The edition in which Simon gets cancelled

We had an interesting debate at a training session that I ran this week. The session was about influence. The debate was about using other firms’ IP for our BD.

I suggested that many firms might as well send their clients another, larger firm’s legal updates and say, “We should talk about how this affects your business”.

Clearly, I can’t tell you how the idea went down in the room as that’s confidential, as was the discussion.

But I can explain my thinking here, and I’d be keen to hear what you have to say.

The first thing to note is that large firms have huge knowledge teams that get updates on legal changes written and published accurately and quickly.

Some of these firms have the sense to send it to their clients before they publish it on theit website and their social media.?

But many firms do not.

Quite a few firms then immediately get the legal update published on Lexology and Mondaq.

So, something that was quick and accurate and useful has now been democratised and made publicly available, and yet no one/very few people at your firm have actually sent it to their clients and said? “I think that this affects you”.

We’ve issued it on the internet, social media and paid content-promotion platforms, which are great at informing other private practice lawyers of our thinking.

Let’s say you work at a smaller firm. Should you:

1. Option 1 - Invest time trying to play catch up with the big firms and produce your own note from scratch and issue it to your clients a few hours or days later, and accept that they have probably already received it from firms who probably effected the change in law in the first place; OR
2. Option 2 - Rip off their content and try and pass it off as your own? (JK. This used to happen to us all the time when I was at Burges Salmon, when trainees and NQs at other firms would nick our content and pass it off as their own articles. Until I called them, that is…); OR
3. Option 3- Think: “Wait, I have limited time available. A big firm has already written this note, I should forward it to five clients in its original format, but write each and every one of them a tailored and personalised note about how it impacts on them and their business?

Wait, Whaaaaaaaaaaatttttt?

Am I really encouraging you to forward another firm’s IP to your client?

No.?Not really*.

But am I right in thinking that far far far too often, we spend our time and energy writing the legal update rather than sending it clients a personalised note about how it impacts their organisation? Yes.

And do we need to rebalance the efforts of marketing/communications and BD so that we do more of that? Yes.

And do we need to send our clients the update first before publicly publishing it? Ideally, yes.

But wait...

There is a fourth option:

To take a beat, read the note and think deeply about how it will affect clients in your chosen sectors.

To write a note that deals with the kinds of insights that only a real sector insider understands.

This was the promised land of sector expertise 15 years ago. In our experience, deep analysis on the effects on a sector are sparse. Certainly within a day or two of the trigger event anyway.

So maybe go for the final option that we often use at TBD Marketing:

Write to your clients saying, “I know that this change has happened, and I am going to do a deep dive on it over the next 24 hours. Let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to cover, or have thoughts you’d like me to add.”

That way, you'd let you clients know you're on top of it, but that you're not going to join the rush for speed when you can instead focus on providing quality insight that they want.

Can you imagine how well received that would be and how many aura points you’d gain as a result?

Who knows, they might even ignore your competitors' notes for a day while you write yours.

(*P.S. I am not actually suggesting that you send someone else's legal update to your clients. But I do want to start a debate about where we put the balance of our efforts and energies. Please don't make me point this paragraph out to you in the comments section on LinkedIn.)

In other news

How US law firms have redefined the Magic Circle

Last Friday, the FT ran a deep-dive feature on the impact that US firms have had on the UK’s Magic Circle and other City firms. It includes quotes from the formidable Neel Sachdev and explores how American competitors have driven up City pay in a fierce competition for talent.

SRA confirms a steep rise in compensation fund levies

As reported in the Law Society Gazette on Tuesday, the SRA has acknowledged that it will massively increase fees to shore up its badly depleted compensation fund. There has been little opposition to the move, which has become necessary in the wake of several SRA interventions, including the infamous Axiom Ince debacle.

Law firms may struggle to renew their PII

On Tuesday, City A.M. reported that nearly 40% of insurers are considering withdrawing from the personal indemnity insurance (PII) market for solicitors, leaving law firms potentially facing severe problems in meeting their regulatory obligation to carry PII.?

Former Axiom Ince staff win claim over mishandled redundancy process

More than 150 former Axiom Ince staff have successfully brought claims before the employment tribunal over the way they were made redundant by the closed firm, the Law Society Gazette reported on Wednesday. Their total claim is estimated to be worth ￡1.9m, representing 90 days’ gross pay for the 153 claimants.

PEP at Macfarlanes hits ￡2.6m

Macfarlanes has seen its PEP rise to ￡2.6m, a 24% increase on last year. According to The Lawyer, the firm saw a similar rise in operating profit, which increased by a 12-month equivalent of 23% (Macfarlanes switched its financial year-end this year), reaching ￡174m.

Labour delays its slapdown of SLAPPs

The Guardian reported on Wednesday that the Government is delaying its proposals to ban strategic lawsuits against public participation, known as SLAPPs. Despite Conservative support for a total ban on SLAPPS, Labour’s Frederick Ponsonby, a justice minister in the House of Lords, said that there were still outstanding questions on how to implement such a ban. One of these questions will surely be how to define what constitutes a SLAPP.

I hope you enjoyed this edition. Wish me luck with all the knowledge lawyers who are going to come at me today.

Si

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