Is Your Law Firm a Group of Cats or Dogs?

by Joseph Altonji

Is your firm a group of cats or dogs? Probably not a question most managing partners have considered recently, but surprisingly apt.

Consider the behavior and hunting patterns displayed by the typical wild versions of cats and dogs. Cats hunt as solos. They stalk their prey individually, kill it, and keep it mainly for their own benefit, or for their own young—whom they teach to hunt for themselves at a very early age. The ultimate example of “eat what you kill.” Dogs (and related animals like wolves), on the other hand, hunt in packs and share the benefits of the kill across the pack. They have team strategies and team benefits. They respond to strong leadership, as Mike Short noted in his post “Law Firm Leadership is Like Walking the Dogs.” Domestic dog behavior is usually highly social. Most dogs like people and other dogs and like to play games. They will initiate playful group behavior, and most of them just want to be “with” their owners. Cats might like you (and even play “with you” if you dangle something in front of them) but from their perspective, it’s generally all about them. They own the place. Your primary job is to feed them, brush them, pet them ... you know the drill.

Is it a surprise, then, that cats and dogs are naturally antagonistic and will fight each other absent early socialization to instill different behaviors?

With these thoughts in mind, which kind of firm do you have? If you are like most firms, you probably have a mix of “cats” and “dogs” in your shop. There are likely to be a number of partners who really are solos, or sole proprietors, whose orientation is primarily to catch and hold on to their own clients, share as little as possible while maintaining strict control over the work they do hand out to others. You probably also have a number of partners whose natural inclination is to build teams, work with others, share the benefits of the practice, support each other on clients and just trust that they will be treated fairly in the process. Realistically, there is room for both in most firms, but the tensions between competing philosophies can sometimes be significant and can manifest themselves in many ways.

There is a real difference between the type of firm you would build if you are catering to cats vs. dogs, and how you build the firm will have a major influence on how you are perceived in the marketplace, what laterals and young lawyers you attract, and how successful you might be in implementing your strategy. Where might those differences lie?

Start with the obvious—how is your compensation system designed? Is it an “eat what you kill” type of system that encourages holding on to clients and work, only delegating what you cannot get done yourself or just don’t have the skills to do? Does getting someone else to work on your clients require a negotiation around credit sharing? Do all marketing “teams” need to have a pre-arranged deal on how credit will be allocated? Or does it encourage credit sharing, team building, collaboration across skillsets, and multiple relationships with key clients? Do partners benefit from creating client access for others? Training young lawyers to be future team members? Team marketing—“let’s catch the client first and worry about how the credit is allocated later?” Where the balance of these competing demands falls says a lot about which side your firm leans toward and striking this balance can sometimes lead to serious tensions around the firm’s compensation system and its implementation.

Next, consider how your practices are managed. Do the Practice Group Leaders have real authority and, more importantly, buy-in, to drive team efforts and activity? Can they generate real communal activity, and have some influence on the allocation of rewards? Or is the primary job of the Practice Group Leader to monitor what is happening among sometimes competing rivals in the practice and try to get people resources when requested while bothering them as little as possible?

Finally, consider your approach to strategic thinking. As a firm, are you disciplined around and capable of agreeing on where the firm is going—and where it isn’t? And do your partners and other stakeholders buy in to the group decisions and work together to try to achieve those goals? If so, maybe you have a pack of dogs in your firm. Or, is your strategy a collection of what all the individual objectives stakeholders (or at least the most important cats among them) want to achieve, whether those objectives are realistic or compatible with each other? This suggests a clowder of cats (or maybe an ambush of tigers or pride of lions?). As you think about it, even the names of these groups of animals suggest very different personalities and very different power arrangements when they come together.

Both cats and dogs can be successful, but in a law firm, there is probably a limit on how big a “cat” firm can be and remain successful. Every firm might need a share of cats to achieve some goals and maybe focus on specialized skill sets, but building real depth and scale successfully requires cooperation and team effort, not the building of individual fiefdoms. Unfortunately, in our new COVID world where getting together is difficult or impossible, it is harder than ever to collaborate and build team successes. There is a real danger of culture shift (more cat, less dog) in firms where leaders cannot—or do not—keep the focus on connectivity and support for all team members. If you do not want that outcome, keep a constant focus on your culture and your people, even while you consider the immediate business concerns and financial performance. As the leader of the pack, it’s your responsibility to assure the firm emerges from challenging times stronger and better than it entered them. n

Joseph Altonji is a founding Principal of LawVision and has spent over 30 years consulting to law firms and their leaders both in the United States and internationally. Prior to launching LawVision, Joe spent 22 years with Hildebrandt Baker Robbins, and its predecessor firm, Hildebrandt International, as a strategist and senior Managing Director. He was a senior member and Co-Chair of Hildebrandt Baker Robbins Law Firm Strategy and Structure practice, and Chair of the Hildebrandt Baker Robbins Law Vision Coordinating Committee, which was responsible for systematically rethinking the business of law. Learn more at www.LawVision.com.

We Know Marketing Like You Know The Law

Let us “do the time” to get your project right!

• Writing for the layperson • Putting together a presentation • Developing a marketing strategy • Sprucing up your website • Designing an ad, booklet, flyer or brochure • Establishing a better logo, mission statement or tagline

215-550-1435 • penn-creative.com

COVID-19 Made Content Marketing More Than a King

by Jim Bliwas

Over the past 10 years a law marketing axiom held that “content is king.” It still is. But thanks to the pandemic, content became elevated to Emperor. And like the fictional Emperor, it needs new clothes.

There are simple reasons this happened.

The lockdowns and stay-at-home orders blocked attorneys from many of their traditional marketing and business development activities that created new opportunities. It is nearly impossible now to take clients or prospects to lunch, speak at trade or professional association meetings, go to charity events, have a golf outing, mingle at live networking sessions, or attend alumni gatherings.

Yet people still need legal services. They are looking online now more than ever and are retaining counsel even during the recession. For both B2B and B2C law firms, this means that creating remarkable content is paramount.

Content marketing is more than scratching out a blog when you have time. It is your entire website. It needs to be a living, breathing reflection of not just what you do but how you do it, conveying the value you deliver.

As a result, content marketing needs to interrupt the conversation going on inside the mind of a client or prospect at your website.

Content Helps Readers and You

The overarching purpose of a website and its blog is to attract potential clients to your practice. Creating great content consistently helps a prospect understand how you will help them solve a problem, take advantage of an emerging trend, seize an opportunity, or think differently about an issue they are confronting.

Having exceptional content benefits law firms of any size in four important ways:

• It builds awareness of the firm’s brand

• It builds trust in the firm’s reputation as an authority

• It keeps a lawyer top of mind when somebody has a pressing need

• It bolsters SEO so more people will find the firm

Four Mistakes Blog Writers Make

A well-written blog is the vehicle to deliver valuable thought leadership to your readers on an ongoing basis. But too many blogs still make four serious mistakes, reducing their effectiveness:

Not Interesting or Engaging. They are too technical and over the head—and interest—of most readers

Too Detailed. They focus on the minutiae of a subject rather than explaining how the detail shapes the bigger picture

Not Original. They cover a subject that has been written about in the business pages of newspapers or industry-focused publications without exploring a new angle

They Try to Sell. They are barely disguised sales pitches offering no actionable ideas or information Committing any of these errors wastes a golden opportunity to generate an inquiry.

Four Tips for Compelling Blogs During COVID-19

So how do you write compelling blogs in the COVID-19 environment? Here are four tips.

Offer Pragmatic Advice. Regardless of the situation in your state, a blog can be a resource to help your contacts through an unprecedented, fast changing situation. Some states remain mostly closed, some are reopening, others that reopened are shutting down again. It’s likely that running a business feels like being battered by a stormy sea. Be their lifeboat.

Use strong headlines. Your content needs to land an emotional punch, making people want to read the blog. We use the headline analyzer from the American Marketing Institute. It rates a headline and allows you to tweak what you’ve written to boost the headline’s appeal.

Write like you speak. Sounding professional doesn’t mean sounding stuffy. During COVID-19, people want to make human connections and, short of a video call, the best way to do this is by writing like a human, not an

impersonal bot. A Nobel Prize-winning economist has nearly 2 million Twitter followers because he writes like a real person, not a nerdy academic.

Be precise. Mark Twain said the difference between using the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Don’t obsess over not being Twain; nobody is. Yet anyone can mobilize the English language and put it to work.

Strong Content Is More Than Strong Blogs

A blog is only one part of a strategic approach to content marketing.

The New Normal—COVID-19 created a “new normal,” requiring a rethinking of every page on your website. This means ensuring that the content on each page is relevant for an unprecedented situation that is likely to be with us for some time to come.

Home Page—Besides summarizing what you do, explain how you add value for visitors who are likely struggling with their own COVID-generated problems and issues. The entire page does not need rewriting. Rather, adding a paragraph or two with embedded links to other, relevant information on how you are serving clients and customers during the pandemic could be sufficient. Service Pages—Until March, service pages could get away with just stating, “We do this and that.” Now, clients want and need to know how a specific service will help them adapt their own situation to the world as it is today. How this is done will vary from one firm and practice area to another, but it is a highly effective tool in generating inquiries. Analytics we run for clients prove it every month.

Social Media—It spills over to social media, as well. No longer can a post simply be “We have a new blog.” It needs to relate how that blog addresses an issue that COVID has created.

Don’t Leave Content Marketing to Chance

There is more art than science to content marketing. Content became the Emperor because marketing is the fuel that fires your business development engine. Your content gives your marketing an extra shot of octane. n

Jim Bliwas is a law marketing pioneer. Now, he is the senior marketing and content strategist for PSM Marketing. A former journalist, he creates website and blog content as well as articles for a range of clients.