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Blog Glob: "Hildebrandt Interprets Economic Impact on Lawyers: 'Flat Is New Up'"

Excerpt:

The traditional way for law firms to weather economic downturns – cutting overhead and raising rates — are no longer enough. “Law firms must expand their efforts to understand the marked shift in client attitude that is the product of this economy,” said [Kristin] Stark. “After ten years of a ‘seller’s market’ we have rapidly shifted to a ‘buyer’s market.’

“Clients now hold the power where pricing is concerned,” said Stark, “and these clients are angry and frustrated. This downturn has quickly compounded long-term client perceptions of poor value and misalignment of resources in exchange for high rates.

“The most market-savvy law firms understand that clients currently enjoy a growing number of options to get legal services cheaper and faster,” said Stark. “These firms are actively pushing ‘big moves’ to reshape their firms – and the legal industry.”
These include:

Click to read the rest of "Hildebrandt Interprets Economic Impact on Lawyers: 'Flat Is New Up'" (Law Week Colorado).

ABA's Law Practice - This edition's focus: Differentiate!

Click to read this edition's articles. Titles include: "Differentiate! Who’s Doing It Right?," "How Lawyers Lose Big Clients," "Business Development Strategies for Smaller Firms: Tactics and Tools for Competing on Any Budget," "A View from the Legal Press Box: An Interview With David Lat," and "It’s Time to Ditch the Broken Model, Folks."

Blog Glob: Do Law Firm Associates Fear Rainmaking?

Excerpt:

So what about rainmaking — or “client development” in the more antiseptic law-firm parlance — is so risky? We’re not entirely sure. But here’s a thought: Bringing in business — at least in its rawest form — involves a bit of gladhanding and salesmanship, which, yes, isn’t always going to work. So the risk is that such efforts will fail, something that lots of lawyers just don’t have the stomach for.

Click to read the rest of Do Law Firm Associates Fear Rainmaking? (Wall Street Journal Law Blog).

Free Webcast: "The Neuroscience of Selling"

From the press release:

Maritz Learning to Host "The Neuroscience of Selling" Featuring David Rock

David Rock, author of "Your Brain At Work" and partner of Maritz Learning, will host a live Webcast where he explores how applying the latest findings in neuroscience can shorten your sales cycle and improve your close rate.

St. Louis, MO (PRWEB) October 14, 2009 -- David Rock, author of "Your Brain At Work" and partner of Maritz Learning, will host a live Webcast where he explores how applying the latest findings in neuroscience can shorten your sales cycle and improve your close rate. Rock is known for his brain-based approach to coaching, and routinely helps Fortune 500 companies develop leaders, retain talent, improve performance and change culture.

"The Neuroscience of Selling" featuring David Rock will take place on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009, at 1 p.m. CTS. The one-hour Webcast is free and highly recommended for sales, marketing and human resource professionals, who want to create an atmosphere in which the customer's mind is open to their message. Attendees will also learn how to "sell less" while their customers buy more, by applying neuroscience to improve business results.

To attend this free Webcast, click here.

October 15: Seminar on managing Gen Y

The workshop "Managing the Gen Y Workforce: To Get the Most from 20-Somethings, Keep Their Brains and Values in Mind" will be taught from 8:30 to 10:30 AM at

5181 Ward Road

Suite 202

Wheat Ridge, Colorado

A shift has occurred in the work environment. Baby Boomers are retiring and Gen Xers are moving into management and executive level positions. Generation Y has joined the workforce and dominates the frontline of entry level sales positions. In order to engage and motivate Gen Y (the new breed of professionals), you need to understand the generational differences and start developing a more fluid management style.

Presenters are Steve Parry and me.

Click to sign up.

Workshop: To Get the Most From 20 Somethings, Keep Their Brains & Values In Mind

I will be co-teaching this seminar on October 15, from 8:30 to 10:30 AM. More information and registration here.

Lawyers in virtual offices can use LinkedIn, blogs, and Twitter for marketing

An article in the Puget Sound Business Journal provides a list of suggestions for lawyers with virtual offices. From "The rise of the virtual law firm":

— Use online resources. Attorneys operating a virtual law firm often lack a dedicated marketing professional. Marketing or public relations consultants can be helpful if the budget allows. If not, marketing and business development can be daunting for a novice, but many online resources have made the process easier.

LinkedIn is an easy-to-use social networking site for professionals. After creating a profile, attorneys

Lawyers and social media: Some "enjoying early-adopter advantage"

This from "Increased cost-consciousness spurs rise in mediation" (Baltimore Business Journal):

Lawyers, often partial to the herd mentality, are beginning to embrace social networking and are noticing some returns.

Cutting-edge legal practitioners say they are using social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in three main ways: to market themselves, to better communicate with clients and to gain an understanding of their clients’ business relationships.

Glenn Manishin ... has been involved in social media “on an intensive basis” for more than two years. At least half a dozen clients have retained him based upon getting to know him through social media.

“I have clients and potential clients that never e-mail me any more; they only send me direct messages through Twitter,” he said.

Do right- and left-handers see abstract concepts in different ways?

This research seems to indicate they do, at least in certain situations. From the article "Embodiment of Abstract Concepts: Good and Bad in Right- and Left-Handers" (Journal of Experimental Psychology) by Daniel Casasanto [linked to here]:

Whereas right-handers tend to associate right with positive ideas and left with negative ideas, left-handers show the opposite pattern, associating positive attributes like goodness, intelligence, attractiveness, and honesty with the left side of space. Both groups implicitly associate good things more strongly with their dominant side: the side on which they can act more fluently with their dominant hands. These results validate the body-specificity hypothesis. People with different kinds of bodies, who interact with their physical environments in systematically different ways, form correspondingly different mental representations, even in abstract domains.

In a Newsweek article about this research, Sharon Begley suggests:

Memo to restaurant owners: if there are particular dishes you want more customers to order, list them on the right side of the menu.

I hope more research is done on the body-specificity hypothesis, this idea that people with different kinds of bodies (e.g., right- versus left-handedness) think about their worlds differently. Could have some very intriguing applications—beyond restaurant choices.

Note added August 8, 2009: Another article on this research: "Lefty or Righty? A new hold on how we think" (Stanford University News).

From ABA Chicago: 7 Secrets to Help Lawyers Thrive in a Recession

My friend Julie Fleming gave a presentation "Seven Secrets Every Lawyer Must Know to Thrive, Even in a Recession" at this year's ABA Annual Meeting. The program will be reprised later this month as a teleconference; details here. To read her seven secrets which are posted at the ABA Web site, click here.