Thompson Coburn LLP currently has an exempt position available in our Chicago office for a full-time Marketing Manager to consult with the partners in the Chicago office to develop and execute marketing, communication and business development initiatives.

Learn More and Apply

By Deborah McMurray is the founder, CEO and Strategy Architect of Content Pilot LLC

The early AmLaw 100/200 firm reports suggest that many of America’s largest law firms saw increases in revenue and profits in 2017 over 2016.  Some of the pre-release headlines are, “…revenue inches up,” or “…partner profits surge” or “…revenues are up 10% or 19% or to a record high or rocketed up 49%…” Yet, there are other firms that saw a tougher 2017 – “…declines in net income,” and “…a 10% drop,” and “…revenues and profits dip.” The stated reasons for growth are most frequently attributed to outside events, such as mergers, hiring of important laterals, investing in new offices and markets, and growth in non-U.S. regions. Occasionally they are attributed to a keenly focused business model and set of service offerings. For example, Kobre & Kim states, “We are trying to stay very disciplined to our model, just focusing on our specialties,” Kim said. Or as Kobre puts it, “We are staying in our lane.”

Declines and downturns are attached to a variety of explanations: fewer successful contingency cases, higher associate and other non-partner compensation, failed merger discussions, the departure of profitable partners and groups.

Where do marketing and business development fit into the discussions behind these sound-bites? How does the chief marketing and business development officer (and his or her team) become one of the drivers of the financial success that’s reported each year? If you keep up with today’s blogs and podcasts that cover the legal industry, you now have a long list of potentially expensive things you can do: new marketing technologies (proposal automation, experience management, CRM), artificial intelligence-something, strategic planning, office and market expansion, lawyer training, new client acquisition and more effectively cross-serving existing clients, a new and better website. Plus, more. These are critical and high-potential tools and initiatives, yet we know that success doesn’t happen overnight. It can take many months and years to demonstrate return on investment from any one of them.

An affordable and executable strategy

There is one strategy that seldom makes the CMBDO’s or Directors’ to-do lists, however, because it frankly has a sex-appeal problem. Strategically overhaul your content and leverage it so it works much, much (much!) harder for you.

Law firms of all sizes are prolific publishers of original content and curators of others’ material – a lot of it is quite relevant and good. Until now, too much of it has been consistently under-performing and under-achieving. Our motto is, “everything you do should drive today’s ‘3-Rs’: Reputation, relationships and revenue.”  Too many law firms neglect to set this as a goal, let alone deliver on it.

Rethink your approach and investment in content

Undiagnosed inertia is an insidious killer of fresh-thinking. Because law firms are publishing weighty volumes of content on a trains-running-on-time-schedule, many marketers don’t want to throw a wrench in the production and delivery process. (“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”) In addition, the “coalition of the willing” is firmly in place – i.e., lawyers with time on their hands are producing content and marketers are displaying it, both without regard for over-arching firm and practice strategy, focus or reach.

But – it IS broken. There is tremendous content-discontent, and not just by you and your lawyers – it’s also felt by your clients, prospects and referral sources. Below are two strategies to help you adjust and better leverage what you are currently doing – remember: the goal is elevated reputation, relationships and revenue.

Restructure your content the “Anatomy 101™” way

The reason that creating today’s law firm practice and industry content is so hard, painful, impossible, exasperating, dreadful, intolerable and paralyzing is that the marketers start with the lawyers as their source. It seems logical – in fact, it is logical, but with rare exceptions, it’s not working. Many lawyers don’t know what to say and how to say it so that a reader will stop in his tracks – they don’t know how to turn heads.  They have no framework to help us create something that is compelling for a website, a proposal or a video.

To illustrate how you can re-frame your content so that it achieves measurable goals, we have created this infographic.

Start here, and work in this order: 

1.  Your ears. Listen to the voice of your clients. For what are they hiring you? What are their pain-points? Opportunities? What does their 18-month horizon look like? These are your topics?
2. Core. What is your firm’s unique strategy and messaging and how does it translate to your practice/industry areas and experience? How does your unique positioning strategy enable you to address what you hear from your clients?
3. Your legs and arms. This is your power; your detailed matters and experience. How does what you’ve done/seen in the past make you the expert? Offer highly specific proof points that only you can provide.
4. Your eyes. You have to see and know the horizon. What regulations, legislation, market upheaval, trends, etc. are affecting and influencing your opinions?
5. Your brain. This is where your relevancy is tested. Are you a part of the latest conversations that cover the topics in which you are interested? Lawyers can take their historical expertise and experience and turn it into relevancy that supports today’s discussions.
6. Your heart. Love your clients and work and don’t be afraid to show it.  Intentionally connect with your readers – not just intellectually, but emotionally. Buyers of legal services make their buying decision on two-levels. When they are making their short-list of lawyers/law firms, they are making an intellectual or technical decision. But when they are choosing the one lawyer or firm over all the others, they are making an emotional decision – “Do I like this person? Do I trust her? Do I feel he has my back?” You have to sell on both levels.

Blow up your practice and industry content, e-blasts, articles and speeches and start over. If you tailor this formula to the medium and follow this Anatomy 101 lesson, you and your lawyers will be more productive, goal-oriented and successful tackling your content challenges.

Create a 360-degree content strategy™

We also recommend that firms embrace a “360-Degree Content Strategy,” where you are pushing and pulling content – in other words, leveraging it and distributing it – to and from all these sources.  Every major practice and industry area should have its own content strategy: who are the buyers of these services?  How fast do these buyers make decisions?  What specifically are they buying from you?  What do those buyers read and where do they spend their time?

Note that you are leveraging and syndicating content from every online and offline source, including one-to-one conversations your lawyers have with each other, referral sources, clients and prospects. (Of course, you aren’t syndicating anything that could be privileged or confidential. But, there are rich water-cooler, Starbucks-run and hallway discussions that could be quickly converted to an e-blast, tweet or blog post.)

Note, too, that “Word of Mouth” is here. A senior partner recently complained to me that his referral sources haven’t been as effective as in years’ past in terms of driving new clients to him. This lawyer had fundamentally shifted his practice from employment counseling to internal investigations but had failed to alert any of his formerly strong referrers of this change. It’s up to your lawyers to coach their referrers by providing a short script of how they guide and assist clients. Ensure that they know what you do today and the kind of work you hope they will refer you.  Remember, they like you and are delighted to help you succeed.  But you have to invest skin in the game for these relationships to be fruitful.

Finally, see the word “Micro-Moments” in the infographic. We all know that it’s difficult and expensive to change perceptions at a macro level, since buyers hang on to and protect broadly-held beliefs. But at the micro level, you and your lawyers have an opportunity to change behaviors and outcomes by designing touchpoints that are distinguishing, relevant and meaningful – touchpoints that turn heads. Google, in a recent study (“Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile”), calls these “micro-moments” and describes micro-moments as “…the new battleground for brands. Micro-moments are critical touchpoints within today’s customer’s journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends.”

We want your prospect’s journey to be clear, and to conclude with a very happy and well-informed buyer hiring your law firm and your lawyers.  Because that’s how this story should end.

About the Author

Deborah McMurray is the founder, CEO and Strategy Architect of Content Pilot LLC. She is a member of LSSO's Board of Editors.

She may be reached at mcmurray@contentpilot.com or on her cell at 972.897.4921.

Shumaker is hiring a Marketing & Client Development Assistant in Charolotte, NC.

The Marketing & Client Development Assistant will provide marketing and client development assistance and support to the Charlotte, North Carolina and Charleston, South Carolina offices.   The ideal candidate will be a self-starter with great judgement and experience in marketing at a professional services firm.

Read more and apply here

What is Design Thinking? Read about the Design Thinking Workshop at this year's RainDance Conference in the National Law Review and register now to attend.

RainDance Conference

June 6 - 7, 2018

Chicago, IL

Register Now

The Client Relationship Manager (CRM) is a highly visible, partner facing position that provides strategic and practical client relationship support for a group of priority clients in the asset management industry.  Working closely with the Firm’s senior management and partners, the Client Relationship Executive (CRE), the CRM will primarily be responsible for helping identify, develop, and implement strategies and tactics to help the Firm develop and expand existing relationships and win new business.  The CRM will accomplish this by working with client teams, individual partners, various internal departments, and business support as needed.  The CRM will also be involved with initiatives and projects that are aligned with the firm’s Asset Management Industry Group.

Read More

By Simone Hughes, Chief Marketing Officer at Field Law

Are Lawyers from Mars and Marketers from Venus?[1]

Are there days that you wonder if you are on the same planet as your law firm? Are there times when you vocalize a business development opinion and are marginalized for it? Do you question your business education and experience and why the lawyers in your firm don’t charge out of bed in the morning to develop business?  I bet you’ve had those days. I have.  But then, I wake up to a new day and realize that it boils down to motivation and communication.

Marketers’ motivation

Our job, as marketers, brand advocates and business developers, is to best position our firms, practices and lawyers so that they will be hired faster than if they were doing it on their own.

Marketers have been trained in business strategy and execution and are motivated to understand human buying behaviour and translate those insights into long-term profit and sustainability of the firm.

Human buying behaviour is complex and subject to continuous change. Our world moves fast and successful marketers have to move faster to remain at the top of their game and show results. We are mercenary for the firm (to maximize profit while optimizing everything else to get there) and mercenary for us (because we get tossed aside more than other professions). We also take all of our business and communications training for granted and think it’s natural for other business leaders to have the same.

Lawyers’ motivation

Have we really dug in to understand what motivates lawyers? Why do we think that they are motivated by the same things we are? We are experts in understanding client motivation and mostly ignore our key stakeholder’s motivations!

People think that law firm leaders have been trained to be leaders and have taken mini-MBA courses. This is not true for the most part. Lawyers are highly trained in their profession and are generally distrustful, risk adverse and conservative. Opposite traits for today’s market demands for client service-focused, business developing leaders. Can they change and do they have to change?

I believe that the organizational design of law firms has to change to segment roles and have the right people in the right role and not force every lawyer to be all roles in a firm. But that is for the future.

If lawyers today must develop business, be a leader of people and business, serve clients and do the work all at the same time– then they have to change. And, they must be provided with the opportunity to learn about managing change, business strategy, leadership and how to manage teams of people collaboratively in our highly disruptive technological world.

A daunting task indeed and probably the reason why an increasing amount of lawyers are leaving private practice and why more law schools are including these disciplines in their law school curricula.

Daniel Pink[2] expresses the opinion that people in in knowledge-based industries, like lawyers, are motivated more by autonomy, mastery and purpose and less by money, fear, recognition and status.

If your objective as a marketer in a law firm is to instill a business development culture, train and then lead and manage marketing initiatives, walking in a lawyer’s shoes and understanding their motivations is critical, but it isn’t the only key to success.

Communication

If things aren’t working and people are not participating in business development - it’s not about blaming others for not understanding you; it is about being the bigger communicator – the trained communicator, and using those super powers to help yourself and the greater cause of increasing long-term value of your firm.

By better understanding what motivates lawyers and by using those insights to communicate more frequently and more effectively, you will see results and become a true partner in the eyes of your firm.

About the Author

Simone Hughes is the Chief Marketing Officer at Field Law and a member of LSSO's Editorial Board. She leads the integrated marketing, business development, brand and public relations functions to support the firm's strategic priorities of professional excellence and client service.  

[1] Acknowledgement of John Gray, PhD 1992 book on communication in relationships: https://www.marsvenus.com/p/men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-venus-hardcover

[2] http://www.danpink.com/books/drive/

 

By David Whiteside, Director of Client Growth & Success at CLIENTSFirst

The American Heart Association refers to High Blood Pressure (hypertension) as the “Silent Killer”.  The reason is that high blood pressure typically has no symptoms until after it has done grave damage to the heart and arteries and most people do not even know they have it. 

Poor Data Quality, just like blood pressure, is the silent killer in a CRM system. At birth (rollout) the data in the system is just fine. But over time, without regular checkups and maybe some medication (data stewarding), the silent killer goes to work.

What often is not accounted for is the fact contact records in a CRM degrade at a rate of 30% - 35% each year. Contacts in the system are people so they change jobs and roles, retire, get divorced, married and some die. That’s life. So, assume a firm has 200 lawyers, and each lawyer has 500 contacts on average. That is 100,000 firm contacts, and statistically, 30,000 of those contacts change every year. End of year one 30% of contacts are incorrect and by end of year two possibly 60%.

Today, regulatory issues are driving data quality to a critical level as GDPR and other email marketing laws come into play. You see it in bounce rates, key contacts don’t receive invites and other marketing efforts take a hit.  And lawyers, as we know, tend to have an eye for detail. They start to see these inaccurate and out of date issues. Your CRM now has “bad data” in your lawyer’s eyes which of course makes the entire system not trustworthy and thus unusable. The Silent Killer claims another victim.

Prevention:

CRM systems require an on-going commitment to Data Quality. Whether you hire a data steward in-house or outsource the work, this is a long-term commitment that just must be done. Get a strategy around your data quality efforts and treat it as the vital part of your CRM program that it is.

About the Author:

Dave Whiteside is Director of Client Growth & Success at CLIENTSFirst. 

Dave’s focus is helping the company grow and expand its CRM, Data Quality, eMarketing and Client Intelligence service offerings, and building alliances that help deliver additional value to Clients.

 

Ballard Spahr has a terrific opportunity for a talented marketing professional to support their national, market-leading Consumer Financial Services (CFS) Group.  The CFS attorneys advise on regulatory matters, assist in the design and documentation of credit products, and represent clients in class actions, regulatory enforcement proceedings, and other lawsuits nationwide.

As the primary point of contact for all CFS Group marketing and business development requests, the Marketing Specialist will be responsible for preparing responses to Requests for Qualifications/Proposals (RFQ/RFP), preparing pitches, and similar procurement requests.  In addition, the Marketing Specialist will be responsible for maintaining all practice group descriptions, credentials, and collateral materials, as well as preparation of Chambers USA and other directory submissions for the CFS Group. This role will also coordinate the marketing and business development budgets for the Group.

Qualified candidates will have a strong work ethic with a positive, can-do attitude, a concise and persuasive writing style the ability to prioritize work, and exceptional oral and written communication skills.

A bachelor’s degree with 3+ years' experience in a law firm or other professional services firm, a strong proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite, and a basic understanding of standard technology systems are required. Previous proposal writing experience is strongly preferred. 

Apply Online

Resume, cover letter and salary requirements are required.

Ballard Spahr is not accepting resumes from search firms for this position.

Ballard Spahr LLP offers excellent compensation, a comprehensive benefits package and a generous paid time off program is offered.  For immediate consideration, please visit https://ballardspahr.silkroad.com/epostings/ and apply online. 

Ballard Spahr is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering a culturally diverse environment. The firm encourages applications from a diverse pool of candidates, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, age, national origin, handicap or disability, citizenship, sex, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical condition, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, transgender status, sex stereotyping, genetic information, ancestry, veteran status or any other category protected by applicable law.

Registration Rates Increase April 1 - Register Today

Sidley Austin is hiring a Business Development and Marketing Specialist in their Houston, TX office.

The Business Development and Marketing Specialist serves as a liaison assigned the Energy and Project Finance practice teams and reports to the Business Development and Marketing Manager. S/He will work directly with the partners in the group (across various offices worldwide) to develop and execute clear strategies and business plans, and manage an aligned range of marketing campaigns/programs, events, communications and key account activity.

Projects may include:

• securing panel and other appointments through the submission of written proposals/pitches
• assisting in the maintenance of business development and marketing collateral for the group (including experience databases)
• monitoring progress against planned priorities
• directory submissions and improving the profile of the practices
• developing strategy for participation in or planning of major events
  

Required:

• At least five (5) years of experience in the legal arena and/or strategic planning, sales, market assessment or positioning in other professional services industries
  
• A Bachelor's degree from an accredited four year college or university
  
• Demonstrated proficiency in Microsoft Office Working knowledge of customer relationship management and other databases
  

Preferred:

• M.B.A. or J.D. a considerable plus
  
• Experience within a law firm environment.
  

Sidley Austin LLP is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

Apply online: https://careers-sidley.icims.com/jobs/4424/business-development-and-marketing-specialist/login