You Fall Out of Your Chair…

February 15, 2006 | Filed Under Managing, Selling the GC 

…Is the legal Jeopardy answer to “What happens when a leader speaks directly and with conviction?”

David Maister, the leading mangement advisor to professional service firms, has written a great speech for a new law firm managing partner. The entire work is worth reading (it would be great to hear Mr. Maister deliver it on a podcast). This part pushed me off balance:

ON CLIENTS AND WHAT THEY WANT

I believe that clients can make few distinctions on the technical capabilities of the best firms, and place great emphasis on the ability of the individual partner to enter their world, relate to them in their language, talk to them about their business. We will never succeed by being technicians alone, no matter how high our level of technical skill. Clients want us to know their business. They want us to be interested in them.

The best part of this is that it serves to shake a lawyers out of a central comfort zone: their qualifications, their firm (or legal department) attributes, and their reasons why what they know is complex and boy should people pay dearly for it.

Sometimes law firms are urged to avoid getting direct client feedback. This attitude I will never understand.

One thing about the inhouse practice is that you hear how you are doing in real time. Not always pleasant; but definitely always instructive as to what is important to the client.

David Maister entered the blogging race just this year. It looks to me like he may soon lap the field.

Staying Flush When A Rainmaker Dries Up

January 13, 2006 | Filed Under Managing, Selling the GC 

Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail gives a rare view into what happens to a law firm when a key rainmaker departs.

The more publicized case is when a lawyer leaves with a “book of business” and goes to hopefully greener pastures with another firm. Gnashing of teeth (and sometimes litigation) results. Clients are often caught in the middle of a tug-of-war, which doesn’t do much to foster long-term loyalty.

Recently for leading Canadian firm Osler Hoskin & Harcourt, things were different. Late last year, longtime partner Peter Dey departed to become chairman of Paradigm Capital Inc., an institutional investment dealer.

As the paper notes:

So when it came time last year to wrap up business with his law firm clients once again, Mr. Dey had the drill all worked out. Namely, he started bringing in other partners to transfer work within the firm.

It’s what he did with the Royal Canadian Mint, for example, which last year retained him to offer advice on executive compensation matters. While the government agency was content to deal with Mr. Dey, despite his impending departure, the corporate governance expert took the added initiative to bring a younger Osler colleague, Robert Yalden in the firm’s Montreal office, to shadow him on the file.

Then this caught my attention as it is something many people don’t consider at the time:

Relationships between law firms and clients are fragile at the best of times, and when a lawyer retires, the loss can trigger wandering eyes.

If retirement can cause “wandering eyes,” what does “bolting for a bigger draw” cause?

The pressures to hit billing targets can cause some law firm partners to zealously control access to clients. But if a firm is truly a firm–and not a confederacy of rainmakers and assorted hangers-on–it is essential to treat clients like the relationship matters. In this case, Osler and Mr. Dey appear to have brought the clients to the table.

Which makes it more likely that they will stay for dessert and pick up the check.

What Will Brown Do With You?

January 11, 2006 | Filed Under Legal Resources, Selling the GC 

Send you to the junkyard if you’re not on your toes.

Tom Collins reports on an interesting decision allegedly made by UPS to terminate the services of a long-time outside firm. He quotes a remark attributed to Teri P. McClure, vice president and manager of the legal department, who recently told an audience in Atlanta:

…that she recently fired a firm that had worked for UPS for 40 years. Even after 40 years, they had not taken the time to understand the nature of UPS. Their attorneys keep calling the company’s brown delivery vehicles “trucks”. “They’re not called trucks,” she said. “They’re called package cars. If you call them trucks, you don’t understand the nature of our business.”

This exchange was originally recounted in the Fulton County Daily Report, found on law.com here.

Yup, a search of the UPS site reveals 71 hits for the phrase “package cars.”

But a similar search for “brown trucks” yields 24 hits.

And a link to this page, which contains a reference to 64,000 examples of a certain UPS service mark: “Big Brown Trucks.” According to a search of that phrase using the USPTO engine, “Big Brown Truck” was registered by UPS effective May 17, 2005. Perhaps the attorney of record doesn’t understand the business.

Maybe if UPS had sent a model of one of these to each of their engagement partners to reinforce the “car” mindset, things would have been different:

My car can beat your truck...

I like the name of Mr. Collins’ weblog: morepartnerincome.com. Nice and direct. Rare–but not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Update (13 Jan 06): An alert reader points to this page on the UPS website. The tagline at the top of the page “We’re Going To Race the Truck. People Love The Truck” is a mark UPS filed with the USPTO on May 10, 2005 (serial no. 78626526). Perhaps the fired firm was staffed with NASCAR fans. By the way, my company uses UPS exclusively and I love the truck.

The Ad Space Race

December 29, 2005 | Filed Under Selling the GC 

To end this trilogy on face-to-face client contact and its implications, I’d like to briefly examine how legal marketing fits into the mix. The starting point for many firms is their advertising. I actually find law firm advertising interesting; but I’m not sure it always delivers on what is promised–or intended.

When you flip through the pages of glossy legal publications, you see no end of law firm ads. Magazines such as the excellent American Lawyer (ed. note: “product placement” alert) have no small number of well-designed and carefully executed ads. If this is about branding, or about entering the current or future client’s mindset, then it certainly has a place in an overall legal marketing strategy.

But I think that much of the advertising that is intended as legal marketing really is an exercise in law firm vanity. The high (or low) point of this for me was the firm that ran double page ads that were almost totally blank. I can’t recall the name of the firm (which tells you something right there) but I recall thinking “more money than brains” as I blasted by. Is that the best tagline of a new firm branding campaign? What did the agency tell the firm they would gain by this “bold initiative?”

The other type of ad that is popular is the “list of awards or benefits” type of ad. Look at us, we’re number one. Check us out, we have X attorneys in Y offices in Z countries around the world. Do these firms think we are taking notes as we read?

It’s almost as if some firms have a large legal marketing budget and by God are going to spend six or seven figures on these sort of ads, come hell or high water. While expensive, it’s so easy. Have a few different ads designed, pick the ones that make the marketing committee feel good about themselves, place them in a few publications and then sit back and wait for the GCs to call. Is the phone ringing off the hook?

I think I know the answer. For me, I would never put a firm on my mental list to bolster my starting rotation because of an ad. How would some firm get there?

First, I would want some personal referral or validation from someone I trust. How do you get one of these? Start by doing a good job with current clients. Second, make it clear to these clients with periodic off-the-meter, face-to-face meetings that you are interested in their business and in contributing to their success. If you don’t know what keeps that GC or managing counsel up at night, you don’t really know them and you’re probably not getting any referrals. Third, I would try to come up with at least one unsolicited idea every year that might save the client money (even if its risks a short-term reduction in my billings).

I know these are not easy, and that they are time-consuming. Certainly not as convenient as hiding behind an ad or a slick brochure and think you are developing business.

But don’t despair. Act. Pick up the telephone right now and schedule a meeting early in 2006 with your best client, or one who you’d like to do more work for.

I’d take that call. I’d look forward to that meeting. And what did that cost your firm? Almost nothing.

There, now you can go out and celebrate with a good conscience.

Happy New Year to you and yours. Please stop back here in early 2006. I think it is going to be a very interesting year.

What Face Means For Place

December 28, 2005 | Filed Under Legal Resources, Selling the GC 

I wrote yesterday about the value of personal contact in a legal world dominated by fast communication that is mostly high-tech, not high-touch. Patrick Lamb was kind enough to pick up on this topic and offer that his firm’s client surveys show that clients appreciate lawyers who care enough to look them in the eye from time-to-time.

Today, a few thoughts about what this may mean for office location and space design for the forward-looking law firm.

First, I need to add an assumption to the “clients appreciate face time” one: most face-to-face contact is at the client’s place of business (or perhaps at some other location like a court). My informal sampling of GCs indicates that less than 25% of personal meetings with lawyers are at the lawyer’s office. The main reasons for such visits are for things like deposition prep or to negotiate or close a transaction. Hardly the time (or place) for asking a client some open-ended questions and listening.

If we accept that lawyers need to spend more time with clients and clients rarely visit their law firm’s offices, a question pops up: why do most firms in large cities persist in putting all their people in pricey high-rise space under long-term leases?

Here are a few of the reasons offered (and my response):

– Clients are impressed. (But they never visit! And if they do, they understand why they just got their notice of a rate increase in 2006).

– Partners deserve the prestige attached to tony addresses. (And how late in each year does that partner’s income statement go green?)

– Associates see it as a bullish sign of the firm’s future. (What is the new billable hour target?)

– Recruits factor location into their decision on which firm to join. (Ever try expanding your law school recruiting universe beyond the Top 10?)

– Staff likes the excitement and “halo effect” of a great address. (Right. And how much does it cost them to park or commute?)

Some large firms in large cities have partly addressed this issue by putting back-office staff in lower cost areas nearby (or even offshore). What the next step may be is for firms to have a main location in a city (but with less space and less “cachet”), and some satellite locations in suburbs where the rents may be cheaper and staff commutes would be shorter. Or just bite the bullett and allow some lawyers to telecommute. If you don’t have an hour long commute each way to work, perhaps you have a little more time for maintaining balance–or even the occasional client visit.

But wait! I thought yesterday we found that telecommuting was so yesterday? You need face-to-face interaction in the firms just as much as you need it for clients, right?

And you do–but I’d wager that on many days lawyers who are on the same floor of a large-footprint building on Fifth Avenue communicate mostly by email anyway. The firm could have a weekly practice-group meeting on one day and a skills development meeting later in the week Both 60 minutes or so. Then a large room of smaller office spaces that provide laptop hookup and phone access. These offices could spur interaction among lawyers and you wouldn’t need a dedicated office for everyone, because of vacations and travel. And the legal tech vendors who have sold the virtues of investing in digitizing files and firm records finally have a legitimate chance at providing some payback.

I’m sure I don’t understand all the intricacies of space selection and design of the modern law firm. But when I see firms jockeying for a new “signature” building, and later submitting their interior design to magazines for their annual awards, I know one thing: I’ve never retained a firm on the basis of its offices. And I have to think that the overhead costs inherent in the current space model are a big driver of higher rates and higher billable hour quotas. And I have decided against retaining more than one firm because of these factors.

Tomorrow, I’ll close out the year by stepping back from face and place and provide a GC-eye view of what lawyers do instead of client visits. A preview: It’s typically called legal marketing or client development–and it ain’t either of ‘em.

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