Law Firm Management

30 security professionals are interviewed in a collective conversation about the cross-functional solutions they are applying to today's most complex challenges and the creative ways they are adapting to a perilous threat landscape.

Armed with technical and regulatory weapons for preventing cyber crimes, law firms must administer policies to protect client data and use the systems and services held standard by industries like medicine and banking. No one knows when disruption will take place. New methods of adverse action force executives to make more choices and decisions. All departments must merge their vigilance and join with IT services as IT takes center stage in order to stay prepared.

Many attorneys already share intellectual capital by writing articles or delivering presentations with the hope of attracting additional business. However, most individuals, and even firms, have not developed a cohesive plan to ensure maximum exposure.

The increasing competition in the legal industry highlights the importance of differentiation and adding value beyond the work product. Face-to-face interactions with clients are a critical component in differentiation because they provide the opportunity to understand better the nuances of clients' businesses, develop deeper relationships, and drive productive collaboration.

Financial stability within a law firm practice does not guarantee harmony within the partnership itself — far from it. Law firm management that does not acknowledge or reflect the importance of firm leadership and the contributions and needs of its members endangers a firm's cohesiveness and its very existence, no matter how many clients come through the front door.

It's now been 10 years since the economic crisis of 2008, and just under 10 years since we saw the greatest dip in demand for services experienced by the legal market. The market has stabilized since then, but growth has remained, year-over-year, flat. The Thomson Reuters 2018 Report on the State of the Legal Market shows this trend will continue as we see a market characterized by flat to sluggish growth, a continued decline in productivity, modest rate increases and the continued downward pressure on realization.

Years ago, when trying to improve some of my snacking habits, I stopped buying cookies, candy and savory chips. Magically (and perhaps obviously), I quickly found that I ate less junk food. In effort to find a few more minutes a day for marketing, I recently applied this same basic, but effective, technique to my time management and the results have been just as immediate.

Last year, the FTC released a staff report on Cross-Device Tracking, which added to the FTC's efforts to regulate emerging issues in the ever-evolving area of online behavioral advertising. The advertising in question involves the collection of data from a particular computer or device regarding a user's Internet-viewing behavior over time and across non-affiliate websites. Cross-device tracking is the logical next step for this technology.