ALMResearchBlog

Data Content 09

I've just returned from a conference called Data Content 09 run by Infocommerce Group.  To oversimplify, the gist of the two day conference is how companies can use data to create new products, improve current products, collect additional data or license existing data for others to use.

Being in the research and marketing business - content is king.  I know you've heard that before, so have I.  What made me actually pay attention this time is the new ways companies are using different forms of data to enhance their businesses.  User generated content, was a big topic.  Customer reviews and self-submitted profiles continue to grow - and as one participant pointed out - as they grow, the volume of information that gets collected makes them more valuable, and actually drives more user generated content.  Mobile was another big topic.  It's amazing how many iphone apps exist, and even more amazing how many people pay for them and use them.  The question of the day was not "should we develop an iphone app?  it was "what iphone app should we develop?"

How does content relate to your law firm competitive intelligence and business development? 

Well think about your CRM system;  Are you using it to it's fullest?  Capturing as much information as possible on each contact and centralizing that data so that others in the firm with the same contact can append their info? Making them all search-able by practice area, geography, company, industry etc?

How about billing and collections?  Do you know what your realization rates are?  By practice?  Or office?  That information is available in the market to benchmark and compare.  (Full disclosure:  yes, that is a survey that we sell.)

Compensation is another area. And as the market continues to be difficult, many firms are looking at aggressive compensation plans based on performance metrics other than just hours billed. 

Bottom line is that there are plenty of places to look within a law firm, or company, to find information that will either help you run more efficiently, or will create new opportunities for business.

Independent Law Firms in Europe

Legal Week’s annual publication reporting on Independent Law Firms in Europe is now available. The report covers legal markets from Ireland to Ukraine, and features a detailed survey of independent law firms' plans for 2008, interviews with leading independent lawyers across the European Union, and analysis of individual jurisdictions from Legal Week's journalists.

New “Success Kit” for Business Development

Not that we make a practice of promoting anyone else’s products and services, but Jim Hasset of the Legal Business Development Blog has developed the “Legal Biz Dev Success Kit,” and reviews—all positive—are popping up on a variety of sites, such as this one by Tom Kane on the Legal Marketing Blog, and this one by Kate Daisley on  Amid the Noise and Haste. A demo of  the modular course is available here. Check it out.

Survey: Corporate Counsel Costs Up 7 Percent

According to this report in The National Law Journal of a new survey from Altman Weil and LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell, corporate law department internal spending climbed by 7 percent while outside spending edged up by 1.4 percent at American companies with more than $5 billion in revenue. The increase translates to costs of $346,497 per lawyer, driven chiefly by an average 19.2 percent bump in lawyer compensation and benefits. Outside expenditures now average $616,519 per lawyer, ranging from above $1 million in the chemical manufacturing industry to $251,405 per lawyer in the insurance industry. The survey data, collected from 144 companies in the spring, reflects fiscal year 2006 spending.

Just Released: Report of Practice Group Management Survey

Altman Weil and ALM Research have just released a report of their survey of Law Firm Practice Group Management, which surveyed law firm leaders across the U.S. about their practice group operations and management. Key findings include the fact that, despite the time and money invested in their practice groups, more that half of law firm managing partners and executive directors surveyed rated overall practice group performance as average or worse. When asked to rate their groups on the ability to market, develop new business and cross-sell other practices, fewer than 20 percent of firm leaders rated their groups as “excellent” or “very good” on any one of those measures.

The report includes data and information about practice group structure, performance, operations, leadership, administration, and marketing. It is the first formal benchmarking survey of law firm practice group management to be published in the U.S. In addition, the report leverages the extensive expertise of Altman Weil, to provide actionable recommendations for improving and increasing the overall effectiveness of Practice Groups. The report is available through ALM Research Publishing.

LSSO RainDance Conference

The Legal Sales and Service Organization wants business development and marketing folks to save the date for their next conference: May 6 – 8, 2008 in Boston at the Hilton Boston, Logan Airport. Those who register before March 14 receive preferred pricing on registration. FYI: RainDance is the industry's only leadership conference exclusively focused on driving revenue and building client loyalty. You can visit the Past Events page on their website to view speakers, topics, comments, and conference photos from past conferences. To register visit the LSSO web site, call 617-726-1500 or email [email protected] for more information.

Law Firm Client Surveys

We were intrigued by Tom Collins’ musings and suggestions (More Partner Income Blog)
about client surveys. Collins says he has read very little in the past year dealing with client surveys and wonders if the whole idea has “moved to the back of the collective mind of law firm managing partners.” We’re wondering also—and, in fact, it is one of the topics covered in our current Business Development Practices Survey, which we invite your law firm to participate in.

We ask, in our survey, not only whether your firm conducts formal client interviews and/or satisfaction surveys, but who conducts the surveys/interviews, how they are conducted, how often they are conducted, how the selection process works as to which clients are selected for surveying/interviewing, how the information is disseminated, and what the purpose is. We also ask respondents to rate client surveys/interviews for their effectiveness as a business development strategy.

Collins recommends that this strategy should be an ongoing exercise, but should not be done as a mass mailing. He also offers advice on how often to conduct surveys, and who should be surveyed or interviewed, along with a few caveats, e.g. Do not conduct surveys unless you plan to do something in response to the results.  Do not survey unless you have assigned clear responsibility and established accountability for follow up with each client regarding their survey.  To read more, click here.

To participate in this year's Business Development Practices Survey, click here. The survey covers marketing/communications efforts (budgets, staffing, strategy, and other organization concerns), as well as business development/sales efforts and trends. Participants receive the Executive Summary and a discount on the full publised report.

Marketing and Business Development: Just Follow the List

We like numbers here at ALM Research. And wouldn’t life—and work—be so much easier if all we had to do was follow the proscriptions of a numbered list telling us what to do, or what not to do? But which one? Take your pick—or perhaps try them all:

6 Things That Drive Clients Crazy (and What You Can Do to Avoid Them) appeared among FindLaw’s law practice management articles by Edward Poll.

8 More Marketing and Management Tips appeared on the Kohn Communications Marketing and Communications blog, with all each short paragraph authored by a different writer.

10 Tips from the Consultants at Kohn Communications appeared on the Kohn Communications Marketing and Communications blog, with each tip authored by a different writer/consultant.

10 Business Tips to Help Your Legal Practice appeared on the Legal Marketing Blog (they had picked it up from the article on RainToday.com by Ruth Winett of Winett Associates).

10 Ways to Lose Good Clients was mentioned on Alison Shield’s Legal Ease Blog (it was actually the title of a now-past tele-seminar).

15 Ways to Become an Influential Blogger appeared on Kevin O’Keefe’s Real Lawyers Have Blogs blog (referencing the author of Skelliewag, a site about “creating content your site’s visitors will fall in love with”).

17 Lawyer Tips: A Mini Manifesto appeared on Larry Bodine’s Law Marketing Blog (he had picked it up from the ABA's Law Practice magazine; the list was put together by Matt Homann).

Evolving Role of the CMO

On his blog, Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices, Gerry Riskin posted a discussion (Gaining Influence as a Law Firm CMO) of an article appearing in the September 2007 issue of the McKinsey Quarterly on The Evolving Role of the CMO (the full article is available only to premium subscribers). According to Riskin, the writer—David Court—posed four areas of change for the CMO: changing to reflect new customer (client) buying behavior; shaping the company’s (firm’s) public profile; managing complexity; and building new marketing capabilities. Riskin says you may want to ask your Managing Partner to read this—“if you are a serious CMO in a serious law firm"--so that you can discuss how to implement some of Court’s suggestions.

Business Development and Marketing: By the Numbers

Our own Business Development Survey report (2006; the 2007 survey to launch right after Labor Day) presents all the information we learned about business development and marketing practices—budgets, staffing, strategies—basically in the order of how we asked the questions. Perhaps we should take hint from these other writers who use short, numbered lists. We do like lists.

11 Ways to Build Relationships, is courtesy of Tom Kane and his Legal Marketing Blog. In Kane’s world, because he encourages lawyers to entertain (No. 2 on his list) he feels that one can build relationships with clients and gather referral sources on the golf course, a place he is obviously pining to be. Kane says that his list of 11 tips comes directly from Sara Holtz’s list (The Complete Lawyer which is called: Instead of Golf: Ten Ways To Build Personal Relationships That Build Business.) And on his newly re-vamped Law Marketing Blog, Larry Bodine has the 25 Question Sales Training Quiz (e.g., You know you need to develop a sales training program when … all of your rainmakers are over 65.)

FindLaw has come up with Ten Ways to Protect Your Marketing Intellectual Property, a list of “ten situations where your marketing department should avoid spreading the word,” starting with starting with not being so generous in sharing your internal reports. Also on Findlaw: 17 Fatal Marketing Mistakes Lawyers Make, authored by consultant Trey Ryder. (Mistake #1: Relying on Referrals.)