I just had the great pleasure of spending the past couple of days at a Zeughauser Group meeting featuring some of the top Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in the country (approximately 30 in attendance). They traveled from all over the United States for this meeting. For those of you unfamiliar with the Zeughauser Group, they are a well organized group of consultants that are focused on advising, consulting and supporting law firms across the country on a myriad of strategic issues, it’s a very highly respected group. They count among their clients many of the largest law firms in the country/world. The conference was incredibly well run and is intentionally designed to have only between 30-40 members for this annual meeting.
On behalf of Manzama I was asked to share some thoughts as to the state of social media, specifically with a focus on how business intelligence is evolving and changing with the proliferation of content in the public domain. It was honor to be asked to present in this forum and we hope that the members of the group benefited from the exchange. While I am not at liberty to discuss specific firms nor the contents of the program that would be deemed confidential, I’ll share some over-arching themes and messaging that I heard through the two day program:
> All lawyers in firms must be revenue generators. There was a time when the divide between the procurers of revenue (aka rainmakers) and those partners that do the work was an acceptable divide. This is no longer the case. In fact, the divide in terms of compensation paid to the procurers vs. the services is becoming more apparent and growing;
> Most of the leadership acknowledge that lawyers/partners more than ever are open to having others w/in marketing support revenue type of activities, including “selling,” with the expectation that this would become more important w/ each year;
> GC’s interest in social media is growing. This is substantiated with the findings in the Inside Counsel/Green Target report that I blogged about the other week.
> Directories (Chambers, Superlawyers, etc.) are only meaningful to the partners (sometimes merely to reinforce egos), but GCs do not weigh these directory listings as a key factor for hiring a law firm. Again, there was some data shared to support this statement, but I think there are still some other valid data points to suggest otherwise;
> Wikipedia is gaining momentum as an authoritative source of information for GCs to help understand and profile a law firm. However, the group was cautioned to not try and turn Wikipedia into a branding/marketing activity, rather, firms should view Wikipedia as “opportunity to credential” themselves;
> Social Media use is on the rise (blogs, videos, twitter, etc.) in and across all age groups of lawyers and GCs. Likewise, the ability to “monitor” and understand what’s transpiring in and around a law firm’s brand, practice, industries, clients, etc is becoming increasingly important as firms look to differentiate and reflect a deeper understanding of their client and align themselves across various industries, etc. Hence, the reliance on ways to find and locate intelligence and act in a timely manner will become service differentiators in the months and years to come;
Bottom line — great group (approximately 30) and I think the next decade will emerge as the decade of the CMO. In this blogger’s estimation never has this role been more important (I saw the 90s as the rise of the CIO, due to the strategic use of technology w/in law firms, but the emphasis on client satisfaction, business development, positioning, business intelligence have demanded a greater skill set from CMOs than in past decades, and this trend is likely to continue).
Best,
Peter J. Ozolin, CEO
Manzama, Inc.
It must be the season, but in the past ten (10) days I have presented at and attend two supposedly very different marketing and technology conferences (on either side of the United States no less – SF & NY). However, I was surprised at how much they overlapped. While there were certainly sessions unique to each program. Quick side-bar: credit to the organizers of each program – both were well organized, run and were able to include interesting speakers and content.
All-in-all here’s what I heard and learned.
- Use of blogs and firms blogging is reaching a tipping point. While statistics vary, there’s a huge push toward understanding and how to deliver content in meaningful ways. Now that there are lawyers that have been blogging for years, there were many concrete examples of lawyers/firms getting new revenue from blogging. I don’t think anyone left either conference doubting, if done effectively, there’s revenue to be gained. I don’t have the time or inclination to relay the specific tactics, but I encourage folks to visit Adrian Dayton’s blog, www.adriandayton.com to learn more about best practices, etc;
- Business Intelligence – whether backward looking (profitability analysis, analyst reports, etc.) or forward looking (analyzing social media, news, etc.), firms are moving ahead and aggressively, witness Latham Watkin’s recent hire of a “social media manager.”
- Video – take away here is “wow.” I was not expecting to see such concrete examples and high quality delivery from law firms on the use of video as a business development tool. Specifically, I’d highly encourage that readers see Adam Stock’s (Chief Marketing Officer at Allen Matkins) short blurb that summarized his various presentations over the past several weeks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikuF_KsSIfY
Enjoy
This past week I gathered with a group of colleagues in San Francisco, represented were a number of CKOs from some of the largest law firms on the west coast. The group has been meeting and expanding for years. The fundamental drivers for the group are to discuss a range of issues and challenges that large law firms are facing. Overall, here’s what I say were the main takeaways from our get together:
(a) Automation — although a lot of discourse tends to focus on AFA (alternative fee arrangements), to actually deliver on flat fee or fixed arrangements, firms need “automation,” that is to say they need to take the low hanging fruit and process and find ways to deliver to the client at lower price points. I can’t think of a firm in the group that had not begun some sort of an effort here. Related to this theme — the growing % of AFA arrangements, the group differed from 15 – 35% of work falling in this bucket. Initial reaction was that even 25% seemed high, but the reality is if we write-off good percentages of non-fixed fee arrangement, are we not in effect doing the same thing?
(b) Sharepoint as CRM — I was surprised to hear this, but it makes sense. The frustrations with the incumbents continues to fuel the need to consider other options;
(c) Next Big Thing — the group watched Mary Meeker’s presentation from Web 2.0 Oriely Conference, a must see. It generated a fair amount of conversation as to where the market is trending. As expected, opinions differed as to how these global trends would impact law firms from “not at all” to “wow” moments. My personal “Ah-ha” was related to the growth of mobile — as a business leader, I already feel like I am behind, but fortunately some of my colleagues did not share this perspective and suggested law firms (namely lawyers) are just not that interested in accessing applications via their mobile devices. This said, if I were still CKO at Paul Hastings, I think I’d be scrapping my plans for version 5.5 of the portal and thinking about how I can reach the lawyers with the right services/information via mobile apps, etc.
Best,
Peter
This article is a great read and was passed on by a colleague of mine. For those that know me, they know I like to challenge the existing structures, institutions and conventional wisdom. What I find useful with respect the below is that it talks about the challenges to shift a culture from a model of “free form” development to one that commands an attention to detail, as well as which environments are conducive to a good result. Excerpt and full article below:
“However, if Google wants to succeed in smartphones and business applications then it’s going to have to create dedicated teams/departments within Google that are much more process-oriented and focused on product quality from end-to-end. The never-ending beta is not going to cut it in the smartphone world or the enterprise IT world.”
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=1609 (click here for full article)
Best,
Peter
It’s with great pleasure I’d like to announce my latest venture, Manzama, Inc. It has been almost fifteen years since I founded Legal Anywhere (leading provider of turnkey extranet solution for law firms) in the mid-90s. After that business was successfully acquired, I always thought the next idea for a company would just surface naturally and quickly, just as the idea for Legal Anywhere had with relative ease and obviousness – time and experience have taught me otherwise. And, I now recognize the rare series of events and circumstances that must align to not only be inspired with an idea, but in addition to have the necessary conviction that there’s a sustainable business behind that idea. I feel grateful that I have found this opportunity for a second time. Likewise, I appreciate those (some of which are included in this email message) for your support to date and hopefully throughout the life of the business and thereafter.
Having spent a good proportion of my career in KM, I think the new KM frontier will be how we manage information in the public domain. After all, a basic principle of KM is to add structure to unstructured data. The data sources continue to grow and it’s time for law firm KM professionals to apply their know-how on managing information internally to the public domain. Here’s the excerpt from the research report that I think does a nice job of summarizing what it is we intend to do for the legal profession:
“Businesses have new opportunities to improve their strategies through Social Intelligence — the concept of informing marketing and business decisions with insights found in social media data.1 Social Intelligence is not possible without a technology platform: As more businesses build out their strategies, listening platforms — technology and analytics infrastructures that mine and analyze social media to deliver insight — become essential tools within the enterprise.2″
Thank you and I hope to connect with many of you in the not too distant future.
Best,
Peter
Much is, and has been, said about the outsourcing of legal work product, law firm infrastructure, etc. In a former post, I commented on Seyfarth Shaw’s Lean Six Sigma, which is really (in some respects) a good response to outsourcing — become more efficient and effective, change practices long-term. Another method I learned of, after sitting down with a CKO at an AMLAW 20 firm was “insourcing,” higher lawyers that perform the more standardized legal work (1st yr – 3rd year associate type of work) in more affordable markets, secondary employment markets, thus, work gets done at more appropriate rates. To me, this was another indication of how much more savvy law firms are becoming with respect to the ever changing climate. Here’s a quote from the law21.ca blog that I thought did a nice job of summing up the point:
“If I were an LPO (Legal Process Outsourcing), I’d be nervous every time I read about a law firm that provided secondments, gave legal project management training, managed its workflow, unbundled its services, used decision trees, or even employed Lean Six Sigma, because it means they’re starting to adopt some of my stock in trade. The critical battleground in the legal services marketplace is not price, but innovation: inventing and implementing more efficient and effective ways to carry out legal work. That’s a tougher and far more important assignment than simply lowering the cost of associate work, and whoever figures it out first and best could, like Toyota and Sony, dominate this market. LPOs are in a strong position to compete in this race, but they’re not the only contestants.” The full-text of this entry can be found at:
http://www.law21.ca/2010/06/08/the-evolution-of-outsourcing/
