So he sits down at his computer and punches in the firm’s web site address to get the executive director’s name and direct-line phone number. He gives the home page a once-over and then does a search to find what he needs. But, alas, he comes up empty. Instead, he has to hunt through his files for the right number – or call the firm’s reception desk – either of which takes extra steps, extra time.

“I had been dealing with the managing partner about my presentation but I wasn’t about to bother him just to be sure all the arrangements were in order,” Bower says. “Besides, I know that the executive director is the guy who handles such arrangements. I didn’t want to get up from my desk and go hunt down the file and find the guy’s name. It drives me crazy that I can’t get to administrative leaders, who aren’t lawyers, from a firm’s web site.”

Frustrated and aggravated

Bower isn’t the only one who’s frustrated. Several people Of Counsel spoke to about this issue were also aggravated. After all, enter www.SmithJoneslaw.com and you’ll quickly and easily find a plethora of valuable facts about the firm, including information about its attorneys – their phone numbers, email addresses, pictures and bios. It’s one of the beauties of the Internet.

But when it comes to other important firm professionals who don’t have a law degree, the so-called “non-lawyers,” we encounter a very strange circumstance: A highly refined technological tool in which firms are deeply invested – and about which they’re often very proud – that fails to deliver some simple but important information.

These are odd omissions indeed, especially given the increasing importance of non-law-practicing professionals to a law firm’s success or failure. According to a recent study released by Washington-based consultant Greenfield/Belser entitled Why Firms Fail/Why Firms Succeed, firms that hired and gave substantial control to non-lawyer executives, such as chief financial officers or chief operating officers, are more likely to succeed than those that don’t. (For more on this, see Of Counsel, June 2004, back page.)

“Successful firms are three to five times as likely to have C-level positions filled as failed firms,” says consultant Burkey Belser. “So if those professionals are so crucial to a law firm’s success, they should certainly get air time on a firm’s web site.”

They should but they usually don’t. “It’s just plain stupid to play hide-and-seek with this information,” says Chicago-area-based consultant Larry Bodine, who says that while he was with Chicago’s Sidley & Austin several years ago he lobbied hard for senior managers to be listed on the firm’s web site. “But when I did, we’d have this big discussion during which some people would say, ‘If you list one staff person you have to list everybody.’ That’s baloney. You simply list the senior managers. It’s an efficient use of disclosure.”

 
Two-Tiered System to Blame

So what gives? Why the “hide-and-seek”? Some legal profession observers have a theory, and it’s not a pretty one. “Law firms are caste systems,” says one source who asked not to be named. “In most firms, there are the attorneys and then there is everyone else and everyone else doesn’t really count.” Consequently, if  “everyone else” is relegated to serf status, they don’t find a place on the web site.

Minneapolis-based consultant Sally Schmidt agrees with her counterparts Bower and Bodine, and seems equally irritated. “It’s clearly cultural,” she says. “There are lawyers and there are ‘non-lawyers,’ and the fact that we even call them ‘non-lawyers’ demonstrates a nomenclature that people in the normal world wouldn’t even think of.”

Schmidt says that when she discusses this subject she hears another reason for the omission. Some attorneys are afraid that if the chief operating officer, for example, is listed on a firm’s site that he or she will be inundated with vendor calls.

“But frankly,” Schmidt counters, “vendors call the reception desk and ask for the COO anyway. Or they’ll call the managing partner who’s on the web site. And I bet managing partners get all kinds of solicitations for various things. I would expect it would be better for those calls to go through some administrative person than through the lawyers, especially the managing partner.” As usual, Schmidt makes perfect sense.

Law firm leaders voice other reasons why they don’t include c-level professionals on their web sites. When Of Counsel expressed its frustration over discovering that the chief marketing officer of a particular, prominent New York firm is left off its web site, one of that partnership’s leaders says: “With all due respect to your profession, [journalists] are not the audience that our web site was designed for. It was designed for clients and to tell people interested in our legal services something about the firm. Clients want to know about our lawyers; they don’t want to know about the chief financial officer or the executive director. They care about the legal services so they want to know about the lawyers.”

Well, with all due respect to your profession, that’s ridiculous. Yes, of course, clients and potential clients want to know about the attorneys. But to think that they don’t give a damn about anyone else is, frankly, short-sighted.

There are plenty of scenarios in which a client might want to talk to an administrative professional. Let’s say a firm furnishes a client with an extranet. And the client’s director of information technology discovers a glitch in the system, and the corporate decision-makers can’t get to the information the extranet was intended to provide.

Does it make sense for the company’s IT guy to call the managing partner or another attorney on this matter, about this snafu? Of course not, so he goes to the firm’s web site and looks for his counterpart at the law firm, who he simply wants to call to find out how to fix the problem. But the firm’s IT head isn’t on the web site – which he probably helped design in the first place. So the client’s techie, annoyed by now, has to hunt down the name and number of the firm’s techie.

Bower adds another scenario or two to the mix. “I would think that a prospective client might call a chief marketing officer to find out exactly which lawyer he should talk to,” he says. “Or, if a client is having a billing problem and it’s not getting taken care of, they might want to call the CFO. I think firms should do everything they can do to make it easy for clients to deal with them.”

 
An A+ and Higher

But most firms don’t, in this regard. After Monica Bay, the editor of Law Technology News gave a speech about this issue at a recent LegalTech conference in which she strongly encouraged firms to list professionals on their sites, she conducted a quick survey. Bay perused the web sites of the 10 largest law firms in the country to find that only two, Baker & McKenzie and Weil, Gotschal & Manges “provide a visible directory of execs,” she writes, adding that B&K only did so after its chief operating officer heard her speech, agreed with her and had its site changed.

In fact, Weil, Gotschal has on its site its own separate directory, called “WGM Directory,” on which visitors can find categories of partners, associates and administrative staff. “We include the senior administrative staff on our web site because we believe that it’s important for people in the firm and visitors to our site to be able to contact them,” says Les Zuke, former head of global public relations. “For example, if a potential vendor needs the executive director, we want him or her to be able to reach our executive director easily.” What? Even vendors?

This is nothing new, Zuke says, as Weil Gotschal has long recognized the importance of having professionals who aren’t lawyers serving in key leadership positions and has posted these people on its web site for years.

The New York megafirm also realizes that it serves a number of different audiences and that its web site should accommodate them all. “Our site,” Zuke explains, “serves a number of different constituencies: Current and prospective clients, potential recruits – either law students from campuses or laterals at other firms – the general public, reporters, potential vendors and suppliers. We want to facilitate their ability to find the people they need.”

While Monica Bay gives Weil Gotschal an A+ grade for its web site – and indeed that’s a well-deserved mark – we’ve found a firm that deserves an even higher grade. Detroit-based Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone wins our Number One ranking for all-inclusiveness. Virtually anyone you need to find at the firm, you can find at www.millercanfield.com. Even its legal assistants.

The firm’s leadership understands two things: That people outside the firm benefit from such an extensive listing of employees and that the listing boosts internal morale.

“Our thinking is that there are a lot of people who make important contributions to our effectiveness with clients and with the public and that includes all other professionals, our directors and our legal assistants,” says CEO Thomas Linn. “So to have them listed just makes common sense. It lets their constituencies find out a little bit about them through the web site. And, our employees consider it to be a little bit of an enhancement of their position.”

We couldn’t agree more with that “thinking.” Consider this. You want to contact the firm’s director of finance but you don’t know his name. Log on to Miller Canfield’s web site and you’ll easily find a Mr. David Hoin. You’ll see a picture of a distinguished-looking gentleman, his direct-line phone number, email address and fax number. You’ll read where he got his undergraduate and graduate degrees, and a list of his professional experience, activities and honors.

“David’s our CFO and is involved in a lot of things – compensation issues, pricing, setting rates,” Linn says. “He’s a very important person to us.”

Giving Hoin a place on the web site helps underscore his importance, we think. Linn realizes this, and says, “Anything you can do to make people feel they’re an important part of the team helps your organization.”

Now can other law firms follow suit? Burkey Belser thinks they will. “One thing that has been proven in the past 10 years is that law firms are willing to change,” he says. “And while they may be changing slower in some areas than we want them to, nevertheless they’re smart enough to recognize that credit is easy to give.”

Let’s hope so, Burkey.