How to Make the Complex Simple

I'm a longtime fan of newspaper comics. The ability to succinctly make a point or to set up and deliver a punchline in a few words is an admirable skill. In today's paper, Chip Sansom's The Born Loser riffed on this theme of converting complex data into simple analysis. It calls to mind a skill I've worked on honing for many years, that of distilling a large amount of information into the most relevant, and more bite-sized, pieces for consumption.  This skill is useful whether one is a worker bee reporting to his manager, or a manager reporting to an executive, or an executive reporting to the board, and so on.  With technology we now have access to more data than ever before which we can incorporate into our analysis and decision process, and yet so many of us often overlook the critical step of distillation.

Some years ago my team devised and launched the first conference on the use of competitive intelligence (CI) for law firm planning efforts. In those days the predominant tools seemed to be publisher rankings with accompanying demographics, which serve as catalysts to drive strategy.  For example, a law firm partner may observe that several peer firms have launched an office in London, or in Silicon Valley, and therefore the firm takes steps to follow. Such a process appeals to the risk-averse and precedent-driven mindset of many lawyers -- if others have done it, it must be a good idea.

The anecdote is most likely apocryphal, but is it so hard to imagine the law firm leader who viewed the AmLaw 100 summaries in July of 2000 and immediately set about looking into launching a Y2K practice, which for some reason seemed to be enormously popular with his peer firms the prior year?  Today the situation is very different, with most large law firms using current competitive intelligence databases and techniques to assess their clients and competitors and understand market trends in order to incorporate this information into the strategic plan.

The most common use of CI, it appears, is for routine pitches and lunch meetings. The usual process starts with a call from a partner, indicating that he needs to know all there is to know about a potential client in advance of a pitch meeting. Some combination of a reference librarian and a marketing analyst research the various databases, capture all the relevant information, de-dupe it (remove repetitive information), clean it, add a summary, and deliver a beautifully bound dossier to the partner.  Trouble is, many times the information presented is too voluminous to be useful.

I recall a project where a partner asked for my help preparing for two pitches -- one to a major US automotive manufacturer; the other to a major pharma manufacturer.  We commissioned reports from the CI team and a few days later when we met to review the material, the conference room had two foot-high stacks of binders, one stack for each target. The binders were useless, as they consisted of lengthy printouts of financial statements, annual reports, analyst commentary and news articles. The summary was merely an index to the tabs separating the content.  Needless to say, neither the partner nor I had the several hours it would take to read the material, so we prepared without it.

I later sat down with the reference librarian and the marketing analyst to discuss a better approach. Both felt their respective efforts represent best practices.  The reference librarian felt his role is to access as many of the right databases as possible and present the content essentially unfiltered, except for de-duping.  His credibility depends on him delivering everything, because the worst case scenario is to omit an important fact.  The analyst felt her role in cleaning up the data means organizing it and creating an index.  She can't eliminate much because she can't possibly know what the partner might find relevant.  Each was surprisingly dogmatic and inflexible.

One law firm marketer I know well has a very different approach.  She wields a red pen and uses it liberally, sending CI reports back to the researcher or analyst time and again until the output is concise and impactful.  For example, she allows financial reports only in an optional appendix, and instead demands a trend summary in a line or two. "Revenues and earnings increased 7% and 11%, as a result of the recent acquisition of X Corp and the resulting post-merger pruning.  These results compare with a 5-year CAGR of 4.5% and 9% respectively."

Rather than merely listing all filings found through docket searches, she includes a pie chart showing major categories of litigation. This may also be accompanied with commentary culled from the data: "IP protection in emerging markets has been the greatest challenge in the past, but the trend has recently shifted toward products liability defense. As its products gain wider global distribution, the company faces increased scrutiny from regulators and safety advocates."

She may also provide insights into areas of opportunity:  "There are regular employment-related lawsuits, suggesting an opportunity to present our compliance training which reduces employer exposure" or "The recent JV in Brazil and other IP protection efforts in the area may suggest this is an important growing market.  Perhaps our South American office can help their executives by making introductions to the various commerce officials with whom we have solid relationship."  You get the picture.

In these examples, the CI reports rarely reach a full two pages; they reference the source material if the lawyer wants more background (they rarely do); and the distillation provides the marketing team an in-depth understanding of the potential opportunities so they can begin working on pitch materials that will help highlight the firm's capabilities in these areas.

Competitive Intelligence is the forum for today's example, but the same fundamentals apply to so many other situations.  It's obviously much harder to distill complex information into succinct portions, but doing so flexes analytical muscles and positions the analyst as a value-added resource rather than a paper-shuffling clerk.

You may wonder yourself if I could have delivered these points more succinctly.  Probably.  But then again, I am not a professional cartoonist.

Meddlesome Clients Often Drive Changes

Should in-house lawyers allow their internal clients, the business managers, to micro-manage the law department budget?  Should business people be allowed to help select outside counsel, to sit in on transaction or litigation updates with outside counsel, or even to attend trials or participate in negotiating sessions that are beyond business issues and deep into legalease?  Moreover, should business managers be allowed to interact directly with outside counsel, bypassing the in-house lawyer completely? Many in-house lawyers say no.  The in-house lawyer's job is to run point on these legal tasks, filter the issues and then provide wise counsel to business management, they say.  There is often an unstated belief that many of the legal issues are slightly beyond the grasp of most business managers.  Does this attitude change if the in-house law department allocates its costs via charge-back to the internal clients of its services, making business managers the more direct buyers of legal services?

Rees Morrison, as he so often does, gets right to the point in a recent blog article describing how many in-house lawyers reject such oversight:

"One reason for such reluctance is a fear that clients will then believe they have a right to say which law firm to use and how to manage the firm, to meddle in the management of cases, to pick and choose which associates and partners, as if even to sit second seat at trials."

In my various roles in business management, I've had the opportunity to retain outside counsel for a variety of projects.  I've also had stewardship over the in-house law department (also called, alternatively, the "Department of No" and the "cost center").  In not one case did I or my colleagues in the executive management ranks feel overburdened by the legal issues.  We felt pretty confident that we could grasp the nuances, though our objective was determinedly fixed on how these legal issues aided or impaired our ability to accomplish the business objectives.  Indeed, there might be something to gain if the legal department were to take some cues from its internal clients.

In many businesses we are required to estimate revenues and costs well in advance -- in a typical planning cycle we submit our budgets by August for the following year.  And there is no easy forgiveness if we fail to properly predict the future.  You can surely imagine the challenge in quantifying uncertainty in a businesses own production capacity, market demand, competitive threats, economic or regulatory or other exogenous influences.  When allocating capital expenditures or targeting acquisitions, we must calculate cash flows 5 to 7 years out.  So when the legal department submits a budget that adds a 20% premium over last year, intended to address likely outside counsel rate increases and to provide sufficient cover for an unknown number of transactions and unforeseen litigation, you can imagine our skepticism.

Without question it's a challenge to predict legal costs in the face of uncertainty.  But this isn't a binary situation, where you either can or cannot provide useful estimates.  Not everything is uncertain to the same degree.  Divide and conquer.  For recurring legal work, there is a greater chance of predicting variability.  For others, such as litigation which is often a lagging indicator, look to leading indicators.  Is there a significant share price drop this year that will likely lead to shareholder action next year?  Do your internal compliance metrics suggest a potential whistleblower or FCPA claim?  How about the rate of defective returns this year, is there a chance of a products liability suit next year?  You get the picture.

As for outside counsel selection, we've all heard about the fear of hiring the "wrong" firm even at the right cost, because when the deal goes south the in-house lawyer will be held responsible.  In reality, I've been in numerous transactions and negotiations and rarely have I felt our position to be so tenuous that success or failure is primarily going to be influenced by the quality of our advocacy.  Furthermore, with all due respect to in-house counsel, if your own contribution is deemed to be so tenuous that your retention is tied primarily to the proper selection of outside counsel, then perhaps there are other issues in play.  And finally, I'm confident that even where these fears are valid, allowing business management to participate in the selection process will diffuse the responsibility for a poor selection.

Just imagine how that conversation would go.  We're sitting in the board room conducting a day-long law firm beauty pageant, with 5 or 6 firms lined up to make their pitch, each toting beautiful binders of elegant prose about the firm's history, the well-educated lawyers, the focus on clients, and so on.  Imagine if instead of allowing the firms to read their brochures at us, we ask the following questions:

• What do you know of our business challenges?
• How would you approach working through these business challenges with us?
• What will you charge for these services?
• If your rate is substantially higher than other firms, please quantify how your approach is substantially better.

Most business executives are approached by an endless parade of suitors who wish to sell us something, partner with us, forge an alliance or joint venture, use our sales channels to sell their products, use our capital to grow their business, and so on.  We get pretty good at quickly ferreting out the pretenders and for the remainder we focus on how their contribution is additive to the business. If they've done their homework, they can help write this storyline.

As the legal marketplace evolves, and as law departments are tasked with <gasp!> bringing their expenditures in alignment with the fiscal controls used elsewhere, and with the emergence of multiple alternatives to the "classic" way of delivering legal services, it's incumbent on in-house lawyers to move along the continuum from lawyer to business leader.  There are a number of approaches in use in every business today which can improve the budgeting and management of the legal function, including the selection of outside counsel.

When we in the business ranks meddle, it's because funds inefficiently diverted to the legal function create an opportunity cost elsewhere.  Let us behind the curtain, because we might have something to add.  And what's the worst outcome?  Perhaps after a day of sitting through law firm presentations we'll end up like the young teenager whose parents provided her first cigarette.  While choking and turning blue, she exclaimed, "What a stupid idea. I won't try that again."

Vendor Perspective of the LMA Annual Conference

Some years ago when I led a company that was a prominent vendor and sponsor to the legal marketing community, I would regularly take the LMA to task for its tone-deaf and heavy-handed approach to vendors.  They listened and today the association, and the legal marketing community, are far more receptive and embrace the involvement of legal vendors and suppliers.  Don't get me started on other legal associations which appear to regard vendors as evildoers whose role is to send money and logos in return for some token table scraps. So other than one comment, this post does not address the effectiveness of the LMA annual conference from the vendor perspective.  Rather, I will comment on vendor participation at the conference... what worked, and what didn't.

First, the one comment directed to LMA:  The hotel was a beautiful venue and well-suited for a business conference. However, the exhibit hall must be closer to the educational session rooms. No ifs, ands or buts about it.  Periodically a conference planning team will underestimate the importance of this single fact.  That's a mistake.  Since I'm confident every vendor made this point in their post-conference evaluations, I won't belabor it here.

I presented on the topic of managing legal directories, lists and rankings along with Nicole Carrubba of Captivate Legal Marketing.  Though we both have considerable expertise in this area, we spent some prep time on the phone interviewing directory publishers and consultants who specialize in this space.  The publishers, without exception, in some way incorporated the following three assumptions in their remarks: everyone hates us; the competitors stink; and our offering is defined by what the competitors are not.

There are certainly some legal marketers who don't like the very notion of directories, rankings and lists, believing them all to be part of some scam based on lawyer vanity.  But there are many who view these tools as standard components of a law firm's marketing mix, plus there is a constant influx of new marketers from outside the legal profession who have no pre-formed bias.  My recommendation, lose the chip on your shoulder.

In every business there are competitors.  There are often head-to-head fight-to-the-last-bullet battles between competitors.  And it's important to know the competition.  But my view has always mirrored legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden's (possibly apocryphal) view on  game preparation. He never reviewed film of his opponents, and instead focused his team on flawless execution of the basics.  In other words, it doesn't matter what the other guy is doing; all that matters is that we execute well.  In business, deliver what you promise, deliver what the client needs, and let the other guy worry about what you're doing.

In a similar fashion, find your own unique selling proposition.  Help the legal marketers answer the question, Why is your offering additive to my marketing mix?  It's not effective to use "We're better than the other guy because we don't do X or Y, we do Z."  This assumes I have superior knowledge of the other guy, which immediately diminishes your offering. What do you do well? Figure out how to say it.

Interestingly, as I walked the exhibit floor talking to multiple vendors, this theme reappeared several more times.  In one notable case, the president of a small technology company was barely able to articulate what his offering delivered. He hemmed and hawed waiting for the top sales guy to finish up with another prospect, and while he was waiting he described his product thusly:  "We're sort of a Product N light. We don't do all that they do, but then most people don't need all that anyway."  Product N, in case you hadn't guessed, is a leading product in the category.  My advice (well, beyond "Don't stand in the booth if you have nothing helpful to add") once again is to define your unique selling proposition in a few words.  Surely you must offer something that doesn't require me to know all about the competition first!

At one point I worked the exhibit hall during one of the educational sessions.  I suspect I'm not the only conference attendee who occasionally finds nothing of interest at the offered sessions, or perhaps just wants to talk to vendors without the crowd that amasses during breaks. However, the booths were mostly empty. Obviously I wasn't able to poke my head into every educational session, but since many vendors had exhibit-only passes, I surmised that they weren't attending a session and they weren't in the booth.  Where were they?  I can only hope that they were busy in a demo room or were holding some other private client discussions.  If they were at the hotel but not in the booth when prospects were there, that is a travesty.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed the 15-minute chair massage in the information vendor's booth while no one was around.

The opposite is also true.  In some booths the vendor representatives repelled visitors through one of two techniques:  either they stood in a semi-circle in the front of the booth facing in while talking amongst themselves, making an approach impossible; or they stood in a semi-circle facing outward, making an approach daunting as 4 or 5 sets of eyes stared at every passer-by.  Some sat quietly working on their laptops undoubtedly attending to important client matters while we walked by, glanced at the literature, possibly picked up a giveaway pen, and moved on, never making eye contact.  A few, of course, made visitors feel welcome.  I won't go into detail here how to make that happen because it's more amusing to point out what doesn't work -- and besides, helping vendors better reach clients is part of what I do for a living!

Actually, I will reveal the greatest secret to increasing your ROI at a conference, particularly a close-knit community like the legal marketers.  It's this:  Be part of the community.  It's that simple.  How?  Buy more than exhibit-only badges and spend more time with the clients and prospects, learning alongside them in educational sessions, spreading out and mingling with them at breakfast, lunches and cocktail receptions, and attending all the after-hours events.

My former sales teams knew, enjoyed and heartily participated in this credo of non-stop client interaction.  We reached a point where our conference booth was the least important place for us to interact with clients.  We didn't even post a schedule.  We knew that during the conference, from roughly 7 AM to midnight every day, we were with our clients -- our friends! -- participating and contributing alongside them. When the exhibit hall was open, we'd all be around, though we wouldn't congregate in the booth and scare visitors away.  And we most certainly, and enthusiastically, joined our clients after-hours.  And we didn't always pick up the tab either.  Because we were members, not vendors.

At one point at the LMA's "gala" event, amidst all the dancing and frivolity, I stepped outside to get some air and to drop in to a bar next door to the conference hotel to have a drink with an old colleague.  There, arrayed in a group of 15 or so, was one vendor team.  There wasn't a client in sight, for they were all enjoying themselves back at the conference hotel.  Just the vendors enjoying themselves, by themselves. This is poignant example of what to do as a vendor to the community, rather than as a member of the community.  I'll wager a tall, cold drink at the next conference that the ROI report delivered to this vendor's management team was that the conference was good, but not great.

Legal vendors: what sort of sales team preparation do you undertake before attending a major industry conference?  Does the team memorize clear and concise elevator scripts, unique selling propositions and positioning statements?  Do they know their responsibility at the conference is not equal to their assigned booth times?  Does management in attendance know what to say, or when to be quiet?  Do they know when to join clients, and when to take the team offsite for well-deserved R&R?  This isn't rocket science.  Good products, even great products, don't sell themselves.  It takes work and practice to move along the continuum from vendor to the client community to member of the client community.  Are you there yet?  What are you waiting for?

Business Development in the Economic Downturn

At the recent Legal Marketing Association annual conference, I was interviewed by Incisive Media, publisher of countless legal trade journals, organizers of legal conferences and provider of competitive intelligence tools to legal marketers. I was asked how law firms can adapt their legal marketing tactics in light of the economic downturn. You may view the short interview here.

A Note on Reducing Law Firm Associate Compensation

A recent op-ed in the New York Times stated the obvious point, at least for readers of this blog, that some of the mechanics of the legal profession are in dire need of updating.  The author specifically identifies associate compensation as a leading target for significant revision. The author is right, of course, on several points.  Associates at large firms enjoy generous starting compensation packages that by comparison to entry level legal jobs in the public sector, or in small firms, or frankly to entry level jobs anywhere, appear disproportionately large.  Implicit in the piece is the burden these high fixed costs present to law firms who have experienced a fairly sudden and substantial decrease in demand for legal services.

Not expressed in the article, but known to observers of the legal profession, are two additional challenges:  newly graduated lawyers are by and large not prepared to practice law; and they don't stay long enough to generate sufficient profits to pay for their own learning curve.  So large law firms are paying substantial wages to green recruits, trained to think and act like a lawyer, but not yet ready to lawyer, and then incurring additional expenses for on-the-job training. Some of this learning curve has been subsidized by clients, many of whom are finally asserting that their high legal fees should buy senior lawyers with deep experience rather than a host of trainees inefficiently learning while doing.

The author suggests a drop in associate compensation is needed, from $160,000 in major cities to perhaps $100,000. This suggestion will no doubt rally the snarky set who frequent the legal tabloids:

“YOU feel sorry for THEM? ...the spoiled Ivy grads - who lost their silver spoon overpaid jobs that they never deserved in the first place, because they only billed 1600 hours and half of that was padded time anyway . . . wah wah wah!”

The simple fact of the matter is, when demand for labor declines then labor rates decline.  It's no more nor less justified or "right" than in recent years when demand for labor was high and labor rates for the most desirable new lawyers increased.

But is it enough?  I don't believe reducing associate compensation, or laying off staff members, is even close to approaching the solution.  And I'm not even referring to the crying need to reduce partner compensation, or even to cull the partner rolls -- even though doing so would be in keeping with the declining demand-declining labor rate equilibirum impacting associates.  No, to "solve" the challenges facing the legal profession requires a re-think, as the New York Times writer suggests.  But rather than limit the conversation to compensation and overhead and billing rates, it's time to take a good hard look at how law is practiced.

In any industry, the inexorable encroachment of technology or innovation provide new entrants with advantages that can disintermediate or displace incumbents.  Refer to any grammar school text book for a recap of how Eli Whitney's cotton gin transformed the postwar Southern agricultural industry.  Undoubtedly there were a few cotton pickers whose jobs and wages were disrupted.  Henry Ford's assembly line turned the automobile from a quaint toy for the wealthy into a necessary tool for modern life, shrinking the continent and making suburban life practical... and wreaking havoc on the proverbial buggy whip manufacturer.  The story continues, from the invention of the computer to the Internet to eBay to Amazon's "one-click" business method to global positioning satellites to asset securitization and so on.  In the march of human progress when we find a better, cheaper, more effective alternative, we shed a tear for a nostalgic moment and then we move on.

It's time that the typical law firm of today take a good hard l0ok at modern business practices such as governance structures which improve rather than impair organizational effectiveness; supply chain management techniques to eliminate redundant and unprofitable workflow steps; the application of technology to automate repetitive tasks; the use of alternative fee structures to promote efficiency and reward successful outcomes rather than time.

Some of these topics have been promoted before. Very few law firm leaders haven't heard the drumbeat of alternative fees, for example.  But what has been lacking is specific, actionable, quantifiable information to demonstrate how these business practices will improve the practice of law for both the suppliers -- the law firms -- and the consumers -- the clients.

No more, I say.  Let's move from theory to practice.  We will address these topics in more detail in this blog in the coming weeks.  Stay tuned.

For another perspective, read Ron Friedmann's reaction to the NYT article here.