Listening Your Way to New Business
September 01, 2006
According to a German proverb: 'A man has two ears and one mouth so that he hears much and speaks little.' Mark Twain followed up the thought by saying: 'If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.' And I'll add: We were given two ears and one mouth, and they should be used in that proportion in a sales call.
Media & Communications Corner: Meet Hank Shafran ' Director of Communications at Bingham McCutchen LLP
September 01, 2006
With more than 30 years in PR, Hank Shafran has experience in all aspects of agency, governmental and corporate communications. But he has seen law firm PR, in particular, from a unique perspective with more than 10 years at Bingham McCutchen LLP, where he has worked on the PR end of six different mergers and seen the firm grow from a 175-lawyer Boston firm to a 950-attorney global firm.
Brand Identity for Law Firms: Why Is It Necessary?
September 01, 2006
Today's law firms, like many other businesses, are struggling to stand out in an increasingly crowd-ed and competitive marketplace. When it comes down to brand differentiation — or creating a brand image in the first place — most law firms struggle with how to creatively market what boils down to mostly an intellectual property service business.
Adventures in Modern Marketing
September 01, 2006
A few months ago, I was having dinner with an acquaintance, a world-famous professor at one of the most eminent business schools, who asked me: 'What's a blog?'
LexisNexisMergers: A Microsoft-esque Monoculture?
September 01, 2006
Use the once-chilling phrase 'vendor consolidation' around anyone who has been watching the enterprise software market for the past few years, and chances are you'll barely elicit a goose bump. Headline-grabbing deals such as Oracle Corporation's 2005 takeover of PeopleSoft, Hewlett-Packard's recently unveiled plan to acquire Mercury Interactive, and a host of less splashy mergers and acquisitions have gotten us used to the idea that the marketplace may well coalesce around a handful of large vendors. But in the legal-tech sector, this already long-in-the-tooth IT trend has just started teething.
CRM: Not an 'Ancient Chinese Secret'
September 01, 2006
The wisdom of Confucius enlightens. although it usually takes a very long time to figure out the meaning of a select Confucianism, you know the wisdom is there somewhere. But it takes a lot of thinking to figure out the benefits of his wisdom. The same has been said about client-relationship management technology (CRM).
ERM: Firms Leverage Innovative Technology
September 01, 2006
Pre-existing relationships ' whether with clients, former colleagues, or law school classmates ' are every law firm's number-one source for new client development. As large firms know firsthand, the strength of having a vast network is offset by the struggle to effectively search and access those relationships. Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton is a full-service AmLaw 100 firm with 1000 employees in nine nationwide offices. To support our business development and marketing efforts, we must be able to leverage our strong network of contacts and immediately identify everyone within our firm who has a valuable pre-existing relationship and can make an introduction.
Practice Tip: Demystifying Document Assembly
September 01, 2006
The phrase document assembly can refer to the automated process of creating a simple letter from a letter template to a more complex series of interview questions that assemble a multi-page document, complete with content that is ready to deliver. The industry definition refers to compiling documents from a re-pository of stored paragraphs, clauses and document packages that are selected based on interview responses. Document assembly products provide users with marked improvements in turnaround time, consistency, accuracy and quality.
