Companies Spending More on Regulatory Enforcement Legal Work

Businesses in Texas and across the country are spending more money on legal fees to fight high stakes litigation and deal with a growing number of local and federal agency enforcement actions. 

Norton Rose Fulbright's recently released 10th annual Litigation Trends survey indicates 71% of corporations spent $1 million or more on litigation costs in 2013, up from 53% the two previous years.

More than 26% of companies saw their litigation legal costs exceed $10 million last year.  Median costs for Texas businesses in 2013 exceeded $2 million and 20% of energy company GCs polled said they spent $10 million or more on legal costs.

It is reported an increasing amount of discovery in business-to-business litigation focuses on communications made from mobile devices and social media.

General counsel at health care and energy companies reported the highest litigation costs.  More than 1/3 of the companies surveyed said they now employ five full time lawyers in-house to work exclusively on litigation matters.  Sixteen percent of Texas corporations reported they will add litigators to their legal department staffs in 2014, while less than 1% said they plan to decrease the number of lawyers they have working on litigation matters.

Click here to download the full report.

Why Your Website Matters so Much!

Your website is indisputably the number one resource for services buyers to learn about you. If your site isn't designed to draw prospects in, or if your online presence isn't geared to help potential clients find and positively evaluate you, you're missing a huge opportunity.

This is according to research by Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D., the Managing Partner at Hinge, a marketing firm that specializes in branding and marketing for professional services.

Providing references to potential clients is important—it shows satisfaction with your services from buyers you've worked with before. It offers a glimpse into your firm's past. But if it's your future that concerns you, take a look at the developing trends in how buyers research their services purchases. Below, you'll find data from a new body of independent research based on surveys of over 1,000 buyers of professional services. Those interviewed buy services from a wide range of providers, in fields from engineering to accounting, with about 40% of them engaged in purchasing legal services.

More potential clients will check our your law firm website than talk to friends, colleagues or a reference.

The references you provide are still significant, with over half of those surveyed using them as a resource, but they are no longer as widely embraced as newer research methods.

And because three of the top four research methods are directly related to your online presence, it might be time to update your approach to online marketing. Hang on to those client references—they could be a tipping point in your favor—but engaging in social media, revamping your site, and investing in search engine optimization will go a long way to getting potential customers' eyes on those references in the first place.

In our research, we also found that buyers are looking to multiple sources for information about their upcoming purchases. If you're missing from any of their usual channels, you're missing the opportunity to shine. So get online, get optimized, and get visible. Put your best foot forward online, and become your own best reference.
Article by Larry Bodine

Free Online Tools Guaranteed to Streamline Your Work Day

Here are some of the latest tools we have been employing- very happily- that keep us on our toes.  We hope they make your work life easier to manage as well!

1. Hootsuite.com this is a nifty little application that makes managing your online social media a snap.  Simply link all your online profiles, Facebook, twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus, etc. to your dashboard and update them all at once! Super easy to use and monitor.
2. Woofu.com Wufoo is a web application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun. Because they host everything, all you need is your web browser and a few short minutes to build a form and start using it right away.
3. Prezi.com uses fresh designs and a layout that appears as animation to provide you with a presentation that blows the doors off of Powerpoint.  Best of all ther is no need to load a presentation onto a laptop and lug it around.  If the venue has an Internet connection the presentation can be viewed from a cloud- making it easy for other locations to login and follow the presentation from their own computers.  There's even an app for ipad and smartphones!
   Monday- new Google apps that leave Microsoft Office in the dust!

Law Firm Performance in 2012: ‘Not Stellar,’ Outlook ‘Grim’

Here's some happy news to start of your week- according to the Wall Street Journal's Legal Blog- things arent looking for rosy for law firms this year.  Jennifer Smith writes,
Wells Fargo WFC -0.65%’s law firm lending group, which surveyed 115 firms in July on their performance in the first six months of 2012

“The results were not stellar,” Jeff Grossman, National Managing Director for Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group, said on Friday. “We think the second half of the year is going to be softer than the first half….You tend to see transaction work slow down during an election year.”

In general, between January and June of this year law firms’ costs outpaced their revenue growth. Overall revenues were up about 3% while general expenses (money spent to hire more lawyers and stuff, buy new computer systems, etc.) grew by about 6.5%.

Here’s the good news: if you’re one of the highly profitable firms that has been raking it in despite the down economy, expect more of same.

The firms that do the choicest deals and transactional work — those with profits per partner of $2 million or more — are pulling ahead of the pack, Mr. Grossman said. Those firms, many based in New York,  saw net income increase almost 1% compared to the first six months of 2011. That’s in large part because they were able to control expenses, he said.

Not doing so well:  most other  folks, who are either treading water or seeing their profits drop amid tepid demand for legal services.

“Because the market is very soft, the firms below the $2 million profits per partner mark got hit hard in terms of revenue,” Mr. Grossman said.

Partners may need to step it up. While productivity rose among associates, partners increased their total hours worked by less than 1% among the firms surveyed, a mix of AmLaw 100/200 firms and regional players.

“It is a grim outlook,” Mr. Grossman said. “But I don’t think we can forecast that a lot of industry players will fall by the wayside.”

That’s because firms are busy sandbagging against future hard times by amassing capital — perhaps chastened by the mammoth failure of New York firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP earlier this year.

This summer Miami’s Greenberg Traurig LLP took some heat when it issued a capital call for the first time in a decade. The firm called the call “a prudent move to create a further equity cushion” at the time and said it was not prompted by any financial distress.

Mr. Grossman said lots of firms are raising capital — and some do it every year.  “More than half the firms in the AmLaw 100,” he said. “More and more firms, in order to track laterals they want to tell partners that they have a very strong balance sheet.”

10 Most Hated Jobs

Ever have those days when you wonder just why you spent so much time and money on law school? Think you have a bad job? Well MSNBC just released a list of the ten most hated jobs so you can feel better about your lot as you head to work today.

1. Director of Information Technology
For all the press that teachers and nurses get for their long hours, low pay and thankless tasks, it may be surprising to see the most hated job was that of information technology director, according to CareerBliss. After all, the salary's pretty good and with information technology such a prevalent part of everyday business, an IT director can hold almost as much sway over the fate of some companies as a chief executive.
Still, IT directors reported the highest level of dissatisfaction with their jobs, far surpassing that of any waitress, janitor, or bellhop. Of those who responded to the survey, one simple, five-word response summed up the antipathy very well: "Nepotism, cronyism, disrespect for workers."

2. Director of Sales and Marketing
A director of sales and marketing plans implements efforts to promote companies and generate business. Responsibilities often include budget management, public relations, and employee training.
Sales and marketing directors reported the second-highest level of job dissatisfaction of all survey respondents. The majority who responded negatively cited a lack of direction from upper management and an absence of room for growth as the main sources of their ire.

3. Product Manager
"Product manager" is a wide-ranging job title that takes on many meanings, depending on the company and its sector. In some cases, the job requires simply evaluating what products are best suited to a company's business model, and in others marketing, resource management, and scheduling are involved.
The level of job dissatisfaction was very high for this position. One respondent
complained that it restricted growth, saying that it was "very hard to grow up the ranks."
Another was less polite and said "the work is boring and there's a lot of clerical work still at my level."

4. Senior Web Developer
Senior web developers design, maintain, and develop applications for the Internet. With every business expected to have some kind of Internet presence these days, developers are found working in every type of company, in a full-time, part-time, or freelance capacity.
A senior developer is expected to be fluent in client-side and server-side contexts, and know his or her way around Python, Ruby, or whatever other arcane technology requires taming. Senior developers reported a high degree of unhappiness in their jobs, attributable to a perception their employers are unable to communicate coherently, and lack an understanding of the technology.

5. Technical Specialist
A technical specialist "leads the analysis, definition, design, construction, testing, installation, and modification of medium to large infrastructures," according to CareerBliss. This means that if a company wants to design a project, the technical specialist evaluates it to see what's possible and what isn't.

The job is a lead position that requires intimate knowledge of engineering; familiarity with Linux helps, too. However, technical specialists reported that for all their expertise, they were treated with a palpable level of disrespect. They cited a "lack of communication from upper management" and felt their "input was not taken seriously."

6. Electronics Technician
Electronics technicians maintain, troubleshoot and collect monthly measurement data for electronic systems. They work in every sector and can be employed with the phone company, a chain of fast-food restaurants, or the U.S. Navy. Whatever the case, technicians work on-site and off-site, have constant contact with clients, and must have an ability to quickly solve complex technical problems under intense pressure.

Employee dissatisfaction in this job is attributable to several factors. One respondent complained of having "too little control," while another had a litany of complaints: "Work schedule, lack of accomplishment, no real opportunity for growth, peers have no motivation to work hard, no say in how things are done, hostility from peers towards other employees."

7. Law Clerk
Clerkships are among the most highly sought-after positions in the legal profession. A law clerk assists judges as they write opinions, and the ones who get the job are almost always near the top of their class at law school. Six justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, including Elena Kagan and current Chief Justice John Roberts, were all law clerks early in their careers.

The job clearly beefs up a resume. Yet law clerks still report high levels of dissatisfaction. The hours are long and grueling, and the clerk is subject to the whims of sometimes mercurial personalities. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also reported the job brings in a median salary of $39,780 a year—not exactly striking it rich—and those looking for advancement within the position simply will not find it.

8. Technical Support Analyst
Technical support analysts help people with their computer issues. This typically amounts to calmly communicating technical advice to panicked individuals, often over the phone, and then going on site to find the client simply hadn't turned the printer on.

Technical support analysts often work in a variety of environments, and they may be required to travel at a moment's notice, sometimes on holidays or weekends. After all, there's no telling when a client's computer-whiz nephew might make a minor tweak to his machine, with disastrous results.

In the words of one of the respondents, "You can do better, really."

9. CNC Machinist
CNC machinists operate computer numerical control machines. For the uninitiated, this is a machine that operates a lathe or a mill. On the upside, it renders obsolete processes that used to be performed by hand, at a slow pace and with high risk to the operator's life and limb.

Now that the CNC operator has had most of the physical hazards of manufacturing replaced by a machine, there's not a lot to do but push buttons and perform equipment inspections to make sure the coolant is at a safe level. Since it's a specialized skill, the job offers no room for advancement, which caused respondents to report a high degree of dissatisfaction.

10. Marketing Manager
A marketing manager is responsible for overseeing advertising and promotion. This involves developing strategies to meet sales objectives, based on the study of such factors as customer surveys and market behavior.

According to CareerBliss, respondents in this position most often cited a lack of direction as the primary reason for job dissatisfaction. The most optimistic respondent described it as "tolerable," and gave it the faintest praise possible by saying, "It's a job." (In this labor market, that's not such a bad thing.)

Texas Has the Seventh Largest Lawyer Surplus

Texas has the seventh-largest lawyer surplus compared to other states, with nearly 900 more newly minted lawyers than available lawyer jobs, according to a consulting firm's research.

Recently, Economic Modeling Specialists Inc., an employment-data and economic-analysis consulting firm, researched and compared the numbers of law graduates passing the bar exam in 2009 with estimates of lawyer job openings through 2015. The consulting firm says nationally, 53,508 people passed the bar exam in 2009 but the estimated attorney job openings annually from 2010 through 2015 is only 26,239. Texas came in with the seventh-largest lawyer surplus, with 3,052 people passing the bar exam, but only 2,155 lawyer job openings annually. The study says Texas will have an 897-lawyer surplus every year from 2010 through 2015.

According to the report, the average hourly wage for Texas lawyers is $41.55, which is lower than the national average of $44.22 an hour. The consulting firm found wide differences in median wages state by state: lawyers in the District of Columbia earned the highest median wage of $70.96, while Montana lawyers were paid the least at $24.96 an hour.

Economic Modeling Specialists used Texas bar exam data from the National Conference of Bar Examiners, and job-estimate data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Texas Workforce Commission. [See the report.]

More Lawyers Are Settling for Temp Jobs?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal indicates a news trend in hiring itinerant lawyers. According to the article, there is a growing field of "contract" attorneys who move from job to job, getting paid by the hour, largely to review documents for law firms and corporate clients. These short-term jobs, which can pay as little as $15 an hour, have increasingly become a fixture in the $100 billion global corporate legal industry as law firms and clients seek to lower their costs.

This new "third tier" of the legal world illustrates the commoditization of the legal profession, which once offered most new entrants access to prestige and power, as well as a professional lifestyle. It also shows how post-recession belt-tightening is permanently altering some professions.

Responses to a June survey of top legal officers, conducted for The Wall Street Journal by the Association of Corporate Counsel, a bar association for in-house counsel:

• Approximately 34% of 876 respondents said their companies had used non-staff "contract" attorneys in the previous fiscal year.
• The most common reason for their use was given as "project cost management," by 29% of those respondents using contract attorneys. About 26% said they were looking "to satisfy the need for a specific skillset." Another 20% said their use was the result of "cost management" by a law firm.
• About 35% of 319 respondents said their companies typically paid more than $80 an hour for document review work by contract attorneys; 18% said they paid less than $40 an hour.

Source: Association of Corporate Counsel/WSJ Contract Attorney Use Survey

For 10 to 12 hours a day—and sometimes during graveyard shifts—contract attorneys sit silently in a big room, at rows of computer monitors. Each lawyer reads thousands of documents online and must quickly "code" every one according to its relevance in litigation or an investigation.

Supervisors discourage talking and breaks are limited. The computer systems count each lawyer's speed. Some law firms use their own contract attorneys, while others hire them through third-party agencies.

The increasing reliance on temporary workers comes as the industry continues to struggle from a downturn that has produced a glut of unemployed U.S. lawyers, including crops of indebted recent law school graduates. About 10% of all private practice jobs accepted by last year's law school graduates were reported as temporary, a steady increase from 5.4% in 2007, according to the National Association for Law Placement.

Lawyers: Start Your Billing Clocks

Wall Street Journal Law blog has an interesting post today about the future of hourly billing:

It’s been a busy time for lawyers who specialize in advising clients on how to comply with the welter of regulations that come out of our nation’s capitol. Well, it’s likely to get a whole lot busier.

Early this morning, in the wee hours, Congressional Democrats hammered out a compromise with White House Officials on the final shape of the long-debated financial-overhaul legislation. The bill is expected to be approved by Congress next week and signed into law by the president no later than July 4.

The proposed legislation, quite simply, “deals with every single aspect of our lives,” said Senator Christopher Dodd (pictured), who was reported to be teary-eyed in announcing the compromise.

Many lawyers will also be crying tears of joy; the legislation promises to be a nice stimulus to a still moribund legal business.

By many accounts, the legislation is tougher on the banking industry than many expected. It includes new rules that:

• limit the ability of some banks to trade derivatives;

• create a consumer financial-protection bureau at the Federal Reserve to police banks and financial firms; and

• institute the “Volcker” rule, named after former Fed Reserve Chair Paul Volcker, which prohibits banks from making risky bets with their own funds.

Here are accounts of the compromise from Bloomberg Businesweek; WSJ; and the Washington Post.

Do litigators get anything out of this legislation? You becha.

For starters, the legislation would allow investors to sue credit-rating firms for a “knowing or reckless” failure to conduct a reasonable investigation. That is a higher liability bar than the one proposed in earlier versions of the legislation. A bill approved by the House in December, for example, would have required investors to merely show that a ratings company was “grossly negligent” in issuing a grade, Bloomberg reports.

We’ll flesh out more of the particulars in the days ahead.

Finally, here’s an awesome window into last night’s (and this morning’s) sausage making, courtesy of WaPo:

The cavernous Dirksen 106 conference room remained packed at [2:30 a.m.], but it was a chaotic and cluttered mass of humanity. Lawmakers had stopped trying to conceal their yawns. Aides who had worn down their BlackBerry batteries recharged them for the home stretch. Trash cans spilled over with coffee cups and sandwich wrappers. Empty Fritos bags and plastic Diet Coke bottles littered the room, along with reams of paper — old amendments, new amendments, handwritten amendments, amendments to amendments. “So much for the paperless society,” Barney Frank quipped at one point.

New Report: One Third of Lawyers Plan to Hire in the Third Quarter

Great post today from Larry Bodine's law marketing blog. Legal hiring remains a bright spot in a transitional economy, with one-third of attorneys interviewed for The Robert Half Legal Hiring Index indicating they plan to add legal jobs this quarter. Among the findings:

• 33 percent of lawyers interviewed plan to hire full-time staff in the next three months. Just 2 percent plan staff cutbacks. The net 31 percent increase is up five points from last quarter’s survey.
• 83 percent of lawyers are confident in their organizations’ prospects for growth in the third quarter.
• 47 percent of lawyers said it is challenging to find skilled legal professionals, up 6 points from the previous survey.

The new report tracking legal hiring was released today by Robert Half Legal, a specialized staffing firm placing lawyers, paralegals and legal support staff on a project and full-time basis. You can find full survey results at www.roberthalflegal.com/PressRoom.

Legal Research? There's (almost) an App for That!

FastCase, a legal research service, is about to launch a tool you can carry wherever you go. Yep, that's right. They're rolling out an app that allows full case law and statutory research on an iPhone. And get this, not only is the app free, but so is the research.

While the App is not yet available in Apple's App Store, Robert J. Ambrogi of LawSites blog was given a sneak-peek at this service. He says, "I was impressed. The app is easy to use and produces lightning-fast results."

The App is awaiting final approval from Apple before it appears in the App store. What to do while waiting? You might want to get yourself an iPhone if you don't have one already.

Profitable Partners Aren't Afraid of Fee Arrangements

In a recent report, it was revealed the number one request clients had of their legal service representation was alternative fee arrangements. That could mean a flat fee for a particular service, or a capped hourly agreed-upon arrangement.

The important part of fee arrangements if flexibility. Flexibility shows clients you care enough to help them out in tough economic times. This also keeps clients in your Rolodex for when times get better. Don't lose your clients just because you don't want to deal with accounting headaches and some short term profits. In the end, both you and your client will come out ahead.

How to Lose Clients- Guaranteed

Everyone knows today that it is a buyers' market when it comes to legal services. One only has to pay attention to the surveys reporting that clients are dropping law firms that no longer meet their needs in terms of responsiveness, costs, communications, and otherwise fail to meet their expectations.

I ran across an article by Kimberly Alfred Rice over on the Law Practice Matters blog that identifies six ways that a law firm can chase clients away.

They include failure to:

1. Provide "insights and wisdom" about he problem, not just technical legal answers;
2. maintain trust, as in neglecting to provide the "complete and utter truth about a matter;"
3. communicate often and effectively;
4. produce timely advice to meet client needs;
5. use common sense when it comes to billing, and invoicing for every "instant" spent on a clients matter (I agree with Rice that it's a good idea to include time spent, but not billed for, on the invoice); and
6. always look for opportunities to add value to a client relationship, by way of "various marketing and communications tools" such as CLE seminars, newsletters, law alerts, etc.

Obviously, these are just some of the ways to lose clients. So, let the word to the wise be sufficient.

Don't Cry For Big Law

Walls Street Journal Law blog writer Nathan Koppel writes about the economic downturn from the perspective of corporate law firms, and discovers things aren't quite as bad as you'd think. This from his blog post:

The sky, it turns out, is not falling on corporate law firms. That is the counterintuitive take in this bullish piece from The Deal magazine, titled, “Don’t Cry for BigLaw.”

David Marcus, the author, draws an analogy to the 2000 dotcom implosion to argue that most firms will emerge just fine from the current economic rough patch.

Initial public offerings and corporate work in Silicon Valley dried up significantly in the early part of the decade. Still, the leading tech law firms, such as Wilson Sonsini and others, emerged and sustained healthy partner-profits ─ $1.38 million on average at Wilson Sonsini last year, according to AmLaw magazine.

“The lessons: Even in tough economic times, law remains a very profitable business with high profit margins, and law firms, despite being frequently maligned for their business ineptitude, are reasonably adept at adjusting to new circumstances,” Marcus writes.

And there are plenty of reasons for optimism: regulatory work remains robust, and the high-end plaintiffs’ bar continues to churn out litigation that big companies must pay dearly to defend.

Sure, the Deal concedes, there will continue to be pain ahead – and some law firms may even fold. “But law will remain a good business, and law firms will prove far more stable than many of their critics suspect.”

So, LB readers, is Marcus right and is everything just peachy in Big Law?

Bleeding Out: Major Law Firms Forced to Shrink

Silent phones, closed doors and pink slips even for partners, retooling the way major law firms do business is top priority across the country. According to an article in the New York Times last Sunday- the nation's 20 top-grossing law firms, 12 of which are in New York, dropped their average profit per partner in the first quarter of 2009 for the first time since 1991.

The reason? Most of the top firms are completely out of balance; with too many associates with nothing to do. Associate pay is the biggest component of law firm overhead. On September 15 of last year, when Lehman Brothers went under- everything hit a wall.

Three options are being employed by major law firms right now; do nothing, which risks a firm's survival, couch layoffs as decisions based on poor performance; or own up to the crisis and big large numbers of lawyers a harsh but needed goodbye.

The days of throwing associates en masse at certain cases fattening the fees are over and just to survive many firms are employing leaner strategies like flat fees for services. What is your firm doing to survive?

Law Firms on Wikipedia

This post is courtesy of Carolyn Elefant.

If you're like most lawyers, you probably use Wikipedia for a variety of purposes, from finding a layperson's explanation of a legal concept to getting the back story on current events. Some of you may be avid enough users that you may have even registered for a Wikipedia account and contributed to some of the entries. But chances are, you never considered creating a Wikipedia page for yourself or your law firm.


Truth is, up until a few weeks ago, I didn't either. But as I described in this post at Legal Blogwatch, most major law firms already maintain pages on Wikipedia. What's more, the UK Law Society points out, Wikipedia has enormous reach:


Wikipedia is one of the largest reference websites -- 684 million visitors yearly. For a sniff of its power, whether you like it or not, cogitate on this snippet from the New York Times 'Bits' technology blog on 30 March, entitled 'Microsoft Encarta Dies After Long Battle With Wikipedia': 'Microsoft delivered the coup de grâce Monday to its dying Encarta encyclopedia, acknowledging what everyone else realised long ago: it just couldn't compete with Wikipedia... In January, Wikipedia got 97% of the visits that web surfers in the United States made to online encyclopedias, according to the internet ratings service Hitwise. Encarta was second, with 1.27%.' That's how powerful Wikipedia is.

With that kind of traffic, a listing on Wikipedia could theoretically bolster a firm's search engine visibility. So I decided to test my theory and ran a couple of searches on some of the law firms listed in Wikipedia. Sure enough, the firms' Wikipedia listings came up within the top five to ten front page search results on Google.


Still, is a Wikipedia site worthwhile for solo and small firm lawyers? For starters, what kinds of information would you include in the listings? Many large firms with long histories describe the firm's origins and provide bios of firm founders and well known alumni. But solo and small firm lawyers might not have enough background material to include. A smaller firm might also link to reported cases or cross reference practice areas described on Wikipedia. For example, a bankruptcy lawyer could cross link to the entry on Bankruptcy in Wikipedia, thus providing a good resource for clients with basic questions. Likewise, lawyers could cross reference the city where they practice or hobbies they enjoy.


Ultimately, I don't think that Wikipedia is an indispensable component of a lawyer marketing portfolio in the same way as a website or blog or business card. But for lawyers looking for something different or who can devise a unique use for Wikipedia, it might be a marketing tool worthy of further consideration.

Manic Merger Monday

• It’s been a while since the words “manic” and “merger” appeared in a Monday morning post, but today we’ve got just enough grist for the mill to put one together. (Click here for an example of, sigh, how things used to be.)

  Merck/Schering Plough: At some point in the last 12 hours or so, pharma giants Merck and Schering-Plough hammered out a $41.1 billion deal, which will combine the two companies. The new entity will retain the Merck name. In explaining the timing, which followed by six weeks Pfizer’s purchase of Wyeth, BCG Partners’ David Buik said: “Of course when the market is in a mood of desolation, this is often the best time to effect a merger or acquisition.” Lawyering the deal for Merck: Fried Frank’s David Shine, Philip Richter, F. William Reindel and Damian Ridealgh. Lawyers from Wachtell, Lipton represented Schering-Plough. Click here for the companies’ joint press release.

• Dow Chemical/Rohm and Haas: Will Dow Chemical and Rohm and Haas spend today distributing deal toys or duking it out? We’ll likely know soon, but according to news reports, as of late last night, settlement talks between the two were moving along swimmingly. Barring a deal, the two will face off in Delaware court over Dow’s refusal to close its takeover of Rohm and Haas. For more on the kerfuffle, click here for a LB post from Friday.

Maximize Your Marketing in a Bad Economy

For the rest of this week I am going to be focusing on the many free and low-cost services available- including many not widely-known. I will also be sprinkling in some advice from free publicity guru- Bill Stoller about how to get attention without spending much, if any, money.

Money Saver #1: Free Video Distribution Sites
Creating your own videos and having them embedded and viewed around the web is a terrific attention-getter.

Here’s a list of 29 sites that will host your video free of
charge:
http://www.jackhumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport/
list-of-29-free-video-sharing-sites/

Money Saver #2: Free Instant Videos
If you have a webcam attached to your computer, you can create your own videos instantly and free at Viddler.com. No need to shoot a video and upload it --
Viddler captures the live stream from your webcam and microphone directly and in real time. You can then save the video and distribute it everywhere. Cool!

You’ve got to check this nifty online tool out- I tried it last night and it works great- simple interface and my mother even figured out how to open my video email
www.TokBox.com.

You can create videos that are embedded directly into your email. Simply record your video message, type in the email address of the recipient, and out it goes. The possibilites are endless: you can demonstrate a product, record a personalized holiday greeting, and show a longtime media contact what the person behind the emails and phone calls really looks like!

Money Saver #3: Create Interview Podcasts For Pennies
Want some attention? Find the biggest name in your marketing targets' field that you can and ask them to a do a brief telephone interview with you. Then, post the interview online (or, package it with other interviews and sell it as a product). Here's where your marketing cap must go on- understanding your audience and what they care about- do a weekly interview (or monthly) with an industry expert that can help solve your audience's chief concerns. What are those concerns? Call a few of your favorite clients and ask!

It’s very easy -- and cheap -- to do.

Step One: Sign up with Skype, the Internet telephone service that allows you to call other Skype users anywhere in the world for free using your computer. If
the person you’d like to interview isn’t a Skype user, no problem. SkypeOut is a cheap service ($2.95/month for unlimited calls within the US, slightly more for
overseas calls) that gives you the ability to call anyone using your Skype account.

Step Two: Record the interview using Call Graph, a nifty piece of freeware that starts automatically when you make a Skype call. When the interview is over,
Call Graph saves the file as an mp3. http://www.callgraph.in

Step Three: Upload your interview to your site, your blog, iTunes and other audio sharing services.

Step Four: Send out a press release and announce your interview in your ezine, on message boards, groups and in comments on other blogs.

Tomorrow more penny-pinching marketing ideas that pay off big time!

Houston Lawyers Plan Madoff Counterattack

In the Houston Chronicle today was an article about Houston law firm Susman Godfrey's recently formed Financial Fraud Task Force. The group is the result of Bernard Madoff, a former NASDAQ chairman who helped pioneer electronic stock trading, and now alleged architect of the world's first global Ponzi scheme that authorities say siphoned an estimated $50 billion from investors. Madoff also victimized his own community in defrauding Jewish philanthropic and educational institutions. Particularly hard hit were the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and Yeshiva University in New York City.

The exposure of Texas investors to Madoff's alleged criminal activities thus far appears to be limited. An Austin-based hedge fund, Austin Capital Management, reportedly invested funds from New Mexico and Massachusetts public pension funds in the Madoff entities.

Perhaps the most stinging impact of the scandal in the Lone Star state was felt in Dallas, where a foundation that had provided funding for the Innocence Project to conduct DNA testing of convicts closed because of donor losses. The JEHT Foundation had already provided $400,000 for the testing, which has exonerated more than a dozen persons wrongly convicted in Dallas County. The loss of funding may cripple attempts to expand the testing program to other Texas counties.

At least one Houston law firm is gearing up to represent the scheme's victims. Susman Godfrey's recently formed Financial Fraud Task Force is conducting an investigation of the scandal for contingency clients who invested directly with Madoff or through investment advisers. Talk about mining a niche, a very commendable business-minded approach to rainmaking. How can today's headline news result in increased billables for your practice area?

Keep Your Firm Afloat With Lateral Partners

With billables more challenging to find for law firms, we thought we’d ask John Hellerman, of Hellerman Baretz Communications and marketing strategist for numerous AmLaw 200 firms, for some tips.

The “Titanic” theory: If you’re pursuing a sound strategy, the worst reaction to the economic slide is to go off course. Some say the Titanic wouldn’t have sunk had it plowed through instead of trying to avoid the iceberg.

You know that blog you started? Position it in some way that gets more traffic than your firm’s website. For employment lawyers at Ford & Harrison, John helped create a blog centered on NBC’s The Office (called “That’s What She Said,” it estimates the litigation costs of each episode’s antics). Hosted on a popular employment law site not affiliated with the firm, it gets nearly 20,000 hits every Friday.

Produce branded content, like an authoritative annual survey or Patton Boggs’s Capital Thinking magazine. Even if a big contributor leaves, your branded expertise doesn’t walk out the door with them.

John also says more firms could be using PR as a recruitment tool in the war for lateral partners. Other things being equal, he says partners are more likely to head to the firm that promises to sit them down with the PR team and develop a marketing campaign around their practice. The cost of such a campaign—probably in the low five figures—is small compared to a multi-million-dollar book of business.

Early Signs of Law Firm Failure

Larry Bodine of the Law Marketing Blog writes about an important topic affecting all legal prfoessionals; how to recognize if your business is at risk for failure. See how many of these characteristics you recognize in your own firm:

Failed law firms, like Thelen and Heller Erhman, have three things in common:

• Below average financial performance – often including excessive financial leverage, significant deferred obligations, low productivity, and poor realization;
• Internal dynamics – primarily involving leadership issues, partners with incompatible goals, differences over compensation philosophy, and lack of succession planning; and
• External dynamics – primarily involving competitive pressures related to the firm’s historical client base, access to new clients and desirable work, and inability to recruit key talent.

I would add a fourth:

• Lack of a business development strategy -- which leads to firms taking whatever comes in the door, as opposed to taking clients that fit a growth strategy; a lack of business development activities by the partners, who instead rely on a tiny minority of lawyers to bring in new files; and the promotion of lawyers without clients to partnership, which is preceded by hiring associates with no business development acumen.

The analysis comes from a new Hildebrandt white paper called The Anatomy of Law Firm Failures." "Typically, the underlying problems created by the fundamental flaws in the firms we studied were brought to a head by a triggering event that set in motion a rapid downward slide," the report states.

Four types of triggering events were the most common:

1. Overexpansion that weakened the firm over an extended period of time
2. The unexpected rapid or gradual defection of significant partners to one or more other firms
3. A breakdown in merger efforts for a firm that was already in serious financial distress and barely surviving, or
4. The impending expiration/renewal of the firm’s primary office lease.

I would add more triggering events: the retirement of key rainmakers, loss of one or more "crown jewel" clients, clinging to unprofitable practices because they "generate cash flow" or are used to train associates, failure of partners to specialize, and hitching the firm to a dying industry and failing to adapt to the current downturn.