Legal Marketing: Social Media Edition

How To Hire Rainmakers

Adrian Dayton — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:00:57 +0000

As originally published in the National Law Journal on May 1st, 2012

In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book, Outliers, he makes a telling observation about American Nobel Prize winners: Only a few of the laureates in medicine and chemistry were produced by elite schools like Harvard and Stanford; more came from more modest schools like the University of Notre Dame or City University of New York. The Ivy Leagues were excellent at attracting superb students, but when it came to predicting who would become a great scientist, they didn’t know what to look for.

Law firms face a similar situation — how to predict which law students will become great rainmakers?

It all starts with asking the right questions.

The first question recruiters typically ask is: Was this candidate strong academically in law school? It should be: Does this lawyer have the ability to connect — to build the relationships that will bring in business?

Elite law firms hire exclusively from among the top 5 percent academically, said legal consultant Amy Knapp. However, “doing well in law school isn’t the same things as doing well in business. It means you are good at writing and good at legal reasoning. None of those talents are necessarily indicative of skill in business development.”

Not all firms take this approach. Richmond, Va.’s LeClairRyan (a client of mine) prefers candidates with above a 2.8 grade point average. “This lower cut-off allows us to look at the total résumé,” said recruiting manager Danielle Roberts. “Our favorite question — one that always throws off candidates — is, ‘Tell me your story — what has happened in your life to bring you where you are today?’ This gives firms a window into the real character of candidates.”

Of course, it is a little more complicated than hiring the handsome or popular; it requires finding a certain personality type. Knapp described one rainmaker who was a distinctly quirky individual, but he was so gregarious and brilliant that he amassed the largest book of business at his firm.

“There are so few rainmakers because we filter them out,” Knapp said. “The skills that would make a great rainmaker are not necessarily the same skills that would make a great law firm associate. It is often just too tough for them to make it all the way to partner so they can shine. In those first few years, associates are valued for the same types of things that are valued in law school. A few years later, suddenly, things are totally different as they approach partnership. It is really like a bait-and-switch. ‘You did everything we said, but now we are evaluating you on new and different criteria — show us the clients!’ ”

LeClairRyan tries to get around this by setting up coaching sessions, ostensibly to help summer associates work on business development skills; the real purpose is to test them for the potential to be rainmakers. “In one of these sessions, it became clear that one of our summer associates was not only a relationship-builder, but an exceptional relationship-builder,” Roberts said. “He received an offer from the firm soon after, but the real coup came when he invited the recruiters on-campus to meet his friends. We came on campus and set up a table offering free breakfast, and he was sensational — he knew everybody and everybody knew him. He will be a rainmaker.”

By the way, this summer associate had good grades, but nothing exceptional, she said. The firms that weren’t willing to interview him missed out.

Perhaps it is time for firms to spread the net a little wider and value personality at least as highly as academic superiority. Find the lawyers who meet basic academic standards, but who shine in the soft skills that will help them bring in business.

Adrian Dayton is a lawyer, speaker, author and consultant who coaches law firms with regards to business development through social media. You can grab a free chapter of his latest book, LinkedIn & Blogs for Lawyers (West 2012, co-authored by Amy Knapp) at http://adriandayton.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @adriandayton.

Build Better Lawyer Bios

Adrian Dayton — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

As originally published in The National Law Journal on April 12, 2012

The book Moneyball by Michael Lewis examines the actions of a rogue general manager by the name of Billy Beane who is able to take a team with a payroll of $39 million and compete with the New York Yankees, which at the time had a payroll of around $114 million. With his ragtag group of players that he described as “from the Island of Misfit Toys,” he was able to field a team that won 20 consecutive games, more than any other team in the history of professional baseball. How was he able to have such great success? How can we apply those strategies to law firms?

Billy Beane was able to have such phenomenal success in part because Major League Baseball teams are run like an old boy’s club, and he was willing to go against the grain. Among these teams, decisions are often made on based on precedent, gut instinct or other intangibles.

When statistics are used, some are hugely overvalued, like runs batted in, while others are greatly undervalued, like on-base percentage. Beane was able to change things by ignoring precedent, exploiting inefficiencies in the marketplace and focusing on the right metrics. How can law firms do the same?

One area that seems particularly perplexing is law firm marketing. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on salaries for marketing staff, yet most of their time is spent on highly unproductive activities. Pitch books, Chambers submissions, holiday cards–do these really constitute the highest and best use of their costly time? Statistics would indicate otherwise.

Take the area of Web site bios, for example. According to Great Jakes, the law firm Web site company, 55 to 75 percent of the time visitors spend on law firm Web sites is spent on bios. In the range of important statistics and less important statistics, this is incredibly important. Think about it: Who looks at Web site bios? Potential clients, potential new hires and perhaps a smattering of competitors.

The huge inefficiency in most firms is that not nearly enough time is spent on improving and updating law firm bios. Law firm managers are so fixated on output (such as billable hours) that they are often blind to the most substantial inputs, such as understanding what persuades clients to hire their firms.

Law firms need a process and a routine for regularly improving all of their bios, whether they are on the website, on LinkedIn or even on Twitter. Your bio is your elevator presentation; it is what convinces people to pick up the phone and call you, or move on to the next Google search result. How can your law firm drastically improve its bios? For starters, give them the attention they deserve. It may not be sexy and it may not have been your firm’s focus in the past, but the data indicate that bios matter far more than firms are giving them credit for, and that is exactly the type of inefficiency Billy Beane took advantage of to beat out his better-funded competition.

To improve bios, we need to take a strategic look at them. What is the sole purpose of bios? To persuade potential clients to become clients. How persuasive are our bios? For a lesson on persuasion, we can take a page out of the writings of Aristotle. The concepts he shared about persuasion were just as valid thousands of years ago as they are today. He refers to three types of persuasion: logos, ethos and pathos. Most bios only use the first type of persuasion, logos.

Logos refers to logical arguments. “Hire this attorney; he attended Harvard Law School.” Or “This attorney was managing editor of Law Review at his school.” Other logical arguments may include, “Best Lawyer, AV Rated or listed in Chambers.” All nice, clean logical arguments to hire a lawyer. Are you persuaded by these? Some potential clients are, but most are looking for something more. They want someone who is the best, a leader in the field. That is when we come to ethos.

Ethos refers to an argument that makes an appeal to authority. “John Smith literally wrote the book on toxic tort litigation” or “Jane Smith is an adjunct professor at Yale Law School on fiduciary duties of members of closely held companies.” These are arguments that basically say, “This lawyer is the leading authority in the field on a certain area of law.” Other strategies to build an ethos argument include having a lawyer author a blog on a certain topic. “Jed Smith has written more than 100 articles in the past two years on wireless site development law.” You get the idea.

Perhaps the most powerful yet misunderstood form of persuasion is pathos. Pathos is the Latin root of the word pathetic, and as pathos refers to the emotional argument, it is often overlooked. Pathos isn’t always a winning strategy in court, so why does it need a place in our bios? Pathos involves likeability, trustworthiness and other less quantifiable features such as how easy it is for potential clients to get to know you. As humans, the majority of us have natural instincts towards pathos, and although we claim to make logical decisions, we are constantly choosing to buy from people we feel comfortable with, even if it isn’t always logical.

To create bios that have logos and ethos is fairly easy, and most firms have covered these two basis in spades. Where they are coming up short is in creating bios that touch on pathos. How do we bring pathos out in the attorneys? Ask the right questions. What made you to decide to practice law? What are the types of cases you are most passionate about? What do you want to have written on your tombstone? These are just a few questions I’ve collected that can help bring out the best in lawyers and help create more approachable bios.

Give it try, interview a few of your top business developers and see if you can’t improve their bios by including a little more pathos. The statistics show that buyers of legal services want more from law firm bios; let’s start working harder to give them what they want.

Adrian Dayton is a lawyer, author and speaker to law firms on business development and social media. His latest book is LinkedIn & Blogs for Lawyers: Building High Value Relationships in a Digital Age,(West 2012, co-authored by Amy Knapp). You can get a free chapter by filling out the appropriate form at http://adriandayton.com, or follow Adrian on Twitter @adriandayton.

2012 Blogs of the AmLaw 100

Adrian Dayton — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:25:51 +0000

The top ten firms according to the number of blogs in the AmLaw 100 are:

CLICK HERE TO OPEN UP THE SPREADSHEET

Thanks to Samantha for all of her research on the 2012 list. Please email her scollier@adriandayton.com if we missed any of your firm’s blogs.

Fighting for Air on the Top of Mt. Kilimanjaro

Adrian Dayton — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:02:42 +0000

I’m convinced that anybody can make it to the base camp of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It sits at about 14,500 feet of elevation (higher than any mountain in the 48 states) but you get there slowly. We had been hiking for 5 days to aid acclimatization. The average day of hiking was anywhere from 4 to 7 hours per day, so nothing too intense. The real test was coming at dark. We went to bed early, as in 6pm, and then woke at midnight to hike all night to reach the summit.

Even though the summit hike itself only takes about 7 hours, the challenge is three fold. First, your body is exhausted from hiking for 5 days straight. Second, you are at such high altitude that your blood oxygen level is around 60-70% of normal levels- you just can get enough air. Third, you are climbing the crater of a volcano, so the very hardest part – the scramble to the tip of the crater, known as Gilman’s Point (named after a lawyer, the first person to Ski down the glacier in 1926) is not only the steepest, but also comes at a time when your body is physically tapped out.

All this being said, we weren’t worried. We made great time every single day that week, so I couldn’t help but wonder how fast we would make it to the summit. I wasn’t afraid of the high altitude. I should have been.

We assembled just before 1 am, after a quick breakfast of oatmeal and hot chocolate, we were all equipped with headlamps, three layers of clothes on our legs, 5 layers on our bodies, trekking poles, gloves, hats and plenty of water. We headed off with our guide in the lead, giving the instruction “Po-le Po-le” which in Swahili means “Slow, Slow.” For practical purposes, it means you put one foot in front of the other in a very slow and deliberate manner to conserve energy.

In the summit attempt there are three stages. Stage 1- reach the halfway mark to Gilman’s Point up the steep crater face. (2.5 hours estimated) Stage 2- reach Gilman’s Point (2.5 hour estimated) and then finally, Stage 3- finish the more gradual ascent around the crater to Uhuru Peak, the highest point in all of Africa (final 2 hours).

The guides break it up this way for psychological reasons, so that you can focus on one goal at a time. So we made our way in the dark towards Stage 1. In other hikes, we had chatted and eaten snacks as we hiked, but in the pitch black and thinning air, we were silent as we marched up the switchbacks. Our lead guide, a Tanzanian by the name of Joshua was in front keeping a slow but steady pace, it was his 161st attempt at the summit. Behind us was Felix, the assistant guide and a porter named Nasaret who had been the lucky porter chosen out of a group of 12 from Team Kilimanjaro to join us on the summit attempt. Stage 1 wasn’t much more difficult then any other section we had hiked, it was quite a bit steeper, but we were going at a much slower pace and there were switchbacks. We could see lines of headlamps above and below us of other groups slowly trudging towards the top.

Then, just as we were about to arrive at the marker for Stage 1, something turned in my stomach. With dread, I realized that a wave of nausea was rushing towards me and I likely wouldn’t be able to prevent it. We stopped to rest, and I casually walked over to Joshua, “I’m feeling a little bit nauseous, should I take some Diamox?”

“Yes, take 250 mg right away,” Joshua urged me.

Diamox is a medication that helps the body deal with the effects of high altitude. My wife Natalie been taking it for two days, my Father-in-law for 3 days. I of course was far too stubborn. I had felt great all week and so I had refused to take the drug, even though Joshua had advised all of us to take it. That decision would cost me.

After drinking some hot chocolate (that was barely warm because of a broken thermos) I took the Diamox and we headed off for the second stage. 5 minutes in, I threw up the tepid chocolate along with the drugs. The next 30 minutes was a mixture of slow hiking intermingled with pauses to vomit. My heart was racing, and I couldn’t get enough air to calm myself down. Every switchback, I would pause and hold up the group for 10 seconds- while I tried my hardest to catch my breath and allow my stomach to relax.

I pulled Joshua to the side, “I know you have seen these symptoms before, am I going to make it?” I asked him. Once the symptoms of altitude sickness became too severe, there is no other choice but to descend immediately. I was faced with the real possibility that after 4 months of diet and training, flying half-way around the world and hiking for 5 days and half a night, that I wouldn’t make it to the summit. “I think you will be fine,” Joshua answered, but try taking some more Diamox,” he urged. I took a double dose, a small sip of Gatorade and we continued on. I couldn’t tell if Joshua was just staying positive, or if he suspected that my symptoms this early meant I would have to turn back.

I was faced with a gloomy realization. The nausea was one thing, but it would likely only get worse, since I was only at 17,000 feet of altitude and still needed to reach 19,300. I had five more hours of hiking straight up ahead of me, and at least two more back down until I would be at a lower altitude where I might feel better. It was impossible to think of getting there with the way I was feeling. So I blocked it out. Instead, I told myself a lie.

“You feel good, you feel great,” I said as I planted each trekking pole. “You’re going to make to make it to Gilmans.” Over and over I told myself this, maybe a thousand times. “You feel good, you feel great, you’re going to make it to Gilmans.” I felt awful. Every step I would close my eyes and imagine I was asleep for just a moment, to try and fight off the severe exhaustion and dehydration. Those two hours to Gilmans Point may have been the longest two hours of my life.

We finally reached Gilman’s point, I wanted to celebrate, I wanted enjoy the Red Bull that Joshua had saved for each of use to denote the hardest milestone, but I felt worse than ever. I was sucking in as much air as possible, but it just didn’t seem like body could get enough oxygen. We took a few pictures where I faked awkward smiles, including one picture with me laying down, appearing to be dead- demonstrating how I actually felt. Then I realized I was starting to freeze, so I urged our group to push on. Joshua had insisted I drink the entire can of Red Bull. I drank only a third, emptying the rest into my partly full Gatorade bottle. I would throw the Red Bull up just 10 minutes later.

At this point I was past worrying about pain, exhaustion or discomfort, I was mechanically making my way up the mountain. I knew that the only way I would ever feel better was to summit and descend. My training had prepared my legs for the summit attempt, and I had decided that would have to be enough.

Halfway between Gillmans and the top, is a place called Stella Point. When we reached Stella, I was so determined and so cold, that we didn’t even stop for pictures. We just kept chugging along. “Po-le, po-le” I began to say. The sun had begun to rise about 15 minutes before, warming us up and putting the horizon on fire. The blanket of clouds stretched for miles away from us. And something just clicked for me. I don’t know if the double dose of Diamox had made it into my bloodstream with some Red Bull or if the adrenaline of nearing the top was getting to me, but suddenly- I started cruising up the mountain. “You are the guide now,” Joshua said to me, “Go.” I went from feeling like a 2 on a ten scale to feeling like a 9 1/2.

There was less than a half mile left up to the summit, and I couldn’t believe it, I felt great. My legs chugged in front of me, and I was flying up the mountain. Stopping every 100 feet to laugh and catch my breath. A wave of relief and emotion hit me, and I would have started crying, if my tear ducts weren’t also so dehydrated. I was more than 150 feet in front of the rest of the group, and so I stopped triumphantly at the top of a rise to wait for my wife to catch me, so that we could enjoy the moment of reaching the top together. “I’ve never seen someone recover so quickly,” Joshua commented.

We reached the chilly summit of Kilimanjaro together at 7:20 am in the morning of March 24th. Total strangers were embracing, guides from the other companies were clapping us on the back and I savored an emotional high unlike anything I’ve experienced in a long time. We made it. We snapped a couple of quick pictures, said words of thanks to our guides and began the long descent. (The descent would take two days and over 20 miles, and in the week we logged over 50 miles on our hiking boots.)

The lesson for me from Kilimanjaro, is that we are capable of far more than we realize. Those moments where we find ourselves tested to our limits teach us that we have more power than we know.

Give Marketing a Seat at the Table

Adrian Dayton — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:00:38 +0000

As originally posted in the National Law Journal on March 22, 2012

More than 1,000 in-house legal marketers and at least as many vendors converged in Dallas recently for the 2012 Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference.

The excitement and positive vibe at this event is always something to behold. Why are the legal marketers so thrilled to get together? In a word, acceptance. Their peers treat them like the experts they are, while in their own firms they often are left out of major decisions.

Legal marketers tend to have a thankless job. As nonlawyers, they are denied credit for their firms’ successes, but are quickly blamed for any missteps. Not all firms take this attitude but, in my experience, it is far too common. Since legal marketers can never become full partners in the firm, they too often are relegated to second-class status. Unfortunately, far too many of them simply grin and bear it.

How to explain this? Many of the chief marketing officers and legal marketers I know are extremely intelligent and capable, but are not as good at one key component: negotiation. Trained lawyers will win the argument every single time. First, because they generally have strong personalities; second, because they are the owners of the law firms and have the final say.

This presents a major business problem. Let me explain why through an example. A large law firm I recently worked with decided to get into blogging. The head of marketing was behind it, and the lawyers were behind it, but the managing partner killed the initiative. He personally was not a fan of blogging, and that trumped the expertise of his marketing director.

So how can firms overcome irrational business decisions that are based on the prejudices of the poorly informed?

First, give CMOs a true seat at the table. They may not need full voting rights, but they must hold substantial authority. For some firms, this is already happening. “Traditionally, the partners run the ships,” said Chrissie Lightfoot, author of The Naked Lawyer. “But this seems to be changing. Firms are seeing that, with the increase in competition globally, they can’t afford to ignore their marketing talent and those with other soft skills such as PR and digital marketing.” Firms would often be well advised to simply get out of the way of their CMOs and let them make things happen.

On the marketers’ end, “part of being appreciated comes through valuing yourself highly,” said consultant Jan Anne Dubin. “This includes adopting an attitude that instills confidence. Does the firm lack confidence in the marketer, or do the individuals lack confidence in themselves?”

She continued: “You must come to the table with your A-game every time you go to bat. You get tested in the fire every day.” Marketing professionals who can withstand tough cross-examinations from trial lawyers will always be fine, but the point isn’t who can win the argument, it’s who can provide the best marketing solutions.

A truly entrepreneurial attitude that fosters innovation requires a far less contentious environment. This means allowing your marketing director to take calculated risks. Chicago firm Levinfeld Pearlstein won the Best in Show Award from the Midwest Chapter of the Legal Marketing recently for creating video bios for lawyers at the firm. “For legal marketers to prove they deserve a seat at the table, they have to earn it,” said Andrea Crews, the firm’s marketing director. “Executing on holiday cards and pamphlets is not enough. They need to prove themselves by pushing the envelope.”

Don’t just declare that your firm is entrepreneurial — truly be entrepreneurial. That means taking risks and allowing your marketing director to take risks. I know “risk” is a bad word for lawyers, but true entrepreneurship does not exist in a risk-free world. Obviously, the risks need to be managed, but managing risks is what lawyers should be good at. Far too often, marketing directors walk on eggshells to avoid blow-back over their marketing strategies. “Legal marketers need to be given the opportunity to leave a legacy,” Crews said.

Finally, ditch titles like “nonlawyer.” In fact, even “staff” is not as good as “team member” or “talent.” Your firm likely hires some very talented legal secretaries, paralegals and marketing professionals and could benefit from dropping the dismissive titles.

The marketers gathered in Dallas were surrounded by peers who respect and appreciate their expertise and insights. Let’s hope their employers come to respect and value them enough to allow them to put into practice what they have learned.

Are Social Media Worth Your Time?

Adrian Dayton — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:30:16 +0000

As originally posted in the National Law Journal on March 12, 2012

In a recent survey of social-media trends by The National Law Journal affiliate ALM Legal Intelligence, 44 percent of the law firms questioned cited “lack of time” as their biggest obstacle to expanding their use of social media.

This leads to two thoughts — that lawyers aren’t spending time on social media because they don’t think it works, or that they simply are not very good managers of their time. The report’s findings suggest ways around these major impediments to broader use of social media within law firms.

The ALM report, Fans, Followers and Connections: Social Media ROI for Law Firms, makes the case that social media produce a clear return on investment. Sixty-one percent of the firms surveyed reported that using blogs helped them land speaking engagements, while 58 percent reported an increase in the number of calls from reporters. While their rates of success varied widely, one firm counted 75 telephone calls from reporters as a result of their blogs.

Publicity is nice, but what about new business? Are blogs and social media bringing in new clients?

Apparently. More than half of firms surveyed received leads on new matters and 41 percent reported that social media and blogging brought in between $5,000 and $200,000 in new business.

So what was different about the firms that reported success and the ones that did not? Time. The firms that were successful in their use of social media were able to persuade their lawyers to make them a priority.

Blogs require a huge time commitment. Approximately 75 percent of the firms updated their blogs at least weekly; the rest updated far less frequently, posting only once during each month or less. In my experience, blogs that are updated that infrequently are difficult to sustain and are far less likely to produce measurable results. To find success, bloggers need to make time to post on a regular basis. Sixty-six percent of the firms surveyed reported publishing new posts either weekly or twice per week. This frequency of posting requires a substantial amount of time, but has proven successful.

So how do firms convince their lawyers that blogging is worth the time?

It helps to point to the success their competition is having — lawyers are more often persuaded by precedent than by hard data, after all. I’ve interviewed dozens of bloggers during the past year, and those who update their blogs regularly assure me that, yes, blogging is absolutely worth it. Some land new matters and some only gain greater visibility, but in the vast majority of the cases blogging and social media open the lawyers to new contacts and referral sources, and help them build high-value relationships that would not have been possible but for their use of social media.

Perhaps one of the most interesting findings involved a case study at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice. “A typical attorney in the firm has up to 100 visitors to their firm bio page each month,” said Aden Dauchess, the firm’s director of digital media. “The active bloggers and users of social media have at least 200 visitors each month — and several have 500 or more visitors to their bio page every month.”

In other words, there is a measurable difference in exposure for lawyers who take the time to use social media compared with those who do not.

When I was growing up, whenever I complained that I didn’t have the time to join the football team or practice the piano, my father would reply, “We do the things in life we want to do.” With fresh data making the case for blogging and social media all the time, it is no longer a question of whether these tools work. The question is whether you will organize your time to make them work for you.

Legal Marketing: Social Media Edition

How To Hire Rainmakers

Top 6 Social Media Posts This Week

Top 6 Social Media Posts This Week

Build Better Lawyer Bios

Top 6 Social Media Posts This Week

2012 Blogs of the AmLaw 100

Top 6 Social Media Posts This Week

Fighting for Air on the Top of Mt. Kilimanjaro

Give Marketing a Seat at the Table

Are Social Media Worth Your Time?