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)

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

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

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.

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

Why are we still debating (redux)?

Are you really not yet convinced that you need to develop a more active social networking and social media profile? That you need to understand and use and master social media tools for communicating? Maybe the CEO of Sun Microsystems can convince you:

“As CEO, I need to engage the market, inside and outside Sun, with whatever technology affords me the greatest possible reach. Through blogs, online news, social networking sites, or Twitter, the internet has fundamentally changed how we communicate with one another. Today, we have thousands of employees participating, engaging customers and developers across the world, 24 hours a day. And whether it’s via a half-hour streaming video or a 140-character tweet, we need to reach everyone in the forum and format they choose – not what we choose” (emphasis added)

Jonathan Schwartz in “Should CEOs Twitter?,” Brunswick Review, Winter 2009

Could the message be any clearer? If you want to reach clients and potential clients and journalists and other decision-makers, you don’t get to choose where and how. They’ve already chosen. To communicate, you must do it on the terms of the people you want to reach, in the places they look for information, with the tools they’re using to read it. And if you’re not in the Web 2.0 space, you might as well pack up and go home.

Why are we still debating?

Are you exploring Social Media?

What are you doing to market your practice with social media? How are you telling your story? What are your objectives? Are you meeting them?

There's no doubt that social media is revolutionizing PR, marketing, and internal communications across industries, and that the legal profession finds itself directly in the mix. Are you keeping up with the changes or getting left behind? Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and many more social networking tools are out there. Social media can no longer be considered a fad: it is the method that millions of people use to communicate via multiple channels with specific audiences.

But if the tools for communicating have changed, the rules of communication are the same as they have always been. You need a message. You need a plan. You need disciplined execution if you are going to generate value from your social media activities.

I recently participated with Mike Driehorst of Diamond Communications in a panel discussion for a group of lawyers and legal professionals at a joint Legal Marketing Association-Ohio and Association of Legal Administrators luncheon in Toledo, Ohio. Our goal was to place the basic social media and social networking concepts into the context of the legal profession, and to provide our audience with an overview of what they need to do to get started in social media. How do you think we did? Did we leave anything out? We would love your feedback on how we can make this presentation even more relevant to lawyers seeking to embrace social media. Leave us a comment. Send us an email. Track us down on Twitter. We're all ears.

Embracing Social Media

View more presentations from Lance Godard.

Are you listening to your peers?

To better understand how lawyers can use Twitter and other social networking tools to grow their practices, I began talking to practicing lawyers who were active on Twitter. Not really "talking” to them, in the traditional sense at least. More like interviewing them. Live. On Twitter. And it's been great: the interviewees have been interesting and engaging, the interviews fun and insightful, and the reaction from the legal twitterverse overwhelmingly positive. 

These "twitterviews" provide a great snapshot of what these lawyers do, how they market themselves, where they think the profession is going, and more. The lawyers I've interviewed are witty, smart, determined, adventurous, willing to take risks and step into the unknown. Lawyers I would want representing me. Lawyers, I sincerely hope, that potential clients will think of when they need representation.  

The interviews have also given me a lot of valuable ideas that I will incorporate into posts from time to time. For now, though, I will let them speak for themselves. Visit 22Tweets.com and read what these lawyers have to say. You’ll be glad you did (and will most likely learn something).

Are you telling the right story?

What do you say to potential clients? Do you tell them what you do? The type of law you practice, the clients you've represented, the deals you've done or the cases you've won? Or do you tell them what you can do for them? 

It's easy, after all, to focus on what you've done. You know it well, it's impressive information, it summarizes your strengths and experience in a concise package. But is it valuable? Does it communicate your ability to help them manage the situation, make their decision, comply with the regulation, to respond to that which brought them to you? Isn't that what they're going to buy? 

Of course they want someone who knows their industry. Of course they need an expert who has solved problems just like theirs. Of course they're going to hire the lawyer whose background and skills correspond exactly to the demands of the matter at hand. That's why they're talking to you in the first place: if they were not already confident that your practice was credible and your record impressive, that you could help them, you wouldn't be sitting at the table. So don't use the precious little one-on-one time you've got to tell them what they already know. Tell them what you can do in their unique situation. How you can help them save their company, sell their ideas, license their product, buy their competitor. Because that's what they need, and it's precisely what you're good at doing. 

Don't tell your potential clients what you do. Tell them what you can do for them.

Aren't you on Twitter yet?

Carolyn Elefant, on Nolo’s Legal Marketing Blog, just posted another piece on why lawyers should be on Twitter: “To Twitter or Not To Twitter? That is the Question for Lawyers” (you know where I stand on this from this post and this one). Elefant gives a very useful overview of what Twitter is and how you can use it to market yourself and your practice. Get on Twitter, position yourself as an expert amongst your peers, develop relationships with people who can help you grow your business, have fun engaging others in conversations about things for which you have true passion that have nothing to do with your professional activity. That sounds easy, doesn’t it? It truly is. But do we Tweevangelists really believe that there is value in that? Real value, the kind you can endorse on the back and deposit into your account?

In a recent post, I asked whether lawyers shouldn’t be using Twitter to engage clients rather than other lawyers. I don’t ask the question because I think engaging other lawyers does not have value. It does. I don’t ask it because I think using Twitter to validate your expertise does not have value. It does. I don’t ask it because I don’t think establishing relationships based on non-work interests does not have value. It does. All of the ways that lawyers are currently using Twitter have real value that can lead to real work.

But I cannot believe that there isn’t more. That we cannot move Twitter from being an effective networking tool to being a practical communication tool. That you can’t use Twitter to communicate directly with your clients in real time, taking advantage of the immediacy and directness and responsiveness and crowd-sourcing and all of the other benefits of Twitter to help you do your business better, make your clients happier, provide better service and add greater value. Others are doing it, such as @scottymonty and @zappos. Of course selling shoes or selling cars is not like selling legal services. But can't we learn from them? Can't we apply what they are doing and how they are doing it to what we do and how we do it?

I don’t know the answer to this question, and I’m not even sure I could come up with it on my own. But I am sure that someone will, and while the rest of us are still trying to figure out why a client would want to communicate with her lawyer in a public forum, that person will move the game to the next level. 

Three related points. 

First point: in my last post on Twitter I asked for ideas on how lawyers can use twitter to communicate with clients. I got some good comments that are worth reposting here:

Bruce Carton said

“Lance, I have gone with the Trojan Horse method. I re-branded my @SecuritiesD Twitter feed as a "news wire," and have it identified and piped-in via RSS to my website (securitiesdocket.com) as such. Lawyers understand what a newswire is and like it. They didn't pay much attention to it as a Twitter feed.”

  Doug Cornelius said

Lance -

I think there many be some over-enthusiasm for Twitter as a client development tool for lawyers. I think there is a big variation depending on your practice. Chris Brogan gets lots of clients through Twitter because that is the nature of his business. He is a social media consultant. Kevin O'Keefe gets lots of business through Twitter because he is in the social media business.

As a commercial real estate lawyer, none of my clients use social media. They do not read blogs. They do not use Twitter. Only a handful were even in LinkedIn. Even in my new area of compliance, there are very few people in the industry using blogs or twitter. If I were an IP lawyer or dealing with tech start companies. The opposite would probably be true.

The other concern is the future Twitter business model. Right now, the company has zero revenue. That cannot go on indefinitely. Something will change. It may just put Twitter in the junk-pile (anyone remember Friendster?)

I am a big fan of Twitter. But I am less sold on evangelizing it to clients. I would not spend the time in a pitch talking about Twitter. The focus should be on the client and solving the client's need not on your twitter habits.

I like the idea of putting your twitter username on your business card. (That leaves out bigfirm lawyers. Their marketing department would never allow it.) I assume you would also want your blog URL on your business card. If the client notices, then spend some time talking about it.

Melanie Green said (via Twitter)

Get your marketing folks to put Twitter "follow me" links on your web site in areas where people are providing content.

Second point: Does anyone recall how email was received when it first started to become a widespread communication tool? Did lawyers resist it because clients weren't already using it? Did lawyers try to convince clients not using email that it was a great tool for which they should sign up? 

Third point: Please tell me what you think. Can lawyers move Twitter to the next level of client communication? Should they? What are you doing to make your Twittering valuable to you and your practice? Do you think Twitter can be more than what lawyers are it for today?

What do your clients need?

Do you know what your clients need? Which services? The problems -- business critical problems, not legal ones -- they are trying to solve? That which keeps them awake at night? How can you find out? What do you need to know? How does knowing what they need translate into more work for you?

It isn't as easy as it might seem to obtain actionable intelligence about your client from that client herself. You need to do your homework before the conversation, run the discussion like an interview, and identify and execute follow-up. My thoughts on doing it right:

• Make a list of your favorite clients, the ones you can't wait to work for, the ones that always pay your bills. These are your target clients, the only ones you should be chasing. Prioritize them based on your assessment of the opportunity for additional work (criteria include the strength of your relationship with the client, the size and scope of the client's legal needs, your ability to respond to those needs, the percentage of the client's legal work you're already doing, etc.).
  
  
• Spend a few hours reading as much as you can about the first client on your list. It doesn't have to be done in a day or a week, but you need to know their business, their industry, their competition, their challenges, and most of all how they define success and how well they are achieving it. 
  
  
• Make a list of what you believe to be the five critical business issues facing that first client. Do those issues have a legal element? Is it work you can credibly do? Are there upcoming developments in the law that will impact your client's ability to do business and succeed? 
  
  
• Have a conversation with your client, on the phone or better yet in person, at a place and time where you can have a meaningful conversation. Ask her questions about her business, her industry, her competitors, her challenges, how she defines success. Use the knowledge you learned to in your research to sound like you know her business better than she does. Ask a lot of questions without answering them yourself. Talk about the legal elements of her business issues as if you've already solved her problems. Listen to what she tells you. 
  
  
• After that discussion, armed with everything you learned, identify three things you can do for your client that will help her be smart or happy or successful or all three. They don't have to be complicated. In fact, the more complicated they are the less likely you are to do them. Things like "send two-paragraph summary of pending labelling legislation" or "identify cross-border tax specialist with shipping expertise" or even "invite to concert in late June." 
  
  
• Do the things on your list. Without fail. Don't put them off, don't talk yourself out of them, don't forget. Do them as soon as you can, then come up with three more and do them too. And three more after you've done those. Keep doing things for your client, things that will help her be smart or happy or successful or all of the above, and she'll soon think you're the best lawyer she's ever met, the lawyer who provides real value, the lawyer who will be getting more and more of her work. 
  
  
• When you're at a point where you are regularly demonstrating your value to that client, move to the next one on your list. You should be working on two or three client relationships at a time, enough to keep your opportunity pipeline flowing, but not requiring so much time that you end up doing nothing or, worse yet, not meeting the obligations of your practice. The goal is to keep looking ahead, to maximize the value of your business development time, to minimize the burdens, all the while producing results.

I'm sure all of you have your own ideas that work. Please share them as comments to this post so that other readers can benefit. 

One last thought: if your clients are not having meaningful discussions with you, they'll have them with your competition. Which do you think is the better scenario? 

Why aren't you excited about 2009?

Do you think that 2009 is going to be a banner year, that you'll end it doing the work you want to do for the clients you dream about having? Why not? Do those dream clients no longer need legal advice? Has the work you love disappeared as a legal discipline? 

Isn't it possible that this year could be good for you in some respects? That the slowdown might give you an opportunity to analyze your client base and focus your business development efforts on the handful of clients you like, who pay your bills on time without question? A chance to rediscover what it is you love about the law, what you're truly good at, and how you can do more of that work? Is there no chance at all that you can finish this year right where you want to be, in your sweet spot, ideally positioned to make your post-economic-crisis career better than that which you had before the world came crashing down around us? 

It won't be easy, of course. It will require commitment, planning, discipline and lots of hard work. You'll need to focus your time, effort and money, chase only those opportunities that fall into your zone, keep your eye on the prize at all times. You will have to make hard choices, step outside of your comfort zone, maybe even pass up a chance to bid on work you don't want to do for a client that won't pay your bills (not as easy as it sounds). But it's not impossible. 

You'll need a plan of action, one that identifies your objectives and the steps you'll take to meet them. Not a "Strategic Plan" filled with self-evident truths that takes too much of your time to draft and ends up saying little because it tries to say everything. Just a plan, an idea of where you want to go, how you're going to get there, how you'll know when you've arrived, and how long you think it will take. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be complex. You don't need to account for every potential development, you're allowed to make mistakes, you can always change the plan later when you discover this idea doesn't work or that one does or this client doesn't have as much work as you thought it would. It's your plan after all.

Would you be more excited about 2009 if you owned your future? Write your plan and you will. 

What's on your menu?

“Change the menu.” That’s part of the recommendation Jay Ehret (The Marketing Spot) gave his client, Eddie’s Trackside Bar & Grill. What would you do with that advice? What’s on your menu, and how does it appeal to your clients and potential clients? How could you change it? 

It’s not hard to see the lists of services / practices / experience / skills at many law firms as menus, naming anything and everything you can find in the kitchen (a high-end kitchen that doesn’t list prices on the menu, mind you): 

“How’s the cross-border acquisition today? Good? Excellent, I’ll go with that then, an acquisition in the chemicals industry in Brazil. Can I swap out the acquisition finance for a side of your labor, FCPA, and tax medley? Yes, it does look very good....”

What if your menu wasn’t a list of every type of deal you’ve structured, every type of client you’ve represented, every type of dispute you’ve worked on? What if you didn’t list facts and figures, but told stories about how your work helped your client meet its business objectives? What would your menu look like if it were written for the client, not for your lawyers?

It’s clear that the legal profession is going through profound changes in the current economy. More than ever, clients must evaluate the legal services they get through filters of “value” and “service,” and reward only those firms that provide long-term business solutions, not short-term legal fixes. It will be hard for lawyers and firms to change the way they do business, to change the way they value and charge for their services, to change the way they determine success or failure as a function of their client’s business results.

Why not let your menu be the first thing you change? It won’t be an easy change to make. It won't be the hardest, though, and it just might make some of the other changes less difficult. How do you think your client will react when she doesn't hear, “Hire us because we have significant experience in a broad range of public and private M&A transactions of all sizes in jurisdictions around the world”? When you ask instead, “What's the problem, and how can I make it go away?”

Why don’t you find out?  I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the result. 

Shouldn't lawyers be tweevangelizing to clients?

I can't stop thinking about Chris Brogan's comment that 40-60% of his opportunities come from Twitter (mentioned here yesterday). That's a great commercial for Twitter. When will lawyers be able to say that? Five years? Ten? What will it take? 

There's been a lot of talk lately about lawyers on Twitter, how many are joining, what they are saying, how they are trying to make Twitter work. What about the clients?  If you want 50% -- or even 5% -- of your opportunities to come from Twitter, don't you need to increase the number of clients and potential clients that use Twitter and follow you? The type of clients that have legal issues and hire lawyers? Shouldn't you stop convincing other lawyers to get on Twitter, and start convincing your potential client base to take the first step? How are you going to do that? Some thoughts:

• Put your Twitter username on your business card, above your email address
  
• Let contacts know that you share a lot of information on Twitter that might be of value to them
  
• Devote five minutes of every pitch to show your potential client how Twitter works and what you use it for
  
• Ask new contacts to join Twitter and follow you
  
• Organize structured tweetversations with colleagues on hot legal topics (à la Super Bowl ads discussion organized by Tom Peters)
  

What suggestions do you have?  Tweet them to me @lancegodard.

How hard could this be?

It happens a lot. I talk to lawyers and firms about their business and strategic objectives and what they're doing to achieve those goals, particularly their business development and marketing programs. We look at what they've done, what they want to do, what they don't want to do, what they should do. We put together a list of specific things they can start doing tomorrow.  Everyone feels good about the meeting, all jacked up from a good discussion, and we've each got a list of assignments that seem simple enough: research the legal needs of a few clients, make a list of client targets, identify a couple of legal trends impacting their clients' business, etc.  How hard could this be? 

I know it sounds easy. It really isn’t. If it were, you – and all of your peers – would be doing it already. Ideas, plans, strategies, action lists, those are the easy part. The hard part, the part that drives success, is execution: disciplined, focused, relentless execution. It takes time, commitment and hard work to develop new business and market your firm. Sometimes it takes money, to invest in software or training or events. Sometimes it takes new people, or refocusing the efforts of your current team, to manage the execution. Sometimes it takes organizational change, to improve communication and transparency. Every time, though, it takes a lot of effort to initiate and sustain the activity needed to ensure success.

By the way, the best business development and marketing ideas for your practice and your firm are probably not new or different. They’re most likely ideas that you had a long time ago, stuff you’ll find discussed in countless blogs and books and boardrooms. You already know what to do. But knowing what to do is nothing. Doing it is everything. So get to it.

Now what are you going to do?

You did everything the experts recommended. You became active on Twitter, developing a healthy set of followers. You started using LinkedIn, put all the right keywords in your profile, got stellar recommendations from clients and colleagues, asked and answered questions brilliantly. You regularly post to your blog, and the analytics tell you that more and more people read your work every day. So why aren’t you getting more business?

Maybe the “getting work” part never really changed because your workflow doesn’t depend on the tools you use. Don’t get me wrong: Twitter, LinkedIn, law blogs, and many other great resources are here to stay, and participation has become a must-do, like having a website or a firm brochure or business cards. But you don’t get business by just being smart, by hanging out at the cool parties, or even by being #1 on Google searches for lawyers in Phoenix. You get business by being responsive, by solving problems, and by helping clients sleep better at night. You get business by providing good service. You get business by listening. You get business by adding value. You get business by doing the same things that people getting business have done for generations, and that’s not going to change. So get on it. Talk to people. Find out what they need. Deliver it. And most importantly, add value. That’s what I’m going to do.

Are we asking the right question?

Are we asking the right question about the value of legal blogging? Carolyn Elefant on Legal Blog Watch asks: "Does blogging generate business?" It is a reasonable question, one that has been raised with respect to nearly all forms of lawyer communication -- newsletters, articles, public speaking, PR, to name a few. After all, understanding the return on investment for every type of marketing activity (think advertising, conferences, cocktail receptions, golf outings, etc.) is an important part of developing a meaningful business development and marketing program for lawyers and firms alike. The hard part is linking specific activities with specific results, and while history and experience allow firms to evaluate the ROI on much of their marketing spend, there is little history and no objective experience that allow them to apply the same analysis to legal blogging.

The question that lawyers and law firms should be asking instead is different: "is blogging the right way for us to communicate with our clients and potential clients?" For some clients, it probably isn't. But for an increasing number, legal blogging (and micro-blogging) is a vital way for lawyers and firms to establish strong relationships and communicate significant information, be it about legislative developments, legal analyses, firm news, or anything of relevance to their clients. The process isn't new: firms have been pushing information in myriad forms to their clients for years. What's new is the tool that allows lawyers and firms to establish true two-way communication with their clients, solicit their feedback and incorporate that feedback into future communications. Isn't a blog an important part of a communications program that is truly client-focused?  

Are you still waiting to see if blogging generates business before you start your own?

What's the problem with the billable hour?

As the battle to eradicate the billable hour wages on, I can't help but think that, in spite of all of its warts, it is still a pretty efficient way to compensate lawyers for their work. Yes, it can reward inefficiency. Yes, it emphasizes quantity of work, not quality of work. But isn't frustration with the billable hour a symptom rather than the problem? Does that particular billing method produce a negative impact on the delivery of legal services? Are clients getting bad work because of the billable hour? I cannot imagine a situation in which that were true (but welcome correction). 

Isn't the real problem one of value, trust and service? When clients say they are unhappy with the billable hour method, aren't they saying they feel like they're paying too much for their legal services? That the perceived value of those services does not equal the cost they've been asked to pay? Legal services have to be paid for, and by-the-hour is a reasonable way to do it until you think your lawyer spends unnecessary time on your matter, or charges too much for her time, or isn't telling you the truth when she says it will take 20 hours to resolve your problem. And if that's the case, then the billable hour isn't to blame. 

You say you want a revolution?

I love Twitter. It’s a great tool for all kinds of communication, formal and informal, broad and narrow, business and personal, smart and, well, not so smart. But is it the ne plus ultra of professional communication? Will it revolutionize the world of legal marketing? Kevin O’Keefe thinks so. Scott Greenfield seems to think not. In many ways it already has, if only because it allows me to communicate directly with people who are interested in the things I find important, people I would never have an opportunity to know without Twitter.

But Twitter isn't 'enry 'iggins or Richard Avedon, transforming the ugly duckling into a supermodel with the click of a mouse. Your 140-character witticisms and deep thoughts and pearls of wisdom don't pass through a clever or intelligence filter between your keyboard and the screens of your followers. Behind every tweet you still need substance, you still must have something to say that others find valuable. If you don’t, Twitter isn't going to help. So lawyers (and accountants and PR flacks and sales execs) that didn't have value to share with the rest of the world before Twitter are most likely not going to have much value to share with the Twitosphere. That’s really the bottom line, isn't it? You have to bring something to the table if you want Twitter to change the way you market your services. Twitter is revolutionary because it provides access – to ideas, to people and professionals, to cultures and beliefs, to just about anything that exists.  It's up to you to find the good ones, and to make sure that your tweets add value to the conversation. Like it's always been done.