Legal Marketing & PR

5 Ways To Avoid Referral Mishaps

Posted on September 30, 2010
When lawyers are conflicted from working on a case, having a good referral system in place not only helps clients connect with attorneys who have the specific expertise they want, it can boost lawyers' ability to generate more business for their firm in return...

Firm Specialization, Cost and Responsiveness Gets Law Firms Hired

Posted on September 29, 2010
According to responses to a new survey, the top criteria corporations use to hire or fire law firms are: Firm specialization (32 percent), cost (20 percent), and responsiveness (18 percent) The top three most serious relationship mistakes reported this year as being made by outside counsel were over-billing (18 percent), lack of responsiveness (18 percent), and over-lawyering (16 percent) Amidst this news in the new Corporate Counsel's  2010 Law Department Metrics Benchmarking Survey is that many in-house law departments continue to face shrinking staffs and budgets, while reporting increased workloads...

90% Expect the Demand for Legal Services to Remain the Same or Increase in 2011

Posted on September 28, 2010
A straw poll of 21 managing partners at New York law firms revealed guarded optimism about hiring trends and demand for legal services in 2011.  Only two of the 21 respondents said that they anticipated legal work would decrease next year, while more than 50 percent expected to hire the same number or slightly more first year associates than in 2010...

The One Thing to Do Now to Develop New Business

Posted on September 27, 2010
Lawyers, in-house counsel, law firm marketers, and business development experts convened at the recent Midwestern Law Firm Management Conference, organized by Ed Poll, Esq. of Venice, CA., sponsored by West LegalEdcenter in Chicago and answered a key question: 'If you would recommend only one thing, what should lawyers do to develop new business?'   Here are the answers...

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Alternative Fee Arrangements - New Ways Lawyers Can Price their Services

Posted on September 24, 2010
It was in 1958 that billing by the hour was widely adopted by the legal profession, when the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Economics of Law Practice recommended the approach. Flash forward to 2010 when unrelenting abuse is heaped upon the billable hour...

Latham Launches Wall Street Jargon iPhone App

Posted on September 23, 2010
If you don't know the difference between a 'bear hug letter' and 'accordion feature,' perhaps you should download Latham & Watkins new new iPhone app that defines more than 750 Wall Street terms, including slang phrases used by finance professionals and acronyms used to describe government...

Top 8 Tactics in Business Development

Posted on September 22, 2010
I sat next to author and lawyer Michael P. Downey of Chicago yesterday at the West LegalEdcenter Midwestern Law Firm Management Conference in Chicago. We were discussing his new book, Introduction to Law Firm Practice, newly published by the ABA, and we discussed what works in business development...

Robin Sparkman Named Editor in Chief of the American Lawyer

Posted on September 21, 2010
Robin Sparkman has been promoted to editor in chief of The American Lawyer and will also oversee the company's large law firm content team.  Sparkman was named deputy editorial director for American Lawyer Media's national publications and executive editor of The American Lawyer in 2008...

Get a Load of This: The Recession Ended in June 2009. Oh Really?

Posted on September 20, 2010
In a statement that strains credulity, the The National Bureau of Economic Research, an independent group of economists, announced that the Great Recession ended in June 2009. Who are these out-of-touch nimrods and what planet are they referring to? Does anyone believe that the recession is over?  I don't, not when I read in today's New York Times: For the Unemployed Over 50, Fears of Never Working Again Wall Street's Profit Engines Slow Down Fed Expected to Weigh More Stimulus "The NBER acknowledged the risk of double-dip recession in its statement, but said "The committee decided that any future downturn of the economy would be a new recession and not a continuation of the recession that began in December 2007...

Joshua Fruchter, Esq., author of

Posted on September 16, 2010
Joshua Fruchter, Esq., author of the LawyerCasting blog has released a new report on law firm email marketing benchmarks for the benefit of the legal marketing community. "No question, law firms are heavy users of email marketing. But until now, legal marketers had no industry benchmarks to consult to measure how their email marketing campaigns were performing against their peers," Josh said...

48 hours to register: Turning Personal Contacts Into Profitable Business Relationships

Posted on September 15, 2010
Last Day left to register. Don't miss out! Click here to learn more about this Webinar.   To succeed in the legal profession you need to go out, network and build a base of relationships that will help you to develop business...

Register Today: Turning Personal Contacts Into Profitable Business Relationships

Posted on September 15, 2010
Last Day left to register. Don't miss out! Click here to learn more about this Webinar. PRESENTED BY: Apollo Business Development Webinars  SPEAKERS: Larry Bodine, Esq...

Spot Survey: Less than Half of Lawyers Use their CRM Systems

Posted on September 14, 2010
A majority of law firms are not using their commercial CRM (client relationship management) effectively, according to an on-the-spot survey that LexisNexis conducted at the recent 2010 International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference...

Oh No! The U.S. News Law Firm Rankings are Out Tomorrow

Posted on September 14, 2010
This just in: Another meaningless ranking.  Another huge chore for law firms.  U.S. News Media Group and Best Lawyers will release the 2010 Best Law Firms rankings tomorrow, marking  the inaugural publication of this pointless analysis...

The Bad Economic Hits Just Keep Coming

Posted on September 12, 2010
The good news is that "At best, we may have reached a bottoming out," says a bleak new midyear economic report on large law firms from the Law Firm Group at Citi Private Bank.  It is the other shoe dropping in news last week that 2009 was a bad year for small to mid-sized law firms, according to the new ALM Survey of Law Firm Economics...

Guerrilla Marketing with a Flying Skateboarder

Posted on September 10, 2010
The skateboarder in the white suite glides up in the air over storefront windows and across the fronts of buildings, occasionally jumping and flipping his skateboard. You can't take your eyes off of him. The call it Beamvertising.  This video is a another perfect example of innovative, creative and truly imaginative form of guerrilla marketing...

Three Ways to Get Fired by a Corporate Client

Posted on September 09, 2010
Many are the ways that a lawyer can annoy a client, such as failing to return phone calls quickly, leaving no one in an office to field an emergency call from a client, and failing to learn the business of the client. But now there is actual research about the three major peeves of in-house counsel...

Brinks Offers Video for CLE Credit

Posted on September 08, 2010
Brinks Hofer, the 170-lawyer intellectual property law firm, just relaunched its website. Part of the package takes online video a step farther, and offers viewers CLE credit for watching. The 62-minute program "The Supreme Court Decision in Bilski: What's Patentable Now?" the virtual panel discussion features lawyers Tim Delaney, Meredith Martin Addy, Marc Richards and Charlie McMahon...

Confirmed: 2009 Was a Bad Year

Posted on September 05, 2010
No matter which statistic you pick, 2009 was a bad year for small to mid-sized law firms, according to the new ALM Survey of Law Firm Economics. The responses from 187 law firms, ranging from 1 to 150 employees (with only 7% from large law firms) were all bad news...

McKenna: The Demand Side of The Market is Not Demanding AFAs

Posted on September 02, 2010
Following is a post by Canadian strategist Patrick J. McKenna on his Rants and Raves blog and picked up by LegalOnramp. His comments that "value billing" is a revolution, but nobody came, are new evidence reported in articles on the LawMarketing Portal such as: Study Finds No Groundswell for Alternative Fee Arrangements and Study Finds Weak Client Demand for Alternative Fees...

Announcing The Sixth Annual MLF 50

Posted on September 01, 2010
This year the prestigious Marketing The Law Firm 50 will focus on business development.  You have until September 24 to get your submission in. "I would have to say that in looking at the landscape of what law firms are thinking about, it seems that everything circles around the bottom line — and that would be defined as business development and the retention and expansion of existing client work...

Hit with Mandatory Retirement, Bankruptcy Lawyer Bills $950/Hour On His Own

Posted on August 31, 2010
From the Orange County Register: William Lobel is a bankruptcy attorney whose well-heeled clients are facing one of life's more difficult realities. They owe more than they can possibly repay and their creditors have run out of patience. Lobel has learned over 40 years of representing debtors in bankruptcy court...

Recession Boosts Employment Law Practice

Posted on August 29, 2010
The labor and employment practice at many law firms has risen as a result of the recent recession, according to a national overview from the Legal 500. 'Employee benefits litigation has continued to grow apace, as increasing recognition of the opportunities for lucrative settlements has combined with the economic turbulence of the past two years,' the overview reports...

Guerrilla Marketing with Snowbranding

Posted on August 27, 2010
A German startup coupon company called Loupus carried out a fun guerrilla marketing campaign in the gloomy days of winter, by putting their French bulldog brand on snow-covered 2,000 cars in Leipzig, Germany. Gotta love their slogan too: "Coupons mit Biss" or for you non-Deutsch speakers, "Coupons with Bite...

Client Team Management with Interaction Software

Posted on August 26, 2010
The most effective way to generate new files and revenue is through cross-selling, and the most efficient way to sell more services to clients is to create client teams. BTI Consulting lists client teams as one of a law firm's "Power Marketing Practices...

Poken Your Way to Easier Networking

Posted on August 25, 2010
When two Pokens touch, digital identification information is exchanged, including a photo, name, address, telephone number, email address and links to various social networks, including MyLegal.com, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, according to MyLegal...

Portfolio billing: A valuable option for solos, small firms

Posted on August 24, 2010
From and article by Correy E. Stephenson, Esq., Associate Editor of Lawyers Weekly: "Solos and small firms looking for ways to attract new customers and stabilize their income should consider an increasingly popular option: portfolio billing...

Top 10 Website SEO Mistakes Law Firms Make

Posted on August 23, 2010
If your firm website is not on the first page of Google search results, it could simply be a lack of special HTML tags, inconsistent page content, broken links and lack of a Google site map, according to search engine expert Jeff Lantz. "The web pages of most law firms fail to take advantage of any search engine optimization techniques, and, as a result, their web pages will not rank highly in the search engine results for the legal practice areas that the firm is promoting on these same pages...

CMO Positions Going Unfilled

Posted on August 20, 2010
There are at least 25 CMO positions that remain vacant at major law firms around the country, according to an informal count by Stephen Nelson, Managing Principal of the McCormick Group executive search consultants in Arlington, VA. Some of them are at firms covered by the LawMarketing Newsletter, which has reported on the new jobs taken elsewhere by CMOs formerly at Thompson Hine, Morrison & Foerster, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Pillsbury Winthrop...

Join me at the Midwestern Law Firm Management Conference

Posted on August 18, 2010
Make plans to attend the West Legal Ed program "The New Norm: Understanding How to Thrive in the New Economy," on September 21 in Chicago where I'll be moderating a panel on business development. Click to Register Today. Now in its third year, this unique one-day conference, in partnership with the College of Law Firm Management, the Association of Legal Administrators and the Chicago Bar Association, is designed to be a frank and candid discussion of the practice issues facing Midwestern law firms...

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