Five Ways to Make the Most of Trade Conferences

We're right in the middle of conference season, and lawyers around the country are attending events as part of their marketing and business development efforts. With varying degrees of success: some will walk away with new clients and new assignments, and others will walk away empty-handed. How to make sure you're in the first group? Here are some ideas:

1. Don't Talk Too Much. Yes, you read that right. Obviously you want people to know who you are and what you do. But the real value in big conferences is finding out who everyone else is. What their biggest business concerns are. What they're looking for in a lawyer. What they like to do on weekends. And you'll never find that out if you're talking all the time. So ask more questions than you might think are necessary. And listen closely to the answers.
2. Do Your Homework. Before any event you can generally figure out who's going to be there and what you have to offer them (whether it's "companies in the hotel industry" or "Jane Smith, Assistant General Counsel at XYZ Co."). Figure out what you're going to say, when you're going to say it, and how you're going to follow-up in advance of the conference, so that you only have to worry about execution rather than objectives once the seminar is underway.
3. Be Present and Mingle. You can't make any new relationships or get any new leads if you're sitting in your room answering emails. Of course crises happen and of course your clients need you to respond quickly, but if you're not mingling and talking to people you don't know, you'll never have a chance to meet your next #1 client. And don't be afraid to sit at the "grown-ups" table or introduce yourself to a particular attendee. They're at the event to meet people, too.
4. Remember: Everybody's Somebody. Conferences are full of high-level client contacts, directors of HR, and the like. More likely than not, however, there will be more junior executives than senior ones, people who will get promotions and greater responsibilities, who will be in a position to hire lawyers in the future. Get to know those people, too. They may not be decision-makers now, but it's just a matter of time before they'll be calling the shots (and calling the lawyers).
5. Lend a Helping Hand. At a big trade conference, the chances are pretty good that everyone you meet is also looking to make useful connections, get to know some new potential clients, learn something about their industry or their profession that will help them be better at their jobs. So they're going to remember the person who took the time to make a couple of introductions, who offered them some advice on dealing with a co-worker, who pointed them to a valuable resource. Shouldn't that person be you?

The bottom line? Showing up and shaking hands is not enough to guarantee that an event is a valuable way to spend your time and money. You've got to work at it, too.

(Originally posted at JD Supra Business Advisor)

When Is the Best Time to Pitch for New Work During Business Lunch?

You're about to go to lunch with a connection who happens to be the CEO of a large company. You wonder: when during this lunch is the best time for me to ask to be considered for any upcoming legal work?

Answer: never.

Really. The best time to pitch for new business over lunch is never. Not before the main course or after the salad or at any point when you’re seated in a crowded restaurant enjoying a nice meal. Save the business talk for a meeting in the office, and use the lunch and its casual conversation as an opportunity to enhance your relationship with the potential client, to bring it to the point where you and your guest are comfortable meeting in a conference room to talk work. No one – not even your best friend – wants to hear a business pitch over dessert. And certainly not the CEO of a large company. They just want a good meal.

If everything goes well, that is, if you establish and build on a meaningful relationship, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to schedule more meetings where you can demonstrate your expertise as a lawyer.

So what, then, should you ask your lunch companion that will put you on the path to that meeting where you can pitch new work? Some ideas:

• Ask about her company. Thanks to Google, it’s easy to find out recent news about virtually every company in the country. Maybe they just exceeded earnings targets. Maybe they just got sued. Maybe there’s an interesting human interest story about their employee community service program. Whatever the news, you should craft one or two questions that will give you an opportunity to demonstrate your interest in the things that are important to her. 
• Ask about her industry. Again, Google is your friend when preparing for the lunch meeting. Asking your connection how the EPA’s rule on emissions from heavy duty trucks is going to change how they deliver – and price – their products shows that you understand the challenges that she’s facing (and that you might be able to help her overcome them).
• Ask about her future. Obviously, you’re not interviewing your companion, so you can’t really say “where do you see yourself in five years?” But there are ways to elicit that information without being so direct. And because it gives your lunch mate a chance to talk about herself, she’ll likely enjoy that conversation.
• Ask about her problems. Questions like “how are you preparing for the new OSHA rule on reporting workplace accidents?” or “what are you doing in the face of increasing low cost imports from Southeast Asia?” or “have you changed your drug testing policies in response to the new medical marijuana law?” give you an opportunity to learn more about her company. But more importantly, they allow you to turn what could have been generic follow-up – of the “thank-you-for-a-wonderful-lunch” variety – into specific solutions addressing the very problems that are keeping your contact awake at night: “You mentioned that you were having problems with employees abusing FMLA leave. Here’s an article written by one of my partners that lays out five steps you can take to reduce that.”

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The bottom line? Lunch is a great time to build and strengthen the relationship you need to make the pitch for new work. Just so long as you don’t make that ask over dessert.

(Originally posted at JD Supra Business Advisor)

Senior Lawyers: Now It's Your Turn to Make Your BD Plans

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the challenges facing younger lawyers as they begin to formalize their business development efforts into a plan, and the three questions they should ask themselves to get the ball rolling. This week, we turn to the senior lawyers: partners and of counsel, of course, but also any attorney who has spent several years developing her own business, who has an idea of what works and what doesn't, who needs to use what little non-billable time she's got on activities that have a greater chance of producing new work and new clients.

As it turns out, the process of identifying the BD activities that you like and that you're good at so that you can pursue them is essentially the same for all lawyers, irrespective of the stage of their career. Because winning business development isn't about asking the right question. It's not about finding the magic bullet. It's not even about connecting with the client (or group of clients) that are going to make you rich and famous. Successful BD is about work. Honest, old-fashioned, roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-at-it work: to identify your strengths and weaknesses, to define your targets, to craft the plans for going after those companies and to execute on them, to refocus your efforts when Target A doesn't (or does, for that matter) pan out.

So what are the questions that senior lawyers can ask to refine and improve their business development plans?

1. What's working that I should do more of?
   You're no stranger to the game. You've spoken to scores of trade groups, written dozens of articles, established hundreds of meaningful relationships, you've set aggressive targets, and you've achieved them. Chances are that you're already focusing your time and efforts on activities that have been successful in the past. What are they? And more importantly, what are you doing to be able to do more of them? Developing and growing a practice isn't like investing, after all: past performance is entirely indicative of future results. Figure out what works, and do more of that.
2. What's not working, that I should stop?
   Just as it's important to determine what works best, you need to identify the BD activities you're currently engaged in that are not going to lead to more work. Not because you need to necessarily stop doing them completely, but rather to be honest about what you hope to get out of them: your role on the board of the local food bank may never drive paying business your way, so maybe you shouldn't be looking at it as your main business development initiative of 2017. And there's a bonus: freeing yourself from BD efforts that have never produced an hour's worth of client work will allow you to devote more times to those that have.
3. What else would I like to try, and why?
   Most of the lawyers I've worked with over the course of my career are creative problem solvers who have great business development instincts. They're don't lack new ideas about how they can better reach clients and prospects. But it can often be such a challenge to translate those new approaches into viable initiatives – for a wide variety of reasons – that they wither on the vine. The first step in breaking that cycle? Writing down the new ideas, fleshing them out, figuring out what has to happen for them to come to fruition. Accordingly, you need to spend some time thinking about the new things you'd like try, so we can work together to find a way to make them happen.

The Secret of Your Success? Relationships, Relationships, Relationships

What makes a great rainmaker? The ability to establish – and maintain – great relationships, says Michael Rynowecer, the founder of BTI Consulting who’s asked more than 14,000 C-level executives how they feel about their professional service providers. Competency and client service might get you additional work from a client, but a superior relationship is going to allow you to become your client’s confidante, problem-solver, and sounding board on all business-critical decisions. Turns out the cliché is true: people do like to do business with people they like, and the more they like you, the more they’ll go out of their way to create opportunities for you.

Accordingly, you need to invest time in relationships, but not with the objective of getting a new assignment or treating your favorite clients to ball games and golf outings or even turning every client contact into a close personal friend. Rather, because strong relationships are such an essential element of success in this profession, you must devote time and energy to the relationships themselves. Here are three things you can do today:

1. Protect your best relationship

Take a look at your current client list. Of all the people you know at all the companies on the list, identify your single best relationship. Now ask yourself: what are you doing to keep it that way? If you’re not actively building on and improving that relationship, you might be passively letting it slip away.

2. Fix your worst relationship

Using that same list of clients, identify the weakest relationship you’ve got. Just like there will always be a best relationship, there will always be a worst one. But if that “worst one” is at a company in a position to give out legal work in the near future, you need to move it up the list. What can you do to make that relationship better, now and in the near future?

3. Move somebody up the list

The final person to identify is one that you’d like to have a better relationship with. Maybe it’s a junior lawyer who will one day be the general counsel. Maybe it’s a fellow marathon runner you hit it off with at the last client meeting. Or maybe you met an in-house attorney with whom you enjoy talking about non-work related things and would like to continue the conversation. The reason isn’t important. Picking a contact and figuring out how you’re going to improve your relationship with her – in the near term – is.

The bottom line? Invest in your relationships and the work will follow. And even if it doesn’t, you’ll be on better terms with the people who decide which firms get their legal assignments, right? That sounds like a win all around.

(Originally posted at JD Supra Business Advisor)

Associates: Answer These 3 Questions To Begin Your BD Plan

Sometimes the hardest part about starting a task is, well, starting the task. And if I've learned anything from nearly 30 years in the business development business, it's that BD plans are often that project: the one that lawyers know they need to do, the one they plan to do, the one that they just can't get off the ground. That can be even more true for associates, who are often juggling multiple assignments from multiple partners working for multiple clients on multiple legal issues.

The good news is that your plan doesn't have to be written in stone or particularly formal or even follow a standard format. All you really need to do is ask yourself these three questions, then write down the answers:

1. What are you doing now that you would like to continue? Take a look at the work you've done – and the clients you've done it for – over the past six or twelve months. What did you particularly like doing? What do you want to do more of? Maybe you worked on an FCRA matter that you enjoyed. Or found that helping a client resolve a particularly difficult IP rights issue was something you were good at. Perhaps you were able to work for some specific client types, like family-owned businesses, or restaurant franchisees, or companies in the sports industry, that you would like to continue representing. The idea is to identify the work you like, and develop a plan for doing more of it. Not because you'll never do anything else (you might even come up with an entirely different list six months from now), but because without a plan, your chances of doing what you want to do are reduced.
2. What are your marketing strengths? No one would disagree with the statement that some lawyers are better writers than they are networkers. Or that some can talk to anyone about anything. So why shouldn't you focus your marketing efforts on your strengths, on those things that you like, that you do well, and that you want to do more of? Of course that doesn't mean that you should completely ignore a valuable writing opportunity, for example, because articles and blog posts aren't your favorite way to demonstrate your expertise. But it does mean that, all things being equal, you should play to your strengths rather than trying to fix your weaknesses.
3. What new things would you like to try? Without taking anything away from the two previous questions, it's critical that you think about what you're not doing, too: legal issues you'd like to know more about, marketing skills you'd like to acquire or hone, client types you'd like to represent. Your BD plan is the perfect tool for setting goals and aspirations, starting with new things you'd like to try. Want to get to know the craft brewing industry? Set a goal of joining a local trade association and attending four meetings in the next six months. Need to improve your public speaking? Join a Toastmasters chapter and make yourself attend meetings. After all, it's your future.

Are Your Cross-Selling Efforts Stalling? Maybe You’re Doing It Wrong…

Whether you call it cross-marketing or cross-targeting or some other variation on the theme, cross-selling is not a new concept for most lawyers and firms. And it’s not particularly complicated to do: align the work you actually provide a client with the services they need, and implement a program for connecting their needs with your practices. Easy-peasy, right? So why is it so hard to find cross-selling success? Here’s what I’ve learned over the past 25 years:

1. You’re focused on the wrong solution. By framing the problem as “how do we cross-sell more services?” you’re unwittingly eliminating all the other ways you can derive value from your client base. Yes, expanding the scope and breadth of representation is a pretty solid way to maximize a relationship with Company X or Y. But your existing clients can provide you a wide range of other types of opportunities. Perhaps you can use expertise you’ve gained working for an industry leader to create a practice devoted to solving the problems of similar businesses. Or draw on the individual relationships you’ve developed with clients to get more referrals. Or even work with an in-house lawyer to author an article that allows you to share your insight with a new audience. Whatever the tactic, if you re-frame the problem as how to leverage the value of existing clients, you’ll have a new perspective on solving it.
2. You’re not trying hard enough. Cross-selling is hard. It requires perseverance and time, the kind that is measured in years, not quarters of an hour. You need to bring people together and ask them tough questions and find compromise and solutions that may not please everyone. There are no shortcuts to successful cross-selling initiatives. Most firms – and many lawyers – don’t have the patience and long-term vision to pull that off. Sure they’ll introduce an IP lawyer to their real estate client, but they give up on the concept of cross-selling if that single new relationship doesn’t bear fruit in a month or two. That’s not to say that you’re never going to get results with a single phone call, but if you want your cross-selling efforts to produce new representation you’re going to have to work at it.
3. You’re setting the wrong objectives. It’s true: most firms look at cross-selling as a way to grow their revenue stream, to increase profits with minimal expense. After all, the cost of expanding work for an existing client is always going to be less than that of acquiring a brand new client. And that’s a fine objective: like every other business, law firms have to make money to survive. But the firm that seeks to provide more work to current clients because that’s the best solution for the client – because it allows the client to increase efficiencies and drive down costs, because it allows them to benefit from the institutional knowledge their lawyers have of their business, because it offers them better services at a more reasonable rate – is going to be more successful than the one looking to make more money.

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What could you do to improve your cross-selling efforts?

(Originally posted at Zen and the Art of Legal Networking)
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6 Ways to Make Your Attorney Retreat a Business Development Success

Most firms have an annual attorney retreat of some type: all lawyers, all partners, all associates, etc. These events provide attendees with a chance to reconnect with colleagues, learn about new client successes, hear how the firm is doing, and generally have a good time in the company of friends. But firm retreats also present a great opportunity for each and every attorney to enhance their business development efforts. Here are six ways to do that:

1. Schedule your meetings.
   Yes, you'll probably talk to most of the people you already know, those you've been waiting a year to catch up with, those who owe you a drink. But unless you actually reach out to the people you need to see – before you get there – you are probably going to miss a few of the colleagues that could be in a position to give you work one day.
2. Do your homework.
   Want to work for some of your firm's marquee clients? It's not enough to tell the relationship lawyer that “you're available.” You need to express real interest in working with her client, tell her about work you've done for other clients in similar situations, and most importantly describe how you could help solve problems that her client is currently going through. That means doing your homework, and figuring out how you could actually help her client save money / avoid litigation / etc.
3. Fine-tune your story.
   The elevator speech is alive and well. And having a good one is probably as important at the retreat as it is at any networking event: because there will be a lot of competition for the eyes and ears of those colleagues you're trying to reach, you need to be able to tell your story – that which makes you interesting – quickly and concisely.
4. Be friendly and interesting.
   Your colleagues – just like your clients – want to work with people they like. So put on a happy face, smile, laugh, and enjoy yourself, because those are the traits that will ensure you get phone calls from fellow attorneys.
5. Get out and mingle.
   Client emergencies aside, there's no reason you should spend the whole retreat locked in your room or the hotel's business center. It's OK to get away to recharge your batteries, of course, but a big part of why the firm is sending you to the meeting is to get to know and improve your relationships with your colleagues.
6. Think big.
   More likely than not, every initiative you cook up with your colleagues at the retreat isn't going to come to fruition. All the more reason to think big, and set some big-picture business development goals that are going to take time and effort and meaningful intent to bear fruit. You might not get to them all, but you'll probably find that working together to achieve some challenging objectives leads you down paths to work you might never have considered. 

5 Things I Learned at the In-House Counsel Panel at #LMA16

Last month I attended the Legal Marketing Association annual meeting, two days of presentations on how lawyers and firms can better market their services and grow their practices. The highlight of the conference was the in-house panel, which this year featured Vince Cordo, Global Sourcing Officer at Shell, Matt Fawcett, General Counsel of NetApp, and Paul Drummond, Senior Legal Counsel at AT&T. Elizabeth Duffy of research firm Acritas led the discussion.

Here's what I learned: 

1. Value matters. 

Although the panelists agreed that there was no one, standard, definition of "value," they all made it clear that they look to their outside lawyers to bring some form of value to the relationship, such as helping the company meet certain financial objectives, moving the stock price, efficiently resolving problems, anticipating legal issues, and more. The challenge for firms then becomes figuring out how each individual clients defines "value," and providing that.

2. Feedback matters. 

The in-house panelists all agreed that they wished their lawyers did more surveys. They felt firms miss out on an important opportunity to improve the relationship, to learn what their clients don't like and stop doing it, when they don't seek out more feedback from clients. What's more, they made it clear that have things to say – about delivery of service, about skill sets, about how we can make them happy – that they not telling us simply because we don't ask. 

"We don't hire lawyers. We hire law firms."

3. Teamwork matters. 

This was perhaps the most surprising thing to hear, because the idea that clients hire firms, not individual lawyers, flies in the face of what we've been told about the importance of personal relationships in the legal industry. It's important to note that their point was not that they do not expect strong rapport between the in-house and outside counsel; rather, that they give work to firms based on bench strength, on the breadth and scope of skills, on creating and maintaining an environment where everyone contributes and gets credit for their work. 

4. Fees matter. 

Although Paul Drummond told the audience that efficiency is often more important than price, going as far as to say that price is "irrelevant [and] independent of expertise, quality," and other factors, the panelists made it clear that cost continues to be a factor in evaluating the performance of outside counsel. And it was equally clear that the companies on the panel are pushing back harder on certain types of fees to restore balance, to move from a place where legal costs are based on the law firm's perception of value rather than that of the client.  

"Law firms call them 'alternative fee arrangements.' We call them 'appropriate fee arrangements'"

5. Metrics matter. 

The panelists made it clear that clients – now more than ever – are using metrics and data to drive efficiencies and cost-savings. They're all looking at a broad range of data points when evaluating law firm performance, trend that appears to be here to stay. The good news is that they're not shy about telling law firms what they're doing: all you need to do is ask. The better news is, according to Matt Fawcett, the competition hasn't started asking yet…

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So what can you learn from the in-house panelists at this year's LMA conference? That your client is probably more than happy to tell you how you can make her happy. You just need to ask.

3 Reasons Why Every Lawyer Should Study JD Supra's Readers' Choice Awards

JD Supra just published their inaugural Readers’ Choice awards, featuring top authors and top content across 26 categories in 2015. The accompanying report provides critical insight into who’s reading what – and in which industry – that every lawyer should know. Some observations:

Clients Read What They Need To Know

First, the awards make clear that the “secret” of leading authors on JD Supra is to give the people what they want. These authors are writing about the issues relevant to the companies they want to reach. That may seem self-evident, but it’s not. Because it means you have to step away from your perspective as advisor, as someone who knows what her clients SHOULD be worrying about, and step into the shoes of those clients trying to understand a hundred different and diverse legal issues all at once. Of course you can (and should) write about issues you think your potential clients need to know. But if you’re not analyzing the developments they think are important, you’re not going to gain the credibility that will lead them to take your word for it.

This is particularly important because the issues keeping your clients up at night may not always be the ones you think. A top concern of Silicon Valley, according to the report? Immigration. Of insurance companies? Cybersecurity and data breaches. Of businesses in the broadcast media industry? Employer liability. And of course you may already know this (200 lawyers writing on JD Supra did…), but the point is the same: you’ve got to drill down and figure out what’s important to the people you’re writing for, if you want them to read your work.

Content Marketing Works

Second, the reader analysis done by the folks at JD Supra demonstrates that content marketing is working: industry insiders really do read the legal analysis and insight that you post online. A quick look at the “notable readers” makes that clear: people from Chevron, Johnson & Johnson, Amazon.com, Time Warner Cable, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Bank of America, Office Depot, Medtronic, etc., are going to the Internet for guidance on understanding and responding to the legal and business issues they face every day.

Less Is Definitely Not More

And finally, while it may seem obvious, the awards really drive home the point that you shouldn’t ignore a topic because you’ve already written about wage and hour law, or because your competitors have covered data breaches in the insurance industry, or because there’s nothing more to say about the Affordable Care Act. Your job – like every other lawyer – is to demonstrate expertise on the subjects that matter to your clients. A single article does not do that: you must write about the topics you know again and again and again. People are going to read your work when they need it, so your job is to make sure that when they are trying to understand an issue, your analysis is available to them. You do this the way almost every author in these awards did it: by turning up again and again and writing what matters to your readers and clients.

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First published on JD Supra

3 (More) Ways to Jumpstart Your BD in 2016

Want to do better in 2016? Give your business development a boost. Here are three ways:

1. Talk To Your Colleagues. 

Although you pass each other in the hallway 12 times a day, how often do you stop and talk business development with your fellow lawyers? Why not set aside one lunch per month to get together with one or two of them and talk business development? It doesn't have to be formal, you don't need to bring your BD plan as reference, you don't have to justify what you did or didn't do last month. You just have to talk about clients and opportunities and ways you might be able to get new work. 

2. Drop Your Clients a Line. 

You know it's true: most of the correspondence you send clients is about work – status updates, compliance questions, filing deadlines, and the like. But it doesn't have to always be that way. What if you made an effort, again once a month, to find one article or blog post that one of your top clients will find interesting? Perhaps it's an article about their alma mater, or a ground-breaking development in their industry, or even news from their home town that you can forward along with a "this made me think of you" cover note.  They'll appreciate it.

3. Make an introduction. 

No matter how long you've been practicing, you probably know several people who would benefit from knowing each other. Perhaps your accountant and your biggest client both like to sky dive. Or maybe two clients in complementary industries went to the same college but have never met. Whatever the connection, what if you made the effort to figure out who would gain from an introduction and then put them together? Wouldn't your contacts appreciate it if you made three or four introductions over the next 12 months? 

Make 2016 a great year.

3 Questions As You Rewrite Your BD Plan for 2016

The end of the year is always a good time to take a hard look at your business development efforts of the last 12 months: what worked and what didn't, where you want to spend your time and effort next year, etc. If you're going through that exercise – and you should be – here are three questions you should ask yourself:

1. What do I like to do? No, I'm not talking about horseshoes or hang-gliding (though there are no doubt many lawyers who have turned these and similar interests into BD tactics). Instead, you need to figure out what you enjoy, what you're most comfortable doing, and what you don't like, so that you can shape your BD efforts accordingly. Put another way: if you're more at home in front of the keyboard than in front of a crowd, you probably should put public speaking lower on your list than starting a blog. Because you're not going to actively engage in BD activities you don't like to do.
2. What makes me special? Obviously, you wouldn't be a successful lawyer if you didn't bring something special to the table. Something tangible for your clients. Something that makes you stand out, that makes them continue to give you work. Once you figure out what that is – you might even consider asking one or two of them – you can start figuring out a way to exploit that strength, to determine who will be most interested, to articulate that which sets you apart from the competition.
3. What is the market telling me? Staying on top of trends in the market – what regulators are doing in your key clients' industries, what's going on in China, how the presidential election is likely to change the way your clients do business – is essential at all times. But as you're trying to figure out where your biggest opportunities will lie in the coming year, you should be paying closer attention. A good place to start is BTI's recent Mad Clientist blog post reporting on a survey of more than 300 General Counsel on the areas in which they plan to spend their legal services dollars in 2016.

7 Ways To Make In-House Lawyers Happy

Earlier this week, I attended a Legal Marketing Association Ohio conference, "Perfect Your Pitch," featuring six in-house lawyers:

• James D. Campbell, Senior Counsel – Litigation and Claims, Big Lots!
• Ria Farrell Schalnat, General Counsel and Director of Intellectual Property, Vora Ventures
• Mark G. Stall, General Counsel, Escort Inc. and Cobra Electronics Corporation
• Peter Jurs, Vice President and Legal Counsel, Fifth Third Bank
• Robert Horner, Vice President, Corporate Governance and Secretary, Nationwide
• Fred Stein, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Redbox

The group shared useful insight into what we should be doing to make them happier and get more work. Some observations (in no particular order):

1. In-house lawyers want meaningful relationships with outside counsel. For the in-house people who sat on the panel, it's all about the relationship. They won't give work to people they don't know, people they just met, people who haven't spent the time and effort to get to know them and their company. One panelist said that two years is the minimum amount of time necessary for a relationship to develop into work for the outside lawyer, and that ten years is probably more realistic. That might be a bit extreme, but the point is that they want to work with people they know and like, so the better your relationship, the more opportunities you will see.
2. They like free stuff. All of the in-house lawyers were in agreement that they appreciated lawyers who give them free stuff: forms and checklists, ideas and suggestions, introductions to potential customers, etc. Doing so demonstrates that you care, that you're willing to invest in the relationship, that you're the kind of lawyer they'll want to have on their team. It gives you a chance to "audition" for more work and, most importantly, it opens the door to reciprocity: additional work, referrals, and the like. It was clear that most of the in-house lawyers who spoke have to operate on limited budgets with fewer people than they need, so becoming a "knowledge source" is a great way to stand out as you help your clients get smarter and do their jobs better.
3. They require transparency. All of the panelists talked about the importance of transparency at one point or another. A pet peeve was outside counsel who blew through a budget without telling anyone, instead sending a bill for twice the amount. That isn't to say that firms must stick to expected costs for unpredictable work (think litigation), but rather that they want their lawyers to keep them in the loop when fees start to exceed the budget. They recognized that it's not an easy phone call to make, but were clear that it absolutely had to be made for the relationship to continue and grow.
4. In-house counsel is always interviewing other lawyers. Like all of you, in-house lawyers attend seminars, conferences, social events, and the like. They talk regularly to other providers, and they meet people they like and want to work with. That's a given. For you, it means always taking that extra step, making your clients happy, asking them what they want and then delivering it. But it also means that you're only as good as your last piece of work, and that your client relationships are always at risk.
5. They're struggling to please their own clients. Several times during the day each of the panelists referenced his or her own clients: the CEOs, executives, Boards, etc., to whom they all report. Those clients are just as demanding as yours and, as one speaker pointed out, the risks are much greater for the in-house lawyer who doesn't make her clients happy. Another said (and said again) that he wants his outside lawyers to ask him how those clients are doing every time they're on the phone together. The bottom line? Knowing who your clients report to and how they're being evaluated can make or break a relationship.
6. They're tired of Alternative Fee Arrangements. "Alternative fees are a race to the bottom where associates are getting squeezed." That's a direct quote from one of the panelists, who said that getting work "on time, on spec, and on budget" was better than an alternative billing arrangement. It's not that they're wedded to the billable hour, but rather that they have learned that AFAs do not always mean lower costs – or greater efficiency – so they are understandably skeptical when outside lawyers pitch alternative fees. We should instead be creative in developing billing agreements that are win-win and that allow both sides to benefit from technology and other delivery improvements.
7. They don't like staleness. From the panelists' perspective, outside counsel should always be improving the delivery of legal services, the relationship, the quality of work. One in-house lawyer called it CQI: Continuous Quality Improvement, and said that he liked lawyers who kept the relationship dynamic.

While you were sleeping, redux. The world keeps getting smaller.

The rapid march of BigLaw globalization continues. Most of the activity is, understandably, focused on China, the "fastest growing legal market in the world."

• Baker & McKenzie opens in Qatar (just ten months after opening in Luxembourg)
• Blank Rome opens an office in Shanghai
• Chadbourne & Parke announces plans to set up shop in Istanbul
• DLA Piper merges with its 700-lawyer Australian affiliate, DLA Phillips Fox (making DLA Piper the world's largest firm, with approximately 4,200 lawyers worldwide)
• Gibson Dunn opens an office in Hong Kong
• King & Spalding opens a Moscow office
• Locke Lord opens an office in Hong Kong
• Nixon Peabody announces a Global Strategies initiative, which will likely include more expansion along the lines of its recent Hong Kong opening
• Paul Weiss opens in Toronto
• Simpson Thacher launches a Hong Kong law practice
• Wilson Sonsini opens an office in Hong Kong

What are you waiting for?

Go West, young man. And East. And North. And South.

What's BigLaw doing in this "down" economy? Getting bigger. Looking for opportunities to add greater value. Opening offices, merging, forming alliances. Gobalizing:

• SNR Denton barely lets the ink dry on its own merger before forming alliances with 10 firms across Africa
• Norton Rose ties up with Ogilvy Renault in Canada and Deneys Reitz in South Africa, then opens in Hamburg and links up in Indonesia 
• Jones Day decides to open offices in Sao Paolo, Boston, and in Riyadh, Jeddah and Alkhobar
• Clifford Chance moves into Australia with mergers in Sydney and Perth
• DLA Piper opens Miami office and forms alliance with firm in Caracas
• Squire Sanders and Hammonds complete their global merger

What do these firms (and others) know that you don't? They read the same news, see the same signs, talk to the same clients and bankers and accountants. Are they getting secret information? Playing insider baseball? Or are they just taking a longer-term view of the crisis, the evolution of the global practice of law, the opportunities to survive and succeed in what promises to be a radically different future?

Maybe it's time you started looking beyond your borders. Go west, east, north and south. It's a big world, full of big opportunities.

Are you talking the talk? Walking the walk?

Or just sitting at home, watching the world go by from the comfort of your office? When was the last time you traveled outside the country? What languages do you speak? Can you carry on a conversation in a foreign tongue? Have you ever tried? Can you find your way through a crowded Japanese city, negotiate a contract in Columbia, interview a client in Paris? In Japanese, Spanish or French?

On a flight to Asia a few years ago, I struck up a conversation with my seat-mate. Like me, he spent a lot of time on planes and as often happens, our conversation turned to the mileage elite threshold of our favorite airline. I told him that I'd made the 100,000-mile mark over the past two years, but I didn't think I'd reach it for a third year in a row. He told me he already had. It was February.

The world keeps getting smaller. Clients, from corporate executives circling the globe to retirees on vacation to entrepreneurs looking for ideas, are spending more and more time outside the United States. They're seeing the world through different eyes, discovering unknown cultures and traditions, meeting new people and eating new foods and getting new ideas about the way things are done. Shouldn't you be doing the same?

Have you made your resolutions for the New Year?

I was interviewed Friday by Chelsey Lambert at Total Attorneys for their Total Expert Radio broadcasts. I'm not used to sitting on the interviewee side of the table, and it was a lot of fun. Chelsey did a great job keeping me on topic. Thanks too to Kevin Chern and Kate Battle, who made the interview possible.

Chelsey and I talk about new year's resolutions for lawyers in three areas: growing their business, communicating their message, and managing their practice. We cover a lot of ground, especially with respect to business development, communications and practice management trends in 2010 and how those trends will translate into 2011. You can listen to the interview below, but if you don't have time right now, here's the summary of my new year's resolutions for lawyers and law firms:

Growing your business

1. Make a plan, a road map, that contemplates what you want to achieve in your practice, the people that will help you get there, and they ways in which you are going to connect with those people.
2. Set priorities. Time is not unlimited. Decide what's most important, and focus your efforts on that. And don’t make grandiose projects that will never come to fruition. Baby steps are fine.
3. Talk to your clients more. Go through the list of your clients, not just the ones easy to talk to, and start connecting with them. Talk about service, about value, about their problems, about solutions.

Communicating your message

1. Revamp your marketing materials. Practice descriptions, biographies, boilerplates, etc. They get stale quickly. Try to tell more -- and more meaningful -- stories.
2. Write where your clients read. If they read blogs, write a blog. If they read trade publications, do what you can to publish in the trades. How do you find out what they read? Ask them.
3. Draft a communications plan but don't get hung up on the process. Write down what you want to say, who you want to say it to, what you want to achieve from saying it, and where you should say it.

Managing your practice

1. Set objectives for your practice beyond just practicing law. If you don’t plan your route you may end up somewhere you don’t want to be.
2. Embrace alternative billing. Develop some meaningful alternatives to the billable hour that you can offer clients without hesitation.
3. Explore new technology. Cloud computing, client extranets, mobile technologies, etc. Figure out how you can use technology to provide better service, and start doing it. 

Listen to internet radio with Total Attorneys on Blog Talk Radio

Happy New Year!

Best wishes to all for a healthy and happy 2011!

2010 ABA Journal Blawg 100

The nominees for the 2010 ABA Journal Blawg 100 have been released, and for the second year in a row, my lawyer interview blog 22 Tweets was included on the list of the best legal blogs as selected by the editors of the ABA Journal. It's a great honor for me to have 22 Tweets listed alongside so many law blogs that inspire, educate, inform and amuse me every day, but the real credit goes to each and every one of the nearly 90 lawyers who have allowed me to interview them over the past year and a half.

22 Tweets was nominated in the category of "Legal Biz," up against such powerhouses as Adam Smith, Esq, What About Clients?, The Client Revolution, Law21.ca and several other blogs that I read just about every day. I never imagined competing against them in a popularity contest, and don't imagine I'll end up at the top of the heap come December 30, but that won't stop me from seeking your vote for 22 Tweets. You can do it here (you'll need to go through a relatively painless registration process to register before voting). You get 12 votes, one for each category--though you don't have to use them that way--but I'll warn you in advance: you will have a hard time narrowing your list down to 12 blawgs. Really.

So get out there and rock the vote. We're all counting on you.

Is it time for a marketing tune-up?

The market appears to be picking up. Clients are getting back to work. New opportunities can’t be far behind. What are you doing to find them? To make sure they show up on your radar? To put yourself in a position to see those opportunities that do present themselves, and to land the work when you pitch for it? Maybe it’s time for a marketing tune-up.

Just like you regularly perform maintenance on your car, you need to perform regular maintenance on your marketing efforts, objectives and plans. You need to modify them to reflect the constant evolution of your practice, your client base, your experience and your network. And as you do that, you should keep in mind some basic notions:

• Planning is everything. Know where you want to go? How to get there? What it looks like when you’ve arrived? You need a plan. Not a complicated one that accounts for every contingency and takes two or three or six weeks of reflection and drafting and editing. It does have to set goals, realistic, achievable, measurable goals. It does have to understand the clients you want, the work they need, and your ability to perform that work. Plan your route so you don’t end up someplace you don’t want to be.
  
  
• You’re not out to change the world. Yes, you need a plan of action, but you don’t need to change the world, to solve every problem, to cure cancer on your first try. You just need a road map to start. You can build the atlas as you go along. And you can always change your mind when an idea doesn’t work or a potential client doesn’t pan out or a deal falls through. Just don’t get hung up on making it perfect, because that will get in the way of making it in the first place.
  
  
• Focus on opportunities. It’s easy to spend time picking apart ideas, looking at what won’t work, what you can’t do, what you’ll never be able to achieve. But that won’t get you anywhere. Spend your time looking at what you CAN do, not what you can’t. Isolate the opportunities—true opportunities, ones measured in terms of probability not possibility—and the steps needed to realize them. You’ll solve the real problems when you get to them.
  
  
• Be realistic. It’s only an opportunity if you could realistically get the work and do the job better than your competition. If you can convince your client that it makes sense—for them, not just for you—to give you a new assignment. If your experience allows you to tell a credible story, a story that convinces someone who doesn’t know you that they should trust you with the future of their company. If you can’t do that, then you’re probably not going to get the work, and you shouldn’t waste your time chasing it.
  
  
• Don’t neglect your existing clients. Relationships are relationships, and those with clients require the same amount of work as those with potential clients. Providing good legal advice, answering questions, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s isn’t enough. Anticipating client needs, addressing their concerns, understanding their objectives, communicating early and often are essential to maintaining the types of relationships that will not only keep clients coming back, but lead to increased referrals.
  
  
• Don’t forget your homework. Think you know what your clients need? The services they’re looking for? The business problems they’re struggling to solve? Do your research. Read what your clients are saying. What the press is saying about them. What their competitors are doing, what’s going on in their industry, where the growth is in their markets. If you can, talk to your clients about their business, their industry, their competition, their challenges, and most of all how they define success and how well they are achieving it.
  
  
• Execution is everything. You’ve set your objectives. You’ve identified realistic opportunities. You know where you want to go and what you need to do. But a plan is only the beginning. To generate results, you need to execute with discipline, follow-through and flexibility. Sound easy? It really isn’t. If it were, everybody would be doing it already. The part that drives success is execution, and it takes time, commitment and hard work.

As the economy improves and opportunities increase, there’s no time like the present to review your marketing efforts, rethink your marketing objectives and tune-up your marketing plans. You’ll be glad you did.

__________

This post was first published on Construction Law Musings, July 9, 2010

Blawg Review #257

Welcome to Blawg Review. To celebrate the first anniversary of 22 Tweets, our Twitter interviews of practicing lawyers, we’ve put together a special version of Blawg Review. What does that mean? First and foremost, it means that we’ve selected 22 posts from this week’s legal blogs: 22 authors, 22 blawgs, 22 posts.

More importantly, it means that this week there’s no free ride on Blawg Review. We like interviewing lawyers. On Twitter. So Blawg Review #257 does just that: each blawg we’ve included is accompanied by a question in the form of a tweet to its author. We’ll tweet the questions later this week, and compile the responses we get into a 22-lawyer Twitter interview that will be posted to 22Tweets.com. Blawgers, we hope very much that you’ll play along, and look forward to getting your responses tweeted back to us via @22Twts.

22 Blawgs from 22 Tweets

1. Charon QC, who writes about, well, just about anything and everything under the sun in his weekly “Rive Gauche” post for Charon QC The Blawg, bringing together, among other things, Tesco law in Scotland, forging payslips in Singapore, and the London Sperm Bank: “Rive Gauche: Antique ASBOS, a BNP barrister, Meow Meow drug barons, and a pharamacist who won’t give out contraception because of ‘religious beliefs’..et al”
   
   @charonqc What would you say is the most significant issue facing the legal profession today? Can it be resolved? How?
   
   
2. Stan Abrams, who calls it like it like he sees it in his china/divide post on the Google pull-out of China: “Google’s Hong Kong Gambit Is Public Relations Victory”
   
   @chinahearsay What’s the legal story behind the Google pullout of China? Will there be a public dispute? Who has the upper hand?
   
   
3. Dan Harris, who gives us another insightful post on his China Law Blog. This time it’s a ‘moderate’ post on the state of FDI in China: “Google, Rio Tinto And The Truth About China FDI. BTW, They Are Not Even Really Related.”
   
   @danharris Can foreign companies doing business in China expect short-term repercussions from Google and Rio Tinto?
   
   
4. Sam Bayard, writing in the Citizen Media Law Project blog, on a legal setback for Google that demonstrates the challenges that ISPs and other online intermediaries in a second BRIC economy: “Brazil Fines Google Over Dirty Jokes on Orkut; Brazilian Lawyers Weigh In”
   
   @smbayard How important are safe harbors for ISPs to the development of emerging economies in general and the BRIC economies in particular?
   
   
5. Jay Shepherd in The Client Revolution, who draws an important distinction between the lawyer-as-laborer and the lawyer-as-artist in his ongoing efforts to kill the billable hour: “Art and Labor”
   
   @jayshep Do you ever turn down work because a potential client just doesn’t get value billing? How do you convince the ones on the edge?
   
   
6. Jim Walker, who writes about crime on the high seas in Cruise Law News. Not the swashbuckling kind or the “off the coast of Somalia” kind, but the more common kind encountered on land. Except without a police force: “Your Dream Cruise - The Perfect Place For The Perfect Crime?”
   
   @cruiselaw You represent a diverse group of people in your practice. What is the single most important legal issue for your clients?
   
   
7. Paul Kennedy, who writes in The Defense Rests about the difference between “just” and “fair” and why it’s important: “It’s possible to be just, but not fair”
   
   @PaulBKennedy You blog about a diverse range subjects. What are your objectives for your blog? Are you meeting them? How have they evolved?
   
   
8. Jonathan Turley, who sparks in his eponymous blog a very lively debate on complying with the police, the use of force, and obeying the law in his post “Ninth Circuit Rules Police Officers Were Justified in Tasering Pregnant Woman Three Times Over Traffic Ticket”
   
   @jonathanturley How do you decide which client representations to take on? Are you attracted to them by the legal issues or the people?
   
   
9. Johnny Gardner, who writes an engaging critique of the death penalty in Law and Baseball, not on moral grounds but rather because the stakes are so high and the variables so great in capital punishment cases: “The Death Penalty – I’m all about it”
   
   @lawandbaseball Why did you become a lawyer? Have your views changed since you’ve been practicing?
   
   
10. Ron Coleman, who writes about intellectual property and the two Chinas, and how IP disputes are leading to cooperation across the Taiwan Straits in Likelihood of Confusion: “Two Chinas Policy”
    
    @RonColeman What’s the next big battlefield of intellectual property law? How will it help define IP law in the next decade?
    
    
11. Kevin Underhill, who writes in Lowering the Bar about a rather lengthy Ninth Circuit decision finding that “assault with a dangerous weapon” does not apply in the instance of attacking someone with one’s with bare hands: “Ninth Circuit Grapples With Whether Bare Hands Are ‘Weapons’”
    
    @loweringthebar Was it hard to convince your firm’s leadership to let you blog? Are there ever editorial conflicts? How are they resolved?
    
    
12. Bill Marler writing in Marler Blog, who updates us on the latest chapter in Stephanie Smith’s E. coli poisoning from a tainted hamburger produced by Cargill: “Smith vs Cargill E. coli Trial 2010”
    
    @bmarler Will the Health Care reform legislation have any impact on victims of food-borne illnesses? On the regulation of food producers?
    
    
13. Brian Tannebaum, who calls out lawyers seeking the #1 spot on Google results in “The Ethics Of Lawyer Marketing, And Other Lost Ideals.” You love him, you hate him, but in the end you’re glad he’s there, injecting common sense, clarity and credibility into lawyer marketing in the social media age at My Law License.
    
    @btannebaum What will the legal ethics landscape look like in 10 years? Will the profession be struggling with the same issues it is today?
    
    
14. Eric Turkewitz in New York Personal Injury Attorney Blog, writing on the health care reform bill and what it means for his clients, personal injury victims: “Health Care Bill: Benefits For Personal Injury Victims”
    
    @turkewitz You’re an active Web 2.0 participant. What specific impact on business, if any, have you see from your online activities?
    
    
15. Adrian Baron, The Nutmeg Lawyer, who indeed articulates the “trials and tribulations of law practice” as he weaves St. Patrick’s Day, the Ides of March, and a lawyer-shopping potential client into his post: “Shamrocks & Shenanigans”
    
    @lawbaron You review law schools on your site. What advice do you have for people going to law school today?
    
    
16. Ken from Popehat, whose post exploring the themes of the film “10 Rules For Dealing With Police” is an unintended but excellent companion piece to Jonathan Turley’s post: “10 Rules For Dealing With Police: Prudence and Subservience”
    
    @popehat You’ve been blogging for a long time, on a very wide range of topics. What drives your blogging? Does it make you a better lawyer?
    
    
17. Rick Horowitz in Probable Cause, who tells the story of a young client desperately in need of help, stuck in a system that cannot give her the treatment she needs: “I’m in a funk”
    
    @RickHorowitz What can society do to help kids like your client whose mental health issues land them in jail? More funding? Better training?
    
    
18. Gideon, whose latest a public defender post reminds us of the fragility of the Constitutional right to counsel that most of us take for granted every day: “Bad ad-Weis: spitting on Barker”
    
    @gideonstrumpet What would you say is the most difficult aspect of being a public defender?
    
    
19. Scott Greenfield in Simple Justice, who defends Harold Comer and his decision to not seek additional DNA testing for his client Hank Skinner in Skinner’s 1994 trial for murder: “Strategic Shunning”
    
    @ScottGreenfield What’s the most significant challenge facing lawyers today? How is it changing the profession? Is there a fix?
    
    
20. Edward Prutschi, writing on Slaw, who gives us a thought-provoking post on making the roads safer by adopting a very innovative approach to reducing the number of people who drive drunk: “Tackling Impaired Driving… By Decriminalizing It”
    
    @prutschi Tell us about one of the more significant client representations you've had. What was it about? Why was it important?
    
    
21. Mark W. Bennett, in a guest post on The Trial Warrior, reports on the U.S. Supreme Court’ in extremis halting of Hank Skinner’s execution: “Guest Post by Mark W. Bennett: A Triumph of Civil Litigation”
    
    @MarkWBennett The SCOTUS stay is clearly a win for Skinner, but what does mean for the rest of us? Why is it a “triumph of civil litigation”
    
    
22. Stephanie Kimbro in Virtual Law Practice, who provides a useful overview of the virtual law practice, what it is and isn’t, how it works, and what clients need to look for when they consider hiring an attorney who delivers legal services online: “Clearing Up the Terminology Before TECHSHOW”
    
    @stephkimbro You must meet many potential clients who worry about VLO security. What’s the one thing that convinces them to hire you?

Blawg Review has information about next week’s host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.