I’ve mentioned the Pincus Group in a previous post titled Communications and Presentation Skills for the Attorney.  They are a communications and media training company.  I’m sure there are others out there as well.  However, I have worked with the Pincus Group and seen their results. You need to know about them and organizations like theirs.  Why? Because, effective communication is the essential ingredient for individual and organizational success.  Why would you wing something so important to success when there is an alternative—professional media and communication training?

 

Most of us think of public speaking when the topic of communication skills comes up.  Public speaking is important, and doing so can pay off for the attorney and the law firm, but only if you’re good at it.  You can be with training.  But public speaking is just a side issue. We spend our day communicating.  Yet, developing your message and staying on message aren’t natural skills. Communication is the key to persuasion and relationship development.  We develop new business through communications.  We recruit new talent through communication.  We develop our relationship with clients through communications.  We win victories and settle disputes around conference tables and in court through our communication skills.

 

You can’t get elected for office unless your craft the right message and then stay on message.  That skill is no less important for the law firm leader or working attorney. Without training, there is a vicious pitfall just waiting for you—the reporter.  Without professional training, you will not be a happy camper later when reading the reporter’s story.

 

Providing the law firm’s players with professional media and communication training is an income-enhancing move for the law firm.  It will improve rainmaking and client satisfaction.  It will improve the results you achieve as a lawyer. It will kick the law firm’s reputation up another notch!

 

The Pincus Group is located in D.C., but they will do group training for your law firm anywhere that's convenient for you. Sessions are customized for individual needs but all involve interactive practice with Pincus’ seasoned coaches.  Your team learns by doing, enhancing skills with videotaped exercises specifically designed for them. Training sessions can be tailored for half-day, full-day or two-day sessions.

 

In addition to training for your own law firm, consider your firm’s clients.  As their trusted advisor, you may have business executives among your clients for whom media training would make an important difference to the success of the business or the venture being pursued with your assistance.  Such training is especially important for businesses seeking investment funds or considering a public offering.

 

For more information, visit thePincus web site or call Aileen Pincus at 301/938-690 or reach her by e-mail at apincus@thepincusgroup.com. 

 

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc.  For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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Survey after survey discloses that only about 20 percent of midsized law firms engage in a formal planning process.  Yet, the evidence is clear that those that do have a process outperform those that don’t.  If your firm is one of the 80 percent without a formal planning process, you still need to plan—to think about the business of the law firm and into what and how do you want the law firm to change.

 

I previously posted a step-by-step quide for structured strategic planning as a team, but in this post, let’s take a simpler approach—a “one-person planner” approach.  How do you proceed as one individual when thinking about the business of the law firm? Start by taking an inventory—what is the nature of the business today and then proceed to what you want it to be and what is required to get there:

 

• What do our clients have in common (who are they)?

• What do our clients think of us?

• Who are our Partners- professional strengths, people and team skills, business strengths, marketing strengths, aspirations, traits, ages, satisfaction with income level, satisfaction with status quo, retirement goals?

• What do our other lawyers have in common (who are they); are they the right people; do we have the right number; are we fully utilzing them; are we training and developing them as we should?

• How do we stack up financially—per-partner income, rates, leverage, realization, margin?

• How are we growing our business; where does our new business come from?

• What is good and not good about our facilities?

• What is good and not good about our administrative team?

• What is good and not good about our systems and equipment?

• Who are our competitors, if any, that really matter?

• What are we really good at?

• What do clients ask of us that we are not good at?

• What are our biggest threats, if any, that really matter?

• What are our best opportunities?

• What is the firm’s value proposition—what elevator response would we give to someone who asks, “Tell me about your firm”?

• Are you satisfied with who and what your firm is? If not, what do you want it to be?

• If you are not satisfied, what do you want your value proposition to be—what elevator response would you like to give?

• What is keeping you from being what you want to be?

• Make a list—what has to change to get where you want to go?

• Go back over your list and reshape it into a big picture.

• The vision: This is who we are and want to remain or this is who we want to be.

• What are the three to five main things that will determine the success of that vision?

• What strategies are we going to rely on to achieve those main things?

  • What tactics or programs will we implement to support the strategies and who is going to be responsible for what?

  • How are we going to measure and report progress?

  • How are those responsible going to be held accountable for their delegated role?

 

Now here is the caveat.  Now you have to sell your plan. A one-person planning team can only take the progress so far.  You need a consensus for a plan to work. Everyone doesn’t have to agree with every aspect, but they must agree to the destination and the road, the key strategies, for getting there.

 

I call that consensus “getting on I65 North”.  The message I65 North conveys is that we are going north and we are going on this specified road.  You can travel at your own speed as long as you are not endangering other travelers or impeding their progress.  But you can’t go South, East, or West.  If you want to go somewhere else, there are exits along the way.

 

The truth be told, the easy way to sell your plan is to move to the next level and repeat the process as a team.   You’ve gone through the process and, having done so, you are in a position to facilitate the planning process.  New light bulbs may go off during the process, but the team is likely to wind up with a plan very similar to the one you scoped out initially. Only this time, they have ownership.

 

When you plan as a team, you may want to use the strategic planning guide from a prior post or you may feel more comfortable initially by sticking to a modified version of the above one-person planner approach for now.

 

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc.  For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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Last week I was in Milwaukee attending the Milwaukee Bar's annual Conference. Technology and law firm management are an important part of their conference. It traditionally attracts faculty members of national (make that international) stature. One of the faculty members was Dave Bilinsky, the Practice Management Advisor for the Law Society of British Columbia. Among his other insightful tips was this high value four-pointer worth framing:

1. Teach someone

2. Delegate, delegate, delegate….

3. Concentrate on results

4. Push work down

When partners hoard work, they limit the firm’s prospects for future profitable growth. “Doing it yourself” means that you are short-changing associate professional development, limiting your ability to plan, bring in new business, or get more done by leveraging off of others. Taking the time to teach someone rather than doing it yourself increases the firm’s capacity in the long term.

Number two speaks for itself. Try to never do something someone else can do.

Too often we think first of the process required rather than the end result to be achieved. Short-cutting a process (or finding a new way) saves time, if it achieves the same or a better end result. Take the time to think creatively. Give delegates the opportunity to be creative.

For a partner, “push work down” means pushing it down to an associate. When you do, you get double the bang for your buck. The associate gets the work done, and you get a more experienced associate.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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Peter Darling’s article “Seeking Out New Markets” in the September 2006 issue of Law Practice will spark your imagination.

While your peer firms engage in “mantra marketing,” delivering the same old tired message to the same clients and prospects, you can engage in divining for business. You can use Darling's three questions as a divining rod to seek out new business and even entirely new markets. Darling calls it “spotting what’s less than obvious”.

The trick is looking at new events, regulations, and laws from three different angles. Look at them as a lawyer, as a marketer, and as a strategist. Darling uses the example of a new law. There are three questions:

• A Lawyer: What does this new law mean?
• A Marketer: Who will it affect, and is there anyone new in this group?
• A Strategist: Do we have expertise in this area that we can leverage and market?

The test can be applied to anything: Avian flu, new laws regarding computer disposal, outlawed duck liver in Chicago, immigration changes, etc. Sarbanes-Oxley is a classic example. Law firms who initially approached SOX with the eye of a marketer and strategist as well as an attorney reaped the greatest rewards. Where will your firm be when the next Sarbanes-Oxley is signed by the President? Will you just respond to the needs of your existing clients when they turn to you as their trusted advisor or will you take the initiative to seek out new markets and opportunities with an effective strategy to marshal the needed knowledge and expertise.

I would kick Peter Darling's approach up another notch by applying his three questions to possible future events. In a previous post about pursuing opportunities, one entrepreneurial approach discussed was “Getting there first with the most”. Doing so requires the firm to have a strategy in place to mobilize quickly when opportunities arise. To do that, the law firms needs to anticipate possible future events and have a basic plan in place to move faster and with more resources than the other guy. I suggested that the partners prepare their minds by practicing “thinking out of the box.” For example, have a weekly lunch or a monthly evening session devoted to nothing but thinking about things that could happen and then thinking about how they could happen differently. The mission would be to identify strategies that would allow the firm to benefit rather than suffer from these events.

Suppose a one-payer health system is adopted by the U.S. government. What problems and opportunities occur if Mexico nationalizes American businesses? How should your firm respond to a news release that a major U.S. corporation is relocating its headquarters to your area? Could your firm have anticipated the wave of refinancing sparked by falling interest rates? Does the fact that over three million Americans turned 60 last year open opportunities for your firm?

Have fun thinking out of the box. View each event from the eyes of the lawyer, marketer, and strategist. Consider how the firm could capitalize rather than suffer from uncertain future events. Chance, Luck, Opportunity—whatever you call it—“favors the prepared mind.”

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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By Guest author: John Remsen, Jr.

Articles in a well-respected publication are an effective way to establish your reputation as an expert in a particular area of law. Their value doesn’t end with publication. It starts.

Articles give you a reason to communicate with clients and prospects by sharing reprints with them. They add credibility when posted on your firm’s web site. Articles increase the impact of speaking engagements as hand outs and increase the likelihood you will be asked to serve on the faculty of a legal conference. They make your future articles more attractive to publications when you have established a track record of prior publication. Do not overlook industry trade publications when submitting articles. An article in the publications that are read by your targeted business segments can bring you and your firm to the attention of VITO, that Very Important Top Office.

This post will give you practical ideas to tap this powerful marketing technique as a vehicle to:

• Enhance your reputation as an expert
• Increase your visibility among key target audiences
• Build relationships with publications
• Increase your faculty value to conference planners
• Build your inventory of marketing materials

Laying the Groundwork

The last thing you want is to divert a significant block of billable hours to writing an article no one wants. Before you start on that great idea, there are several important things that you need to do.

Consider Your Purpose

Ultimately, the objective of your article is to generate new business for you and your firm. However, take the time to think through your primary purpose for this particular article. Is it to build relationships with people at a particular organization, enhance your reputation as an expert in an area of law, or increase overall visibility with a key audience? Once you determine your primary purpose, you can then incorporate some of the ideas presented here into your strategy.

Decide Who You Want to Reach

Identify carefully who you want to reach with your article. Then, select your target publications based on what they read. The more widely read and respected the publication, the more difficult it becomes to have your article published in it. For example, it is much more difficult to get your article in The Wall Street Journal than in your local chamber of commerce newsletter. There is a trade-off to consider. As an author, you may have to start with smaller publications and work your way up to larger publications. Look for new online publications competing with the traditional newsprint formats. As newcomers, they are often more aggressively searching for contributing authors. 

Build a Relationship with the Editors

Schedule a meeting (or telephone call) with the editor to find out more about the publication, its editorial calendar, and its guidelines for article submission. Learn the parameters (length, style, deadlines, etc.) for your submission. Find out the topics in which the editor has a particular interest. Ask for a media kit, if available. Discuss reprinting policies and copyright issues.

Editors have a continuing need for timely, well-written articles for their publications and are usually receptive when contacted. Volunteer as a source when the publication is looking for an expert quote on a particular legal issue.

Before you invest your writing time, get a tentative commitment from at least one worthwhile publication that they are likely to include your submission in an upcoming issue. Be clear on the topic, the length of the article, and submission requirements.

Color Within the Lines

You determined your audience, selected your target publication(s), and discussed potential topics with an editor or two. Stay within those lines when writing your article.

• Stick to the Parameters: Be certain to stick to the publication’s parameters. An article that is too long or submitted after the deadline probably isn’t going to make it into the publication. If you run into problems or have any questions, contact your editor as soon as possible.
• Write for Your Audience: Write to your audience’s level of understanding. Avoid using “legalese” or writing in a style not easily understood by your readers. Two good sources on writing articles and getting them published are The Writer’s Yearbook and Writer’s Digest magazine.
• Proofread Your Work: Have your final draft proofed for spelling and grammar. Don’t stop there.Have at least two other people (preferably members of your target audience or, better yet, a client) read it for clarity and relevance.

SUBMITTING YOUR ARTICLE

Now that your manuscript is complete, you are ready to send it off to the editor who has agreed to publish your article. First, you should call that individual to let him/her know the document is on its way. There may be some other details about submission to discuss. Also, give thought to the copyright issue. Publications usually want to own the copyright of the article, so any reprints or subsequent publication will require its approval. Include with your submission a photograph, a two-sentence biographical profile, and play it safe by including complete business card information: Name, title, firm, address, phone, fax, URL, and e-mail address. Today, most publications will accept your submission electronically. Be clear about required file formats and the required format for the photograph. Check with the publication to make sure your submission was received and the file formats were correct.

After your article appears in the publication, send a thank-you note to the editor for the opportunity to contribute an article. Remind the editor that you are interested in future writing opportunities and always available should the publication be looking for input or a quote regarding your area of expertise. Likewise, take the time to thank all those who helped with your article, including your proofreaders.

Start capitalizing on your investment. Distribute reprints to clients and prospects. Post your articles on your web site. Use them as hand-outs when speaking. Use your articles as promotional material on display in the reception area and as inserts in information packs and press kits about the firm. A well-written article can be an investment that just keeps paying off.

About the Author: John Remsen, Jr. is President of TheRemsenGroup, a marketing consulting firm that works exclusively with law firms to help them attract and retain the clients they want. He is Past President of the Southeastern Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association and is a frequent speaker and author on law firm marketing topics. He can be reach at 404.885.9100 or JRemsen@TheRemsenGroup.com.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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I mentioned in a prior post that “branding” seemed to be on everyone’s lips at the June Los Angeles Law Firm Business Forum organized by ALM. One of the stronger educational segments was titled “Know Thyself: Marketing and Brand Strategies.”

Each of the four faculty members responsible for the session emphasized the necessity of a consensus among law firm partners as the starting point for developing a branding strategy.

Branding is about communicating a clear image of who you are. The typical, unbranded law firm has multiple personalities. Different partners have a different image of where the firm is and where it should go. It is this dysfunction that branding programs attempt to cure. Branding has become increasingly important as firms turned to institutional marketing as a replacement for ineffective and inconsistent attorney rainmaking.

Faculty member Merry Neithlich is a partner with Extreme Marketing. She provided attendees with a simple test to assess a firm’s brand distinction. To grade yourself, score 3 points for ‘yes’, 2 points for ‘I don’t know’ and 1 point for ‘no’.

1. My firm has discovered what differentiates us from others in our field of practice.
2. My firm’s distinction is recognized by all of our clients.
3. My firm’s distinction has value to our clients and prospects.
4. All partners, associates, and staff at the firm are aware of our distinction.
5. My firm’s distinction is clearly communicated to prospects in conversations, new business proposals, etc.
6. My firm’s distinction is clearly communicated in our marketing materials.
7. My firm’s distinction is scripted and used consistently.
8. We routinely survey client service delivery preferences to gauge and maintain our brand’s relevance.
9. My firm’s pricing strategy is based on our clients’ perception of our value.
10.My firm’s brand of lawyering receives adequate marketing support.

According to Neithlich, your branding grade based on this test is as follows:

A: 24-30 points—You are on the right track.

B: 15-23 points—Your distinction is still a little blurry.

C: 9-15 points—You are average, but that translates to “commodity”.

Other members of the faculty for this Branding session included Allan Anderson with Ropers Majeski, Alison Larson with Schopf & Weiss and Taedra Kogan with Thompson FindLaw.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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In a May edition of The New York Times’ What’s Offline section of nytimes.com, Paul B. Brown reports on business practices involving the protection of trade secrets.

Considering that my career has been spent in the information products and services sectors, trade secrets and intangible property rights are high on my list of concerns. For your business clients, trade secrets are an important part of the value of their business. Trade secrets falling in the wrong hands can harm that value and jeopardize the continuity of your client’s business.

Reminding the law firm’s business clients and prospects that they should take steps to protect that property is an excellent opportunity for the law firm to add value to existing client relationships. It is also likely to win you new business from both existing and new clients.

Brown points to David R. Hannah’s work at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, which notes that companies are particularly bad at taking measures to protect their trade secrets. The biggest threat comes from current and previous employees. What are some of the things law firm business clients should be doing?

1. Initially informing employees (in writing) about their responsibilities and obligations for trade secrets

2. Reminding employees frequently (quarterly) in writing

3. Issuing letters to departing employees

4. In some cases, issuing letters to new employers of departing employees reiterating the consequences of disclosing, or acting on, trade secrets

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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Hard work and long hours limit the income of law firm partners. How can that be? While it may appear counterintuitive, it is really simple. The owners of a service business make more money when they can leverage off of the work of others. In order to do that, you have to have the work for them to do. You have to give them the work to do. And, you have to find, hire, and train them.

A new survey of mid-sized law firms is confirming what we frequently found when working with individual midsized law firms. Partners are logging more billable hours than their associates. Law firm partners are hoarding work rather than handing it off to others. Rather than bringing in new business or training others, they are piling up their own billable hours.

It gets worse. Not only are many mid-sized firms not fully utilizing their existing associates, but partners are not investing enough time in business development or recruiting and mentoring talent. Where AmLaw 200 firms have about three associates for every partner, midsized firms average only a 1 -1 ratio.

The result is what you would expect. Midsized firm partners make less income than their counterparts in larger law firms.

If working long and hard hours actually reduces income, why do partners do it? Why do they hoard the work?

Why shouldn’t they? If a partner’s distribution is based largely on their individual production, what else would one expect?

It is time to rethink partner compensation in the midsized firm. Consider rewarding partners for nothing more than a hygienic level of production. Additional rewards would then come from bringing in new business and handing off work to others. Consider the merits of a compensation system that includes the following four elements:

1. Personal production up to a maximum hygienic level

2. Bringing in new business (based on fee revenue for the initial eighteen-month period)

3. Associate billings on clients’ work under the partner’s control

4. A subjective element based on relative performance in such categories as:

• Recruiting
• Mentoring
• Associate survey
• Administrative staff survey
• Public relations
• Playing by the rules
• Client satisfaction surveys
• Etc.

Why limit the new business reward to eighteen months? The objective is to keep generating new business, not to compensate for revenue the firm already has. Compensation for retaining existing business is earned by performing as the control partner responsible for work supervision and the client relationship. A fifth element can be added, if needed, to encourage a partner to hand off control to a new or different partner. Similar to origination, the partner handing off work could get origination equivalent credit for the first 12 to 18 months following hand off.

By limiting earnings for personal production to a “hygienic” level, partners will no longer be incensed to pile up billable hours at the expense of making rain and devloping the skills of their associates. The short eighteen-month origination credit period keeps the pressure on “new” business development rather than continuing compensation for prior successes. Origination credit under the above approach is never handed off. Once someone has been paid for new business, it becomes property of the house. By basing compensation on associates' fees, the emphasis is shifted from personal production to developing and using the professional skills of associates.

The firm gets a bonus out of the new approach. The firm gains a farm team out of which the future partners and leaders of the firm will come.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.
 

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Yesterday’s post was a reminder that when hiring new talent, the firm needed to look for candidates who have the personality and fire in their belly to bring new business to the law firm. While those traits are needed by the law firm, it turns out that they are not that important in the minds of your existing clients. Perhaps a better way to say it is that the client is looking for more than just a personality.

Most mid-sized law firms are in the B2B business. B2B, of course, is the new age shorthand for an enterprise (a business) that provides services or sells products to other businesses. Law firms are viewed as businesses by their business customers.

The April 2006 Harvard Business Review reports that a Zurich, Switzerland team carried out extensive research to determine the difference between what customers wanted in a company's representative and what the providers looked for while recruiting new team members.

Customers placed considerable value on whether the provider’s representative understood the customer’s business and industry; whereas, industry knowledge was near the bottom of the qualifications that providers looked for when recruiting.

Philip Kreindler and Copal Rajguru with Infoteam Sales Process Consulting in Zurich said, "Our survey suggests that vendors would be wise to put industry and subject matter expertise ahead of social skills when it comes to recruitment." The point was made that instead of learning industry subject matter on the job, the ideal candidate brings that knowledge with them.

That characteristic is usually available to the law firm only through lateral hires. But in that regard, it is clear that knowledge of industries targeted by a law firm should be high on the list of qualifications when searching for a lateral prospect.

The question this raises is: "Does industry and customer knowledge trump relationship building skills?" I’m not sure these are separate skills. Relationship building requires one to have an honest and sincere interest in the other party. To acquire customer and industry knowledge requires that interest, and the more you know, the more interested you become in contributing to both.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.
 

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Law firms depend on customers and that takes lawyers who can attract them. Some people have an ability to do it better than others. From this day forward, let a paperclip remind you that looking for that ability is an important part of managing the recruiting process.

Law Practice Management’s post Trade a Paper Clip for a House tells the story of the blog one red paperclip. “What 26-year-old Kyle MacDonald announced on his one red paperclip blog was his intention to trade up his one red paperclip until eventually he winds up with a house. Implausible? Ridiculous? Impossible? Well, he seems well on his way.”

The Law Practice Management blog relates the story to convey a message: When hiring, look for candidates who have the personality and fire in their belly that will bring new business to the law firm.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.
 

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