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As we approach the three-month mark of the pandemic and alternative working environments, it is important to remember that we still provide a service that is focused upon the needs of people. On the In Seclusion Podcast last week, I talked with four consultants and business development professionals to see how they are adjusting to these unique times. The common theme was that we needed to have more personal and professional discussions with our clients, not less. What that means, however, is that those conversations need to be sincere, relevant, helpful, and empathetic. Clients are drinking from a fire hose of information and it is our job as a trusted counsel to guide them through complex issues and make it simple and easy to understand. Listen in on the insights of four leaders in the industry.
Marcie Borgal Shunk of The Tilt Institute, Inc. is used to working closely with attorneys and law firm leadership. Traditionally, this meant gathering large groups of lawyers into a room for hours, or days at a time, and walking through scenarios together. With the current situation, it means having to adjust to fit the online nature of education and training. For many lawyers, this is new, it’s ambiguous, it’s different, it’s uncomfortable… and they’re actually getting used to it.
Wednesday, May 27 – It Turns Out That Law Firms ARE Pretty Adaptable – Tim Corcoran
Tim Corcoran advises law firms on how to improve the business delivery side of things. One of the positive aspects of the pandemic has been the ability for firms to actually look at the processes of their business, and not just focusing on the tools. As we begin to develop a hybrid office where some people will be working in the office, and some will continue to work remotely, it will test how good our management skills really are. Maybe now we’ll give some real management training.
Thursday, May 28 – It’s Time to Put Our Energy Into New Engagement Models – Roy Sexton
Continue Reading We Are Still In The People Business
Should law firms invest in more competitive intelligence? Asks Ron Friedmann. Um. Yes. Always yes. And not just law firms but every business should invest more in CI. Investing in knowing what you know, knowing what you don’t know and knowing what the market knows – about you and otherwise – is an investment every business should make. In the above mentioned article, CI is described as “The deeper the insight, the better. Competitive intelligence serves that purpose. It helps win business and improve service delivery.” The article goes on to talk about the ways CI can help law firm business development and marketing efforts, this post was expertly timed to come out in advance of the Legal Marketing Associations annual conference being held in Atlanta this coming week. The revisiting a February 2019 survey and calling for more CI is a great start, CI can help with business development.
But positioning CI only as BD and Marketing support sells CI short. CI can and should drive business development efforts but CI is much more. CI should be embedded in practice planning, strategic firm growth discussions, lateral hire diligence, office or practice expansion proposals. To borrow and expand on the SCIP.org definition of CI, it is a systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing, and managing external and internal information that can affects your business. There are a few key elements to that definition that get lost when we think of CI as only competitive research to support BD and marketing efforts. Namely, the idea of CI being based on analysis, and a combination of internal and external information gathering. The aforementioned competitive research leaves out rigorous analysis and negates internal data, which firms are producing in mass quantities and not leveraging very well beyond pricing or resource planning. We need to bring the outside in. if we are going to truly do meaningful CI for our firms. CI needs to be systematic, it needs to be ongoing not only tied to a specific RFP or a moment in time, it should evolve with the firm and inform any business decision that requires both avoiding surprises (the fall of a competitor firm, the exit of an entire practice of lawyers from your firm to a competitor) and forecasting for the future (did we see e-sports coming as a burgeoning area of law?).
Continue Reading More CI? That’s Axiomatic
“All Problems Are Communications Problems.”
This is Greg’s go to phrase when it comes to working with and leading others. Marlene actually beats Greg to the punch this week when they talk with this week’s guest, Heather Ritchie. Heather is the Chief Knowledge and Business Development Officer at Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP in Toronto, and as her title suggests, she wears multiple leadership hats at her firm. In her recent ILTA KM article, “12 Ways Marketing & Business Development Can Leverage Library & Knowledge Management Teams,” Ritchie walks us through the value of collaborating between the Marketing/Business Development, Knowledge Management, and Library operations of a law firm. Knowing who brings what talent to the table is key to creating stable and successful environment which results in wins for the law firm.
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How Is Your Business Changing the Legal Industry?
In part two of our three part series, we hear from four more providers of legal industry products on how they are changing the industry. This week we hear from:
Information Inspirations:
Continue Reading Episode 27: Heather Ritchie on Marketing, BD, KM, and Library Collaboration
There has been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere and twitter this week about the Bloomberg Law article “Law Firm Librarians Feel Underused and Underpaid” and the accompanying survey. First off, I want to thank Bloomberg BNA for conducting this survey, sharing the results with the law librarian community and David Perla,…
Last week the Twitterverse and other content spaces were abuzz (or atweet?), with commentary on the story from Bloomberg Law on how Law Firm Librarians Feel Underused and Underpaid. Many in the sector agreed or felt that it was a wake up call of some kind. The article was based on a survey compiled…
I found the story in today’s Legal Intelligencer on Law Firm Competitive Intelligence interesting.
I noticed a few points (yes I know, surprising isn’t it?) after reading this that I think bear a bit of discussion. Here are my perspectives, which are based on 20 years as a CI professional as well as the Co-chair of…
This post originally appeared on the LexisNexis UK Future of Law Blog under the title Stealing the market: The degree that now has infinite value.
Image [cc] – doozle |
On 17 October I saw Daniel B. Rodriguez, Dean of the Northwestern University School of Law, speak at the ARK Knowledge Management in the Legal…
Image [cc] ByronNewMedia |
While prepping for a workshop on this morning, I began to think about the types of business development, client relations and competitive intelligence questions that are commonly asked at law firms, and how they tend to almost always be reactive in nature. Take the question of a partner coming to the development/intelligence…
Image [cc] mandiberg |
I usually read articles written by vendors with a grain of salt, but I think that Thomson Reuter’s Dave Whiteside’s article, “Stop Doing the Legal Limbo” has some good food for thought in it, and it plays into what we discuss here on this blog when it comes to Librarians playing a…