Law Firm Marketing Brief

Labor Day Legal Market Jobs Report. The post-Labor Day headlines in the legal market strike something of a somber tone, as job gains have stalled and a new round of layoffs is sweeping through the ranks of BigLaw, targeting lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Meanwhile, lateral partner movement remains strong, with Proskauer, Cooley and Crowell all swooping down to raid the competition. And there was also a big lateral move for CMO Nancy Kostakos, who left Goodwin to take the top marketing job at Troutman Pepper. But Nancy's move seems like something of a throwback to a distant era -- back in the days when it seemed there would be no end to BigLaw mergers, which of course did so much to expand the ranks of BigLaw marketing teams and facilitated lots of lateral mobility. When the music stops playing, as ex-CEO Chuck Prince so eloquently put it, you want to make sure you have a chair!

Compliance and Pliancy. A recent survey from Integreon highlights both the growing burden of regulatory compliance on corporate legal departments and the increasing cost pressure that law firms face as they try to provide compliance services to their clients. Only 37% of the law firms surveyed felt they had adequate internal resources to effectively address their clients' regulatory challenges compared to 63% who said they were inadequately resourced. This is perhaps the largest opportunity for law companies and ALSPs to gain traction in the corporate legal market, either as outsourced providers to law firms or directly serving corporate law departments, thanks to their far greater facility in building scalable and cost-effective tech-enabled solutions.

Know Your Client. This interview with Connie Brenton, the legal ops director at NetApp (a Fortune 500 company) provides some great insight into how the corporate law department landscape is changing. From Brenton's description, a well run corporate law department today is developing relationships with multiple ALSPs, each playing a different role in supporting operations. Here's the money quote: "One of the advantages of using these alternative providers is that it is easy to mix and match to serve our needs. They easily collaborate and work together not only on a specific legal or technology implementation or project, but on our overall strategic vision. Often, there are 4 or 5 of these providers on a call at the same time sharing very candidly and confidentially." Can you imagine something similar being said about lawyers from Skadden and Jones Day, who far more likely would spend most of the time trying to elbow one another out of the way?

On Slow Cookers and Instant Pots. Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor and Opentext have released a new report on Innovative technology and Legal Practice. You can download the report here and you may also find this brief summary from Thomson Reuters enjoyable. The traditional practice of law Thomson Reuters compares to a slow cooker whereas practice today is more like an instant cooker. A great metaphor for sure but Thomson Reuters begins to sound a bit like Ron Popeil selling appliances on HSN with a promise that the legal industry-as-intant-pot "prioritizes speed and efficiency, and seeks to deliver a variety of different legal services equally well, at a lower cost, with no compromise in quality." Right. And if you believe that, I have a set of ginsu knives I'd like to sell you as well ....

Virtual Agility. A good blogpost here from two consultants with BTS about how to maintain agility in your organization while working in a virtual environment. The article includes a run down of the various tech tools available to help your dispersed team collaborate more effectively and also highlights a few fun ways to maintain esprit, my personal favorite being this breakthrough service that allows you to bring a goat to your next online meeting. Truly, no one is quite so agile as a mountain goat!