The MLF 50: More From the Top Firms

In my continuing effort to present as many of the firms that were listed in the MLF 50, I am pleased to profile Baker & McKenzie (No. 6) and Carlton Fields (No. 22) in this issue of Marketing The Law Firm.

Baker & McKenzie

Baker & McKenzie was featured in MLF's Second Annual Best of Visual Innovators issue (April 2005) for their coordinated identity program. The marketing, communications and business-development programs are led by David Tabolt, Global Director of Marketing & Communications, and Rob Gijsen, Global Director of Business Development. Both are based in Chicago. The firm continues to be a leader in establishing programs that are sound and coordinated. With offices in 69 cities in 38 countries, more than 3,100 lawyers, the firm is well known, but many clients and law firms remain unaware of the depth of the firm's capabilities and impressive scope of work. In part, this reflects the firm's scale and diversity. But it also reflects a historical focus on building strong local practices and keeping central management lean and global costs low.

But that is changing. While the firm will always be careful with its monetary resources and continue to encourage its strong local practices, Baker & McKenzie is focusing more than ever on building a global reputation and brand. The firm is addressing these issues as part of a broader strategy to sharpen client focus, strengthen core practices and deepen industry knowledge. Firm, office and practice management are getting more aligned in their approaches.

Marketing and business development are playing a key role in this change. The firm has introduced greater discipline to its brand and focusing on telling a more coherent story. The firm has developed tools and standards to assist the marketing and business development teams in doing their jobs and as a result there has been improvement in the firm's overall ability to help its lawyers sell work and promote their experience.

Support and commitment from the top make it possible. With the strong support of the chairman, Executive Committee, managing partners and practice leaders, the firm is driving global alignment of marketing and business development through a series of initiatives to project our strengths into the market more forcefully, while improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our functions and our support to the firm.

Here are some of the highlights of this coordinated effort:

Strategy and Action Plans. The strategies and action plans are closely linked to the firm's global strategy and business objectives. The marketing focus is on engaging lawyers and staff in the execution of the global firm strategy, strengthening the firm's brand identity and firm profile, and improving the collective impact of the firm's more than 100 full- and part-time marketing and business development personnel. The business development efforts focus on supporting the client service program and global practice groups, improving business development skills and resources, and raising the standards for client care.

Leadership Commitment. Baker & McKenzie established a Global Marketing Steering Committee comprised of nine partners and three chief operating officers from major offices. One member is a member of the firm's Executive Committee. He serves as the marketing liaison, giving sponsorship at the firm's highest level. The firm also has coalesced senior marketers into a Global Marketing Leadership Council to provide regular input and feedback and build support for and drive global initiatives.

Alignment. The firm has developed an alignment plan to coordinate the activities of marketing, business development and media relations professionals firm wide. The plan defines the desired state for 16 key activities, from advertising and marketing collateral to client selection, Web site, and sponsorships. It defines the roles and responsibilities of each dimension of the firm  ' global, regional and local.

Standards. As a companion to the alignment plan, Baker & McKenzie has consolidated its marketing practices, policies and standards to establish global “rules of the road” for their marketing network. The policies cover topics as broad as global consistency, and as specific as spam controls. The firm has also developed a Firm Stylebook to guide copywriters, and have encouraged marketers and business developers to focus on client needs and the benefits, rather than features, of what the firm offers.

Visual Identity. The firm's Visual Identity Program (VIP) is at the heart of its standards program. Launched in 2003, the VIP established a common, consistent modern look for the firm's brand. It applies to all promotional and business development materials. The firm constantly enhances the VIP with templates for common materials such as invitations, newsletters and brochures using the award-winning brand Web site, the Baker Identity Manager.

Shared Services. Baker & McKenzie's shared-services center in Manila makes it easier for marketers and lawyers to produce attractive, professional, VIP-compliant materials. Each month the desktop publishing specialists produce hundreds of newsletters, brochures, ads and other marketing materials for offices and practices worldwide. This reduces the need for costly creative resources in the offices and improves the consistency of all materials. Materials can be developed more quickly as well. Savings are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, marketing and business development staff can obtain customized client and industry research from our dedicated research analysts.

Internal Communication. In terms of “telling our story,” Baker & McKenzie has improved communications through a portfolio of e-newsletters called Baker Reports. The firm produces “The BakerReport” for everyone in the Firm; “BakerAdmin” for office and practice group management; and “BakerMarketAbility” for marketing, business development and media relations staff. Many global practices and regional teams have adopted the format for their own communications.

Client Service Development. The firm's business development team has worked with the Executive Committee and Director of Strategy Implemen-tation to refine client service initiatives, a central feature of the firm's global strategy implementation program. The program is now focused on assuring flagship clients consistent high levels of service, identifying and sharing best practices in client care, and providing senior management support to the client teams. Each client service director now has a liaison on the Executive Committee.

The firm has also developed a number of tools and processes to improve the consistency and quality of its proposals and the efficiency with which they are developed. These include “Pitching to Win,” a guide to bid management; a pitch shopping cart for basic content such as CVs and capabilities descriptions; and a credentials repository for collecting legal matters and deals. The firm has also developed a client feedback toolkit to obtain feedback in a more consistent and systematic way from our major clients.

Exciting, innovative, creative and moving forward; that is what Baker & McKenzie's marketing, communications and business development departments have achieved.

Carlton Fields

Marketing at Carlton Fields (www.carltonfields.com) is headed up by their Director of Client Services, Elizabeth Zabak. Among new and improved Web sites, Carlton Fields stands out as they recently made significant improvements to their Web site by incorporating many of the latest advances in Web development. Below is a brief summary of some of the improvements that were made.

Improved navigation, increased use of screen space, and a clean sophisticated appearance. The firm's Web site now has a horizontal page layout, including the main navigation bar. The navigation bar was changed from a vertical bar on the left side of the page to a horizontal bar at the top of the page to make it more user-friendly to visitors. The firm also integrated easy to access secondary navigation onto the site to allow visitors to find the information they seek more quickly. The new horizontal layout provides more information to the viewer when the page is opened, and it reduces the amount of scrolling needed to view the information on each page.

The firm opted to keep their original color palate of green, burgundy and white, but changed the way in which the colors are used on the site to improve readability and the overall look. The appearance of the new site became cleaner and more sophisticated with the use of more white space and burgundy. The heavy olive green color of their previous site was incorporated into the new look as an accent color.

Friendly URL technology. A new feature of the firm's Web site is the friendly URL technology. For all attorney and government consultant biographies, practice groups and offices, visitors may now go directly to the page they want by using a friendly address, or URL. For example, to go directly to Tom Snow's biography, the visitor can type www.carltonfields.com/tsnow and will be directed to his biography without having to go through the homepage of the site. The designation used for biographies is the first initial and last name of the attorney or government consultant. Similarly, if a visitor would like to go directly to a practice group page or office page, the friendly URL is the office name or abbreviated practice group name such as: www.carltonfields.com/atlanta and www.carltonfields.com/appellate. This feature makes it easier to point clients, prospects and others directly to the information available on its Web site.

Media Center. The firm has added an extensive Media Center www.carltonfields.com/mediacenter/presskit to its Web site that includes office specific media guides, firm logos, attorney photographs, general firm information along with media contacts and media registration. Logos and photographs can be downloaded directly from the site. Media Guides for each of the firm's office locations provide members of the press with a select list of members of the firm, including their contact information and topics on which they are available to comment on for stories, serve as a source, provide background information, or provide suggestions for additional sources, based on story topic. The Media Center also provides a Speakers Bureau for each of the firm's offices and practice areas, listing the firm's attorneys and government consultants who are available to speak to professional and civic organizations on a variety of subjects. The Media Registration allows members of the press to sign up to receive notification of recent news and information from Carlton Fields, including press releases, industry newsletters, and events. Registrants are able to tailor the news they receive when they register.

Sign up for newsletter feature. The site includes a sign up for newsletter feature (www.carltonfields.com/mediacenter/newslettersignup) that allows the firm to capture the names, addresses, and practices and industries of interest of site visitors for follow up.

Addition of Martindale-Hubbell icons. Carlton Fields also added the new Martindale-Hubbell icon to all AV rated attorney biographies. The clickable icon on the attorney biography connects the visitor directly to the Martindale-Hubbell listing of the attorney and shows the attorneys' rating.

Net Tracker Reports. The firm's Web traffic continues to increase by an average of 1000 unique visitors every month. The attorney biographies remain the most consistently visited area of the site, and Google remains the most popular referrer. The most frequent key words used are “carlton fields.” The average length of time a visitor remains on the site is approximately 2.5 minutes.

Carlton Fields has done a remarkable job of creating a Web site that speaks to its visitors and enables clients, potential clients, students and others to get a clear “picture” of the firm. They are ready for their close up.

Stay tuned for other firm profiles in upcoming issues.

In my continuing effort to present as many of the firms that were listed in the MLF 50, I am pleased to profile Baker & McKenzie (No. 6) and Carlton Fields (No. 22) in this issue of Marketing The Law Firm.

Baker & McKenzie

Baker & McKenzie was featured in MLF's Second Annual Best of Visual Innovators issue (April 2005) for their coordinated identity program. The marketing, communications and business-development programs are led by David Tabolt, Global Director of Marketing & Communications, and Rob Gijsen, Global Director of Business Development. Both are based in Chicago. The firm continues to be a leader in establishing programs that are sound and coordinated. With offices in 69 cities in 38 countries, more than 3,100 lawyers, the firm is well known, but many clients and law firms remain unaware of the depth of the firm's capabilities and impressive scope of work. In part, this reflects the firm's scale and diversity. But it also reflects a historical focus on building strong local practices and keeping central management lean and global costs low.

But that is changing. While the firm will always be careful with its monetary resources and continue to encourage its strong local practices, Baker & McKenzie is focusing more than ever on building a global reputation and brand. The firm is addressing these issues as part of a broader strategy to sharpen client focus, strengthen core practices and deepen industry knowledge. Firm, office and practice management are getting more aligned in their approaches.

Marketing and business development are playing a key role in this change. The firm has introduced greater discipline to its brand and focusing on telling a more coherent story. The firm has developed tools and standards to assist the marketing and business development teams in doing their jobs and as a result there has been improvement in the firm's overall ability to help its lawyers sell work and promote their experience.

Support and commitment from the top make it possible. With the strong support of the chairman, Executive Committee, managing partners and practice leaders, the firm is driving global alignment of marketing and business development through a series of initiatives to project our strengths into the market more forcefully, while improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our functions and our support to the firm.

Here are some of the highlights of this coordinated effort:

Strategy and Action Plans. The strategies and action plans are closely linked to the firm's global strategy and business objectives. The marketing focus is on engaging lawyers and staff in the execution of the global firm strategy, strengthening the firm's brand identity and firm profile, and improving the collective impact of the firm's more than 100 full- and part-time marketing and business development personnel. The business development efforts focus on supporting the client service program and global practice groups, improving business development skills and resources, and raising the standards for client care.

Leadership Commitment. Baker & McKenzie established a Global Marketing Steering Committee comprised of nine partners and three chief operating officers from major offices. One member is a member of the firm's Executive Committee. He serves as the marketing liaison, giving sponsorship at the firm's highest level. The firm also has coalesced senior marketers into a Global Marketing Leadership Council to provide regular input and feedback and build support for and drive global initiatives.

Alignment. The firm has developed an alignment plan to coordinate the activities of marketing, business development and media relations professionals firm wide. The plan defines the desired state for 16 key activities, from advertising and marketing collateral to client selection, Web site, and sponsorships. It defines the roles and responsibilities of each dimension of the firm  ' global, regional and local.

Standards. As a companion to the alignment plan, Baker & McKenzie has consolidated its marketing practices, policies and standards to establish global “rules of the road” for their marketing network. The policies cover topics as broad as global consistency, and as specific as spam controls. The firm has also developed a Firm Stylebook to guide copywriters, and have encouraged marketers and business developers to focus on client needs and the benefits, rather than features, of what the firm offers.

Visual Identity. The firm's Visual Identity Program (VIP) is at the heart of its standards program. Launched in 2003, the VIP established a common, consistent modern look for the firm's brand. It applies to all promotional and business development materials. The firm constantly enhances the VIP with templates for common materials such as invitations, newsletters and brochures using the award-winning brand Web site, the Baker Identity Manager.

Shared Services. Baker & McKenzie's shared-services center in Manila makes it easier for marketers and lawyers to produce attractive, professional, VIP-compliant materials. Each month the desktop publishing specialists produce hundreds of newsletters, brochures, ads and other marketing materials for offices and practices worldwide. This reduces the need for costly creative resources in the offices and improves the consistency of all materials. Materials can be developed more quickly as well. Savings are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, marketing and business development staff can obtain customized client and industry research from our dedicated research analysts.

Internal Communication. In terms of “telling our story,” Baker & McKenzie has improved communications through a portfolio of e-newsletters called Baker Reports. The firm produces “The BakerReport” for everyone in the Firm; “BakerAdmin” for office and practice group management; and “BakerMarketAbility” for marketing, business development and media relations staff. Many global practices and regional teams have adopted the format for their own communications.

Client Service Development. The firm's business development team has worked with the Executive Committee and Director of Strategy Implemen-tation to refine client service initiatives, a central feature of the firm's global strategy implementation program. The program is now focused on assuring flagship clients consistent high levels of service, identifying and sharing best practices in client care, and providing senior management support to the client teams. Each client service director now has a liaison on the Executive Committee.

The firm has also developed a number of tools and processes to improve the consistency and quality of its proposals and the efficiency with which they are developed. These include “Pitching to Win,” a guide to bid management; a pitch shopping cart for basic content such as CVs and capabilities descriptions; and a credentials repository for collecting legal matters and deals. The firm has also developed a client feedback toolkit to obtain feedback in a more consistent and systematic way from our major clients.

Exciting, innovative, creative and moving forward; that is what Baker & McKenzie's marketing, communications and business development departments have achieved.

Carlton Fields

Marketing at Carlton Fields (www.carltonfields.com) is headed up by their Director of Client Services, Elizabeth Zabak. Among new and improved Web sites, Carlton Fields stands out as they recently made significant improvements to their Web site by incorporating many of the latest advances in Web development. Below is a brief summary of some of the improvements that were made.

Improved navigation, increased use of screen space, and a clean sophisticated appearance. The firm's Web site now has a horizontal page layout, including the main navigation bar. The navigation bar was changed from a vertical bar on the left side of the page to a horizontal bar at the top of the page to make it more user-friendly to visitors. The firm also integrated easy to access secondary navigation onto the site to allow visitors to find the information they seek more quickly. The new horizontal layout provides more information to the viewer when the page is opened, and it reduces the amount of scrolling needed to view the information on each page.

The firm opted to keep their original color palate of green, burgundy and white, but changed the way in which the colors are used on the site to improve readability and the overall look. The appearance of the new site became cleaner and more sophisticated with the use of more white space and burgundy. The heavy olive green color of their previous site was incorporated into the new look as an accent color.

Friendly URL technology. A new feature of the firm's Web site is the friendly URL technology. For all attorney and government consultant biographies, practice groups and offices, visitors may now go directly to the page they want by using a friendly address, or URL. For example, to go directly to Tom Snow's biography, the visitor can type www.carltonfields.com/tsnow and will be directed to his biography without having to go through the homepage of the site. The designation used for biographies is the first initial and last name of the attorney or government consultant. Similarly, if a visitor would like to go directly to a practice group page or office page, the friendly URL is the office name or abbreviated practice group name such as: www.carltonfields.com/atlanta and www.carltonfields.com/appellate. This feature makes it easier to point clients, prospects and others directly to the information available on its Web site.

Media Center. The firm has added an extensive Media Center www.carltonfields.com/mediacenter/presskit to its Web site that includes office specific media guides, firm logos, attorney photographs, general firm information along with media contacts and media registration. Logos and photographs can be downloaded directly from the site. Media Guides for each of the firm's office locations provide members of the press with a select list of members of the firm, including their contact information and topics on which they are available to comment on for stories, serve as a source, provide background information, or provide suggestions for additional sources, based on story topic. The Media Center also provides a Speakers Bureau for each of the firm's offices and practice areas, listing the firm's attorneys and government consultants who are available to speak to professional and civic organizations on a variety of subjects. The Media Registration allows members of the press to sign up to receive notification of recent news and information from Carlton Fields, including press releases, industry newsletters, and events. Registrants are able to tailor the news they receive when they register.

Sign up for newsletter feature. The site includes a sign up for newsletter feature (www.carltonfields.com/mediacenter/newslettersignup) that allows the firm to capture the names, addresses, and practices and industries of interest of site visitors for follow up.

Addition of Martindale-Hubbell icons. Carlton Fields also added the new Martindale-Hubbell icon to all AV rated attorney biographies. The clickable icon on the attorney biography connects the visitor directly to the Martindale-Hubbell listing of the attorney and shows the attorneys' rating.

Net Tracker Reports. The firm's Web traffic continues to increase by an average of 1000 unique visitors every month. The attorney biographies remain the most consistently visited area of the site, and Google remains the most popular referrer. The most frequent key words used are “carlton fields.” The average length of time a visitor remains on the site is approximately 2.5 minutes.

Carlton Fields has done a remarkable job of creating a Web site that speaks to its visitors and enables clients, potential clients, students and others to get a clear “picture” of the firm. They are ready for their close up.

Stay tuned for other firm profiles in upcoming issues.