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Lawyer Advertising & Internet Marketing Resources
LAWYER DIRECTORIES ON THE INTERNET
INFORMATION ABOUT LAWYER MARKETING & ADVERTISING
LAW MARKETING NEWS
Feb. 25, 2003 Once ad-shy lawyers now embrace Web Alan Doyle
the telephone directory. Not that they could have, anyway, for most of the 20th century.
It took a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to overturn an advertising ban imposed by the American
Bar Association in 1908 and later adopted by most state bars But today, with both the profession and the business marketplace they serve dramatically changed,
lawyers are advertising everywhere, hiring marketing directors &endash; and figuring out how to
use the World Wide Web to build business. Now they even have their own Internet Marketing Attorney Awards, conferred by Micah Buchdal,
a New Jersey lawyer who's found a second career as a Web consultant to law firms. For the second straight year, the winner among the nation's 250 largest firms is San
Francisco-based Morrison & Foerster LLP, whose 18 offices worldwide include one in Walnut Creek.
The 1,000-lawyer firm tied for first with Faegre & Benson LLP of Minneapolis and Piper Rudnick LLP of
Baltimore. Each scored 45 out of a possible 50 points, 10 in each of five categories: design,
content, usability, interactivity and intangibles. MoFo justifies its advertising slogan of "Lawyers for the Global Economy" with a Web site,
http://www.mofo.com, in English, Chinese, Japanese and Hebrew crammed with information,
news and links. The offerings include audio clips of the MoFonics, a skewed house rock band
specializing in lawyer humor whose members wisely kept their day jobs. "This is what a home page should look like, when you are a diverse, international law firm,"
Buchdal wrote about MoFo's site. "No waste of space or useless graphics … pretty darn
close to a perfect score." Aside from MoFo, Buchdal's top 10 Web list is devoid of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley
firms that provided legal services to the companies that made the area the home of the
dot-com revolution. The closest collateral connection is Pittsburgh-based Reed Smith LLP, which last year
bought Oakland-based Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May LLP, the East Bay's biggest firm. Part of the problem, Buchdal concedes, may be that he is more exacting toward Bay Area
firms' Web sites. "I hold firms to a higher standard because of where they're located," Buchdal said,
explaining why he expects Bay Area practices to have a better Web presence. "Silicon
Valley and the Bay Area are expected to be better." But geography may have less to do with embracing the Web than a firm's institutional
values, Buchdal said. "It's the old law firm saying, 'We've been doing it this way for years and we're not
changing,' " Buchdal said. "Many of the largest firms may have trouble grasping the
importance of the Web as a tool or how to use it. "I don't think the law firms have trouble spending money and energy, but they just
don't know how to do it well." Judy Burgin, MoFo's director of marketing, has a different theory of why Bay Area firms
are absent from Buchdal's list. "The thing that comes to mind is that the East Coast firms came out here and gobbled
up a lot of the local firms," Burgin said, citing the wave of acquisitions and mergers
that has changed the Bay Area's legal landscape. But as costs of building sites for law firms continue to drop dramatically, Buchdal
expects to see more midsize and smaller firms in the Bay Area and elsewhere expand
their Web presences, giving the larger firms a run for surfers &endash; and clients. "Three or four years ago, it cost a minimum of $50,000 to build a site," Buchdal said.
"Today, it's $10,000 to $20,000." MoFo's Web site is a key component of MoFo's advertising and business-building
strategies, says Burgin. "It's huge," she said. "The information we can put out there about our lawyers is
critical. It's the perfect place to talk about what your company does. It's a very
important part of marketing for law firms." And dubious attorneys reluctant to embrace the Internet should remember that lawyers
weren't always so reluctant to market themselves," Burgin said. "Abraham Lincoln advertised," she said. "Why shouldn't we?"
Feb. 8, 2003 Law firms put marketing efforts on front burner Deborah Roth Grabein
Special To Houston Business JournalToday's law firm may look like the polished, professional environment the public is accustomed to, but inside the doors, many law firms have begun to transform their traditional networking-at-events business models into well-oiled marketing machines.
Traditionally, lawyers were only expected to know the law, file the correct papers and counsel their clients on legal matters — basically only as legal practitioners. But today's lawyers are so much more.
They are skilled business executives who not only partner with and advise clients on business and legal matters, but they are also savvy marketers who have adopted the practice of developing and executing targeted marketing campaigns to better focus on pursuing and generating new business opportunities.
Evolving trends
Just like in many other industries, over the past few years the business of practicing law has gone through a paradigm shift, causing lawyers to change the way they do business.
With heightened competition for new business, the process for targeting, researching and preparing for prospective client presentations is far more intensive than ever before.
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The request for proposal process (essentially unheard of a decade ago, but now a standard practice) includes providing strategic plans for how the law firm will not only meet the potential client's current legal needs, but also how it will provide quality client service, utilize technology resources such as extranets and case management systems, and prove to be a valuable, contributing partner in the future.
New business deals that were once made over lunch have evolved into full-blown multimedia presentations just to make an in-house counsel's short list. In addition, with more than 80 law firm mergers and acquisitions globally in 2002 alone, the expansion of the global economy, advances in technology and increased demands throughout the world's business environments, lawyers have had to become more strategic marketers to enable the firm's continued growth and success.
Old-fashioned methods
That's not to say that traditional methods of law firm marketing have been forgotten. Civic sponsorships, speaking at professional associations and writing articles on recent legal developments are still tools of the trade. And as in the past, many client relationships are still forged at networking events, and golf is still a viable relationship-builder. But, the day-to-day efforts are the results of strategic planning and implementation for law firms, large or small.
New leadership
Another key change in the profession is that many larger firms now operate with complete marketing departments, led by executive-level chief marketing officers.
These departments are tasked with the development and implementation of marketing plans that include advertising, branding campaigns, Internet marketing, client service training, media relations, market research and attorney visibility campaigns.
Legal marketing professionals across the globe participate in professional associations and networks such as the Legal Marketing Association, to learn about best practices and trends in the industry.
Smaller firms turn to outside consultants
Smaller firms that can't support in-house marketing departments are beginning to turn to outside marketing consultants to support their advertising and marketing needs. There's even a growing industry of marketing consultants dedicated only to the legal industry.
Regardless of size and whether using an in-house marketing team or outside consultant, law firms are beginning to take a team approach, collaborating with the marketing resources available to them to develop and achieve predetermined and measurable goals, and effectively execute all marketing programs.Without ongoing communications and teamwork, it is easy for marketing programs to veer off course.
Lawyers recognize it's a competitive, fast-paced business environment, and firms in Houston and around the country are doing what's required to keep up. For attorneys it means becoming accustomed to a new way of doing business, knowing how to effectively market themselves, identifying the right client demographics and using the right set of marketing tools to grow their practice.
Even the "old school" attorneys have seen the benefits of the new structure and are now actively participating in firm marketing efforts.
© 2003 American City Business Journals Inc.
