When you’re not particularly enamored of either team in the Superbowl, and hockey is more your sport anyway, what’s a gal to do when football’s biggest game of the year is on? DVR it so I could watch just the commercials, of course! (And the Sandy Hook Chorus sing "America the Beautiful" – that was not to be missed). 

Though after zipping through the game to catch this year’s ads, I was kind of wishing I’d skipped the whole thing all together – these are some of the most expensive ads to be purchased throughout the year, and for me, there were almost no standouts. Where have all the good marketers gone?

But, since I need to choose *some* good commercials to discuss, here are my top picks for this year – I’ll cover the "really good" today and the "pretty good," the bad and the ugly later in the week. 

Continue Reading Superbowl Commercials – The Really Good 2013

The Legal Marketing Association‘s Social Media Special Interest Group is at it again – this afternoon, they brought members an excellent webinar focused on combating internal politics – how to sell social media to your lawyers. 

Featured on the panel were moderator and LMA SIG leader, Gail Lamarche, of Henderson Franklin, an employment law attorney and social media maven from her firm, Suzanne Boy, and legal marketing expert, Jill Rako with Ohio-based Bricker & Eckler. 

Since these webinars are an LMA member benefit, I’m not going to delve as deeply into the recap as I traditionally would, but I do want to hit the highlights! 

Continue Reading Combating the Internal Politics – How to Sell Social Media to Your Lawyers

Welcome to ILN-terviews, a series of profiles of ILN member firm attorneys, designed to give a unique insight into the lawyers who make up our Network. For our latest interview, we chose ILN member, Andreas Kaeser of our member firm, wehinger kaelin ferrari ag in Switzerland!

In one sentence, how would you describe your practice?
Our firm represents both corporate and private clients with a strong focus on international commercial and corporate law.

Who would be your typical client?
Our typical clients are predominantly high net-worth individuals and entrepreneurs, a large number of which are from abroad, as well as domestic and foreign middle-sized companies.

What would you like clients and potential clients to know about you?
That due to our lean structures and our professional and language skills, as well as due to our very broad network of partners in the legal and financial field worldwide, we are in a position to meet our clients’ needs in Switzerland and abroad in a cost effective manner.

What has been your most challenging case? Why?
I represented a major football club domiciled in Honduras against an Italian Serie A-club in a transfer related matter. This was and still is challenging, as it deals with an unusual subject matter and went through three different instances, two of them having arbitral character (FIFA and the International Court for Sport). On the other hand, for me as an enthusiastic football fan, this case is also fascinating.

What has been your proudest moment as a lawyer?
When a long-time client sold his company to a multinational for an astonishing price with the help of a small team of our firm – the multinational was represented by a huge delegation of a big law firm together with Deloitte.

What do you do when you’re not practicing law?
I am a father of seven and half years old twins, which sometimes can be quite a challenge; besides that I do a lot of sports such as football, swimming and bicycling.

What would surprise people most about you?
That I sometimes take myself not too seriously, despite being a lawyer….

What has been your most memorable ILN experience?
There have been a lot of really good experiences, however, if I had to point out one single event, I would choose the speech of old German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the famous hotel Adlon in Berlin at the occasion of the ILN meeting 2006, which was the first meeting I attended. Helmut Kohl’s presence was tremendous, and all of a sudden, history became presence. I still have his signed biography from that day in my office.

What career would you have chosen if you weren’t a lawyer?
Probably I would have entered in Switzerland’s Foreign Service as I always was and still am interested in international affairs and all issues related thereto.

If a movie were made of your life, who would you want to play you?
Charlie Sheen.

How would you like to be remembered?
As a good father to my children and as a loyal friend.

There’s been a lot of chatter over the last few years about the "new normal" for law firms, and what that might mean.  Yesterday, I was reading an interesting article at Above the Law, which addressed the idea that the new normal is a lot like the "old normal" (making the boom time an aberrance and not the other way around). 

While that part was enlightening (and I recommend reading the article in full), what I found most useful were the lessons that the author felt we’d learned over the past four years and advice for BigLaw firms in dealing with the new normal.  We all recognize that BigLaw and mid-sized firms are different, but in this case, the advice are very much the same for both. We’ve been hearing it again and again, so it’s definitely time to start making some changes (if you haven’t already), to remain competitive. 

 

Continue Reading Mid-sized firms and How to Adjust to the “New Normal”

Welcome to ILN-terviews, a series of profiles of ILN member firm attorneys, designed to give a unique insight into the lawyers who make up our Network. For our latest interview, we chose ILN member, Tor Erlend Framstad of our member firm, Okland & Co DA in Norway!

In one sentence, how would you describe your practice?
My practice is related to real estate and companies, but Lawfirm Økland & Co DA provides service in almost all private and commercial areas of law.

Who would be your typical client?
My typical client is a small or medium sized company, often within the real estate business, but some of the companies I work closest with are large multinational trade companies.

What would you like clients and potential clients to know about you?
I’m always giving 100%, and I don´t practice in areas outside my competences.

What has been your most challenging case? Why?
It’s hard to say. Is a new type of case more challenging than types you have done plenty of – even though the "regular" case is more complex?

What has been your proudest moment as a lawyer?
When winning a case of great importance for the client – against all odds!

What do you do when you’re not practicing law?
When not working, I’m a father to a little girl, and a husband, and I ride mountain bikes in the summer and ski in the winter.

What would surprise people most about you?
I’m a farmer and can drive any kind of construction machines.

What has been your most memorable ILN experience?
It amazes me how fast you can make friends within the ILN, and how nice it is to meet them again.

What career would you have chosen if you weren’t a lawyer?
Everybody expected me to become an engineer, but I chose law instead.

If a movie were made of your life, who would you want to play you?
Daniel Craig (for now…)

How would you like to be remembered?
I´d like to be remembered as an honest guy.

It’s been a festival of webinars over here lately, so I’ve got one more recap for you this year! Yesterday, we hosted Jaimie Field, esq. of Marketing Field, who presented on the in-house marketers’ guide to motivating your attorneys to rainmaking success. 

Jaimie kicked off by saying that the short version of her presentation is that you can’t motivate them. It’s not possible to motivate someone else – they have to motivate themselves. But what the in-house marketers or marketing partners CAN do is to provide the attorneys at their firm with the tools they need to help them to motivate themselves to rainmaking success. 

While Jaimie didn’t address specific tactics, she did identify what attorneys need from their in-house marketers in terms of their marketing genius and motivating prowess. 

Continue Reading ILN Marketing Webinar: In-House Marketers’ Guide to Motivating Attorneys to Rainmaking Success

Today, we’re wrapping up our last post from Tim Corcoran’s webinar series on the business of law! Check out part I and part II of the Contract Lawyers and Outsourcing session. 

In speaking about outsourcing, Kevin commented that he feels like he’s overstating the point on a lot of these things, because he’s been involved in this arena for so long. He added that evaluating a company to handle outsourcing is like evaluating any business partner – think about the challenges of hiring a third party that you’ve never worked with before, to work on something that might end up in your clients’ hands. 

Going back to the PR side, Kevin said there are firms out of the UK who are very involved in the legal outsourcing space, and they do it in two steps – they handle some work themselves, but they also help the client understand why that’s good for them. It’s more than just the cost, it’s connected to value and the client wanting to use them over and over again. So firms should do their due diligence, understand these points and be able to articulate them to your clients. You want to be able to say that it’s not that you want to be cheaper, but you’re outsourcing because it’s the right strategy for the client. 

Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing Part III

Yesterday, we began our recap of the Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing webinar with Tim Corcoran and Kevin Colangelo. Today, we continue the discussion. 

Who is Doing this Successfully, and How?

Tim said that one of the challenges he’s heard from law firms about outsourcing is that their work is unique, their firm is unique, and as such, their work is hard to routinize and find a common way to deliver the services. So he asked Kevin to comment on how others who have done this have found that there are practices that can be improved through this approach – and not just the low-end, simple document reviews, but some high end work as well. 

Kevin said that they analyze the tasks going on within a law firm, legal department our sourcing department to see what can be disaggregated. Those that they’ve been able to disaggregate, they rebuild in a very process-heavy, documented environment. This extends outside of just outsourcing – firms can understand both how they get their work done and improve the way they’re doing it with the people that they’re using. This blends into not only the way that clients want their firms to do the work, but also how the firm itself wants to be operating. 

Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing Part II

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