Eight Recession-Busting Tactics

The law firm recession has been here for a year. For confirmation, just take a look at “The Layoff List” published by Law.com at http://tinyurl.com/68ymow. By early December 2008 it had grown to 47 major law firms that had let go scores of lawyers ' in a profession where layoffs are never supposed to happen.

According to the 2008 ACC/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey, found at http://tinyurl.com/5bbfj6, median spending on outside counsel last year fell 9.1% ' to the lowest level in 8 years. A growing amount of work is being kept in-house, the average projected increase in law department spending for 2008 is only 3% and 40%-plus of corporations have fired some of their outside counsel during the prior year. This is grim news indeed.

But there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel, according to the 2009 BTI Premium Practices Forecast ' http://tinyurl.com/6eysmw.

Some Good News

• Litigation will lead the legal profession out of the recession, especially with class actions against financial institutions and any company involved in subprime mortgage lending.
• In 2009, mergers, divestitures and acquisitions will return to the spotlight as failing banks get scooped up by newly stabilized giants.
• Finance and securities spending will surge as banks seek counsel on the best ways to repackage and repurpose themselves.
• Regulatory practices will rise as the new President and Congress promulgate new regulations, and add and remove tax incentives.
• Bankruptcy and investigations will get a boost as companies that fail to get a federal bailout collapse.

How to Thrive

When the recession ends, many firms will have survived. But those that thrived will have employed all or some of the following measures:

Turn Your Skybox into a Moneymaker

Nearly every firm I've visited has a skybox or sports tickets for client entertainment. And each one of them has squandered their value by letting them go unused. As Darryl Cross, the Vice President of Client Profitability of LexisNexis says, “Sporting events are not a perk. They're valuable, expensive tools.” They should be used in a premeditated, planned manner ' for example, by presenting a seminar in the skybox before the event begins. Firms should invite a mix of 33% their own lawyers, 33% clients, and 33% customers of clients. “Not one extra dollar has been spent,” Cross said. “You're just using them in a better way.” Use of the tickets or skybox should be planned for the entire season, so nothing is wasted.

Shrink Down Seminars

Instead of holding a 500-attendee event, firms should shrink their seminars down into a number that will fit in a conference room. Clients like the intimate atmosphere and will open up about their legal needs. But a firm must start by assigning a lawyer to follow up each attendee. “If an attendee is not designated for follow-up, there's no reason to invite the person in the first place, because no new business will happen,” Cross said.

Stop Pitching, and Start Asking Questions

Lawyers are inclined to pitch themselves when they meet prospective clients. The approach is as unwelcome as the used car salesman who pressures you into buying a particular model. It's presumptuous for a lawyer to think he can provide solid advice to a client without input from the client. Instead, lawyers should come to a meeting with a prospective client with five good questions. Competitive intelligence tools should be used to formulate the questions, such as: What has changed since the last time we met? How has this affected you? How are you dealing with the “XXXX” issue in your industry? How do you think that will affect you in the future? What are the two to three things that absolutely MUST go right for you to have a good year? “The idea is to get in more to what's going on at the company,” Cross said.

Schedule Rainmaking Training Programs

Law firms operate in an incredibly competitive environment. “In developing a strategy for business development training, you must understand where your partners benefit. Marketers have a lot of knowledge, have attended conferences and have a lot of experience. You need to package that into internal training,” said Iris Jones, Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer of Chadbourne & Parke. “Why not offer mini-seminars on a regular schedule at your firm's offices?” Topics
can range from “How to Make Powerful Presentations” to “The Techniques for Writing for Business Development” to “Media Relations Training.” Chadbourne plans training sessions in a year-long curriculum. They run from one to two hours, frequently during lunchtime.

Use Competitive Intelligence

If your firm can afford it, it should subscribe to LexisNexis AtVantage or West Monitor Suite. These online competitive intelligence services allow lawyers to look up a client, see what legal services the client is buying, and which law firms are serving the client. “You're looking for information that will give you a competitive edge,” Iris Jones said. She recommends:

• Don't stop at identifying a competing law firm; dig deeper and look for the key relationship.
• Every company worth having as a client already has a law firm. Discover what legal services the client is buying and make them a better offer.
• Mine industries to look for potential clients. Business people consider themselves a member of an industry, not a customer of your practice group.

Help Create Client Teams

I prefer to call client teams “wolf packs,” which are the most efficient hunting organization on the planet. In a wolf pack, every member hunts, and every member feasts; there are no lone wolves. A firm should begin by identifying its most important clients ' the ones that generate 80% of the firm's revenue (generally the top 25 or 30 clients) ' and build a group of lawyers around it with the aim of capturing more work from the client.

At Chadbourne, the firm has a “how-to develop teams manual” ' a Client Service Team Information Kit. It reduces all key points to writing so that any lawyer in the firm can find the manual on the firm's intranet. It includes how to get started, where to get the highest return-on-investment, forming the team, initial team meeting and developing a client service improvement plan. The manual continues with selecting the team leader and team members, sending reminders, monitoring results, and concludes with miscellaneous helpful forms.

Offer In-House Business Planning Services

“How do you create rainmakers when the lawyers don't know what to do? So we offer them assistance in creating individual business development plans,” Jones said. The firm's business development staff works on plans with each interested partner (in person or over the phone), meets monthly with them to review the plan, creates a progress tracking report, and follows up with coaching and encouragement. “I'm a relentless person, so I'm going to stay on you after you develop a plan,” Jones said. “The partners love it because everyone once in a while they get bogged down, and I can help. The point is, the plans cause the partners to hit the ground running.”

Establish a Proposal Center

It is essential that law firms centralize the proposal process and track their results. It's counter-productive for lawyers to respond to RFPs without consulting the marketing staff. For example, Chadbourne participated in 139 RFPs in Q2 of 2008; it had a “win” rate of 14%, a loss rate of 5%, with the balance of the proposals pending. Knowing this data allows a firm to analyze why it wins proposals, and why it loses others. Chadbourne has created a user-friendly team and process for assisting partners with presentations and responses to RFPs. Proposal writing is a business development art. It should not be left to lawyers who tend to state the firm's credentials, and often fail to explain why a feature of the firm (“in business for 100 years”) is a benefit to the client.

Larry Bodine, Esq., is a business development adviser based in Glen Ellyn, IL. With the Apollo Business Development Program, he has helped law firms nationwide get new clients and generate new revenue. He can be reached at 630-942-0977 or www.larrybodine.com.

The law firm recession has been here for a year. For confirmation, just take a look at “The Layoff List” published by Law.com at http://tinyurl.com/68ymow. By early December 2008 it had grown to 47 major law firms that had let go scores of lawyers ' in a profession where layoffs are never supposed to happen.

According to the 2008 ACC/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey, found at http://tinyurl.com/5bbfj6, median spending on outside counsel last year fell 9.1% ' to the lowest level in 8 years. A growing amount of work is being kept in-house, the average projected increase in law department spending for 2008 is only 3% and 40%-plus of corporations have fired some of their outside counsel during the prior year. This is grim news indeed.

But there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel, according to the 2009 BTI Premium Practices Forecast ' http://tinyurl.com/6eysmw.

Some Good News

• Litigation will lead the legal profession out of the recession, especially with class actions against financial institutions and any company involved in subprime mortgage lending.
• In 2009, mergers, divestitures and acquisitions will return to the spotlight as failing banks get scooped up by newly stabilized giants.
• Finance and securities spending will surge as banks seek counsel on the best ways to repackage and repurpose themselves.
• Regulatory practices will rise as the new President and Congress promulgate new regulations, and add and remove tax incentives.
• Bankruptcy and investigations will get a boost as companies that fail to get a federal bailout collapse.

How to Thrive

When the recession ends, many firms will have survived. But those that thrived will have employed all or some of the following measures:

Turn Your Skybox into a Moneymaker

Nearly every firm I've visited has a skybox or sports tickets for client entertainment. And each one of them has squandered their value by letting them go unused. As Darryl Cross, the Vice President of Client Profitability of LexisNexis says, “Sporting events are not a perk. They're valuable, expensive tools.” They should be used in a premeditated, planned manner ' for example, by presenting a seminar in the skybox before the event begins. Firms should invite a mix of 33% their own lawyers, 33% clients, and 33% customers of clients. “Not one extra dollar has been spent,” Cross said. “You're just using them in a better way.” Use of the tickets or skybox should be planned for the entire season, so nothing is wasted.

Shrink Down Seminars

Instead of holding a 500-attendee event, firms should shrink their seminars down into a number that will fit in a conference room. Clients like the intimate atmosphere and will open up about their legal needs. But a firm must start by assigning a lawyer to follow up each attendee. “If an attendee is not designated for follow-up, there's no reason to invite the person in the first place, because no new business will happen,” Cross said.

Stop Pitching, and Start Asking Questions

Lawyers are inclined to pitch themselves when they meet prospective clients. The approach is as unwelcome as the used car salesman who pressures you into buying a particular model. It's presumptuous for a lawyer to think he can provide solid advice to a client without input from the client. Instead, lawyers should come to a meeting with a prospective client with five good questions. Competitive intelligence tools should be used to formulate the questions, such as: What has changed since the last time we met? How has this affected you? How are you dealing with the “XXXX” issue in your industry? How do you think that will affect you in the future? What are the two to three things that absolutely MUST go right for you to have a good year? “The idea is to get in more to what's going on at the company,” Cross said.

Schedule Rainmaking Training Programs

Law firms operate in an incredibly competitive environment. “In developing a strategy for business development training, you must understand where your partners benefit. Marketers have a lot of knowledge, have attended conferences and have a lot of experience. You need to package that into internal training,” said Iris Jones, Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer of Chadbourne & Parke. “Why not offer mini-seminars on a regular schedule at your firm's offices?” Topics
can range from “How to Make Powerful Presentations” to “The Techniques for Writing for Business Development” to “Media Relations Training.” Chadbourne plans training sessions in a year-long curriculum. They run from one to two hours, frequently during lunchtime.

Use Competitive Intelligence

If your firm can afford it, it should subscribe to LexisNexis AtVantage or West Monitor Suite. These online competitive intelligence services allow lawyers to look up a client, see what legal services the client is buying, and which law firms are serving the client. “You're looking for information that will give you a competitive edge,” Iris Jones said. She recommends:

• Don't stop at identifying a competing law firm; dig deeper and look for the key relationship.
• Every company worth having as a client already has a law firm. Discover what legal services the client is buying and make them a better offer.
• Mine industries to look for potential clients. Business people consider themselves a member of an industry, not a customer of your practice group.

Help Create Client Teams

I prefer to call client teams “wolf packs,” which are the most efficient hunting organization on the planet. In a wolf pack, every member hunts, and every member feasts; there are no lone wolves. A firm should begin by identifying its most important clients ' the ones that generate 80% of the firm's revenue (generally the top 25 or 30 clients) ' and build a group of lawyers around it with the aim of capturing more work from the client.

At Chadbourne, the firm has a “how-to develop teams manual” ' a Client Service Team Information Kit. It reduces all key points to writing so that any lawyer in the firm can find the manual on the firm's intranet. It includes how to get started, where to get the highest return-on-investment, forming the team, initial team meeting and developing a client service improvement plan. The manual continues with selecting the team leader and team members, sending reminders, monitoring results, and concludes with miscellaneous helpful forms.

Offer In-House Business Planning Services

“How do you create rainmakers when the lawyers don't know what to do? So we offer them assistance in creating individual business development plans,” Jones said. The firm's business development staff works on plans with each interested partner (in person or over the phone), meets monthly with them to review the plan, creates a progress tracking report, and follows up with coaching and encouragement. “I'm a relentless person, so I'm going to stay on you after you develop a plan,” Jones said. “The partners love it because everyone once in a while they get bogged down, and I can help. The point is, the plans cause the partners to hit the ground running.”

Establish a Proposal Center

It is essential that law firms centralize the proposal process and track their results. It's counter-productive for lawyers to respond to RFPs without consulting the marketing staff. For example, Chadbourne participated in 139 RFPs in Q2 of 2008; it had a “win” rate of 14%, a loss rate of 5%, with the balance of the proposals pending. Knowing this data allows a firm to analyze why it wins proposals, and why it loses others. Chadbourne has created a user-friendly team and process for assisting partners with presentations and responses to RFPs. Proposal writing is a business development art. It should not be left to lawyers who tend to state the firm's credentials, and often fail to explain why a feature of the firm (“in business for 100 years”) is a benefit to the client.

Larry Bodine, Esq., is a business development adviser based in Glen Ellyn, IL. With the Apollo Business Development Program, he has helped law firms nationwide get new clients and generate new revenue. He can be reached at 630-942-0977 or www.larrybodine.com.