Professional Marketing Blog
by Larry Bodine

Search For Global Innovation Begins: InnovAction Awards

Mon, 02 Feb 2004 03:23:03 GMT

DENVER, CO. - The first annual global search for lawyers, law firms and other deliverers of legal services who have invented and successfully applied totally new business practices to the delivery of legal services was launched this month by the College of Law Practice Management. The InnovAction Award, sponsored by the College in concert with Edge International, will be presented in four categories:

Client service - Client Service Virtuoso

New market creation - Market Disruptor

Knowledge management - Knowledge Star

Leadership- Leader Ship

Information about the awards can be found online at www.innovactionaward.com. In a recent US survey of Chief Legal Officers, when asked about the most innovative practice proposed or instituted by their outside counsel in the past year, only 23% of respondents were able to identify any innovation at all. Yet, in an earlier UK study of FTSE-100 companies' perceptions of the legal profession, innovation was ranked amongst the most important factors in choosing a law firm.

'We're interested in new ways of thinking about the provision of legal services wherever they may be," said College Vice-President Merrilyn Astin Tarlton. "While the philosophical underpinnings of the legal profession have traditionally driven law firm managers to rely on precedent in decision making, we know a good deal of exciting thinking is now at work to solve the business challenges of law practice with little or no concern for the restrictions of tradition. We want to focus thinking on these extraordinary achievements and, hopefully, inspire more."

The award recipients will be selected by a blue-ribbon panel of judges in July of this year with the actual presentation of the "NOVA" awards occurring in September at the Annual Induction Meeting of the College in Chicago. Entries will be judged on the basis of four primary criteria:

Absence of precedent (never been done or done quite this way before.)
Evidence of action (the innovative idea was transformed into action and not merely reflective of best intentions)
Effectiveness of innovation (there is some measurable outcome that would indicate that the innovation is accomplishing what it was intended to do)
Action must have taken place within no more than three years prior to this entry.

"The goal is to demonstrate for the profession what can be created when passionate professionals with big ideas and strong convictions are determined to make a difference," Patrick McKenna, Principal of Edge International explained; "Too often we hear lawyers saying things like "We've never done it that way!' or 'Who else has done this?' It is our intention to help the College seek out and identify those rare few whose fearlessness has created a business advantage."

Any lawyer, law firm or entity providing legal services to clients anywhere in the world is eligible and encouraged to enter this competition. Further information about the awards, eligibility restrictions and nomination forms is available at www.innovactionaward.com.

For further information contact: Sandra Geist, College of Law Practice Management, 303-232-3355, s.geist@comcast.net

Lawyers can get valuable coverage in a blog

Wed, 28 Jan 2004 22:28:54 GMT

Marketer and lawyer Kevin O'Keefe of Bainbridge Island, Washington, makes a great point in his blog, at http://www.kevinokeefe.com/, that writing a blog is a great way to get attention from the media. He's ever got Perry Mason musing to himself, "Hmm... I should have a blog."

A growing audience of Web-savvy newshounds has quickly taken to getting their news and views from blogs. Kevin notes that this trend has caught the notice of established Internet news sources, which have joined in the game. Recently, MSNBC.com (www.msnbc.com) unveiled a collection of blogs on its site. New York-based Trylon Communications, Inc. (www.tryloncommunications.com) handled press for the successful launch of the pop culture blog Plastic (www.plastic.com), which was begun by the editors behind the Webby award-winning e-zine Feed (www.feedmag.com).

It's happened to me too. The first bloggers were news reporters, so naturally they read blogs. I've gotten calls from reporters who phone me up and say they saw my blog. They found me by doing a Google search, and the next thing I know they're interviewing me for quotes in their story. If you're a professional looking for more attention from the press, start writing a blog.

Glasser LegalWorks Acquired by FindLaw

Mon, 26 Jan 2004 20:20:46 GMT

This just in:

News Release

Glasser LegalWorks Acquired by FindLaw
With leading legal seminars business, FindLaw positioned as premier provider of client development solutions to large law firms

EAGAN, Minn., January 27, 2004 - FindLaw, a Thomson business (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) today announced it has acquired Glasser LegalWorks, a highly regarded producer of legal and law practice seminars, events and publications. The acquisition of Glasser LegalWorks accelerates FindLaw's strategy of becoming the premier provider of expertise marketing solutions to large law firms, and establishes FindLaw as the legal industry's foremost provider of client development solutions.

Glasser LegalWorks will become part of FindLaw. The company's operations and employees, under the direction of Lynn S. Glasser and Stephen A. Glasser, will continue to be based in Little Falls, N.J. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The acquisition significantly expands FindLaw's line of expertise marketing services, and accelerates the company's strategy of offering a comprehensive line of services that enable lawyers and law firms, corporate counsel and industry service providers to network and learn best practices for tackling current issues for their clients and their businesses.

Glasser LegalWorks brings to FindLaw an extensive series of highly-regarded seminars, forums and newsletters covering the latest issues on substantive legal topics, and management of law firms and corporate law departments. The Glasser events feature hundreds of the profession's foremost experts and thought leaders.

"The acquisition of Glasser LegalWorks positions FindLaw to lead the way in providing opportunities to learn and share expertise about pressing issues related to both the practice of law and the business of law," said Debbie Monroe, president and CEO of FindLaw. "The addition of over 100 events and more than 50 publications creates the legal profession's largest collection of trusted resources. Together with our proven client development services and technologies, FindLaw offers lawyers and law firms an innovative and completely integrated means to demonstrate their expertise and connect with potential clients."

"There is increasing demand for education, event and information services from the legal marketplace and we look forward to continuing to expand our offerings with FindLaw in these and other areas," said Lynn S. Glasser, co-president of Glasser LegalWorks.

"We were attracted to FindLaw because of its commitment to help law firms and corporate counsel improve communications and information exchanges," added Stephen A. Glasser.

# # #
About FindLaw
FindLaw (www.findlaw.com) is the leading provider of online legal information and solutions for the legal community, businesses and individuals. The FindLaw Internet portal is the highest-trafficked legal Web site, according to leading independent Internet-traffic-monitoring services. The site provides comprehensive, plain-English legal information to businesses and individuals. These resources include West Legal Directory®, the Internet's largest directory of lawyers and legal professionals. FindLaw also offers comprehensive information, resources and services for law practice and legal career development, including free case law, an online career center, breaking legal news, newsletters, message boards, service directories, continuing legal education and legal search tools. In addition, FindLaw provides access to tools and services that help connect legal professionals with potential clients. FindLaw is a business within The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).

About Glasser LegalWorks
Glasser LegalWorks, founded in 1995 by Stephen and Lynn Glasser, is widely known for its management events, including The Marketing Partner Forum, Law Firm Leaders Forum and Executive Director/CFO Forum; its substantive law seminars, including ERISA Litigation, Annual Proxy Statement and Disclosure Documents conference and SEC Disclosure and Accounting conference; and its newsletters, including "Wall Street Lawyer" and "M&A Lawyer."

About The Thomson Corporation
The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), with 2002 revenues from continuing operations of $7.5 billion, is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers. Thomson provides value-added information, software tools and applications to more than 20 million users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate training and assessment, scientific research and healthcare. With operational headquarters in Stamford, Conn., Thomson has approximately 43,000 employees and provides services in approximately 130 countries. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).

Media Contact: Investor Relations Contact
Kyle Christensen Gene Gartlan
FindLaw The Thomson Corporation
(651) 687-7082 (203) 328-9485
kyle.christensen@thomson.com gene.gartlan@thomson.com

If a law firm were run like Southwest Airlines

Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:00:56 GMT

The most colorful presentation at the Marketing Partner Forum so far was the panel of in-house counsel, who discussed what a law firm would look like if *they* designed it. Deborah Ackerman, VP and GC of Southwest Airlines, described a law firm that would be run like SWA.

Remember that SWA has high employee productivity, low turnover, high morale, and flies 64 million passengers to 60 locations. The last time I flew on Southwest, it was great. The Chicago to Las Vegas flight had attendants wishing passengers happy birthday and passengers all singing along together. It was a fun flight.

Ackerman said a law firm run like SWA:

Would be the low-cost producer
Have excellent service
Focus on clients as customers and not as a legal matter
Have no layoffs
Have an annual chili cook-off
Have a tradition of fun. Halloween is a major holiday at the headquarters, and everyone comes to work in a costume, including the CEO.
Relax the dress ode.
Be family-oriented. There is no expensive artwork on the walls of SWA. Instead there are pictures of employees with their families, pets and hobbies.
Display "brag boards" everywhere where employees can put up notes about their own and their kids' accomplishments.
Have many employee recognition programs.
Establish an Employee Catastrophic Fund to help employees in cases of an uninsured loss or serous illness.
Communicate in a timely fashion to employees
Senior partners give hugs and praise from to staff as a daily occurrence.

OK, this is a total fantasy. There will never be a law firm run like Southwest Airlines, because law firms care about partner profits, not employee happiness. The employees are there to serve the partners and help the firm make more money. Law firm goals are to move up the chart of the AmLaw profitability tables.

So call me a curmudgeon: there will never be a law firm run like Southwest, but we can dream.

Yes, Diversity Really Counts

Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:58:47 GMT

One message came through loud and clear at the luncheon panel here at the Marketing Partner Forum in Orlando: diversity counts now.

Lloyd Johnson, publisher of Chief Legal Executive, opened the panel with some statistics: in 1996 there were 40 women general counsel and 5 minority GCs at Fortune 500 companies. In 2003 there were 120 women GCs and 20 minority GCs. "If you show up at a pitch with an all-white male team, it's a big mistake," said Catherine Lamboley, GC of Shell Oil.

And there's a new buzzword: inclusion.

Lamboley said that 3 years ago, Shell began focusing on the 45 law firms it works with and began examining their inclusion programs, to see if there were retention, mentoring and leadership programs. They took demographic surveys of the law firms, and gave them a report card on their diversity, and told them how the firm compared to competitors. "We no longer do business with a couple of law firms because they were simply giving lip service to diversity," Lamboley said.

Michelle Mayes, GC of Pitney Bowes, said that a survey of conference attendees revealed that 52% said their firm has lost business, or faced losing business, as a result of not hiring minority lawyers.

"Diversity is a moving target," she warned, noting that Latinos now are a larger group than African-Americans.

Mayes offered "Seven C's" for what Pitney Bowes looks for in law firms:

1. Communication skills - lawyers can't be talking all the time; they can learn anything that way.

2. Competence - what the law firm can do

3. Credibility - revealing what the firm cannot do. "There nothing more irritating than a firm that oversells itself," she said.

4. Chemistry - every law firm is not a good fit for every corporation

5. Computer-savvy - how is the law firm leveraging its knowledge and using technology to get information from the client.

6. Commitment - to diversity

7. Cost-Effectiveness.

N. Cornell Boggs III, the new GC of Tyco said his firm is sending out RFPs to the 700 law firms the company uses. "One of the things we're really going to look at is diversity," he said. "We want to see if the law firm understands the concept of inclusion, in age, race and gender. We're not bashing white males. We want teams that work with us to be composed from a wide pool."

He offered 3 tips for law firms seeking to get Tyco's business:

1. "No more window dressing." The presenters at the pitch should be the lawyers who will actually work on the company's matters.

2. A good pipeline. Tyco wants to see minorities in summer hires up to equity partners. "We want to see students hired from a variety of places, including all ethnic backgrounds."

3. Market your inclusion. He said, "Your marketing materials should showcase your rainbow of people."

During the luncheon, I sat next to a senior white male partner at a 400-lawyer national law firm. He said his firm kept hiring minorities and women, but the firm's clients kept poaching them. He said the firm finally had to reach an agreement with a big computer software company not to hire away any of the firm's associates.

Boggs emphasized that you can find minority lawyers everywhere. "It's a my that you can't find minority lawyers in all parts of the country." Mayes chimed in, "it's easy to say 'minorities don't live in Minneapolis because it's too cold. That's one of the excuses I've actually heard."

Marketing Partner Forum draws 500 in Orlando

Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:50:27 GMT

There's a big crowd here at the Marketing Partner Forum here in Orlando. I've got a number of talented volunteers covering programs, so you'll see event reports on the LawMarketing Portal within 10 days.

The conference organizers tell me there are 500 registrants -- which is a record. An interactive poll showed that 60% of the audience is professional in-house marketers, so this is kind of turning into an LMA conference. (LMA gets 700 attendees and will be here in Orlando in March.)

Brad Hildebrandt led the morning panel and said that the legal profession is in very good shape now "thanks to the great litigation machine." He said 2004's recovering economy would be very good for law firms.

He said the rate of mergers has slowed down -- only 170 mergers of 5+ attorney firms in the last 5 years, but consolidation continues. He said a problem is that there are fewer mid-size firms left as viable targets for the large acquiring firms.

Sarbanes-Oxley is causing problems for law firms, because clients are seeing conflicts, causing law firms to withdraw from the smaller client that is causing the problem, and causing the lawyers working for that client to leave the firm.

A trend Hildebrandt spotted was that practice groups are forming strategies -- because they feel disconnected from the firmwide strategy and aren't getting the attention they want from the marketing staff, which is busy carrying out the firmwide strategy.

First-ever Law Firm TV Webcast

Thu, 15 Jan 2004 14:19:45 GMT

Here's something new under the sun -- Wilentz Goldman & Spitzer in New Jersey is presenting a live Webcast for clients next Tuesday, January 20. It allows public participation in a real-time question and answer format via the Web.

P R E S S R E L E A S E

For Immediate Publication: January 12, 2004

For more information, contact: Mary Ann Shive, Director of Marketing, 732-855-6429 or Amy Adams, Marketing Coordinator @ 732-855-6102

WOODBRIDGE, NJ LAW FIRM FIRST IN STATE TO LAUNCH INTERNET CHANNEL -- WilentzTV.com -- AS IT DEBUTS LIVE, INTERACTIVE WEB CAST

Woodbridge, NJ -- Law firms are not traditionally known for taking a cutting-edge role in adopting new technology but one of New Jersey's major law firms, Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer P.A., headquartered in Woodbridge, is actually stepping out ahead of the pack to blaze new trails.

On Tuesday, January 20, 2004, Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer P.A. will publicly launch the firm's Internet TV channel, WilentzTV.com, the first of its kind for any law firm in America. In particular, the web cast will debut "Your Legal Rights," a revolutionary, interactive concept that provides access to legal information by allowing public participation in a real-time live video question-and-answer format via the Internet. The first of the programs, slated to air every Tuesday at 10 a.m., will be "What You Should Know About Divorce." New topics will be presented on a weekly basis. During each program, viewers will be invited to submit general questions via e-mail to a guest attorney who will provide on-the-spot feedback. The programs will also be available for viewing at a later time, as part of the website's On-Demand Programming.

Recognizing that Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer is the first law firm in the country, and specifically in New Jersey, to apply such technology in this manner, nationally-known attorney Christopher Placitella, a partner and senior officer of the firm who spearheaded the project, states, "It is very important for our firm and its unique combination of practice areas to be current with technology, and we believe that there is no other firm right now in New Jersey that even has the knowledge or capability to do what we're doing and still hope to do via the Internet."

After several months of development, WilentzTV.com will now provide an alternative method of communication for clients and consumers. The site will enable visitors to obtain educational information relative to their legal needs and rights at no cost. In addition, people can speak live immediately with a Wilentz representative directly from their computer, or fill out a free online case evaluation form, obtaining a response within one business day.

The WilentzTV.com web site is actually comprised of three separate areas. Those areas are the Consumer Information Center, Client Information Center and the Co-Counsel Information Center.

The Consumer Information Center is open to the public while the majority of the Client and Co-Counsel Information Centers are password protected. The Consumer Information Center found at www.WilentzTV.com is the host site for "Your Legal Rights," in addition to On Demand programs and a weekly "Consumer Alert" update. On January 7, a consumer alert was distributed to approximately 120,000 consumers nationwide. Also on that day, a similar distribution called Mass Tort Minute, tailored for the legal profession, was distributed to approximately 170,000 attorneys. This is specifically geared to consumers so feel free to forward to family and friends.

Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer also has offices in New York City, Philadelphia and Eatontown, New Jersey. The firm has approximately 165 attorneys, with 22 listed in the book The Best Lawyers in America," more than any other law firm in New Jersey. The firm provides a comprehensive range of both business and personal legal services.

The Best Days to Send E-Mail Newsletters

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:18:06 GMT

I just picked up this item from the e-Newsletter Web Marketing Today. If you send out an e-mail newsletter, as I do and many law firms do, this is very useful information. To get my free LawMarketing Newsletter, just go to http://www.lawmarketing.com/subscribe.html

Most Common Days to Send E-Mail

The EmailLabs Delivery Trends Report Q3 2003 revealed that for legitimate business e-mailers, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the most popular days to e-mail their subscribers. E-mailings reported were: Sunday 1.4%, Monday 15.1%, Tuesday 25.4%, Wednesday 23.3%, Thursday 18.3%, Friday 15.6%, Saturday 0.9%. More than two-thirds of all messages were sent Tuesday through Thursday. Not surprisingly, Wednesday was also the day that most e-mails were opened and offers clicked on. The report was based on average statistics gathered from approximately 525 of EmailLabs' client accounts.

The report also indicates that the unsubscribe rate dropped from 0.29% to 0.17% over the previous six months, suggesting that recipients are becoming less trusting of, or perhaps more impatient with unsubscribing from unwanted e-mails. A copy of the 9-page Report in PDF format is available on EmailLabs' website. www.emaillabs.com/pressroom_12_16_03_deliverytrends.html

However, just because EmailLabs' clients sent out most of their e-mails midweek doesn't mean that this is best for all e-mailers. Be sensitive to who your subscribers are and when they prefer to read your e-mails. Some e-mails to consumers might be better read on the weekends. The way you can find out is to try different e-mail times for your own list and see which days seem to have the highest open rates.

To get your free subscription to Web Marketing Today, just visit http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt/?wmt_free).

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 00:40:00 GMT

Wolf Greenfield sends out Fold-In, a la Mad Magazine

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 22:47:17 GMT

Those fun-lovin' marketers at Wolf Greenfield in Boston have done it again. I could tell something inventive was in store when the outer envelope of the holiday card said, "Here we go again with another holiday card!"

Enclosed was a greeting card that was identical in size and appearance to one of those fold-in pages, the kind you see at the back of Mad magazine. I grew up on Mad and read it faithfully through grade school and junior high, and continue to watch Mad TV.

The picture shows people walking into a restaurant. The man is saying, "Let's do a parody mentioning nucleic acid therapeutics!" The woman answers "Are you MAD?" The artwork is in the style of Al Jafee, a contributing illustrator to Mad since the early 1960s. He invented the concept of the fold-in as a satirical response to the trend of glossy fold-outs produced by "gentlemen's" magazines. An Al Jafee fold-in has appeared on the inside back cover of nearly every issue of Mad since 1964.

Folded out, the card says "Attorneys and scientists embark on a tour de force of intellectual endeavor. Holing up in a cafe, they work through the day concerned with moving this project forward." When you fold the page in, the card removes all the people and simply says "Spread Cheer - our holiday card."

Cheers to the fun-lovin' marketers at Wolf Greenfield!

Professional Marketing Blogby Larry Bodine