The 'Out of Towners'
April 29, 2005
Public relations or not. If you are a reader of The New York Times, you may have noticed that when journalists quote an attorney for a particular piece, it seems that the quote comes from an expert in a firm outside of New York. What's going on? I will admit that for many years New York law firms shied away from being quoted at all, feeling perhaps that they were above it all and that their clients, for the most part high profile Fortune 500 corporations and large banking institutions would scowl at their outside counsel garnering attention. Now it seems that these firms have been relegated to the occasional quote while the regional/national firms have embraced the media and are truly "out there.
<b>Meyerowitz on Marketing</b>The Law Library Meets Marketing and Technology Head On
April 29, 2005
Librarians who have begun to work relatively recently in law firms probably never have participated in a "shifting party" or in any similar event. That's because the nature of the law firm library ' and thus the librarian's role ' has undergone revolutionary change over the years. There still are books, at least some books, in today's law firm libraries, but Internet connections and CD-ROMs often seem to be just as prevalent and, perhaps, are actually even more important.
Creating A Brand Through Advertising
April 29, 2005
With thousands of mid-sized law firms ' and hundreds of thousands of lawyers - all competing for the same pool of clients and prospects, differentiation is one of the most important ways to gain recognition and build brand awareness. Communicating your firm's unique characteristics, expertise, strengths and successes to a large number of prospects can be achieved through advertising.
Note from the Editor
April 29, 2005
We have some exciting things going on at <i>Marketing The Law Firm</i>. First of all, and you may have noticed this last month, we have expanded each issue to 12 pages which gives all of our readers more content. It also gives budding and authors an opportunity to take pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and write an article for MLF.
Hiring CMOs From Outside The Legal Industry
April 29, 2005
Law firms are increasingly looking beyond the legal industry to hire Chief Marketing Officers and other management level officers who have broad experience in the corporate sector. The problem is that no matter how talented a person, if they cannot successfully assimilate into a law firm culture it will never work. Firms must examine their hiring process more so than ever to be sure that the candidates they evaluate will actually be able to succeed in the legal industry. Personality testing is increasingly being used to screen candidates to make sure they can successfully make the transition before the job is offered to them.
<b>Op-Ed</b>'Something Old, Nothing New, Everything Borrowed, Shades of Blue'
April 29, 2005
I think law firm marketing is in a "funk." Recently I've been doing some research on law firm Web sites and have noticed that the look, the feel and yes the content of many of these sites is virtually the same. In a couple of instances, the exact wording from another firm site was used to describe a practice area. Could this be a coincidence? I don't think so.
Book Review: <i>365 Marketing Meditations</i>
April 29, 2005
Every once in a while you come across a book that is literally makes you smile ... fun, thought provoking ... but not too thought provoking. It becomes something akin to reading a light romantic comedy. I had the pleasure of reading 365 Marketing Meditations while riding on a train to Philadelphia and honestly, by the time I arrived I was smiling for a variety of reasons.
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Offer Mixed Views During Arguments in Landmark 'Grokster' Case
April 29, 2005
WASHINGTON, DC ' The controversy over whether developers and distributors of peer-to-peer file-sharing software should be found liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement has been described as the most important copyright case for the entertainment industry in two decades ' or as an issue that Congress ultimately will decide. (That the underlying unlicensed downloading and uploading of entertainment content by consumers is direct infringement has already been made clear by courts.) To this observer in the court's press section, questioning by the U.S. Supreme Court justices during the recent oral arguments in what is known as the <i>Grokster</i> case demonstrated no clear consensus among the justices.
