Re-caps of Sessions

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Last week, we had the final session in our Business of Law Series, on the topic of contract lawyers and outsourcing. This time, Tim Corcoran brought in a co-presenter, Kevin Colangelo of Yuson & Irvine. 

Tim began with a few minutes to recap some of the topics we’d discussed in the first two webinars, so that the audience could understand the main drivers behind these changes.  For those full recaps, please take a look at Legal Project Management Part I and Part II and Alternative Fee Arrangements Part I and Part II. 

Outsourcing – Love it or Hate it? 

Following this, he jumped into a discussion with Kevin about outsourcing. He began by saying that outsourcing is not a popular topic with law firms, but from a corporation standpoint, they already outsource their legal needs to their legal departments, who, in turn, outsource it to their law firm, so they’re very comfortable with it. Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing Part I

Yesterday, we began with the first part of Tim Corcoran’s webinar on the strategic role of alternative fee arrangements. After Tim’s elephant analogy, he gave the attendees a short economics lesson. Using a graph with two parallel arrows, Tim said that essentially, we charge a rate that is higher than our cost to deliver. Price needs to be higher than the cost, and profit is derived from the difference between the cost and the price. 

But law firms do a poor job of calculating costs – other than their overhead and real estate, they don’t know the cost of the delivery of their legal services. 

So the challenge is, as we saw in the recent downturn when there was downward price pressure, because we haven’t fundamentally changed our delivery costs, our profit turns to loss. In the first part of the webinar, Tim had talked about the inevitable movement from premium and strategic to commodity, meaning that clients will pay less for something over time. That’s what we’re seeing – clients are refusing to pay for work that they believe doesn’t have the same value it once had, but law firms who have not adapted their cost structure for this are experiencing loss. Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – Alternative Fee Arrangements Part II

Part II of our Business of Law webinar series with Tim Corcoran took place in November, but things have been so hectic with travel and hurricanes and holidays that I’m only just getting to the recap! So without further ado…

The topic of the second webinar was the strategic role of alternative fee arrangements, which was a natural sequel to the first session on legal project management. Tim re-emphasized that the industry has changed, and we need to adapt to the changing times. Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – Alternative Fee Arrangements Part I

Despite being a long-time blogger and follower of Kevin O’Keefe on social media, I always learn something new when I attend one of his webinars.  Today, I was able to participate in "Blogging: Greater Returns with Less Effort," which was excellent and I’d like to share my recap with you. A full recording of the webinar will be available in the coming days on LexBlog’s YouTube channel.

Usual Starting Point

Kevin began at the beginning, so to speak, with the questions that he normally gets at the outset of a firm or attorney beginning their foray into blogging: 

  • How frequently should lawyers blog? 
  • Should we have a group blog to take the weight off of one person? 
  • Should we have an associate write the blog? 
  • Should we have a ghostwriter? 

Continue Reading Blogging: Greater Returns with Less Effort – A LexBlog Webinar

Last week, we had the first part of our recap from Tim Corcoran’s excellent webinar on Legal Project Management. Today, I bring you the second half, which covers: 

  • Legal Project Management (LPM): Concepts – should they be embraced or avoided? Is LPM a friend, an enemy or a frenemy?
  • Process improvement versus LPM: Two different disciplines, though they are related.
  • LPM 2.0: The advanced level of LPM. 

Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – An Introduction to Legal Project Management Part II

This week, we kicked off our three-part webinar series with Tim Corcoran, of the Corcoran Consulting Group. Tim’s first webinar addressed an Introduction to Legal Project Management, which is a fascinating topic, which I’ll recap in two parts. 

Tim offered his best practices, based on years of experience, and condensed what is normally a half day session into an hour – so there’s a lot of information in this webinar!

The themes for the part of the session covered in today’s recap: 

  • What happened to our ecosystem? The wonderful world where clients paid handsomely for good legal work is gone – something changed, and now clients are pushing back more on rates, talking about whether they’ll pay by the hour or not, the kinds of attorneys that will service various matters, and alternative providers of services. There is also competition from other sized firms, including big firms that are becoming more savvy about pricing. 

Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – An Introduction to Legal Project Management Part I

Last Wednesday, I attended ALM’s Cross-Border Litigation Forum. After the opening remarks, whose theme was that the complexity of cross-border litigation has (unsurprisingly) increased with globalization, we had a keynote address from Franco Ferrari, the Executive Director for the Center for Transnational Litigation and Commercial Law at New York University School of Law. His keynote focuses on Enforcing US Money Judgments Abroad: Debunking a Myth.

Enforcing US Money Judgments Abroad: Debunking a Myth

Ferrari wanted to correct the misconception of what happens to US judgments abroad, and he said that the idea that it’s difficult is "nonsense." Some people believe that you shouldn’t even try to enforce judgments because it’s costly, time-consuming, and foreign courts are corrupt, but Ferrari said that this was also nonsense. 

 
 

Continue Reading ALM’s Cross Border Litigation Forum

One of the initiatives we undertake here at the ILN is marketing partnerships, where we arrange for an in-kind trade of services for various events in the legal industry. When the events are fairly local to me, I’ll go in person to "woman" the table with our materials, answer any questions that might arise, and also sit in on the sessions. 

Last week, I was fortunate enough to participate in two such events. The first of these was American Lawyer Media’s Cross Border M&A Forum – right up our alley, since much of the work that happens in the ILN is cross-border. 

I’ll re-cap a couple of the sessions, along with those from the following day’s conference, ALM’s Cross-Border Litigation Forum. 

 
 

Continue Reading ALM’s Cross Border M&A Forum

After sharing all of their valuable content with us, Kevin and Lee were happy to answer some questions from the audience. 

What’s the correlation of a strong brand with online lead generation? 

Lee clarified the essence of the question as being "how is your brand going to impact your lead generation and online presence?" Kevin said that he wanted to say that larger brands would have more impact, but he wasn’t sure that this was true. He used Coca Cola as an example, saying that if they didn’t form the right strategy online with the people who want to drink Coca Cola, they’re not going to go anywhere. 

In a lot of ways, the internet is the great equalizer (I say this to my attorneys all the time). If you take the time to craft a good strategy, understand what makes you unique, and demonstrate what your value is, you’re going to be effective and your brand will become stronger. You may even develop a stronger brand as an upstart than an old traditional company. Continue Reading Blogging for Clients: How Online Relationships Lead to Real-World Clients (A Re-cap) Part III

On Tuesday, we jumped into the first half of Kevin McKeown and Lee Frederiksen’s webinar on Blogging for Clients. Today, we’re looking at the second half! 

Developing your Strategy and Tools

Lee said that when you look at online marketing at a macro level, there’s not one technique that says "this is the one to use." There are a whole bunch of techniques. So how do these fit together – how do you make sense out of this about what you need to do, and when you need to do it? 

He showed us a slide with the content marketing model, which shows how the various techniques fit together. It was a series of steps, with escalating levels of interaction and trust with the client – it goes from the point where they’ve never heard of you all the way to they’re a client. Lee said that marketers may look at this as their marketing funnel, and business developers as their pipeline. Continue Reading Blogging for Clients: How Online Relationships Lead to Real-World Clients (A Re-cap) Part II