Chicago was fortunate to be the host city for LMA’s inaugural P3 Conference. Taking place at theWit Hotel from September 30 to October 2, “P3” encompassed three major emerging areas of law firm management and marketing: “Pricing”, “Practice Innovation,” and “Project Management.”
Organized by LMA’s Client Value SIG, and held in collaboration with several other professional associations, the event proved a great hit, drawing more than 200 law firm pricing experts, business development and marketing professionals, those in corporate law departments, corporate procurement professionals, and product and service providers.
It may not be immediately obvious why these three topics were grouped together, but the rationale goes something like this: if you are going to grow your law firm practice, you need to innovate with new offerings, new capabilities, etc., which address new needs and spur demand among clients; an important part of innovation is the capacity to offer alternative forms of pricing, such as fixed or capped fees; but a firm’s profitability can be destroyed if it fails to manage and control its AFA-based projects properly.
The range of specific topics addressed during the panels and presentations truly covered the waterfront, with subjects such as:
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“Getting the Work…Profitably: Negotiating Win-Win Fee Arrangements,” which addressed the challenge of having meaningful and productive conversations with clients about alternative fee arrangements
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“Maintaining the Work…Effectively: Methods of Performance Monitoring,” a panel discussion about techniques for monitoring performance-to-budget of attorneys who have accepted an alternative pricing approach not based on the billable hour
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“Show Me the Practice Innovation,” with LMA president-elect Tim Corcoran, leading a panel of self-proclaimed geeks in a discussion of new technologies intended to better support new pricing models and better project management
I reached out to several other LMA members – including Chicago’s very own Amy Jean – to understand the key points they drew from the event. I posed this simple question: “Tell me one insight you’re going to put into action right away.” Here’s what they shared:
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“As legal marketers, sometimes we make things overly complicated, but I learned a key strategy to follow is actually very basic: Understand what your clients are really looking for and what they truly value, whether it's identifying triggers to pricing sensitivities, or finding ways to help them share information within their organization. The more you make the effort to understand where your clients are coming from, the deeper the relationship will become.” - Amy Jean, director of marketing and business development, Goldberg Kohn, Chicago, IL
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“In several sessions, speakers discussed the impact of carve-outs during fee negotiations and the impact of work that is out of scope of the initial arrangement. In both instances, there’s a chance to build or destroy client trust, so it’s critical to think about how to handle these situations on the front end of an engagement. A basic reason for implementing project management and budgeting discipline is to help eliminate surprises for the client. To do that, you should have clear, unequivocal discussions with the prospect (who hopefully becomes the client). Handled well, carve-outs and scope issues can trigger a separate discussion about additional work opportunities.” - Terri Gavulic, director, legal support at Fisher & Phillips, Atlanta, GA
I also consulted the commentary on social media channels, and found this particular gem from the “Daily Dispatch” of Merrilyn Astin Tarlton’s blog:
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“Many law firms will say that commodity work — simple, low-priced legal tasks that can be done over and over again with little need for customization — is uninteresting and not profitable. However, unless you’re only in the law business to get your intellectual jollies, commodity work represents a huge opportunity to increase profitability. It takes a business-like approach to staff, manage and price it correctly, that’s all.” - Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, founder/partner, Attorney at Work, Golden, CO
I think this last point is particularly salient to the future of law. As professional legal marketers, many of us have a bias towards Big Law and larger firms in general, where “intellectual jollies” is indeed a latent – and sometimes even explicit– part of a firm’s raison-d’être, so taking on commodity work does not occur to us. Whether we should be encouraging our firms’ senior management to take on more routine matters is beside the point. Instead, being willing to consider very different approaches to the business of law is precisely how conferences such as P3 having the great potential to help us.
Ian Turvill is the chief marketing officer at Freeborn & Peters LLP, a Chicago-based mid-sized law firm. He held marketing roles with several professional services and technology companies for 18 years before coming to Freeborn in 2011. Ian holds a B.A. as well as an M.A. in engineering, economics and management from the University of Oxford and an M.B.A. in finance, marketing and corporate accounting from the University of Rochester. He was elected National Marketing Scholar of the Year by the American Marketing Association in 1997.