The Success Of Demand-Driven Training

Law firms' business development training for attorneys often flows down from the top: senior management endorses a program or a trainer, attendance is required, and content may or may not be directly related to an attorney's practice or clients. The result is too often a lack of enthusiasm for, or acceptance of, the training message. Consultant David Maister has observed: “Training is a great last step but a pathetic first step. It is sensible to make training available when the professionals are already convinced that they need a new skill, but you can't change people by first putting on a training program.”

Jenkens & Gilchrist, a 500+ attorney national law firm with nine offices from New York to Los Angeles, has proven Maister right with our Women's Marketing Group. Now in its second year, the Group had its genesis with a female attorney who saw the need for business development mentoring and better communication among her peers throughout the firm. Her idea, developed with the support of a key Board member and with my help as an in-house marketing professional, has expanded to include a quarterly series of firm-wide videoconference meetings for female partners and associates, related business development activities, and an Intranet Marketing Library that we help the attorneys grow themselves. Our Women's Marketing Group successfully harnesses our internal creativity and proves that demand-driven training can generate the enthusiasm necessary for success.

Genesis and Expansion

The Women's Marketing Group began in our Chicago office in 2002, when Margo Wolf O'Donnell (then an associate, today a shareholder) felt that the Chicago women attorneys needed greater marketing outreach. Margo is fully committed to business development activities. “Marketing is an essential part of any good practice,” she says, “and I believe that effective marketing takes personal effort to identify new clients and new ways to reach them.” Margo turned to me as office marketing manager, and together we began a series of informal meetings to which the office's female associates and partners could invite clients or other outside speakers. Soon, the participants were enthusiastically asking their clients to talk to us, and we shared ideas on everything from effective service to work/life balance. David Maister has said that the most basic definition of marketing is “energy,” and our programs generated plenty of that in Chicago.

Our efforts were so successful that we wanted to share them with the entire firm. Margo and I approached Riva Johnson, an employee benefits and ESOP practice shareholder and female member of the firm's Board of Directors. Riva saw how our efforts in Chicago could benefit the firm as a whole, and she secured the Board's approval to take the effort national. Riva is a soft-spoken and personable pioneer, and her help was crucial in ensuring that both male and female attorneys of the firm were supportive of our efforts.

Current Scope and Organization

Today the Women's Marketing Group meets quarterly in each firm office, with participants linked by videoconference service. Because there can be a four-hour time difference between locations, what is a lunch meeting in one office can be high tea or breakfast in another. Total attendance is typically 65 to 75 attorneys, often equally divided between partners and associates. Attendance is good in all offices and outstanding in some (Chicago, for example, has had 100% attendance on several occasions). Presentations usually last an hour, followed by a question-and-answer session involving all locations.

Our speakers are a mix of women and men, clients and other professionals, all with something positive and thought provoking to say and all supportive of the group's basic purposes:

• To encourage and mentor attorneys in effective marketing techniques;
• To provide a marketing forum for female in-house counsel and business leaders in the cities where we practice;
• To create partnerships with the growing number of associations for women in business;
• To promote communication among the female attorneys in the various Jenkens offices;
• To help recruit top women attorneys to our firm.

Our speakers have included in-house counsel like Gail Leone of Harley-Davidson, consultants like marketer Nancy Roberts Linder (who spoke on “Bridging the Gender Gap”), and motivational experts such as Dr. Paul Bomrad (whose topic was “Strategies for Helping Professional Women Succeed”). Margo, Riva and I coordinate the speaker suggestions we receive from Group members. My office in Chicago sends out an electronic invitation to each meeting, including an RSVP option.

Building the Momentum

Although the Women's Marketing Group meetings are important in themselves, their real value to participants and the firm is the ongoing business development momentum that they generate. We have a very conscious agenda for this momentum, emphasizing four key areas.

External Networking

We encourage the participation of Group members in networking/marketing organizations in their own cities and nationwide by internally publishing information about events. Margo and I are actively involved in the Women's Franchise Committee of the International Franchise Business Network Association. Riva's participation in the Group helped give her the idea for a successful wine-and-cheese women's networking event at the ESOP Association's annual conference. We facilitate activities with many other groups, including the International Network of Women in Technology, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, and the National Women's Economic Alliance Foundation. As Margo says, marketing is about new ways to reach new clients.

Internal Networking

Group members use their participation as a way to build working partnerships with other female attorneys whom they otherwise wouldn't have the chance to know. Sometimes this involves creating marketing teams for presentations to potential clients; often it simply involves building a personal network of contacts. Riva has put it well when she says, “I often need help from a colleague in a distant office like Los Angeles. Now, because of the Women's Marketing Group, I know more names and faces that I can contact directly.”

Client Development

Through the contacts and activities of the Women's Marketing Group, we have created a database of potential clients that is a useful business development tool. Sometimes the payoff is immediate: one female general counsel who spoke to our group was so impressed that immediately after she spoke she hired the firm to handle an employment law matter that we otherwise would not have gotten.

Education

The Women's Marketing Group has taken a high-profile role in firm-wide marketing training. We have a portal on the firm Intranet where we list a whole range of available education resources, from videotapes of Group meetings to ABA training videos. We also post to the portal marketing articles that Group members recommend, as well as the contents of publications that we access by subscription. We regularly send electronic memos to women attorneys about new resources, and keep the activities fresh in everyone's mind with a “quote of the month” e-mail about marketing. The important thing is that we aren't telling Group members what materials to use; instead, they choose their own materials and we communicate with each other about them.

Succeeding Through Success

In some firms, gender-focused marketing programs have met with skepticism or even criticism from female as well as male attorneys. At Jenkens & Gilchrist, our efforts with the Women's Marketing Group have met with nothing but support, largely because the participants themselves create and direct the efforts and are enthusiastic about the results. Nothing succeeds like success, and we believe that our success of the past two years has created the foundation for expanded demand-driven business development training efforts.

Law firms' business development training for attorneys often flows down from the top: senior management endorses a program or a trainer, attendance is required, and content may or may not be directly related to an attorney's practice or clients. The result is too often a lack of enthusiasm for, or acceptance of, the training message. Consultant David Maister has observed: “Training is a great last step but a pathetic first step. It is sensible to make training available when the professionals are already convinced that they need a new skill, but you can't change people by first putting on a training program.”

Jenkens & Gilchrist, a 500+ attorney national law firm with nine offices from New York to Los Angeles, has proven Maister right with our Women's Marketing Group. Now in its second year, the Group had its genesis with a female attorney who saw the need for business development mentoring and better communication among her peers throughout the firm. Her idea, developed with the support of a key Board member and with my help as an in-house marketing professional, has expanded to include a quarterly series of firm-wide videoconference meetings for female partners and associates, related business development activities, and an Intranet Marketing Library that we help the attorneys grow themselves. Our Women's Marketing Group successfully harnesses our internal creativity and proves that demand-driven training can generate the enthusiasm necessary for success.

Genesis and Expansion

The Women's Marketing Group began in our Chicago office in 2002, when Margo Wolf O'Donnell (then an associate, today a shareholder) felt that the Chicago women attorneys needed greater marketing outreach. Margo is fully committed to business development activities. “Marketing is an essential part of any good practice,” she says, “and I believe that effective marketing takes personal effort to identify new clients and new ways to reach them.” Margo turned to me as office marketing manager, and together we began a series of informal meetings to which the office's female associates and partners could invite clients or other outside speakers. Soon, the participants were enthusiastically asking their clients to talk to us, and we shared ideas on everything from effective service to work/life balance. David Maister has said that the most basic definition of marketing is “energy,” and our programs generated plenty of that in Chicago.

Our efforts were so successful that we wanted to share them with the entire firm. Margo and I approached Riva Johnson, an employee benefits and ESOP practice shareholder and female member of the firm's Board of Directors. Riva saw how our efforts in Chicago could benefit the firm as a whole, and she secured the Board's approval to take the effort national. Riva is a soft-spoken and personable pioneer, and her help was crucial in ensuring that both male and female attorneys of the firm were supportive of our efforts.

Current Scope and Organization

Today the Women's Marketing Group meets quarterly in each firm office, with participants linked by videoconference service. Because there can be a four-hour time difference between locations, what is a lunch meeting in one office can be high tea or breakfast in another. Total attendance is typically 65 to 75 attorneys, often equally divided between partners and associates. Attendance is good in all offices and outstanding in some (Chicago, for example, has had 100% attendance on several occasions). Presentations usually last an hour, followed by a question-and-answer session involving all locations.

Our speakers are a mix of women and men, clients and other professionals, all with something positive and thought provoking to say and all supportive of the group's basic purposes:

• To encourage and mentor attorneys in effective marketing techniques;
• To provide a marketing forum for female in-house counsel and business leaders in the cities where we practice;
• To create partnerships with the growing number of associations for women in business;
• To promote communication among the female attorneys in the various Jenkens offices;
• To help recruit top women attorneys to our firm.

Our speakers have included in-house counsel like Gail Leone of Harley-Davidson, consultants like marketer Nancy Roberts Linder (who spoke on “Bridging the Gender Gap”), and motivational experts such as Dr. Paul Bomrad (whose topic was “Strategies for Helping Professional Women Succeed”). Margo, Riva and I coordinate the speaker suggestions we receive from Group members. My office in Chicago sends out an electronic invitation to each meeting, including an RSVP option.

Building the Momentum

Although the Women's Marketing Group meetings are important in themselves, their real value to participants and the firm is the ongoing business development momentum that they generate. We have a very conscious agenda for this momentum, emphasizing four key areas.

External Networking

We encourage the participation of Group members in networking/marketing organizations in their own cities and nationwide by internally publishing information about events. Margo and I are actively involved in the Women's Franchise Committee of the International Franchise Business Network Association. Riva's participation in the Group helped give her the idea for a successful wine-and-cheese women's networking event at the ESOP Association's annual conference. We facilitate activities with many other groups, including the International Network of Women in Technology, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, and the National Women's Economic Alliance Foundation. As Margo says, marketing is about new ways to reach new clients.

Internal Networking

Group members use their participation as a way to build working partnerships with other female attorneys whom they otherwise wouldn't have the chance to know. Sometimes this involves creating marketing teams for presentations to potential clients; often it simply involves building a personal network of contacts. Riva has put it well when she says, “I often need help from a colleague in a distant office like Los Angeles. Now, because of the Women's Marketing Group, I know more names and faces that I can contact directly.”

Client Development

Through the contacts and activities of the Women's Marketing Group, we have created a database of potential clients that is a useful business development tool. Sometimes the payoff is immediate: one female general counsel who spoke to our group was so impressed that immediately after she spoke she hired the firm to handle an employment law matter that we otherwise would not have gotten.

Education

The Women's Marketing Group has taken a high-profile role in firm-wide marketing training. We have a portal on the firm Intranet where we list a whole range of available education resources, from videotapes of Group meetings to ABA training videos. We also post to the portal marketing articles that Group members recommend, as well as the contents of publications that we access by subscription. We regularly send electronic memos to women attorneys about new resources, and keep the activities fresh in everyone's mind with a “quote of the month” e-mail about marketing. The important thing is that we aren't telling Group members what materials to use; instead, they choose their own materials and we communicate with each other about them.

Succeeding Through Success

In some firms, gender-focused marketing programs have met with skepticism or even criticism from female as well as male attorneys. At Jenkens & Gilchrist, our efforts with the Women's Marketing Group have met with nothing but support, largely because the participants themselves create and direct the efforts and are enthusiastic about the results. Nothing succeeds like success, and we believe that our success of the past two years has created the foundation for expanded demand-driven business development training efforts.