10 tips for using technology to connect law firms and clients.

Lippe, Paul

When I first joined my old firm straight out of law school, I had the opportunity to work on an important project that had a large marketing/business-development component. Having also spent some time in business school, I asked what seemed the obvious question: "What is the firm's marketing/business-development strategy?" My question seemed to catch everyone by surprise, but eventually the answer I got from the somewhat exasperated chairman of the firm was:

* Do a good job;

* Make sure clients know you did a good job;

* Keep in touch with people who aren't yet clients; and

* Go out to breakfast once in a while.

Twenty years later, I think the view of most lawyers hasn't changed much: Marketing as a discrete, promotional activity is seen as somewhere between distasteful and not a priority; marketing as an extension of practice excellence is A-Okay.

The good news for law firms and marketers is that the new generation of technology, referred to as Web 2.0, allows lawyers to be both more visible to and connected with clients. And so it allows marketing that isn't marketing, but rather ways of demonstrating excellence to current and prospective clients that are an extension of practice.

The one mistake marketers and lawyers need to get over is to think of this shift as being about technology. Web 2.0, or Law 2.0 as we'll sometimes refer to it, is simply a utility that will be available to, and used by, all.

While there is no single definition of the term, "Web 2.0" is generally understood to mean those applications that exist on no one person's or enterprise's computer--"in the cloud," so to speak--and which facilitate collaboration among users. Wikipedia and Facebook are among the best examples of Web 2.0 applications. According to John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, "Collaboration is the next big step in terms of productivity." When I discuss this topic with law departments or law firms, none ever disputes that Law 2.0 will happen or will be beneficial. But many are skeptical about how soon, arguing (somewhat tautologically) that since the change hasn't happened yet, it won't happen at all. Here's my "Top Ten Reasons Why Law 2.0 is Easier, More Familiar and Closer than You Think," and why it will make marketing's job more fun and more successful

[1] Legal work has always been collaborative

While we all know a few lawyers who "don't play well with others," the truth is that legal work is, and always has been, intensely collaborative. Long before there was Wikipedia, lawyers developed the Common Law--a linked, multi-authored, "emergent" codification of best practice. Lexis was arguably the first major online digital database. So sharing of information to understand and make a decision or sharing of information to create a document or other work product has been around a long time.

What's new is simply that Law 2.0 makes collaboration easier to do and easier to scale--it is a difference of degree, but not of kind.

[2] Partnering with clients

The practice of law today is unique in that most professional services are bought by other professionals (i.e. law departments of big companies). This has some dramatic implications, because purchasers of legal services:

* Are highly sophisticated and can assess value;

* Are organized in groups (legal departments) that are often better able to achieve scale economies than are the service providers (law firms);

* Are more closely aligned with the goals and operating styles of their clients;

* Have a great deal of freedom in "build vs. buy" decisions (whether to proceed internally or to team with a law firm), such decisions often being fungible; and

* Are increasingly the intellectual center of gravity of law. General counsel are much more interested in knowing what other law departments are doing than hearing abstract advice from law firms, and are more likely to talk to other law departments than to law firms.

Clients are desperate for firms to collaborate with them, to partner. If your law firm doesn't embrace Web 2.0, clients will increasingly use it to communicate client-to-client or engage with those innovative law firms that do, with a resulting decline in business for your firm.

[3] Law 2.0 is not only in the cloud

The one aspect of all this that's probably most confusing is that many lawyers assume that all Web 2.0 systems are open. "Why would I want to tell the whole world what I'm up to?" is a common objection.

By our calculation, about one-third of lawyers' communications are open, non-confidential, non-privileged and generally non-charged. Examples include seminars, articles, alerts, bulletins and incidental advice. Putting this type of communication in a fairly open environment (i.e., less open than LinkedIn, but perhaps limited to lawyers) makes perfect sense.

For the other two-thirds of lawyers' communications that are confidential, usually privileged and generally paid for, lawyers can use Law 2.0 systems, but ones which are specifically limited to one-to-one client relationships.

Most of these communications occur today via email, a notoriously insecure medium. Law firms and companies can create private, confidential Law 2.0 systems that use the same Web 2.0 mechanisms, but for a narrowly defined group. For example, a team of both in-house and law-firm lawyers could use a group to manage all the steps, participants' names/contact info and documents in a matter.

[4] Law 2.0 puts together in one place the information clients care about

A profile in a rich Law 2.0 system contains everything about law firm attorneys they could want a prospective client to know, including basic biography and credentials; whatever frequently asked questions, memos, articles, sample documents or other writings they have written and want to expose; connections or networks, including the critical ability to be a link or introducer to someone whom the client wants to connect to; recommendations from clients; and conversations, forum postings, etc., that the attorney has contributed to the Law 2.0 system Clients are constantly sharing recommendations and assessments of lawyers; it's in every attorney's interests to have those recommendations be as transparent as possible. It is a universally acknowledged truth of marketing today that sophisticated customers do not rely on promotional materials, but rather word of mouth from trusted third parties. As David Johnson, the former CEO of Counsel Connect says, "It's the difference from a pushed TV ad, on the one hand, and a favorable mention at a dinner party, on the other." Some skeptics fear that Law 2.0 will "commoditize" law, a term whose meaning is quite unclear to me. Rather, law firm leaders who participate in Law 2.0 will consolidate--they will make more valuable resources available in one place, and become the "one-stop shop" for clients. Those who don't participate won't be commoditized--they just won't be part of the next conversation.

[5] Improved efficiency via collaboration translates into cross-selling

Clients want firms to use Law 2.0 to be more efficient and deliver more value. In most parts of their business, clients are accustomed to the firms they buy from (and to the firms they sell to) delivering more value every year, and shifting their business to those firms that do the best job of increasing value.

To deliver more value, Law 2.0 will happen in confidential spaces between a law firm and a major client. While much will be matter-specific, some of the tools in these spaces will quickly extend beyond the initial team to involve others.

As most law firms know, a large client-firm team may encompass 10-20 lawyers, but in the modern 1,000 lawyer firm, that leaves 980 lawyers wholly unengaged with that major client. By sharing more of the firm's resources and learning more about the client, the firm will naturally open up more opportunities for cross-selling.

[6] Low-cost technology

In law firms, information technology has traditionally been viewed as a cost center. Since most law firms minimize the capital in the firm and distribute cash to partners every year, there is a strong impetus to keep spending on technology down. But Web 2.0 technologies are now cheap to deploy; so cheap that they can leveraged as part of the revenue stream, rather than a capital investment.

[7] Force marketing to think

Everybody knows that many of the basic building blocks of today's legal marketing generate basically no business. These include profiles in paid-for directories, "Top Lawyer" ranking services, Web profiles, alerts pushed to clients and CRM systems. My old managing partner would have been quite skeptical whether any of these lead directly to new work, and most marketers would be hard-pressed to show him data that they do.

Firms are reluctant to cut back on these, just because "everybody does them," but starting to evaluate the more focused and far lower cost Law 2.0 approaches will force firms to think more carefully about what really works and compare ROI. Clients get very angry when they see firms spend money on activities that create no value; at a time of belt-tightening among clients, their sensitivity will only grow.

[9] Involve younger and introverted lawyers

Twenty years ago, there was no email, and then suddenly email was ubiquitous; today, young people are much more like to be found on Web 2.0 systems than email. So this may be the first time in the history of the profession that opportunity shifts to younger people who are more comfortable with a critical new medium. The greatest internal change among law firms over the last few years has been the growing attrition rate among associates. It is fueled by associates' recognition of the low probability of becoming a partner and by their overall frustration with their work. Law 2.0 can make associates' work more flexible, more fun and more engaged with clients.

Firms can enable associates to be closer to clients, or leverage "lawkipedia"-type systems to accelerate their training or garner recognition as contributors. Law 2.0 can also open up the possibility of more flexible work styles (30 hours per week from home for a young parent, for example).

And for some subset of lawyers who are quite introverted, they may find that the opportunity to publish in a structured, but not quite face-to-face, way is a more comfortable way to discharge their basic obligation to reach out to clients.

[10] Sometimes, "soon enough" isn't

A tremendous amount has been written in the last decade about how change happens and organizations do or don't adapt. In general, lawyers have taken the attitude that they can wait until "the pioneers" try something, and then follow once it's pretty much proven. Indeed, for something like email, there's no particular advantage to being an early adopter. But Law 2.0 may look more like being the first firm to open an office in a hot market like Singapore or Shanghai--lots of people come to you because you're first, you develop the best reputation and you learn the most.

Lawyers have always understood the need and desire to adopt new technologies to serve their clients. Web 2.0 won't be any different. As lawyers start to see the benefits for their clients, they will quickly go from "worst to first" in their adoption of those technologies.

Paul Lippe is a founder and CEO of Legal OnRamp, a Silicon Valley based network founded in cooperation with Cisco Systems and other leading companies to improve legal quality and efficiency. Lippe can be reached at paullippe@legalonramp.com.