The Barustors Report
LAW FIRM PORTALS
A Effective Tool For Cementing Client Relationships
Legal Marketing Association (LMA) Bay Area Program
Held at the
PRACTISING LAW INSTITUTE
San Francisco, October 9, 2001
COPYRIGHT 2001 THE COSMIDES GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
In its earliest business application, the internet served as an online brochure for companies. As it evolved, it became a repository of dynamic content, enabling companies to supply current, targeted information to their clients and prospects.
The latest evolution of the internet is the portal, a single, customizable desktop interface (or "page") from which users can access all manner of information, and perform all types of work. Yahoo is probably the world's best known portal.
Today, law firms are creating their own portals for use by their attorneys and clients. Andersen Legal, one of the world's largest law firms, just released its latest portal, Connect, as the stage on which clients and attorneys can work. Their portal includes deal management services, online news, and access to Andersen's and Andersen Legal's internal knowledge databases.
Portals offer three key benefits:
1. They save time, because they provide attorneys -- in a single location -- access to software applications, internet links, internal and external data bases, client records, transactional work and current news updates.
2. They help law firms generate uniform work, because they standardize the way legal work is performed.
3. They help law firms retain clients, because they can provide up-to-the-minute updates on the status of their work, as well as a collaborative platform for clients and attorneys to work together.
Bay Area LMA brought together four experts to discuss the importance of creating and using portals at law firms. The speakers were:
The panel addressed several important issues related to creating a law firm portal.
WHY SHOULD A FIRM CONSIDER A PORTAL?
Portals require a considerable investment of time and money, with no guarantee that attorneys and clients will use them. Therefore, the firm must first weigh internal and external demand.
Is there demand for this service?
Is there a lack of standardization in the firm's work product?
Are clients demanding an easier way to stay informed about the status of their matters and to collaborate with their attorneys?
Can a portal be used as an effective marketing tool to facilitate top-of-mind in the client?
Portals create efficiency, which generate long-term savings. They enable firms to create a better, and more consistent work product, and to tap into their own knowledge base more readily. These add up to a competitive advantage, because they enable people to work better, faster and smarter. Portals enable attorneys to quickly access content, and to stitch together legal teams and documents, by delivering the firm's various applications together onto a simple, desktop format. When designed in conjunction with a comprehensive CRM system, portals give users access to the firm's institutional memory from a single log-in point.
Portals can be customized around the individual user's needs, without losing collaborative abilities. This feature is familiar to many Yahoo users who take advantage of the My Yahoo option. For example, an attorney can configure her desktop around her daily routine. She can check email, voicemail, faxes, and the last 5 documents she worked on the previous evening. She can view the day's calendar, and then move right onto the first matter of the day.
Portals can similarly be customized for clients' use. They too can get updates on their matters, receive specific newsletter updates from the firm, access certain news servers, etc.
MAJOR HURDLES TO USER ACCEPTANCE AND FIRM-WIDE ADOPTION
As with most things, form must follow function when designing a portal. Law firms must first decide what problems they are trying to fix, if any. Surveying clients' needs, and determining if they will even use the portal, is a wise preliminary. Once these issues are addressed, the best way to build the portal is through beta testing, one feature at a time. For example, the firm can ask its corporate attorneys to use the portal for its next transaction, and then ask the attorneys how it worked for them. The panel discouraged open questions, such as "What would you like a portal to do for you?".
Other advice from the panel included:
1. Avoid excess features and confusing functionality. These may turn users off.
2. Be sure that in-bound and out-bound email is integrated into the portal. The panelists noted, "If you cannot send email easily from a project page to a client or team member, the opportunity to simplify a core task will be lost."
3. Win buy-in from upper management, and have them champion the technology to the firm.
4. Use "audit trails" to track usage. Audit trails can identify who is using the portal, what work they are performing on it, which features they are using, how long they are using the portal, etc.
SELLING THE PORTAL TO ATTORNEYS AND CLIENTS
According to Peter Buck, 90% of task-oriented portals (those designed to facilitate collaboration, as opposed to merely deliver content) fail because excitement does not spread. The panel offered these closing thoughts:
Inspire peer influence, by encouraging attorneys to evangelize portal usage to their fellow attorneys.
Create incentives for portal usage
Offer financial incentives for the percentage of their work attorneys do on the portal
If general counsel and other clients have their own portals, offer to plug your portal onto theirs.
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| 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. |  |