While doing my annual review of the year in law office management and technology, my focus kept returning to the numerous predictions of challenging change ahead for lawyers. Some of these trends are already apparent and others are coming into focus. For my column in the December 2010 Oklahoma Bar Journal, I decided to discuss some of these trends and provide some resources to lawyers as they contemplate the future. I hope you appreciate my column titled Reviewing 2010 Should Make Lawyers Think About the Future. Download Calloway Reviewing 2010 and the Future

Here are a couple highlights:

• There are a host of negative pressures on the legal market.
• Fred Ury predicts that within a decade, there will likely be 10 percent to 40 percent fewer lawyers than there are today.
• Lawyers and law students must take charge of their careers and become entrepreneurs.

While I do believe that legal professionals will have to evolve to survive this new future, I don't believe that the outlook for legal services professionals is as bleak as some have contended.

As it always is with any business, the key to lawyers' success in the future comes down to their ability to adapt, change, and evolve. Those that are unable to adapt to their new environment, will perish. It's simple natural selection. On the other hand, legal professionals that are adapting to the future, including adoption of law practice management, networking, and marketing technologies will survive. In fact, due to the nature of many of these technologies, it is likely that costs associated with accessing these tools is likely to be much lower than it has historically.

While there are several unique aspects to practicing law and running a legal practice, too many legal professionals still fail to accept that law firms are businesses. This is not to diminish the important function that lawyers serve our society. However, this is a capitalist society (or at least quasi-capitalist) and in order to be a viable profession, legal professionals must look at themselves as business people.

Your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening.

In the time since the article, review sites, online social signals, and local signals have gained more and more importance for business owners, including legal professionals. This has happened primarily from the demand for trust online. Some social and local signals provide a trust element that just hasn't existed online in this form.

However, to me, the real insight from the article comes from Greg Sterling, a San Francisco-based Internet analyst who specializes in small business and local search:

“It’s all common sense — the best way to ensure that you have positive reviews is to offer good products, good service, have integrity and be diligent,” said Greg Sterling,. “It’s really just the rules of dealing with people in the real world, translated online.”

With all of the buzz surrounding social media, SEO tricks and secrets, and the various other forms of Internet snake oil, the truth is that effective online marketing, in many ways, parallels its offline predecessor.

Successful law firm web marketing really comes down to some simple ideas. Provide the best possible service for your clients. Develop a professional presence with informative content and get that content in front of people who are able to publicize it, link to it, and share it with your target audience of potential clients.

Here are some basic questions that can make a big difference:

• Can you provide examples of your work and share the results? - There is no substitute for experience. Hold your web strategy partner accountable for delivering tangible results.
• What is your position on Google's Webmaster Guidelines? - The Webmaster Guidelines certainly leave some room for interpretation. However, how your prospective consultant interprets these guidelines will have a significant impact on their success and the risks to your professional reputation.
• What results should I expect? - From the beginning of your web strategy partnership, you should set tangible goals and expectations. If your goals and expectations don't match those of your web strategist, you are likely to be disappointed.
• How long will it take to obtain those results? - Timing and patience are critical to successful web strategy. While you shouldn't expect results overnight, you shouldn't have to wait years to see significant results. Depending on the strategies in place, we generally like to see significant improvements within 6-8 months.
• How do you measure results? - This is one of the most critical questions. Too many consultants track the wrong metrics. Ultimately, you should measure any marketing on how well it increases business to your firm. You should also measure search engine positions, traffic to your site, and potential client inquiries from the web.
• What's your experience in the legal industry? - Just because a web consultant has had success in other industries, doesn't mean they will have success with your law firm. Web marketing for law firms is highly competitive and presents unique challenges that don't exist in marketing other businesses.
• What's your experience in my location? - Understanding the competition in your specific geographic region is also very helpful. Web marketing in New York City isn't the same as marketing in suburban Arizona.
• What strategies do you plan on implementing? - It is absolutely essential that you understand what your strategy professional plans to do for you and why. That is why it's so important for you to learn law firm seo basics.
• Will you communicate website changes, information on your recommendations, and the reasoning behind them? - Successful web strategy requires communication. There are very few "secrets". Mostly, online marketing success comes down to knowledge, skill, experience, and leg work. Don't get duped into buying "secrets", "special relationships", or other magic seo.

Asking these basic questions will help you avoid many of the most common web consultant traps. Are you considering hiring a consultant? What questions / concerns are you facing? Have you interviewed web strategy consultants? What challenges have you faced? Do you have a healthy partnership with your web strategists? What have you found makes your partnership work?

Free Guide: Hiring A Law Firm SEO Consultant Learn How To Go About Hiring An SEO Consultant For Your Law Firm Including: Hiring a Professional vs Do It Yourself Finding The Right SEO Consultant Pitfalls To Avoid Google’s Recommendations Questions To Ask An SEO Before You Hire Them

Small firms and solo practitioners should specialize, even if by exclusion.

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Solos and small firms also have to learn to say "no" to clients who are either unwilling or unable to pay their fees. Early qualification of clients should occur by virtue of fee counseling, engagement letters, and fee memos clearly spelling out the client’s obligations.

Your initial reaction during a difficult time might be to "take on all comers." To the contrary, client qualification and selection is more important now than ever. While there are certainly many unique challenges to practicing law and managing a law firm, too many legal professionals fail to recognize the business aspects to their practices.

If your law firm is not profitable, it will eventually cease to exist. Maximizing your time on your best clients and minimizing, or eliminating, time on your worst, is an important step to securing your prosperity.

#2: Take a Lawyer to Lunch

"Small firms that specialize in only certain practice areas should develop a network of other firms specializing in different practice areas, for purposes of referral of work by specialty. Inbound and outbound referrals should be monitored and tracked to assure that the implicit quid pro quo actually develops, and to maximize the asset value of outbound referrals for business development purposes."

Referral business remains one of the very best sources of new business. With the advent of social media and social networking, developing referral relationships is that much more efficient and effective. Follow online social etiquette, but don't be afraid to reach out to others. Relationship-built businesses always prevail.

#3: Show the Old School Ties

College friendships and acquaintances should be maintained as a potential source of clients. Just as importantly, law school ties should be maintained, particularly with lawyers specializing in other areas of practice and who practice are outside of your jurisdiction.

Nurturing and maintaining existing professional relationships is even more important than building new ones.  These "old" relationships should be your strongest.  Don't be afraid to leverage them for new business.  Remember to reciprocate.  Relationship maintenance is a two-way street.

#4: Become Famous

Solos and small firms should get to know reporters in local newspapers and other publications that cover legal and business fields. It is entirely appropriate to volunteer to provide expert background on legal topics within the ambit of one’s practice specialty.

While more easily said than done, developing relationships with journalists and other publishers can be the most powerful strategy in terms of building your professional brand.

In addition to positioning yourself as a trusted authority in your field, building relationships with online publishers can have significant benefits to your search engine visibility.  If your local newspapers consider you an expert, chances are that Google, and more importantly, potential clients will too.

#5: Give Back to the Community

each lawyer should select one or two activities or organizations to join and contribute actively, preferably achieving leadership status. Furthermore, the commitment to the community organization should be genuine—overt selling is never necessary.

With high-paced schedules, legal professionals often puch time investments to the back burner.  However, time spent on community participation and sponsorship, can be one of the most effiecient and effective reputation building investments.  And who knows, it might just make you feel good too.

#6: Get Your Money’s Worth from the Bar Association

Bar associations can be exploited as excellent referral sources.

While I'm all for getting your money's worth from your Bar Association, in my experiences, Bar Association networking has been generally more expensive than valuable.  Obviously, it stands to reason that the effectiveness of networking varies greatly from on Association to another, as well as, one practice area to another.

In my opinion, if you're going to invest in Bar Association networking, stick with local associations.

#7: Mine Your Clients

80% of the business development potential of a law firm comes from existing clients; conversely, only 20% of the potential rests in the remainder of the marketplace. Clients are potential sources of repeat business, plus potential selling of other specialties in a firm, and referrals.

Yes.  A satisfied, well-serviced client is absolutely your strongest marketing agent.  Nurture these relationships.

#8: Don’t Hang Around Lawyers

Although law school classmates and bar associations might be developed as referral sources, other local lawyers are potentially poor sources of significant referral business, unless one’s practice is highly specialized, or lawyers/friends are corporate counsel who cede their client’s work to outside law firms. In most instances, social circles should concentrate on business people and other prospective clients.

I have seen too many lawyers who spend a great deal of time building professional relationships with other lawyers, and wonder why they're not receiving a great deal of new clients.  Look, building referral relationships is very important.  However, you have to "go where your clients are."  While becoming the best friend of many other lawyers in your community can lead to professional recognition and leaderships positions, don't over do it at the risk of not building new potential client relationships.

#9: Reinvest in Your Practice

Solo practitioners and small firms probably should spend up to 5% of revenues in marketing, advertising, business development, and promotion to achieve a profile and brand-name recognition to influence clients.

***

Investment in technology is a competitive requirement in today’s marketplace.

Ding ding ding ding!  Law firms are businesses.  They require investments in order to grow.  If you rely solely on your existing recognition and relationships, you probably won't have the kind of success that you want.

Like it is in business, complacency in the marketing and management of your law firm is usually a death sentence.

#10: Manage Your Economics

Fundamental to financial management of any business is knowing your costs.

Failing to measure, manage, and analyze the economics of the firm is a widespread problem among legal professionals.  Many managing attorneys simply don't make understanding the economics of their businesses a priority.

This problem is especially true when it comes to marketing and advertising costs.  One of the first things we do for our clients is to take an audit of their existing marketing efforts.  It is shocking how few marketing programs are held accountable through performance metric measuring.

We have seen law firms pouring thousands per month into unmeasured programs.  Holding marketing accountable is one of the first places to improve upon the efficiency of business costs.

Despite being four years old (ages in online time), Bower's keys to small law success seem to be more important now than ever.

These are some common complaints we hear from legal professionals about social media and social networking.  While I have little doubt that these statements are true for the attorneys that have made them, the very nature of the statements indicates a lack of understanding of the very nature of social media and social networking.

This is a very common, as well as, legitimate complaint.  Your professional time is probably the second most valuable asset you have.  Can you guess the first?

While not having enough time is certainly a legitimate complaint, it's not a legitimate excuse for not participating online.  To me, saying that you don't have enough time for social media and social networking is like saying you don't have enough time to respond to emails, answer the phone, or participate in offline professional networking activities.

I set up a profile and am getting zero results.

You set up a profile and aren't getting results?  Weird.  Again, expecting results from setting up a social media profile is like hooking up your office phone and waiting for it to ring.  While you need a phone to talk to prospects, clients, and other professional contacts, simply having a phone won't make it ring.  Despite the fact that they contain your firm's contact information, your social media profiles are not advertisements!

I haven't seen social media produce a single client for my firm.

And how did you draw this conclusion?  Haven't received a client intake form from a twitter direct message?  No one has posted a request for a consultation on your facebook wall?  Your readers aren't leaving "call me I want to hire you" as comments on your blog?

I'm a big believer in return on investment.  "Believer" is probably the wrong word.  It's axiomatic that marketing and advertising investments should produce a return.  However, how you measure the return for any particular investment, can vary greatly.

For example, if you pay for online advertising, you should measure impressions, clicks, conversions, phone calls, and new clients.  If, over time, your advertisement does not generate more in terms of new business than it costs, then you should drop it.

On the other hand, there are many marketing investments that require more sophisticated measurement.  For example, how do you attach a dollar amount to a conversation that leads to a speaking engagement that leads to a new client.  How do you measure the value of being quoted in an industry journal?

Abandoning social media and social networking because clients aren't checking the "found you on twitter" box of your intake form is unwise.

A Social Networking Participation Plan

Once you understand that social media is a tool and not an advertising opportunity, it's time to understand how to use the tools at your disposal.  The only thing worse than not having the right tools, is using tools the wrong way.  This can be especially problematic when you're talking about tools that may impact your professional reputation, your most valuable asset.

There is a lot of information out there about using social media for your law firm.  Some great, some ok, some just wrong.  Before you buy books, webinars, or pay huge consulting fees for social media expertise, check out the free stuff first.

Even more importantly, create an online social networking plan.  Here's a very basic 3 hour per week plan.  Start with smaller and informed social media investments.  Here are some additional guidelines:

- Avoid the "auto" stuff.  Your law firm doesn't have an auto-dialer (at least I hope not), neither should your profiles.

- Focus on "with" or "at".  Don't "participate" at people online, participate with them.

- Listen.

- Be responsive.

- Be patient.

- Measure your efforts in conversations.  Don't even think about how many "friends", "followers", and "connections" you have.  Focus on the number of times you "converse".  Start by trying to have one online conversation per day.

- Take your relationships offline.

- If you do absolutely nothing else, understand how to, and then start blogging.

After a week of back and forth between Chris Pearson, the creator of Thesis and Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, things finally concluded with the Thesis Theme adopting a split GPL (General Public License) for the Theme.

According to the GPL, software can be sold commercially but the user must be free to share the software, free to modify it, free to redistribute it to the community and free to share copies of his modified versions. In the words of the license, “If you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received.”

The split GPL will allow the parts of Thesis that use WordPress code to be freely shared. All the PHP code is GPL, while CSS and JavaScript code sections remain proprietary.

I find it all a bit confusing to be perfectly honest with you.  

Can the software now be purchased, modified, and freely distributed?

Chris Pearson tweeted this in response to what the adoption of a split GPL means to Thesis customers:

@tomoswyn It has no practical implications for 99.9% of people. It just means the PHP is GPLv2 and the CSS, JS, and images are proprietary.

Seems to me this pretty much nullifies what the GPL states.

I'd love to read some comments from our readers (especially ones with legal expertise in this field) letting me know your thoughts on this one.

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Soluto - Anti Frustration Software from Soluto on Vimeo.