Great Legal Links: The Top 10 of 66 Business of Law Blog Posts

by Contributing Author | Sep 16, 2015

We’ve published 66 posts on these pages in the three months spanning June, July and August. Here’s a summary of the most popular – that is the most read – Business of Law Blog posts for that time period. It’s always fascinating to see the most read, are not always the posts with the most social shares.

We’ve also listed a few technology announcements and trendy articles the community might have missed in the last few months. And we close the post by checking analytics provided by Twitter: these analytics tell us, of all the content we shared, what resonated the most with the legal profession’s Twiterati.

1. What are the Going Law Firm Billing Rates by Practice Area? Here’s a look at current law firm billing rates stemming from our most recent bi-annual Enterprise Legal Management Trends Report.

2. Law Firm CMO on the Evolving Business Development Landscape. CMO Jeanne Hammerstrom of Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP spoke to us about the shifting dynamics in law firm business development – and her words clearly resonated with the legal marketers.

3. Infographic: Billable Hours Gained with Practice Management. Technology provides two opportunities: a) to work more efficiently and re-allocate time saved to earn more money and b) to reduce the amount of overhead required. The analysts at Blue Hill Research studied the numbers from law firms and quantified the results rendered here in this graphical format.

4. Four Expert Social Media Tips to Help Attorneys “Survive and Thrive”. “Attorneys today spend 1.7 hours a week on social media and 35 percent of attorneys said they acquired clients as a result of their efforts,” according to Leigh McMillan of Avvo. However, she cautions, “It is better not to engage in social media at all than to do it badly.”

5. A Cheat Sheet for 5 Recent Legal Industry Studies. Is the legal spending back to pre-recession levels? One of these studies says it’s true for some law firms. Here’s an easy-to-read breakdown of five studies we published in June.

6. The Cliff Notes to 7 Current Legal Industry Studies. Two months later in August, we boiled down seven more studies to the essential findings and the community seems to like these. Legal economics, invoicing, and the outlook for legal hiring all made the lists.

7. Infographic: Amazing Coincidences of 2 Lawyers on July 4th. For the annual celebration of Independence Day we put together an infographic on two former presidents – who started as lawyers – that had amazing coincidences in their lives. For reference, there are a whole lot of Presidents with roots in the legal profession.

8. History and Origin of the Billable Hour. To understand where the industry is going (if we are in fact, going), sometimes it’s useful to know where we’ve been. The origin of the billable hour won’t disappoint.

9. Core Concepts in Measuring Law Firm Client Profitability. “If you work it, but don’t bill it…or even if you bill it, but don’t collect it…its wasted time,” according to David Caiati from our professional services group. There’s an entire (video) presentation on the topic for putting together the profitability puzzle.

10. Five Reasons Virtual Law Firms Needs to Invest in Case Management. Stacey Romberg is an attorney in Seattle (and a customer) who has written extensively virtual law firms. She penned this guest post for us and it struck a chord with readers.

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3 Tech Announcements You Might Have Missed

Out at trade conferences people are always surprised to learn just how big the LexisNexis software and technology business has grown in Raleigh – more than 400 legal tech professionals under one roof. Managed technology services, litigation solutions and business of law tools small law, large law and corporate counsel are all housed in our Technology Center of Excellence on the NC State Centennial Campus.

The results? An uptick in the cycle of product enhancements we’re able to make. Here’s a few you might have missed:

1. LexisNexis CaseMap Now Integrated with Lexis Advance. The CaseMap software helps litigation teams bring together the relevant facts, documents, cast of characters and issues of each case – as well as legal and investigative research – into a centralized repository for improved case assessment. This allows users to maximize case knowledge, see connections they might otherwise miss and better collaborate with their colleagues on a matter. The 2-minute video demonstration nearby spells it out in succinct and compelling fashion.

2. LexisNexis Firm Manager Named Best Practice Management Software. The LexisNexis Firm Manager® practice management solution, earned recognition as “best practice management software” during this year’s Legaltech News Innovation Awards.

3. LexisNexis InterAction CRM Tunes Up “IQ” Module to Help Law Firms Uncover Hidden… “Client-flight risk drops to less than 10 percent when clients have relationships with five or more of a firm’s partners,” according to our own Toni Minnick. The updates to this leading CRM solution are “about putting the relationships a law firm has to work – research shows there’s a correlation between the number of partner relationships a client has with a law firm and that client’s loyalty,”

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8 Legal Industry Articles worth a Quick Read

This is a roundup of articles from third-party sites — some of which we contributed to — that earned substantial engagement on social media. We believe all of them are quite useful to the community here.

1. Walmart Likes to Keep In-House E-Discovery ‘Flexible’. The “team at Walmart uses a diverse approach, with in-house resources dedicated to early case assessment work and more complex matters assigned to the appropriate service providers.” (Marlisse Silver Sweeney for Corporate Counsel)

2. The Legal Market is Fine for Those Who Adapt. “Competition from traditional and non-traditional sources is sharp and clients are demanding more value. Firms would do well to expand their options for improving profitability beyond billing rates, production increases and unfocused cost cutting.” (Brian Kennel with PerformLaw)

3. 10 Best Practices to Implement CRM Effectively in Your Law Firm. “During these audits we asked these firms questions in 14 different categories, through which we were able to benchmark how these firms approach marketing and business development technology. Through the audits and subsequent in-depth interviews, we were able to identify 10 best practices that the firms with the most successful CRM implementations engaged. (Our own Matt Thompson in LawMarketing.com)

4. $18 billion in invoices suggests corporate legal re-visiting big law. “New data indicates the tide has shifted over the course of two years as a result of changes in billing rates and staffing the Largest 50 law firms have made. The most recent ELM Trends Report, released in May 2015, found exceptions to the previous trends one segment of the market – IP litigation.” (Our own Kris Satkunas for InsideCounsel)

5. CRM For Legal: Relationships Are Not Easy. “There are no relationship wunderkinds. There is, however, software for law firms and lawyers that identifies and analyzes how the firm interacts with customers or clients to build and maintain relationships.” (Sean Doherty for Above the Law)

6. Heightened Risk of Cyberattacks Puts Pressure on Law Firms to Bolster Defenses. “On a scale of one to 10, the risks law firms are facing are an 11, according to Daniel Solove, professor at George Washington Law School and organizer of the Privacy + Security Forum.” (Erin Harrison for Legaltech News)

7. The Road to Not Getting Paid is Paved with Good Intentions. “In ten years, only three clients owed me money. The first was because I didn’t know any better. The second, years later, was because I needed a reminder not to work unless I have been paid. And the third was basically unavoidable due to a weird confluence of things.” (Sam Glover for Lawyerist).

8. Survey: Companies Move to Big Law for IP Litigation. “Corporate counsel are increasingly turning to Big Law for help with intellectual property litigation rather than to midtier firms and IP boutiques. And while they are increasingly engaging in alternative fee arrangements with their law firms for most work, they rarely do so for IP litigation, according to a recent report.” (Lisa Shuchman for ALM)

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9 Links Twitter Analytics Said were Hot

In most cases, we had little to do with the articles listed below — other than reading these and believing valuable to share on social media. Whatever the case might be it is certainly a place to find information that’s trending. Here’s a few of the articles Twitter analytics suggests resonated the most with the @Business_of_Law community:

1. Are Big Law Legal Technology Experts Failing? A Pre-ILTACon Question – a post published on LinkedIn by Ron Friedmann of Prism Legal.

2. Here, There and Everywhere: Basic Tactics for Building Referral Networks – a post published to LinkedIn by Jared Correia of Mass LOMAP

3. 9 Principles of Global Change Management for Law Departments — Rethink the Practice – a post published on Medium by Kenneth A. Grady of Seyfarth Lean Consulting.

4. To achieve meaningful diversity in the legal profession, make your law firms your partners – an article contributed to InsideCounsel by Linda Addison of Norton Rose Fulbright US.

5. ‘Elite’ Law Firms May Be Among Earlier Adopters of Artificial Intelligence Platforms – a news story by Ed Silverstein for Legaltech News.

6. Traffic ticket? Getting divorced? Software becomes the judge – a news story by Debra Cassens Weiss in the ABA Journal.

7. CEOs’ Higher Expectations of General Counsel – an article contributed to Corporate Counsel by E. Leigh Dance of the Global Counsel Leaders Circle.

8. So how do firms persuade their lawyers to share to their contacts? – a blog post by Adrian T Dayton on his blog, Marketing Strategy and the Law.

9. Confessions of an E-Discovery Lawyer: We’re Light Years Behind – an article contributed to Legaltech News by Geoffrey A. Vance of Perkins Coie.

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What’s resonating with you? What would you like to see more of – or less of?

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