Marketers Develop Plan for 478-Lawyer Firm on the Fly

By Julie Meyer, Marketing Director of Dilworth Paxson LLP. Julie can be reached at 215-575-7042 and jmeyer@dilworthlaw.com.

A senior partner calls you in on a Saturday morning because he has a major presentation to make on a Monday afternoon. Not exactly the way most of us would choose to spend a weekend?

This scenario was the agenda for the Marketing Directors Institute "Learning By Doing" conference recently held in Philadelphia. Several leading in-house marketers and consultants signed on for the challenge.

The challenge was to develop a marketing plan -- on the fly -- to present to the Executive Committee of Brawn & Daschell (B&D), a hypothetical Boston-based firm that increased in size by 55% between 2000 and 2003. B&D accomplished the significant growth with an '01 merger with a 75-attorney New York firm and an '02 merger with a 100-attorney Boston based firm, growing B&D to a total of 478 attorneys.  The firm changes its name to Brawn & Daschell (the first name of the acquired New York firm). By 2003, in addition to its Boston and New York offices, B&D also had presence in Washington, DC; Providence, RI, Stamford, CT and London. 

Participants assumed the following roles:

·       B&D and its Executive Committee was chaired by Norm Rubenstein who, after the conference, returned to his real-life position as a marketing and consultant and partner at the Zeughauser Group. 

·       Richard Bernero briefly took a sabbatical from the Five Mile River Group to assume the role of B&D's recently hired COO.

·       Dawn Gertz, a Director of Practice Development at Akin Gump, spent her weekend chairing B&D's struggling Corporate Practice.

·       Mark Beese, Marketing Director at Holland & Hart, filled the role of Marketing Partner.

·       Tim Corcoran of Martindale-Hubbell chaired B&D's Litigation Practice Group that employed 25% of the firm's attorneys and generated 40% of the firm's revenues. 

·       Rod Oshins briefly left American Lawyer Media's National Magazine Group without a Director of Advertising to chair B&D's beleaguered IP practice.

The hypothetical facts

Equipped with firmwide financials from 2000 forward and the conclusions of an outside consultant recommendation for a strategic plan (carefully compiled by Carol Greenwald of Greenwald Consulting, conference attendees were divided into four task forces to make recommendations for the firm's practice groups, integration, internal communications and branding.

From 2000, gross revenues and revenues per lawyer steadily increased from $98,000,000 with 215 attorneys in 2000 to a forecasted $270,000,000 with 478 attorneys in 2003. However, profits per partner, average partner compensation and AmLaw profitability levels all plummeted by as much as 40%.

The hypothetical revenues for B&D's for 2002 were:

·       Litigation practice group accounted for 40% of the firm's revenues and employed 32% of their attorneys

·       Labor & Employment with 10% of revenues employed 18% of the attorneys

·       The more profitable Transportation practice with 10% of revenues and 9% of the attorneys were the next most substantial practices

·       Corporate with 8% of 2002 revenues and 8% of the attorneys

·       International with 6% of 2002 revenues and 7% of the attorneys

·       Lastly, IP with 6% of 2002 revenues and 4% of the attorneys but sorely affected by recent defections were identified as the most underutilized practices.

So, with this information and a bit more about B&D's primary competitors, what recommendations came to mind to present to the Executive Committee to accomplish the firm's growth objectives and establish your credibility as B&D's marketing team?

Preparation time passed all too quickly as it always does, and the practice group task force found themselves presenting first to the Executive Team. Tracy Holotuk, Marketing Director of Canadian 675-attorney Borden Ladner Gervais took on the task of presenting the "Practice Group" task force's recommendations and conclusions.

Focus on internal communication

Following extensive consideration of all firm information available, Holotuk informed the somewhat unreceptive committee that more time was required to recommend any specific firm practice area or geographic changes. She continued that the most constructive short term direction was to proceed with the integration and internal communication initiatives to be presented later in the same meeting.

Holotuk reviewed in detail for the committee where the firm had come from and the significant assets they had as a result. She was emphatic that instead of continuing the trend of significant changes made over the past three years, B&D would be most successful focusing with current structure on the business in hand while simultaneously continuing to assimilate the firm cultures, procedures and resources of the three amalgamated law firms and learning more about themselves in the process before making hasty practice group or geographic structural changes.

Visibility and P.R.

The "Branding Task Force" was the next to present to the Committee.  They presented a 12-month rollout plan for a brand to be developed.  The first quarter of their initial branding year would be devoted to bringing on an ad agency for research and brand development. Their recommendation for an agency was Paul Herrmann based on the agency's strong track record (and, possibly, Paul Herrmann's participation in planning the presentation).

Q2 of initial branding year would focus on increasing B&D's visibility with a focus on P.R. Q3 would be devoted to production of brand vehicles including ads, redesigned intranet, Web site, and print collateral. Internal rollout would begin during the third quarter, as well. The group committed to a fourth quarter launch.

The "Integration" Group recommended that the firm focus on four areas to meet the growth goals set by the Executive Committee:

1.     Establish Client Service Teams to maintain and expand current business.

2.     Stabilize the firm culture currently an unsteady balance of three former firms.

3.     Improve firmwide efficiency currently slowed by different administrative systems in place in different locations and practice areas.

4.     Implement integration plan and other marketing initiatives recommended to the Executive Committee with minimal disruption to ongoing day-to-day operations

Building and doing

The "Internal Communications" Group presented their Executive Committee with a detailed agenda for the firm's upcoming strategic partners' retreat to both communicate and initiate the marketing recommendations made during this presentation. The theme of the upcoming Partners Retreat will be "Building and Doing." The Retreat Planning team emphasized the building block theme by literally building with bricks they placed in front of the Executive Committee as they announced each component of their retreat including interactive meals with seating at one designed to facilitate attorneys from different locations to get know to know each other and at a second, attorneys in different practice groups to become more familiar with services at their own firm.

The last presentation of this conference was the Executive Committee returning to their real-life marketing roles with feedback for the presenters. In their role as Executive Committee members, they had been convincingly belligerent with each of the presenters about components of their recommendations. In the case of the Practice Group's recommendations, the repeatedly questioned the absence of specific practice group and geographic recommendations.  They sparred during the branding presentation because the presenters were not providing an actual branding strategy (which would have been premature) in addition to the detailed rollout schedule.

In their feedback session with the conference attendees, the Committee was equally emphatic as to how impressed they were with both the quality of the recommendations developed over such a short period of time and that none of the groups altered their prepared recommendations and plans in response to the Committee's reactions to the content -- very valuable feedback for when we all find ourselves in presentation, meeting or strategizing circumstances where we are prodded to misstep.  

All conference attendees left with many lessons. Some were obtained during a number of substantive presentations made by Wendy Loder, Conference Coordinator and CMO at Akin Gump, Rubenstein, Corcoran, Herrmann and Bernero between presentation working sessions. Others were gained from the feedback to their own presentations. The uniqueness of the conference format was also very instructive. Wendy Loder and MDI took a risk that paid off quite well.