge in Blog Post
Posted on September 17, 2009State bar authorities in Florida have fined trial lawyer Sean Conway $1,200 for criticizing judge Ft. Lauderdale Judge Cheryl Aleman on a blog. Among other remarks, Conway called the judge an "evil, unfair witch." (Incidentally, the judge herself was sanctioned by a state panel for her "arrogant, discourteous and impatient" manner, according to The New York Times...
Lessons Great and Small from Chief Marketing Officers Forum
Posted on September 16, 2009Here's a sampling of the rich variety of lessons I learned at the 5th Annual Law Firm Chief Marketing Officers Forum in Chicago, presented by Incisive Media. Follow the high points of the CMO Forum in Chicago on Twitter: #LCMO * * * There will soon be an online social networking site for African-American lawyers, at www...
Lawyer 2.0: The Collaborative Lawyer
Posted on September 15, 2009Follow the high points of the CMO Forum in Chicago on Twitter: #LCMO First can the lawyer as Valued Advisor, someone whose advice the client trusted. Second came the Trusted Advisor, a person whom the client trusted. Now, according to Darryl Cross, VP of Client Profitability for LexisNexis, what clients want is the Collaborative Advisor -- a lawyer who introduces his contacts to his clients and lending sources...
Zany 47-State Legal Attack on TotalAttorneys.com
Posted on September 15, 2009A Hartford attorney Zenas Zelotes has filed ethics complaints in 47 jurisdictions, alleging that Kevin Chern, President of TotalAttorneys.com and more than 500 of its lawyer-customers have violated ethics rules and engaged in a vast national criminal conspiracy to mislead consumers...
Webinar: Turning Personal Contacts Into Profitable Business Relationships
Posted on September 14, 2009PRESENTED BY: Apollo Business Development SPEAKERS: Larry Bodine, Esq. and Michael Cummings DATE: September 17, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern time LOCATION: On the Web, on your computer MORE INFO: Michael Cummings; (Tel) 630-572-4798 or mcummings@sageprofessional...
Don't Miss the CMO Forum, Next Week in Chciago
Posted on September 11, 2009Come learn how to get ahead of the curve in the economic recession and stay to network with Chief Marketing Officers and Marketing Directors. Come discuss the real life issues that are facing CMOs and Marketing Directors today. This conference is geared towards addressing the concerns of small, medium and large size law firms particularly in this economic downturn...
Don't Miss the CMO Forum, Next Week in Chicago
Posted on September 11, 2009Come learn how to get ahead of the curve in the economic recession and stay to network with Chief Marketing Officers and Marketing Directors. Come discuss the real life issues that are facing CMOs and Marketing Directors today. This conference is geared towards addressing the concerns of small, medium and large size law firms particularly in this economic downturn...
Don't Miss the CMO Forum, This Week in Chicago
Posted on September 11, 2009Come learn how to get ahead of the curve in the economic recession and stay to network with Chief Marketing Officers and Marketing Directors. Come discuss the real life issues that are facing CMOs and Marketing Directors today. This conference is geared towards addressing the concerns of small, medium and large size law firms particularly in this economic downturn...
Only 6% of Lawyers Use Twitter
Posted on September 10, 2009The big surprise in new survey data by Leader Networks shows that the vast majority of lawyers do not use Twitter or any other micro-blogging service. Only 6 percent of lawyers participate in microblogging (Twitter, etc.) but among these lawyers with too much time on their hands, roughly 70 percent report that they tweet at least once per week...
Legal Onramp to Add 14,000 In-House Lawyers as Members
Posted on September 09, 2009Legal OnRamp -- the leading online social network for general counsel and in-house lawyers -- is adding 14,000 additional corporate lawyers to its membership, as part of a deal with Corporate Executive Board Co. ("CBE"), an executive network based in Arlington, VA...
Shorten URLs Even More with J.mp
Posted on September 06, 2009First there was tinyurl.com, a free online service that could shorten a 100-character web address (like http://www.lawmarketing.com/pages/articles.asp?Action=Article&ArticleCategoryID=58&ArticleID=924) to 25 characters (like http://tinyurl...
New Webinar: Turning Personal Contacts Into Profitable Business Relationships
Posted on September 03, 2009WEBINAR PRESENTED BY: Apollo Business Development SPEAKERS: Larry Bodine, Esq. and Michael Cummings DATE: September 17, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern time LOCATION: On the Web, on your computer MORE INFO: CONTACT Michael Cummings; (Tel) 630-572-4798 or mcummings@sageprofessional...
How To Sell Legal Services
Posted on September 01, 2009In this snippet from my presentation at the Get A Life Conference in Chicago, you'll hear how you can: The three places where new business comes from for law firms. Why effective legal selling is not "selling." Questions to ask in a new-business call...
Effective Business Development Initiatives for a Law Firm
Posted on August 31, 2009Blogger Adrian Dayton, author of the 'Marketing Strategy and The Law' blog, interviewed me about business development strategy for law firms. Among the topics we covered are: Three key elements of a marketing plan. Practice group profitability...
Helping Lawyers Build Relationships and Sell
Posted on August 27, 2009What is it about the nature of some professionals that stops them being great in business development? UK marketer Peter Kane examines 10 of the big issues – and at the same time suggests ways to help. The areas are also song titles on his iPod...
Bankruptcy Practice Leads Law Firms Out of Recession
Posted on August 26, 2009The recession in the legal profession appears to have bottomed out, according to a new Hildebrandt Peer Monitor Report for the second quarter of 2009. The bright spot is that demand growth, defined as growth in billable hours, for bankruptcy is up 22% compared to a year ago...
Last Day to Register for Webinar: How to Win More RPFs
Posted on August 26, 2009Today is your last chance. Learn the best practices from both the legal and accounting professions in the live webinar "How To Win A Competitive Proposal Process" broadcast tomorrow, Thursday August 27, 2009. Learn the mistakes to avoid from business development experts Gail Huneryager, Director of Business Development, Crowe & Dunlevey, along with Michael Cummings and me of Apollo Business Development...
The Top 46 Law Firms that Represent Corporate America
Posted on August 25, 2009Incisive Media researched the Fortune 100 to find out which law firms they used in 2008 in each of the following practice areas: Corporate transactions Torts and negligence Commercial law and contracts litigation Employment and labor litigation Intellectual property...
Interview: Collaboration is the Key to Finding New Business
Posted on August 24, 2009Want to find out the most efficient hunting organization in the world? Or how to find a counterpart to go to market with? Check out Ari Kaplan's interview with me about business development, Twitter and the bright side of the down economy. Listen to the 4-minute excerpt of our conversation here...
How to be in the Top 3 of the Firms under "Google Maps"
Posted on August 21, 2009It's well-known that people look up phone numbers, business addresses and restaurant menus on Google Local. Just type in the Google box "Mexican Restaurant Lisle Illinois" and you'll find my favorite local restaurant in position "D...
Paid Search Results Bring Bigger Spenders than Organic Search Results
Posted on August 19, 2009Now here's something I didn't expect: according to a new study by Engine Ready, an Internet marketing company, suggests that visitors who get to retail sites through sponsored links are more likely to buy than those who click on organic results. They also spend more; the average order of a paid linker was $11 higher, at $117...
How to Win More RFP Competitions
Posted on August 19, 2009Law firms nationwide are overwhelmed with RFPs from corporations looking for better rates. More clients are opening their business to a competitive proposal process – where two, three or more equally qualified firms vie for the business. Learn the best practices both within the legal and accounting professions in the live webinar "How To Win A Competitive Proposal Process" broadcast on August 27, 2009...
Supercharge Your Referrals with Technology
Posted on August 17, 2009According to Steve Matthews and Reid F. Trautz, social networking sites are free services to connect to others through your existing relationships in order to obtain business referrals and build new alliances for future business. "Know that every time you participate in your network you make small deposits into relationships in order to maintain them and have them grow," they said...
More Positive Economic Indicators
Posted on August 14, 2009More economic indicators for the legal profession show that the recession is ending and that a recovery is beginning. Law firm marketing professionals point to several positive indicators: ... Fed Views Recession as Near an End. On August 12, 2009, the Federal Reserve said that the recession is ending and that it would take a step back toward normal policy...
August 2009 Issue of Originate! is Online
Posted on August 13, 2009Prepare for better business development with the talking points from this month's featured articles in Originate!, the business development newsletter. Lead Article: Making His Mark – 8 Things an IP Lawyer Wished He Had Known Sooner about Making Business Development Work Attorney Nicholas Weston knew he had to do something different at his boutique IP firm...
Turning Your Social Networking & Web Presence Into Billable Work
Posted on August 12, 2009Today is the last chance to register. PRESENTED BY: Apollo Business Development SPEAKERS: Larry Bodine, Esq. and Michael Cummings DATE: August 13, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern time LOCATION: On the Web, on your computer MORE INFO: CONTACT Michael Cummings; (Tel) 630-572-4798 or mcummings@sageprofessional...
A Marketer's Guide to Alternative Billing Methods
Posted on August 11, 2009Clients are inquiring about alternative fees, which leave most law firms flummoxed. Hourly billing is all that many law firms are familiar with. Now Susan Van Dyke, the president of the Vancouver Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association, demystifies several alternative billing models: Blended rates Capped fees Contingency fees Fixed fees Retainers Success fee "American lawyers and firms are now undeniably called upon to introduce more creative approaches to billing by in-house legal departments," she writes on the LawMarketing Portal...
Discount to Webinar: Compensation for Client Development
Posted on August 10, 2009LawMarketing Blog readers will save $75 with Discount Code LMLS on CCM's audio conference.... Compensation for Client Development: How to Recognize and Track New Business Origination Tuesday, August 11, 2009 | 2:00 PM to 3:15 PM Eastern Register Now or Order the CD! Description: Client development is one of the most crucial factors for setting lawyer compensation...
Drinker Biddle Prospers after Adopting the ACC Value Challenge
Posted on August 07, 2009We are at the tipping point, and one of the law firms leading the way into the future is Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, a national law firm with nearly 700 lawyers in 12 offices representing midsized enterprises to Fortune 50 companies. Drinker Biddle has fully embraced the ACC Value Challenge...
Martindale Connected Passes 12,000 members
Posted on August 06, 2009Back on March 31, Martindale Connected launched with 3,000 members and a headwind of withering skepticism. Despite this, the online social network has crested over 12,000 members in just 4 months. I joined myself, made a few connections and am experimenting by starting some discussions...
Getting Billable Work from Online Social Networking
Posted on August 06, 2009Today's hottest question is how to get new clients and revenue from online social networking. Should you spend time on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Martindale Connected, Legal Onramp, My Space, Plaxo, Spoke or Twitter? Most lawyers don't know where to begin...
Guerilla Marketing with Gecko Magnets
Posted on August 04, 2009In a delightful guerrilla marketing campaign, phone company Telus placed hundreds of gecko-shaped magnets over 18 high-traffic transit shelter ads in downtown Vancouver. The magnetic side of the geckos read "Bundle and save on the sure-footed network...
Enlarging Revenue Pipelines into Your Firm
Posted on August 04, 2009What is the methodology for getting new clients and generating new revenue? Find out in a podcast recorded by Adrian Dayton where I explain how it's done. The title of the podcast is "No Twitter for Lawyers? Hear marketing pro Larry Bodine's Take," but we don't talk about Twitter until the last 5 minutes...
Guerrilla Marketing with Gecko Magnets
Posted on August 04, 2009In a delightful guerrilla marketing campaign, phone company Telus placed hundreds of gecko-shaped magnets over 18 high-traffic transit shelter ads in downtown Vancouver. The magnetic side of the geckos read "Bundle and save on the sure-footed network...
"Professional Services Marketing" - With Bonus Materials
Posted on August 03, 2009The new book Professional Services Marketing, written by Mike Schultz and John Doerr, co-founders of Wellesley Hills Group and publishers of RainToday.com, offers field-tested expertise, benchmark research, industry case studies, and personal anecdotes from top service marketing professionals...
Turning Your Social Networking & Web Presence Into Billable Work
Posted on July 31, 2009WEBINAR: Turning Your Social Networking & Web Presence Into Billable Work PRESENTED BY: Apollo Business Development SPEAKERS: Larry Bodine, Esq. and Michael Cummings DATE: August 13, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern time LOCATION: On the Web, on your computer MORE INFO: CONTACT Michael Cummings; (Tel) 630-572-4798 or mcummings@sageprofessional...
LMA Launches Interactive Web Site to plan 2010 Conference
Posted on July 30, 2009The Legal Marketing Association has launched an interactive web site where members can comment and make suggestions for next year's annual conference on March 10-12 in Denver. Marketers can join a LinkedIn Group to discuss the conference. More than 200 people have joined and discussions are already underway regarding keynote speakers and how vendors can help...
Now Available: White Paper on Thinking Like a Rainmaker
Posted on July 29, 2009Most attorneys misunderstand how to network, when to join an association and how to become a rainmaker. They think rainmakers are not born. But in fact, they are trained. Furthermore, rainmakers are not just those charismatic lawyers with thousands of contacts...
Economic Indicators are Positive for Legal Profession
Posted on July 28, 2009New research shows that 3% growth is on the way for law firms, layoffs are dwindling and the Index of Leading Indicators finds that the recession appears to be nearing an end. An industry forecast by First Research Inc. shows that growth in the legal sector stabilizes in 2009 and turns into 3% growth in 2010...
Word Of Mouth is a Much Stronger Influencer Than Social Networking
Posted on July 27, 2009Stephanie Molnar, CEO of WorkPlace Media, says "When it comes to influencing brand perception and purchase decisions... social networking... has a long way to go." A recent Harris poll also supported this assertion, says the report, showing that word of mouth is a much stronger influencer than social networking...
Readers of this Blog Get $200 Discount on CMO Forum
Posted on July 24, 2009Readers of the LawMarketing Blog are entitled to a $200 discount when they register for the CMO Forum coming up on September 15-19 in Chicago at the Renaissance Chicago Hotel. Just Use Promo Code LMN and Save $200 when you register online. function PersonDialog(person_id) { if (person_id != "") { open("...
Study: Facebook use cuts productivity at work
Posted on July 23, 2009Survey finds 77% of Facebookers use the social networking site while on the job Only a few months after one study found that Facebook users tend to get lower grades in college, another study has found that the social networking site might not be earning good grades in the workplace as well...
Law Firms Spend Less on Branding, More on Business Development
Posted on July 22, 2009According to branding expert Leigh George, legal marketers are talking about spending less money on traditional brand awareness marketing and investing more time and money into business development and attorney coaching. "Once the work stopped falling into their laps, a realization set in: attorneys don't know how to market...
Webinar on Friday: Getting More Revenue from the Marketing You're Already Doing
Posted on July 21, 2009WEBINAR PRESENTED BY: Apollo Business Development SPEAKER(S): Darryl Cross, Vice President of Client Profitability DATE: This Friday, July 24, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern LOCATION: on the Web, on your computer MORE INFO: Laura Kresich, Program Director; (Tel) (773) 966-9273 or Lkresich@lawmarketing...
Which Industries to Target Now in Law Firm Marketing
Posted on July 19, 2009There are 16 industries that law firms should target in the current recession -- and most of them are in health care and education. These are the industries that are hiring employees from December 2007 through June 2009, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics...
Major Bank Insists on E-Billing, Innovative Pricing and Diversity
Posted on July 17, 2009In addition to pushing firms to be more flexible and competitive on fee arrangements, the Barclays Bank has rolled out an e-billing system across all 11 of its panels, and asked all of its newly-appointed panel firms to sign up to a range of diversity initiatives, according to an article in Legal Week...
Two Weeks Left to Nominate Your 2009 Rainmaker of the Year
Posted on July 16, 2009Nominate a top rainmaker at your firm, or yourself! The editors of Originate!, the monthly business development newsletter, in association with Legal Sales and Services Organization (LSSO), announce this year's competition to identify and honor top business getters in the law...
The American Lawyer Announces 5th Annual Law Firm Chief Marketing Officers Forum
Posted on July 15, 2009The American Lawyer today announced the agenda and speakers for its 5th Annual Law Firm Chief Marketing Officers Forum, to take place September 15-16, 2009 at the Renaissance Chicago Hotel in Chicago. Targeted to law firm chief marketing officers, marketing directors, executive directors, business development officers and partners in charge of marketing, the two-day conference will focus on the changing role of marketing and marketers as law firms respond to the challenges of the current economic recession...
Companies Want Law Firms to Help Them Increase Revenue and Cut Costs
Posted on July 14, 2009These are turbulent times for corporate clients, which are struggling with management changes, workforce voids caused by layoffs, worries about cost-reduction initiatives and keeping pace with competitors. This creates an excellent opportunity for professional firms -- including law firms -- to capture their outsourced work by showing companies how to increase revenue growth, decrease operating expenses, and demonstrate their expertise in the client's line of business, according to a new 80-page survey report, "Consulting & Professional Services Firm Hiring by U...
Dim light on law firm recovery: A lot of law firms with too many people and not enough work
Posted on July 13, 2009From the Boston Business Journal by Lisa van der Pool Are law firms finally climbing out from the bottom of a deep, deep abyss? Possibly. But if so, it's going to be a long journey. Citi Private Bank's quarterly report on the Managing Partner Confidence Index notes that while the last six months have been trending down, that pattern was snapped during the second quarter of this year...
Getting More Revenue from the Marketing You're Already Doing
Posted on July 09, 2009WEBINAR PRESENTED BY: Apollo Business Development SPEAKER(S): Darryl Cross, Vice President of Client Profitability DATE: July 24, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern LOCATION: on the Web, on your computer MORE INFO: Laura Kresich, Program Director; (Tel) (773) 966-9273 or Lkresich@lawmarketing...
Nominate Your 2009 Rainmaker of the Year
Posted on July 09, 2009Nominate a top rainmaker at your firm, or yourself! The editors of Originate!, the monthly business development newsletter, in association with Legal Sales and Services Organization (LSSO), announce this year's competition to identify and honor top business getters in the law...
July 2009 Issue of Originate Newsletter now Online
Posted on July 08, 2009The July issue of Originate! - the business development newsletter - explores how you can be more resourceful in your business development, not just by using a particular marketing method or firm asset, but by looking at smart ways at hand to reach those people you want as clients or do more for those you already have...
Media Post: Forget Twitter, Go Back to Email Marketing
Posted on July 07, 2009Ian McCollum is technical manager | eCRM Solutions with Razorfish, writes in the Email Insider blog that Twitter is an overrated fad, and that smart marketers are returning to good old email marketing: Everywhere you turn there is Twitter -- CNN, NASA, operating rooms, corporate home pages, and even the toilet (twitter...
83% of Law Firms Fight Recession with Business Development Training
Posted on July 06, 2009The following is excerpted from the July 2009 report "Delivering Value-Added legal Services in Challenging Times," published by Robert Half Legal, a specialized staffing service reachable at 800.870.8367 and www.roberthalflegal.com. Altman Weil's survey of general counsel found that 75 percent of legal departments anticipate budget reductions in 2009...
Mixed Martial Arts Law Blog goes Live
Posted on July 03, 2009One of the most inventive and novel lawyer blogs went live yesterday: David Nelmark's Mixed Martial Arts Law Blog. No, David is not a raging ultimate cage fighter. In fact he's a charming, mild-mannered associate at in the Des Moines, Iowa, law firm of Belin Lamson McCormick Zumbach Flynn...
Employment Law Litigation Goes Through the Roof
Posted on July 02, 2009Claim FY 2008 % Race 33,937 35...
Online LawBiz Forum Launches
Posted on July 01, 2009Nationally recognized law firm management expert Ed Poll, has launched www.LawBizForum.com, an online destination for lawyers, sole practitioners, partners, managing partners, of-counsel and in-house counsel. www.LawBizForum.com will promote discussions on how lawyers can deliver their services more effectively and efficiently to their clients, such as management, marketing, technology and finance, and others...
Chief Legal Officers Don't Think Law Firms Are Serious About Change
Posted on June 30, 2009Only 5% of chief legal officers at corporations believe that law firms are serious about changing the value proposition in their legal service delivery, as opposed to simply cutting costs, a new survey by Altman Weil reveals. 'This year, in the midst of an unprecedented financial shift, we wanted to learn if the talk about a changing model of legal service delivery – in terms of pricing, staffing and law firm selection criteria – was being translated into action,' DiLuccio said...
Virtual Law Firm Collects 250 Clients with Fixed Fees
Posted on June 26, 2009Excerpted from the National Law Journal: Attorneys Frank Natoli and Moshe Lapin launched their new law firm Natoli-Lapin LLC in 2008, building a niche in low-cost legal services for entrepreneurs, artists and others launching new business ventures...
Corporate Counsel Want to Hire Virtual Law Firms
Posted on June 25, 2009From the Fulton County Daily Report: Here's a formula for success in a brutal economy: Figure out a way to save general counsel money on their outside legal spending. The attorneys who have done that are growing their revenue while others are not. "We are keeping costs down by using in-house attorneys as much as possible and using sole practitioners or nontraditional law firms with big firm experience," said Kristen K...
Look! A See-Through Plastic Post Card
Posted on June 24, 2009Here's something I've never seen before: a plastic see-through post card. I liked it as a marketing tool because it really popped out of all the other mail I get. Appropriately, it promotes a $100 discount to a marketing conference in Chicago in July...
Last Chance to Register for Webinar: Becoming an Associate Rainmaker This Year
Posted on June 23, 2009Learn how two associates — both recognized as top business development performers — have succeeded in business development and how to make these proven methods work for you this year. Rainmaking associates Peter J. Bilfield and Wilton MacDonald II are featured speakers in this seminar...
Twitter: You Can't Always Trust What You Want
Posted on June 22, 2009As marketers, for the last 9 days we've all been transfixed by the protests in Tehran, made accessible by Twitter messages leading to online videos. It's been dubbed the first protest movement enabled by technology. But the New York Times notes that you can't always trust what you read on Twitter...
Having a Wikipedia Entry can be Good for Getting New Business
Posted on June 19, 2009Carolyn Elefant makes a great point on Nolo's Legal Marketing Blog that you need to pay attention to your Wikipedia entry. Not sure if you have one? You better check. I looked up my own name and was surprised. A Wikipedia entry can help your law firm generate new business...
Billing Clients for Computertized Research - and how it Hurts Law Firm Marketing
Posted on June 18, 2009Lawyers USA has a great article on the effects of billing clients for certain costs. In the case of a major New York law firm it led to a class action lawsuit. The plaintiff argues that the firm violated California's ethics laws as well as the state's unfair business practices statute by overcharging him for computerized legal research...
Blogger Not Surprised that Black Lawyer was Hired as "Marketing Tool"
Posted on June 17, 2009Former associate Venus Yvette Springs, an African-American lawyer at Mayer Brown's Charlotte, N.C., office has filed a Title VII discrimination suit that claims the law firm used her as a 'marketing tool' before firing her in 2008. So what? says Heather M...
Twitter's Growth Screeches to a Halt -- It Was All Hype
Posted on June 15, 2009Like CB radios, Twitter is turning out to be a fad that has peaked. Check the facts: The number of Twitter users has started to decline according to Quantcast. At best, Twitter's growth suddenly stopped in May, according to Compete.com...
The Little Black Book: Creating a Marketing Habit in 21 Days
Posted on June 14, 2009For the next 48 hours Paula Black will be offering an impressive opportunity to anyone who purchases 'The Little Black Book: A Lawyer's Guide To Creating A Marketing Habit in 21 Days.' Readers who purchase the book will receive 'The Smart Lawyer's Toolkit,' a compilation of advice from more than 30 of the most sought-after experts in the legal arena (including myself!)...
Mobile Version of LawMarketing Portal Now Online
Posted on June 12, 2009I have seen the future of the Internet, and it will be viewed on a 2 by 3-inch screen. New research shows that most people will view the web on their smart phones and PDA -- instead of computer monitors. Accordingly, visitors to the LawMarketing Portal can now see a special mobile version of the site specially designed for their handheld devices...
OMG! Womble Carlyle Releases Clever Texting Video! ROFLMAO!
Posted on June 12, 2009Aden Dauchess, Director of Digital Marketing, and the tech wizards at 530-lawyer Womble Carlye will release a funny video of two laywers texting each other about the sale of a factory. To the tune of Leroy Anderson's orchestra music "The Typewriter," it shows the shorthand used in the text messages and a polite translation below...
California Law Firm is First to Get Bailout Funds from $1 million Rainmaker Software Law Firm Economic Assistant Package
Posted on June 11, 2009An 85-lawyer firm is the first recipient of RainMaker Software's $1 million Economic Assistance Package for law firms. So far RainMaker has awarded $228,164 in economic assistance, as much as $30,000 per firm. Law firms get the funds in the form of a discount on the company's software and must agree to 'pay it forward' by devoting the benefits of the bail-out to their local community, for example, identifying new pro-bono work initiatives for laid-off workers, or assisting families dealing with potential mortgage foreclosures...
California Law Firm is First to Get Bailout Funds from Law Firm Economic Assistance Package
Posted on June 11, 2009An 85-lawyer firm is the first recipient of RainMaker Software's $1 million Economic Assistance Package for law firms. So far RainMaker has awarded $228,164 in economic assistance, as much as $30,000 per firm. Law firms get the funds in the form of a discount on the company's software and must agree to 'pay it forward' by devoting the benefits of the bail-out to their local community, for example, identifying new pro-bono work initiatives for laid-off workers, or assisting families dealing with potential mortgage foreclosures...
June Issue of Originate Now Available Online
Posted on June 10, 2009The new June 2009 issue Originate! is now online. Here is the table of contents for this month's issue. Earlier articles are still available for viewing in the 'Archives' section and are searchable using the Search the articles just click any title or log in at www...
Rainmakers of The Year Offer Tips for their Success
Posted on June 09, 2009Enter the 2009 Rainmaker of the Year Awards, sponsored by Originate! Newsletter and the Legal Sales and Services Organization. The newsletter is now soliciting entries from lawyers, firms, marketing specialists, recruiters and advisors in six categories: Associate Small firm lawyer (30 or fewer lawyers) Partner – transactions Partner – litigator Woman Lawyer Enter Today! From the LawMarketing Portal: When Peter Bilfield won the Originate! newsletter Rainmaker of the Year Award in 2008, he was an associate at a large New York Law firm...
Bank Abandons Outdated Logo that "Looked Like a Law Firm"
Posted on June 08, 2009A Massachusetts credit union got rid of its old logo because it made them look like a law firm, which doesn't say much for law firm marketing logos. When the officers at the First Citizens' Federal Credit Union in Massachusetts decided it was time for a new bank logo, they embarked on what can be a risky enterprise...
Reed Smith LLP Partners Deploys Concep Email System to Streamline Client Communications
Posted on June 08, 2009Reed Smith LLP, one of the 15 largest law firms in the world, has deployed the Concep Campaigner e-mail marketing communications across 23 of its offices globally. The product is an interactive e-mail marketing communications platform, designed specifically for busy law firm marketers to deliver content-rich, company-branded e-mails to target audiences...
More McDermott layoffs
Posted on June 05, 2009McDermott Will & Emery issued its second layoff memo this year on Thursday. The grim news: the loss of 25 lawyers and 47 administrative staff. The elimination of 72 people is on top off a reduction of 149 jobs in February, which included 60 attorneys...
10% of active users are responsible for over 90% of all Tweets
Posted on June 04, 2009A study conducted by the Harvard Business Review reveals that most Twitter users don't actually use the service much, or even at all. In fact, 10% of active users are responsible for over 90% of all Tweets. According to the research, conducted on a random sample of about 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009, 25% of Twitter users don't tweet at all, while 50% of users tweet less than once every 74 hours...
Martindale Connected Membership Doubles
Posted on June 02, 2009As of today, there are approximately 6,200 members of Martindale-Hubbell Connected. When I joined back in March there were 3,000 members of the company's online social network. Granted, it's far from the 563,000 lawyer members that LinkedIn has, according to Steve Matthew's Stem Blog...
Mayer Brown lawyers take $100,000 pay cut for one-year guarantee of employment
Posted on June 02, 2009From the Chicago Tribune: Mayer Brown is paying some of its associates to work in-house at corporate clients such as United Airlines parent UAL Corp. and Kraft Foods Inc. But there is a catch: The associates' pay is reduced to $60,000 plus benefits, from about $160,000, and the jobs last one year with no guarantee of further employment...
Mayer Brown Lawyers Take $100,000 Pay Cut To Avoid Layoff
Posted on June 02, 2009From the Chicago Tribune: Mayer Brown is paying some of its associates to work in-house at corporate clients such as United Airlines parent UAL Corp. and Kraft Foods Inc. But there is a catch: The associates' pay is reduced to $60,000 plus benefits, from about $160,000, and the jobs last one year with no guarantee of further employment...
Yet Another Twitter Worm
Posted on June 01, 2009According to Nerino Petro's Compujurist.com, As Twitter becomes more popular with lawyers, it becomes a larger target for people with malicious intent to use for their own nefarious purposes. The latest round of attacks has been occurring in the form of a worm which attacks when users click the shortened URLs in a Tweet...
Martindale Connected Membership Nearly Triples
Posted on June 01, 2009As of today, there are approximately 7,500 members of Martindale-Hubbell Connected. When I joined back in March there were 3,000 members of the company's online social network. Granted, it's far from the 563,000 lawyer members that LinkedIn has, according to Steve Matthew's Stem Blog...
Martindale Connected Membership More than Doubles
Posted on June 01, 2009As of today, there are approximately 7,500 members of Martindale-Hubbell Connected. When I joined back in March there were 3,000 members of the company's online social network. Granted, it's far from the 563,000 lawyer members that LinkedIn has, according to Steve Matthew's Stem Blog...
Twitter Defenders Miss the Point
Posted on May 29, 2009I wrote Twitter Not Effective for Law Firm Marketing and it's got Twitter defenders in, well, a twit. The evidence shows that: 60% of Twitter users drop out after one month, according to Nielsen Wire. It is the least effective way to boost traffic to your website, compared with SEO, email promotions and blogs, according to Marketing Sherpa...
I'll See You at the RainDance Conference, June 3-5 in Chicago
Posted on May 28, 2009I'll see you soon at LSSO's RainDance Conference, scheduled for June 3-5 in Chicago. The conference is conceived and designed for senior leaders in law firms and legal departments. It's the place where sophisticated professionals and industry thought leaders turn for their own professional development...
Tune in to the Get A Life Conference Free Live Stream Wednesday & Thursday (May 27 & 28)
Posted on May 27, 2009As you might be aware, the Total Practice Management Association is hosting its inaugural Get a Life.™ Conference (follow #GAL09 on Twitter) Wednesday and Thursday of this week (May 27-28th) in Chicago. True to its mission of educating legal professionals with practical, 'how to' marketing, operations and practice management advice, the conference will be streamed live and free of charge during the two day event...
Tune in to the Get A Life Conference Free Live Stream Today and Tomorrow (May 27 & 28)
Posted on May 27, 2009As you might be aware, the Total Practice Management Association is hosting its inaugural Get a Life.™ Conference (follow #GAL09 on Twitter) Wednesday and Thursday of this week (May 27-28th) in Chicago. True to its mission of educating legal professionals with practical, 'how to' marketing, operations and practice management advice, the conference will be streamed live and free of charge during the two day event...
Twitter Not Effective for Law Firm Marketing
Posted on May 26, 2009We've all been sucked into the black hole of buzz about Twitter, which attracted 32 million global unique visitors in April, 2009 according to comScore. It's even surpassed Digg (23 million), LinkedIn (16 million), and the NYTimes.com (17...
Building Your Personal & Client Business Development Plans
Posted on May 23, 2009Come to the "Get a Life Conference" next Wednesday in Chicago, where I'll be speaking on "Building Your Personal & Client Business Development Plans." The conference is sponsored by the The Practice Management Association, a new organization that helps attorneys seeking innovative ways to grow their practice and manage their office without sacrificing their personal and family life...
Ed Schechter, the Marketing Director of the Year, is Out at Duane Morris
Posted on May 22, 2009Ed Schechter, who built of Duane Morris from an unheard of middling firm in Philadelphia to the 25-office, 700- lawyer powerhouse it is today, resigned, ending his eight-year tenure as chief marketing officer at Duane Morris. The handwriting was on the wall when regime change occurred, and Shelly Bonovitz stepped down as firm Chairman in 2008...
How to Remember Peoples' Names
Posted on May 20, 2009Remember that a man's name is, to him, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. —Dale Carnegie For many of us, remembering names is difficult, but make no mistake: It is extremely important in building relationships. People like to hear their own names...
WSJ: Lawyers Lack the Skills Needed to Draw, Keep Clients
Posted on May 20, 2009From the Wall Street Journal: In the last few months, law firms have become increasingly aware that training lawyers in marketing and business development is a key way to drive business. According to a February survey of 120 marketing directors at large law firms -- conducted by legal market researcher, BTI Consulting Group -- business development is one of the few marketing areas where law firm executives are most willing to increase spending...
WSJ: Lawyers Learning the Skills Needed to Draw, Keep Clients
Posted on May 20, 2009From the Wall Street Journal: In the last few months, law firms have become increasingly aware that training lawyers in marketing and business development is a key way to drive business. According to a February survey of 120 marketing directors at large law firms -- conducted by legal market researcher, BTI Consulting Group -- business development is one of the few marketing areas where law firm executives are most willing to increase spending...
Complimentary Special Report: The One Piece of Advice You Need to Earn Your Clients' Loyalty
Posted on May 19, 2009There's been a lot of talk lately about surviving this recession, and much of the advice is focused on marketing and selling to get new clients. While continuing to bring in new business is necessary for a service firm's survival, so is keeping your current clients loyal to your firm...
Legal Recession May End Soon
Posted on May 16, 2009In the latest sign that the recession in the legal profession may end soon, businesses will once again begin increasing their law budgets in the second half of this year according to the study BTI Mid-Year Spending Update and Outlook. Key findings of the study include: Corporate legal spending at large companies will grow nearly 5% over the next 6 months, bringing overall market growth to only negative 1...
Get PR for Law Firm Marketing on a Shoestring
Posted on May 15, 2009Lawyers know the value of getting your name in the news, but in these hard times, few can come up with the $5,000 or $10,000 retainer that big PR agencies want. How would you like to get access to queries from journalists as they are working on articles, plus exposure to the world's most influential news outlets -- for $34...
May issue of Originate! Business Development Newsletter now Online
Posted on May 13, 2009The May issue of Originate! - the business development newsletter for lawyers is now online at http://www.pbdi.org/originate/ The Lead Article is always free. Lead Article: Doing What Should Come Naturally - A Lawyer Learns How to Ask for the Business Do you feel like a vulture when you ask for the business or feel you're prying into your prospects' problems? Larry Bodine Esq...
Business Development for Litigators
Posted on May 12, 2009Business development is especially difficult for litigators, who will labor for months on a case, bring it to a successful conclusion, and then have a gaping hole of billable time to fill. Join us to learn how to overcome the bane of litigators: the one-shot case...
Address Change for Larry Bodine
Posted on May 10, 2009As you know I work a sales trainer, teaching lawyers how to get new business and coaching them on how to originate new files. I also operate the LawMarketing Portal, Apollo Business Development, the LawMarketing Listserv, Apollo Webinars, the LawMarketing Store, edit Originate! -- the business development newsletter, and write this blog...
How To Choose or Evaluate An SEO Consultant for Law Firm Marketing
Posted on May 08, 2009Research shows that search engine optimization (SEO) is the No. 1 best way for law firm marketers to boost traffic to their firm website and generate leads. See SEO and Email Better for Law Firm Marketing than Social Networking for proof in a research report by Marketing Sherpa...
60% of Twitter Users Quit After a Month
Posted on May 06, 2009According to the Neilsen Wire, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter's audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month's users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent...
Catch Steve Barrett THURSDAY on Getting ROI from Law Firm Marketing
Posted on May 05, 2009Whatever you do, don't miss the legendary Steve Barrett in the LIVE webinar this Thursday: Getting a Return on Investment From Your Marketing Initiatives Are you spending on law firm marketing and getting less to show for it? Are you unable to show any ROI at all? Steve is see-in-the-dark smart about marketing and has been the CMO at (count 'em) Philadelphia's Drinker Biddle; Seattle's Perkins Coie; Paul Hastings in Los Angeles; and Choate Hall in Boston...
SEO and Email Better for Law Firm Marketing than Social Networking
Posted on May 04, 2009This just in from Marketing Sherpa, which just published MarketingSherpa's 2009 Ecommerce Benchmark Report: There's no doubt that social media is an immensely important trend or perhaps even a sea change in how we buy, sell and communicate. Still, the chart below (scroll down) puts the role of social and Web 2...
Lawyer Kills Himself After Being Told He Was Being Laid Off
Posted on April 30, 2009In a horrendous tragedy resulting from the recession in the legal profession, a 59-year-old lawyer with Kilpatrick Stockton who was due to lose his job for economic reasons was found dead in his Washington office this morning. He shot himself in the head, according to police...
Lawyer Offers to Give $25K to Charity if He Gets 25K Twitter Followers
Posted on April 29, 2009Events on Twitter are really getting pathetic. First we had a movie actor who won a competition with an entire TV broadcasting network to get the most followers. Celebrity won over news, which shows the decline of the intelligence of the American Public...
Boo Hoo for the Partners in the Am Law 100
Posted on April 29, 2009I'm weeping to read that for the first time since 1991, both average profits per partner and revenue per lawyer dipped last year among the Am Law 100 firms. And, I'm choked up that given the weakness in the market thus far in 2009, another decline seems likely this year...
How To Choose Very Strong Passwords That Are Easy To Remember
Posted on April 28, 2009What makes a password strong is the combination of different alphanumeric, special characters, and capitalization that you use, and of course the length of the password. "I don't know about you, but I don't want to remember and type an epistle when I fill out a password field," says Dewald Pretorius of New Brunswick, Canada, who created the TweetLater service...
AZ State Bar Webcast: "Surviving the Recession"
Posted on April 27, 2009Please join me for this 90-minute webinar and live presentation sponsored by the State Bar of Arizona on May 6 in Phoenix and online too. Visit WEBCAST- Surviving the Recession for all the details. Any lawyer in any state can attend and get 1...
How to Remember Peoples' Names
Posted on April 24, 2009Remember that a man's name is, to him, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. —Dale Carnegie For many of us, remembering names is difficult, but make no mistake: It is extremely important in building relationships. People like to hear their own names...
Emerson College Offers Course in Law Firm Marketing
Posted on April 24, 2009For the second year in a row, Emerson College in Boston, MA, is offering a for-credit post-graduate course in professional services marketing beginning May 11, 2009. Professor Silvia Hodges believes it is unique in the USA -- which she feels is a shame, because all law schools should teach their students how to get clients and generate new business...
How to Use Blogs for Effective Public Relations
Posted on April 23, 2009From the LawMarketing Portal: Blogs are a pervasive part of your client's lives, according to PR expert Rodger Johnson. They are an essential element of public relations, because 80% of bloggers post reviews of products and brands -- including yours. Social media is changing how we do public relations...
Last Chance to Register for Webinar Today
Posted on April 23, 2009What Do I Say To A Prospective Client To Win Their Business? Don't miss legal sales and business development experts Michael Cummings and me when we reveal the how-to secrets in this webinar today: DATE: Thursday, April 23, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern LOCATION: on the web, on your computer MORE INFO: Michael Cummings; Tel: (630) 572-4798 or mcummings@sageprofessional...
Last Chance to Register for Webinar Tomorrow
Posted on April 22, 2009What Do I Say To A Prospective Client To Win Their Business? Don't miss legal sales and business development experts Michael Cummings and me when we reveal the how-to secrets in this webinar tomorrow: DATE: Thursday, April 23, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern LOCATION: on the web, on your computer MORE INFO: Michael Cummings; Tel: (630) 572-4798 or mcummings@sageprofessional...
5 Low Cost Ways to Attract More Clients for Your Small Law Firm
Posted on April 21, 2009Excerpted from the Build Your Own Business blog by Dave Lorenzo of Aventura, FL: 1. Differentiate Yourself As times get tougher, many other lawyers will "dabble" in your area of expertise. Make your prospective clients aware that this is happening...
Great Lawyer Gift -- Personalized Cartoon
Posted on April 20, 2009I just found the website of artist Richard Stergulz, who will create funny custom drawings featuring lawyers at www.yournameherecartoons.com. You choose the person's name (or law firm name) to be inserted into the cartoon caption. A small cartoon unframed is $75, and the largest cartoon framed is $350...
Maggie Watkins takes top law firm marketing job at Best Best & Krieger
Posted on April 20, 2009My longtime friend Maggie Watkins has joined Best Best & Krieger as Chief Marketing And Business Development Officer. Headquartered in Riverside, CA, the firm has 200 lawyers in 8 offices. I've known her since the early days of her career as President/CEO of the Meritas legal network in Minneapolis, then Marketing Director of Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego, and most recently as Director of Marketing and Communications at LECG Consulting...
Law Firm Marketing for an ADR Practice
Posted on April 17, 2009Most lawyers who get into mediation or other ADR services don't do it because they love to market their services, according to Diana Mercer, Esq. of Peace Talks Mediation Services, Inc. in Playa del Rey, CA. For many lawyers, marketing has a pejorative feel to it; marketing feels unprofessional for a professional service industry...
What Do I Say To A Prospective Client To Win Their Business?
Posted on April 16, 2009How to ask for the business is the most common business development problem lawyers have. Yet, rainmakers have learned how to engage a prospective client in a structured dialogue, listen for a problem point of business 'pain' and ask the client how they might help solve this problem...
Why Blogs are Good for Law Firm Marketing
Posted on April 14, 2009Excerpted from the New York Times: It's clear that blogs are excellent business development tools, because they establish the author as an expert to clients and attract calls from the news media. The power of blogs to influence what people buy -- and which law firms to retain -- is now established...
Law Firm Marketing for Rainmakers
Posted on April 13, 2009From the LawMarketing Portal: Rainmaker Marketing -- 52 Rules of Engagement to Attract and Retain Customers for Life by Phil Fragasso is a must-read for professional service marketers, rainmakers and rainmaker wannabes -- according to book reviewer Cecelia Alerts...
Law Firm Marketing Newsletter "Originate!" Now Online
Posted on April 13, 2009"Turn the key on maybe tens or hundreds of thousands or more in business..." Praise for ORIGINATE! Learn More About Subscribing to ORIGINATE! What does it take to get new clients and generate more work? Put the best ideas and advice to work for you with ORIGINATE! – the online business development newsletter for lawyers...
Big Corporations Hiring Smaller Law Firms
Posted on April 10, 2009According to Bloomberg.com, U.S. companies are adding firms with 300 or fewer lawyers to their outside-counsel roster and saving as much as half compared with fees of Wall Street firms more than triple that size. I wrote about this trend in Pendulum Swings in Favor of Mid-size Law Firms on the LawMarketing Portal...
Womble Carlyle Website Named Best in the Carolinas
Posted on April 09, 2009Once again, Womble Carlyle's Web site, www.WCSR.com, has been named the best law firm Web Site in both North Carolina and South Carolina. Who doesn't love a site with Winston the Bulldog walking across the page? Womble Carlyle and WCSR.com won "Best in Contest," the top overall honor, in the Lawyer's Weekly annual "Best Law Firm Web Site 2008" competition...
Last chance to register for Today's Webinar: Learn What Women Rainmakers Know
Posted on April 08, 2009Learn What Women Rainmakers Know -- Highlights of the Women Rainmaker's Study Catherine MacDonagh, founder of the Legal Sales and Service Organization (LSSO), will be the featured guest on a web seminar, to discuss which business development activities work best, the right attitude that leads to successful business development and how to overcome obstacles to generating new business...
Lawyer Participation on LinkedIn Skyrocketing
Posted on April 08, 2009From Steve Matthew's Stem Blog: Stem has been conducting ongoing tracking of the 'law practice industry' category on LinkedIn. The chart below displays the number of profile pages indexed by Google on four different dates over the course of the last year...
Last chance to register for Webinar: Learn What Women Rainmakers Know
Posted on April 07, 2009Last chance to register -- don't miss out! Learn What Women Rainmakers Know -- Highlights of the Women Rainmaker's Study Catherine MacDonagh, founder of the Legal Sales and Service Organization (LSSO), will be the featured guest on a web seminar, to discuss which business development activities work best, the right attitude that leads to successful business development and how to overcome obstacles to generating new business...
Last chance to register Tomorrow for Webinar: Learn What Women Rainmakers Know
Posted on April 07, 2009Learn What Women Rainmakers Know -- Highlights of the Women Rainmaker's Study Catherine MacDonagh, founder of the Legal Sales and Service Organization (LSSO), will be the featured guest on a web seminar, to discuss which business development activities work best, the right attitude that leads to successful business development and how to overcome obstacles to generating new business...
Last chance to register for Tomorrow's Webinar: Learn What Women Rainmakers Know
Posted on April 07, 2009Learn What Women Rainmakers Know -- Highlights of the Women Rainmaker's Study Catherine MacDonagh, founder of the Legal Sales and Service Organization (LSSO), will be the featured guest on a web seminar, to discuss which business development activities work best, the right attitude that leads to successful business development and how to overcome obstacles to generating new business...
Getting New Business from Online Social Networks
Posted on April 06, 2009Today's post on getting new business out of online social networking is part of a series coordinated by Martindale-Hubbell Connected. So far we've heard from bloggers Bob Ambrogi of LawSites, Monica Bay of The Common Scold, Sean Doherty, Rees Morrison, and Kathleen Delaney...
Social Networks Now More Popular than Email
Posted on April 02, 2009From the LawMarketing Portal: Two-thirds of the world's Internet population visit social networking or blogging sites, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time, reports public relations expert Brian Solis. What's more, Facebook has surpassed MySpace! You heard that right...
LMA Gives #1 Law Firm Marketing Award to Akin Gump
Posted on April 02, 2009The Legal Marketing Association today gave out Your Honor awards to 77 law firms in 23 categories. Following are the highlights of winners, some of which made money for their firms: First place: Business Development: Dykema, a 381-lawyer firm in Detroit, targeted 4 industries for new business: automotive, financial, transportation and pharmaceuticals...
Dykema Wins LMA Law Firm Marketing Awards for $6 Million Business Development Program
Posted on April 02, 2009The Legal Marketing Association today gave out Your Honor awards to 77 law firms in 23 categories. Following are the highlights of winners, some of which made money for their firms. Visit the LawMarketing Portal at www.LawMarketing.com to see more details and pictures...
Dykema Wins LMA Law Firm Marketing Award for $6 Million Business Development Program
Posted on April 02, 2009The Legal Marketing Association today gave out Your Honor awards to 77 law firms in 23 categories. Following are the highlights of winners, some of which made money for their firms. Visit the LawMarketing Portal at www.LawMarketing.com to see more details and pictures...
"Ghost" Twitterers Bash Holland & Knight Online
Posted on April 01, 2009"Ghost" Twitterers -- that is some who impersonates a real person or company -- by the handle "hklaw" and "hklawtwits" have been bashing the international law firm of Holland and Knight (whose web address is hklaw...
Martindale-Hubbell Launches Today
Posted on March 31, 2009With a base of 1 million lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell launches its Connected online social network today. It's been in beta testing for several months and currently has 3,000 members. Here's what makes it different from LinkedIn, Facebook, Legal OnRamp and the ABA's LegallyMinded: It's for lawyers only, an attractive feature for attorneys...
Martindale-Hubbell Connected Launches Today
Posted on March 31, 2009With a base of 1 million lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell launches its Connected online social network today. It's been in beta testing for several months and currently has 3,000 members. Here's what makes it different from LinkedIn, Facebook, Legal OnRamp and the ABA's LegallyMinded: It's for lawyers only, an attractive feature for attorneys...
Baker & Daniels' Identity Launch Takes Off with Flight 317
Posted on March 30, 2009From the LawMarketing Portal: After Melanie Green joined Baker & Daniels and the Director of Business Development & Marketing in Indianapolis, IN, the most frequent advice she was given when inquiring about how to achieve success was to "keep her hands off the logo...
Law Firm Marketing Alert: YouTube Traffic Exceeds 100 Million Unique Visitors
Posted on March 27, 2009From my friend Joshua Fruchter's blog LawyerCasting: YouTube Traffic Exceeds 100 Million Unique Visitors For First Time in January 2009 Law firms and individual attorneys considering whether to start using online video as a marketing tool need look no further than research by comScore finding that more than 100 million unique US Internet users visited YouTube during January 2009...
Now online: New issue of Originate! Business Development Newsletter
Posted on March 26, 2009The new issue of Originate! -- the business development newsletter -- is now online. This issue features a host of lawyers talking about business development and three installments in a series of articles detailing valuable business development initiatives...
One in Four Law Firms Plan to Add Bankruptcy and Litigation Lawyers
Posted on March 26, 2009Bankruptcy and Litigation Most In-Demand Specialties Despite a down economy and layoffs in the legal field, one-quarter (25 percent) of lawyers interviewed recently said their organizations would be adding personnel in the next 12 months. The majority (65 percent) of survey respondents forecast no change in staffing levels while one in 10 attorneys said their firms and corporations would be reducing the size of their teams in the coming year...
Using web analytics to increase your traffic
Posted on March 25, 2009Hat tip to Staff writer Correy E. Stephenson of Lawyers USA: As the Internet becomes an ever-increasing source of clients, it's extremely valuable to understand how and why potential clients arrive at your website or blog. Web analytics – the information included in the site's browser log – can provide those answers...
Despite recession, McGuireWoods expands into London
Posted on March 24, 2009The recession isn't affecting 900-lawyer McGuireWoods, which just entered the London market by acquiring a firm there. McGuireWoods has announced plans to acquire the law firm Grundberg Mocatta Rakison (GMR) in London. The combined firm will be called McGuireWoods...
Law Firms Continue to Expand Despite Poor Economy
Posted on March 23, 2009Excerpted from the Legal Intelligencer: A tough economy doesn't necessarily mean expansion-minded firms are putting their plans on hold. Blank Rome and K&L Gates each announced recently the opening of an office in markets far from their respective home bases of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh...
285-lawyer Wolf Block decides to dissolve
Posted on March 23, 2009Excerpted from the Philadelphia Business Journal: The partners of Wolf Block voted Monday to dissolve the 106-year-old law firm due to a combination of effects of the recession on the firm's core real estate practice, the constriction of credit and the anticipated departures of significant partners and practices...
ABA President-Elect to Speak at Best Lawyers 25th Anniversary Event
Posted on March 20, 2009Best Lawyers, one of the country's few legitimate lawyer-rating services, will mark its 25th anniversary in 2009 by honoring the 1,397 lawyers from throughout the U.S. who have been listed in its publication since it began rating lawyers in 1983...
2 Day Marketing Boot Camp for Small Law Firms
Posted on March 19, 2009There's a good conference coming up soon tailored for partners at small law firms, solo practitioners, of counsel attorneys and associates: The Rainmaker Retreat, a program that's helped 6,000 attorneys find more and better clients. It's being held Friday, March 27th & Saturday, March 28th at the Treasure Island Hotel in Las Vegas, NV...
Many Firms are Profiting in this Economy
Posted on March 18, 2009Robert Denny is right on the money in his March Legal Communique, excerpted here: "Don't believe all the gloom and doom. Many firms are profiting in this economy. And that is certainly true today in most parts of our economy including the legal profession...
45% of Law Firms Block Access to Social Networking Sites
Posted on March 17, 2009According to Doug Cornelius, who writes the Compliance Building blog, nearly half of all law firms block access from work computers to Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. These are three of the top 10 most visited sites on the web. He and Steve Matthews conducted an informal survey of 231 law firms, large and small, in January 2009 on Zoomerang...
Recession will Forever Change the Legal Profession
Posted on March 16, 2009New York Times columnist and author Thomas L. Friedman recently posed this question: "What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: 'No more...
Google becomes a monopoly with +70% market share, raising antitrust pushback
Posted on March 13, 2009According to Hitwise, Google has a 72% market share of online search, putting it over the 70% benchmark for having market power to raise prices unilaterally. This arguably makes Google a monopoly. This status has deservedly brought Google antitrust challenges from the US Government...
A New Magazine for Women Litigators
Posted on March 12, 2009There's a new online magazine for "women in litigation" called "Sue" (get it?) The technology is very slick: you can turn the pages online just like a real magazine. You can "zoom" to enlarge the copy 400%, making it easily readable...
Why Finding a Lawyer in the Yellow Pages is a Mistake
Posted on March 10, 2009I found the following on the lawyerahead blog. I've long held the view that the Yellow Pages are a waste of money for lawyers -- it just attracts bottom-feeders, illiterates and shoppers. this piece points out that the yellow pages are also bad for the client...
AVVO Making Trouble Again, This Time in DC
Posted on March 10, 2009Excerpted from the March 9, 2009 Washington Post: [Note: AVVO, the controversial lawyer directory, is up to its fishy tactics again, this time trying to impose directory listings on 90,000 lawyers in Washington, DC. The District of Columbia Bar wants AVVO -- which "mined" names from the bar's own Web site, no less -- to cease and desist, arguing that posting information about Washington lawyers for commercial purposes violates copyright laws and privacy rights...
Webinar: Credit Crisis Litigation -- The Hottest Practice area
Posted on March 10, 2009Last chance to register for Webinar: Thursday, March 12, 2009 10 AM to 11 AM Pacific Time 11 AM to Noon Mountain Time Noon to 1 PM Central Time 1 PM to 2 PM Eastern Time Subprime mortgage litigation has evolved into the hottest areas of law practice: credit crisis litigation...
Expert says Twitter can be a "goldmine" for marketers
Posted on March 09, 2009As a business-to-business marketing platform, Twitter has legs. About 56% of Twitter users say they use the online social communication site for business purposes, according to Rodney Rumford, a social media guru and one of the keynote speakers at the inaugural Gravity Summit on Social Media in Los Angeles...
Foley Hoag Sweeps LMA New England Your Honor Awarda
Posted on February 26, 2009The Boston law firm of Foley Hoag collected seven Your Honor awards from the Legal Marketing Association’s New England Chapter's. The awards recognize law firms that have demonstrated excellence in marketing and business development during the preceding year...
Foley Hoag Sweeps LMA New England Your Honor Awards
Posted on February 26, 2009The Boston law firm of Foley Hoag collected seven Your Honor awards from the Legal Marketing Association’s New England Chapter's. The awards recognize law firms that have demonstrated excellence in marketing and business development during the preceding year...
Increase Your Google Ranking with More Inbound Links
Posted on February 25, 2009The number of "inbound links" is a very important factor for Google and other search engine to decide how high your law firm website should rank, according to the Law Firm And Attorney SEO and Internet Marketing blog. What we're talking about is links FROM other websites TO your law firm website...
[Webinar] Last Chance to Register: Business Development Advice from new Chair of the ABA Commission on Women
Posted on February 25, 2009Don't miss the live Webinar TOMORROW: Register today for this LIVE, online Webinar with Roberta D. Liebenberg, Esq. of Fine, Kaplan and Black, Philadelphia. PRESENTED BY: Apollo Business Development DATE: TOMORROW February 26, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern time LOCATION: at your office, over the Internet MORE INFO: Laura Kresich, Program Director; (Tel) 773...
Chicago LMA Presents Law Firm Marketing Awards to 7 Law Firms
Posted on February 24, 2009The Chicago chapter of the Legal Marketing Association presented a dozen "Your Honor" awards for excellence in marketing at a ceremony in a classy Loop restaurant recently. Law firms were honored with an achievement award in the following categories: Advertising Campaign: Levenfeld Pearlstein LLC & Hunter Design – "Unusually Good" Identity: Davis & Kuelthau – "Positive Change" Promotional & Collateral Materials: Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP – "Demand Something Different" Promotional Gifts: Davis & Kuelthau – "Positive Change: Lockbox" Public Relations / Community Relations: Ice Miller LLP – "Indiana CEO Survey Project" Public Relations / Community Relations: Mayer Brown LLP – "Global Financial Markets Initiative Teleconference Series" Recruiting / Professional Development: Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP – "Demand Something Different" Sales / Business Development: Levenfeld Pearlstein LLP – Rate Freeze 2009 Vendor Partner of the Year: Regis Marketing Group – for work with Davis & Kuelthau Web Sites and Other Electronic Media: Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP – Web site Redesign Project This year, the judges thought two entries stood out among the others in their categories...
New Orleans Solo Lists Fixed Fees for Writing Appellate Briefs
Posted on February 23, 2009I thought this was a great idea – it’s from the From the Out-Of-The-Box Lawyering blog: "We’ve all heard about setting fixed fees for certain kinds of litigation. But this is the first time that I’ve seen a site in which an appellate lawyer lists his schedule of his fees for certain kinds of work...
The Dental Appliance that Sues the Dentist
Posted on February 20, 2009From "goofs, glitches, gotchas" on the inside back cover of Consumer Reportes:
Best Practices of Personal Marketing for Women Attorneys
Posted on February 18, 2009Michael Cummings wrote this article on the LawMarketing Portal: Last week, I saw a headline in the New York Times only 20-23% percent of partners at major law firms nationwide were women – despite that the fact that women account for roughly 50% of practicing attorneys in the US...
Using Twitter for Business - Perhaps!
Posted on February 17, 2009Maybe the siren’s call of Twitter - http://www.twitter.com (everybody’s doing it) has become too much and you’ve jumped in, according to John Jantsch, a marketing and digital technology coach based in Kansas City, MO.Or, maybe you have no clue what it is or why you would care...
March 17-18: Economist Conferences' Seventh Annual Marketing Forum
Posted on February 13, 2009I plan on attending this conference. If you are going, let me know at Lbodine [at] LawMarketing.com. Chief marketing officers have been hit with a double whammy in the current financial turbulence: the slowing economy is forcing most of them to become cost-cutters just at the time they are being asked by their CEOs to take more responsibility for building brands and increasing revenue...
Credit Crisis Litigation -- The Hottest Practice area
Posted on February 12, 2009PRESENTED BY: Apollo Business Development SPEAKER: Kevin M. LaCroix, Esq. DATE: March 12, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern LOCATION: on the web, on your computer CONTACT: Laura Kresich, Program Director; (Tel) (773) 966-9273 or www.PBDI...
Valorem's Law Firm Marketing says "We killed the billable hour."
Posted on February 11, 2009If you’re going to create a brochure, it’s best if you make it distinctive. My latest favorite is the Valorem law group’s brochure. They show a clock (from their building in Chicago) shot through with bullet holes. You open it up and it says, “we killed the billable hour...
YouTube has Replaced Yahoo as the No. 2 Search Engine
Posted on February 10, 2009From the Online Business Newspaper: "For many adults, their research quite often begins with a web search. Long gone are the days of visiting the library to review the most recent versions of your favorite encyclopedia or the card catalog. Although most of us opt for Google or Yahoo as a starting point, for some, the search begins with video...
Six Ways to Address Crises So You and Your Clients Win
Posted on February 08, 2009From the new February issue of Originate, at http://www.pbdi.org/Originate/default.asp?Action=GetDetails&ArticleID=271 in an article by Barry M. Schneider: During the last few months of 2008, crises were threatening very quickly. Banks were failing as their write-down of mortgage backed assets triggered liquidity problems...
Foam Marketing: the Latest Guerilla Marketing Tactic
Posted on February 06, 2009The idea of guerilla marketing is to insert your promotion in a clever way that buyers least expect. Most often, guerilla marketing is fun. Here's a law firm marketing idea: foam marketing. I'm not quite sure what the advertiser is promoting here on the foam of lattes, but it's called ROM and it costs 218 Euros...
Is the CMO Position in Jeopardy? NO.
Posted on February 05, 2009The Marketing Consigliere blog highlighted a couple posts from a Q&A on LinkedIn, where several top executives shared their thoughts on the role of the chief marketing officer and whether or not the role of the CMO will become obsolete. Mark Chmiel, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer at Denny’s: I think quite the opposite–the CMO is becoming more important and influential...
Twitosphere Drawing in a Steady Stream of Twittering Lawyers
Posted on February 04, 2009From the Cleveland Plain Dealer: A steady stream of lawyers is using Twitter.com -- on their computers and on their Blackberrys -- to network with peers, post industry news and drum up business. How to tweet Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to post and receive messages...
Save the Date: Annual Chief Marketing Officer's Forum
Posted on February 04, 2009Mark your calendar: 5th Annual Chief Marketing Officer’s Forum September 15 to 16, 2009 • Renaissance Chicago Hotel - Chicago, IL Conference Overview Come to learn how to stay ahead of the curve in the economic recession and stay to network with your peers...
Save the Date: Annual Chief Marketing Officer's Forum
Posted on February 03, 2009Mark your calendar: 5th Annual Chief Marketing Officer’s Forum September 15 to 16, 2009 • Renaissance Chicago Hotel - Chicago, IL Conference Overview Come to learn how to stay ahead of the curve in the economic recession and stay to network with your peers...
Top Ten Law Firm Billing Mistakes that Clients Hate
Posted on February 02, 2009I heard this Top Ten list of billing grievances at the Marketing Partner Forum program, “General Counsel Roundtable.” It’s from Ivan K. Fong, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary, Cardinal Health, Inc. in Dublin, OH, (and nomineee as Homeland Security General Counsel)...
Six Hot Areas of Law Practice for Regional and Mid-sized firms
Posted on February 02, 2009I see six hot areas of law practice for regional and midsized firms. Now is the time to step up law firm marketing in the following areas: 1. Employment law. President Obama just signed a law making it easier to bring employment discrimination cases...
March 17-18: Economist Conferences' Seventh Annual Marketing Forum
Posted on January 30, 2009I plan on attending this conference. If you are going, let me know at Lbodine [at] LawMarketing.com. Chief marketing officers have been hit with a double whammy in the current financial turbulence: the slowing economy is forcing most of them to become cost-cutters just at the time they are being asked by their CEOs to take more responsibility for building brands and increasing revenue...
Economic Hell Coming in 2009 for Big Law Firms
Posted on January 30, 2009Two leading advisors to major law firms predicted a declining demand for legal services, a 15% drop in net income from 2008, the inability to raise rates, additional layoffs, salary freezes and cost cutting, heavier fee discounting, expenses rising faster than revenues -- and a long wait for better times...
Reflections at the Marketing Partner Forum
Posted on January 29, 2009There are 250 attendees at the 16th Annual Marketing Partner Forum in sunny, balmy Dana Point, CA. Though the group is smaller than in the past, these are people from the law firms that will stand tall after the recession ends. They see the importance of spending money on marketing in an economic downturn, and have sent their partners and talented marketers to a conference to learn how to stay ahead of the pack...
Marketing Excellent Awards - Marketing Partner Forum
Posted on January 29, 2009At tonight’s Marketing Partner Award excellence in marketing awards, the winners are: Marketing Professional of the Year: Deborah Grabein, Director of Marketing at Andrews Kurth in Houston. Marketing Initiative of the Year – Private Eduqity and Banks Initiative: Goodwin Procter Best Use of Technology to Support the Marketing Efforts – Patton Boggs for a weekly “Capital Thinking” podcast and radio show hosted in house...
4 GCs Describe How They Pick Law Firms
Posted on January 29, 2009Four in-house counsel gave their views on “The Changing Paradigm: What Will Drive Outside Counsel Selection, Retention And Profitability in the Future?” at the 2009 Managing Partner Forum in Dana Point, CA, today. They were: Michael Gruskin, Managing Attorney, Commercial and Product Litigation, General Motors John E...
Marketing Excellence Awards - Marketing Partner Forum
Posted on January 29, 2009At tonight’s Marketing Partner Award excellence in marketing awards, the winners are: Marketing Professional of the Year: Deborah Grabein, Director of Marketing at Andrews Kurth in Houston. Marketing Initiative of the Year – Private Eduqity and Banks Initiative: Goodwin Procter Best Use of Technology to Support the Marketing Efforts – Patton Boggs for a weekly “Capital Thinking” podcast and radio show hosted in house...
Law Firm Marketing Message Should Be "We want YOU to be satisfied"
Posted on January 28, 2009Here's something refreshing: the General Counsel of AutoZone described in 20 words or less what his company does. He said: "We are in the customer satisfaction business." Notice that he didn't say he was in the business of selling auto parts...
5 Tips for Better Business Cards
Posted on January 27, 2009If you think business cards aren't important marketing tools, you're wrong, as reported by Kimberly Atkins in an interview with yours truly in Lawyers USA: Yet too may lawyers simply stick to the old, outdated format of white card stock with a name and number printed in boring black letters...
Bankruptcy is a Growth Area for Law Firms
Posted on January 26, 2009When I teach lawyers how to sell, I advise them to ask questions to discover client "pain." In this recession, there is an ocean of pain for businesses and individuals that can't pay their landlords, have run up debt so high it can't be paid off and revenue has dropped drastically...
5 Ways Blogging Can Make a Difference for You in This Economy
Posted on January 23, 2009By Dan Schawbel, from the ProBlogger blog. Dan is the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, and owner of the award winning Personal Branding Blog. If you ever were scared or intimated of a blog, now is the best time to flush away those fears and start a blog...
Make Four Personal, Face-to-Face Contacts Every Day
Posted on January 22, 2009Found on Peter Darling's blog: Your goal should be to make at least four personal, face-to-face contacts every day. They should include: 1 prospect, to determine needs, present a proposal, or close a sale1 existing customer, to maintain the relationship, deliver on promises, up-sell and gather testimonials and referrals 1 lost customer, to see how they are doing and to remind them you haven’t forgotten about them 1 professional colleague, to ask how you might help them further their career (don’t worry, they will offer to help you too) If you do enough of this, you will soon have to see 2 existing customers each day because there won’t be very many lost customers to win back...
Dr. Evil Appears in Law Firm Marketing Ad
Posted on January 21, 2009When I first saw the law firm advertisement in American Lawyer magazine I had the following impressions: 1. Omigod! A law firm has used Dr. Evil from the the Austin Powers film series in an ad! How much did they have to pay to get comedy actor Mike Myers? Wait a minute...
Top 10 Marketing Blunders of 2008
Posted on January 20, 2009From the Collateral Damage blog: Ford features “Space Oddity” — a song about astronaut suicide — in new car campaign. Framingham State College uses the word blah 137 times in a 312-word fundraising letter...
Law Firms Could Rock the Train Station with Guerilla Marketing
Posted on January 19, 2009T-Mobile rocked the Liverpool Street station in London with a guerrilla marketing campaign filmed at 11am on Thursday January 15, 2009. They cast some hundred people and had them dress in normal work attire while passing through the rail station...
Baby Boom Generation Now Outnumbered
Posted on January 16, 2009Ever since I was born, the Baby Boom Generation ruled. What we decided was the majority rule. Our worldview prevailed and our music, fads and hairstyles were always dominant. What we did defined the news and ultimately, history...
Guerilla Law Firm Marketing Idea for ACC Convention
Posted on January 15, 2009Why doesn't a law firm use guerilla marketing tactics at the next convention of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)? Or any of the 48 ACC chapters in the US and abroad? We all know the ACC annual convention is going to be in Boston on October 18-21...
My 2009 Tech Resolutions
Posted on January 14, 2009Earlier this year I bought a webcam, and it’s been staring at me, sitting in the package. My 2009 tech resolutions include breaking open that package and learning how to use it. I saw myself on a webcam at Radio Shack and looked like a character in Grumpy Old Men...
Top 10 mistakes People Make on LinkedIn
Posted on January 13, 2009Christine Pilch of Ware, MA, a co-owner at Grow My Company says "LinkedIn is such a wonderful tool to sell yourself to prospects and potential customers, clients and employers. Unfortunately, a lot of people make a lot of mistakes and don't fully utilize LinkedIn to its full potential...
Blagojevich impersonator says, "Impeached? For being Awesome?"
Posted on January 10, 2009Follow me at http://twitter.com/LarryBodine For a great laugh, follow govblago on Twitter -- the writer is pretending to be the F*%#ing corrupt governor of Illlinois - http://twitter.com/govblago Here are some samples: govblago After all of this political BS, I am thinking about becoming a Spokesperson for Mantyhose http://is...
Sixteen Reasons to Tweet on Twitter
Posted on January 08, 2009Follow me at http://twitter.com/LarryBodine Twitter is the newest tech sensation in legal marketing. Lawyer Robert Ambrogi explains how to use the microblogging tool to mold your image, distribute news and attract new clients: So I strapped on some wings and gave it a try...
AVVO Has Lost its Credibility
Posted on January 07, 2009From Scott H. Greenfield's Simple Justice: Avvo made a big splash with its numerical ratings, but was subject to severe criticism from within the bar for its secret algorithmic methodology that burned younger lawyers and experienced lawyers who couldn't be bothered to play its game...
GCs Face Budget Cuts Averaging 11.5% for 2009
Posted on January 06, 200975% of responding General Counsel indicated that their law departments are facing budget cuts averaging 11.5% for 2009. An additional 15.6% reported that their budgets would increase by a smaller percentage than in prior years. Follow this link to read the Altman Weil research...
Attorneys Flocking to Twitter for Marketing
Posted on January 05, 2009Follow me at http://twitter.com/LarryBodine From where I’m sitting, 2009 will be the year Twitter becomes the major business development trend. Why? Because lawyers don’t have time to update their own bios...
LMA Abandons its Listserv
Posted on January 02, 2009After trying for years to compete with the original LawMarketing Listserv, the Legal Marketing Association has given up and abandoned its listserv, according an online press release. The LMA launched its members-only listserv in 2002. It will be "decommissioned" on February 1, 2009...
Rosy Outlook for Long Island Law Firms
Posted on December 31, 2008From the Long Island Business News: Lawyers throughout the Island say that for the next year and for many to come, they will be reacting to the new presidential administration, the national recession and how it locally impacts Long Island’s businesses and homeowners...
NPR Ads by Law Firms are Wasted Money
Posted on December 30, 2008I found the post Brought To You By A Large Firm With Offices Everywhere on Patrick Lamb's blog, In Search of Perfect Client Service. A lawyer based in Chicago, he asks the question: do you remember the name of the law firms that advertise on National Public Radio? He doesn't, and neither do I...
The Year in Tweets: 10 Most Memorable Twitter Moments of 2008
Posted on December 29, 2008Follow me at http://twitter.com/LarryBodine Doriano "Paisano" Carta writes on Mashable.com how Twitter has exploded into an Internet phenomenon where people sent tweets including the first news about the Mumbai attacks, the deaths of prominent figures, and the 2008 Presidential election...
Minneapolis Law Firm Shares Its "Secret" Connections
Posted on December 24, 2008From acupuncturists and artists to underground shopping and website development, the attorneys of Parsinen Kaplan Rosberg and Gotlieb (PKR+G) in Minneapolis reveal their intimate personal and professional resources by way of their client communication for the holidays, PKR+G's Little Black Book...
16th Annual Marketing Partner Forum Coming Up Jan. 28-30
Posted on December 23, 2008pThe conference I never miss is coming up next month in Dana Point, CA: the a href="http://westlegalworks.com/conferences/mpf/2009/index.htm"Marketing Partner Forum/a.nbsp; This year's theme is quot;Lighting the Way: Strategies for Influencing Change...
Sonnenschein Loses its CMO
Posted on December 22, 2008pLate-breaking newsflash: Sonnenschein, Nath amp; Rosenthal announced late Sunday that strong100 lawyers, including 40 partners, from Thacher Proffitt amp; Wood will be joining the firm's New York office/strong, effective January 1. The hires increase Sonnenschein's total headcount to about 800 lawyers, nearly doubling the size of its New York office...
Latest Issue of ORIGINATE! Newsletter Now Available
Posted on December 18, 2008p table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" tbody tr td valign="top" table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" tbody tr td valign="top"embfont color="#0000ff"NEW! /font/b/emDownload a PDF of the Complete Newsletter/td /tr tr /tr tr td valign="top" pfont color="#0000ff"Subcribers can now receive each month's issue as a PDF document...
Boston Law Firm's Thanksgiving Card Does Abe Lincoln Proud
Posted on December 18, 2008Audra Callanan has done it again. Following in her tradition of creating Mad magazine holiday cards and prescription-style candy pills to comprehend a Boston accent, she convinced her firm to send out wicked funny Thanksgiving cards featuring Abraham Lincoln holding a chunk of pumpkin pie on a gigantic fork...
NJ Supreme Court Allows Advertising in Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers
Posted on December 17, 2008pThe New Jersey Supreme Courtnbsp;ruled today that strongit is ethical for lawyers to advertise in Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers /stronglistings -- striking a blow for lawyer's freedom of speech./p pVisit stronga href="http://tinyurl.com/5xpufk"http://tinyurl...
Last Day to Register for Webinar: What General Counsels Want from Their Lawyers
Posted on December 17, 2008pfont color="#ff0000"strongLast day to register! Don't miss out!/strong/font/p pfont size="2"WEBINAR DATE: strongDecember 18, 2008/strong /font/p ul li10 AM to 11 AM Pacific Time/li li11 AM to Noon Mountain Time/li liNoon to 1 PM Central Time/li li1 PM to 2 PM Eastern Time/li /ul pstrongLOCATION:/strong on the web, on your computer br / strongREGISTER:/strong a href="http://www...
Survey Finds Only 25% of B-to-B Marketers Plan to Cut Budget in 2009
Posted on December 16, 2008Despite the recession, nearly one-third of business-to-business ("b-to-b") marketers plan to increase their marketing budgets next year, according to BtoB's "2009 Marketing Priorities and Plans" survey. The recent survey found that 31...
Federal Reserve: Recession to be over in Mid-2009
Posted on December 16, 2008Look for this line in your Wednesday morning newspaper: After two quarters of very weak growth, the economy should start a slow recovery after mid-year, according to a Federal Reserve official. "I've got to admit it's getting better, It's a little better all the time" -- John, Paul, Ringo & George.
Janet Raasch's Constant Content Blog Launches
Posted on December 16, 2008What hunter can see in the dark, makes no sound when it moves and can listen better than a sonar station? An owl, which is the anchor graphic for writer Janet Ellen Raasch's new blog, Constant Content The capabilities of the owl translated directly into good business development skills: Foresee client needs...
Boston Law Firm's Thanksgiving Card Does Abe Lincoln Proud
Posted on December 13, 2008Audra Callanan has done it again. Following in her tradition of creating Mad magazine holiday cards and prescription-style candy pills to comprehend a Boston accent, she convinced her firm to send out wicked funny Thanksgiving cards featuring Abraham Lincoln holding a chunk of pumpkin pie on a gigantic fork...
On the Bright Side of the Road
Posted on December 13, 2008"Won't you help me sing my song, from the dark end of the street, to the bright side of the road" -- Lyrics by Van Morrison. Maybe it's the holidays, or maybe it's a coincidence, but I've noticed several positive things in life: The death rate for cancer dropped for the first time ever, according to the American Cancer Society...
One week left to register: What General Counsels Want from Their Lawyers
Posted on December 12, 2008WEBINAR DATE: December 18, 2008 10 AM to 11 AM Pacific Time 11 AM to Noon Mountain Time Noon to 1 PM Central Time 1 PM to 2 PM Eastern Time LOCATION: on the web, on your computer WEBSITE: http://www.sagelawmarketing.com/webseminar41...
CMO Moves at Large Law Firms
Posted on December 11, 2008Arrivals and departures of CMOs at large law firms are making the news lately. Karen Braun, the longtime CMO of Kirkland & Ellis, will join New York's Sullivan & Cromwell in New York as CMO. Bob Gero has left Milbank Tweed to start a consulting practice in Philadelphia area...
CMO from Non-Legal Background Didn't Work Out
Posted on December 10, 2008I was stunned when I heard the news: the CMO of a global law firm with 1,000+ lawyers was let go after only four months. I made calls to verify the news, and it turned out CMO's fatal flaw was that he had never worked in the legal profession before...
Recession-Proof Marketing in 4 Steps
Posted on December 09, 2008In tough economic times, marketing is often one of the first items to be slashed. That's a mistake, as I've maintained consistently. The time to be marketing is in a severe economic downturn. But regrettably, a lot of law firms will dump jet fuel while their firm is going into a tailspin...
State of AmLaw 200 Blogosphere
Posted on December 08, 2008LexBlog's 3rd report on the State of AmLaw 200 Blogosphere highlights of significant growth in blogging the 8 months since the last report: Over 35% of AmLaw 200 law firms have blogs. 12% of AmLaw 200 law firms have more than one blog. 32% growth in last 8 months in the number of AmLaw 200 law firms publishing blogs...
Light at the End of the Tunnel for Residential Real Estate
Posted on December 05, 2008Suddenly things are looking up for the 50,000+ lawyers who have a residential real estate practice. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. 1. Mortgage rates dropped below 6% last week, a significant market threshold. For a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, rates can be found as low as 5%, according to Mortgage News Daily...
Lawyers Can Find Referrals on ABA Online Social Network
Posted on December 05, 2008News Alert: the ABA has launched an online social networking site – Legally Minded – at LegallyMinded.com Benefits include: It offers ways for lawyers to generate referrals by making connections online. One twist is that it has a “people map” that displays other members who have similar interests, or are looking for what a lawyer has to offer...
Vote for This Blog
Posted on December 04, 2008The ABA Journal just notified me that this blog has been selected as one of the 100 best websites primarily written by lawyers, for lawyers. This blog is one of the 15 in the Practice / Career Management category. Now readers are being asked to vote on their favorites in each of the Blawg 100’s 10 categories...
Optimism in the Face of the Recession
Posted on December 03, 2008I got this on Monday: -----Original Message----- From: CNN Breaking News -- The U.S. entered a recession in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. -------------------------- Leave it to the government to tell us something we've known for a year...
Last Day to Register for Webinar: Business Development in a Severe Downturn
Posted on December 02, 2008For law firms planning to be in business in 2009, don't miss this Webinar: Business Development in a Severe Downturn -- How CMOs Can Train Partners to be Rainmakers. PRESENTED BY: Incisive Media SPEAKER(S): Iris Jones, Chadbourne & Parke; Larry Bodine, Esq...
Last Days to Register for Webinar: Business Development in a Severe Downturn
Posted on November 28, 2008For law firms planning to be in business in 2009, don't miss this Webinar: Business Development in a Severe Downturn -- How CMOs Can Train Partners to be Rainmakers. PRESENTED BY: Incisive Media SPEAKER(S): Iris Jones, Chadbourne & Parke; Larry Bodine, Esq...
Early Warning Signs of Law Firm Failure
Posted on November 27, 2008Failed law firms, like Thelen and Heller Erhman, have three things in common: Below average financial performance – often including excessive financial leverage, significant deferred obligations, low productivity, and poor realization; Internal dynamics – primarily involving leadership issues, partners with incompatible goals, differences over compensation philosophy, and lack of succession planning; and External dynamics – primarily involving competitive pressures related to the firm’s historical client base, access to new clients and desirable work, and inability to recruit key talent...
OBABL: Life as a Minority Lawyer
Posted on November 26, 2008Yolanda Young has launched the blog www.onbeingablacklawyer.com. You might remember her as the former Covington & Burling staff attorney who chronicled her experience as a minority attorney there in The Huffington Post piece, “Law Firm Segregation Reminiscent of Jim Crow...
November Issue of Originate Focuses on How Economy Affects Law firms
Posted on November 21, 2008It's crunch time in both the legal business and the economy at large. In the newest issue of Originate! - the business development newsletter - we offer many basic, but powerful, ways to make a difference in your business development so you can stay ahead of the turmoil – from advice by general counsels to simple plans of action to knowing how to connect with a prospect...
Last chance to register for Webinar: Generate New Business with Six Technology Tools
Posted on November 20, 2008Smart lawyers are using the Web and other online technologies to work as lead generating-machines for them. You don't need to be a technology wiz to use the six top techniques for online business development. In fact, you'll learn just how easy it is to harness the Web to attract clients in the LIVE one-hour webinar featuring: Famous online marketer and entrepreneur Kevin O'Keefe of Seattle, Washington...
You can still register today for Webinar: Generate New Business with Six Technology Tools
Posted on November 20, 2008Smart lawyers are using the Web and other online technologies to work as lead generating-machines for them. You don't need to be a technology wiz to use the six top techniques for online business development. In fact, you'll learn just how easy it is to harness the Web to attract clients in the LIVE one-hour webinar featuring: Famous online marketer and entrepreneur Kevin O'Keefe of Seattle, Washington...
Survey of Women Lawyers Reveals Shocking Results
Posted on November 19, 2008The 2008 National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) Survey produced some shocking data, including that, on average, a female equity partner earns $87,000 a year less than a male equity partner. The best way for a woman lawyer to reach the position of equity partner may be to make a lateral move: two-thirds of the new women equity partners in the sample were laterals, and 31% of all new equity partners were recent laterals...
"Elevator Pitch" Post Deleted
Posted on November 17, 2008I sincerely apologize for the crude and offensive "Elevator Pitch" post I put online last week. In the clear light of morning, it is clear that it was anti-Semitic and repellent. I want to thank all the people who commented and called me about it; I listened and took what you said to heart...
Marketing the Marketing Department
Posted on November 16, 2008Nothing is more frustrating when a an MBA or JD who has toiled in the firm's marketing vineyards, striven mightily to generate new business for the firm, and vainly proposed great ideas like CRM, client surveys and competitive intelligence only to have them ignored -- than it is to have a lawyer at the firm ask: "What exactly do you do in marketing?" The ever-successful Iris Jones of Chadbourne & Parke in New York has come up with a remedy: print a one-page directory of the Business Development and Marketing Department, naming the marketing professionals, describing concisely what they do and listing their phone number...
Best "Elevator Pitch" Ever
Posted on November 14, 2008I was conducting business development training at Chicago-area law firm when the focus turned to "30-second commercials" or "elevator pitches." Each lawyer in the session was assigned to write their own, following guidelines I outlined...
LTN AWARDS Deadline Extended to Dec. 3 - Nominate your firm/law dept.
Posted on November 13, 2008By popular demand, Law Technology News has extended the deadline to enter its 2008 LTN Awards to WEDNESDAY DEC 3. Especially in tough economic times, here's an opportunity to showcase your organization's technology stars -- and projects...
White & Case Lays Off 70 Associates
Posted on November 12, 2008From the AmLaw Daily Blog: White & Case said it will lay off about 3 percent of its global legal and staff head count as part of a review of firm operations in light of the economic downturn. The layoffs, first reported on the blog Above the Law, will affect about 70 associates and 90 staffers, spokesman Nicholas Clarke says...
New Technology Affects Public Relations
Posted on November 12, 2008I just picked this up from a public relations agency: New technologies have made an impact on how newsrooms operate. Journalists are simultaneously facing added on-line duties and large staffroom cuts and are increasingly dependent on the internet and press releases...
White & Case Lays Off 70 Associates, 100 staff
Posted on November 12, 2008From the AmLaw Daily Blog: White & Case said it will lay off about 3 percent of its global legal and staff head count as part of a review of firm operations in light of the economic downturn. The layoffs, first reported on the blog Above the Law, will affect about 70 associates and 100 staffers, spokesman Nicholas Clarke says...
The Silent Treatment from the Boss Means You Could be Laid Off
Posted on November 11, 2008If your boss suddenly stops talking to you, it may be a warning sign that you will soon be laid off, according to Debra Cassens Weiss. The Wall Street Journal talked to job coaches and management consultants to put together a list of warning signs. They include: Your boss stops making small talk with you, even though he or she continues to shoot the breeze with other co-workers...
Lawyers Among WSJ "50 Women to Watch"
Posted on November 10, 2008Several lawyers lawyer made the list in today's "50 women to Watch" section of the Wall Street Journal, and the only practicing lawyer is Marcia Goldstein of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. " "Marcia Goldstein sits atop what is arguably the hottest legal practice of the moment," the newspaper says...
Defense Bar Launches Blog
Posted on November 09, 2008The Defense Research Institute, the organization that is to the civil-defense bar what the American Association for Justice is to the plaintiffs' bar, recently launched a blog, For the Defense, as an adjunct to the organization's magazine of the same name...
Matt Homann's 10 New Rules of Legal Marketing
Posted on November 07, 2008According to lawyer and marketer Matt Homann of St. Louis, "Legal Marketing has changed. It used to be enough to keep an ad in the yellow pages and belong to the Rotary Club. Not anymore. Times are tough, so I present to you Ten "New" Rules of Legal Marketing...
TV vs. the Web for Law Firm Marketing
Posted on November 06, 2008I asked my networks the following question: "I’m advising a law firm that is spending a ton of money on TV advertising (they do some plaintiff PI work, but also have a billable-hour business practice.) Which is a better marketing medium: TV or the Web? Give me your opinion...
LTN AWARDS - Nominate your firm/law dept - DEADLINE FRIDAY
Posted on November 05, 2008The deadline to nominate your law firm or law dept for the 2008 Law Technology News Awards is FRIDAY (NOV 7). Click here for the entry form. "As Law Technology News prepares to present our sixth annual Technology Awards, we will once again recognize leaders in the field - both in innovation and implementation...
Obama Presidency is Good News for the Legal Profession
Posted on November 05, 2008In my opinion, the election of Barack Obama as President brings all sorts of good news for the legal profession. Regulatory law. After 8 years of minimal regulation of business (except for crackdowns on illegal aliens), lawyers with a regulatory practice will see much more activity in their practices...
You shouldn't be reading this...
Posted on November 04, 2008Don't just sit there. GET OUT and VOTE FOR CHANGE!
Black October for Layoffs in Law firms
Posted on November 03, 2008The profession has demonstrated that that article "2009: Another Year of Economic Darkness for Law Firms" is based on fact. Law.com has even created "The Layoff List" as a running tally. (Also see below.) There are plenty of ways using law firm marketing to respond to the economic downturn...
85% of Firms Offer Business Development Training to Lawyers
Posted on October 31, 2008In response to the bleak news about the economic prospects for the legal profession, smart law firms are training their lawyers to bring in new business. A new survey by The BTI Consulting Group of Boston found that 85% of law firms offer formal sales and business development training to their lawyers...
Beat the Recession by Creating Your Personal Business Development Plan
Posted on October 29, 2008Get More Clients. Make More Money. Visit http://tinyurl.com/6xvudu Does business development at your firm look like a Warner Brothers’ cartoon with lawyers dressing up as hunters, going out into the business forest and shooting at anything that moves? If your business development seems more about “wascally wabbits” than verified business leads, you aren’t alone...
Bad Economy Forces Thelen Reid Out of Business
Posted on October 29, 2008According to a report in New York Lawyer, the Partnership Council of 400-lawyer Thelen announced it voted to dissolve the firm. The firm expected to close on Dec. 1. An early sign of trouble for Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner came last March, when the firm laid off 26 associates (which was 10% of their associates) and 85 members of its support staff, including members of the west coast marketing staff...
Beat the Recession With an Organized Business Development Program
Posted on October 29, 2008Get More Clients. Make More Money. Visit http://tinyurl.com/6xvudu Does business development at your firm look like a Warner Brothers’ cartoon with lawyers dressing up as hunters, going out into the business forest and shooting at anything that moves? If your business development seems more about “wascally wabbits” than verified business leads, you aren’t alone...
2009: Another Year of Economic Darkness for Law Firms
Posted on October 27, 2008New research shows a dark economic picture for law firms during the next 12 months: The current year will represent a significant downturn for the legal industry as a whole. Across-the-board rate increases will not be possible in 2009 . Profits per partner in 2008 will on average be flat to a minus 10 percent, as compared to profit levels in 2007, causing a severe strain on many firms...
The Economic Picture for Law Firms Gets Worse
Posted on October 24, 2008As the law firm recession enters its second year, new research shows that corporations are sending less work outside, rate increases will be smaller in 2008 than in the past, and 40%+ corporations have fired some of their law firms. The new research reveals that one reason for the economic downturn in the legal profession is that corporations are sending less legal work to law firms, and handling more work by in-house lawyers...
63% of Law Firms say Client Satisfaction Surveys are Top Business Development Tool
Posted on October 23, 2008Some of the surprise statistics that came to light during the Chief Marketing Officers' Forum in New York were: Almost two-thirds (62.7%) rated client interviews and surveys as a “very effective” or “extremely effective” strategy for leading to business development...
Last Chance to Register: Getting Client Feedback to Generate More Business
Posted on October 20, 2008To get more files from clients, lawyers need to know what is happening at their businesses. To get this key business development information: More than 50% law firms conduct client surveys. 63% of law firms say client satisfaction surveys are their most effective business development tool...
Last Hours to Register: Getting Client Feedback to Generate More Business
Posted on October 20, 2008To get more files from clients, lawyers need to know what is happening at their businesses. To get this key business development information: More than 50% law firms conduct client surveys. 63% of law firms say client satisfaction surveys are their most effective business development tool...
Only 3% of Legal Work is Influenced by Directories
Posted on October 15, 2008There are three ways that law firms can waste their money: Shoveling bales of cash out of the back of a moving pickup truck. Starting bonfires with wrapped packs of $100 bills. Buying a listing in a directory of law firms. Speaking at the recent Chief Marketing Officers' Forum in New York, Peter Columbus, the Director of Business Development for Kaye Scholer and Mark Messing, Chief Marketing Officer of Weil, Gotshal Manges, presented research showing that directory listings are worthless...
Make Friends, Not Contacts
Posted on October 14, 2008Lawyers need to meet people to generate business and to retain clients, according to author Ari Kaplan. He suggests lawyers join a sports league, the chamber of commerce, and hook up with law school classmates. Start with those you have already met and have them introduce you to their friends, recommends Elizabeth “Betiayn” Tursi, the founder of Tursi Law Marketing Management...
Book Review: Some Assembly Required: A Networking Guide for Women
Posted on October 13, 2008Get your copy of Some Assembly Required: a Networking Guide for Women in the LawMarketing store for just $22.95 Review by Margaret McCaffery: This book is a sequel to Thom Singer’s Some Assembly Required: How to Make, Grow, and Keep Your Business Relationships...
Portland Law Firm Boosts Website Visitors who became Leads by 400%
Posted on October 09, 2008The law firm Gilroy & Napoli dramatically boosted traffic from target clients to their website by using a combination of search engine optimization and paid search marketing using Google Adwords. The firm employed sophisticated online techniques that any law firm could use, to make certain its top 10 most important search terms appeared on the first page of search results on Google...
Nevada Law Requires All Emails about Clients be Encrypted
Posted on October 07, 2008This law just went into effect in Nevada: NRS 597.970 Restrictions on transfer of personal information through electronic transmission. [Effective October 1, 2008.] 1. A business in this State shall not transfer any personal information of a customer through an electronic transmission other than a facsimile to a person outside of the secure system of the business unless the business uses encryption to ensure the security of electronic transmission...
Nevada Law Requires Encryption of Emails with Personal Info about Clients
Posted on October 07, 2008As of October 1, the state of Nevada requires the encryption of all transmissions, such as e-mail, for all businesses that send personal, identifiable information over the Internet. Violations are criminal misdemeanors. It's all in Title 52 - Trade Regulations and Practices, Chapter 597 - Miscellaneous Trade Regulations and Prohibited Acts...
Webinar: Getting Client Feedback to Generate More Business
Posted on October 06, 2008To get more files from clients, lawyers need to know what is happening at their businesses. To get this key business development information: More than 50% law firms conduct client surveys. 63% of law firms say client satisfaction surveys are their most effective business development tool...
Web Marketing Association Honors Chicago's Schiff Hardin
Posted on October 03, 2008The Chicago law firm Schiff Hardin has been awarded the "Legal Standard of Excellence" WebAward from the Web Marketing Association. This annual competition recognizes the people and organizations responsible for developing some of the most effective and best Web sites on the Internet today...
Law Firm Loses Web Trademark Fight for its Own Name
Posted on October 02, 2008Have you trademarked your law firm name? If not, it's a big mistake and invites cyber-squatters to buy a domain, hijacking your firm name. Just because you've been using your law firm name on stationery and marketing materials may not be enough to create a common-law trademark for you...
Rainmaker Peter J. Bilfield - Taking Control of Career as an Associate
Posted on October 01, 2008Peter Bilfield gets it. He embraced business development enthusiastically, found a niche, markets in a disciplined way and is on the fast track to being an accomplished rainmaker. And he is delivering results that his firm respects: Peter has originated a significant and impressive level of fees for Withers Bergman in New York in 2008...
Rainmaker Peter H. Klee - Using Unbeatable Results to Generate New Business
Posted on September 30, 2008Peter H. Klee is the biggest rainmaker at Luce Forward in San Diego, bringing in between $10 - $15 million each year, and his insurance litigation practice continues to grow at a rate of 10 percent per year. What sets him apart as a 2008 Rainmaker of the Year, in the category of partners who are litigators, is his unbeatable record: no client represented in court by Peter has ever been found liable for breach of insurance contract, bad faith or any other tort...
Rainmaker Wilton G. McDonald II - Innovating to Build a Practice
Posted on September 29, 2008Wilton McDonald II had some special challenges in building up a small legal practice. Hired in November 2006 by a small to mid-sized firm in Grand Cayman as a senior associate, he was charged with bringing in his own work and full responsibility for the Investment Funds Department...
Defections & Litigation Dropoff Mean Heller Ehrman is Likely to Dissolve
Posted on September 27, 2008From the Saturday Wall Stree Journal: Heller Ehrman LLP, a prominent, 118-year-old San Francisco law firm, appears to be near the end of its life. Chairman Matthew Larrabee announced Thursday that the firm's partnership would vote Friday on whether to dissolve the firm, says a firm attorney briefed on the matter...
Defections & Litigation Dropoff Led to Heller Ehrman Demise
Posted on September 27, 2008Heller Ehrman LLP, a 118-year-old San Francisco law firm, is shutting its doors after 118 years. Chairman Matt Larrabee broke the news to the firm's 500-plus employees on Thursday. The firm's partnership was voting last Friday on dissolving the firm, according to many published reports...
Rainmaker Lorelei Graham - An Entrepreneur Who Gives Valued Legal Services to Entrepreneurs
Posted on September 26, 2008Lorelei Graham is quite clear on what it takes to bring in business: “I don’t believe in the file fairy magically delivering work to my desk. Perhaps some IP attorneys can hit a hot area and mine it for business for a long time. But, I haven’t been that fortunate...
Rainmaker H. Patrick Callahan -- Generating Business Via Relationship Building and Team Play
Posted on September 25, 2008The winner of the 2008 Rainmaker of the Year award for the category “Partner – Transactions” is H. Patrick Callahan of Baker & Daniels LLP. The annual Rainmaker awards are sponsored by Originate! - the business development newsletter, and judged by the Legal Sales and Service Organizations (LSSO)...
When is it time to bring in a law firm marketing expert?
Posted on September 24, 2008Attention do-it-yourselfers: Why did you go to law school? To be a marketer or to practice law? I found this great post on the Grow My Law Firm blog: "Why should I pay somebody to do my law firm’s marketing when I can just do myself?" Well, that’s a good question; and only you can decide: Can you make more money practicing law than doing marketing? Do you enjoy practicing law more than marketing? Is your expertise in marketing or law? What is the most efficient use of your time? What daily activities bring the biggest payoff? Legal work or marketing planning and execution? Are you willing to commit a significant amount of time to keeping abreast of contemporary marketing techniques, tactics and their application strategies? Without the guidance of a legal marketing professional, do-it-yourself marketing is akin to the people that you shake your head about who have undertaken do-it-yourself legal work...
Badger State Lawyers Get Clients Using LinkedIn
Posted on September 23, 2008Lawyers at the Wisconsin law firms of Davis & Kuelthau and Godfrey & Kahn are generating new business by methodically using LinkedIn, the online social network, according to a report in the Wisconsin Law Journal. In fact, 70 percent of the lawyers at the Milwaukee firm Davis & Kuelthau have joined LinkedIn, at the recommendation of Michelle M...
Finding a $250K contract on LinkedIn Answers
Posted on September 22, 2008LinkedIn has a great case history about how Steven Shimek, Senior Vice President, Ruder Finn PR in Los Angeles used LinkedIn not only to get his job, but to bring in $250,000 in new businesses. Attorneys and law firm marketers should take note. His job is to find new business for the company...
Marketer of the Year Brings Big Results to Her Firm
Posted on September 20, 2008Marketer René Stranghoner used an integrated marketing and branding approach resulting in her firm achieving a 28% increase in net revenue for fiscal year 2008, taking the firm to a record $51 million mark. Taking a 360° approach to marketing, Stranghoner simultaneously executed a variety of strategies, all with a common objective – grow the firm and build the brand...
Learn the Branding Secrets of the Top 100 Firms
Posted on September 19, 2008Get competitive intelligence on what the best law firms are doing and learn from their examples with the Legal Brand Blueprint. Business development expert Steve Hoeft shows you how branding can be your most powerful marketing strategy to win new clients...
Today is the Last Day to Register for Subprime Loan Litigation Webinar
Posted on September 18, 2008There is a tidal wave of subprime loan litigation against the entire financial services industry. In a live web seminar Liability expert Kevin M. LaCroix, Esq. will identify the causes of action, plaintiffs and defendants. Business development experts Michael G...
New York Lawyer Uses Online Video to Attract New Clients
Posted on September 17, 2008From the LawMarketing Portal: “Welcome, and thank you for joining me. My name is Gerry Oginski, and I’m a medical malpractice & personal injury trial lawyer practicing law here in the State of New York.” This is my introduction in every one of my 100 on-line videos...
Last Days to Register: Multiply Your Caseload with Commercial Subprime Loan Litigation
Posted on September 16, 2008SPEAKERS: Kevin M. LaCroix, Esq., Larry Bodine, Esq. and Michael G. Cummings PROGRAM DATE: this Friday September 19, 2008 10 AM to 11 AM Pacific Time 11 AM to Noon Mountain Time Noon to 1 PM Central Time 1 PM to 2 PM Eastern Time LOCATION: on the web, on your computer MORE INFO: Program Director Laura Kresich; Tel: 773...
LSSO Launches 2008 Women Lawyers Study
Posted on September 15, 2008The Legal Sales and Service Organization has launched a new online survey that focuses on the work lives of women lawyers. This survey is intended to assess the professional experiences and working lives of female attorneys, with specific focus on business development practices and performance...
Five Outstanding Lawyers Win 2008 Rainmaker Of The Year Awards
Posted on September 11, 2008Five attorneys who have generated millions of dollars in new business for their law firms won the Originate! 2008 Rainmaker of the Year Awards to honor their outstanding business-development skills. The winners are profiled in the September 2008 issue of Originate! -- the attorney business development newsletter at http://www...
The Death of Voicemail in Law Firm Marketing
Posted on September 10, 2008Ask anybody in business who is age 30 or younger: which will you answer first: A voice mail? A text message? The answer, my fellow silverbacks, is No. 2. I couldn't believe it when I read it in the New York Times, because I'll answer my phone and check voice mail before anything else...
One week left to register for the CMO Forum in NYC
Posted on September 09, 2008Chief Marketing Officer's Forum - Last Chance to Register! Only One Week Left. The Westin New York at Times Square will be the place to be next Tuesday and Wednesday, September 16 and 17 when The American Lawyer Magazine’s Chief Marketing Officers' Forum takes place...
Multiply Your Caseload with Commercial Subprime Loan Litigation
Posted on September 08, 2008There is a tidal wave of subprime loan litigation against the entire financial services industry. In a live web seminar Liability expert Kevin M. LaCroix, Esq. will identify the causes of action, plaintiffs and defendants. Business development experts Michael G...
Google Slaps FindLaw In Effort to Crack Down On 'Link Juice'
Posted on September 04, 2008The Web's No. 1 search engine has charged FindLaw with the shady tactic of selling Web links -- a.k.a. selling "link juice," designed to boost a Web site's search engine rankings -- such as the law firms that are FindLaw customers...
New Business in 99 Days - Law Marketing
Posted on September 04, 2008Beth O. Seabright, Director of Marketing at Tucker Arensberg, PC in Pittsburgh, PA, has been swamped with calls and emails about her article, Associates Develop New Business in '99 Days' Program, first published on the LawMarketing Portal. The blog Quiver & Quill followed up with Beth in an interview by Zachary Braiker of Boston, MA: 1...
Thriving in a Recession
Posted on September 03, 2008Recently First Alert - Bowman's Accounting Report, published by Bowman Communications, Inc. focused on as "Thought leadership for your challenges ahead" with mini-articles by 14 experts, including yours truly. You can get the full report online...
Law Firm Marketing Mistakes When Dealing with Editors
Posted on September 02, 2008Members of the LawMarketing Listserv were discussing how best to pitch a news story to an editor. That's when the redoubtable Monica Bay, Editor-in-Chief, Law Technology News, chimed in with 20+ mistakes to avoid: (See below for info on joining the LawMarketing Listserv)...
Time To Boost the Top Line in Law Firms
Posted on August 29, 20082008 will be law firms’ worst year since early 1990s, according to the gloomy Dan DiPietro, who oversees law firm client relations at Citigroup Inc.'s Citi Private Bank. A difficult economy has cut partner profits and associate attrition, while increasing expenses for major U...
CMOs Say Recession Will Not Harm Marketing Budgets
Posted on August 28, 2008Marketing budgets this year will not be slashed because of the economic downturn, according to a new survey by the Chief Marketing Officers Club. 71% percent of chief marketing officers in the study do not plan on cutting their company's marketing budget, while only 14 percent said they would...
Curtis, Mallet-Prevost Launches Facebook Page to Attract Top Law Students
Posted on August 27, 2008In what is believed to be a first for the AmLaw 200, Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP launched a Facebook page to serve as a central component in its law school recruiting efforts. The Facebook page lists 31 fans, 9 universities as favorite pages, photos of firm events, and firm news highlights...
Webinar Tomorrow: What Do I Say To A Prospective Client To Win Them Over?
Posted on August 26, 2008There is only 1 day left to register for Wednesday's August 27 Webinar: What Do I Say To A Prospective Client To Win Them Over? PRESENTED BY: Professional Business Development Institute (PBDI.org) SPEAKERS: Larry Bodine, Esq. and Michael G...
Webinar Today: What Do I Say To A Prospective Client To Win Them Over?
Posted on August 26, 2008You can still register this morning for today's Webinar: What Do I Say To A Prospective Client To Win Them Over? PRESENTED BY: Professional Business Development Institute (PBDI.org) SPEAKERS: Larry Bodine, Esq. and Michael G. Cummings DATE: Today, August 27, 2008; Noon - 1PM Central Time LOCATION: on the web, on your computer CONTACT: Michael G...
Benesch Launches Recruiting Video
Posted on August 25, 2008Benesch, an Ohio-based firm with 140 lawyers, has launched a new recruiting video, equal in quality to videos that megafirms on the East Cost put online. The professionally-produced video can be found on the firm’s website at www...
Duane Morris cuts marketing, business development staff
Posted on August 22, 2008This just in from Law.com: Duane Morris, an international law firm with Philadelphia roots, has cut about 18% of its marketing and business development staff, making staff reductions that echo moves at other firms in recent months. The firm, which has about 650 attorneys, now has a marketing and business development team of 30 to 35 people, after eliminating seven managers and staff and hiring three more senior executives in the past few months, said Ed Schechter, the firm's chief marketing officer...
Benesch Launches Recruiting Video
Posted on August 21, 2008Benesch, an Ohio-based firm with 140 lawyers, has launched a new recruiting video, equal in quality to videos that megafirms on the East Cost put online. The professionally-produced video can be found on the firm’s website at www...
50 Best Law Firms for Women Named by Working Mother magazine
Posted on August 21, 2008Working Mother magazine has named the top 50 best law firms for women (see below), based on their retention and promotion of female lawyers, family-friendly benefits and policies, flexibility, leadership, compensation, among other factors. Being named to the list is a huge marketing coup...
Sexy Nurses and a Toilet of Money highlight the Law Marketing of whocanisue.com
Posted on August 19, 2008Belching up from the dregs comes the marketing campaign of whocanisue.com, featuring sexy nurses and an overflowing toilet of money. Ordinarily I'm all in favor of freedom of marketing for lawyers. But I'm barfing as I review their bottom-feeding, publicity whoring campaign...
What General Counsels Want from Law Firm Marketing
Posted on August 18, 2008Visit the new August issue of Originate! - the business development newsletter, to read a very specific list of marketing pointers in-house lawyers Carolyn H. Clift, Esq. and Verlyn Suderman, Esq. According to the duo, there are 7 specific things that law firms should know about so they can get corporate legal work...
99-cent Gas is Novel Law Firm Marketing Technique
Posted on August 14, 2008One of the most successful law firm marketing gambits this year was the 99-cent gas giveaway by Kentucky personal injury attorney Kevin Renfro and the Becker Law Office. He achieved all his marketing goals: He "separated himself from the herd" of other lawyers...
Webinar Tomorrow: Generate More Revenue by Focusing on High End Work
Posted on August 13, 2008Don't wait to register for tomorrow's Webinar, which will help you get more clients and generate more revenue. SPEAKERS: Business development experts Darryl Cross, Michael G. Cummings and me. DATE: Tomorrow, August 14, 2008; Noon - 1PM Central LOCATION: on the web, on your computer CONTACT: Program Director Laura Kresich; (Tel) (773) 966-9273 or Lkresich@lawmarketing...
Webinar Today: Generate More Revenue by Focusing on High End Work
Posted on August 13, 2008SPEAKERS: Business development experts Darryl Cross, Michael G. Cummings and me. DATE: Today, August 14, 2008; Noon - 1PM Central LOCATION: on the web, on your computer CONTACT: Program Director Laura Kresich; (Tel) (773) 966-9273 or Lkresich@lawmarketing...
Avoid the Cost of Failing to Follow Up after Seminars
Posted on August 12, 2008Hosting seminars and giving speeches are good marketing tactics, according to Sales Attorney Johnny Manriquez. But they won't generate new business if lawyers fail to follow up or wait for the phone to ring. Johnny Manriquez, Esq., is the Sales Attorney for Scholefield Associates, P...
Law Marketing Tip for Litigators: Position Yourself as a Case-Settler
Posted on August 11, 2008If you are a litigator, the best way to get new clients is to market yourself as a risk reducer and problem avoider. Most litigators make the mistake of marketing themselves as fire-breathing trial lawyers. But the better approach is to say that you will keep clients out of court, save them from even having to answer a lawsuit, and prevent them from having to appear at a deposition...
Hilarious Video Satirizes Lawsuit-Crazy Lawyers
Posted on August 08, 2008There is a hilarious video on YouTube that satirizes bad lawyer advertising, brought to you by the fictional law firm of Swindel & Scheister. "We will sue everybody," says the ad, if you've ever been misunderstood, stung by a bee or annoyed by pop-up advertisements...
Heard of WhoCanISue.com? Hilarious Video Satirizes Lawsuit-Crazy Lawyers
Posted on August 08, 2008There's some buzz about a new client-lawyer matching service called "WhoCanISue.com." Some have called it a terrible idea that brings disrepute upon the profession, on the other hand, others say it borders on barratry, which is the unethical stirring up of quarrels and lawsuits...
Law Firm Marketing Mistakes When Dealing with Editors
Posted on August 08, 2008Members of the LawMarketing Listserv were discussing how best to pitch a news story to an editor. That's when the redoubtable Monica Bay, Editor-in-Chief, Law Technology News, chimed in with 20+ mistakes to avoid: (See below for info on joining the LawMarketing Listserv)...
How Email Marketers can Avoid Getting on a Blacklist
Posted on August 07, 2008My friend Josh Frucher in New York just put up this excellent list of pointers for email marketers, about how to make sure your emails get delivered: Email Deliverability Best PracticesThey include:#1: Register a custom domain#2: Get a Private IP address#3: Reverse DNS: Use an email service provider who will customize your email headers so that the domain name in the "From" field and headers of your emails match the domain name associated with your unique IP address...
Blogger Bob Ambrogi Wins National Press Award
Posted on August 07, 2008The American Society of Business Publication Editors this week awarded blogger Bob Ambrogi its national silver award for best contributed column in a publication with a circulation under 80,000. He received the award for the "Web Watch" column he writes for the magazine Law Technology News, an ALM publication...
Winners of the Tenth Annual Edge Award
Posted on August 06, 2008The ABA's Law Practice magazine and Edge International announced three winners of the tenth annual Edge Award. The awards commend outstanding articles in the magazine most likely to have a practical influence in shaping the actions lawyers take to manage their practices...
Evidence that the Yellow Pages are Trash
Posted on August 05, 2008If there was every any doubt that lawyers should cancel their Yellow Pages, I offer this photographic evidence. I just got the latest edition of “The Real Yellow Pages” from AT&T. Notice the presentation: dumped like a piece of garbage on my front lawn, wrapped in a cheap plastic bag...
Google Keyword Search Volume Now Available with the Google's Keyword Tool
Posted on August 04, 2008This just in from Tim Stanley's Law, Technology & Legal Marketing Blog: Google's AdWords Keyword Tool now gives the approximate monthly search volume for different keywords.You can read more about this new feature on the Google AdWords Blog.And here are a few words and their approximate monthly search volume4,090,000 Lawyer7,480,000 Attorney1,000,000 Law Firm 7,480,000 Legal20,400,000 LawOf course, as can be seen in the image above, Google gives additional suggested terms as well...
DLA Faces Job Cuts
Posted on August 02, 2008From Law.com:DLA Faces Job Cuts as Effects of Crunch Continue to Take Hold DLA Piper has become the latest firm to be hit by the market downturn, with the international giant currently consulting on a number of possible redundancies in its London office...
Associates Develop New Business in '99 Days' Program
Posted on August 01, 2008When Beth O. Seabright, Director of Marketing at Tucker Arensberg, PC in Pittsburgh, PA, joined her first law firm, she was surprised inspired by the young, bright, outgoing associates who were eager to build their own book of business, even right out of law school...
Cadwalader Lays Off 96 More Lawyers
Posted on July 30, 2008From Law.com: Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft announced today it is laying off 96 lawyers in a second round of job cuts as the Wall Street firm continues to cope with the ongoing effects of the credit crunch.W. Christopher White, the firm's chairman, says the cuts will be in its capital markets and global finance groups, which have been hit hard by the reduced appetite on Wall Street for commercial mortgage-backed securities...
Excellence in eLawyering Brings New Clients to Chicago Law Firm
Posted on July 30, 2008Cowell Taradash of Chicago, Illinois, launched the website www.illinoisdivorce.com five years ago after they realized they were losing clients to low end, discount divorce attorneys. Managing partner Wes Cowell said this was a preventive measure to stop market loss while at the same time to gain market share...
For Marketers, the Title Doesn't Count
Posted on July 28, 2008I agree with Russell Lawson's post on his Progressive Marketing blog, concluding that for marketers, it's not important what your title is. What counts is whom you report to.The coveted title for law firm marketers has been Chief Marketing Officer. But according to Korn/Ferry’s Michael DeCosta: Moving from a director to chief title typically suggests a move, albeit subtle, from a tactical to a more strategic approach to a function -- and almost always, with the title change comes increased responsibilities...
Lowenstein's Rock n' Roll Recruiting Video Wins Award
Posted on July 25, 2008Lowenstein Sandler PC, an American Lawyer top-200 firm has embraced new media in its marketing efforts and just won the Videographer Award of Excellence, 2008. The hip, fast-paced video is a six-minute whirlwind of interviews with partners, counsel and associates as a 21st century electric guitar band plays in the background...
Mark Beese's Lesson in Business Development
Posted on July 24, 2008Anybody who's been in law firm marketing listens when Mark Beese speaks. He's the pioneering "marketing guy" for 415-lawyer Holland and Hart, the 800-pound gorilla law firm in the Rocky Mountain West, for the last seven years...
LexisNexis and LinkedIn Announce Agreement to Feature LinkedIn® Contacts on martindale.com
Posted on July 22, 2008As previously noted, LexisNexis today announced an agreement with the online social network LinkedIn – making Martindale-Hubbell® legal network more attractive as a networking destination for attorneys. (LexisNexis owns Martindale.) Additionally abstracts and links to Martindale-Hubbell articles and content will be distributed within the LinkedIn network...
Blogs Bring Lawyers Calls from the Media
Posted on July 22, 2008Steve Matthews makes a great point on his Stem Blog: lawyers who write blogs will get called and quoted by news reporters. According to a new study by eMarketer, 57.7% of reporters use blogs to measure public sentiment; 38% of reporters use blogs to drive new story ideas; and 29...
Watch360 Website Monitoring Service For Law Firms
Posted on July 21, 2008Law firms regularly update their websites to post vital new information about their customer wins, deals, media coverage, publications, management changes, and more. Now law firm marketers can find this information and check dozens of websites each day with the Watch360 Website Monitoring Service...
Good News: Study Predicts Uptick in M&A Work
Posted on July 21, 2008A new study by ACG Boston and Thomson Reuters projects an uptick in mergers and acquisitions during the second half of the year. The latest survey of middle market merger professionals reveals cautious optimism for the next six months.Points of optimism revealed in the survey include an increase in the last year to 67% from 5% of M&A professionals who say the debt markets will improve in the next six months...
Marketing Leaders Flocking to September CMO Forum in New York
Posted on July 18, 2008The Westin New York at Times Square in New York, NY, will be the place to be on September 16 and 17, 2008, when the annual Chief Marketing Officers Forum takes place. Sponsored by ALM Events, this promises to be THE conference of the year.I've been working hand-in-glove with Iris Jones, Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer of Chadbourne & Parke to assure that we have the best and brightest speakers discussing the topics that really matter to law firm Chief Marketing Officers...
San Diego Law Firm Hires their First 'Sales Attorney'
Posted on July 17, 2008San Diego based construction law firm, Scholefield Associates, P.C. recently hired their first ‘sales attorney’, and possibly created the legal industry’s first associate position whose only job is to bring in new clients. This is the first step in implementing their controversial business development strategy that I reported about earlier this spring...
Illinois to Avvo: Drop Dead
Posted on July 16, 2008From today's Chicago Tribune:Illinois Supreme Court: The high court on Wednesday denied access to information about the state's 85,000 licensed lawyers to a Seattle-based company that publishes online legal directories. The court did not provide an explanation for its order...
How Email Markters can Avoid Getting on a Blacklist
Posted on July 15, 2008My friend Josh Frucher in New York just put up this excellent list of pointers for email marketers, about how to make sure your emails get delivered: Email Deliverability Best PracticesThey include:#1: Register a custom domain#2: Get a Private IP address#3: Reverse DNS: Use an email service provider who will customize your email headers so that the domain name in the "From" field and headers of your emails match the domain name associated with your unique IP address...
Last Day to Register for: Business Development for Real Estate Lawyers
Posted on July 15, 2008Law firms nationwided are flocking to attend the Webinar TOMORROW JULY 17 entitled, Business Development for Real Estate Lawyers.Real estate lawyers are surviving and thriving even though the real estate recession is at its worst ever. Smart real estate lawyers have learned that a building successful law practice is all about adapting to the current market...
59% of Lawyers Have Joined Online Social Networks
Posted on July 15, 2008In a significant new trend, almost 2 out of 3 lawyers in private practice are now using online networks for professional and business development purposes.In-house counsel have joined the trend too, with 48% of in-house counsel becoming a member of an online social network...
How K&L Gates Reengineered its Business Development Processes
Posted on July 14, 2008When Preston Gates & Ellis merged with Kirkpatrtck & Lockhart Nicholson Graham to form K&L Gates, CMO Jeff Berardi had to merge InterAction CRM with web-based Microsoft Sharepoint. Once it did so, it improved the number of RFPs it won by 40%...
Nearly 30% of Lawyers Surveyed Fear Firing
Posted on July 11, 2008Lawyers who are unable to meet their billable hour goals are wondering if their jobs are secure, according to the ABA Journal. This, however, is not a problem for lawyers who have been trained in business development and know how to get clients and generate revenue...
New Research on Law Firms Fees and Profitability
Posted on July 10, 2008How important is business development to law firms? Very – with most law firms getting 11% to 25% of their annual revenue from new clients, according to the new study Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report published by RainToday.com Research. The report is a treasure trove of key data about how much law firms charge and how much they earn...
Martindale Hooks Up with LinkedIn
Posted on July 09, 2008Martindale-Hubbell has connected itself to LinkedIn, the popular online social networking site. Take a look at the Fulbright & Jaworski listing in Martindale.Notice the little blue icon "in" for LinkedIn?If you click on the blue icon you get a popup that asks: "Allow LexisNexis to access your LinkedIn account?" I think most visitors will be too leery to take the next step, but I did...
FastCase Offers Cheaper Option vs. LexisNexis and Westlaw
Posted on July 08, 2008From the 6/30/08 issue of Forbes Magazine:Philip Rosenthal and Edward Walters were young lawyers at Covington & Burling, a prestigious Washington firm, when they got an unusual request from a large corporate client to start looking up legal case histories on the Internet...
The Answer Is Blowin' in the US Supreme Court
Posted on July 07, 2008Quote from a dissent by Chief Justice Roberts in a Supreme Court decision issued June 23:The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing. "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose...
Lawyers use of LinkedIn : It's becoming an avalanche
Posted on July 04, 2008Kevin O'Keefe reports on his blog that the online social networking site LinkedIn is catching on big-time in the legal profession. Law firm marketers should take note!The latest comes from Oliver Picher, president of Visible Influence, speaking about LinkedIn and social networking to the Delaware Valley Law Firm Marketing Group...
Signals of an Economic Recovery
Posted on July 02, 2008Better days are coming! I spotted this article buried in the business section of the New York Times:Have you seen how small-capitalization stocks have been performing lately?Despite all the bad news surrounding record-high oil prices, mounting job losses, and continuing troubles in housing, the Russell 2000 index of small stocks has soared 12...
Using Accordions as a Law Firm Marketing Technique
Posted on July 01, 2008Kudos to Frank Lopez, marketing director of 130-lawyer Hanson Bridgett in San Francisco, the firm put up a delightful video, "The World Accordion to Hanson Bridgett."Using music it demonstrate the firm's diversity, showing that people of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds cab play wonderfully together...
ROI Research: Professional Firms can Increase Revenues by Measuring Business Development Initiatives
Posted on June 30, 2008Professional firms could earn a lot more revenue from their marketing and sales efforts if they just did one simple thing: measure them effectively. This is among the insightful findings of an ROI research report "Increasing Marketing Effectiveness at Professional Firms," published jointly by Expertise Marketing LLC of Concord, MA and Larry Bodine Marketing...
ROI Research: Increase Revenues by Measuring Business Development Initiatives
Posted on June 30, 2008Law firms could earn a lot more revenue from their marketing and sales efforts if they just did one simple thing: measure them effectively. This is among the insightful findings of an ROI research report "Increasing Marketing Effectiveness at Professional Firms," published jointly by Expertise Marketing LLC of Concord, MA and my firm, Larry Bodine Marketing...
BEST Customer Service Ever -- from Dell
Posted on June 27, 2008I had bought my Dell Latitude D630 laptop from a booth at ABA Techshow in Chicago in March. I was so impressed with the booth staff's attention to my needs, that I bought it on the spot for a huge discount.I never expected the wonderful call last week from Chris Estes in Houston, saying he was my personal account rep...
Rewarding Referrals in Law Firm Marketing
Posted on June 25, 2008Here's a great post from Nancy Myrland's blog:Let’s talk about referrals. Few things in business are more satisfying than receiving a referral from a current or past client, a friend or a colleague. How do we make sure we keep referrals coming? First, make sure you are doing great work...
Troutman Sanders merging with Ross, Dixon & Bell LLP, creating a 750-attorney firm
Posted on June 25, 2008This press release just arrived:ATLANTA and WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 25, 2008) – The law firms of Troutman Sanders LLP and Ross, Dixon & Bell, LLP announced today they will merge, creating a 750-attorney firm with national and international reach and unparalleled depth...
CAN-SPAM Update: Have You Complied With the New Rules Yet?
Posted on June 25, 2008This post summarizes an excellent article on the Marketing Sherpa site: The Federal Trade Commission’s latest update on CAN-SPAM regulations take effect in less than two weeks. Is your email compliant? Not sure? The Good News CAN-SPAM terminology is now better defined, giving marketers clearer standards – that’s a baby step in the right direction...
How a Restaurant Can Help Your Personal Brand
Posted on June 24, 2008From Bruce Allen's blog, Marketing Catalyst:"I went to lunch last week at McCormick & Schmick's with a partner from a local accounting firm. As we entered the restaurant staff and maître d' all greeted him by name with smiles and affection -- the maître d' asked, "your usual table?", which turned out to be, of course, a prime spot in a prime restaurant...
An all-female Buffalo law firm Touts its Woman Power
Posted on June 21, 2008From the Buffalo News "Business Today" section:An all-female Buffalo law firm is getting a mix of cheers and boos for a series of ads that tout its woman power. “Ever Argue with a Woman?” reads the headline of one of the ads for Schroder Joseph & Associates LLP...
The ROI Obsession in Law Firm Marketing
Posted on June 19, 2008Law firm marketers are facing increasing pressure to justify their budgets and sometimes their very existence, according to a new report, "10 Megatrends in B2B Marketing 2008" published by The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited."The promise of intangible or uncertain returns is unacceptable to hard-headed executives, particularly in accounting, law and other professional service firms...
Former Mayer Brown partner sues firm for ousting
Posted on June 19, 2008This article is now online at http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202422369263. Attorney John Halbleib was riding high in June 2001. He'd just won a first-time pro bono award from his law firm, Mayer Brown Row & Mawe, for his work with the alumni association of a Hershey family founded school for underprivileged children and his leadership in the legal battle had been the subject of many news stories...
Former Mayer Brown Partner Sues Firm for Ousting Him
Posted on June 19, 2008This article is now online (subscription required) at http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202422369263. Visit here for a summary.Attorney John Halbleib was riding high in June 2001. He'd just won a first-time pro bono award from his law firm, Mayer Brown Row & Mawe, for his work with the alumni association of a Hershey family founded school for underprivileged children and his leadership in the legal battle had been the subject of many news stories...
Chris Matthews of WaMu is new Orrick CMO
Posted on June 18, 2008Orrick, the No. 27 law firm on the AmLaw 100, has hired a new CMO who has never worked at a law firm. It appears to be a continuation of the trend to hire CMOs from outside the legal industry. I’d like to see what you think: is it a good idea to head up law firm marketing departments with people outside the profession?Here’s the internal memo from Ralph Baxter, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Orrick...
Take the Survey on Alternative Billing Methods
Posted on June 16, 2008The Center for Competitive Management (CCM) is also conducting a survey on alternative billing methods, and they'd like hear from you. Your input is vital to the success of the survey. Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey. In exchange for your valuable feedback, you will receive a complimentary summary of the results...
Enter the 2008 Rainmaker of the Year Awards
Posted on June 15, 2008Who were the top “rainmakers” in the law this past year, and how did they do it? To find out, the editors of Originate!, the monthly business development newsletter, join LSSO to announce a competition to identify and honor top business getters in the law...
New Blog on Social Networking
Posted on June 13, 2008The ever-resourceful Nancy Fox of Westchester County, NY, has started a new blog on social networking, sharing all the latest info and insight on social networks - how they are impacting business, people, trends, etc.See http://www.sociabling.blogspot...
The Ten Most Effective Law Firm Marketing Techniques
Posted on June 12, 2008Many lawyers don't get new clients and files because they don't do enough business development activities, or they waste time on the wrong activities, or they don't get face-to-face with potential clients. I've helped attorneys generate more clients and get more business by training attorneys what to say, what to do and how to be in the right place at the right time...
Illinois Denies AVVO the State List of Lawyers
Posted on June 12, 2008From the State-Journal Register, Springfield, IL:Illinois keeps list of lawyers private By BRUCE RUSHTONSTATE JOURNAL-REGISTERWho’s licensed to practice law in Illinois?None of your business.That’s what the state Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission has told a Seattle company that wants to post the names of lawyers on the Internet and assign grades based on performance, awards, experience and disciplinary records...
Last Day to Register for Webinar: Personal Marketing Plans for Associates
Posted on June 11, 2008Today is the last day to register for the Webinar: Developing Your Personal Marketing Plan - for Associates DATE: Tomorrow, Thursday, June 12, 2008 10 AM - 11 AM Pacific Time 11 AM - Noon Mountain Time Noon - 1 PM Central Time 1PM - 2PM Eastern time LOCATION: Over the Web, on your computer MORE INFO: http://www...
Law Firm Marketers Shorten Law Firm Names
Posted on June 10, 2008The Houston Chronicle reports that the long-running trend of law firms to shorten their names is continuing. Sutherland Asbill & Brennan is now "Sutherland." Winstead Sechrest & Minick is now "Winstead." McMillan Binch Mendelsohn is now McMillan...
Video on Websites is Effective Law Firm Marketing
Posted on June 07, 2008New research by Findlaw indicates that adding video to a law firm websites will bring in more business. "Consumers research an average of 4.8 Web sites before choosing an attorney, but when video is added that number decreases to 1.8 because consumers feel more comfortable and are more apt to retain an attorney who they feel they know...
Pinup Calendar of Boston's Most Beautiful Lawyers
Posted on June 06, 2008Forget recruiting the best best legal talent. One Boston lawyer is looking for Boston's hottest attorneys, reports the Boston Business Journal.Howie Altholtz, an entertainment lawyer and marketing director at the Boston-based law firm Ruberto, Israel & Weiner has begun soliciting submissions for the first ever "Beautiful Lawyers Calendar," a glossy pinup that will feature gorgeous local lawyers and judges for each month of 2009...
FutureTech Comes to Los Angeles Legal Tech
Posted on June 05, 2008As you may know, LegalTech West Coast will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, June 26 and 27. For the first time ever, Law Technology News has its own LegalTech program track, "FutureTech," at the Los Angeles show. The three panels feature top leaders in legal technology, including "Sell Your Tech" with Doug Caddell Rob Kahn Robin Solomon "Green Law: It's Not Easy Being Green...
New in the LawMarketing Store
Posted on June 04, 2008New in the LawMarketing StoreAudio & Video:How to Target and Crack a Large New Client with Mark Cowan Supreme Court Portrait by James Cromartie Reaching New Markets with Industry Practice Groups The Professional Services Guide To Online PR: How To Use The Web To Generate Leads, Brand, and Free Press
New Programs on Mentoring Associates, Paralegal Profits and Alternative Billing
Posted on June 04, 2008The Center for Competitive Management (CCM) is offering the following upcoming events: Mentoring Associates: The Key to Retention, Development and ProfitabilityThursday, June 5, 2008 How to Turn Your Paralegal Staff Into a Firm Profit CenterWednesday, June 11, 2008 Implementation Strategies for Alternative Billing SuccessTuesday, June 24, 2008CCM is the one resource that gives you an insider’s advantage for staying on top of the issues in the legal profession...
Law Firm Marketing Blog Policy? Here's a 10-Point Checklist
Posted on June 03, 2008Does your law firm need a policy covering lawyer blogs? No, Kevin O'Keefe told the LawMarketing Listserv."The better approach is to apply your existing law firm standards and protocol on confidentiality, PR, marketing, and communication. Who better to know how blogs fit into your culture and the safeguards needed for firm comfort than the firm's own professionals?Kevin McKeown, Lexblog's VP of client development, also a lawyer, but with a long history of business development and strategy takes a different approach...
Lesson for law firm marketing: DON'T DO THAT!
Posted on June 02, 2008I found this great advice on The Closers Group blog:It is amazing how out of touch some attorneys are when attending a pitch, lunch or presentation session with potential clients. Some of the comments I’ve heard about meetings: “They spent most of the time talking to themselves, not to us...
5 Law Firms Win Legal Writing Awards
Posted on May 29, 2008Kudos to Morrison & Foerster, Debevoise & Plimpton, Brinks Hofer, Winston & Strawn, and Hanify & King, which won the annual Burton Awards in legal writing, presented in association with the Law Library of Congress and sponsored by the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA)...
Sonnenschein Lays off 37 Lawyers -- Including 6 Partners
Posted on May 29, 2008Today's Chicago Tribune reports that 619-lawyer Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, one of Chicago's biggest corporate firms, laid off 124 employees, including 37 attorneys, six of whom are partners. The firm blamed the recession for taking a toll on billings...
Marketing Hot Spots for Litigators
Posted on May 28, 2008Now is the time for a litigator to capture bet-the-company patent, class action and stock option backdating cases from corporate clients, especially if you are familiar with the federal rules on e-discovery. We'll be discussing these and other points on Thursday -- tomorrow -- during our Business Development Webinar for Litigators...
Webinar this Thursday on Business Development for Litigators
Posted on May 27, 2008Business Development Webinar for LitigatorsDATE: May 29, 2008; 12PM - 1PM Central LOCATION: on the web, on your computer TO REGISTER: Contact Program Director Laura Kresich: Tel: (773) 966-9273 or Lkresich@lawmarketing.com. Click here to register instantly with a credit card...
A Law Firm Marketing List of Client Service Blogs
Posted on May 23, 2008In January 2007, JD Hull posted a list of links to blogs dedicated exclusively or in large part to the topic of client service. Leo Bottary, author of the Client Service Insights blog, just sent me the updated list. Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices, Gerry Riskin CBA Practice Link (Canada) Church of the Customer Blog, Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba CustomersAreAlways, Maria Palma David Jacobson’s External Insights, David Jacobson Gladwell...
Allen & Overy's Website Ranked Best for Law Firm Business Development
Posted on May 21, 2008Allen & Overy is the UK law firm with the website most likely to win business, according to the findings of a new survey. The "magic circle" giant finished with the highest overall score in the Intendance Fast 50 annual survey ahead of Nabarro, Freeth Cartwright and Herbert Smith...
Comcast Aquires Plaxo
Posted on May 21, 2008Plaxo, one of the also-rans in the emergence on online social networking, has agreed to be bought by an Internet comapany known for lousy service and poor technical support. My heart goes out to Plaxo users.A Letter from the CEO and Founders We are excited to announce some of the biggest news in the history of Plaxo...
American Airlines to charge $15 to check a bag
Posted on May 21, 2008As a business traveler, I won't be flying American anymore. They announced today will pull even more seats from its domestic flight schedules in the fourth quarter, trim its workforce and the size of its fleet, and add a $15 fee for passengers' first checked bag...
Law Firm Marketers Shudder as Comcast Aquires Plaxo
Posted on May 21, 2008Plaxo, one of the also-rans in the world on online social networking, has agreed to be bought by an Internet company known for lousy service and poor technical support: Comcast. Speaking as a Comcast phone, Internet and cable subscriber, here's what you're in for: Endless waits on hold, only to have Comcast hang up on you...
Law Firm Marketing Advice: 7 Steps to Getting Your Bylined Articles Published
Posted on May 20, 2008My colleague David M. Freedman of Financial & Legal Communications in Highland Park, Illinois, just released the 2008 edition of his handbook, “Under Your Byline: 7 Steps to Getting Your Bylined Articles Published.” David has worked as a financial and legal journalist since 1978, and has served as a media relations consultant to professional advisers since 1999...
Free Trade Magazines for Law Firm Marketing
Posted on May 19, 2008Law firm marketers can now get free trade magazine subscriptions & technical document downloads at http://lawmarketing.tradepub.com/, thanks to a new affiliation I've made with Netline.com.Browse through the extensive list of free Sales & Marketing magazines, white papers, downloads and podcasts to find the titles that best match your skills and interests...
Here's some good news: data suggest economy not in recession
Posted on May 19, 2008From Marketwatch:The Conference Board's index of leading economic indicators, which attempts to forecast turning points in the economy, rose 0.1% in April, matching March's gain after falling for the five prior months. "These data certainly reflect a weak economy, but not one in recession," said Ken Goldstein, labor economist at the private research group...
Markus Offers Inexpensive Competitive Intelligence
Posted on May 15, 2008There’s a new entry in the field of competitive intelligence sources. Markus Research Services is taking on the established triumvirate of LexisNexis AtVantage, Thomson Monitor Suite and ALM Research with a persuasive proposition: it costs less...
Markus Offers Inexpensive Competitive Intelligence for Law Firm Marketing
Posted on May 15, 2008There’s a new entry in the field of competitive intelligence sources. Markus Research Services is taking on the established triumvirate of LexisNexis AtVantage, Thomson Monitor Suite and ALM Research with a persuasive proposition: it costs less...
On Vacation...Reopening in Chicago on May 19
Posted on May 09, 2008It's been 5 years since I took a vacation, so I'm taking one now: a sightseeing road trip from Tucson back to Chicago.I'll be open for business again on Monday, May 19 at:691 Wingate RoadGlen Ellyn, IL 60137630.942.0977Lbodine@LawMarketing.com www.LarryBodine...
Free Trade Magazine Subscriptions
Posted on May 08, 2008You can now get free trade magazine subscriptions & technical document downloads at http://lawmarketing.tradepub.com/, thanks to a new affiliation I've made with Netline.com.Browse through the extensive list of free Sales & Marketing magazines, white papers, downloads and podcasts to find the titles that best match your skills and interests...
Last 24 Hours to Register: How the Marketing Partner of the Year Doubled His Firm's Revenues
Posted on May 07, 2008There are only 24 hours left to register for the LIVE webinar:How the Marketing Partner of the Year Doubled His Firm's RevenuesDon't miss hearing how Mark A. Long, the Marketing Partner at Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt doubled his firm's revenues: WEBINAR DATE: Thursday May 8, 2008 (tomorrow)10 AM Pacific time 11 AM Mountain time Noon Central time 1 PM Eastern Time Click here now to sign up for this LIVE web seminar to learn how your firm can apply his lucrative methods...
Getting New Business from Online Social Networks
Posted on May 06, 2008Jill Konrath, Contributing Editor of RainToday.com has an excellent free e-book you can download called "Can LinkedIn Increase Your Sales?" Just visit her website and click to download this 14-page ebook now.The answer is "yes" -- LinkedIn works great in business development -- so long as you use it...
Webby Awards go to ABA Journal and Out-Law.com
Posted on May 06, 2008The ABA Journal and the website Out-Law.com by the UK firm Pinsent Masons won the 2008 People’s Voice Webby Award in the Law category, it was announced today.Described by the New York Times as the "the Internet's highest honor," the Webby Awards are administered by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, and received almost 10,000 entries this year...
Recession? What Recession -- Part II
Posted on May 05, 2008The US economy lost fewer jobs than expected and unemployment nudged up. “It strongly argues that this downturn will be mild and short- lived,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “As long as businesses hold the line on their layoffs, the economy will weaken, but it won’t unravel...
Webinar on Tuesday: Lawyer Rankings
Posted on May 05, 2008One thing that brings out the competitive nature of CMOs and marketers everywhere is the desire to score high on the numerous law firm rankings that are published. Being named No. 1 as a corporate dealmaker or litigation firm is a huge marketing coup -- even making the top 10 of rankings like the AmLaw 100 are sought-after goals...
Suite of 5 Domain Names for Sale
Posted on May 02, 2008I am offering the following suite of 5 domain names for sale: LAWMARKETINGINSTITUTE.NET LAWMARKETINGINSTITUTE.INFO LAWMARKETINGINSTITUTE.COM LAWMARKETINGINSTITUTE.BIZ LAWMARKETINGINSTITUTE.ORGI'll accept $10,000 or the best offer. Serious inquiries only...
Top Marketers Leaving Philly Law Firms
Posted on May 01, 2008In an article titled, "Chief Marketing Officers Are Dropping Off at Some Law Firms," (subscription required) the Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer is reporting: Stephen D. Barrett will be leaving Drinker Biddle, but has yet to provide an exact date of departure...
What Should Lawyers And Accountants Worry About In The Current Economic Downturn?
Posted on April 30, 2008Bruce Marcus has a great article about the economic downturn. I love his analogy:"An economy is an hydraulic system – a closed system in which pressure at one end translates into pressure elsewhere in the system. In other words, nothing happens in an economy without reactions elsewhere in the system...
Largest law firms all have expanding firm profiles at LinkedIn
Posted on April 29, 2008Kevin O'Keefe reports that LinkedIn, the largest and most popular professional social network, has detailed firm profiles on each of the largest law firms in the country.Here's Kevin's of the LinkedIn law firm profiles for AmLaw's top 20 largest firms with the number of their LinkedIn members in just my LinkedIn network...
How Bingham won 11 Awards for its Branding Campaign
Posted on April 28, 2008Bingham McCutchen’s 2007 branding campaign proved to be the big winner at the 2008 Legal Marketing Association Your Honor Awards. Bingham earned first place awards for branding identity and advertising, and second place recognition for web site design at the LMA National Conference in Los Angeles...
Recession? What Recession?
Posted on April 25, 2008To survive in business, law firms must adapt to the market. Accordingly you don't necessarily pursue industries that are in a downturn like real estate, luxury retailers, small retail stores, construction, manufacturers, automakers, financial advisors and banks, publishers and broadcasters...
How Many Clients Does It Take To Change a Lightbulb? A Lawyer Strikes Back
Posted on April 23, 2008Here's a joke book for lawyers written by Giovanni Diviacchi, and "independent entertainment professional" in the Washington D.C. Metro Area: humor by lawyers about pain-in-the-neck clients. It's a 38-page book you can get on Amazon.com for $9 at http://www...
Hyper Teams: Big Returns from Deepening Relationships
Posted on April 22, 2008Would you be interested in an investment that yields $18 for every $1 you put into it? It’s not from the tables in Las Vegas; and it’s a lot more predictable than a hedge fund. It’s what St. Louis-based law firm Bryan Cave earned when it created a business development program they called “hyper teams...
Beginning of the end of the recession
Posted on April 19, 2008I believe we are at the bottom of the economic downturn that I first spotted last August, Get Ready for the Coming Recession . I have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, and better economic times for law firms are approaching. Here's the evidence: Real estate lawyers are adapting -- learning to handle workout transactions, taking on foreclosure work, tax appeals, commercial transactions and zoning work; holding "fix my credit" seminars for first-time home buyers, and targeting real estate investors and foreclosure specialists as clients...
Chicago Law Firm Uses CRM to get a Competitive Edge
Posted on April 16, 2008The partners at 45-lawyer Chicago law firm Williams Montgomery & John wanted to be more involved in client development. However, their packed schedules left them little bandwidth to focus on contacts, follow-ups and networking to meet new prospective clients...
Webby Awards Honor Four Law Firms
Posted on April 14, 2008The Webby awards have been announced and three law firms were honorees: Official Honoree Agency/Credited Organization Bingham http://www...
Webby "Honorees" Include Four Law Firms
Posted on April 14, 2008While the Webby awards winners will not be announced until after May 6, four law firms have made it as finalists, which are identified as "honorees." Official Honoree Agency/Credited Organization Bingham http://www...
Can You Beat this 25-question Sales Training Quiz?
Posted on April 10, 2008In the 16 years I've been in law firm marketing, I've seen at least 25 scenarios where law firms need sales training. Typically, it's the reason that a partner or marketing director calls me in the first place. These situations are found in law firms of any size, any practice and any location...
Online Social Networking Not Catching on with Lawyers
Posted on April 08, 2008My article below is reprinted with permission from the April 2008 edition of Law Technology News, copyright 2008, ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. SOCIAL NETWORKING: Crowded But Silent By Larry Bodine Send this to a colleague What if you gave a party, hundreds of people showed up, but almost nobody talked to each other? That describes the state of social networking for lawyers on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and the new Plaxo Pulse...
Major Law Firms Starting Blogs
Posted on April 06, 2008Kevin O'Keefe has issued a State of the AmLaw 200 blogosphere showing that blogging has grown significantly among the nation's largest law firms:Growth highlights: Over 25% of AmLaw 200 law firms have blogs. 10% of AmLaw 200 law firms have more than one blog...
A Pox on United Airlines: Join my email campaign
Posted on April 04, 2008This miserable airline battered my trusty rolling suitcase into uselessness and then blew me off. Join my email campaign (see bottom) to let United know that we customers won't put up with this abuse.They told me they had no liability for wrecking my luggage! It didn't matter that I travel a lot in my business and am a target customer...
Ballard Spahr hires a full-time client interviewer
Posted on April 03, 2008Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll has hired veteran journalist Debra Nussbaum to be a full-time client interviewer. She has more than 30 years of newspaper reporting experience, beginning her career at The Minneapolis Star, then writing about real estate for The Philadelphia Inquirer and about schools for The New York Times...
Rethinking business cards
Posted on April 02, 2008"I think how we market ourselves deserves to be re-examined. Marketing is about getting noticed, in a good way. Traditional marketing is no longer effective; people rely on it only because it's familiar," wrote Ernie the Attorney, a/k/a Ernest Svenson of New Orleans...
HP still offers the Worst Customer Service EVER
Posted on April 01, 2008Two years ago I wrote a post called Worst Customer Service EVER about Hewlett-Packard's wretched customer support for printers. It's more worse than before ever and remains in the Hall of Shame.The message is clear: HP printers are defective and their support matches the quality of the printers...
Take Suzanne Lowe's One-Minute Marketing Survey
Posted on March 29, 2008Suzanne Lowe, author of the Expertise Marketing Blog, is conducting another one-minute survey for her upcoming book. The title of this survey is "How well do Marketing and Business Development work with other operations, like Finance, IT, HR, Legal and more?" Increasingly, Marketing / BD leaders seek ways to add new value by partnering with their colleagues in HR, IT, Finance, Legal, and more...
Survey Report: How Law Firms Spend their Marketing Dollars
Posted on March 28, 2008Become a LawMarketing Portal Premium Member today for only $200/year! You get: To read "MEMBERS ONLY" articles To post JOBS listings a simple text editor and image upload capabilities (no HTML knowledge needed)...
Marketers Now Have Many New Choices for CRM Software
Posted on March 27, 2008Over the past 12 months there has been a transformation of the market for CRM (client relationship management) software. Previously dominated by InterAction, there are now five plausible competitors vying for a slice of the professional services market, according to John Rogers, a consultant with Tandem Management Ltd...
Thelen Reid Layoffs Hit Firm's West Coast Marketing Staff
Posted on March 25, 2008The recession which is hitting law firms has caused 600-lawyer Thelen Reid to lay off 26 associates and 85 members of its support staff, including members of the west coast marketing staff. In my opinion, laying off marketers during an economic downturn is like dumping fuel when a plane is trying to stay in flight...
Sea change from marketing to business development
Posted on March 25, 2008By Larry Bodine, Esq., a business development advisor with offices in Tucson and Chicago. He has helped law firms nationwide earn millions of dollars using strategy, business development training and individual attorney coaching. This article is reprinted from the guest Editor's column in the March 2008 issue of Professional Marketing magazine...
Scales shifting from marketing to business development
Posted on March 25, 2008The scales are shifting in professional services marketing. The days when it sufficed to perform ‘marcomm’ activities – like brochures, advertising, public relations, firm events and branding – have passed. Today there is pressure on marketers to show return on investment...
The Fifth Dimension: Online Advertising Increasing Rapidly
Posted on March 21, 2008The four biggest advertising media channels—print, television, radio and outdoor—now compete with a ubiquitous and rapidly changing fifth, the digital channel, because your buyers and influencers are spending more and more time online, according to Shaun Quigley, Account Director, and Joe Walsh, Principal, of greenfield/belser ltd...
Emerson College to Offer For-Credit Course in Law Firm Marketing
Posted on March 20, 2008Professor Silvia Hodges, of the Department of Marketing Communication at Emerson College in Boston will soon launch the first university-level for-credit course in law and professional services marketing."I am in the midst of prepping my upcoming course in professional services marketing for graduate marketing students at Emerson (heavy on the legal marketing side, thanks to several years in the industry)...
LMA Gives Out Awards for Brochures, Ads and Marketing Initiatives
Posted on March 18, 2008Last week the LMA gave out its annual Your Honor awards. Taking a cue from the LawMarketing Portal, the LMA put up the list of the winners online (Click here for an excel file for the full results) and actually printed a 48-page glossy brochure describing what the winners did to get the award...
Podcast: Virtual Law Firms
Posted on March 17, 2008Almost since the earliest days of the Internet, lawyers have been experimenting with virtual firms to increase efficiency and lower costs. More recently, virtual firms have taken on greater levels of sophistication and complexity. On the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we discussed this phenomenon with the principals of two virtual firms and a business-development consultant...
The LMA Strikes Back at a Critic
Posted on March 16, 2008The following letter to the editor from Jennifer Johnson, president of the New York LMA chapter, appeared in the March 13 issue of the New York Lawyer. It came in response to an op-ed article by Elizabeth Anne "Betiayn" Tursi, Editor-in-Chief of ALM's Marketing The Law Firm...
The LMA Rebuts a Critic
Posted on March 16, 2008The following letter to the editor from Jennifer Johnson, president of the New York LMA chapter, appeared in the March 13 issue of the New York Lawyer. It came in response to an op-ed article by Elizabeth Anne "Betiayn" Tursi, Editor-in-Chief of ALM's Marketing The Law Firm...
For the first time I can say that
Posted on March 14, 2008For the first time I can say that a vendor expo was awesome. The ABA Techshow had the usual collection of case management and time-and-billing stuff, but I found some really cool items:I bought a top-of-the-line fast laptop/main computer at the Dell booth...
Awesome Discoveries at the ABA Techshow Exhibits
Posted on March 14, 2008For the first time I can say that a vendor expo was awesome. The ABA Techshow had the usual collection of case management and time-and-billing stuff, but I found some really cool items:I bought a top-of-the-line fast laptop/main computer at the Dell booth...
2,000 Expected for ABA Techshow
Posted on March 13, 2008According to Conference Chair Tom Mighell, some 900 lawyers will descend on the Hilton Hotel on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago for ABA Techshow 2008. When you add in exhibit hall vendors, faculty and vendors, the total is expected to go up to 2,000...
Podcast: Ten Most Effective Marketing Techniques
Posted on March 12, 2008The Chicago Bar Association asked me to record a podcast on the most effective marketing initiatives for solos and small law firms. The recording is online at http://www.chicagobar.org/podcasts/ It's the second item: 08/24/2007 - YLS - Most Effective Marketing Techniques...
Bingham named one of Calif.'s Best Places to Work
Posted on March 11, 2008Bingham was one of 20 winners of California's Best Places to Work, as chosen by the Los Angeles-based Employers Group, a human resources consulting and educational company for California employers. It's most recent recognition of the firm’s culture and working environment...
A Ray of Economic Hope: Corporate Clients Have Plenty of Cash
Posted on March 10, 2008There's a ray of light in the economic gloom affecting law firms: many corporate clients have plenty of cash and little debt, and are well-situated to get through the recession, according to the New York Times.The concern in the legal community is that corporate clients will start demanding rate freezes or discounts, following the direct challenge spearheaded by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) against law firm rates...
Editor Rips Marketers and the LMA for Failing to Grow into a Profession
Posted on March 07, 2008In a controversial op-ed article entitled "Law Firm Marketing: Is It So Over We Need a New Word for Over?" Elizabeth Tursi, the Editor-in-Chief of Marketing The Law Firm, takes legal marketers -- and the LMA to task -- for failing to grow into a real profession...
2,200 Texas Lawyers Join Social Networking Site
Posted on March 06, 2008In case you missed it, appended below is an article about a social networking website that the State Bar of Texas created for Texas lawyers--------------------------Branching Out in the Lone Star State By Tom Mighell, Law Practice Magazine, January 2008Branching Out in the Lone Star State On June 1, 2007, the State Bar of Texas officially launched the Texas Bar Circle, the first social networking site for lawyers provided by a state bar organization...
2008 Law Firm Lateral Hiring Survey - Get a Free Copy of the Results
Posted on March 04, 2008IOMA is conducting a survey on lateral hiring and integration at law firms, and this is your chance to provide input. I recommend that you take a few minutes to fill out the survey. In exchange for completing the survey, you will get a summary of the results as published in IOMA’s Compensation & Benefits for Law Offices newsletter...
Perkins Coie Makes Crain's list of Best Places to Work in Chicago
Posted on March 03, 2008The law firm Perkins Coie, with 129 employees (staff + lawyers combined) at the office at 131 S. Dearborn St. in Chicago, made the list of Chicago's Best Places to Work just published by Crain's Chicago Business.Congratulations to Christopher Wilson, Office managing partner, for breaking the code on how to make a law firm a great place to have a career...
Blogosphere Talking About JD Supra Launch
Posted on February 29, 2008The launch of JD Supra is the talk of the bloggers everywhere. You owe it to yourself to visit the site where a lawyer can post a court filing, opinion or article, for free, that links to a profile of the lawyer -- also free -- where clients, prospects and lawyers can search the database -- also for free...
Blogosphere Abuzz about JD Supra Launch
Posted on February 29, 2008The launch of JD Supra is the talk of the bloggers everywhere. You owe it to yourself to visit the site where a lawyer can post a court filing, opinion or article, for free, that links to a profile of the lawyer -- also free -- where clients, prospects and lawyers can search the database -- also for free...
New England LMA Chapter Names Marketing Winners in 13 Categories
Posted on February 27, 2008The Legal Marketing Association’s New England Chapter named the winners of its Sixth Annual Your Honor Awards at a gala event held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston. The Your Honor Awards recognize law firms that have demonstrated excellence in marketing and business development during the preceding year...
7 Principles of Client Development: Making Their Bottom Line Yours
Posted on February 27, 2008By Darryl Cross in discussion with Larry Bodine Darryl Cross is Senior Vice President of Business Development of Concep, Inc. in New York. The company does client surveys/market research, communications, client relationship management (CRM), graphic design, holiday cards, marketing, survey software and web site development...
Bingham Sweeps New England LMA Chapter Your Honor Awards
Posted on February 27, 2008The Legal Marketing Association’s New England Chapter named the winners of its Sixth Annual Your Honor Awards at a gala event held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston. The Your Honor Awards recognize law firms that have demonstrated excellence in marketing and business development during the preceding year...
User-Generated Site JD Supra Goes Live
Posted on February 26, 2008Launched today, JD Supra offers lawyers a free platform to post official court filings and articles that can be accessed without fee by anyone using its site – www.jdsupra.com. It is one of the first Web 2.0 businesses designed expressly for the legal community...
The Latest issue of Originate! is Now Online
Posted on February 25, 2008The newest issue of the online rainmaking newsletter Originate, is now online at http://www.pbdi.org/originate/. Here's the lineup of articles aimed at helping individual lawyers get more clients and make more money. Get your own subscription and don't miss an issue...
Get Smart on Marketing with Technology at ABA Techshow
Posted on February 22, 2008Marketers will find a feast of programs on how to use technology to connect to new clients at the annual ABA Techshow 2008 coming up on March 13-15 in Chicago. More than 1,500 people will convene at the Chicago Hilton. There are 16 educational tracks including Advanced IT/Security, Client Relationships, E-Discovery, Going Green, Internet, Large Firm/Corporate Counsel, Litigation, Mac Track, Microsoft Office, Mobile Technology, Paperless Office, Records Management, Roundtables, Show Me How, Solo/Small Firm I and Solo/Small Firm II...
Three Things Clients Look for on Law Firm Web Sites
Posted on February 21, 2008The Internet has changed a lot since Web 2.0 began to catch on in 2006. But all the videos, podcasting blogs, online discussions, mashups and jamming don't mean a thing if they don't utilize basic marketing principles. No matter how kludgy or cool your web site is, in-house counsel and corporate executives still want three basic things from a law firm website...
Law Firm Requires New Associates to Have Sales Background
Posted on February 20, 2008San Diego construction law firm Scholefield Associates, P.C., is hiring new associates with a unique requirement -- a sales background. The firm says it is is borrowing heavily from the corporate world where the role of technical sales is fundamental to most successful business plans...
90% of Lawyers Missing Out on Blogging
Posted on February 19, 2008Only 10% of lawyers have their own blog, according to a survey LexisNexis conducted a survey at LegalTech on the adoption of Web 2.0 capabilities in the legal market. And only 17% of the respondents' firms have a blog, according to the survey...
Hildebrandt Sees Economic Downturn for Law Firms in 2008
Posted on February 18, 2008In its first downbeat client advisory in 10 years, Hildebrandt warns that law firms are in an economic downturn that has not been accompanied my the usual upturns in litigation, bankruptcy or reorganization. See below for info about the upcoming Webinar: Business Development in a Down Market It cites: The precipitous drop off in structured finance work triggered by the sub-prime mortgage crisis...
Sonnenschein Hires New CMO
Posted on February 16, 2008In case you missed the news item, Brian Lambert of from Charlotte, North Carolina, has been selected by Chicago-based Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP to be their Chief Marketing Officer. The firm has 700 lawyers in 13 U.S. cities and Brussels. Prior to joining Sonnenschein, Brian headed the Business Development Group for Wachovia's Treasury Services Division...
Brinks Hofer Shows a Great Example of Follow-Up
Posted on February 15, 2008How often do general counsel wish they had a quick desk reference to get a quick definition of a legal concept outside their practice area. Real often. They don't want to appear stupid in front of their colleagues and don't want to pay their outside law firm for an explanation...
See What We're Talking about on the LawMarketing Listserv
Posted on February 14, 2008Thanks to a cool breakthrough in technology, you can now see live what topics members of the LawMarketing Listserv are talking about. Just go to http://www.lawmarketing.biz/ and read the TV screen.The LawMarketing Listserv is a friendly collection of marketers, practicing attorneys, experts and journalists...
Those "You've Been Sued. May I Assist You?" Messages Don't Work
Posted on February 11, 2008Almost every law firm I know subscribes to a docket alert system that notifies the firm when a company has been sued in their jurisdiction. As a marketing technique, the firms email the defendant companies informing them that they've been sued and offering to help...
For Valentine's Day, Give the Gift of Business Development
Posted on February 11, 2008Forget the flowers, cards and Godiva chocolates. What your valentine really wants is more clients, new business and increased revenue. So on Valentine's Day, February 14, plan to attend the webinar Crafting Your Personal Marketing Plan for 2008...
Tips on Preparing for a Pitch Meeting with a Prospective Client
Posted on February 07, 2008Stacy West Clark has a great list of 19 tips to follow when you are getting ready to go to a beauty contest, or have a new-business meeting set up with a prospective client. The full article is on Law.com. Here are the highlights:Once you have an appointment set up with the target, follow this step-by-step guide to preparing for and holding a pitch meeting with a prospective client: In advance of the meeting, learn everything you can about the target -- both the person you are meeting with and his or her company...
Best Law Firms for Women
Posted on February 07, 2008Working Mother has released its brand new list of best firms for women lawyers to practice. As we know, law firms tend to be family-hostile places to work. Once you go on the "mommy track," years have been added to your time to become partner...
Business Development in a Down Market
Posted on February 06, 2008Patrick J. Lamb says law firms are in the "perfect storm": clients are angry at law firms and want to cut their spending for outside legal services.I call it a recession. We're in one already, but the slow-moving National Bureau of Economic Research won't announce it for another nine months...
What's New in LawMarketing Store
Posted on February 05, 2008Get the most popular book in the LawMarketing Store: Law firms buy The Essential Little Book of Great Lawyering by the dozen. The core thesis of author Jim Durham, Esq., CMO of Ropes & Gray, is simple: Being a great lawyer IS the best business development plan...
Take the RainToday Fees & Pricing Survey
Posted on February 02, 2008The good folks at RainToday.com are conducting their next benchmark research report on Pricing and Fees in Accounting and Professional Service Businesses, and you can contribute your input. They are requesting you take 20 minutes to share how you go about pricing your services...
Average Size of Megafirm Marketing Departments: 28
Posted on February 01, 2008Megafirms in the AmLaw 100 are well-known for having well-staffed marketing departments. In fact the size ranges up to 113 people at one firm, according to Wisnik Career Enterprises, Inc. in a new factsheet the company released at the recent Marketing Partner Forum...
Rainmaking Lessons From a Top Corporate and International Trade Attorney -- Lisa A. Landy, Esq.
Posted on January 30, 2008According to Lisa Landy, leveraging 1-2 premier industry and trade associations has been central to growing her practice. She itemizes six marketing mistakes that lawyers make when the join membership organizations, and how you can avoid them. Come hear Lisa Landy, who will be the keynote speaker at our Miraval Business Development Conference on March 6-8, 2008...
To Boost Response, Elminate Links form Landing Pages
Posted on January 29, 2008My blogger colleague Josh Fruchter in New York identifies how law firms can get more website responses to: Register for an event Download a free white paper Sign up for an email newsletter The trick is to eliminate all distractions on the landing page -- especially links -- that take the visitor's eye off the desired response...
JD Supra Goes Live Soon as Founding Contributors Send in Documents
Posted on January 29, 2008JD Supra, the free online repository of court filings and legal articles, is about to go live. Lawyers, law firms and legal organizations are continuing to send in documents during the site’s private beta phase. They are completing their free online profiles and getting a sneak peek at one of the most anticipated law related website launches...
What Lawyers Earn: typically from $120,000 to $185,700 in Chicago
Posted on January 26, 2008Everybody loves to know what other lawyers make. There are lots of good reports on starting salaries, and the Robert Half Legal 2008 Salary Guide breaks it down for experienced lawyers.So for example, a lawyer in Chicago with 4 to 9 years' experience in a midsize law firm (35-75 attorneys) can expect an income of $120,00 to $185,700...
Vote for Your Own Firm in the Inside Counsel Rankings
Posted on January 24, 2008Inside Counsel magazine is giving its readers a chance to rate law firms on 8 factors, such as "quality of service" and "responsiveness." There are dozens of firms to choose from, and if your firm is not on the list -- you can yourself to it...
Tydings & Rosenberg Announcement Hits the Mark
Posted on January 23, 2008Tydings & Rosenberg sent out an eye-catching new-partner announcement that successfully serves a marketing purpose. It's a refreshing change from useless the black-and-white data-devoid announcement in Copperplate type that many law firms send out...
5 Law Firms Included in Fortune's "Best Places to Work"
Posted on January 22, 2008Today Fortune magazine published its annual list of the best places to work for, and the following 5 law firms made the list: Rank Company Job growth What Makes it so great U...
The Legal Profession Has Entered a Recession
Posted on January 21, 2008Once thought to be recession-proof, the legal profession is now in a recession that will include a drop in profits per partner, declining spending for legal services by corporations, attorney layoffs and a major competitive threat from law firms in London...
Favorite Examples of Guerrilla Marketing
Posted on January 17, 2008I love it when marketers carry out a promotion that is out of the ordinary. Call it guerrilla marketing -- unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results for minimal resources. Favorites include: Ungaretti & Harris' "mergeritis" ad...
Blogger Patrick Lamb Starts Valorem Law Group
Posted on January 17, 2008Patrick Lamb, a Chicago litigator who writes the In Search of Perfect Client Service Blog, has started the Valorem Law Group, LLC, a national litigation boutique based in Chicago serving businesses. Valorem is the Latin word for value.He founded Valorem in January 2008 with Hugh J...
Winners of the Marketing Partner Forum Awards
Posted on January 17, 2008Details to come, but here are the winners, just announced this very minute:Chief Marketing Officer of the Year Anne Malloy Tucker At Goodwin Procter for 8 years Marketing Partner of the Year Mark A. Long Managing/Marketing Partner Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt Marketing Initiative of the YearFoley & Lardner Multimedia Integration Initiative
Sexy Billboard Lawyer Strips for Playboy
Posted on January 16, 2008Remember the lawyer who put up the sexy billboard in Chicago? The lawyers have just dropped off the bottom of the scale for bad taste. This just in from the January 11, 2008 Chicago Sun-Times: And helping promote the column is her nude pictorial, some of which is available in February's Playboy magazine, with more at its Web site...
We Are In A Recession
Posted on January 15, 2008Call me Cassandra. Or call me the boy who said the king has no clothes. We are now in a recession, there is no doubt. See below for "Here's how to cope." Consider the evidence: Consumer spending is down, according to the New York Times...
Ungaretti Markets with "Mergeritis" Ad
Posted on January 14, 2008The half-page ad looks like a solicitation for plaintiffs in a class-action against a pharmaceutical company. (Click here to see it full-size.) The bright yellow advertisement on page 41 of Chicago Lawyer magazine poses the following:You may have mergeritis if you suffer from: a rash of new conflicts that jeopardize your client relationships queasiness about an overnight 20% increase to your billing rate numbness from feeling like an employee rather than an entrepreneur a sense of detachment from new partners based in distant offices aching for a firm that’s a better fit for you and your clients Nowhere did the clever ad reveal that it was an ad to attract laterals to Chicago's 100-lawyer Ungaretti & Harris...
Listerv discussion: Forget Print & YP Ads; Get Results Online
Posted on January 10, 2008On the LawMarketing Listserv, there is currently a lively discussion on promoting a law firm via print advertising vs. Yellow Pages vs. the Web. [Visit www.lawmarketing.biz to join the discussion.] Dale Tincher of ConsultWebs offered an intelligent and detailed response to my initial comment: Sure, you can make the the print ad better by including a person's name and number to contact, and can include a call to action (like requesting a white paper or survey), and this will produce something to measure...
Webinar on Friday: How a Law Firm Grew its Fees $7.5 million
Posted on January 09, 2008Leonard, Street and Deinard realized $7.5 million in fee receipts growth over a two-year period, based on a $150,000 program investment – including coaching fees, outside training fees, events and sales incentives. In a Webinar this Friday, Mike Cummings and I will talk with Jill Weber about how the firm did it -- and how your firm can too...
LexisNexis Acquires Redwood Analytics
Posted on January 08, 2008LexisNexis has added New Jersey-based Redwood Analytics to its collection of companies, which also includes InterAction CRM software, the atVantage business intelligence database, and the Martindale-Hubbell directory.Redwood sells business performance software for large law firms that mines the time-and-billing records to create reports on financial performance, focusing on the most significant drivers of the business of law...
New Podcast Offers Free Business Development Advice
Posted on January 07, 2008Click the link to listen to Cole Silver, Esq., interview me in the Expert Audio Series podcast. Listeners will get 34 minutes of free advice from me as I cover: Overcoming your natural hostility to marketing and sales. Avoiding rejection and conducting a new-business call correctly...
Blogging's a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool
Posted on January 05, 2008The headline in the New York Times Busines section says it all: Blogging's a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool. "It is a low-cost, high-return tool that can handle marketing and public relations, raise the company profile and build the brand," the article says...
Visionary Sheldon Bonovitz Steps Down at Duane Morris
Posted on January 04, 2008Having grown Duane Morris from 200 lawyers to 650, firm chairman Sheldon Bonovitz has stepped down and handed over the reins to vice chairman and litigation department head John J. Soroko.Bonovitz brought on Ed Schechter as the firm's first chief marketing officer in 2001...
Federal Judge Calls Lawyer Ratings "Nonsense"
Posted on January 03, 2008U.S. District Chief Judge Robert S. Lasnik in Seattle, WA, declared in a 10-page opinion that lawyer ratings are “nonsense” and “ludicrous.” Specifically criticizing Avvo, the judge said, “the rating itself cannot be proved true of false...
Even More Firms Dropping Out of Martindale-Hubbell
Posted on January 02, 2008In an informal survey of Philadelphia firms by Delaware Valley Law Firm Marketing Group shows that more firms are eliminating or scaling back their Martindale-Hubbell's directory listing. Delaware Valley Group founder Stacy West Clark said the cost of the listings -- firms pay by the word or "unit" -- was causing firms "enormous pain...
Now Working from Tucson
Posted on December 28, 2007Thanks to the wonders of the Web, email, unlimited long-distance calling, FexEx and a good international airport, I am now working in my West Coast office in Tucson, Arizona. As in years past, you can find me at:4601 E. Camino Pimeria AltaTucson, Arizona 85718tel: 520...
Marketing Angle: Your Firm Knows E-Discovery
Posted on December 27, 2007The courts have created a marketing opportunity for law firms with the promulgation of new guidelines for e-discovery. Firms that have an expertise in electronically stored information have a new marketing angle, in presenting themselves as experts in this hot new area of law...
Wolf Greenfield Deals Humor to Market IP Law
Posted on December 26, 2007There must be something in the River Charles that gives one Boston law firm a great sense of humor. Wolf Greenfield, a larger-than-life 75-lawyer intellectual property firm, has dealt a deck of holiday cards -- hilarious branded playing cards.The deck includes their greatest hits of Christmas past including their Mad magazine fold-in card, patent bar (of candy), "Better Patents and Trademarks" magazine, gingerbread house, Advent card and advertising campaigns ("wicked smart" and "Smarts Illustrated")...
First Annual WTH ("What The Hell?") Bad Christmas Card Awards
Posted on December 22, 2007Blogger Peter Darling has launched the First Annual WTH ("What The Hell?") awards at his blog, Business Development.2nd PrizeThe runner-up is an intellectual property partner at a large, very prominent firm in Silicon Valley who sent him a holiday card that he did not sign...
Calloway and Nelson Podcasts Offer Marketing Advice
Posted on December 21, 2007Check out the new collection of podcasts by Sharon D. Nelson and Jim Calloway, which includes Electronic Marketing: Harnessing the Web's Whizbang. It includes the following points about how lawyers can use the internet to market their law practice: Put your marketing plan in writing...
Vote for This Blog
Posted on December 20, 2007Editors of the ABA Journal selected the LawMarketing Blog as one of the top 100 best websites for lawyers. Now lawyers are being asked to vote on their favorites in each of the Blawg 100’s 12 categories. To vote, go to http://www.abajournal...
E-Newsletters Have Many Advantages
Posted on December 19, 2007Electronic newsletters are a must for any marketer's toolbox, according to Lisa G. Meyer, the director of marketing and client relations at the New England law firm Preti Flaherty. "They offer fast, direct communication with clients, prospects and customers...
Historic Inventors Gather on Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds Holiday Card
Posted on December 18, 2007You know the holiday card is from Hamilton Brook Smith Reynold, the intellectual property law firm in Concord, MA, when you see Thomas Edison serving the turkey with Mmm. Marie Curie.The card also includes jokes about eight famous inventors. It refers to Edison's "unfortunate failures including the remote control turkey baster and the electric gravy delumpifier...
Again, Cancel Your Yellow Pages Ad
Posted on December 17, 2007"If you are not getting a solid ROI from your Yellow Page spend, cut back! If you’re not investing in search engine optimization for your law firm, you need to wake up! It’s the year 2007, Rip Van Winkle. People use the Internet to find lawyers," says the ilawyermarketing blog...
Top Four Reasons to use Presentations as a Marketing Tool
Posted on December 14, 2007Lawyers should utilize speaking engagements as a subtle form of marketing, according to marketing consultant Joseph Sommerville. By making in-house presentations and teaching educational classes you will definitely obtain new clients.Did you ever wonder what your most effective business development tool is? Stand in front of the nearest mirror to find out...
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Congressional investigation demonstrates Karl Rove lied about his active role in US attorney's firing
On 08-12 at 16:20PM
Family of New York City swine flu victim to sue city for failure to secure school #nyc #swineflu
On 08-12 at 12:59PM
Real Network's DVD copying software deemed to break DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions
On 08-12 at 12:57PM
Prepaid funeral operators indicted for $100 Million fraud
On 08-12 at 12:53PM
NY Jets join Cincinnati, Dallas, Green Bay, Houston & Seattle #NFL teams offering branded state lottery games
On 08-12 at 12:43PM
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Is it libel to write blog posts and/or online reviews about a local business that defames one's reputation?
Libel is the form of defamation expressed in fixed-- usually written form. Sland...
Who will get the assets of Anna Nicole Smith's estate?
Anna Nicole Smith's asset could exceed $88 Million if her estate prevails in Cal...
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