Today the LMA awarded the final batch of Your Honor Awards:

• Practice Development -- Sutherland Asbill & Brennan: Sutherland Business Development curriculum
• Media Relations: Mayer Brown
• Community Relations: Middleton Reutlinger – kindess public service advertising campaign
• Recruiting: Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft: recruiting microsite
• Chapter of the year (of 18 LMA chapters) - LMA Vancouver: “Changing the Rules”
• Marketing on a Shoestring: (maximum expenditure of $500) -- Morrison Foerster: Regulatory Innovation Award
• Best in show: (an entry that stood out from the rest, where a law firm took something and did everything they could possibly do to maximize it) -- Event by Fredrickson Bryon: “Lawyers & the Louvre” Campaign

Awards given on previous days of the convention, which ended today, are:

• Advertising (single ad): Bennet Jones – The Pink Ad
• Advertising campaign: McInnes Cooper – signal flag branding campaign.
• Events: Miller & Chevalier – inauguration invitation and website
• Website: Gesmer Updegrove -- www.gesmer.com
• Niche web site: Bingham McCutchen – Bingham Information Gateway
• Online Interactive Marketing Tools: Morris, Manning & Martin – MMM Social Media
• Electronic Media: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman for New Faces of Energy: Insights from the Energy Revolution
• Identity: (logo and stationery)  Baker & McKenzie with zünpartners – branding a firm for growth
• Firmwide brochure: Bingham McCutchen – inSecurities practice brochure
• Annual report: Blank Rome “A Year Marked by Change”
• Announcements: Bingham McCutchen – Bingham-McKee Nelson Announcement
• Newsletter or Alert: Stikeman Elliott – Registration reform

 

Howrey is planning to oust up to 10 percent of its partners, a move that follows a year of disappointing revenue numbers.

Howrey is expected to cut between 25 and 30 partners, most of them in the United States, Legal Week reports. The decision to make the cuts was made before Christmas, according to the story. Both equity and nonequity partners will be let go.

Last month the law firm laid off 29 associates and 65 staffers from its 10 U.S. offices.

The move comes after Howrey saw a 35 percent drop last year in profits per equity partner and a 16 percent drop in revenue.Further evidence that the legal profession  is in a recovery economy arrives in a new report that layoffs at law firms are nearing zero.

Meanwhile, Darby & Darby, a 62-lawyer IP firm in New York, announced it would close. The decision follows a series of departures, as partners left to join general practice firms and failed attempts to merge with another law firm.

Legal Job Losses Drop Off Sharply

Howrey and Darby are the outliers in a major trend in the opposite direction.  As the national unemployment rate remained steady in February, the number of legal industry jobs lost dropped to one-tenth of what it had been in January, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly jobs report.

The legal profession shed only 100 jobs in February — substantially fewer than the 1,100 jobs that it lost in January — according to the report, released Friday.

Those numbers represented the second significant monthly decline for the industry. The sector lost 2,100 jobs in December and 2,900 in November — a steep difference compared to the 5,800 lost in October. The industry has shed 37,100 positions over the past year, according to BLS statistics, which tally net job losses.

For further details, see Law360.

The LMA today inducted 3 people into its Hall of Fame:

1.       Silvia Coulter of Hildebrandt Baker Robbins in Boston – she is a former CMO of three AmLaw 100 law firms, founder of LSSO. She has a book coming out this fall: Client Relationship Management for Associates, published by the ABA.

2.       Jim Durham, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer of McGuireWoods in Richmond, VA -- he was a former practicing lawyer, worked for Major League Baseball, former marketing director for Mintz Levin and later Ropes & Gray, was a marketing consultant, author of 3 books.

3.       Kevin McMurdo, CMO at Perkins Coie in Seattle – he was the 7^th president of LMA, a non-practicing lawyer and a former marketing consultant.

 

An LMA committee reviews hall of fame candidates and looks for people who must be a thought leader in advancing the legal profession, must be a mentors and must have served the LMA on the local or national level.

 

The LMA is continuing to issue Your Honor awards a few at a time. Here's the latest:

 

First Place Your Honor Winners

 

• Advertising (single ad): Bennet Jones – The Pink Ad
• Advertising campaign: McInnes Cooper – signal flag branding campaign.
• Events: Miller & Chevalier – inauguration invitation and website
• Website: Gesmer Updegrove -- www.gesmer.com
• Niche web site: Bingham McCutchen – Bingham Information Gateway
• Online Interactive Marketing Tools: Morris, Manning & Martin – MMM Social Media
• Electronic Media: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman for New Faces of Energy: Insights from the Energy Revolution

I haven’t been to an LMA meeting in 5 years, and this one in Denver is a very pleasant surprise.  Many longtime and senior members of the marketing profession were there. There is great networking – I barely made it 30 feet into the Hyatt Regency lobby when I immediately ran into people I knew.

There are 800 attendees at the LMA conference, according to conference co-chair Despina Kartson.  This is up from 530 last year. There are 190 CMOs and Marketing Directors here.

LMA is issuing the Your Honor Awards in batches.  Here’s the first batch of first place winners (like the early awards given out in the Oscars):

• Identity: (logo and stationery)  Baker & McKenzie with zünpartners – branding a firm for growth
• Firmwide brochure: Bingham McCutchen – inSecurities practice brochure
• Annual report: Blank Rome “A Year Marked by Change”
• Announcements: Bingham McCutchen – Bingham-McKee Nelson Announcement
• Newsletter or Alert: Stikeman Elliott – Registration reform

The new conference company is a great improvement.  Before the conference I got an email with a bar code in it.  I printed it out and scanned it upon registering at the hotel.  Instantly my information was prepared for me at a counter 10 feet away. The whole thing took 60 seconds.  Very innovative.

 

I think that a higher-level crowd is at this conference – I see more CMOs and Marketing Directors than in past conferences. One factor is that the full member registration fee is $1195, and it’s $1645 for non-member – so attending the conference has reached an expense level where attendance is not given out as a perk to marketing assistants, for example. With law firm cuts in budgets, it’s become a destination that only the CMO can justify.

 

Yesterday was the first ever pre-conference session for lawyers.  About 25 people attended, with the crowd growing to 40 by lunchtime.  The best received speakers were Alvidas Jasin (soon to leave Thompson Hine for a job at BTI Consulting), Jim Durham, CMO of McGuireWoods, and Rick Klau of Google.

 

Attendees were grumbling that there is no Wi-Fi at the conference, but I anticipated this and brought my plug in "skycard" that gets me online using a cell-phone connection.

 

The programs have better speakers this year too—more CMOs and marketing directors and fewer consultants at the podium.  I want to hear from the in-house marketers, because they’re the ones on the firing line.  Tomorrow is broken into 4 tracks: business of law, client service, business development, and public relations. 

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, as 2010 Small Firm Rainmaker of the Year Christopher Marston knows well. He offers soup-to-nuts service to entrepreneurs and startup businesses. Originate! newsletter selected him because the revenues of his Boston law firm – Exemplar – saw its revenues shoot up 48% last year, when the rest of the legal profession stagnated in the Great Recession.

His business has succeeded by being different in a way that is highly desirable to clients. The 22-lawyer firm, led by four partners including Marston, who is still just in his early 30s, was founded in 2005 with the aim that it would “absolutely not bill by the hour.”  The firm was ahead of its time by offering value billing and a service guarantee from the start.  This approach plays very well in the current times of client rebellion, as exemplified by the Association of Corporate Counsel Value Challenge.

“We’re not a vendor, we’re a partner with a client,” Marston said. “And we call clients customers.”

In contrast, most large law firms charge by the hour and are built as legal silos.  Business advice and financing is something that is offered elsewhere.   “We practice at the intersection of law and business,” Marston said.  “We’re looking for clients like us.  We’re revolutionaries and we’re looking for revolutionaries.”

The target client of Exemplar law is...For the rest of the story please click here.

Six additional law firms have retained Concep, a leading provider of integrated digital marketing solutions to law firms, representing 10 percent growth for Concep during Q1 2010. Among the new clients are

• Hunton & Williams
• Schulte Roth & Zabel
• Cole Schotz, a mid-sized firm.
• Downs Rachlin Martin, another mid-sized firm.
• Two other AMLaw100 firms.

The company works with professional organizations in the financial, professional and business services sectors, as well as membership organizations and marketing agencies to help them build, manage and deliver digital communication programs. Concep recently partnered with the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), complementing their existing partnerships with LMA Metro New York, Bay Area and Toronto.

I use Concep myself for digital marketing, and they are superb.

"Concep’s strong start to the year is evidence of the growing demand for email and digital marketing," said Anthony Green, president of Concep. "We have capitalized on the growth better than most companies because we work hard to win and keep new business with unparalleled service, innovative products and a pricing model that drives significant ROI.” 
 
The Concep U.S. office launched three years ago at 11 Harrison Street in New York.  During that time more than 50 law firms and other businesses have retained Concep to handle their B2B marketing.  Concep also has offices in Sydney and London, which recently won two B2B Marketing awards in the categories of ‘best lead nurturing initiative’ and ‘best limited-budget campaign’.

Concep continues to make enhancements to its SaaS email marketing platforms and broaden their offerings as a full service digital marketing firm. For additional information, please visit www.concepglobal.com
 

Join the video lawyer expert, New York Attorney Gerry Oginski together with me on Wednesday, March 17, St. Patrick’s Day at Noon for an important look at how video marketing can differentiate you and prompt new clients to call you. Research has shown that you're 53 times more likely to get on the first page of Google's search results if you have video on your website.

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Click here to sign up for this event

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Lawyers in firms large and small who want to use modern web technology to give prospective clients what they're looking for: a video of the lawyer they're going to retain.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Putting video on your law firm website can result in dramatic traffic increases and conversions of website viewers to callers.
• How and why video is so important to attorneys in today’s legal climate.
• Gerry’s 10 Commandments for using attorney video.
• Why video is the best way to communicate with your online visitors.
• Why video is the best return on investment you can make with your marketing dollars
• Learn how video develops trust with a non-trusting public.
• Learn why video is the best way to communicate with your online visitors.
• For more info visit http://www.pbdi.org/pages/events.asp?Action=View&EventID=237

In this one-hour webinar we guarantee you will learn how video makes you the logical choice for a viewer to call. Your goal is to make the phone ring and get more clients. Learn how using video.

Learn the 5 critical things you need to know when searching for a video production company. Also, learn why video is the best return on investment you can make with your marketing dollars.

"In this one-hour webinar I guarantee you will learn things you didn’t know about why creating video is so helpful to your potential clients and importantly, makes the phone ring." -- Gerry Oginski.

Register Now for the incredible low price of only $30.  You can't afford to miss this program!

I can tell the economy for the legal industry is getting better when research shows that law firms are merging with each other without any slowdown.  Hildebrandt Baker Robbins reports that there were 57 completed law firm mergers in 2009.

The newest one is the merger of Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP, with headquarters in Cleveland (plus offices in Columbus, Philadelphia, White Plains, Wilmington and Shanghai) with Dann Pecar Newman & Kleiman of Indianapolis, IN, effective March 1, 2010.  Because Benesch has 145 lawyers and Dann Pecar has 26, it's really an acquisition.

In an announcement, the firms say the merger would strengthen several of Benesch's core practice areas, particularly real estate, commercial litigation, bankruptcy, and their transportation/logistics and construction industry groups. Dann Pecar has promoted itself as a local leader in real estate, litigation, employment law, business and bankruptcy law.

The firm will do business as Benesch/Dann Pecar in the Indianapolis market as part of a national expansion plan by Benesch.

Interestingly, the consultant at Altman Weil who worked on the merger quoted statistics from AW's year-end MergerLine report, that the number of law firm mergers dropped by a significant 24 percent in 2009.  This is the opposite of what their arch-competitor Hildebrandt is saying in it's latest client advisory (see below):

The applause was enthusiastic when lawyer Mary Ann Dunham of Pittsburgh, PA, was named the 2009 Greater Pittsburgh Athena Award recipient.  An energetic community leader, she was acclaimed for creativity in the profession, serving the community and assisting other women to reach their leadership potential.

She is also a wife, mother of two and chair of the firm's Women's Business Development Committee at 450-lawyer Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC – and the Originate! Woman Rainmaker of 2010. (see http://www.pbdi.org/Originate)

“The techniques I use in business development are really just finding opportunities to get to know business owners and to do it in an informal setting where I can get to know them as individuals while learning about their business,” Dunham said. 

Hear Mary Ann Dunhan live in the March 23, 2010 webinar, “The Woman Rainmaker of the Year Offers Business Development Advice.” Lawyer Mary Ann Dunham of Pittsburgh, PA, is an active community leader, which has generated so much business for her firm that she was just named the 2010 Woman Rainmaker of the Year. She also heads up Buchanan Ingersoll's Mergers & Acquisitions Practice Group plus the Women's Business Development Committee. Interviewed by business development experts Larry Bodine, Esq. and Michael G. Cummings, she will describe in the live webinar how she keeps them supplied with new files and clients. Click here for more information.

“Sometimes that can be done by joining boards of organizations and getting involved in something that they do in the community.  I’ve been involved in nonprofit events, such as golf outings, charitable sponsorships and fundraisers. It's a win-win to make a difference in the community while building relationships with clients and business contacts.”

A shareholder, she is chair of the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions Practice Group and advises clients in the advanced manufacturing, technology and service industries on a variety of transactions, including acquisitions, divestitures, mergers, financings and joint ventures. She also focuses on advising foreign clients on their U.S. investments.

Being a mentor

The Athena award — named after the Greek goddess of strength and wisdom — is unique among other regional honors for women in business because of its focus on mentorship.  It is Dunham’s willingness to be helpful to others that plays a key role in her business development efforts.  In addition to the Athena award, she has been:

• Selected to the Pennsylvania Super Lawyers® list in 2007.
• Selected as a 2005 Fast Tracker by the Pittsburgh Business Times. The program recognizes 50 talented individuals under the age of 45 who are having a significant impact on the business and social climate of the region.
• Named a Pennsylvania Rising Star by Philadelphia Magazine, based on the recognition of her peers, in 2005.
• Named one of the 40 Under 40 by Pittsburgh Magazine and PUMP, the Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project, in 2004. The "40 Under 40" are young leaders honored for their ceaseless work to make Western Pennsylvania a better place.

Amazing stats like Facebook passing  the 400 million user mark, Twitter hitting 50 million tweets per day, and YouTube viewers watching 1 billion videos per day are impressive on their own, but what if we looked at Internet-related stats collectively?

Jesse Thomas looked at Internet-related stats collectively in his video State of the Internet (see below).

The video highlights some remarkable figures and visually depicts the Internet as we know it today. It’s a must-watch video for anyone trying to wrap their minds around just how immersed web technologies have become in our everyday lives, according to Mashable.com.  For example:

- There are 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide as of September 2009.

- There are 1.4 billion e-mail users worldwide, and on average we collectively send 247 billion e-mails per day. Unfortunately 200 billion of those are spam e-mails.

- As of December 2009, there are 234 million websites.

- Facebook gets 260 billion page views per month, which equals 6 million page views per minute and 37.4 trillion page views in a year.

Although I love online social media, it turns out that nothing beats a word-of-mouth recommendation to get new business, according to a new study by ARAnet.

Word-of-mouth recommendations from friends or family remain the most influential resource on advice for those looking to purchase products and services, but overall, search engines are also becoming a trusted source.

Young and highly educated consumers say online sources influence their buying decisions at a higher rate compared with the rest of the population, but social media resides down at the bottom of the list, according to a recent survey. Overall, consumers rely less on resources in social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, according to a survey from Opinion Research Co., sponsored by ARAnet.

Scott Severson, president of survey sponsor ARAnet, believes companies need to have more than one way to reach consumers online because not all will want to have contact via email or social sites. Companies will need search engine optimization (SEO) and paid-search campaign strategies, too. In other words, one campaign message will not resonate with all consumers the same way.

For more details, read "Social Media Not Preferred Recommendation Resource."

From Justin Rebello of Lawyer's Weekly:

Some lawyers are even acting contrary to the old credo that the client shouldn’t pick the lawyer; the lawyer should pick the client, and taking clients that simply walk in the door.

Facebook has increasingly become a source of marketing efforts by law firms. For instance, see Facebook Generates More Website Visitors than Google and News Reporters Now Depend on Social Media Sources 

For a list of law firms with Facebook "fan pages" I turned to Dale Tincher, CEO, Consultwebs.com, Inc., 800-872-6590, dtincher@consultwebs.com.

"In addition to Linkedin and other social media and article Websites, we recently started developing Facebook pages for our clients.  We develop them for several reasons including additional exposure and to complement their SEO and overall marketing campaigns.  As you will see, we go far past the normal programming techniques that most Facebook sites utilize.  A few of the Facebook pages we have developed are listed below:

 

·         Schwartzapfel & Associates- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Schwartzapfel-Truhowsky-Marcus-PC/125133637386?  

 

·         Ullman & Associates- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Charles-R-Ullman-Associates/147781706904?

 

·         Belluck & Fox, Mesothelioma Help - http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-York-NY/Mesotheliomahelp/53026818989

 

·         Rush, Hannula, Harkins & Kyler - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rush-Hannula-Harkins-Kyler-LLP/112383517805

 

·         Brian Moskowitz - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boynton-Beach-FL/Law-Offices-of-Brian-Moskowitz/282800090474?

 

·         Abelson Law - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washington-DC/The-Abelson-Law-Firm/123258383596

 

·         Terry Terry & Stapleton- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Morristown-TN/Terry-Terry-Stapleton/92188938485

 

·         Gemma Law - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gemma-Law-Associates-Inc/133645823382

 

·         Scott Gottlieb - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scott-C-Gottlieb-Associates-LLP/132967210799

 

·         David Resnick - http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-York-NY/David-Resnick-Associates-PC/67559988517

 

·         Tafelksi Law - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bloomfield-Hills-MI/Paul-J-Tafelski-PC/86153619073

 

·         Wyly Law Firm - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wyly-Law-Firm-PC/127085836673

 

·         Ted Greve & Associates - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Charlotte-NC/Ted-A-Greve-Associates-PA/99209593157

 

·         Barry & Loewy - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Austin-TX/Barry-Loewy-LLP/118297808977

 

·         Heselmeyer Zinda - http://www.facebook.com/hzfirm

The Web seminar "Business Development for Litigators" will be broadcast at Noon Central Time tomorrow, Thursday February 25, 2010.  Today is your last chance to register at www.PBDI.org,

Join us to learn how to overcome the bane of litigators: the one-shot case. Michael G. Cummings and I will show you how to grow your litigation client base, by continuing the relationship after the case is over, focusing on dispute-rich industries, picking the "hot" practice areas for trials, and prioritizing your business development efforts.

Learn the 10 Keys to Developing Litigation Business 1. Pursue specific industries where you have clients already. 2. Get referrals from small-firm lawyers who are overwhelmed. 3. Focus on the "hot" areas of practice, as identified by market research. 4. Methods to create a good reputation that will attract files and cases. 5. Building long-lasting relationships with clients. 6. Avoiding mistakes -- where most lawyers fail at business development. 7. Penetrating organizations of potential clients. 8. Becoming the industry expert that every business client wants. 9. The two kinds of companies to look out for. 10. Ways to get in front of a prospective client.

Invest in The Skills You Need to Succeed in the Legal Profession...

Register today at: www.pbdi.org or call 630-572-4798

Back when Twitter became a sensation in January 2009, the data had shown that Twitter was not yet an effective as a business development tool.  I said if the facts changed, I would change my mind and it's happened: lawyers are getting business via the popular micro-messaging platform.  You can indeed get new clients by using Twitter.

There have been random reports that a lawyer connected with a potential client with a Tweet. But it took blogger and online social networking expert Adrian Dayton to find Fort Lauderdale, FL, lawyer Robert C. White who methodically works Twitter.  White tweeted about an article on mobile advertising and got calls from two different mobile companies as a result.

You can listen to the 30-minute podcast conference call between the two at "Think Twitter’s for Kids? Think Again"

The social media guy

"I’m taken it upon myself to be the social media guy within the firm," said White, aka @soflatechlawyer on Twitter. "I spoke at a recent meeting of our lawyers on social media.  I try to be a leader by example and it doesn’t take a lot of time." White is a shareholder at Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, P.A., where he practices business, corporate and technology law. Gunster is the oldest commercial law firm in Palm Beach County, with 140 attorneys and 200 staff in eight Florida locations.

"Everyone needs to determine who their clients and referral sources are.  I’m a technology and entrepreneurial attorney, so my  clients use Twitter. For other areas of law, Twitter might not be as efficient. Very few of my clients are active Twitter users, but from a branding standpoint Twitter can be useful for referral sources. They key is to touch people so they can touch other people with you and mind," he said.

For the rest of the story, visit the LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/cqk3R1