Happy New Year!

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Not the same year-end pablum again!

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We’re at the tail-end of the year, a busy time whether you’re celebrating with family or pushing to meet a year-end matter deadline. At year’s end, the ‘net is awash in articles about evaluating last year and prepping for the new year that are just warmed over from previous years. Ugh! Who has time? But…

Here are two articles worth making time to read this week because they’ll challenge your way of thinking:

  • Paying the Smart Phone Tax by Seth Godin. I essentially run my business from a smart phone, and I rely on it for critical news about a terminally ill family member. When I saw the title of this post, I immediately worried about a financial tax on my phone, but the post itself points out a much more significant price to pay from overusing it.
  • The Four Hardest Questions to Answer at the End of the Year  by Michael Bungay Stanier. We all reflect on the closing year as a new one approaches, and our questions tend to scratch only the surface. As Stanier argues, asking only “what did you do” and “how did it go” allows you to avoid going deeper into what’s really going on. He recommends four alternate questions:
o    What do I need to kill off?

o    Where have I stayed stuck?

o    How did I let myself down?

o    Where are you really headed?

Read the article for further explanation of these questions, and then answer them honestly to gain deep insight leading into to purposeful action. I particularly like Stanier’s suggestion that you answer the questions out loud with a trusted friend or colleague.
These two articles got me thinking in a fresh and challenging direction. I’ll be working on Stanier’s four questions next week. Will you join me?

2016’s hot-or-not forecast

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It’s prediction season! This time of year, you’ll find one article after another reviewing trends and predicting next year’s conditions in the legal profession. Here’s the best forecasting article I’ve read this season, with a few highlights:

  • Legal project management is a hot topic, though it’s also under-utilized.
  • Alternative fee arrangements continue to be popular, especially in the context of an overall reduction in legal fees. Some firms are using non-partner track attorneys to ensure more consistent profit under these arrangements.
  • Younger attorneys, especially millennials, are not as interested in the traditional law firm model as previous generations, which is causing a crimp in succession planning and challenges in hiring.
  • Corporate legal departments continue to expand and take on work that would previously have gone to outside counsel; lawyers with large books of business are joining in-house departments in search of better quality of life. (Though the article doesn’t draw this conclusion, I’d suggest that this is also a result of an increased squeeze on lawyers who don’t originate enough work to be considered financial contributors to the firm, particularly non-equity partners in large firms.)
  • Increased competition is here. Law firms are competing not only against one another, but also against accounting firms that are building legal services divisions and other outside service providers that can provide services previously offered only by lawyers.

Here’s another article that offers the 15 Best Opportunities and Trends for 2016. A key takeaway from this article is that “[m]ore clients expect outside counsel to understand their business” and that lawyers must seek to understand the business and demonstrate that understanding. If you serve business clients, this should be considered a non-negotiable area of focus for the coming year. (Interestingly, this article offers a generally rosier view of the upcoming year than the previous article.)

Read the articles and consider the trends… Ask yourself whether your experience bears out these articles’ conclusions. Predictions are often incorrect and where there’s a trend, there’s often a counter-trend as well. But the bigger question is, so what? What do the trends these reports identify mean for your practice, and what adjustments do you need to make? 

New study: Should you blog?

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I ran across two interesting articles last week summarizing a recent survey on in-house counsel’s content consumption habits and preferences. (Download a summary of the survey results here.) The survey suggests that content marketing for lawyers may not be all it’s cracked up to be… But is that true?

“The survey clearly shows that in-house counsel know the value – or the potential value – of relevant content generated by law firms,” said John Corey, founding partner of Greentarget. “But the sheer volume of content out there combined with the dearth of documented strategies, and even the absence of any kind of strategies, has caused a problem for many firms – and an opportunity for those who can get it right.”

Survey findings include:

  • Client alerts and newsletters are more valuable to survey respondents than blogs
  • Professional use of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube is on the rise (though LinkedIn is still the preferred social media platform for professional use)
  • 71% of in-house counsel have used Wikipedia to conduct company and industry research
Blogging seems to take a particular hit in the study findings, with 30% of in-house counsel stating that they don’t visit blogs at all and a decreasing number who report being influenced by a blog in making a hiring decision. However, that means that 70% of in-house counsel do read blogs. It also overlooks the increased visibility that can result from valuable content generation, because a blog can often be a springboard to being quoted in traditional media, which 98% of respondents consider to be very or somewhat credible.

What’s the takeaway message for you?
  1. Have a strategy for producing and using content for marketing purposes. Value quality over quantity.  65% of in-house counsel rate blogs as “somewhat or very credible,” but 75% find law-firm blogs valuable. Don’t waste your time trying to crank out voluminous content; instead, invest the time to provide thoughtful exposition and commentary on topics that matter to your clients and potential clients. Be clear on your content marketing objectives.

  2. Be clear on your content marketing objectives. Are you producing content to establish your credibility in your area of practice? Are you writing in an effort to attract attention from potential clients? Are you writing (or paying someone to write for you) in an effort to attract web traffic through optimized search terms? Each of these objectives (along with others) is viable, but effective implementation calls for different strategies.

  3. Build distribution strategies into your content marketing approach. If you’re spending the time to produce high-quality content, you should also spend the time to distribute it via social media, perhaps to submit it to Wikipedia where appropriate, and to highlight it on your bio sketch and/or firm website.
  4. View content marketing as a door opener, not a business closer. If you’re expecting a blog or newsletter to generate business in and of itself, you’re likely to be disappointed. Instead, use it to build a reputation, to buttress your credibility in practice, and to open or continue conversation with contacts that can lead to business.

  5. Value quality over quantity. It bears repeating, because this point is really the bottom line of content marketing. Throwing something together because you know content is supposed to be valuable is a dead-end effort. Producing content that starts or adds to conversation on issues that matter to the kinds of clients you seek to serve can create significant opportunity.
What’s your content marketing strategy, and how might the survey results influence it?

Making the most of holiday networking

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Buckle your seat belt: the business-social season is about to kick into high gear. Many organizations will have holiday parties, and contacts will likely invite you to a variety of parties. It’s a great opportunity to meet new people and, if you are strategic about the functions you attend, to meet and build relationships with people who will be helpful for your business development goals.

If you get energy from meeting new people, you’re probably polishing your shoes already. If you’re a bit more introverted, however, or if the idea of walking into a room of strangers is so off-putting you’d rather do anything else, you might be tempted to skip out on these business-social opportunities. 

Here’s help, through a few articles I’ve recently read, plus one video:

• The 17 best icebreakers to use at awkward social events offers some good ideas to kick off conversation, with simple suggestions such as asking whether your conversational partner is originally from the city you’re in or whether she came here for business. Ignore the goofy photos and a few goofy icebreakers, but do read the commentary along with each suggestion for some valuable insight.

• 7 Tips for Networking has good principles for networking. The first (don’t arrive late) and last (follow up) are my favorites, but all are useful.

• 20 Ways to Start a Conversation and Build into a Connection makes the critical (but far too often overlooked) point that having a conversation doesn’t much matter unless it becomes the building block for a relationship. I particularly like tip 7, which suggests actively working on a repertoire of entertaining stories. Whether it’s a practice-related war story or a funny story about your kids, knowing how to tell a story well can pave the way for a great connection.

• 21 Conversations Starters Professionals Can Use to Break the Ice provides seven topics you might use to get conversation going and outlines a four-step process for good conversation: “One: Ask them appropriate, relevant questions about themselves — known as ‘conversation starters.’ Two: Practice active, appreciative listening. Three: Share brief, reflective relevant comments about yourself. And four: Repeat the process.”

• Must Know Body Language Tips for Networking Events recommends watching the feet in a networking setting. It’s an unusual proposition, but a valuable a 3-minute video.

Using these tips will help you in both business and business-social networking opportunities. Choose strategically which functions to attend, prepare yourself to initiate conversations, and initiate good follow-up … And you’ll be ready to make the most of holiday networking.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States. Whether you’re celebrating Thanksgiving or just going about an ordinary Thursday, please know how grateful I am for the opportunity to serve you through this blog.

 

Take time to Work ON your practice.

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Lawyers, like other business owners, tend to spend their days working in their business: seeing clients, writing documents for client services, having meetings about client projects, and so on. And that’s good and important work, without which the business that is your practice would cease to exist.

Marketing lives and thrives, however, when you’re working on your business. That’s when you come up with a new way to talk about what you do and identify an under-served client sector that needs your services. That’s when you come up with a great idea for an article, you write that article, and you consider who might help you land a speaking opportunity to develop further and share what you wrote in the article.

So, here’s today’s question: how much time are you spending on your practice? And is the time you’re spending effective?

Effectiveness is driven by not just the degree to which you’re able to raise your professional profile and the business you bring in, but also by the number of smart ideas you have and implement. As Seth Godin writes, “Pretty good ideas are easy. The guts and persistence and talent to create, ship and stick it out are what’s hard.”

Take some time today to work on your business. If you don’t know where to start, start with asking what is your vision for your practice. Consider your practice area, your sub-niche within that area, the clients with whom you work, how you serve those clients, and your practice setting, for starters.

WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT FROM YOUR PRACTICE?

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A number of my clients recently seemed to hit a brick wall with their business development plans. Nothing was wrong, exactly; but progress was much slower than it had been in the past, and my clients seemed to have a certain malaise. In each case, problem solving revealed no problem with the plans themselves, but one key issue: uncertainty about the ideal result.

Here’s the issue: without clarity and a certain excitement about the preferred practice setting, the preferred number of clients and matters, the preferred kind of client and matter, and so on, business development is almost destined to fail. That isn’t an airy-fairy “thoughts become things” assertion. Instead, it’s the result of two truths.

  1. Business development is a simple process, but usually not an easy process.
  2. If you don’t know exactly what you want and why, business development challenges that might otherwise be overcome will seem insurmountable because you don’t know clearly what it is or because you don’t want it enough.

Certain telltale signs reveal this lack of clarity.

 

If your business development progress has slowed, ask yourself these questions:

  • Are you a high achiever who’s suddenly feeling meh about the goals you’ve set?
  • Does business development work that seemed doable in the past suddenly seem unusually difficult?
  • Do you find yourself unwilling or unable to make the time for business development activity?
  • Do you know what to do to grow your practice, but find yourself resistant to taking those steps?

If you responded “yes” to more than one of these questions, something is out of kilter. Very often, that something is a mismatch between what you say you want and what you actually want or a lack of clarity about your objectives and how your business development plan will get you there.

To get clear on your objectives, ask yourself what you want from your practice in terms of your subject matter, your practice setting, the kinds of clients with whom you want to work (and those with whom you do not want to work), the kind of matters you enjoy, how much time you want to spend working, how much money you want to make, what you want your day-to-day professional life to look like, and what you want your personal life to look like. You’ll know you’ve got clear objectives when you can describe the practice you’re aiming for and how it fits into your life with clarity, and you’ll know your objectives are right for you when that description gives you a sense of excitement or satisfaction.

If you’re at a standstill, stop beating yourself up and start asking questions. I have yet to meet a lawyer who simply cannot build a practice, but I’ve met a lot who actually don’t want to build a practice or who want something that isn’t likely to result from executing the business development plan they’ve created.

So… What do you want from your practice?

WHAT CAN YOU LEARN FROM THE 2015 SURVEY?

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About this time every year, Altman Weil releases the results of its survey of law firms. Those who work in large firms need to read the report – tellingly titled Law Firms in Transition – because it’s a good window into what other firms are doing and why, which is critical information both for firm business purposes (in other words, what’s working?) and for competitive purposes. Those not in large firms need to read it because smaller firms have increasing competitive opportunities that may increase yet further thanks to some of the problems outlined in the report.

A handful of summary points caught my attention:

  • Overcapacity of equity and non-equity partners, especially in larger firms, is endemic and a drag on profitability.
  • Non-traditional competitors are actively taking business from law firms and the threat is growing.
  • In 63% of law firms, partners aged 60 or older control at least one quarter of total firm revenue, but only 31% of law firms have a formal succession planning process.

The upshot from the report is that law firms are taking measured steps to change practice (evolutionary, not revolutionary) and that clients aren’t demanding anything more. In other words (and, to be clear, these are my words, not Altman Weil’s), law firms are like one hunter in a group running from a bear: there’s no need to be the best runner, just better than the slowest hunter. This is not a particularly good sign for large firms, but it may be good for smaller firms that are seeking to innovate and offer more client-appealing alternatives to the norm.

Read more

READY FOR LEGAL SERVICES MARKET CHANGES?

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Last week, I spoke at a national law firm’s annual All-Attorney Meeting, and I also had an opportunity to hear Professor Bill Henderson speak about the challenges facing the legal profession. If you haven’t yet read his recent feature in the ABA Journal, I suggest you start here . A short excerpt from that article describes one of the new competitors facing lawyers: the field of legal operations.

I have gradually concluded that legal operations is not just a job within a legal department. Legal operations is a multidisciplinary field where professionals collaborate to design and build systems to manage legal problems.

A lawyer might say to a client: “Better, faster and cheaper—pick two.” A legal operations professional figures out ways to get all three. To date, the greatest advances in legal operations have occurred in legal departments, yet the same inventive methods and mindsets are cropping up in traditional law firms and sophisticated “New Law” companies funded by non-lawyer investors.

Wondering why you should bother reading the article? Here’s the only reason you should need, offered in Professor Henderson’s words:

In my travels over the last several years, I have talked to hundreds of lawyers, including many law firm partners. One of the strongest impressions I have drawn is that many partners are too immersed in their own practices to grasp the broader changes that are occurring in the profession.This is because maximizing short-term revenue has become a precondition of maintaining one’s status and income.

 . . .

This perspective is not the result of a faulty character. It is a natural feature of an industry undergoing a major transition.

Once you’ve read the article, here’s the critical question you (and all lawyers) should mull: Now what? The answer will be different for every firm and every lawyer, but one thing is for sure… Without a reasonably good answer to that question, the future looks pretty dim.