Tag: Value

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3 stats that should scare the Hell out of law firm BD teams

Citing various industry reports, including both the American Bar Association’s 2022 Tech Report and Clio’s Legal Trends Report, Annette Choti has come up with a list of ‘Five unbelievable law firm marketing statistics that may completely change the way you see legal marketing and how you reach prospective clients‘ over at Attorney at Work.

Annette’s article is a really good read, but 3 of the 5 stats she calls out in her article should have all law firm BD professionals saying: “What the…” and these are:

  • 43% of Law Firms Do Not Have an Annual Marketing Budget
  • 68% of Clients First Contact a Lawyer or Law Firm via Phone
  • Only 53% of Lawyers Say They Are Confident in Running the Business Side of Their Firm

While 1 and 3 above have me scratching my head, 2 made me laugh – invest as much as you want in law firm technology and sales/BD methodology; but make damn sure your reception desk knows who does what!!

If this all sounds too close to home to be true, feel free to drop me a line to talk through how we can fix this up.

rws_01

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Want a bonus? Make sure to be in the office…

After a few weeks away on holiday (as is the custom here in Australia in January), I return to posting with a link to an interesting post on the Bloomberg Law Blog on the issue of associate bonuses.

While Sidley Austin is picked out in this article ‘Sidley to Associates: Skipping Office Will Cost You Bonus Money‘ the issue of how we entice lawyers and allied professionals back into the office in 2023 is going to be a major headache for many a firm around the world – including here in Australia.

That said, telling a junior attorney that could possibly be entitled to a bonus of somewhere between US$20,000 and US$150,000 that their bonus will be deducted based on the number of days they go into this office is a little short-sighted in my view (or are we now past the Quiet Quitting phase?).

Yes being present in the moment has it place. But that is not the same as presentism.

And let’s call it; if you are truly adding value to the client experience, probably the last place you are doing that from is the office.

As usual comments are my own.

rws_01

Photo credit Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

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Quote of the Week 13.01.23 – Data and price increases

Only got around to reading this interesting post by William Josten on the Thomson Reuters website this week. In the post – ‘How to improve handling of law firm rate increase requests through data: A view from in-house counsel‘ – Josten comes up with this gem that is well worth keeping in mind the next time you ask your clients for a rate increase and makes it my Quote of the Week for this week:

From law firms’ perspective, understanding the data that informs a client’s financial position is a helpful way to focus their rate increase conversations onto a productive end for both sides.

As usual comments are my own.

rws_01

#QuoteOfTheWeek