Legal Sales Conference Is First Of Its Kind

I knew that afterwards, nothing would be the same. The event was a turning point, the beginning of the rest of many people's careers. Like the arrival of the PC, the Web or the cell phone ' there was no great fanfare, no marching bands. It was the quiet advent of something new that will change everything in law firm marketing.

The inaugural “Raindance” conference of the Legal Sales and Service Organization (www.legalsales.org) took place in Boston in June. It marked the first time ever that there was a critical mass of people to hold a conference devoted sales and business development in law.

Ever since I practiced law years ago, it's always been a violation of every state ethics code to solicit clients, hire runners or chase ambulances. But this conference was about something very different ' and it made the ethics rules seem quaint and out-of-date.

Driving Revenue

Attracting 100 people, the event was a “leadership conference focused on driving revenue and building client loyalty,” according to organizer Catherine Alman MacDonagh, Esq., LSSO Director and Director of Business Development of Day, Berry & Howard LLP in Boston. This was a sophisticated conference with speakers on improving sales techniques, using Six Sigma efficiency methods, building client teams, anticipating RFPs before they are issued, meeting the needs of picky in-house counsel and building client loyalty the way Disney builds customer loyalty.

But the most important factor was that a legal sales conference actually took place at all. I would never have imagined 5 years ago that such a thing was possible.

Attendees came from firms across the U.S., such as Akin Gump, Brown Raysman, Burr & Forman, Day Berry & Howard, Goodwin Proctor, Goulston & Storrs, Gray Cary, Hale and Dorr, Holland and Knight, Nixon Peabody, Nutter McClennen, Palmer & Dodge, Piper Rudnick, Ropes & Gray, Swidler Berlin, Thompson Hine, Torys, Wilmer Cutler, Wolf Greenfield and Womble Carlyle.

Of course, Dorsey & Whitney was there in force, because Silvia Coulter, the firm's Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, is on the LSSO Board. (Editor's Note: Silvia is also the Editor in Chief of LJN's Law Firm Partnership & Benefits.) At the conference, I learned that she hired Adam Severson as the new Director of Sales at her firm, which has, 650 lawyers and 1000 support staff in more than 20 offices headquartered in Minneapolis. He had been Manager of Premier Accounts for West Group/Findlaw.

The speakers made clear the difference between marketing and sales. As defined by Jim Durham, the president of the Law Firm Development Group in Dedham, MA, marketing includes brochures, newsletters, public relations, branding, advertising, direct mail, seminars and Web sites. In contrast, business development (which I use interchangeably with “sales”) is an activity that people do face-to-face ' such as relationship building, cross-selling, networking, giving referrals, and creating client service and partnering strategies. Marketing supports sales; but sales cannot happen without marketing.

The High Points

The high point of the LSSO conference was the general counsel panel, moderated by Michael Rynowecer of BTI Consulting Group in Boston. It included Patricia Gray of Arch Wireless, Gabriel Miller of Captivate Network, Christopher Mirabile of IONA Technologies and Aaron von Staats of PTC product development. Each company spends several million dollars a year on outside legal fees.

Law firms should find out how their legal fees will be accounted for by the corporation. If they will be capitalized, as opposed to recorded as an expense, there will be much less fee resistance. Miller said: “If we're doing a deal we can capitalize, we'll shove everything including legal fees into that budget.” It's very important to know how the corporate budgeting works, according to Mirabile. “It makes a difference if the GC is budget holder, are there chargebacks in the company, is the legal budget a catchall budget that'll be taken away if not spent,” he said. The more a law firm knows, the easier the fees will be to swallow.

Medium-sized firms can get an edge over mega-law firms by offering lawyers who have cross-functional skills, that is, a litigator who knows bankruptcy as well as securities law. In the big firms, these two areas of law are compartmentalized. Gray said: “This is where a medium size firm can compete with the big firms, where the lawyers are not encouraged to develop cross-functional skills.”

GCs will only hire a new law firm if they get a recommendation from a GC colleague at another company. Mirabile said he “would never hire a law firm without a recommendation.” Accordingly, the best marketing money a law firm can spend it to develop a circle of GCs who will actively recommend the firm when their colleagues call up. A referral from a GC is worth more than a million-dollar brochure. Miller said: “I don't think I've ever had a firm that I didn't have an introduction to; somebody else knew about them.”

When dealing with big firms, GCs want to have a single, trusted lawyer they can call up to guide them to the right lawyer for their work. Having a “relationship partner” or point person ' even if they're not doing the work ' is what the GCs want to help them navigate through the titanic law firms.

I only wish there had been more questions put to them that related to getting a sales call from a non-lawyer professional. With the advent of sales pros in law firms, I would have like to hear how the GCs would respond to a cold call from a law firm sales person.

Client Account Teams

Law firms need to form key client account teams, according to master sales trainer William J. Flannery of Austin, TX, because 80% of a firm's current income comes from the top 20-30 clients. Flannery will hold a Webinar on this topic on October 7, 2004. See, www.lawmarketing.com/index.html for details.

Each client requires a different strategy, according to Flannery. Recall that Chevrolet marketed the Nova successfully in the US, but not in Spanish-speaking countries where the car name means “no go.”

The role of the sales team is to talk to clients and provide solutions ' not sell matters. The team is composed of partners and associates, with each member having a well-defined role. Team members should be in contact with the client daily, and even have a voicemail number and e-mail address on the client's system ' so they always know what's going on in the company.

The team hunts for latent needs. For every active file, Flannery says there are 1000 latent needs, waiting to be addressed by the law firm. One approach is to create a spreadsheet ' with a list of clients down the left side, and columns for each practice group across the sheet. The amount billed by each group to each client should be entered into each cell. The spreadsheet gives the big picture, and makes it immediately clear which blank cells ' and sales opportunities ' should be filled.

Six Sigma

Law firms should learn that language and practices of Six Sigma, because the program is so attractive to corporations, according to Tom McCarty, Vice President of Motorola University Consulting Services. Numerous law firms ' including Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy in Atlanta ' has adopted the efficiency methods invented by Motorola. But the firms are keeping the fact secret because it's such a competitive advantage.

McCarty asserted that law firms can use Six Sigma methodology to lower their costs, improve client satisfaction, and secure new, profitable business.

Yet he was amazed at resistance that he encounters within professional services firms. “I know that you are not a manufacturing operation and I realize that the creative process is not like grinding out widgets,” he said. But he pointed out that:

• Law invoices are late and loaded with errors.
• Rework is out of control and clients are paying for it.
• Many of a firm's most successful projects are acts of heroism by a very talented team but not the result of a predictable, systematic process.
• Law firms are missing opportunities to drive innovation with key customers because you don't speak the language of innovation or breakthrough process improvement.

Six Sigma can fix these problems with a process that generates only 3.4 defects per one million opportunities. The program creates a continuous improvement process that focuses on customer requirements, aligns the firm with those requirements, measures results and ensures timely execution. McCarty will describe the process in detail in the upcoming October 2004 issue of Professional Marketing magazine, published by the PM Forum.

As of this writing, details about the conference were still on the LSSO Web site at www.legalsales.org/news/raindance2004.asp.

Editor's Note: Due to space constraints, we could not publish the list of “Who's Who in Law Firm Sales” that Larry Bodine provided with this article. We will publish it in our next quarterly issue of the “Sales in the Law Firms” supplement.

I knew that afterwards, nothing would be the same. The event was a turning point, the beginning of the rest of many people's careers. Like the arrival of the PC, the Web or the cell phone ' there was no great fanfare, no marching bands. It was the quiet advent of something new that will change everything in law firm marketing.

The inaugural “Raindance” conference of the Legal Sales and Service Organization (www.legalsales.org) took place in Boston in June. It marked the first time ever that there was a critical mass of people to hold a conference devoted sales and business development in law.

Ever since I practiced law years ago, it's always been a violation of every state ethics code to solicit clients, hire runners or chase ambulances. But this conference was about something very different ' and it made the ethics rules seem quaint and out-of-date.

Driving Revenue

Attracting 100 people, the event was a “leadership conference focused on driving revenue and building client loyalty,” according to organizer Catherine Alman MacDonagh, Esq., LSSO Director and Director of Business Development of Day, Berry & Howard LLP in Boston. This was a sophisticated conference with speakers on improving sales techniques, using Six Sigma efficiency methods, building client teams, anticipating RFPs before they are issued, meeting the needs of picky in-house counsel and building client loyalty the way Disney builds customer loyalty.

But the most important factor was that a legal sales conference actually took place at all. I would never have imagined 5 years ago that such a thing was possible.

Attendees came from firms across the U.S., such as Akin Gump, Brown Raysman, Burr & Forman, Day Berry & Howard, Goodwin Proctor, Goulston & Storrs, Gray Cary, Hale and Dorr, Holland and Knight, Nixon Peabody, Nutter McClennen, Palmer & Dodge, Piper Rudnick, Ropes & Gray, Swidler Berlin, Thompson Hine, Torys, Wilmer Cutler, Wolf Greenfield and Womble Carlyle.

Of course, Dorsey & Whitney was there in force, because Silvia Coulter, the firm's Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, is on the LSSO Board. (Editor's Note: Silvia is also the Editor in Chief of LJN's Law Firm Partnership & Benefits.) At the conference, I learned that she hired Adam Severson as the new Director of Sales at her firm, which has, 650 lawyers and 1000 support staff in more than 20 offices headquartered in Minneapolis. He had been Manager of Premier Accounts for West Group/Findlaw.

The speakers made clear the difference between marketing and sales. As defined by Jim Durham, the president of the Law Firm Development Group in Dedham, MA, marketing includes brochures, newsletters, public relations, branding, advertising, direct mail, seminars and Web sites. In contrast, business development (which I use interchangeably with “sales”) is an activity that people do face-to-face ' such as relationship building, cross-selling, networking, giving referrals, and creating client service and partnering strategies. Marketing supports sales; but sales cannot happen without marketing.

The High Points

The high point of the LSSO conference was the general counsel panel, moderated by Michael Rynowecer of BTI Consulting Group in Boston. It included Patricia Gray of Arch Wireless, Gabriel Miller of Captivate Network, Christopher Mirabile of IONA Technologies and Aaron von Staats of PTC product development. Each company spends several million dollars a year on outside legal fees.

Law firms should find out how their legal fees will be accounted for by the corporation. If they will be capitalized, as opposed to recorded as an expense, there will be much less fee resistance. Miller said: “If we're doing a deal we can capitalize, we'll shove everything including legal fees into that budget.” It's very important to know how the corporate budgeting works, according to Mirabile. “It makes a difference if the GC is budget holder, are there chargebacks in the company, is the legal budget a catchall budget that'll be taken away if not spent,” he said. The more a law firm knows, the easier the fees will be to swallow.

Medium-sized firms can get an edge over mega-law firms by offering lawyers who have cross-functional skills, that is, a litigator who knows bankruptcy as well as securities law. In the big firms, these two areas of law are compartmentalized. Gray said: “This is where a medium size firm can compete with the big firms, where the lawyers are not encouraged to develop cross-functional skills.”

GCs will only hire a new law firm if they get a recommendation from a GC colleague at another company. Mirabile said he “would never hire a law firm without a recommendation.” Accordingly, the best marketing money a law firm can spend it to develop a circle of GCs who will actively recommend the firm when their colleagues call up. A referral from a GC is worth more than a million-dollar brochure. Miller said: “I don't think I've ever had a firm that I didn't have an introduction to; somebody else knew about them.”

When dealing with big firms, GCs want to have a single, trusted lawyer they can call up to guide them to the right lawyer for their work. Having a “relationship partner” or point person ' even if they're not doing the work ' is what the GCs want to help them navigate through the titanic law firms.

I only wish there had been more questions put to them that related to getting a sales call from a non-lawyer professional. With the advent of sales pros in law firms, I would have like to hear how the GCs would respond to a cold call from a law firm sales person.

Client Account Teams

Law firms need to form key client account teams, according to master sales trainer William J. Flannery of Austin, TX, because 80% of a firm's current income comes from the top 20-30 clients. Flannery will hold a Webinar on this topic on October 7, 2004. See, www.lawmarketing.com/index.html for details.

Each client requires a different strategy, according to Flannery. Recall that Chevrolet marketed the Nova successfully in the US, but not in Spanish-speaking countries where the car name means “no go.”

The role of the sales team is to talk to clients and provide solutions ' not sell matters. The team is composed of partners and associates, with each member having a well-defined role. Team members should be in contact with the client daily, and even have a voicemail number and e-mail address on the client's system ' so they always know what's going on in the company.

The team hunts for latent needs. For every active file, Flannery says there are 1000 latent needs, waiting to be addressed by the law firm. One approach is to create a spreadsheet ' with a list of clients down the left side, and columns for each practice group across the sheet. The amount billed by each group to each client should be entered into each cell. The spreadsheet gives the big picture, and makes it immediately clear which blank cells ' and sales opportunities ' should be filled.

Six Sigma

Law firms should learn that language and practices of Six Sigma, because the program is so attractive to corporations, according to Tom McCarty, Vice President of Motorola University Consulting Services. Numerous law firms ' including Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy in Atlanta ' has adopted the efficiency methods invented by Motorola. But the firms are keeping the fact secret because it's such a competitive advantage.

McCarty asserted that law firms can use Six Sigma methodology to lower their costs, improve client satisfaction, and secure new, profitable business.

Yet he was amazed at resistance that he encounters within professional services firms. “I know that you are not a manufacturing operation and I realize that the creative process is not like grinding out widgets,” he said. But he pointed out that:

• Law invoices are late and loaded with errors.
• Rework is out of control and clients are paying for it.
• Many of a firm's most successful projects are acts of heroism by a very talented team but not the result of a predictable, systematic process.
• Law firms are missing opportunities to drive innovation with key customers because you don't speak the language of innovation or breakthrough process improvement.

Six Sigma can fix these problems with a process that generates only 3.4 defects per one million opportunities. The program creates a continuous improvement process that focuses on customer requirements, aligns the firm with those requirements, measures results and ensures timely execution. McCarty will describe the process in detail in the upcoming October 2004 issue of Professional Marketing magazine, published by the PM Forum.

As of this writing, details about the conference were still on the LSSO Web site at www.legalsales.org/news/raindance2004.asp.

Editor's Note: Due to space constraints, we could not publish the list of “Who's Who in Law Firm Sales” that Larry Bodine provided with this article. We will publish it in our next quarterly issue of the “Sales in the Law Firms” supplement.