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on the road to Change for LegaL MarketIng2020❯VISION❯2020Article first appeared in Strategies: The Journal of Legal Marketing, May/June 2013. Permission granted by the Legal Marketing Association, Chicago, Ill.

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n his new book, “Tomorrow’s lawyer,” rich-ard susskind introduces us to the “incre-mental revolution” he expects for the legal industry. To hear him tell it, the emphasis is very much on “revolution.”

driven by three forces — the more-for-less challenge, liberalization and informa-tion technology — susskind posits a legal landscape that bears about as much resem-blance to the increasingly quaint world of the am law 200 as the terrain of maine does to mars. indeed, he sees nothing less than “pervasive, irreversible, and transforma-tional” change in the not-too-distant future.

“i am not suggesting that this means the legal sector will be turned on its head over the next three to six months,” he writes. “But i am confident we will see some fundamen-tal shifts over the next three to six years.”

susskind, widely heralded as one of the legal world’s most insightful think-ers, explores in “Tomorrow’s lawyer” the same timeframe that we asked our con-tributors to explore in this special feature,

IMake Way for TomorrowA brave new legal world is in the offing. Are you up for the challenge?

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in the middle distance for the legal market generally and legal marketing and business development in particular?

why 2020? it’s kind of a goldilocks frame — not too long and not too short. and, truth be told, given our audience, it makes for a catchy and convenient marker for marketers. we hope you agree that the results, from some usual and not-so-usual suspects, make for an interesting read.

we did not, however, strictly yoke our-selves to prognostication. we also asked a few folks to look back before looking ahead. so the four inaugural inductees in 2007 to the lma hall of fame — ross fishman, norm rubenstein, sally schmidt and merrilyn Tarlton  — graciously agreed to tell us about the biggest changes they’ve witnessed in their enviable careers before looking ahead and telling us what they expect tomorrow. as you might expect from such a group, it’s good stuff.

2020>VISIon>2020: on the road to Change for Legal Marketing. given the many changes to this magazine, we thought it would be fun to create a centerpiece that itself is about change. so we sought a broad cross-section of the community and asked them to buff up their crystal balls and tell us what’s ahead for legal marketing and business development between now and 2020. what big changes do you see

we hope you enjoy the changes revealed by our experts, as well as the changes unveiled in this issue of Strategies. please contribute to the dialogue and tell us what you see ahead. visit us on facebook and Twitter and let your voice be heard.

Joe Calve is CMO at Morrison & Foerster. He leads the firm’s global business development, marketing and media relations efforts. He can be reached at jcalve@mofo.com.

2020❯VISION❯2020

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From Shoe Shines to ServiceFirms that fail to see client happiness as their No. 1 priority are doomed.The business of law has always been de-cades behind “real” business. That hasn’t changed in the last 30 years. from hiring cruise ship singers as directors of market-ing, to dense brochures that no one ever reads, right through today when “chief” marketing officers are treated by managing partners with the same degree of consid-eration given to the guys who shine shoes at the airport, marketing has never had the role in law that it has in business.

will that change by 2020? for firms that want to thrive, it has to. The relationship between firms and clients is failing, broken by a model that causes firms to pursue management schemes that put the firms at odds with clients. pricing is one example. and think about how firms define produc-tivity. is it any wonder clients are upset?

But clients are the lifeblood of every firm. firms that fail to recognize that client happiness must be their no. 1 priority are destined to fail. firms that do recognize the supremacy of client happiness will need to integrate marketing, client service and business development into the dna of the firm. This will be accomplished, in part, by substantially expanding the role, influence and power of the marketing director.

Patrick Lamb, a founding member of the Valorem Law Group, is a trial lawyer and frequent author, speaker and commentator on client service. He is the author of “Alternative Fee

Arrangements: Value Fees and the Changing Legal Market (2010).” He can be reached at Patrick.Lamb@valoremlaw.com.

To the Resilient Goes the RaceClient engagement will be highly customized.a significant evolution of legal marketing and business development that will occur over the next five-plus years will be the role legal marketers will play in fostering client and lawyer engagement to address the dra-matically increased competitive landscape. This engagement will be both within the law firm among lawyers and outside the firm with clients.

client engagement will take on a highly custom-ized approach that will see legal marketers leading continu-

ous client feedback programs, and develop-ing highly customized client communica-tions that are targeted to the issues and needs of clients — all delivered in real time and via mobile devices. The need for legal business developers to be nimble and resil-ient in their approaches to spotting trends, identifying needs and synthesizing solutions will differentiate those who contribute to their firm’s future success from those who maintain the status quo.

within the law firm, legal marketers will drive their lawyers to develop relationships across industries, geographic regions and practice areas. They will lead their firms’ efforts to engage with one another to insti-tutionalize client relationships and identify client expansion opportunities.

The approaches legal marketers use to foster client and lawyer

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engagement will be centered largely on technology-based solutions, namely new media and social media channels. mar-keters will use these channels to engage clients, prospects and lawyers around the solutions and results that their firms may achieve.

Despina Kartson is the chief client development & marketing officer for Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, where she leads the firm’s global client development and

marketing strategies across 24 offices. She can be reached at dkartson@morganlewis.com.

Behold the Trusted CuratorA well-curated online or retail experience motivates the user to act in a particular way.The lawyer as trusted curator is an emerging role that will become more fully embraced between now and 2020.The cu-ration movement already underway in other industries (think travel, food and beyond) is catching up to law.

i predict that it will no longer be suf-ficient for most attorneys to function merely as trusted advisors. would-be clients at all levels of the market increasingly are able to access information about law on their own. at the same time, most of the public does not even recognize a legal problem when faced with one and millions go without representation. even if we succeed in pro-viding more affordable, accessible services through technology and other efficiencies, the justice gap will remain unless individu-als in need actually adopt the legal services. a well-curated online or retail experience informs and motivates the user to act (or not act) in a particular way.

i see enormous potential for lawyers as trusted curators to help with the access-to-information gap that perpetuates the access-to-justice gap in this country. law-

yers who want to best poise themselves for developing their client base will curate legal information in user-friendly, understand-able ways and, in doing so, will enhance general awareness about law, lawyers and legal services — filling a much-needed public education role and, hopefully, fueling greater adoption of legal services.

Renee Newman Knake is associate professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law and co-founder of ReInvent Law Lab. She can be reached at rk@law.msu.edu. ❯

VISION2020: 10 Legal News Stories We’d Like to SeeBy Joe cAlve

1. using its patented “egoBoosT” ranking system, chambers-super lawyer has launched its highly awaited new directory, “The guide to unbelievable lawyers and practices,” or gulp. The gulp guide assigns a numerical ranking to every lawyer and practice in the world, dead or alive. The top 500,000 are eligible to purchase an extended bio, an imitation walnut plaque and a gulp tattoo. (deceased lawyers are eligible for a 15 percent discount.)

2. law360, a product of wexis, announced that it is accepting submissions for a new feature, “80 over 80.” all lawyers with a practice and a pulse are eligible.

3. Twitter is abuzz with the news that the magic circle has become the Terrific Triangle with the merger of allen & overy and linklaters into aolinks.

4. acritas, a division of neilsen, has released its 2020 global Brand index, which for the third straight year is topped by the malta-based megafirm dlak+lsnrskadden.

5. The american lawyer has announced it will be extending its popular litigation department of the day feature to six new cities: Boise, idaho; nome, alaska; corpus christi, Texas; ken-nebunk, maine; provo, utah; and Backwash, south dakota.

6. above the law, which has struggled since enactment of the aBa’s controversial moratorium on associate hiring, announced that it is changing its name to “Behind the Times.”

7. The aBa announced its highly anticipated new guidelines for lawyer advertising. most note-worthy is rule 37.349.12-7B, which states that all client pitches now must prominently display the following in 48-pt bold-faced type: “caveat emptor!”

8. marcus evans has launched an exciting new event, “The intergalactic general counsel hook-up,” in which financially qualified law firms (cash only) will be selected by a panel of unnamed experts to join seven unnamed decision makers from some of the world’s lead-ing unnamed companies for a (simulated) flight to mars on board the new google-spaceX supershuttle. (return flight not included.)

9. facebook’s newest acquisition, avvo, has been sued by all nine justices of the u.s. supreme court over their persistent ranking in the “unqualified-to-represent-a-dog” tier. in their com-plaint, the justices insist they absolutely are qualified to represent a dog.

10. merger talks between eversheds and freshfields reportedly have collapsed over the firms’ inability to agree on a name for the combined firm from the two leading contenders: ever-fresh or freshsheds.

It’s the Relationship, Stupid!Now we can pick the people with whom we want to build relationships.relationships between living human be-ings — our lawyers, our referral sources, our clients, and our friends and communi-ties — are the basis of our business. we have lost sight of that over the years. i see

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DC 202.274.4762 NY 646.386.7995 www.hellermanbaretz.com

a return to that model, this time using the lessons we’ve learned and new tools we’ve developed over the past decade or two to help us source, create, improve, track and maintain those relationships.

coaching, thought leadership, crm, erm, competitive intelligence, media rela-tions, live and virtual events, value pricing, branding and social media will all be a part of it, but as means to an end, rather than ends in themselves. we will use these tools to find the right people to get to know, find ways to meet them, shorten the relation-ship-building process, and deliver value in the relationship so we keep it going strong over the years.

actually, it used to be this way, but you had relationships with the people who ran in your circles — your college and law

school friends, your adversaries and co-counsel, and the people they introduced you to. and often those relationships took years to build, and there was little you could do to build them other than face-to-face communication. now, we can pick the people with whom we want to build those relationships, do it in a fraction of the time, and employ a pile of tools to help us do it more effectively, with more people and in more ways than ever before.

Geoffrey Goldberg is the chief advancement officer with McCarter & English, where he leads the firm’s business develop-ment, marketing, client relations

and promotional activities. He can be reached at ggoldberg@mccarter.com.

Back to the FutureIt is not possible to create tomorrow without first getting rid of yesterday.There are two ideas that are killing the legal profession: pricing by the hour and main-taining timesheets. They are stifling growth, wealth creation and innovation, inhibiting client service, destroying morale and the quality of life, not to mention making the profession less attractive to potential talent.

any profession or industry has a genetic immune system providing a natural resis-tance to new ideas. of course, sometimes we are resistant to change for good reason. if every crackpot idea were tested, the costs would be astronomical while the ben-

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“ For a proFession to be truly innovative, it must not only do new things, it must stop doing old things. It is not possible to create tomorrow unless one first gets rid of yesterday.”Ronald J. Baker, VeraSage Institute

efits minimal. yet if no new ideas were ever tried we’d still be in the stone age.

it is past time to replace the old law firm business model of “we sell time” with a radical business model.

why radical? Because it is latin for “getting back to the root” — meaning clients buy value, not time. ever since the billable hour regime was introduced in the profession — in 1919 — firms have lost focus on customer value.

for a profession to be truly innovative, it must not only do new things, it must stop doing old things. it is not possible to create tomorrow unless one first gets rid of yes-terday. The human body has an automatic mechanism to discharge waste, but it ap-pears the legal profession does not.

as science fiction writer william gibson quipped, “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” The billable hour and the timesheet are ideas from the day before yesterday, and they are gradu-ally being eliminated in firms around the world. good ideas may be neglected, but they seldom die. my only hope is to live long enough to see it happen.

Ronald J. Baker is the founder of VeraSage Institute, a think tank dedicated to eliminating the billable hour and timesheets from professions, and author of “Implementing Value

Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms.” He can be reached at ron@verasage.com.

The Great Partner Awakeningover the next year or two, there will be many changes in law firm marketing, many of which have already begun. i call this new phase “professional services market-ing 3.0.”

The world of 3.0 differs from the mar-keting of the past few decades, primarily in the new recognition of marketing by law firm partners, who, until relatively recently,

failed to recognize the intense, dynamic, highly competitive world of contemporary practice. many law firms today will no longer look like they do now by the end of this year and the next few years. it’s an evolutionary process that accelerates once it’s started. and it has already started.

Today, this process is happening at a rapid pace, as lawyers begin to recognize that marketing is now an integral part of law practice. it will accelerate over the next two years — as a result of not only the increasing competition, but the dynamic of the economic environment under the current administration in washington (new law, new regulation, etc.), world economic and social changes, new technology, inter-nationalism and the growing sophistication of marketing professionals. as i point out in my book, “professional services marketing 3.0,” the growing acceptance of marketing has resulted in gradual changes in law firm governance and productivity, and will continue to reshape the modern law firm.

Bruce W. Marcus is a pioneer in marketing for professionals. He is the author of 16 books and the editor of “The Marcus Letter on Professional Services Marketing.” He can be

reached at marcus@marcusletter.com.

Big Data Drives Big ChangesBetter data, better decisions, happy clients.The legal market continues to change rap-

idly. consolidation, increased competi-tion, pricing challenges, staying relevant with your clients as their business needs change  — these are all factors that demand attention, discipline and better decision making. over the past decade, most companies have reorganized, gaining efficiencies through process reengineering or cost containment. it is now time for law firms to align their structure with the com-panies they represent and determine the right way to operate as an efficient busi-ness while quickly adapting to changing client demands.

firms who are able to analyze client, financial and market data they have col-lected or change the way they collect relevant data, or otherwise referred to as “Big data,” will be the firms who are able to adapt quickly, make smart decisions and stay ahead of the competition. clients now expect higher service standards, bet-ter quality work, more innovative pricing structures and the ability to harness a law firm’s intellectual capital to help their busi-ness. To meet these expectations, law firms need to be proactive around the demands of their clients while offering the appropri-ate service at the right price. This is not a new concept in the consumer world, but one that will dictate who wins and who gets left behind in the legal sector.

Better data, better decisions, happy clients.

Graham Ross is a director at Torys LLP, with overall responsibility for the firm’s marketing and business development strategy. He can be reached at gross@torys.com.

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Teaming for SuccessPartners will depend on professional managers to work alongside them as equals.we will see the role of the Bd client man-ager in a law firm take on much greater prominence and seniority. The challenges of managing large global clients will demand it — not just controlling the delivery of the legal advice but delivering consistency of service standards across multiple offices and areas of law and making life easier for the in-house counsel, who are themselves trying to manage increasingly complex legal matters and law firm relationships.

as clients consolidate their work in fewer firms to get more leverage and to make administration easier, these relation-ships will consistently generate $40-$100 million in fees across many offices. part-ners will depend on professional managers to work alongside them as equals and be true account managers, having direct and frequent client contact, running teams of analysts, pricing and project managers and dedicated billers. The client managers will need to be more experienced than today — perhaps being specialists in certain sectors such as banking or energy — and will have regular interaction with clients in all regions of the world, being a key contact for un-derstanding client strategies, opportunities and expectations and for helping to guide the firm’s client team in delivering consis-tent service and staying ahead of the curve.

This is the most exciting new area for Bd people — being an integral part of the

client teams, bringing complementary skills to those teams and helping retain and grow a firm’s most important clients.

Laurie Robertson is the global director of business development & marketing at Baker & McKenzie. He can be reached at laurie.robertson@bakermckenzie.com.

Marketers as Account ManagersFour pillars of innovation: law, technology, design and delivery.The change we can come to expect in legal marketing and business development will be driven by the continuing transformation of the legal industry. as defined by the reinvent law laboratory, the four pillars for future innovation in the legal industry are law, technology, design and delivery. in furtherance of this thinking comes a new resource paradigm represented by the likes of axiom and riverview law.

with more alternatives available to the buyers of legal services — potential re-sources with vastly different business mod-els, skill set offerings, talent deployment platforms and access to capital — law firms must be nimble in their strategies to thrive against the backdrop of a segmented com-petitive landscape, one that will increasingly have decentralized service providers work-

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“ the change we can come to expect in legal marketing and business development will be driven by the continuing transformation of the legal industry.”Mark E. Young, ShiftCentral

VISION2020: The View from the LMA Hall of Fame

We asked the four members of the inaugural class of the LMA Hall of Fame, inducted in 2007, to tell us about the key changes they’ve experienced in their careers and the changes they anticipate in the years ahead. Here’s what they said about what they see today and what they expect to see tomorrow.

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Law firms don’t need color.TODAY: like dorothy opening the door from her black-and-white world into Technicolor oz, marketing has become a vibrant, dynamic field undertaken by high-level professionals instead of part-time secretaries or lunch-hour receptionists. in 1994, our department’s request for a color printer was denied because, as the cfo said, “law firms don’t need color.” Today, our industry’s best marketing is just as visually powerful and at least as effec-tive as that of our fortune 500 clients. we’re trusted with strategic seats at the executive committee tables. and we accomplished all that in just a couple of decades. how cool is that?

TOMORROW: pre-recession merger mania will start to unwind. There are too many international mega-firms built around the false belief that (1) law firms can effectively cross-sell and (2) there is an infinite number of global companies that want one-stop shopping. many will fail, creating a significant opportunity for focused and specialized firms. These smaller, more nimble firms and boutiques (10-25 lawyers) can identify narrow geographic or industry-based markets and dominate them. The remaining middle-market firms (25-250, depending upon their city and region) can become the value-added alternative to the costly mega-firms. with focused strategy and effective execution, they can dominate the big firms in the middle 80 percent of the work.

Ross Fishman, CEO of Fishman Marketing, is known for developing some of the profession’s most creative and effective marketing campaigns and websites.

Law firms are too successful for their own good.TODAY: over the last two-and-a-half decades, legal marketing has evolved from a purely promotional, “product push” enterprise (“let’s put on a semi-nar”) to a strategic enterprise in which lawyers, armed with robust research about their targets’ businesses, industries and bespoke concerns, finally are talking with their clients and not at them. By articulating a differenti-ated value proposition that aligns with what matters most to clients and prospects, and by marshaling compelling evidence of both the requisite expertise and experience and of a more demonstrably client-focused ap-proach to service delivery, law firms are competing in ways that help clients make informed decisions when selecting outside service providers.

TOMORROW: law firms are too successful for their own good. for all but a few, the felt need to change only accompanies a threat — a downturn economy, one or more commoditizing practices, or a significant loss of a key practice or rainmaker. i anticipate that as the market continues to experience ever-increasing competition, firms will come to an even greater appreciation of the value of competitive intelligence. in an effort to know what clients and prospects are hearing from other law firms, law firms will pay more attention to the marketing of their competitors. in the pro-cess, they will find ways to sharpen and make more distinctive their own marketing messaging and business-development efforts, and will start the preparation for any pitch with the question, “what can we provide this client better than any other firm?”

Norm Rubenstein is a principal with the Zeughauser Group LLC. He can be reached at Rubenstein@consultzg.com.

Every legal service has the opportunity to be profitable.TODAY: when i started in this field, in-house counsel positions were rare. in-house departments typically had one lawyer, and the people who filled those roles were perceived as second-class attorneys who couldn’t make it in private practice. now, in-house lawyers are sophisticated and powerful consumers of legal services. legal departments have grown tremendously, and company lawyers handle a wide range of matters formerly sent outside. if you think about it, almost all the uncomfortable changes we face today — such as pricing pressures, procurement procedures, lower demand for legal services — are a result of a more demanding and engaged clientele.

TOMORROW: i believe the continued segmentation of legal services will be the most important change facing private law firms. we are already seeing it: firms are shedding practices that don’t fit their economic models, such as labor and employment or trusts and estates; new providers are emerg-ing to provide alternative sources for repetitive or “commodity” work. every legal service has the opportunity to be profitable. But the days of housing both low-value and high-value services in the same law firm will come to an end unless firms give more latitude to practices to operate in whatever manner they need to be profitable.

Sally Schmidt, president of Schmidt Marketing, Inc., was the first president of LMA (formerly NALFMA).

Marketers must be on their toes.TODAY: it’s been fascinating to watch the legal profession encounter, ex-plore, understand and embrace what marketing and business development are and the critical roles both must play in the business of practicing law. one of the most compelling shifts i have seen in our profession occurred with the realization that bringing marketing professionals into a firm was good but not enough — individual business development or sales activity on the part of lawyers would also be universally required. once sales, sales training and sales management were recognized as key functions, we saw law firms driven to reorganize around practice areas, markets and clients and we were off to the races with entirely new firm structures and a new emphasis on business management and leadership.

TOMORROW: There is no getting around it, big change is brewing in the legal profession. and the spark for that change isn’t coming from inside existing firms this time. pioneering entities like legalZoom, rocketlawyer, Total attorneys, clearspire, axiom and many more are driven by money, professionals and energy from outside the am law 200. it’s become excit-ing to be on the edges, unbound by traditional bureaucracy and precedent, and able to move quickly in response to the market. as this new entrepre-neurism leverages technology and consumerism, we will see innovative delivery methods, novel legal institutions, an influx of non-lawyers into the delivery of off-the-rack legal answers and greater value attributed to the increasingly rare bespoke solution. one thing is clear, though — marketing professionals are going to be kept on their toes.

Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, a principal with Astin Tarlton, has more than 25 years of experience in strategy, organizational development and marketing with law firms throughout the United States. She can be reached at mat@astintarlton.com.

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ing together as something of a collective. This will require new project management protocols and tools, of which client develop-ment teams will need to be stewards.

also in the coming years, legal market-ers will need to direct more time and money to key account management. This isn’t about client service teams; this is account planning in close collaboration with clients. it is the stuff of a true strategic partnership with a selected client where the law firm is afforded the opportunity to purposely align its business with that of the client.

finally, to increase — and sustain — their firms’ reach and influence, marketers must think of themselves as publishers. working off of value-add informed editorial calendars, content creation becomes an increasingly important success factor.

Mark E. Young, president of ShiftCentral, is a former law firm partner, CMO and marketing agency general counsel. He can be reached at mark.young@shiftcentral.com.

From Effort to Revenue to RewardMarketers should look into Rosetta Stone.how business development and marketing is defined today and how it will be defined in the coming years is a moving target. lawyers are already growing accustomed to smart and capable business develop-ment professionals helping them, particu-larly with analytics- and research-based strategy development. i believe we are likely to see this evolve to where the efforts of business developers will be more closely aligned with revenues, i.e., as with other professional services firms (accounting, physician practices, etc.). These profes-sionals will play a critical, client-facing role in the process, and they will be rewarded on their success.

once client needs are identified and an interest in the firm’s services is generated, then the appropriate attorney specialists can be brought in to address specific le-gal issues. This will make for some happy lawyers who just want to practice law, but will certainly not eliminate the need for or benefit of those lawyers who are natural rainmakers. increasingly, Bd professionals will need to have a breadth of knowledge about international business and interna-tional markets, especially asia and latin america, now considered the growth mar-kets. consequently, multilanguage skills are increasingly important, so consider looking into rosetta stone.

finally, success (and repeat business) will often hinge on a close alignment be-tween business development and practice management to ensure that the true capa-bility of the firm is being marketed and not just the smarts of the lawyers. operational efficiencies will be critical to (and hopefully not haunt) ambitious business develop-ment efforts.

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Amanda K. Brady, a director with The Alexander Group, has more than 25 years of recruiting and administra-tive management experience. She can be reached at abrady@thealexander-group.com.

Let’s Make It 100 Percent!Wed., April 22, 2020, 7:45 a.m.you step out of the shower after your morn-ing jog on the beach. you are the chief client officer at legal inc. international, the world’s largest provider of legal services.

“congratulations, your company stock just went up 10 percent; you should treat yourself with a nice weekend getaway,” you hear your virtual assistant saying via the sound-system. smiling, you get dressed and head over to the virtual meeting area in your home office to join your colleagues ivan, paramjit, rafiq and wei-Ting. funny,

you work with them all the time but have only met paramjit in person at an industry event a few months ago. you’re still getting used to seeing them as holograms rather than on the work surface that is as large as your desk.

wei-Ting, your newest team member is beaming: “i just ran the analysis: according to our pitch probability prediction model, we should have a 78 percent chance of winning the pitch that came in last night.”

“what’s their lifetime customer value to us?” you ask. ivan vigorously types on

his screen. it takes less than two seconds before the number — $750m — pops up on your screen.

“and they always pay fast,” adds rafiq.“well, you know what to do. i’d run pro-

cess 901 and assemble the team,” you say, smiling at her. “let’s make it 100 percent!” ◾

Dr. Silvia Hodges, director of research services at TyMetrix Legal Analytics, is an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School. She can be reached at hodges@silviahodges.com.

“ …success (and repeat business) will often hinge on a close alignment between business development and practice management to ensure that the true capability of the firm is being marketed and not just the smarts of the lawyers.”Amanda K. Brady, The Alexander Group

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