Digital Marketing for Law Firms: A Double-Edged Sword?
In today’s competitive landscape, legal-services providers can no longer rely only on word-of-mouth and referrals to generate new clients. With technology changing almost every aspect of our professional lives, marketing has also undergone a complete overhaul. Websites, blogs, search engines, e-mail, social media, e-books, mobile phone apps have seamlessly made their way into our lives […]
Client Relationship Reviews
The highly competitive nature of the legal sector provides an unprecedented number of choices to clients. Investing in existing client relationships can generate growth at less cost than developing new clients. Why then is there a reluctance on the part of many lawyers to invest time listening to their clients? Common retorts include the following: […]
Building and Leveraging Relationships: The True Essence of Business Development
The concept of ‘business development’ is often over-rated when it comes to law firms. The phrase may resonate with such metrics as ‘financial targets,’ ‘meeting new contacts,’ ‘cold-calling,’ ‘attending events at relevant forums,’ ‘undertaking activities that contribute to the revenues and profitability of the firm,’ etc. Most firms like their partners to be ‘rainmakers’, the […]
Online Reputation Management for Professionals and Their Organisations
Online Reputation Management (ORM) has become one of the latest marketing and brand buzz-concepts. This is one every professional should be concerned about and should understand. Much has already been written about ORM, as any search on the internet will show. I have found that much of what is available online does not explain where […]
Cultivating Connectors from a “Standing Start”
Force multipliers or “connectors” are often easier to cultivate than are prospects. It can be easier to build a history and therefore trust because the relationship is not weighed down by the “heaviness” of a retention goal. At the same time, it can be hard to build trust if you are viewed to be merely […]
QNBT: Extracting Real Value from Non-Billable Time
“Your billable time is your income; your non-billable time is your future.” David Maister Non-billable time gets little respect Many perceive non-billable time as something that can be conjured at will. Taking someone to dinner who may or may not be a qualified client prospect can be recorded as business development. Furthermore, that two-hour dinner […]
Storytelling Is an Effective Communication Strategy
“Storytelling” may seem an odd word choice for a profession like law, which focuses on very academic-oriented activities like drafting contracts, legislative provisions, proposing a regulation, writing a will, researching case laws, etc. However, the increasing competition faced at home and abroad demands that lawyers make efforts to guide their teams to surpass expectations and discover […]
Sell the “Whole” Legal Product
“We partner with our clients.” “We build relationships with our clients.” “We understand our clients’ businesses.” Blah, blah, blah. . . . What does all this really mean? Generally speaking, not very much! Clients don’t have time to tell you how to add value, but they are very open to working even more closely with […]
The Role of the Law in the Growth of an Economy, with a Special Focus on Developing Economies
Law and Business are not mutually exclusive sub-sets. Neither of them can be practiced in isolation. However, the interplay of law and economic growth has always been an intriguing subject for legal researchers and those associated with the legal sector. With an increase in the number of opportunities available for growth, especially in developing economies, […]
Ask Gerry Riskin: Should Corporate and Other Transactional Groups Spin Work off to Litigation Teams?
Question from a Client* While it seems to be a commonly held assumption that corporate and other transactional groups in firms spin work off to litigation teams (and that this is and should be the primary source of clients for litigators/trial attorneys), we aren’t finding any literature or research that supports this premise. Our numbers […]