What Your General Counsel is Really Thinking (Regional Conference Recap)
By Holly Harper - Anagram Consulting
The 2022 LMA Mid-Atlantic Annual Conference theme was Forward. After a disorienting pandemic pause, we are all looking forward in our personal and professional lives, and the 2022 General Counsel Panel kicked off the day with critical takeaways for CMOs, BDOs, and legal marketers that, at first glance, didn’t seem all that forward thinking at all.
The key takeaway from the panelists was much more important: Before you go anywhere forward, make sure your basics are covered.
With discussions on Zoom vs. face-to-face, communication, and matter management, and where they go to learn when making selections for legal services, the panelists all agreed: “Yes, while we are excited to move forward, we must also carry with us the important lessons we’ve learned from the past and the ‘pandemic pause.’”
Panelists:
• Mary Chapin, President of ACC National Capital Region and VP, Chief Legal Officer, & Corporate Secretary National Student Clearinghouse
• Jerry Howe, EVP & General Counsel of Leidos
• Steve Sherman, General Counsel - Americas & Corporate Secretary of BSI Group America Inc.
• Lakshmi Williams, General Counsel of Transurban North America
Three Takeaways from the GC Panel
1. Trust Still Matters: Building trust between your attorneys and their GC clients is still an important factor when GCs are choosing to renew your partnership.
2. Service Still Matters: With many rules, norms, and technologies in flux, delivering legal services may have changed substantially, but your demonstrated commitment to client service still reigns supreme.
3. You Still Matter: Your GCs want nothing more than to be extremely happy with their decision to hire your firm. They’re looking to you to live up to your own hype. Make them proud!
1. Trust Still Matters
Whether rebuilding trust or building a brand new partnership for 2023 and beyond, audience members were curious about what makes a trusted partnership in the Zoom era. Jerry Howe summed it up nicely when he conveyed that building habits of consistency, responsiveness, and personal accountability automatically creates a foundation of trust.
From a CE perspective, the key word is “habits.” Building trust comes from being on a journey together. It’s the responsibility of your firm and your attorneys to have habits and practices that are proven to engender trust and security. And we’re not talking about “hacking” trust, we’re talking about deepening a trusted partnership by adding things to your communications and soft skills mix to create transparency and mutual understanding.
Quick Fix: How do we build trust on Zoom? Turn on your cameras. Your GCs are busy folks. They may not have time for small talk or chit chat, but it helps them connect with you when they know you also want to see the Buffalo Bills end their sad losing streak or that your daughter loves horses, too.
Process Change: How do we address future conflict when we’ve never met one another face-to-face? Make a practice of documenting and communicating project progress on a consistent, timely basis. Jerry Howe recalls how he would send an end-of-week summary to his clients documenting work performed, progress toward completion, and next steps. He did it every week on the dot to facilitate trust and model dependability. When there is a time where fingers are about to be pointed, pull out the documentation and remind your GC that you have been steadfast by their side, and are ready to overcome this next challenge together, too.
2. Service Still Matters
Depending on your firm and role, you may have already been on a “global clock” responding to matters across time zones and traditions, but for many others the pandemic changed our relationship with time. We have been gifted flexibility, and we cannot squander that gift. Lakshmi Williams summed it up best when she said that, although everyone wants 100% perfection, they’re willing to accept 90% perfection with 100% accountability and commitment.
From a CE perspective, the key word is ”accountability.” If we’ve already turned on our cameras and are being more transparent about documenting progress, we also must be accountable to our deadlines, deliverables, and calendars. A GC knows sloppy work from pristine product, and if you are juggling too much, procrastinating, or working at times where you’re drained and not on your A-game, then who is responsible? You are. GCs need you to be accountable to their expectations, their deadlines, and your promises.
Quick Fix: How do we build accountability? Use your project management or case management software to its fullest extent. SaaS tools your firm provides are there to keep the entire team from letting anything slip through the cracks. It provides a backup if you have an emergency and someone else needs to step in. It provides a documented track record of the process in case your GC has questions or concerns. Use it. Ask for CE.
Once we are accountable to a process, a system, a deadline, and a budget, how do we stay accountable and ahead of the curve? According to Mary Chapin, we get curious, ask questions, and deepen our understanding of the entire industry or market segment the GC is working in. If we can be accountable to escalating problems the GC hasn’t even identified yet, we’ve got a rock-solid foundation for keeping the work.
Process Change: How do we ensure accountability? Continual discovery mindset. In discovery, we are asking for specific information and inputting the details into your systems, like deadlines, dates, times, urgency of issues, on the horizon matters, wild card thoughts, and opportunities. But by creating a “continual discovery mindset” at each critical stage and documenting the journey - not just this specific matter - the process serves as a framework for repeat business. As you ask great questions, you’ll learn about the industry you’re supporting and can better see matters on the horizon. You may find you can pitch a block of associate hours to research a “wild card,” just to ease a nervous GC’s mind. You may find an article about a rule change that you asked about when you temp-checked her “on the horizon” issues and can forward it on. Being accountable and curious is a win-win.
3. You Still Matter
In the olden days, we had happy hours or tabletop meetings. We met for meetings in boardrooms and flew across oceans to deliberate together. While the world has “opened back up,” everything is still very new and different. What our GCs want us to know is that they don’t need you to show up in Hong Kong if you’re showing up on Zoom (camera on!) and nailing it at every turn, but they do care what you are doing in the comfort of your living room (or corner office). According to Steve Sherman, GCs don’t care about your reposting of some boring law review bulletin on LinkedIn, but they do care that you are a good person working for a firm that shares his values.
Mary Chapin echoed the sentiment when she said that LinkedIn is an important source for her to see if your firm is committed to pro bono, equity, service, CE, and recognition programs, while your daily/weekly/monthly email newsletter may get lost in the shuffle.
From a marketing perspective, the key word is “values.” Creating a drip messaging, attorney-messaging, email marketing, and social media marketing content program that is thoughtful and segmented is going to be much more effective in 2023 and beyond than your 14,000-person unsegmented Constant Contact list - even with an airtight plan for SEO, LinkedIn advertising, and “thought leadership” webinars.
Quick Fix: Use LinkedIn and your email marketing for brand awareness. If a GC is following you on LinkedIn, then they are probably doing it because you’re in contention for a second look, so don’t hog the news feed. If they are on your email list, then don’t flood them out with a firehose of content. Just be awesome, talk about interesting/relevant things, and be authentic. GCs love knowing when associates make partner. They love when their chosen firms are awarded with industry accolades for DEI or community service. They don’t love endless scrolling through clickbait blogs and SEO-optimized nothing-burger blogs. Authenticity, relevance, quality are your content cues for 2023, take note.
Process Change: Treat your current clients to the red carpet all the time. While new business is critical, we all know that most new business comes from repeat and referrals. In light of this (and the wide array of competition out there), marketers need to hyper-segment and support attorney participation in marketing in order to provide thoughtful, relevant, and personalized messages that bring in monies. Marketers need to market, not because a newsletter is on the editorial calendar, but because they know an attorney’s GC client actually needs the information ASAP! Training attorneys on how to identify thought leadership content, how to effortlessly curate content for marketers, and how to go through an editing/review/distribution process with confidence is will allow marketers to develop “pull-in” marketing campaigns that keep clients coming back for more.
Why is such an investment in current clients important if you’re just handling one or two matters and you’ll probably never work with them again? Well, back to our repeat and referral conversation: more people like your current clients will need help in the future with the same darn thing!
All four of the panelists are active in the ACC, and they all said, “When I check the ACC listserv and a colleague of mine asks me for a referral to a firm that can help, specifically, with Matter X, don’t you want your firm to be the one that I personally recommend to them?”
Yes. Yes, you do.
Get your entire team centered around adding value to GC clients at every touchpoint, being accountable for your promises, and building relationships that last.