ABA Law Practice Management Section

Published on: July 11, 2023

LP Magazine — Market Share Competition Among Diverse Law Firms Heats Up, and Gets Heated

The cover of the final hard copy issue of Law Practice There seemed to be some irony in receiving the final, hard copy, mailed issue of Law Practice magazine in the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities across the country. I won’t get overly political here except to say that I’m not a fan of SCOTUS these days, between these harmful rulings and ridiculously unethical behavior by appointed Justices that I would not welcome at my dinner table. It’s quite sad.

In Market Share Competition Among Diverse Law Firms Heats Up, and Gets Heated, my marketing column in the July/August 2023 issue of Law Practice, I address the state of doling out work to diverse lawyers and law firms—for the first time since my March/April 2017 column—a lot had changed. The first section of the recent column subtitled “Diversity in Reverse,” seemed so apropos after the SCOTUS decision. It already felt like progress that took decades to implement now saw courts turning back the clock. Again, quite sad.

Writing about competing for work in the diversity space was triggered by a joint report last year from the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms (NAMWOLF) and the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP), “Understanding and Assessing the Use of Minority- and Women-Owned Law Firms by Corporate Clients.” Blend the George Floyd murder in with the COVID world of Zoom and Teams…and you get a picture of the modern landscape of the legal industry. There isn’t even a clear definition anymore of what diversity is, when contemplating the distribution of work.

Published on: May 25, 2023

Buchdahl Receives ABA Award for Law Practice Management Excellence

by Micah Buchdahl

Pictured (L to R): Pam McDevitt, Tom Grella, Micah Buchdahl, Walt Karnstein, Andrea Hartley

On May 18^th, I had the privilege of being honored by the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Division with the Samuel S. Smith Award, recognizing an individual who has demonstrated outstanding lifetime achievement in the field of law practice management.

Read the ABA’s press release here.

Published on: March 16, 2023

ABA Law Practice Today — Marketing Your Practice in 60 Minutes or Less

by Micah Buchdahl

60 Minutes In serving as an issue editor for the Marketing-themed March 2023 edition of the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Today webzine, together with my co-issue editor Jason Marsh, we tried to put together a collection of articles that would prove both timely and informative.

My article contribution, Marketing Your Practice in 60 Minutes or Less, is not rocket science. But people read this stuff (click bait? Perhaps?). And it is designed more to encourage doing something, rather than simply doing nothing. Sometimes I too should follow my own advice. We’re all busy. But if we can just carve out a little time for business development each week, we’ll be the better for it. My wife keeps asking me when I’m going to get around to updating my own website and writing some fresh content. Soon. Soon. Maybe I should do it one hour at a time.

Paula Zirinsky writes on Marketing Opportunities in a Slow Market. And there is nothing more timely than Abbey Block of the Ifrah Law Firm in Washington, DC, writing on Can My Lawyer Be a Robot? We’re reading about issues surrounding artificial intelligence every day now, and the impact that it has, and will have, on the legal profession. Addressing some similar themes but from a total different angle—law marketing and AI—is Chat GPT, Your AI Friend in Content Marketing? For Lawyers, It Depends, by Marina Wilson of Justia.

Published on: March 1, 2023

LP Magazine – Guilt by Associations

by Micah Buchdahl

ABA Law Practice Magazine In my March/April 2023 marketing column in the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Magazine, I address the pros and cons of organizational involvement in Guilt by Associations.

It should come as no surprise that I tout my ABA involvement as a core component of my own business development strategy. At some point, I decided I was going to go “all in” on ABA activity—and it has been beneficial on so many fronts. For me, as an attorney, I wanted to network with other lawyers. And because my own business and practice is national in scope, a broader-based organization made more sense. As a bonus, many of my closest friends today are people I met through ABA activity.

Now my home for most of the last 20+ years of ABA membership has been the Law Practice Division. But choosing the right places to hang your hat have a lot of variables—geography, practice type, cost, ability to travel, ability to meet on nights or weekends, ability to build a referral network, exposure through writing or speaking, and opportunities to be a leader. Are you an introvert or extrovert? Who else is active in the organization? The thinking should go well beyond, “I live in Chicago. I should join the Chicago Bar Association.” Or “I’m an IP lawyer, I should go to INTA.” It might involve a women’s initiative, or something outside the scope of legal, like a House of Worship or Museum group. Some of the wisest moves in organizational involvement is to sit on a board with huge potential clients on the left and right of you—but in a completely non-work, non-legal setting.

Published on: November 17, 2022

ABA Law Practice Today — Point-Counterpoint: The Likelihood of Revising RPC 5.5

by Micah Buchdahl

SNL’s Point-Counterpoint

Perhaps, I’ve never (co) authored an article with a smaller potential audience than the great give-and-take on the bandied-about subject of Model Rule 5.5 under the Rules of Professional Conduct. In the November 2022 edition of the American Bar Association’s online webzine, Law Practice Today (LPT), together with Charity Anastasio of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), we debate the viability of a revision.

In Point-Counterpoint: The Likelihood of Revising RPC 5.5, we ask and answer the question – Is the Association of Professional Lawyers’ Proposal for a Revised Model Rule 5.5 on its way, or DOA?

Published on: November 10, 2022

LP Magazine – Marketing Ethics Compliance Continues to Confound

by Micah Buchdahl

Marketing Column

In the November/December 2022 marketing column in the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Magazine, Marketing Ethics Compliance Continues to Confound, I combine a number of business development topics into one.

When writing my column, I often start by thinking about what “hot” areas I’m working on at the moment. In the 21 years-plus since launching HTMLawyers, I’d say most years that the bulk of law firm clients have been on the marketing and business development guidance side; a slight amount dedicated to my related but separate ethics practice. However, in recent years, it has flipped. I find myself spending a lot of time behind the desk reviewing a vast variety of marketing campaigns for law firms around the nation—not to give my two cents on the marketing aspects, but to review for ethics compliance. I help law firm managing partners and GCs sleep better at night. They don’t want to be at the helm when that disciplinary letter rolls in, or worse. It is a practice area loaded with inconsistencies, confusion and varied levels of enforcement. All of which makes it a super fun area to practice.

Published on: July 21, 2022

LP Magazine – Recruiting and Staffing Your Law Firm Marketing Team

by Micah Buchdahl

LPcover_JulyAugust2022-231x300 The last few years of recruiting and hiring marketing staff for law firms has certainly been interesting. On the plus side, law firms continue to invest in marketing and business development personnel. Some might argue that it is even more important as we come out of COVID and start to connect and reconnect with clients, prospective clients, and referral sources. The law firms that have retained me have been wiling to make the proper investment to hire the right people. On the minus side, depending on geographic location (I’ve placed marketers in the MidAtlantic, Northeast, Midwest, and South in the last year), the pool of candidates can be quite shallow. I won’t go into specifics, but some markets simply have more available talent than others.

My marketing column in the July/August 2022 issue of the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Magazine, Staffing Your Law Firm Marketing Team, addresses many of the issues and concerns that law firms have (or should have) when it comes to new hires. Like the job market everywhere, there are lots of moving people and moving parts. In some cities, the best some law firms can do is poach junior personnel from competing law firms by overpaying. This is happening more at the lower to mid-level positions on a marketing team. To oversimplify things, you end up hiring someone else’s marketing coordinator by offering him/her $75k when they are earning 50k where they are.

Pre-COVID, there was no talk of hybrid versus fully remote, and less discussion of a willingness to hire in a satellite office market versus one of a law firm’s more substantial office locations. As I often tell my law firm clients, I’m still a bit old school when it comes to having a marketer that you can see and interact with at the water cooler on occasion. On the flip side, I’ve had some marketers complain to me that it made no sense to sit in an office when 95% of the attorneys there are working from home (or the shore, or in the Virgin Islands somewhere). I’ve found that “back in the office” is more about geography than a law firm deciding across the board. I’ve sat down in many law firm offices across the country in the last year—yet not a single visit to New York City (which is a quick New Jersey commuter train from my home), although I’ve been to ballgames and other sporting events in NYC.

Published on: November 18, 2021

LP Magazine – The Law Marketing Up/Down Drill 2021

by Micah Buchdahl

LP Magazine - Leadership Issue The third annual Up-Down Drill, which played off my favorite morning-after column in The Philadelphia Inquirer after an Eagles game (why did Jeff McLane stop doing it?), was one of the more difficult to write. In the November/December 2021 issue of Law Practice, The Law Marketing Up/Down Drill tackles relationship-building, lawyer ratings, webinars, social justice and getting back out in the real world for in-person business development.

It was especially difficult to write due to my failure to prognosticate exactly how COVID would play out since the first quarter of 2020. It is still hard to believe we’re getting ready to hit the two year mark—and normalcy still seems to still be slightly in the rear view mirror (remembering that “objects are closer than they appear”). However, I finally got to go out and do my first in-person presentation last weekend—a law firm retreat in the DC area—in front of a crowd and without a mask over my mouth), so there is that. See my next LP column for more about the return of the law firm retreat.

Roaring back—hopefully—is true blue relationship building. While Zoom happy hours and wine tastings were quite the creation, the option of grabbing a drink or lunch or golfing has never looked so good. And as I’ve been counseling my law firm clients, strike while the iron is hot. People are not overbooked or over traveling yet—and are eager to accept the invites. That will not last forever. The “I’m way too busy to get together” will return in time.

Published on: August 17, 2021

LP Magazine – Getting to In-House Without Ending Up in the Outhouse

by Micah Buchdahl

LPcover_JulyAugust2021-231x300 Yes, I went with the lowest hanging fruit of topics for my marketing column in the July/August 2021 issue of Law Practice, Getting to In-House Without Ending Up in the Outhouse, by doling out pearls of wisdom as it relates to a law firm’s successful pitching of corporate counsel. It never fails to draw an audience.

Unfortunately, one of the key pieces of advice is simply this—everyone is different. It is a very subjective measuring stick. And for some reason, many articles written, and programs presented respond to a handful of in-house folks’ personal philosophies as if they were trends in the industry. When I drafted the column, I used as an example the Benjamin Moore & Co. decision to dismiss its entire legal department. Spoiler alert—it was not a trend. It was a one-off. And if I were writing the same column from scratch today, I’d replace that example with the recent uproar created by Eric Grossman, Morgan Stanley’s longtime chief legal officer, who sent a “warning” to the bank’s outside law firms about their policies allowing remote work and “the lack of urgency to return lawyers to the office.” Hey, if that is a “requirement” for Eric and/or Morgan Stanley—then perhaps my law firm would comply to get or retain the business. Because, as I said, it is a subjective target.

Of course, putting the squeeze on law firms to get attorneys back into the office is probably a little tone deaf today. Most of the law firms I work with and interact with most certainly would like to see attorneys and staff back in the workplace—but not at the expense of health and safety. They also must balance the happiness of associates—who are often in positions to bolt for greener pastures if they don’t like the arrangement. Work from Morgan Stanley would be great; but if you don’t have lawyers to staff it, then you lose regardless.

Published on: December 15, 2020

ABA LPT — Why are Lawyers so afraid of talking about Race?

by Micah Buchdahl

BLM If you want to read a powerful piece about the hottest topic in law firm marketing circles this year, the lead feature in the December 2020 edition of the ABA’s Law Practice Today webzine hits the target with How Can the Legal Sector Have a More Meaningful Conversation About Race?

The process may be difficult for some, but the conversations need to happen – the days of sitting back and maintaining a desensitized outlook on this problem must end. So how do legal professionals discuss race and social justice in these trying times? The answer is to listen to those with experience and those affected.

The article includes perspectives from major law firm leaders throughout the U.S., including Skadden, Morrison & Foerster, Morgan Lewis and Holland & Hart.