Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog

Don't Accept That Counter-Offer

When you get a job offer it's better to take it than to accept your current firm's counter-offer, according to Bruce Allen of Rutan & Tucker.  In a recent Marketing Catalyst blog post he says, "An amazing statistic is that 89% of people accepting counter offers are gone in 6 months. 89 PERCENT!"

He recounts how me made a job offer to a woman to join his marketing team.  "When partners at the last firm found out she intended to leave they pulled out all the stops; made promises; told her everything is going to be great from here on out. She stayed." Bruce wrote.

"Not too many days later I've heard from her and now she is MEGA unhappy. The partners may have wanted things to transform, but the people she actually reports to are still the same." he says.  "If the relationship is not transformed, money and platitudes will not change a thing. A huge discount (or a raise in the case of my teammate) changes nothing about why someone is unhappy."

So maybe the grass is greener on the other side.  If you get a good job offer, simply take it.

Can Roberts overcome Ethics Lapse?

The Wall Street Journal honed in on a recent ethics gaffe by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts (see 8/26/05 issue, p. A4). He ruled in favor of a case involving President Bush on the same day -- July 15 -- that Roberts met with Bush for the job-clinching interview. The blunder was revealed in a response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

Speaking as a lawyer myself, this is a conflict of interest you could see in the dark. Roberts was on a three-judge panel in the Salim Hamdan case, about the Bush administration's policy to deny legal rights to Guantanamo detainees before military commissions. The Hamdan case differs from others because of the personal involvement of the president, who created the military commissions in an executive order and selected Hamdan as eligible for prosecution.

Roberts could have:

• Notified the litigants of his conflict of interest.
• Recused himself.

But he did neither. He ruled in favor of his political sponsor.

Law professors Stephen Gillers of NYU, David Luban of Georgetown U. and Steven Lubet of Northwestern U. wrote an artice citing prior instances where other judges recused themselves in similar situtions. The White house responded with professors Ronald Rotunda of George Marshal U. and Thomas Morgan of Geoerge Washington U., who said that Roberts' impartiality could not "reasonably be qeustioned" and that he broke no ethics rule.

I follow the maxim that "if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck -- it's a duck." In this case, the duck is a quid pro quo. Here in Chicago, where I live, when a judge rules in favor of his patron, we refer to this as a payoff.

---

NARAL is back with a TV commercial on CNN criticizing Roberts, the Teflon Nominee. "But John Roberts dismissed one of our established liberties as the 'so called right to privacy,' and co-wrote a brief arguing that Roe v. Wade shold be overruled," the announcer says. "There is just too much at state to let John Roberts become a decision vote on the Supreme Court. NARAL's earlier TV ad was yanked immediately for being false and misleading.

RSS Feeds on NJ Law Firm Site

This just in: The law firm of Stark & Stark in Princeton has made available 15 separate RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds specific to various firm practice areas through its New Jersey Law Blog (www.njlawblog.com). The addition of these customized feeds allows subscribers to get instant notification of new developments in area of law most important to them.

According to Richard C. DeLuca, Director of Business Development for the firm, Links to these newly available feeds can be located within the "Blogs" section of the 90-lawyer firm's Web site. The 15 practice area feeds now available are:

Banking & Financial Services
Bankruptcy & Creditor's Rights
Business & Corporate
Collections
Community Associations
Condemnation & Eminent Domain
Corporate Investigation & White Collar
Divorce
Employment
Environmental
Litigation
Podcasts
Real Estate, Zoning & Land Use
Securities Compliance & Arbitration
Trusts & Estates

The New Jersey Law Blog still offers a main RSS feed (http://www.njlawblog.com/index.xml) which distributes information added to any one of the blog's 18 sub-categories.  The firm also publishes the Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog at www.braininjurylawblog.com.

RSS Feeds Appearing Now on Law Firm Web Sites

In a new phenomenon I've discovered, law firms are beginning to add RSS feeds to their Web sites. This is a universal feature of blogs, of course, but it works just as well for Web sites. I've had RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) feeds on The LawMarketing Portal for several months. now. They're wonderful for attracting traffic because they allow visitors to subscribe to my content.

Wilmer Cutler offers RSS feeds to 19 sections of its Web site at http://www.wilmerhale.com/rss/. "RSS feeds allows Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr to deliver the content that you select from our list below and display it for you in one convenient location. RSS feeds are a simple way to receive timely legal updates from the firm," the Web site explains.

Wilmer Cutler has more than 1,000 lawyers with offices in 14 cities in the United States, Europe and Asia. To view the firm’s RSS feeds, you must first have a news reader (or aggregator) installed on your computer. A news reader is the application used to view the headlines via RSS. To download a news reader select a reader for free download through a site such as download.com. The one I use is NewsGator, available free at www.NewsGator.com.

The RSS feeds for Wilmer Cutler include Antitrust and Competition, Aviation, Bankruptcy and Commercial, Communications and E-Commerce, Corporate, Defense, National Security and Government Contracts, Environmental, FDA, Financial Institutions, Intellectual Property, International Arbitration, Labor and Employment, Litigation, Private Client, Public Policy and Strategy, Real Estate, Securities, Tax, and Trade.

Criminey, if the firm could get the risk-averse lawyers in Corporate and Securities to have an RSS feed, ANY firm should be able to convince ANY practice group head to do the same.

This morning I discovered that Canada's Clark Wilson, up in Vancouver, British Columbia is also offering RSS feeds on their Web site for the firm's publications. By using RSS feeds, visitors with interests in specific legal subject matters will receive immediate notification as soon as alerts and articles that match their interests are posted on their Web site.

Clark Wilson LLP, with 65 lawyers, is one of the first law firms in Canada to offer publication headlines via RSS. You can subscribe with Bloglines, My Yahoo, Newsgator or XML. Their feeds cover 14 different categories of legal topics, including technology and intellectual property, real estate, securities, energy, labor & employment, higher learning, and general business issues. Clark Wilson LLP feeds are located at: http://www.cwilson.com/feeds.

Dead Practice Area: Federal Trials

The number of tort trials in federal courts has fallen by nearly 80 percent in less than two decades, a government study found.  If your firm has an active practice in Federal trials, it's time to get out.  This area is dead or dying.

Legal experts attribute the drop to Supreme Court rulings in the 1990s that made it much more difficult for people bringing lawsuits in federal courts to prevail.  "Plaintiffs have been avoiding federal courts," Aaron Twerski, dean of the Hofstra University school of law, told the Associated Press.

President Bush signed legislation in February to have federal judges take most large class action lawsuits away from state courts. In a nine-minute White House signing ceremony, Bush said a half-dozen times that the legislation was only a beginning in his drive to end "the lawsuit culture."

The number of tort trials concluded in the federal court system in 1985 was 3,600, compared with fewer than 800 in 2003, the government study said. Nine out of 10 tort trials in federal courts involve personal injuries such as product liability, car accidents and medical malpractice cases.

The total number of tort cases concluded in federal courts -- those that went to trial and those that didn't -- hit a high of 60,941 in 1999, with an influx of asbestos and breast implant litigation. The figure declined to 49,166 in 2003.

A major reason for the decline in trials: Rulings like the 1993 Supreme Court case of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals which set a very high standard for admitting expert testimony in federal courts, said Twerski.

Testimony from expert witnesses is often the vital link in convincing juries that an anti-nausea drug causes birth defects, that PCBs in industrial brake fluid accelerated a worker's lung cancer or that a defective tire was the reason for a blowout on a minivan that killed several people.

Elaborate pretrial hearings over proposed expert witnesses are driving up the costs of tort cases, Brooklyn law school professor Margaret E. Berger told the Associated Press.

Twerski also said a string of fairly conservative judicial appointments during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and both Bushes "does not look kindly to this cutting-edge-type litigation."

Bush took his campaign for lawsuit reform local early this year, visiting Madison County, Ill., which the American Tort Reform Association dubbed the nation's top "judicial hellhole." The county has a reputation for handing out big awards and allowing lawsuits that would be thrown out in other districts.

More than 1,400 asbestos cases were filed in Madison County over the last two years, and it was home to 179 class action lawsuits during that time. A Madison County judge ordered cigarette maker Philip Morris USA to pay $10.1 billion for falsely marketing light cigarettes as less harmful than other brands.

So it will pay off to promote and market your firm's trial experience in state courts instead.

Roberts' Marketing Picking Up Supporters, Detractors

The lawyer marketing campaign for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts is generating heat.

• US Chamber of Commerce endorsed Roberts.
• The National Association of Manufacturers became the first business group to endorse him.
• The National Review online defended him, sort of, with columnist Leonard Leo saying Roberts would not "toss old widows on the street and leave the rest of us property owners twisting in the wind."

He's also got more detractors, meaning that the marketing campaign is pressing hot buttons:

• People for the American Way announced its opposition.
• Lambda Legal wants Roberts grilled on gay rights legal issues.  Saying it has "serious concerns" about him, the group set up an online petition to pressure the Senate to ask the questions.
• Newsday.com said "Roberts looks like early Archie Bunker" in a column by Marie Cocco.

The heat goes on.

How to Determine Traffic at a Competing Site

Is there a way to know in real time how many visitors come to a specific site, without help from that website? Yes there is, according to Dr. Ralph Wilson's Web Marketing Today newsletter.

The doc says there are four ways to determine traffic. Three companies monitor traffic to websites and sell this information to their clients, though some information on the highest traffic sites is sometimes displayed for free. These companies are:

comScore Media Metrix (www.comscore.com/metrix)

Nielsen//NetRatings (www.nielsen-netratings.com)

Hitwise (www.hitwise.com)

You may have to purchase data from comScore or Nielsen//NetRatings. If you can't afford their data, you can get a relative idea of traffic to a site by using Alexa (www.alexa.com). This service, owned by Amazon, ranks websites on the basis of traffic, #1 being high. They don't tell you absolute numbers of unique visitors, however. For such an estimate, find the traffic rankings (in press releases, etc.) of the sites just above and below your site of interest in the Alexa ranking, and its relative traffic will be between those numbers.

Associate Business Development Survey Now Open

Click here to see the results of this survey online.

The Sage Professional Development Institute and the LawMarketing Portal are sponsoring a groundbreaking new survey:  "Current Practices in Business Development for Associates." Please participate by visiting http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB224KLK2JRHJ
or click here to participate.

There is no public information available on this important topic -- today's young lawyers may become tomorrow's rainmakers.  But the path they take depends on today's current law firm practices. That's why your feedback is important.

There are only 7 questions, and the survey takes on 5 minutes or less to complete.  The survey is designed so that you may complete it only once, to prevent duplicate responses.  It will be open for responses this week only -- Monday August 22 to Friday August 26.  Again, simply click here to participate.

Find a Publicist the Media Loves

Joan Stewart, a/k/a the Publicity Hound has six great tips for hiring a "dream publicist."

They have a hot list of media contacts at newspapers, magazines and TV stations where you want your story to appear--or they know how to create the list.  The Number One factor in hiring a publicist is chemistry.

If you're looking for a publicist, be on the lookout for someone who:

--Can deliver a snappy, succinct telephone pitch within 15 seconds.

--Can create a clever media kit that reporters won't toss in the newsroom wastebasket along with all the others.

--Understands how to take the contents of that same media kit and put it at your website so reporters can access information about you within seconds, without you having to spend money on expensive overnight deliveries.

--Knows the target market for your product or service as well as you do and prefers to develop relationships with a short list of media contacts instead of sending blast faxes to a cast of thousands.

--Prefers to hold a magazine in her hands and inspect it before calling an editor to pitch.

--Uses accurate yet enticing email subject lines that force reporters to open email pitches.

For more info, including how to avoid a Publicist from Hell, visit her site at http://www.publicityhound.com/hireapublicist.html.

Roberts Gets Stamp of Approval

In marketing, a powerful asset is a third-party endorsement.  That's why professionals use testimonials, references and rankings by others to get new business.  It's always better to have someone else praise you than to praise yourself.

Supreme Court nominee John C. Roberts got that when the American Bar Association bestowed a "well qualified" upon him on August 17, the highest of three possible ratings.  (The possible ratings are "well qualified," "qualified" and "not qualified.")

The rating by unanimous vote of an ABA committee was disclosed as the Senate Judiciary Committee announced plans for the start of confirmation hearings on Sept. 6.

For more than 50 years, the ABA has evaluated the credentials of nominees for the federal bench, though the nation's largest lawyers group has no official standing in the process.  This is the fourth time the ABA has rated Roberts. He was designated well qualified in 2001 when he was nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He received the same rating in 2003 when he was nominated again for the appeals courts and then confirmed. He was rated as qualified as an appeals court nominee in 1992, but the Senate never took up that nomination.

This approval trumps the marketing efforts of opponents:

• Democracynow.org insists Roberts had a conflict of interest when he interviewed with Bush officials while his three-judge panel was considering a Bush White House case involving Guantanamo Bay military tribunals.
• Senator Kennedy, a member of the Judiciary Committee, called for an investigation into the disappearance of documents related to Roberts' nomination. 
• The Democratic National Committee said it will file a Freedom of Information request to get documents relating to 80 cases that Roberts worked on in the first Bush administration.

How to Liven Up Boring Meetings

Matthew Homann posted some great ideas to spice up dull meetings in his blog [non] billable hour.  These are the kind of meetings I want to attend!

These great tips for making boring conference/meeting space more conducive to creative thought come from Eva Niewiadomski, founder of Catalyst Ranch (really cool conference space in Chicago).

• Bring a small boom box and a couple of homemade CDs with an eclectic and exotically wild mix of music to set the mood for the meeting. Try to pick music that most people are not familiar with, but that is energetic.
• Use an unusual noisemaker to get people’s attention or to tell them when to start or finish an exercise (i.e. bike horn, rattle, maracas, dinner bell, gong).
• Set up a station near the door where participants create their name tags instead of using preprinted or standard issue name tags. Provide them with different colored markers, stickers, mini-stamper markers and tell them to have some fun.
• Have the group actually create something during the icebreaker exercise that will give the room some character.
• Drape a few feather boas over several of the chairs.
• Place various ties, hats and wigs around the room and on the chairs.
• Bring small nerf guns and hoola-hoops.Pipe cleaners in cool containers

Eva also suggests a few things to place on the tables:

• Play-Doh
• Small etch-a-sketches
• Funny rubber noses
• Containers of crayons, coloring pencils and colored markers/funky colored pens
• Small mazes, puzzles
• Bowls of wild mixed candies and chocolates
• Yo-Yos
• Interesting books and magazines with lots of pictures
• Postcards you’ve received over the years
• Coloring books

Matt has just launched LexThink! Innovation Coaching, and is offering a great deal for his first 17 clients: "The coaching, conference calls, virtual assistance, and retreat (hotel and food) are all included in the price, which is $3,000.  I’m giving a $1,000.00 discount to the first seventeen clients who sign up and agree to be my “Beta Testers.”  The first coaching group will start mid-September."  If you are interested, e-mail him at Matt@LexThink.com.

John Roberts: The Teflon Nominee

Viewing things from a lawyer marketing standpoint, John Roberts has been turned into the Teflon Nominee.  His "speak no evil" no-downside marketing is working. (At right: The nominee shares a chuckle with with Sen. Ron Wyden (Democrat from Oregon.)

According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen Democratic senators have decided that they will not launch a major fight to block him.  They don't want to waste their political capital.  "No one's planning all-out warfare," said one Senate Democratic aide.

Roberts has turned himself into a matter not worth fighting over.  An excellent marketing tactic.

So all the blogger comments and news reports are sliding off and not sticking:

• ABC News said that as a young lawyer in the Regan White House, Roberts wrote about "the abortion tragedy" in a 1985 memo.
• ABC News also reports that Roberts wrote in a 1985 memo that forbidding prayer in public schools "seems indefensible."
• Bayoubuzz.com notes that "Roberts offered that he would have "no objection" to a constutional amendment permitting voluntary prayer" in schools.
• As an assistant White House counsel in 1984, Roberts "scoffed at the idea of equal pay for women" according to Americablog.com, adding "he compares the idea to communism."  Roberts belittled three women Republican members of Congress who promoted that idea.
• Scripps Howard News Services said, "In a 1984 gender pay case, Roberts criticized as "radical" the controversial theory of "comparable pay" for men and women.
• Last week NARAL pulled an ad accusing Roberts of aiding anti-abortion violence.  Yahoo News said "the failure of the NARAL attack ad reflects the overuse of negative scare tactics."
• USA Today noted that, "As a Justice Department lawyer in 1981, for example, Roberts draft an article that referred to the "so-called 'right to privacy'" and asserted that "such an amorphous right is not to be found in the Constitution."

All these facts came out among 5,400 pages of records about Roberts released by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.  An additional 478 pages that cover the same subject remain under seal, but it doesn't make any difference. All this is slip, sliding off the nominee.

The Christian Science Monitor headline is: "In media battle over Roberts, GOP on top." The President has set a target date of October 3 -- the first day of the Court's new term -- as the date for completing the Senate's consideration of the nomination.  He could be confirmed by the Senate as early as September 16.

Appalling: Law Firms Spend only 1.1% of Gross Revenue on Marketing and Sales

Jim Hassett is appalled that law firms spend only 1.1% of gross revenue on marketing and business development.  Right on Jim, this amount is totally insuffient.  And I worked at a law firm that spent a fraction of 1% of gross revenue on marketing only. 

Jim says: "Did you see the recent survey of business development spending on the cover of Law Firm, Inc.?  The writer seemed encouraged by the upward trends, but I was appalled.

"When ALM and Brand Research surveyed large firms for this article, they found annual spending of $1.8 million on marketing (defined as communication to groups of buyers) and $1.3 million on business development (defined as selling to individual buyers).

"The combined figures were about 1.1% of gross revenue -- so ridiculously low that I don’t even want to talk about it.  Today, I need to rant about the fact that the average law firm spends more on marketing than on sales.  What a waste.

"Let’s see, which is more important:  communicating with groups or selling to individuals?  Which is more likely to bring in new revenue next month:  a better web page, or sitting down to talk with people who have legal needs and budgets?

His advice: Select a few partners who like people, and turn them loose.  Better yet, spend 5% or 10% of your money on marketing to figure out who these rainmakers should talk to and what they should say.  Then turn them loose. 

E-Newsletters Still Excellent for Marketing

My friend Tom Kane posts on his blog, "Legal marketing efforts using e-mail give me great concern. Particularly, I worry about the amount of e-mail these days that inundates you, me and, most importantly, clients. I am just not convinced that it is a viable form of lawyer marketing. However, others may disagree."

While Tom and I agree on most other things, the facts show that e-newsletters still work great.  I sent out the August 12 edition of the Professional Marketing e-newsletter to 4,000 subscribers.  A counter I put on the newsletter showed that 4,980 unique readers opened the email.  How can this be?  Simple: nearly 1,000 people forwarded the newsletter and gave it a whopping 124% "open" rate.

Email newsletters have survived as one of the most potent electronic marketing weapons in a law firm’s arsenal, even though everyone seems to be talking about other e-marketing tactics du jour --- blogs, podcasts and news aggregators.  That’s because the basic and original e-marketing methods still work:

• An e-newsletter is still the fastest and most personal way to deliver a marketing message to clients and prospects.

• They easily show return-on-investment, by measuring number of messages opened, what elements the recipient read and whether the destination address was correct.  Web sites and blogs come close, but can’t match this detailed measurability.

• E-newsletters still take advantage of viral marketing in that they are easily forwarded.

• They are still the best way to find out exactly who is visiting your Web site.  The Web site log will reveal the machine numbers of visitors, but a newsletter sign-up form on a firm Web site can record the person’s name, email address and demographic information.

• E-newsletters do manage to get through the recipient’s firewall, spam filters and technical roadblocks because they come from a trusted source or have been “whitelisted” by recipients to be certain they get the e-mail.

• They are the most cost-effective form of “push” marketing.  A newsletter that must be printed and mailed not only is more expensive but also takes longer to reproduce and mail.

• They can offer the colorful beauty and design of Web sites and magazines by using HTML coding.

To be sure, the glory days of colorful HMTL email newsletters is over.  Three years ago a marketer could blast out a newsletter and be assured of a 90% open rate.  But the spammers, criminal hackers, and virus writers put an end to that.  Many people complain about email overload and unwanted messages, which are hurdles that e-newsletters can and do overcome.

Law Office Computing will publish a lengthy article I wrote about the advantages of e-newsletters for law firms.  Keep your eye out for upcoming issues of the magazine.

Anti-Roberts Ad is a Smear, New Ad Planned

The anti-Roberts TV ad linking him with violent protesters at abortion clinics is a smear, and is being replaced with a new ad from Naral Pro-Choice America.  The initial ads were called "blatantly untrue and unfair" and "inaccurate, filled with innuendo and shameless."  The ads even embarrassed Ted Kennedy. 

From a marketing standpoint, it appears that a smear campaign is not the best approach to oppose U.S. Supreme Court nominee John C. Roberts.  This is a surprise, considering how well smears have worked for right-wing groups like the Swift Boat Veterans when they smeared John Kerry and John McCain. Lesson for marketers: only twist the truth when attacking Democrats.

Naral will begin running new ads examining Judge Robert's record, including the argument he made as a government lawyer  in 1991 that Roe v. Wade was "wrongly decided."

So, score one for the Bush White House; they are clearly better marketers than the opposition.  The being said, Roberts' abortion views are now fair game.

Marketing Challenge for Roberts on Abortion

Will John G. Roberts be "Borked"?  He is no longer the "no downside" appointee for the U.S. Supreme Court.  All politics aside, he's got a lawyer marketing challenge to overcome in a TV ad that attacks his record on abortion clinics.

Naral Pro-Choice America in running ads on the Fox and CNN cable networks saying that when abortion clinics were under violent attacks, he filed court briefs in 1991 supporting the bombers and failing to defend the clinics.  Naral urges viewers to call their senators to oppose Roberts because America can't afford a Justice "whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans."

Ouch! The opposition picked the most controversial issue in politics and positioned him as being anti-choice.  No matter what the talking heads on TV said about the particulars of the matter, the vivid image has been painted.

From a marketing standpoint, it's time to call in the crisis team.  The Bush White House labeled the charge as a "reckless smear." Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan watchdog project, immediately had a spokesman on TV saying "the ad is false" and "misleading."  A fast response is always effective, especially from a neutral party. The White House also produced a 1986 brief Roberts wrote arguing that abortion clinic bombers should be prosecuted. Supporting paperwork for a claim is also impressive.

However the fact remains that Roberts argued in 1991 in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic before the U.S. Supreme Court that the Ku Klux Klan Act did not apply to clinic protests.  The Klan Act lets federal judges issue injunctions against violent demonstrations.  The Court agreed with Roberts.  The violence continued.

So Roberts is now on the defensive from a marketing standpoint.  He's been tar-brushed but has remained silent.  This is not good marketing.  Battling TV ads and spokespeople will not carry the day.  Roberts cannot remain above the fray; he's in the fray now.  If I were his marketing director, I'd advise him to make a statement to the world -- something neutral like "I'll judge each case on the merits without any preconceived ideology and will be fair to all parties."  It would end the media frenzy.

But that won't happen.  Roberts advised Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981 to avoid specific answers at her Senate hearings, a tactic he is likely to use at his own confirmation hearing.

Tech & Marketing Tips Galore at ABA Meeting

When I saw the little fan plugged into the USB port of Ross Kodner's laptop, I knew I was at the right place: on the speakers' platform for the program "Technology for the Rest of Us: 2005 Edition" presented on August 5 at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago.  Nerino Petro, who was sitting next to me, wore an atomic wrist watch, so that confirmed I was in techno-heaven.

We delivered as many tech and marketing tips as we could in 90 minutes.  My fellow panelists were: Ross Kodner of MicroLaw in Milwaukee; David Bilinsky, Esq., Law Practice Management Advisor, Law Society of British Columbia in Vancouver; Jim Calloway, Esq., Law Practice Management Advisor, Oklahoma Bar Association; Debbie Foster, President of Intouch Business Consultants in Tampa, Florida; Tom O’Connor, Director, Legal Electronic Documents Institute, Seattle, Washington; and Nerino Petro, Jr., President of Cencom in Loves Park, Illinois.  Here are the best:

• Best office PC to buy today: Speed: 2.8 to 3.4ghz Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 Series; RAM: 1 GB (inexpensive!), Monitors: 17" or 19" LCD flat panel, CD-ROM: CD-Writer/DVD reader , Hard Drive: 40/80 GB if LAN station, 120-300 GB if standalone system, Operating System: Windows XP Pro (no Windows XP Home - Mac is possible too!), Price: $900-$1500, Brand: Whatever works for you!  Generic PCs have no price advantage any longer.
• "All-in-One" office Printers: Laser printer (black & white) is better than color inkjet for office use and much less costly to operate; RAM: 64 Mb preferred (more is better); Speed: At least 15 pages per minute (faster is better!); Networking: If not shared, USB 2.0 connection is best.  If shared, Internal or External 10/100 Ethernet print server (preferably same brand as the printer; Faxing:  Don’t considers these PC fax units - they don’t work well in that role; Scanning:  Get an automatic feeder and also look at included software to see if PaperPort and/or text recognition software is included; Copying: Consider it a “backup” to your main copiers; Brand:  HP or Brother are safest choices; Model Suggestions:  HP Laserjet 3380, Brother MFC-9800; Price:  $550-$700 without 2nd paper tray or networking.
• Subscribe to the LawMarketing Listserv at www.lawmarketing.biz.  This online email discussion group lets you get answers to marketing questions from experts.  It operates 24 hours a day and is independent of any trade association.  You'll get news accounts of marketing conferences, and invitations to write articles and review books.
• Handheld wireless PDAs: Types: Blackberry, Smartphones (Palm), Smartphones (Pocket PC); Differences: Blackberry syncs with Outlook, but to check more than e-mail, you need the Blackberry Enterprise Server software and Exchange Server, Real-time always on email. Palm Smartphones - 100% Palm devices - maximum syncability with legal apps - real-time email with software like SnapperMail. Pocket PC Smartphones sync with Outlook and Microsoft apps primarily -more limited when it comes to legal apps like case managers.
• Digital camera: Point-and-Shoot models are quite adequate. Resolution: At least 4 megapixels - 5 or 6 is better if budget permits. Digital Film Type:  SD cards are the overwhelming standard today -and the least costly to purchase - get 512 Mb (under $100); be sure to get an SD Digital Film reader for a PC in your office for easiest photo transfers ($15-$40). Battery:  Lithium-ion rechargeable is good, but you want AA or AAA capability as well for emergencies. Docking:  “One Touch” docking units for simplifying photo transfer make sense, but SD card readers are easier to use. Brands:  Kodak, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic (Sony uses less standard Memory Sticks for digital film, Fujitsu and Olympus use odd WxD cards). Price:  $250-$600.
• Get a Macintosh computer.  They are not subject to hacking, viruses and spyware.  Apple doesn't even offer programs for them, becuase they are not an issue for Macs.  The ranks of Mac-using lawyers are steadily increasing. For Mac lawyers, their systems are their “secret weapons,” allowing them to spend more time practicing law and less time babysitting uncooperative technology.Today, with 100% file compatibility and Virtual PC 7 from Microsoft to run Windows applications, Macs can make real economic and functional sense for lawyers, especially in smaller practices. The Mac Mini is a perfect example of a low-cost network station - from $499.  Powerbooks could be the ultimate Legal Road Warrior platform. So explore, subscribe to MacLaw and MacAttorney and consider making the switch at http://www.apple.com/switch/.
• Convert long Web addresses into short ones with Use www.tinyurl.com. Are you sick of posting long URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then use TinyUrl. This Web site will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires. 

• Get client feedback without paying client feedback without paying big bucks. 

  Go to http://info.zoomerang.com and set up online survey questionnaires on the fly with Zoomerang.  The annual subscriptioin is $600.
• Get free fonts and Powerpoint templates at www.BrainyBetty.com. You can enhance your presentations by getting icons, bullets, dingbats, business quotations and some very useful tips and tricks about design and more at Brainybetty. You can also take the advanced graphics tutorial here and learn how to make your own special templates or learn about using PowerPoint with Macromedia Breeze here.
• Start an Avantgo Channel.  You can broadcast Web content -- such as news, weather, sports, entertainment and law firm sites, that you can read on your PDA, Blackberry or Palm device.  There are 7 million subscribers to www.Avantgo.com.  As a channel content provider you can break throughthe clutter.  There are 2,500 content offerings, but only 1 for law.  The typical AvantGo reader is an executive with income of $75,000+, a health care professional, an IT professional or a sales representative.
• Broadcast a Web Seminar. You attended Webinars, now you can give added value to your clients, increase contact with them and get more exposure for your firm.  Emailing invitations to your Webinar helps expand your mailing list.  Everyone benefits because everyone saves travel expenses and time with a Webinar.  Attendees can ask live questions during the broadcast, increasing the live quality of the proram.  You can record them for later playback and Webinars are now Cheap: $400 for 90 minutes.
• Use a business card scanner. It will help eliminate the thick wad of business cards you bring back from conferences by scanning them directly into Outlook fields.  You can also retrieve your information on the Web on Cardscan.net.  The scanner allows you to add meetings notes and personal details and sync with your PDA. The Cardscan Personal is USB Powered, needs no power cord and costs only $149.

One Lawyer Per Billion in Revenue

This just in from Patrick Lamb's blog: What is Up with the Auto Industry?

Corporate Legal Times reports on the 200 largest legal departments.  At the end of the report is a breakdown by industry of the number of attorneys in a company per billion dollars in revenue.  For example, in the Aerospace and Defense category, the listed companies average 4 lawyers per billion dollars in revenue.  Here are some others:

          Commercial Banks                   6 lawyers

           Forest and Paper Products       4

           Pharmaceuticals                      6

            Tobacco                                 3

             Industrial Manufacturing        3

             Automobile                          1

One lawyer per billion dollars!  Far and away the worst ratio in the group.   What is going on with the auto industry? 

-------------------

Pat, I couldn't agree more.  No wonder Detroit is in the doldrums -- they are are underlawyered!  Compare this to thriving cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles -- their economies are on fire and they are also ankle-to-neck in lawyers.   The auto industry should be hiring more lawyers, and it's up to us marketers to get them to see the sense in doing so. :)

Corporate Legal Times reports on the 200 largest legal departments.  At the end of the report is a breakdown by industry of the number of attorneys in a company per billion dollars in revenue.  For example, in the Aerospace and Defense category, the listed companies average 4 lawyers per billion dollars in revenue.  Here are some others:

          Commercial Banks                   6 lawyers

           Forest and Paper Products       4

           Pharmaceuticals                      6

            Tobacco                                 3

             Industrial Manufacturing        3

             Automobile                          1

One lawyer per billion dollars!  Far and away the worst ratio in the group.   What is going on with the auto industry? 

-------------------

Pat, I couldn't agree more.  No wonder Detroit is in the doldrums -- they are are underlawyered!  Compare this to thriving cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles -- their economies are on fire and they are also ankle-to-neck in lawyers.   The auto industry should be hiring more lawyers, and it's up to us marketers to get them to see the sense in doing so. :)

Lawyer Marketing for John G. Roberts

Of all the lawyer marketing campaigns, the most high-stakes is that of attorney John G. Roberts, Jr. for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Drawing on my 15 years of experience in legal marketing (and all politics aside), the campaign is working just as planned.

I call it the "no downside campaign," which is very popular among large law firms.  The pitch is: pick us, there is no downside; if we lose the case, you can say you did the best thing by choosing our shimmering credentials.  In fact, when I was a marketing director at a Top 10 law firm, I used to sell marketing ideas internally by saying, "there is no downside to it."  The lawyers, trained to look for flaws, could find nothing wrong with my idea.  They'd say, "O.K. Proceed.  I have no objection."

I rarely promoted the upside or the benefit of a marketing idea, because they are ineffable and lawyers couldn't imagine them.  But "no downside" was a potent argument, and it is working for John Roberts.

"Judge John G. Roberts continued to win support from all wings of the Republican Party while leaving Democrats with little that might threaten his confirmation," said the July 29 New York Times.  Here's how Roberts marketed himself (quoting the August 1 New Yorker):

• Kindly of gaze, square of jaw, dimpled of chin.
• Bulletproof resume, simple professional excellence.
• Disciplined and unidirectional legal career.
• Gentle temperament, not a hater nor a particularly rigid ideologue.
• Unknown legal biases, because you cannot attribute the positions he took as a lawyer for clients to him personally.
• A "mainstream conservative" (i.e., "middle of the road").
• Even if Justice O'Connor's support becomes Roberts's opposition, Roe v. Wade will still have majority support on the high court by one vote.
• Does not hold strong political beliefs.  Not a Scalia-style ideologue.
• Believes in judicial restraint in the style of the revered Justices Holmes and Brandeis.
• Avoids legalese.  "Give me English words over Latin Maxims," he wrote recently.

In other words, what's not to like?  There is no downside, according to the marketing campaign.

Using Offline Marketing to Promote Online Medium

I was surprised when I opened my snail mail to get a printed flyer promoting a blog -- using 18th century technology to promite the newest online medium.  It came from Jim Hassett, president of The Advertraining Group, Inc.  "How ironic," was my first thought.  "I'll check out his blog now," was my second thought.

It is quite good, and quoted a survey stating that large law firms spend on marketing and business development only "1.1% of gross revenue -- so ridiculously low that I don’t even want to talk about it."  I couldn't agree more, Jim.  So I've added Jim's blog to my RSS feeds to which I subscribe in Newsgator.

So the schoolyard prank "made you look!" still works.  You can promote new technology with old technology.  I'm reminded that once again, never forget the basics. They still work.