Note from Your Editor

Happy New Year, 2015.

As our world continues to “dance as fast as it can,” legal marketers around the globe continue to struggle with educating their lawyers in the ways of the “new normal,” guiding them in ways to distinguish themselves from the greatest competitive times our legal services space has ever experienced.

Thanks to the Great Recession, senior lawyers are staying in the workforce longer. New law school grads are grappling to get hired and start their legal careers. And, marketers jump from one law firm to another, hoping their new management team will “get” the expertise that they bring to the table ' IF the marketer even has a seat at that management table.

It's fascinating to me that not only does the paradigm of the legal services landscape continue to shift, in some instances dramatically, from what we've seen in the history of legal services, but that so much stays the same. Law firm leadership still often does not understand how to fully utilize the resources and expertise of its professional marketing team.

Firms are loathe to shift their billing and compensation models to encourage collaboration and cross-selling among their lawyers. Average tenure for a CMO is still around 32-34 months. Lawyers still resist and struggle with the concept that in order to build a book of business, they must engage in organized marketing endeavors to see the results they desire. They lack imperative skill sets such as basic effective networking and presentation skills, refuse to engage in social media marketing (which brings relationships as close as their computer monitors) and insist on repeating old habits that yield the same lackluster results.

The good news from my desk view is that legal marketers are marching boldly onward, embracing new technologies, proving more than ever the ROI to certain business development and marketing tactics. As informed, engaged and highly-tuned professionals, we continue to educate, guide, support and coach our lawyer clients in spite of themselves. We must be an eternally optimistic group after all.

So, another year allows up to continue moving the needle for our clients, to continue innovating strategic solutions for our quickly changing markets. The world has never been so small and accessible than it is today. We can learn so much from each other.

To that end, we at Marketing the Law Firm hope to help you cut through the chatter and deliver strategic, practically-based insights into what are relevant legal marketing topics to you, our readers. I urge you to share with us your struggles and the topics you would like to learn more about to make your job easier and firms more successful.

To a healthy and prosperous 2015!

' Kimberly Alford Rice , Editor-in-Chief

Happy New Year, 2015.

As our world continues to “dance as fast as it can,” legal marketers around the globe continue to struggle with educating their lawyers in the ways of the “new normal,” guiding them in ways to distinguish themselves from the greatest competitive times our legal services space has ever experienced.

Thanks to the Great Recession, senior lawyers are staying in the workforce longer. New law school grads are grappling to get hired and start their legal careers. And, marketers jump from one law firm to another, hoping their new management team will “get” the expertise that they bring to the table ' IF the marketer even has a seat at that management table.

It's fascinating to me that not only does the paradigm of the legal services landscape continue to shift, in some instances dramatically, from what we've seen in the history of legal services, but that so much stays the same. Law firm leadership still often does not understand how to fully utilize the resources and expertise of its professional marketing team.

Firms are loathe to shift their billing and compensation models to encourage collaboration and cross-selling among their lawyers. Average tenure for a CMO is still around 32-34 months. Lawyers still resist and struggle with the concept that in order to build a book of business, they must engage in organized marketing endeavors to see the results they desire. They lack imperative skill sets such as basic effective networking and presentation skills, refuse to engage in social media marketing (which brings relationships as close as their computer monitors) and insist on repeating old habits that yield the same lackluster results.

The good news from my desk view is that legal marketers are marching boldly onward, embracing new technologies, proving more than ever the ROI to certain business development and marketing tactics. As informed, engaged and highly-tuned professionals, we continue to educate, guide, support and coach our lawyer clients in spite of themselves. We must be an eternally optimistic group after all.

So, another year allows up to continue moving the needle for our clients, to continue innovating strategic solutions for our quickly changing markets. The world has never been so small and accessible than it is today. We can learn so much from each other.

To that end, we at Marketing the Law Firm hope to help you cut through the chatter and deliver strategic, practically-based insights into what are relevant legal marketing topics to you, our readers. I urge you to share with us your struggles and the topics you would like to learn more about to make your job easier and firms more successful.

To a healthy and prosperous 2015!

' Kimberly Alford Rice , Editor-in-Chief