Posting will be sporadic at best this week, as I’m trying to launch a new site, while at the same time trying to find a new place to live. With that said, I had a thought this morning that really made me question some of my assumptions about legal marketing.

Many times legal marketing initiatives start from the middle. Someone decides “We should update our brochure and make it more client-focused.” Rather than starting from a problem (we want more clients), this approach already takes for granted that redoing the brochure is the correct path. It’s coming up with a solution for a problem that isn’t clearly defined.

That made me think about something very basic: why do law firms need marketing?

The most obvious answer would be: to get more clients. Right? Makes sense to me.

Why? Why do law firms want more clients?

How would you answer that? Is the answer “so we can make more money?”

So now we’re shifting problems. The problem isn’t “We need more clients.” Instead, it’s “we want more money.” Those are two very different problems.

If all you wanted was to get more clients, you could lower your rates considerably. You could offer to do some work for free. If the only goal is to get more clients, there are many ways to accomplish this. However, most firms aren’t willing to get clients at any cost. Put simply, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense.

Most firms want to make more money.

So what’s my point here?

Many law firms see marketing as an “activity” that needs to be done. But they don’t “do it” with the ultimate goal in mind. How is a brochure going to make a law firm more money? It’s not. It might help someone that is on the fence become more aware of the firm, and because of that, they might eventually become a client. But, you see, the brochure isn’t helping the “we want to make more money” problem. Rather, it’s a good way to attack the “We have some people that could potentially be clients, but they really don’t know much about what they do, and if we can just give them a glossy bunch of text and pictures, they might eventually become clients, but right now we don’t have that” problem.

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This morning I read an article by Elizabeth Anne Tursi on Law.com entitled “Commentary: Law Firm Marketing Not Where It Should Be“.

In the article, Ms. Tursi discusses how law firm marketers do not get the respect they deserve.

The post goes through the evolution of legal marketing, showing the two types of traditional law firm marketing hires:

• Hiring a marketing professional from the outside world
• Promoting someone from within

Both situations, in her opinion, are doomed for failure.

Hiring from the outside:
The problem with hiring someone from the outside: culture shock. Ms. Tursi notes:

The credentialed hire, for the most part, had never seen the inside of a law firm and soon discovered that operating in a horizontal management structure, where every partner is a boss and has something to say about his or her own personal objectives, didn’t allow for a successful marketing effort to move forward.

Promoting from within:
One of the main problems associated with this approach is image/reputation. Partners just don’t see the newly promoted as a marketing professional. Ms. Tursi puts it best:

The “promotion” to marketing of the otherwise loyal employee, who had possibly been at some administrative level within the firm, didn’t get the respect of the partners because they basically continued to view the individual as an employee without the background of having worked in professional services marketing.

So it seems to be a no-win situation. Or is it?

Within the article, there were two statements that really caught my eye and made me think:

1. Most law firms are set up in a caste system. Lawyers are the professionals, and everyone else sits on the other side of the moat seeking recognition.

and

2. there are those partners who are not willing to open their eyes or pockets to allow someone to teach them a thing or two that actually might lead to more productivity and business.

There’s one thing that kept popping up in my mind while reading these two statements: Change.

If a firm isn’t willing to change, why bother marketing in the first place? If the firm is happy with their client base and has no problem getting new clients, what’s the point?

I guess the main question is: Why do law firms engage in marketing at all?

The quick answer to that is: To get clients and make more money.

A little bit of logic now. A firm wants new clients (or more business from existing ones). But they aren’t getting this from their current initiatives. So what do they do? If they continue doing what they’re doing, trying nothing new and being averse to change, their situation won’t improve. But if they try some new approaches, they’ll at least have a chance.

So I guess what I’m saying is this: if your firm is really serious about getting new clients or more business, it’s time to get serious about change. If the firm is set up as a “caste system” where marketing professionals are not taken seriously or given respect, you can’t expect any real change. And when that happens, what’s the point?

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Law.com has an article today entitled “Best Practices for Legal Blogging” by Joshua Fruchter.

The article is a basic “what is blogging” overview for attorneys.

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When I first heard of Lawbby.com, it was basically a MySpace/Dating script hybrid. Chris Rempel, the site’s owner decided to create the site as a way for lawyers to chat, meet, and network with each other. However, the software under Lawbby’s hood was set up to facilitate dating. A member’s profile would have items like turn on’s and turn off’s, which I saw as a major obstacle for getting attorneys to join the site. Things like “do you drink?” and your religious status, though great for a personal site, just didn’t seem to translate to the legal arena.

I thought the site would be sort of a one-off: something that law school students could use to meet people with similar interests.

But I think I was mistaken.

Today I received an email from Chris Rempel, who wanted to let me know that he was already working on changing the categories for profiles. I talked on the phone with him this afternoon, and before he called, he had already replaced the religion field with Practice Area. Excellent!

So here’s what I think this site will be good for:

1. Law School Students- I’ve said it before- I’ll say it again: I am not an attorney. So, I’ve never been to law school. But I think I’m correct in thinking that law students are interested in knowing more about the areas of practice they hope to be in. Using Lawbby’s search and explore features, students can look find attorneys that are practicing in their areas of interest, read about what they do, and contact them.

2. Relentless Networkers- Attorneys and people working in the legal industy often see a direct correlation between the number of contacts they have and the amount of success they enjoy. Sweeping generalization, sure, but you can see the truth there. Lawbby is another way to expand your network of contacts.

3. Relationship builders- Blogs and social networking sites have one benefit that can’t be denied: they allow people to skip steps in forming relationships with people they normally (in the physical world) would not be able to know. If you think back to 10 or 15 years ago, you can start to see just how much the barriers of communication have come down. Could you imagine calling somone across the country (or even the world) to say “Hi. I read your book. Will you be my friend?” You might get locked up for that!

4. Reporters- Now that the site is broken down by practice areas, there will now be a central repository of “experts”, which could benefit reporters and the media immensely. Rather than searching and hunting for an expert, a reporter could simply browse through the list of members within a specific practice area, find the right person, and send an email.

which leads to

5. Attorneys who want to be interviewed by reporters- the result of #4.

Here’s the obstacles Lawbby.com faces:

1. Getting attorneys to join: Trying to get an attorney to try something new is often a difficult task. And since getting them to join is essential to the site’s success, this is a major hurdle to clear. It will take a lot of effort to build enough momentum to make signing up seem obvious.

2. Spammers: Since signing up is free, spammers will sign up to promote their sites. With any measure of success, spammers will jump on the opportunity to have free outbound links. As long as site has the right spam-blocking technology and enough administrative will, this problem can be controlled- to a point.

3. Corporate Fear Syndrome: I couldn’t think of the right name for this. It’s the idea that a firm doesn’t want their name to be associated with something seen as “amateurish” or “unprofessional.” In many cases, this fear is justified. Sometimes it is not. Either way, some firms may decide to tell their attorneys to stay away from Lawbby. And some attorneys will join anyway, which will cause a problem. It’s not an “if” it’s a “when.”

This is going to be an interesting site to watch, and, being addicted to betas and new legal marketing ideas, I’ve signed up (of course). If you decide to join, look me up on Lawbby. In fact, here’s a link to it:

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I’m not sure about this one.

Lawbby.com describes itself as “where lawyers mingle…” It is a MySpace clone, focused on attorneys. The site was created because:

there really was no real “meeting place” for attorneys to chat, meet friends or simply network with other attorneys and people in the legal world.

If you’re an attorney that has desperately looked for a free site where you can search for other attorneys to date, this site might work for you. But if you’re really looking to network or market, I don’t know if lawbby will ever help you.

From Robert Ambrogi:

The site was just launched last month and has attracted only a smattering of activity so far. Legal lonelyhearts, you now have a home.

When you sign up for a Lawbby.com account, like MySpace, you can fill out a profile page. Here are the fields:

• Headline
• Occupation
• Dating Status
• Reason for lawbbying?
• Referral Friendly?
• Drink?
• Religion
• Turn On’s
• Turn Off’s
• Hobbies
• Movies
• Music
• Books
• About Yourself

Can you see attorneys telling the world about their drinking, religion, dating status, and turn ons? Even if you were a lawyer looking to date another lawyer, would you really want to do this?

I think having something like this isn’t a bad idea, but only if it becomes less MySpace and more attorney-focused. The site could definitely be a good networking tool, but only if it scrapped the whole “turn on/turn off”, dating focused theme. Maybe they could have something on areas of practice, etc.

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Whoa.

I just learned that Skype is now offering a free version called SkypeOut. All you need to do is have a broadband connection, some speakers and a microphone, and you can make free calls to anyone in the US and Canada! They’re only offering this service as a free one until the end of this year.

And this isn’t the “Enter your credit card first” kind of free. It’s the “you don’t have to enter anything at all, and just download the software” kind of free.

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