Legal Marketing

The Daily Record on Business Development

The Daily Record, Rochester's daily legal and business newspaper, has had several articles on business development, notably:

In the Beginning: Networking 101: Can you hear me now?, by Langston D. McFadden, Daily Record columnist (published September 4, 2007).

Law firms and legal depts. head offshore to cut costs, by Dick Dahl, Dolan Media Newswires (published August 31, 2007).

Taking good care of referral sources, Dolan Media Newswires (published August 29, 2007).

The author advises attorneys to be "proactive in cultivating ... referral relationships."  Take  referral sources to lunch. Ask them what they think of your practice and "how it serves the people they send."  Keep it simple: " We appreciate your business and thank you for trusting us to work with your clients." Ask what you can do to serve your clients better. Ask open-ended questions, such as "What are a couple of things you'd suggest I do?"

Link to The Daily Record's website for more information. If you have a subscription to the newspaper, you can view archives.

Temp Attorneys

Temp Attorneys' Time Has Come

By Leigh Jones, The National Law Journal, October 11, 2005

The Lateral Report 2004

The Lateral Report 2004
The American Lawyer, 3/1/2004
The American Lawyer's lateral report is the annual survey ranking the Am Law 200 firms that gained and lost the most lateral partners over the last 12 months. Read on to find out who's growing, who's shrinking, and what lateral numbers can mean to a firm's bottom line.
Short article
Related charts:
Arrivals: Lateral Partner Hires
Departures: Partners Moving On
Star Laterals of the Year

Corporate Practices

The 2004 Corporate Scorecard
The American Lawyer's annual ranking of top transactional practices.
Jim Schroeder, The American Lawyer, 04-01-2004
Full text article
Related chart: Top Corporate Practices in 2003
Compare with last year’s survey:
Corporate Scorecard: Top Practices in 2002
Jim Schroeder, The American Lawyer, 04-01-2003

Salaries & Billing - Texas

Texas Salaries & Billing: Steady as She Goes: State's salaries, billing rates reflect modest increases
Texas Lawyer, 05-01-2003, by Lisa M. Whitley
For the second year in a row, salaries at Texas firms increased by very little on average. This year, 48.9 percent of firms using alternative fee arrangements preferred flat-fee billing. Most consultants and many lawyers want to move away from billable hours, Elder says.
Full-text article has links to salary and billing charts:
• Hourly Billing Rates
• Average Hours Billed Per Week
• Administrative Services Salaries
• Legal Secretaries' Salaries
• Support Staff Salaries
• Timekeepers' Salaries

General Counsels' Salaries Survey

Survey Shows General Counsels' Pay Soared Last Year
New York Lawyer, July 24, 2003, By Eriq Gardner
Corporate Counsel
Overall, GC compensation jumped 9 percent in 2002.
Short article.
Chart.

The AmLaw 200

The AmLaw Second Hundred of the country's highest-grossing law firms had a good 2002 overall. Gains in gross revenue and profits per partner are due mainly to focus and geography. Gross revenue at the Second Hundred was up an average of 5.4 percent, compared to 8.5 percent for The Am Law 100.
Short article.
Full-text of article.
The chart.

Surveys

Surveys can be informative but also costly. Look for Executive Summaries and tables of contents. Some surveys can be ordered in sections.

We'll be posting information about surveys of interest to the legal industry - law firms, legal vendors, marketing people, law librarians. Here's a start:

ABA 2002 Tech Survey, conducted in Nov. 2002 polled more than 3,000 lawyers in private practice. Five reports cover Law Office Technology, Mobile Lawyers, Litigation and courtroom Technology, Online Research, and Web and Communications Technology. For more information, including an executive summary, see http://www.lawtechnology.org/surveys

This site has other surveys. Of note: Feasibility and Viability of the Digital Library; Trends In Legal Publishing for the Millennium: Quality Moves to the Internet.