A new season of Mad Men is in full swing, and once again, I continue to find themes that translate from a 1960s fictional advertising agency to a new millennium legal industry (for more posts, click here). Our protagonist Don Draper was a bad boy last season. Getting drunk at the wrong time. Sleeping
Controversial Clients and Social Media: Game Changer?
An interesting headline caught my eye this week via Forbes: “Disgusting!,” Cry Legal Experts: Is This The Lowest A Top U.S. Law Firm Has Ever Stoop (ht Above the Law).
Quick history lesson: During WWII the Japanese (allegedly) kidnapped (mostly) Korean women and forced them to be “comfort women” (prostitutes).
The case in question involves a U.S. law firm taking on a controversial action surrounding this issue:
Would any self-respecting U.S. law firm represent a client who suggested the Jews deserved the Holocaust? Probably not. As a matter of honor, most law firms would run a mile, and even the least honorable would conclude that the damage to their reputation wasn’t worth it.
Where imperial Japan’s atrocities are concerned, however, at least one top U.S. law firm hasn’t been so choosy. In what is surely one of the most controversial civil suits ever filed in the United States, the Los Angeles office of Chicago-based Mayer Brown is trying to prove that the so-called comfort women – the sex slaves used by the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II – were no more than common prostitutes.
Not exactly the way I’d like a story on my firm, in Forbes, to begin.
So why am I writing this post?
Call it what you will — a game changer, jumping the shark, yellow journalism, link bait — but something has shifted in the land of corporate communications and management with the advancement of social media.
While law firms like to hold themselves out to be above the fray (we’re a “profession” after all), truth is, we bleed green just like any other business and are susceptible to outside influences.
Earlier this month, the co-founder and CEO of Mozilla was forced to resign due to a relatively small political contribution he personally made to a now unpopular California state proposition.
Prior to the contribution being revealed — several years after the fact — there was no indication that his contribution ever impacted the running of the business, or the management of the employees.
But his personal position is now incredibly unpopular and political forces used social media to put pressure on the company once the contribution was unburied, and he resigned.
Then I saw the Forbes headline this week. And read the comments. And started a discussion. And listened to the debate. And I have one question that cannot be answered … yet:
What does this mean for law firms that take on unpopular or controversial clients or causes?
Continue Reading Controversial Clients and Social Media: Game Changer?
Trends in Media/Pr for Law Firms: What’s Valuable and Effective Today
Thank you to guest blogger Denise Nix, Marketing and Business Development Manager at Glaser Weil, for providing her insights into “Trends in Media/Pr for Law Firms: What’s Valuable and Effective Today” from the recent Legal Marketing Association annual conference.”
Really the only LMA session this year to focus exclusively on the PR side
Personally yours, from the Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference
It’s Monday afternoon and I have finally cleared my e-mail, spoke to a partner, posted a session recap/guest blog post (with three more in the que), and realize I have not personally provided any major content about the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual conference last week, except for my Twitter feed. Looks like I’m skipping the gym today.
First of all, the LMA annual conference is exactly what Tim Corcoran, our president, described in his opening remarks: part educational & networking conference, part family reunion, part high school reunion. And we all know who the crazy uncle is. There are so many layers to the LMA annual conference, that when I look at the conference from each individual pair of eyes, I find that it only tells one side of the story. Family reunion: It was wonderful to see so many of my former colleagues from across my career in legal marketing. Kevin McMurdo from Perkins Coie, Ellen Musante and Corey Garver from my Pillsbury days. Not to mention all the current and former committee and task force members I have worked with throughout the years at both the local and international levels. High School reunion: Some of my closest and dearest friends I have met through LMA. While we are in constant contact via Facebook, getting to see one another live is beyond measure. We have actually started to form an “after prom” event so we can focus on our business and networking while at the conference, knowing we’ll have our personal social time once the conference ends. 
Education & networking: Really, there is no better place in the industry for marketing professionals to gather. We are a strange breed, and only in LMA are “competitors” so open and willing to share, help one another as we traverse this road, mentor one another, and on board new legal marketers.
This year I found the two most powerful sessions, for me, to be the first and the last I attended.
Continue Reading Personally yours, from the Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference
When Firm Culture Gets In the Way of Firm Success: How to Overcome the Stumbling Blocks
Thank you to guest blogger Denise Nix, Marketing and Business Development Manager at Glaser Weil, for providing her insights into “When Firm Culture Gets In the Way of Firm Success: How to Overcome the Stumbling Blocks” from the recent Legal Marketing Association annual conference.”
Realizing that no marketing or business development strategy will
Session Recap: Generational Marketing (video)
Thanks to the folks at Spark Media Solutions for doing a great round of post-session interviews after our presentation, Generational Marketing: Strategies and tactics for engagement with Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials.They really picked up on the main themes of our session, and provides a great recap of our session.
Harvard’s Disruptive Innovation Conference Videos
I love disrupting things. From a recent assessment I did for a leadership program (I’ll blog on that soon), my natural traits include having a very high tolerance to conflict, which they defined as challenging the status quo.
So I was incredibly excited to hear about Harvard Law School’s Disruptive Innovation in the Market for Legal Services conference.
Sadly, I could not attend live, in person or as it streamed.
I can, however, watch the four videos at my leisure, and you can as well.
Panel 1: The Nature of Disruptive Innovation in Professional Services
Panel 2: The Role of Regulation
Continue Reading Harvard’s Disruptive Innovation Conference Videos
Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe – The Indictment
Well, the fall out from the Dewey implosion and bankruptcy has take a new turn with a 62-page indictment of senior partners and staff members, including a conspiracy charge worthy of John Grisham (ht Kathleen Pearson for that line). Attached is the indictment. Will take more than just a cup of coffee to read through
Mad Men and Law Firms: We Need a Pete
For quite a while now I keep telling attorneys in my firm that we need a Pete. For those of you who do not watch Mad Men, Pete Campbell is the head of accounts and a partner at Sterling, Cooper, Draper and the other guy. His job is to go out, find the business, wine and dine (and throw in a whore house or two) the clients. He is not an ad man. He’s a BD (business development) guy. Client services professional. And his role to the firm is key in their success:
- He finds the client.
- He is a bridge between the client and the creative team.
- He keeps the client happy and coming back for more.
Once Pete interests a client in the firm, he then introduces them to Don Draper, one of the agency’s partners and senior creative directors. Don then starts to get the potential client interested in the pizazz of what an advertising campaign run by him would look like. Once they get the green light to prepare a formal pitch, Don then brings his team together. Peggy, the head copy writer, and on her way to becoming a partner, along with the media buyers, art directors, and junior copywriters. They then work together to pull the pitch together and present to the client.
Nothing about this flow chart is unique. Accounting and other professional services businesses are run this way. They all have a Pete.
Law firms? For the most part, we don’t have a Pete. And our flow charts for new business doesn’t look like their process at all.
Continue Reading Mad Men and Law Firms: We Need a Pete
Why the generational shift in leadership is impacting the legal industry
Last month came the news that another law firm is closing its doors. This time north of the 49th parallel.
One of Canada’s largest firms seemingly collapsed overnight. But, like most law firm failures, the collapse was a long time coming.
Canada’s online legal magazine, SLAW, sums it up well in this post, Requiem for Heenan Blakie:
Heenan Blaikie died from a combination of greed, poor management and failed leadership wrapped together in an antiquated business structure ill-suited to “more for less” client demands in a marketplace gradually filling with non-traditional competitors.
As I have said repeatedly, the Canadian legal profession is now entering the most disruptive period of time in its history. It has never faced such strong client demands for value and efficiency. It has never faced competition from non-traditional legal providers.
These are structural changes that never go away; they amplify.
And all of this in an environment of flat legal services demand, over capacity and legal tech entrepreneurs!
Layer in partners who are more loyal to themselves than to the firm and one can see that Heenan Blaikie (like every other law firm in Canada) was a house built on sand, not bedrock.
I fear that many of us can insert “name of American law firm” in place of Heenan Blaikie and tell the same story.
Yes, we’re chatting about this in my circles. What does this mean? Why? What will it take to change law firm culture and business models?
Some argue for the ability of non-lawyers to co-own law firms, thereby giving more control of the actual business function to the true professional business people.
Some argue we need true business development and sales people. Lawyers are not necessarily cut out for this.
Some argue that the services themselves need to be repackaged and sold (think AFAs).
Some argue that the growth through lateral hiring binge is unsustainable and a leading cause of law firm failure.
It’s the compensation plans. No, it’s the commoditization of legal services.
And then there are those lawyers who just want things to go back to the way things were. Institutional clients. None of this business development crap.
There are no single right answers. And there are no single wrong ones here either. These are all contributing factors, leading to a perfect storm that will continue to result in the roller coaster of growth through acquisition, and big law failures, along with a lot of mid-sized failures as well.
I’d like to add another layer to the conversation of change and disruption in the legal industry: There is a generational shift taking place and very few people are talking about it, nor the impact it is having on our sales culture, nor our business culture.Continue Reading Why the generational shift in leadership is impacting the legal industry