The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50822
L Legal connections aw student Omar Ha-Redeye: www.omarha-redeye.com/ www.slaw.ca/author/redeye/ twitter.com/omarharedeye • Ogilvy Renault LLP twitter.com/ogilvyrenault note, for example, that a lot of Canadian companies have been issuing requests for proposals for legal work, a trend Hughes chalks up to corporations trying to pare down the number of lawyers they deal with. As a result, Oslers' Glendinning says firms are busy assembling teams to bid for the work. In some cases, companies are asking for a legal strategy document during the bidding process, something that essentially means lawyers are provid- ing free legal advice. "It can take several lawyers dozens of hours to put something together," Glendinning notes. The changes within corporate legal work also put a particular onus on law firms to do more to retain the clients they already have, according to Michael Rynowecer, the president of BTI Consulting Group Inc. in New York. "Much less [work] is going to outside counsel. It's shrinking," he said at a recent Legal Marketing Association event in Toronto. Citing statistics from a recent survey of U.S. in-house counsel, he noted only 40 per cent were truly satisfied with their primary law firm. Instead, most graded outside firms at "perfect B-minus performance," they do what the client asks of them but aren't proactive. To rate higher, Rynowecer said law firms must do better in four key areas: client focus, understanding the client's business, showing they have a commit- ment to help, and delivering value for money spent. Firms that get there can earn a 20-per-cent rate premium — thus improving client satisfaction can be an important business development goal. But as Rynowecer pointed out, his data show that less than a quarter of law firms seek client feedback to see where they rate. For her part, Glendinning already does some of the things Rynowecer says will help boost client satisfaction, including devoting extra time to researching what a business does even if it doesn't relate directly to the legal matters she's dealing with. "It's actually about partnering with the people you work with to help them do the job they do," she says, noting that with regulated companies, for example, corpo- rate clients will appreciate a lawyer who takes the time to advise them on new laws or rules that might affect their business. The goal is to improve the relationship by showing that she can solve a client's prob- lems, she points out. At BLG, meanwhile, Hughes says her firm does use metrics and other feedback practices to gauge what clients think of the service it's offering. "We visit clients and we ask them how they're doing. We look at retention numbers. We look at trends in the financials." But, she adds, doing business development at a large firm, including during a recession, is largely about strategy. In order to cross- sell existing clients on legal services in other practices, for example, the firm has to look at where business is booming and where it's ramping down. "Cross-selling, or cross-buying, as I would prefer to say, is a function of your strategic plan," she says. "Are you interested? Are you a niche market and just doing one thing, or are you a broader-based line of business, and you're going to do it anyway? So if we're in a recession, what we did is look at our strategic plan and asked, 'Does this pres- ent new opportunities, and what do we do about it?'" But with the competition for client business increasing, predicting where work opportunities are has become more complex. So far, much of it comes from educated guesses about what law firms believe will happen, but as Hughes points out, they are also considering adopting the complicated models financial compa- nies use to predict what their clients will need. "In the law industry, we are evolv- ing into a more sophisticated, data-driven model. In the current form, it's more of a hypothesis and [then] test and evolve." The key question is how to take that data to sell legal services to clients. Some of it involves marketing, something Hughes' team at BLG recently did through a direct- mail campaign targeting bankruptcy and insolvency work. But, she notes, closing a deal often requires lawyers to do the actual sales work. "Our lawyers are the front line," she says. "They're the people who are directly dealing face-to-face with clients. . . . It seems to work from my experience that the person who does the work, or the top relationship professional, is usually that salesperson, although we don't call them a salesperson." For Glendinning, it's this last aspect that can be hardest for lawyers. Nevertheless, after taking clients to dinner, inviting them to sports games, or playing a round of golf, it's something she has to do. "At the 30 JUNE 2009 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com end of the day, if you don't tell them what you'd like from them, it's going to be a waste of time," she says, adding that being direct is often the best way. Magraken, however, finds he doesn't have to aggressively sell his services to the people he hears from on his blog. Instead, they often approach him for help after a few interactions by e-mail or on the phone. "It shows them that I know what I'm talking about rather than me having to tell them that I know what I'm talk- ing about." That strategy is a good one, especially for personal injury lawyers who risk a negative reaction by coming on too strongly, says Doug Jasinski, a law firm marketing consultant in Vancouver. Key to success, he notes, "is understanding the channel that they're using. The danger is for lawyers to come in and misunder- stand the tone of something like Twitter and then suffer a backlash if they miss the mark by coming off as ambulance chasing or bringing some of the negative stereotypes in." Of course, avoiding the direct approach takes away from some of the efficiency of social media as people like Magraken spend up to 10 hours a week on online marketing without necessarily seeing the immediate benefits of their efforts. But as Jasinski notes, the approach is cheap and ultimately can be more effective than other online marketing efforts such as a standard web page. "Really, the big trend is away from the online component being the firm web site . . . to innovative firms looking at ways to extend their presence a lot more deeply. I think that makes a lot of sense in recessionary times because a lot of these tools are either free or inexpensive. What they're doing is giving lawyers a chance to repurpose and redistribute their content in multiple forms." Moreover, he adds, platforms like Twitter actually work with lawyers' busy lives. Even law students are using the Twitter- blog combination to get their names out there and position themselves in the field. Omar Ha-Redeye, a second-year student at the University of Western Ontario law Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP twitter.com/Osler_Law • Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP twitter.com/gowlings_law • Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP twitter.com/HicksMorley • Hicks Morley's Dan Michaluk: danmichaluk.wordpress.com twitter.com/danmichaluk