February 27, 2007
Law Firm Clients Want Their News and Information with Pictures
The February 2007 ABA journal article Less Razzle, More Dazzle appeared in the Journal’s section Ideas From The Front. It should have been called Ideas From The Past.
The article was in praise of established legal newsletters that refuse to deviate from their long-time tradition of straight text. Why? Because they say that is what their readers want—substance with “no fluff, no fuss, no muss, no color, no gloss, no pictures, no graphs. Just black-and-white words. Lots of them.”
Well old guys, you just keep doing what you are doing and you will go the way of the Hershey candy bar! There was a time when in the psyche of the population there was only one candy bar and it came with or without nuts. New generations didn’t want their father's Oldsmobile. They didn’t want their grand parent’s Hershey Bar, and they don’t want their information the same way you used to receive it—all text and no pictures.
Much of the newer technology deals with managing the flow of information. Overly busy people don’t intend to waste their time digging through pure black-and-white text to see if it includes something of importance to them. If you provide information to your clients, you have to get with the times. We are talking RSS feeds, drill-down summaries, dashboards, mashups, podcasts, etc.
Hang tough and keep dishing out any product or service the same way you always have and the new guys and girls are going somewhere else. When it comes to information, Generation X and Generation Y people will not tolerate processing it the same old way. So if your law firm is putting out text-only newsletters to attract and retain clients, then the people you are appealing to are the same people who are leaving the scene. If you want to please them while they are still around at least offer an option. Give your clients a choice—the “text-only version” or the “next generation version”. It is great to continue to loyally serve the people who have made your firm what it is, but not at the cost of those you will depend on for your future.
One of the important steps in planning is to define the environment in which you must operate and succeed—market, social, economic, governmental, competitive, technology, human resources, etc. The fact that the next generation of clients and legal talent is changing the way it processes information is an important difference between yesterday, today, and tomorrow—one that you need to consider to remain competitive. Don’t go the way of the Hershey bar.
PS: After writing the above post, I received a nice e-mail from Howard Lax providing additional insight as to why he styles his newsletter as he does. Mr. Lax is greatly respected and his newsletters are valued highly by those who receive it. Howard Lax is an expert who knows what he is doing and why. For the rest of us, my advice is “don’t try this on your own”.
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Filed under Marketing, Operations by Tom Collins
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