Are Your Conference Speakers Teaching or Selling?

Raise your hand if you've attended a panel discussion at a conference and one of the speakers sounds suspiciously like he's selling a product or service rather than educating the audience about the panel topic.  Judging by all the raised hands, it's nearly unanimous that we've all been insulted (or is it assaulted?!) in this way.  This is a topic with which I have close  familiarity from a variety of perspectives and so I was interested to read the post at Sharon Nelson's "Ride the Lightning" electronic evidence blog (HT to @ronfriedmann for pointing it out) debating the pros and cons of allowing vendors to purchase conference speaking slots. The debate is a familiar one:  should legal conference panels be comprised solely of neutral parties such as academic types and buyers and users of legal services?  And if we allow vendors and sponsors and consultants to participate, parties who may have some commercial interest in promoting their products (or themselves), will this erode the quality of the content and turn the panel into a one-sided affair, or worse, a long infomercial?  Does the risk of commercialization increase when the vendors are also financial sponsors of the conference?

I've spent years managing sales teams or leading businesses that invested heavily in consumer education as part of the process of selling our products and services.  This meant that my team sponsored conferences or conference sessions and, yes, I've spoken on many panels which I had also sponsored.  I also led the business development function at a global law firm where I was considered a trusted insider and so I was asked to join conference panels to provide the buyer's or user's perspective on numerous topics.  I'm now a legal management consultant who's asked to speak regularly on conference panels as an independent observer debating issues of the day in our beloved legal profession.  Amusingly, on more than a few occasions, statements I've uttered as a consultant or as a law firm insider were deemed more credible and unbiased than the exact same statements I've made as a vendor.  Perhaps some audience members hear what they want to hear?

In fairness, I've had vendor colleagues who perceived any opportunity speak on a panel as an opportunity to pitch their product.  This type of behavior ruins it for the rest of us, and it usually stems from one of two sources:  the vendor representative is just that, a vendor rep, who knows little about the market dynamics beyond the features and functions of her particular product and therefore is in no position to offer consumer education on broader issues; or the vendor does such a poor job of consultative (a.k.a. "needs based") selling that he believes he gets one chance to pitch his wares, and as a result behaves in such a way as to make this a self-fulfilling belief.  I've written about the need for vendors to become part of the market they serve, to participate in the community alongside their clients, competitors and colleagues.  Sadly, many view their vendor role as a day job and when their sales call or booth shift is over, they want to do anything but spend time in their marketplace.

In Sharon's post she shares the inside scoop from a conference organizer who is incensed at the arrogance of vendors who try to buy selling time at the podium.  But conference organizers aren't without sin in this debate either.  One challenge with conference committees is that there is often little continuity from year to year.  On two separate occasions in my career my panel was rated the highest of all panels at the conference.  The following year, neither conference committee would take the time to even consider a follow-up session, a 201-level course, if you will.  In a more recent example, the new conference planners retained by a national legal organization specifically prohibited all but the most prominent consultants and vendors from participation in the educational panels, out of some apparent misguided sense that users and buyers are the only credible sources for peer education.  Does anyone really think that a neutral consultant, or an objective, education-oriented vendor, either of whom has spent time in dozens or even hundreds of firms, can't shed additional light on a topic as compared to a user who, almost by definition, has experience at just one firm?  Conference organizers, and in particular conference programming committees, tend to want to leave their mark, which often manifests itself in finding new speakers and not relying on prior speakers... regardless of how well they were received.  Eliminating all past speakers, and eliminating all but the buyers, are dumb ideas, but no more dumb than lazily inviting the same speakers year after year.

The moral of the story is that there are few hard and fast rules which apply when organizing conferences.  I should know, I've been the conference chair of a national legal industry conference, and I and my teams have organized (not sponsored, but ran) many dozens of conferences.  We often invited industry experts, some of them vendors, sometimes even competitors, to participate on panel discussions in order to present compelling educational programming.  However, we checked references of potential speakers -- starting with evaluations from prior speaking engagements and on multiple occasions polling past attendees to assess a speaker's propensity to sell from the podium.  The vendors who sell rather than educate are usually well-known.  Those who offer new, insightful, relevant contributions year after year should not be constrained because some poorly-trained hack in the same field conducted a product demo in lieu of a didactic approach.

I understand the emotion behind the pay to play debate.  But it's not the fact that a vendor sponsors a panel, or the fact that a panelist derives an income from selling products or services to audience members, that causes the problem.  After all, I've wasted as much time listening to biased users who, for example, resolutely believe their firm's technology implementation is perfect for everyone else on the planet, as I have listening to vendors pitch their wares.  The key is to discard prejudices and evaluate each speaker on his or her own merits.  And let's not be afraid to discard a panelist -- even after the program guide is published -- if during the rehearsals a panelist is incapable of educating rather than selling.  Do this a few times and the word will get around to the community:  send your best or don't send anyone at all.

As for me, my past teams often accused me of not once mentioning my company or my products. One colleague remarked dryly, "Tim, I don't think anyone would be offended if you thought to mention our company name, or mentioned that our company offers products that help users address the business issues you were discussing."  Of course, at one conference, immediately after the panel chair introduced me, an audience member stood up and  exclaimed, "I'll learn nothing from a vendor trying to sell me something!" and then he stormed out... before I had even said a word.  And I'm the one accused of having a bias?

Are Layoffs Via Email Ethical?

This blog receives quite a bit of traffic from the search engines, according to my Wordpress stats report.  Sometimes it's obvious why certain key words lead to my blog; other times, it's mystifying.  Many of the key words and phrases are amusing.  Some are quite sad.  So here's the first in an occasional series of vignettes reacting to some of these key words or phrases. Yesterday, a visitor searched for "Are layoffs via email ethical?"

There are so few black and white answers in today's complex world.  In my climb up the corporate ladder, I eventually learned that what looked to be a dumb decision or action by my superiors was often a good decision, informed by facts that were not at my disposal from my lower perch.  So over time I learned to give the benefit of the doubt when I observed what appeared to be a dumb action by another manager or leader.

Which is why you might expect me to say that there may very well be certain conditions under which a layoff can and should be conducted by email.

But you would be wrong.

I've been through numerous layoffs over the years, primarily on the winning side.  I've seen all the shenanigans that take place before, during and after a layoff, by those whose jobs are eliminated, by those who are making the decisions, by those who are tasked with executing such actions.  I have not seen, ever, in any context, a valid justification for conducting a layoff via email.

Whether it's to manage legal risk, or to conduct unfortunate but necessary business processes with a dose of humanity, whether it's to maintain positive relations with soon-to-be-ex-employees who may one day hold a position of influence in the marketplace, or whether it's to minimize the inevitable confusion and communication gaps that result from email correspondence, there's always a reason to conduct a layoff in person.

Perhaps a temp employee who's contracted on a day-to-day basis may expect to wake up each day to check whether she should go to work that day.  But that's not really a layoff anyway.

I challenge an accomplished business leader to make a case for why an email layoff is a better choice for either the enterprise or the impacted employee.  But be ready with facts and figures.  Because no matter what you say, you're wrong.

In a somewhat related post I wrote last year during a period when companies and law firms were laying off lawyers and staff nearly every day, I suggested that one can conduct challenging business affairs and drive change, and do so with compassion.  I continue to fervently believe that's the case.  Yet I've observed, and worked with managers who took a different path out of sheer laziness, incompetence or, more likely, sheer terror at facing the consequences of the decisions that are so easy for them to make behind closed doors.

There's no reason to conduct a layoff via email.  I can't speak to the legality or even the ethics, but by my standards, it's just not right.

Thanks for asking.

Does a CMO need an MBA?

The Legal Marketing Association's monthly publication Strategies asked this question of three experts in the February 2010 issue.  It's a great question, particularly as the legal industry evolves before our eyes.  Does a graduate degree in business management (an MBA) help a chief marketing officer (CMO) do his or her job more effectively? Two respondents offered similar responses, essentially "It depends."  They suggested that while an MBA may not be essential today, it can be a differentiator in a CMO search in which one candidate has the credential and one doesn't.  They also suggested that one's undergraduate degree matters, and if you don't have sufficient business training, get some.  As one stated, a business-oriented degree may obviate the need for an MBA, but someone who "spent your college years dissecting frogs or analyzing Mark Twain's literature" may have a greater need.

I love that line.  It may seem snarky, but it reflects the reality that some degrees confer specific skills (e.g., accounting, chemistry) and others provide wide foundations for critical thinking (e.g., many liberal arts degrees).  My own liberal arts undergraduate degree provided an excellent foundation for critical thinking and future learning, and my days climbing the corporate ladder provided daily business lessons, but my MBA provided specific training that has proven to be invaluable in my career.  Given the choice to approach it differently, I wouldn't.  An undergraduate liberal arts degree and a graduate degree in business has, for me, turned out to be a successful formula.

One expert, however, asserted that a CMO has no need for an MBA.  "Having obtained an MBA myself and having hired MBAs for an investment bank, I can tell you that very little of what you learn in B-school is of value to a law firm." Wow.  I can think of few opinions that are more poorly informed than this one.  Good thing this expert isn't influential in the hiring of CMOs!  Oh wait, as it turns out, this expert is a recruiter, specializing in placing marketing professionals at law firms.  No wonder there are real questions (here and here and here) about the value of CMOs in the modern law firm!

Let's not kid ourselves, folks.  While there are many fantastic law firm CMOs, there are some whose skills and experience would barely qualify them to be a mid-level marketing manager in the corporate sector.  Scroll back up and click on the link embedded behind "CMO" at the end of the first paragraph.  Look at the spectrum of responsibilities typically associated with a corporate CMO.  How many law firm CMOs own the product roadmap, i.e., have primary input into which practices the firm will offer?  How many have any input into setting fees, let alone own the entire pricing process?  If we consider the lawyers' business development efforts to be the sales function of the law firm, how many CMOs have responsibility for establishing how the lawyers sell and to whom?  Your first reaction may be that many law firm leaders don't even know what these things mean.  Therefore, according to our supposed expert, it's a waste of time for a CMO to have skills that the lawyers don't understand.  This is nonsense and the expert should be embarrassed to be associated with such drivel.  If the lawyers knew all that they needed to know about running a business, then the legal sector would have been better prepared to weather the recent global economic meltdown.

I've participated in and observed the legal marketing profession from many angles, and while the profession has come a long way, the next frontier is to adapt successful business practices into the operations of a law firm.  One way to get there is to continue to introduce marketing professionals from outside the legal sector who have business experience, and another is for excellent legal marketers to continue their own business education.  It's critical to raise the bar and make the role of law firm Chief Marketing Officer more challenging, and also more rewarding.  Today's CMO is expected to manage budgets, manage managers, be conversant in the many critical functions such as communications, public relations, competitive intelligence, web marketing, client relationship management, knowledge management and have a more than passing understanding of strategy, accounting, corporate finance, project finance and leadership development.  While one can gain quite a bit of insight and training in these areas without an undergraduate business degree through on-the-job exposure, I'm a firm believer that an MBA provides new tools, techniques and a vocabulary that are difficult to replicate in a piece-meal fashion.  But as the first two experts offered, if you don't have this training, do something to get it.

Recruiters who recirculate the same resumes, who rank longtime law firm experience as far superior to business experience or business training, are doing a disservice to the legal marketing profession.  They pander to the law firm leaders who don't know any better, and who are comfortable with marketers who know how to "keep the trains running on time" without "rocking the boat."  When I was an in-house law firm marketer I was recruited constantly to jump to another law firm.  When I heard the recruiter repeat these code words, which to me mean "don't challenge the lawyers to change," I ran the other way.  For me, and a for a lot of excellent legal marketers I know, being seen and not heard while churning out "brochureware" at the request of lawyers who think this is how clients buy, is not an inspiring role.

Many law firm leaders out there today are realizing that what made the law firm successful in the '90s and '00s is no longer enough to succeed in the next decade, and they accept the challenge to improve their operations.  Part of their challenge is finding and hiring experienced professionals who bring new ideas, ideas tried and tested in other environments, and giving these professionals a voice.  I imagine that the influx of new ideas from outside the legal profession, and the excellent ideas offered by legal marketers who have improved their business acumen, will easily crowd out the supposed experts who wish for a return to the heady days of yesterday.  That door is closed.  Please don't let it hit you on the way out.

Legal Project Management Q&A

In recent months I've trained hundreds of Biglaw partners on project management principles.  In some of the earlier sessions, a handful of partners would sheepishly acknowledge that they had no idea project management was a term of art, that it referred to a disciplined approach to managing a series of interrelated complex tasks.  Few now will admit to this blind spot, though among those who've heard the term most still don't know what it means for a law practice.  To help demystify the concepts, my colleague Pam Woldow (now with Edge International) and I presented a webinar recently on Legal Project Management.  (Click here to order the CD.)  Of the many webinars I've presented, this session had one of the most active audiences.  The questions were flying in from almost the moment we were underway.  We addressed many of the points during the session, but I'll expand a bit more here.  The commentary below is primarily addressed to those who've viewed the webinar or who already have a basic grasp of the concepts. First, what is Legal Project Management? Legal Project Management, or LPM, is the practice of applying tried-and-tested business practices used in other fields to the management of complex legal matters, both litigation and transactions.  While designing and constructing a large skyscraper is very different from defending a corporation against claims of IP infringement or assisting a private equity firm to acquire a majority stake in a closely-held technology business, in many ways the techniques to manage budgets, to deal with scope change and to communicate expectations among stakeholders during the engagement mirror the challenges faced by lawyers managing these legal matters.

Doesn't Legal Project Management apply only to commodity practices? LPM doesn't reduce the practice of law to a series of rote exercises that can be performed by any low-cost lawyer, ignoring all creativity and years of accumulated wisdom.  In fact, LPM very clearly embraces such experience by ensuring that legal matters benefit from this learning curve, rather than treating each legal matter as if it's the first of its kind.  Of course it's easier to take a systematic approach to legal matters if the matters are routine to begin with, but let's not kid ourselves.  Very few legal matters introduce completely new concepts.  Most law firms acknowledge this themselves by showcasing their lengthy deal lists and league tables.  If they only handled truly new and unique matters and cases of first impression, then little of that past experience would be relevant.

Then isn't Legal Project Management really just another name for Case Management or Matter Management? The concepts are related, but generally speaking Case Management and Matter Management are approaches to keeping track of the many aspects of legal matters with a particular emphasis on tracking costs.  LPM casts a much wider shadow.  The intent of LPM is not merely to track costs, but to control costs, to identify areas of variability in order to get in front of scope change before it happens.  LPM emphasizes performing the right activities to achieve the desired outcome and not more, while being mindful of one's duty of care and the client's risk tolerance.  Doing necessary work that a client will pay for is more efficient than doing unnecessary work that manifests itself in low realization rates.

So Legal Project Management means sacrificing quality for lower cost? Not at all!  We illustrate this challenge in our webinar in more detail, but these graphics are a good start.  Imagine the firm that begins lawyering up when the client initiates a new matter, without properly understanding the client's needs, scope and budget. What results might be the 3-tiered wooden swing when what was needed is a simple tire swing.  At times, clients do a poor job of articulating what they want; at times, chief legal officers don't fully understand what the business leaders want; at times outside counsel leaps to the conclusion that this client's fact pattern looks a lot like a prior and similarly-situated client's fact pattern, so work begins.  To belabor the metaphor, the associate builds a wooden seat, and the senior associate demands two wooden seats, and the partner demands three wooden seats because eliminating risk means doing more work and because "clients hire us to be more thorough than anyone else."  Is it compromising quality when we eliminate all lumber and woodworking from the matter, and instead provide the simple tire that fully meets the client's budget and expectation?

Why would we involve clients? Won't they always demand more for less? That's one way to look at it.  If your client doesn't trust you to do the necessary legal work at a fair price but no more, then of course given the opportunity the client may very well instruct you to do less work and therefore charge less.  This happens all the time.  Does the following sound familar?  "We will not pay for first-year associate time."  When you purchase a Mercedes (or a Honda Accord) do you feel the need to dictate who may staff the production line?  Clients impose their will on the process because they often don't trust that their outside counsel fully appreciate the need to balance legal risk with budgets.  Imagine, though, that the client is involved at the earliest stages and that all parties share common expectations for what legal tasks are necessary, for how long and at what cost (approximately), and imagine the client is fully aware of those areas where scope change of a significant magnitude is likely to occur, e.g., during due diligence, review by the regulating authority, if class cert is granted, and so on.  Clients demand more for less when they believe absent any control we'll do more for more.  LPM helps to manage expectations because everyone is aware of what's necessary in advance.  Of course, we can never eliminate surprise but the client who feels fully informed at all points in the process will be far more tolerant of change than one who's surprised every month when the invoice arrives.

So Legal Project Management means we'll bill less, and be less profitable? I'm a big believer that a financially healthy law firm is good for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with the Biglaw focus on profits if this focus doesn't interfere with the clients' needs.  But let's clear up a few misperceptions.  Just as many of us grew up with the notion that our home values will always increase, Biglaw partners have grown up with the notion that profits only result from high billable hours multiplied by ever-increasing billing rates.  There are even some who believe the ACC Value Challenge will result in lower compensation for outside counsel.  Hogwash!  Every other industry in the world operates under an assumption that another equally viable path to profitability is by lowering costs.  And we're not just talking about eliminating free soda.  If a client were to pay less because the firm put the client's interests first and determined that the legal issue doesn't need as much lawyering, we'd very likely see an increase in realization rates, we'd reduce the opportunity cost of assigning lawyers to tasks that ultimately will not be billed, we'll engender client loyalty and reduce our cost to acquire the next matter (the cost of sales).  These are plenty of ways to apply simple grade school math to illustrate this point.  To be clear, things are changing.  But change doesn't have to mean lower profits.

Does Legal Project Management help or hurt under an Alternative Fee Arrangement? As described above, the new math of law firm profitability means lowering the waste and inefficiency we create by performing legal work that cannot be realized.  Imagine if there's a capped fee in place, then any waste and ineffiency directly reduces the firm's profitability.  While there are many flavors of Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs), essentially they all require that the firm operate more efficiently, and absent a disciplined, rigorous approach like LPM then it's likely, bordering on guaranteed, that the firm will experience profit dilution and view AFAs with skepticism.  For my consulting practice, an AFA is a primary catalyst for embracing LPM; but the concepts apply equally as well in a billable hour scenario, even more so in an environment where the competition is creating downward fee pressure.

Do we need certified project managers?  Can our staff do this? The first caution is to understand that LPM is not a technology initiative, it's not something that can be delegated to someone else in the same way that law firms hire experts to handle Public Relations or to update the website or to manage the cafeteria or to tend to the grounds.  So often law firms treat business processes as technology initiatives.  Knowledge Management (KM) is about capturing and sharing knowledge to better train our lawyers and serve our clients, yet most law firms treat it as a database problem for the techies to figure out.  Client Relationship Management (CRM) is about understanding our clients, yet most law firms treat it as a mailing list issue owned by Marketing.  LPM is about better serving client needs by setting proper expectations, by providing the right legal services, and by dealing with change.  These are not tasks to be delegated, but tasks that client-facing partners must embrace.  Of course, when LPM involves creating pretty charts and graphs to show our progress on the project plan, then of course there are qualified people on staff who can do this more efficiently than a partner.  Some firms have hired certified project managers, but by and large their focus is on understanding the historical costs of delivering legal services, an effort designed to inform the partners when making pricing decisions.  LPM tasks can be delegated, but the partners must own the business process.

Legal Project Management

I've been spending a lot of time in recent months conducting workshops in Legal Project Management.  What is Legal Project Management, you may ask?  Simply put, it's the process of adapting business process improvement, resource allocation and predictable budgeting techniques to the delivery of legal services.

Some lawyers believe that the practice of law is not like other professions or business disciplines, and that therefore project management principles which work in other areas do not apply.  These lawyers are wrong.  That's not to say one can manage a complex legal matter as if it were an automotive assembly line.  But every legal matter doesn't have to be treated as a completely unique confluence of steps that has not occurred before and will not occur again.  Each of these steps can be broken down and analyzed, and when the opportunity arises for this step to be included in an engagement, there can be a greater understanding of the cost drivers. 

Understanding the assumptions that influence the cost of delivering legal services is critical to setting fees, and clients understand this.  After all, they go through a similar process when establishing their own cost and revenue budgets. My former colleague Pam Woldow and I have (literally) traveled the world delivering Legal Project Management workshops to law firms big and small, to law departments big and small, to corporate lawyers and litigators, to partners and associates, to finance and marketing staff... and our workload is increasing. 

We will be offering a webinar on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 1 PM ET to share our insights into Legal Project Management, and to address questions from those who are experienced Legal Project Managers as well as those who are just starting to explore this new frontier.  For more information, click here.

Legal Project Management is critical to managing legal work more profitably, but it's also an excellent way to achieve client satisfaction and to develop associates' skills.  We'll touch on all of this in the webinar.  If you plan to attend and wish to submit a question in advance for us to address, please post it in the Comments below.