The Barustors Report
DEVELOPING A MARKETING CULTURE
AT YOUR LAW FIRM
A law firm's culture is the spirit of its brand, the substance behind the icon. The essence of that culture is expressed through the promises that are made to the client. When those promises are in line with clients' desires, and when they are consistently delivered, law firms grow healthy and strong.
It follows then, that the successful law firm knows itself. It is acutely aware of its purpose and values, and is on a constant mission to integrate these distinct attributes at every level of its operation. These distinct attributes constitute a type of DNA. Everything the firm does should be an outgrowth of this core programming.
The legal profession has evolved into an industry, and many of the best firms are growing into substantial businesses. As with their colleagues (and clients) in the corporate sector, a growing number of these firms are being led by visionary CEOs who understand the subtle difference between selling legal services and delivering solutions to clients' legal needs. One such firm is Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe LLP.
Recently, Martha Sullivan, owner of Thornton Marketing, moderated a penetrating discussion on this topic. The guests were Wayne Marks, senior vice president of The Forum Corporation, and John Buchanan, Communications Executive at Heller Ehrman.
Culture Starts With A Clear Vision
As a starting point, a firm must ponder itself, its clients, and the position it wants to hold in the legal marketplace. Such introspection and analysis take time and should include feedback from a cross-section of the firm's people and clients. Consultants might also be brought in, to offer an outside perspective. As Marks put it, the objective of these audits is to answer the questions, "What experience do our clients want, and what culture must we define in order to give them that experience?"
From that answer, the firm's core values will emerge. At Heller Ehrman, those values are: People, Community, Teamwork, Excellence, and One Firm. All of Heller Ehrman's business, hiring, and expansion decisions are first evaluated against these parameters. A commitment to core values offers additional benefits, as well. As Sullivan put it, "If you're clear on your culture, you'll know which clients don't share your values and don't belong on your client roster."
Culture Comes From The Top
As with any great organization, vision starts at the top. Marks observed that if you examine the culture of the people in a company, you will know what the CEO is like. He referred to Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon.com as a leader whose energy and creative excitement is visible in his people. He also referred to a major hospitality chain as staunch adherents of doing business their way. When this chain buys a property, they install their own management team. Qualified candidates from the old operation may be retained, but only on the condition that they are retrained in the new company's way of business. The company operates this way because they are not merely collecting properties; they are spreading their unique brand of business through additional outlets.
Buchanan praised Heller Ehrman's charismatic chairman, Barry Levin, for his evangelistic communication of, and relentless commitment to, the firm's values. Levin regularly visits the firm's various offices, and he encourages recruits to come aboard only if they agree with the firm's culture. Buchanan also noted that Lonnie Zwerin, Heller Ehrman's Director of Marketing & Communications, has long been a proponent of focusing on the firm's culture and developing an integrated marketing strategy that communicates the firm's core values. He said that this kind of dedication and focus has allowed Heller Ehrman to effectively implement a host of marketing initiatives, including a new branding and advertising campaign, a new web site, improved marketing collateral, and an aggressive public relations program.
Culture Must Permeate The Organization
The healthy law firm is a living, integrated organism. Heller Ehrman cultivates and expresses its core values in everything it does, from the way it conducts interviews, runs its meetings, writes its PR message points, and creates its advertising. As a case in point, a recent ad campaign was designed around the slogan, "Challenging The Laws of Convention."
People at all levels of the organization attorneys and non-attorneys, alike are trained in the firm's capabilities. Lateral hires spend several hours with the firm's marketing people, learning about the firm's core values and culture. Everyone in the firm is taught simple sentences that encapsulate the firm's achievements. These short-liners are effective during social chatter, and can be as succinct as, "We represent three of the largest antitrust suits in the nation." Heller Ehrman also developed a "strategic architecture" that they use in their decision-making. The schematic contains the firm's core values in the center, and its goals on the perimeter. All decisions are evaluated by this model.
Heller Ehrman also makes creative use of computer "splash screens." When Heller Ehrman employees log on to their computers each morning, the daily splash screen appears. The text covers topics ranging from big team wins to individual honors. A deliberate by-product of the splash screen is its ability to help pull the offices together and reinforce a "community concept," as the splash screen is the same firm wide. In addition, the internal publicity inspires more attorneys to announce their settlement and trial victories, speaking engagements, and publications. Heller Ehrman also uses this medium to include information about key clients and to disseminate PR information.
Internally, the firm employs a level of motivation that is reminiscent of a contemporary sales organization. They recently launched an internal campaign to publicize and introduce the new ad campaign to the firm. Playing off the, "Heller Ehrman Versus" theme, red static Vs were pasted all over their offices, and a large "V" appeared on daily splash screens prior to the premier of the ads. Buchanan reports that the effectiveness of these combined efforts is being seen organically in the firm: people at all levels, including partners, are beginning to use the firm's cultural terminology in their conversations.
Culture Must Be Regularly Measured and Evaluated
The absence of complaints does not imply client satisfaction. Law firms must regularly gather data from their clients. However, they must do so deliberately. That is, they must know what they want to find out, and they must commit to following through on their findings.
To illustrate, Marks once again turned to the hospitality company. The company has long known that two important needs of their clients are check-in time and friendly service. They never assume that they are meeting clients' expectations in these areas. Instead, they ask. If the average waiting time to check in is two minutes, and clients find this to be too long, the company will make the necessary changes to reduce wait time to, say, one-and-a-half minutes. They will then re-measure client satisfaction. As Marks put it, "Your people are the ambassadors of the brand."
Heller Ehrman measures effectiveness in several ways:
| Bay Area legal marketing consultant, John Cosmides, is principal of The Cosmides Group and director of Barustors, a State Bar-certified referral service for business and corporate clients. John can be reached at john@barustors.com or at 415-957-1330. | |