Articles Posted in In The News

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law360In the July 25, 2023 edition of Law360, reporter Aebra Coe writes on How Law Firms Can Capitalize On Marketing As Demand Lags. In my interview with her, we discussed what to do with lags in demand, and the best ways to guard against it.

“As many law firms see business decline amid a sluggish economy, some may cut back their marketing budgets to save on costs, however marketing experts say now is actually an important time to double down and create new business opportunities,” writes Coe.

Summer is also a good time for lawyers and their firms to focus on marketing and business development, as business naturally slows in the summer months, according to Micah Buchdahl, president of law firm marketing company HTMLawyers.

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

On May 18th, 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.

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The magazine for Temple Law School Alumni

Thanks to Patrick Plunkett and Dean Rachel Rebouché at the Temple University Beasley School of Law for thinking of me in contributing the “Top 10 Tips” segment of the Spring 2023 issue of Temple ESQ. In Top 10 Tips for Attorney Marketing and Business Development, I try to boil down a lot of what I do into 10 pithy things totaling around 500 words—not an easy task.

My tips are not rocket science. But as I often like to say, something is better than nothing. And if lawyers struggling to figure out how to market walk away with one thing for a to-do list, then that is something better than nothing.

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60 MinutesIn 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.

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Point-Counterpoint - Model Rule 5.5

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 questionIs the Association of Professional Lawyers’ Proposal for a Revised Model Rule 5.5 on its way, or DOA?

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ABA Law Practice Magazine

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.

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LPcover_JulyAugust2022-231x300The 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.

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LPcover_MarchApril2022-232x300In that brief time snugly between delta and omicron, I had the opportunity to speak at a law firm retreat. Live. In-Person. With people. No masks. In a hotel. Food served. It was circa 2019 and it was so nice to put on a suit and close the Zoom app.  In the March/April 2022 issue of Law Practice, I discuss The Return of Law Firm Retreats.

An argument can be made that the law firm retreat in 2022 or 2023 will look and feel a lot different from those in the past. For a myriad of reasons:

Mergers and movement of attorneys and practice groups did not stop over the last few years, meaning there are lots of people at your law firm that you’ve never actually met before. The retreat becomes the perfect venue for getting acquainted.

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LP Magazine - Leadership IssueThe 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.

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