Law firm marketing is more than skin deep

By Maria Kantzavelos

Just as a trial lawyer inside a courtroom becomes immersed in the art of persuasion, working to paint his client in the most positive light for an audience of 12 jurors, the marketing departments of big law firms today make it their mission to project and manage an ideal perception of a firm in the legal marketplace at large.

”Who doesn’t want to have a good public image? Who doesn’t want to have a good public face? said David A. Milberg, an attorney who serves as director of marketing and communications at Schiff Hardin. ”It’s about putting a good face forward and having people think well of you, and it could open a lot of doors.” Milberg, who was an advertising executive in the 1970s for Procter & Gamble’s Cheer Detergent Brand Group, said he applies many of the lessons learned in advertising consumer products to marketing a law firm.

”Most big law firms all do the same things,” Milberg said. ”The key is that any law firm needs to differentiate itself. You do that in any number of ways.”

The tactics of law firm marketing departments and of the outside agencies and consultants they work with to manage a firm’s image run the gamut — from pitching story ideas to reporters that land a law firm lawyer’s quotes in a newspaper article on a legal trend or high-profile case, to helping lawyers prepare sales pitches to potential clients, sponsoring continuing legal education conferences or special events in the community, and launching advertising and branding campaigns that aim to evoke a particular concept or image when someone hears or sees the name of a firm.

”What really works? They all do,” said Jay Jaffe, president of Jaffe Associates and one of the first marketers to work with large law firms. ”You never see McDonald’s just having print advertising. It’s a marketing mix. They have broadcast advertising, they do PR, they have the Ronald McDonald House, they give a lot to charities, they have local promotions around their Happy Meals. Nobody relies on just one thing.”

But compared to their accounting firm counterparts and other entities in the professional services world, big law firms generally have been slow to jump on the ”branding” bandwagon, and into advertising in general — even after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1977, in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, that the First Amendment protects lawyers’ commercial speech.

”It was very slow in coming after that because most large firms perceived it as ambulance chasing or not appropriate for their profession,” said Barbara C. Sessions, marketing partner and director of business development for Winston & Strawn.

Legal marketing pioneers point to a 1991 national print advertising campaign of the Washington, D.C.-based firm then known as Howrey & Simon — which featured the tagline: ”The Human Side of Genius” - as the first such campaign by a large firm. Jaffe, at that time, was working as Howrey’s marketing director.

”As early as 1990 we were talking about branding and positioning, and that was unheard of at that point,” Jaffe said. ”Branding got very popular maybe seven or eight years later.”

Overall firm strategy
On display in a corner of Jenner & Block’s ”marketing resource center” — a room stocked with firm-wide publications and annual reports, reprints of outside magazine and newspaper articles featuring firm lawyers, newsletters, and other promotional materials used in recruiting lawyers or in meetings with potential clients — a poster-sized board lists about 30 words under the title of ”Guidewords and Aesthetic Criteria.”

The words — such as ”compassionate,” ”deep,” ”democratic,” ”fighters,” ”full-service,” ”love of the law,” and ”tenacious” - are used to guide the creation of every marketing communications piece developed by the firm’s 20-person marketing department, said Theresa A. Jaffe, Jenner & Block’s chief marketing officer.

When Jaffe (who is no relation to Jay Jaffe) joined Jenner & Block in 2000 to establish the first marketing department in the firm’s 90-year history, her mission was not to ”create the Jenner & Block brand,” she said.

”The brand of Jenner & Block always existed — the business mix of what we do has been here, and the aspirations of the firm have always been here,” Jaffe said. ”What wasn’t here is a consolidated method of communicating that to the outside. It’s wonderful to have a terrific brand, a reputation, a culture. … But if nobody knows about it in a highly competitive marketplace, you immediately are at a disadvantage.”

Eight years ago, Jaffe said, she and leaders of the firm worked with a branding consultant on a first exercise to ”identify the attributes of the brand,” or, to come up with words to describe the firm — its business mix, its culture, its aspirations, and what it means to the marketplace. The goal, she said, was to come up with answers to questions such as, ”How do we want to be seen? Who are we? What are we about? What are our business aspirations? What are our values?

”We took these words and said, ‘These will guide the development of every single thing we do,”’ Jaffe said. ”What my colleagues and I do then is, we translate. We’re message makers. We translate the brand and we execute it through really smart programs, services, marketing communications.”

Michael R. Ralston, director of marketing and business development at Vedder Price, has been in the business of legal marketing since the early 1980s. Back then, he said, law firm marketing was simply, ”communications — ‘Let’s get out a brochure.”

”There was no thought to strategy: What markets should we be in? What do we do well and how do we capitalize on that?” Ralston said. ”In most of the firms now, marketing is a part of the overall firm strategy. The really good lawyers get it.”

Big law firms today use a range of tactics to project their image to particular markets, whether the goal is to redefine a firm’s identity after a major merger, to raise the profile of a particular practice group, to recruit top-notch talent, or to establish an identity in a new geographic location.

”Certainly, within our industry, there have been wide consolidations. Buyers of legal services can’t necessarily keep track of who we are and what we do,” Winston & Strawn’s Sessions said. ”At the same time you have more firms that are national and international, as opposed to just regional. You have a broader market than ever before — so many companies and people you have to reach.”

At Winston & Strawn, whose chairman, Dan Webb, is one of the most well-known litigators in the country, ”we’re trying to go into new markets,” Sessions said. ”It’s taking some of the best attributes of how you’re known in certain markets and then expanding those into new markets, particularly international markets and our [new] Charlotte, N.C. office.”

”Because we have a fairly targeted audience, reaching out to those people is probably the best way for us to try to get additional legal business,” Sessions said. ”We do client entertainment, seminars, newsletters on topics. In the scheme of things, we spend more time working to help our lawyers develop business and client service than we do, necessarily, building up our image. Not that we don’t do it, it’s just that I think the lawyers largely are folks that are projecting the image.”

Still, Sessions said, ”Public relations is a fact of life. You have to be pro-active about your own image, or the market will make it what it wants.

”Of course you want to try to manage peoples’ perception of who you are, from the standpoint of making it, hopefully, more accurate and positive. There are always negative things that come out about everybody’s law firm. Some of it may not be accurate. You just have to work hard to try to help people understand the things that are accurate and positive.”

Many firms, in developing a strategy to project an image to a particular audience, turn to outside marketing, advertising, and communications consultants for assistance.

”It’s hard for firms to be objective about themselves. They’re too close to it. Typically, it requires some outside assistance to hold the mirror up to them so we can help them see who they really are,” said Ross Fishman of Fishman Marketing Inc. in Highland Park. ”Once they understand that, then we can pull a message out of that. We have to help them see what it is that is unique about them, so we talk to a lot of different lawyers across the firm.”

For instance, said Fishman, during his work on a marketing campaign for mid-size Shefsky & Froelich, he noticed a consistency in the use of the word ”imagination” from the lawyers he interviewed.

”Independently — in describing their practices, the firm, themselves — they kept using the word imagination,” Fishman said. ”They prided themselves on a very creative approach to their representations. … It existed at the firm, they just hadn’t thought about it in those terms, or told people about it.”

In developing the firm’s marketing campaign, ”You can’t say you’re imaginative and creative and have a skyline on the home page of your Web site like they did,” Fishman said.

”There are a dozen obvious literal cliches that lawyers default to if they don’t know any better — gavels, scales of justice, buildings with columns, globes, handshakes, skylines, light bulbs, chess pieces, pictures of books, dart boards [with the tagline] ‘We’re on target,”’ Fishman said. ”You can’t say you’re different, then look like everybody else.”

As another example, Fishman pointed out his work on a marketing campaign for Laner Muchin, Dombrow, Becker, Levin and Tominberg, which features a stopwatch and an invitation to ”Take the Laner Muchin Challenge.”

The campaign asks prospective clients to, ”Call your current lawyer and leave a message to return your call. Wait an hour or two (to give your lawyer a decent head start), then call one of our lawyers and leave the same message. See who calls you back first; we’re betting it’ll be us. If it’s not, we’ll buy you lunch and donate $100 to your favorite charity.”

”While interviewing their lawyers, I found that they call everybody back within two hours,” Fishman said. ”So that’s their message, which allowed us to build a good marketing campaign around that: The frustration of what clients feel when they’re left hanging by their highly skilled lawyer who won’t call them back.”

Media relations
To Schiff Hardin’s Milberg, ”the best advertising is publicity.”

”Credible publications, the mass dailies, if they’re saying nice things about you, that’s like gold,” Milberg said. ”We really emphasize publicity.”

For instance, Milberg put together an 18-page booklet featuring only the highlights of favorable media mentions garnered by managing partner Ronald S. Safer when he led the defense team for Mark S. Kipnis, a co-defendant in the highly publicized trial of media tycoon Conrad Black.

The booklet, Milberg said, is given to clients and prospective clients.

”It’s very impressive. Rather than us saying how great we are, it’s other people saying good things about you,” Milberg said.

Jenner & Block’s Jaffe calls it a ”repurposing of content,” when the firm buys the electronic rights and reprint rights to articles featuring its lawyers, and showcases them on its Web site, in legal recruiting kits, or in packets for existing and prospective clients.

Media mentions and quotes from firm lawyers appearing as experts in a piece can be of significant value to a firm and its lawyers, Jaffe said.

”It’s very important. You then actually get into the Internet stream of commerce,” she said. ”Part of why being quoted as an expert is so helpful is truly because you, as an individual attorney, are shaping your individual identity and your individual reputation. You’re building your own personal brand as an expert.”

Milberg, himself a former news radio executive, shared a few pointers on his approach to media relations.

”I am very knowledgeable about what our attorneys do. When I see something that’s cutting edge or part of a growing trend that hasn’t been covered, or something that has meaningful interest, I’ll talk to a particular editor or reporter,” Milberg said.

When he pitches a story, Milberg said he puts himself in the position of the reporter or the editor.

”When I suggest a story, it’s rarely just a story about Schiff Hardin,” he said. ”It’ll be a story that I’d call a ’survey story’ where, obviously, we hope Schiff Hardin will be portrayed prominently, but there’s room for others to be covered, too.”

Some firms can find a marketing opportunity in high-profile cases where its lawyers are not even part of the representation. Take Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based firm that has been working to raise its profile locally since opening its Chicago office in June 2002.

With a PR goal of improving the firm’s name recognition in the Chicago area, former Perkins Coie partner Hugh Totten and public relations manager Lori Anger set out on a plan to make Totten, a litigator who specializes in complex civil cases, available to follow and comment on the Conrad Black case during the trial at the federal courthouse in Chicago, where hundreds of U.S. and international reporters had gathered for coverage.

”It really was a broad sweep of media circles,” Anger said. ”He actually went into the courthouse and started following the case. As he was sitting in the media room, he casually struck up a conversation with the reporter next to him.”

Since many of the lawyers from other firms couldn’t comment publicly on the case during the trial because they were representing one of the defendants or witnesses in the case, Totten offered legal insights to major media outlets in Chicago, around the nation, in Canada and the United Kingdom, Anger said.

”He was using the skills he already had as a litigator to help the media understand this trial,” Anger said. ”It’s kind of a win-win for lawyers and the media. The attorney gets the recognition as being thought of as an expert in a particular field, and the media gets a more well rounded story to recover that day.

”You can certainly work with the media to be recognized for the expertise you already have and provide your clients. You’re just extending that to the media.”

In a climate where law firms are aggressively competing on expertise and reputation, many firms work with outside public relations agencies to supplement their in-house PR staff.

”Firms are very sophisticated in how they project their expertise through the media,” said John E. Corey, president and founder of Greentarget Global Group, a public relations and communications consulting firm.

Greentarget often uses a research-based approach to market a firm’s expertise in a practice area or industry, Corey said.

For example, if a law firm wants to position itself as a preeminent real estate firm, Greentarget might use a software tool to execute a survey or study through a ”[law] firm-branded e-mail” that gauges the perceptions of real estate executives on a developing trend or issue in the marketplace.

Corey said his group works with the law firm to ”attach the client’s expertise to the study,” and, once the study is implemented, ”we have this report, which is associating that firm’s presence and expertise within a specific industry segment, which then provides a very robust marketing platform.

”You send a firm-branded survey to 3,000 real estate executives — that right there has marketing value. That is a reinforcement that this firm specializes in that area,” Corey said. ”We send the report out to everybody that was sent the survey. Now, this firm that surveyed me is sending the final report. Those are two very potent marketing channels that were just hit.”

Often, Corey said, the survey reports are developed so they can be unveiled at high-profile industry events.

”We will position it with select journalists to get the big media pop the day of the event. We give them an advance look at the report so that they are in a position to have their story run the day before or of the event,” Corey said. ”When that event happens, there’s three to five very in-depth articles on the chair of every attendee.”

What’s in a brand?
With fierce competition among top firms, visibility in the marketplace is crucial, said Joy Long, immediate past president of the Chicago chapter of the Legal Marketing Association.

Long, who is the business development director at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione, spearheaded the firm’s updated branding, image, and advertising campaign launched in 2004.

”Because we’re a specialty firm and focus solely on IP, it was important that we be clear about what we do,” Long said. ”We decided to use a call to action of, ‘When you’re serious about IP, use Brinks.’ The campaign was built around the strengths of that call to action.”

When it comes to branding, she offered this rule of thumb.

”Basically, when you develop a brand, that has to carry through to your written materials, your culture, your advertising,” Long said. ”The brand is really developed around the culture of the firm — that’s what makes it successful.”

Branding can be more of a challenge for large, full-service firms, Vedder Price’s Ralston pointed out.

”It is hard to distinguish a whole firm from another whole firm. We all say we’re full-service, we all say we’re high-quality, we’ve got great lawyers. That’s true of Jenner, Winston, Sidley, Vedder Price, Schiff Hardin — you go down the line,” Ralston said. ”When you talk about these big firms that offer a wide range of services to different types of buyers it’s almost impossible to come up with a brand that makes sense to all those different market segments.”

A recent shift in legal marketing, experts said, is the move toward more industry-oriented marketing that aims to build and maintain a reputation as a firm that is knowledgeable about a particular industry.

”The realistic way to look at it is, ‘What market are you in and what’s your image in that specific market?”’ Ralston said. ”That, to me, is more important, and it’s going to have a greater payoff.”

When law firm giant DLA Piper was formed in 2005 by the merger of three regional firms, the newly formed firm that now consists of more than 3,700 lawyers in 25 countries created a global brand as part of its strategic business initiative, said Bill Schroeder, who serves as DLA Piper’s global director of brand management.

”We want to make sure that when you go to DLA Piper in Germany or in San Francisco that there is a common, DLA Piper-ness,” Schroeder said. ”Any global organization has to be sensitive to local cultures, but at the same time there has to be a common and consistent approach within the firm. We all have to be marching to the same drummer.”

For starters, Schroeder said, the firm conducted more than 600 interviews with the law firm’s partners, associates, and staff members in offices around the world to develop a ”brand strategy,” including a positioning statement, a vision for the firm, core values for the firm, and a set of ”personality attributes that reflect what you generally are and what you aspire to be.”

”Our positioning is really about, ‘Looking after the world’s businesses,” Schroeder said. ”We have a brand expression: ‘Everything matters.’ … The focus being on, ‘If it matters to you, it matters to us.”’

Here’s Schroeder’s definition of a brand.

”Our brand is really who we are. When you think of the firm DLA Piper the impression in your mind is the brand. When you think about Apple, or Target, or Wal-Mart there are certain things that come up in your mind. The sum of all those impressions is really the brand,” Schroeder said.

A brand, Schroeder said, takes on more than just the organization or the product.

Take Starbucks, he said, ”There’s a consistency in a Starbucks that comes through in all sorts of sensory levels: a logo, colors. But the entire environment of a Starbucks store not only looks a certain way, but smells a certain way. There’s a consistent music, a consistent way of talking about the product.”

In the end, he said, It’s not the latte that tastes so good, it’s the essence of the Starbucks experience. And that’s what great brands have.”

Another mega firm globalized its brand in 2007, when Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw became known worldwide as Mayer Brown, said Kathleen Reichert, the firm’s chief marketing officer.

With the firm’s acquisition last year of the Hong Kong firm Johnson Stokes & Master, it will maintain the name Mayer Brown JSM in Asia only, until 2012, she said.

The firm’s mix of marketing tools is less likely to include advertising, Reichert said. Rather, she said, the focus is on the use of the media to comment on trends, on the firm’s self-publishing of timely client alerts on issues, newsletters and quarterlies, more effective use of technology, such as extranets that allow for more customized information for clients, and events that allow the firm’s lawyers to speak or ”engage in dialogue with clients in smaller, roundtable forums.”

”Rather than sending out an advertisement saying Mayer Brown is global, you demonstrate your global knowledge by articles on China, being cited on trends in China, sending client alerts that talk about new issues we see. Those things are more powerful ways to communicate the brand of, ‘We know what’s going on there and we have an expertise that is very unique,”’ Reichert said. ”I think law firms are ready for a more sophisticated approach to marketing, which means you really understand your target market and really build a capability and response to what is of high urgency to them.”

For the global firm, Reichert said, one of the more important target markets is major multinationals and major banks.

She said the firm recently completed a ”brand study,” involving interviews with general counsel and other clients of the firm, multinational corporations, and major banks in the U.S. and Europe, asking, ”What is the most important for you to receive as value? How do you see the competitors and their differences? What do you expect to need from law firms? What are the attributes that are most important to you?”

Reichert said the firm plans to use the data from the study to shape its messages going forward.

”You’d be surprised how powerful brands are in creating a perception in the marketplace and motivating attorneys to behave similarly,” Reichert said. ”For firms that have done this well, essentially, it creates their own demand and it becomes part of the fabric of the culture of the company.”