A Blog About Law Firms And Their Clients

I am pleased to announce today that Manzama has partnered with the Lex Mundi organization.  For those of you unfamiliar with  Lex Mundi, the organization counts among its member law firms some of the most widely recognized law firms in the world.  We are excited to be able to reach this vast network with the Manzama offering.  The partnership demonstrates that social intelligence and business intelligence as applied to what’s transpiring in the public domain is at a level of importance that is global in significance, e.g., regardless of location, the need to listen and understand what clients are saying and to track conversations is important to a broader based understanding of  lawyer’s or marketing department’s business and practice strategies.

The Lex Mundi network provides clients with access to unparalleled global legal resources with its vast network of 160 premier member firms in more than 100 countries and offices in more than 600 business centers.  By working with a Lex Mundi member firm, you can be quickly connected to in-depth local market knowledge and legal expertise practically anywhere your legal needs arise.

To learn more about our newly formed partnership, please visit us at Lex Mundi’s Americas Regional Marketing Conference in Denver, CO October 5th – 7th.

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 my company, Manzama, had the pleasure of hosting a Chief Marketing Officer Dinner in New York City. The group was an intimate one, approximately 15-18 CMOs from some of the largest law firms in New York. And, while I am not at liberty to discuss specific firms or comments, I would like to share some of the big ideas I heard at the table as various questions were posed to the group as a whole:

(a) Profitability – The expectation is that it’s not just the accounting team’s responsibility to understand matter and client profitability metrics. The responsibility is a collective one, especially in light of the fact that marketing/business development are the first line of defense when it comes to interfacing with client teams and concerns;

(b) Business Intelligence – some firms have re-organized to fold library and other traditionally IT functions into the marketing departments – do we see a trend here as more of these folks are asked to perform business intelligence functions that need to closely align with the firm’s marketing strategies;

(c ) Contract lawyers – growing percentage of firms are using contract lawyers in a number of different contexts.

It’s a rare event to get a group like this together to share thoughts over dinner. In the event this blog entry finds them, I wanted to personally thank each and everyone for their time and interest.

Best,

Peter

Last week I reviewed with my team the concept of being a “mesh” company.  I think you’ll hear more and more about this developing trend or philosophy for companies to have mesh-type of cultures.  Specifically, the values that I think are of immediate importance can be summarized as such:

• Mesh Companies “Wow” their customers because they have access to information, and thus can anticipate what we want to do next?  They understand data, thus our behavior.
• Value unused = waste (example of why car sharing by neighbors took off)
• Do we have any opportunities to capitalize on waste – waste of time to find stuff, wasted time preparing for a client meeting?;
• Companies have shared failures, can we benefit from these failures – MySpace, etc.
• Make sharing irresistible.
• “Invite” people to share.
• DEFINE, REFINE & SCALE – a new method to develop.
• Make DATA OPEN – allow for multiple ways to access and absorb

Here’s an excellent discussion as to how Mesh companies are becoming a fabric of forward thinking businesses: http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_gansky_the_future_of_business_is_the_mesh.html

Law Marketing Association (LMA Planning Committee)

This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with a diverse group of CMOs across the country and the organizing body (ACI) of the Law Marketing Association’s Annual Conference.  Having been part of many committees over the years (profit, as well as not-for-profit), I was quite impressed with the level of organization, thought and commitment this group brought to the table.  Some of the folks have been involved with LMA for over two decades and still take an interest in seeing the organization do well and prosper.  Last year was a success by many measures – attendance, satisfaction with program content and overall planning.  It will be a difficult year to emulate, but I think this group is up to the task.  As a company, we are certainly planning to re-up our commitment as a sliver sponsor.

In terms of substantive content, I think the program will continue to expand its CMO track; thus you’ll likely see even more value add in terms of content there.  Likewise, some of the subject matter should appeal to not only CMOs, but Marketing Partners, Managing Partners and the like.

Hello All,

I am just leaving NY where I had the privilege of moderating a discussion centered around the use of social media, trends and implications for the legal profession.  The group’s participants had a number of things to say on the subject, including, but not limited to:

> Quantifying remains a challenge;

> Interested in finding ways for lawyers to blog or send “insights” clients care about via their blogs vs a stream of concience approach;

> Hiring has begun as firms are staffing with competitive intelligence personell and social media experts, like the aforementioned story below (shared via LinkedIn by my colleague Patrick DiDeminico of Gibbons, PC out of NY).  I suspect this is just the beginning:

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/help_wanted_latham_seeks_social_media_specialist/

Best,

Peter

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

Hello All,

This past week I had the opportunity to attend Marketing Partner’s Forum (gathering of 300-500 CMO/Managing Partner types from law firms of all sizes, although most were in NLJ 250).  The event proved to have some useful content — including sessions by Ann Lee Gibson (Consultant) and Kevin McMurdo (CMO, Perkins Coie) that dealt with Law Firm RFP response strategy, and a hands on workshop (with an element of self-assment).  Likewise, there was a good session on Social Media, where panelist shared some pratical advice/experience they have had in “mining” and assessing information in the public domain.  I was pleased that Manzama was referenced more than once in this session.  Law Marketing Partner Forum Leader, Larry Bodine, took some time to visit our booth, and had the following to share on his blog. 

Overall, there seemed to be a more general sense of optimism from the leaders of the law firms represented, and that was encouraging on a whole — not just for Manzama, but for the fact that innovating and leading are what set our economy apart — it’s not easy to get back on that horse given this last recession, but at the same time we are  society/culture that’s difficult to suppress (on more levels than one).  Looking forward to the remainder of 2011.

Regards,

Peter

The stats are out there — blogging among AMLAW 200 is on the rise.  As one partner in an AMLAW 200 firm indicated that sent along this article “As much as I hate to admit it, this suggests …… use the new social media might just be relevant to buyers of legal services.”

A few days ago, Benzinga.com reported on a survey that asked corporate execs and their in-house counsel about their hiring practices when it came to retaining outside law firms.  The survey was conducted by Greentarget Strategic Communications, ALM Legal Intelligence and Zeughauser Group and underscored a growing trend among a large number of the attorneys who serve in these corporate legal departments, particularly those responsible for vetting and hiring law firms.  Strikingly, one of the factors taken into consideration and a determining one in who gets the company’s business is whether the law firm has a blog.

In addition to the blog factor, the Benziga piece pointed out social platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Twitter, as tools that are being utilized in the hiring process.

All this points in one direction – the lines between personal and professional use of traditionally “private” web-based social forums are becoming more indistinct.  Attention firms: on your mark, get set and tweet.

I came across the attached article while traveling this week, it appeared in Bloomberg Business Week.  The movement has been real for some time now — we have seen in it happening from a consumer standpoint now for years (Digg, Amazon, etc).   It’s fascinating, if you think about it, how the world continues to become more global and information driven each day.  Any serious assessment of information requires mining and analytics — it’s fun to be apart of this at its infancy.  Albeit, the starting points are rather rudimentary (aggregate basic information — competitors, clients, etc), but the foundation will enable more sophisticated data mining/analysis in the years to come.

A link to the article can be found here: The Big Business Of Sifting Through Social Media.

Best,

Peter