The Conversation

Amanda Illing

2021-12-24T11:18:00.000+00:00

In 2021, one job stood out as Kysen's proudest moment: helping one barristers' chambers rename to Gatehouse, when the set decided to sever associations with its former namesake and slave trade supporter Lord Hardwicke in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the boldest and most positive moves I’ve seen in law in my entire career.

Working closely with CEO Amanda Illing on this was a privilege… and an education in how to bring people along with your thinking and create true consensus. Marshalling over 100 barristers, plus staff, getting everyone to agree to something as emotive as what their set is going to be called, is no mean feat! I had the pleasure of sitting in on the multiple focus groups she ran with the always delightful Charles Bagot QC in what they called the "Working Title Sub Committee" to develop the new name. I can tell you she was masterful in corralling all the different parts of chambers and getting everyone working together as one. It also says a lot about the culture of collaboration at this particular set of chambers: amazing to see how effectively and harmoniously everyone worked together. And she was doing this whilst also in the middle of a refurbishment project of a building they were planning to move to, and many other related projects. As she describes it, "I was in the middle of a massive series of Venn diagrams!".

Before this latest round of Covid restrictions I popped in to have breakfast with Amanda at the set’s new home in Gray’s Inn, at 1 Lady Hale Gate (you can see how far Gatehouse has moved away from the set’s Lord Hardwicke connections, just from the address!) I was blown away. Their new accommodation looks nothing like a barristers’ chambers, instead channeling smart, City law firm. The interiors are spacious, sleek and contemporary, very pleasing to the eye… and not a single piece of wood panelling in sight! There are gorgeous pop-out colours and interesting fabrics everywhere, and a plethora of inviting spaces all around the building to entice people to meet with colleagues and clients and commune, also to enable people to take a moment of solitude in a manic day for their wellbeing or for prayer. And as you’d expect there’s also the state-of-the-art facilities for hosting virtual hearings. I haven’t even started on the party space on the top floor: a very cleverly designed area with a number of beautiful rooms that can be sectioned off or opened up into a larger sweep, segueing onto an amazing top floor terrace that overlooks the whole of Gray’s Inn. What a view! A metaphor for the fact that Amanda and her team are giving us all a new perspective on the Bar.

I interviewed Amanda for this blog several years ago, when we first worked for her and the set. I remember opening with “Amanda Illing is famous for tearing down walls in Chambers…” One of the first things she did when she joined in 2009 was to convince Chambers that it was essential to rip down the partitions separating the different members of the admin team, so that clerks, marketers, managers and the finance team could all see and hear one another, and work as one team. Over 10 years later, she has taken this creative approach to planning workspace in a way that promotes better collaboration to a whole new level. She’s raising the bar for everyone at the Bar 😉.

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Love this campaign highlighting the role of language in #inclusivity.

Forward-thinking set 7BR has created a series of infographics, following interviews with five AccessAble Ambassadors, each designed to highlight the realities and #accessibility issues facing a disabled person when they’re asked to simply ‘swing by’ or ‘nip to the loo’. For a disabled person, ‘popping to the shop’ can be a dramatically different experience. Have you seen the campaign on 7BR's social? If not you can connect with their Twitter and LinkedIn feeds here...

The campaign is part of an exciting project 7BR will be announcing in early 2022. Another set that is raising the bar at the Bar, this time in relation to attitudes to accessibility.

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Whilst in Glasgow this month I had a lovely opportunity to pop in to see ex Kysenite Fred Banning (who I'm proud to say started his legal PR career with us 15 years ago, pretty much straight out of Uni) and enjoy an amazing spectacle in his street: a Winter Wonderland Christmas lights extravaganza that he and his neighbours have put on, festooning their houses and gardens with festival fare, to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

People travel miles to see it and it has been incredibly effective at raising money: over £10,000 so far and counting!

At Kysen we decided to make our annual Christmas charity donation to support this heartwarming initiative. If you want to make a donation too, you can use this link here.

Lara Squires

2021-09-24T15:40:00.000+01:00

Legal marketing supremo Lara Squires thinks lawyers need to get a much better grasp of their brand positioning, to give them confidence in pricing themselves properly. This is a major issue for the profession she says. With a new competitive framework as firms and their clients prepare to pull out of Lockdown, she's worried there's going to be a race to the bottom in terms of price, with lawyers undercutting each other to win mandates.

This is a topic we've visited before in this blog, in conversation with Vanessa Ugatti, who specialises in training lawyers to see their worth and price themselves accordingly. For Vanessa, the issue is largely one of psychology and getting lawyers to see themselves differently. Lara's take on the topic is that it's intrinsically linked to how a lawyer understands (or doesn't) their firm's brand.

"Yes it's about the L'Oreal factor, and pricing confidently telling clients *they're worth it*", Lara says. And she agrees it's also about the Stella Artois positioning too, (one of my advertising faves), giving your customers comfort in being "reassuringly expensive". "I often price myself as more expensive than competitors in a pitch situation, and then explain why I am more expensive, ie demonstrating how much more value I offer", Lara tells me. "I do think there's a lot lawyers could learn from these consumer brands. I often invite partners to compare their firm to supermarket brands, to help them get a handle on where they think they're positioned and where they want to get to. But there's often so much confusion within one partnership as to where in the market their firm is positioned. In a situation like this, what hope does a firm have of communicating a clear positioning to its target audiences. I had a classic example recently: a small firm of six partners, and when I took them through this exercise two of them said the firm was like Lidl, two said it was akin to Waitrose, one likened it to Sainsbury's and one Tesco." Lol.
This confusion raises a huge continuity point about how the firm comes across, she warns. "What are the partners communicating to the outside world if they have such different ideas about what the firm is? This is the real challenge and firms need to address it urgently: how individual partners see the firm versus how the world sees it. Lawyers need to think about brand in terms of its importance in the story it tells about a firm. They need to become much more comfortable evaluating the emotive aspects of their business and why people are drawn to them over other firms. Retail brands do this so well. Think of The White Company for example, offering lots of things that are white but not exclusively ... but ensuring everything in its stores and all the products they offer are clean lines and a kind of Zen living. The difference between what Premier Inn offers compared to Boutique Hotels is clear for all to see."
We can only dream of a time when law firm brands are so clearly distinguishable from one another as these retail brands. But with Lara advising the marketplace, I'm starting to think that day will come a little sooner.

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Nothing gets a busy PR team more excited than a request to support a client in their litigation battle,
especially when it involves a multi-million pound fraud, celebrity status and a police chase. Edmonds Marshall McMahon have successfully brought a private prosecution against Elie Taktouk who has been sentenced to seven years in prison on 11 counts of fraud relating to a failed property redevelopment in Knightsbridge. Their clients, Adrien and Frank Noel, were defrauded of £2.49 million by the tycoon who leveraged his reputation to con the investors into investing large sums through a series of calculated lies about the true state of the redevelopment. Taktouk who failed to show up in Southwark Crown Court was later detained by the police at the Chelsea Harbour Hotel. Taktouk reached celebrity status after his wife Daniella Semaan, left him for the former Arsenal and Chelsea midfielder Cesc Fàbregas. This case highlights why private prosecutions are a vital part of our justice system, at a time when the state prosecutors are struggling to investigate and prosecute for complex fraud. Private prosecutions are becoming increasingly more significant as they provide a fast and effective option for individuals, corporates and charities as state prosecutors continue to suffer from a lack of resources to investigate and prosecute complex fraud.

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There's been so much coverage of the vaccine question as life and work starts to return to some
sort of normality, you'd think we'd all be tired of the topic. (We've been placing employment experts here, there and everywhere in the press on these sorts of topics for weeks!) But the Strictly vaccination drama made us all prick up our ears. The BBC quoted strictly star Gorka Márquez, who claimed that reports that some professional dancers on the show are refusing to be vaccinated against Covid are ‘pure speculation’. Márquez told This Morning that everyone is free to make their own decisions. “You go in the streets right now and some people might be vaccinated and some people might not”, he says. As the months go on, we’re bound to see more of these ‘vaccination drama’ stories, whilst business of all kinds increasingly grapple with the question of encouragement vs. enforcement when it comes to staff being vaccinated. We’d do well to remember it’s not just the corporate world coming up against these challenges. Watch this space, because employers are only going to need more guidance as we come closer to normality!

Katie Cramond

2021-06-11T16:20:00.001+01:00

MWE’s Katie Cramond has given a lot of thought to how we need to present differently in the digital environment. And of course this is a subject close to everyone’s hearts at the moment, as so much of our business life has transitioned to Zoom or Teams. Indeed this was a recurring theme at The Lawyer’s Marketing Leadership Summit (#TLMLS21) this week. In fact an entire session was devoted to “How can law firms cut through the surge in online information to get content engagement”. (We will be posting a series of guides on various of The Lawyer’s platforms, looking at different aspects of this, and reposting them here too.)

“The virtual environment is here to stay”, Katie says. “It’s clearly going to be part of our “new normal”, even as we go back to in-person as our default.” She’s right: apart from anything else, we’ve learned through the pandemic that you can vastly increase audience numbers and connect with clients and prospects much further afield if you allow at least an element of online attendance. And it’s good for a firm’s carbon footprint, to tick that ESG box! So we will all be getting used to “hybrid” events in the future I am sure… another hot topic of discussion at #TLMLS21, especially around the issue of how to make these work for both audience types, and how to avoid a compromise that is worse for all! [On this point, Laura Ottley of Addleshaw Goddard had some very good points to make about the benefits of engaging specialists to help you work the medium better. She’s had advice to stage TV-style panel discussions (think Question Time ... or Graham Norton, depending on the image you want to project 😉) and learn from your own viewing experience how this format works equally effectively for the studio audience as it does for people at home watching remotely. But more on this another day…]

“As with any new medium, you need to take time to think how it works”, Katie says, “rather than just do a version of what you normally do on a different platform. So think about your “staging”, ie camera angles, lighting, backgrounds etc, and your clothes. It’s a balance though, between being sufficiently rehearsed and mindful of how you come across … and still being authentic!"

“A common mistake people often make on Zoom calls”, she observes, “happens when it comes to sharing documents on the screen. Remember, this takes away from the human face-to-face interaction. All too often, presenters come to the natural end of a document on screen being useful, but they continue to display it, filling the whole screen, making the faces of those on the call shrink into tiny boxes in the corner. Not ideal for quality communication. So close down those documents as soon as they have served their purpose and return to good face-to-face contact with the people you’re trying to engage with.”

Similarly focussed on optimising engagement with the people on the call, Katie advocates plenty of interactivity in your presentations, even the use of polls to aid this.

We may all be excited about the return to in-person business, but online marketing, having exploded in Lockdown, is here to stay. We marketeers and comms specialists can help our lawyers and clients adapt to the new normal. This is the time we can really show our skill and our value-add, so let’s make the most of this moment!

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So enjoyed The Lawyer’s Marketing Leadership Summit this week (and proud to be a sponsor). I particularly loved how the organisers included so many GCs in their panel sessions. A wise move, giving all the marketeers attending hard evidence to go present to their partners, as they take ideas back to their firms. “We heard FTSE 100 GCs say [this or that] is important to them…” Even a lawyer can’t argue with that! Interesting how many times the plea for lawyers to “be more human” came up in talks by GCs. “Legal expertise is a given. What we want to know is what a firm’s lawyers are like as people, and the values and approach that’s unique to their (and their firms’) way of doing business and helping clients.”
The Summit also introduced me to The O Shaped Lawyer Movement, which aims to change the way lawyers’ skills, mindsets and behaviours are developed. Their mantra is “People first; then lawyers”, believing the lawyer of the future will practise in a more human-centric and emotionally intelligent way, and that this will result in better service to clients in a more diverse, inclusive and healthy environment. Well, I’ll vote for that! Expect to read more about this initiative in this blog soon!

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The Summit’s (virtual) room was full of some of the profession’s greatest and best marketeers and comms professionals, including many clients and friends of Kysen. A shout-out to: 7BR’s Hannah Sparkes, Ashfords’ Michelle Johnson, BDBF’s Paula Chan, BBK’s SonitaHayward, Cripps PG’s Julia Hepner , Liz Carter and Rachel Smith, Hardwicke’s SallyWollaston, Keystone Law’s Kristina Oliver, Mayer Brown’s Helen Obi, Mills & Reeve’s Rob Neal and Julie Mortimer, Morton Fraser’s Tania Hemming, MWE’s Katie Cramond, Quadrant’s Sarah Longden SHMA’s Ben Buckton, CYK's Robert Coffey, RCR Partnership's Victoria Ash, LSL Family Law's Helen Childers, Atkin Chambers' Emily Morris, Radcliffe Chambers' Georgie Watts, ELA's Rebecca Churchill, Eversheds Sunderland's Judith Green, BDBF founder and consultant Arptia

Dutt, Weightmans’ Sarah-Jane Howitt, Payne Hicks Beach's Ruth Napier and freelance marketing specialist Victoria Brentwood. Also delighted to see ex-Kysenites Norton Rose Fulbright’s Heledd Phelps-Brown and Bird & Bird’s Sophie Bowkett. What a great and talented community to be part of!

Rhian Huxtable

2021-05-27T16:51:00.002+01:00

If ever there was proof how poorly the term ‘non-fee-earner’ describes those in law firms who aren’t lawyers, Rhian Huxtable’s research into the customer experience is it. His company insight6 specialises in exploring ‘client journeys’, from the background research they do before making an initial enquiry, to their first point of contact with a firm, then looking at what happens as they request (and then receive) information, and finally exploring what happens between that point and their enquiry being converted into a firm instruction. When you break it down like this, it’s easy to see just how many people, from different professional disciplines (receptionists, secretaries, marketeers, lawyers) are involved in reeling in a client. And once they become a client, this full range of professionals all continue to be involved in the client’s ongoing experience, in addition to the IT team who are responsible for digital communication working smoothly and the finance team who send out bills and maybe have to chase for payments, and so on and so on. Everyone plays a role in earning fees for a firm and contributing to clients’ perceptions and thus the firm’s wider reputation. That’s why the term ‘non fee earner’ is such a bad fit – yet you will see from my recent LinkedIn survey detailed below, just how prevalent the use of this awful term still is. Indeed one City firm senior partner told me he worked at a firm recently that talked about ‘fee-earners’ vs ‘fee burners’! I remember working in-house in marketing roles myself and being labelled a ‘fee-spender’ in stark contrast to the hallowed ‘big fee-earners’. But that was in the ‘80s and ‘90s and I had hoped that attitude was long gone. Clearly there’s more we need to do to understand how clients see the contribution that everyone makes in the law firm, beyond just the legal advisors.

So what else does Rhian’s work tell us about the client’s-eye view of legal service provision? Just as I was poised to start writing up my interview of him and everything he told me about this, (and actually quite randomly), I had the opportunity to ask one of his clients and mine. How entirely appropriate! Instead of using his own words, I can tell you how one of his customers found the experience of working with him! The Family Law Company’s very wonderful Kerry England, (she’s a dynamo and one of the most creative legal marketeers around – you may remember her Only Human campaign that we profiled in this blog before), has worked with Rhian previously at Stephens Scown. She says what Rhian is particularly good at is the critical part that happens after gleaning the customer insights: getting partners to listen to what they need to do differently and actually getting them to change. He does this by getting under the skin of their practical and psychological blocks to change, starting with three simple questions: 1. What do we think is not working as it should do? 2. What can we do to fix it? And 3. What are the blocks that stop you doing those things to fix it. And he manages to do this without making anyone feel defensive. That’s the big difference, she says. That and the fact that everyone he coaches in the firm, which covers people at all points in the organisation from receptionists and secretaries to partners, respect his pedigree, honing his customer experience skills over 16 years at much-loved high street brand Boots. That’s why he’s worth his weight in gold, she tells me. And this comes direct from the experience of a customer!

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I am sorry to report that over 40% of people we asked told us their firms still use the term “non fee-earner” to describe the many talented people that work hard in making their contribution, but who are not lawyers. We posed our question via a LinkedIn survey and 80 people replied, showing it’s clearly a theme people are interested in. One equity partner in a City firm put it well: "It suggests non-fee-earners or non-lawyers are somehow not as important as lawyers. Quite frankly the term fee earner itself is rather offensive too, given that it suggests that a lawyer’s primary purpose is to earn fees rather than to service clients”. Quite.

I always loved that Unsung Heroes campaign led by Managing Partners' Forum, urging the profession to rethink how it assesses and describes how different people contribute value in their firms. But that was launched in 2004 and I'd kind of assumed the issue was behind us now. Sadly, it would appear not. But there is hope: another respondent to our survey, Daniel Fletcher of Trowers & Hamlins, pointed out: "I do think a silver lining of the pandemic is that it has really showcased the talents of BD and marketing folk and hopefully this will see a shift in how they are viewed - as professionals". And not before time!

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Law firms going public has become a topic of increasing interest in recent years. Paul Hodkinson, Editor-in-Chief of Legal Week, wrote a fascinating article on the subject last week, taking a controversial line and opening up a vital discussion. The trend has been driven in large part by advancements in technology. This has led many tech-savvy and forward-thinking firms to consider whether an IPO could be an effective way of raising the huge amounts of capital they need to take their business to the next level. Paul created an interesting conversation around this last week, when he made some arguments against law firm listings – he takes the opinion that history provides only cautionary tales, and there may be more suitable alternatives. There are clearly strong arguments flying around on both sides of the debate. So what do you think? We’d love to have your views, so please do reply to this post with a comment. Alternatively, perhaps this could be a good topic for Kysen’s new LinkedIn survey next week… We’ll keep you posted! This story posted by Jack Rodway and Svitlana Lyekar

Matt Kay

2021-03-19T14:53:00.000+00:00

Vario managing director Matt Kay is missing the randomness of office chat and thinks our professional life risks being the poorer without it.

I took the opportunity to speak to Matt as he settles into his expanded role as head of Pinsent Masons’ new professional services practice group, Vario. He has made such a success of the firm’s contract lawyer resourcing arm since taking over the lead five years ago, that he has now been given a key role in the wider firm’s journey to transition from a law firm to a ‘professional services business with law at its core’. As Matt is a leading expert in workforce dynamics and resourcing teams for best effect in all sorts of different and changing circumstances, I was keen to hear his insights.

“In Lockdown our days have become far more structured now that most of our meetings are conducted online”, he told me. “On the plus side, this has proved to many more bosses that employees can be trusted to be more, not less, productive when working remotely. But on the other, in a different sense people’s output is in danger of being watered down because our interactions are so much more formal, narrowly task-oriented and to that extent straitjacketed. We no longer bump in to people, have unexpected chats that spark new ideas which we might then set up a meeting to explore. Everything is far too scheduled and pre-booked to allow for this serendipity. Yet we can see now that pre-Lockdown this was so often the way new ideas and initiatives got started. Teams and Zoom are great for allowing us to carry on and get done what we need to do to keep things going. But little happens outside of that.

“Also”, he continues, “We spend a lot of time online with the same people. The professional bubble of people we interact with is a lot smaller, ie only the collection of people we need to interact with directly to do our job. What’s being lost is the ad hoc interactions that normally just happen by chance in the office. The opportunity to bounce ideas off someone as you have an unexpected conversation. This is part of the everyday process of operating in a large office environment. Indeed modern offices are designed to encourage exactly these sorts of random interactions, because experience has shown how valuable they are to businesses: open plan, comfortable seating around coffee areas, breakout spaces. The challenge for us now is to rediscover this in the virtual environment. The answer? To build more casualness in to our scheduling.”

We often talk about the importance of business certainty. But Matt has given me a completely new perspective on the value of unpredictability and uncertainty. Vario is a brand known for turning established business practices on their head, doing things differently and leading where others follow. Every time I speak to their managing director he makes me think again about business norms I’ve accepted as a given. I’m looking forward to the next chat Matt!

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Complex personal injury specialists Bolt Burdon Kemp claim to be “Champions” for their clients … and rightly so! They have just conducted a study that reveals only a paltry 2% of British civil and criminal courts are fully accessible. Why haven’t we heard more about this before? Credit to BBK for bringing this to our attention. This clearly needs to change.

As they say in their report, “for many people, going to court is seen as a necessary evil…a way to help them gain justice or get redress for crimes committed against them or negligent behaviour that has adversely affected them”. Its’ a daunting process for anyone to go through, we know. But even more so for clients who have issues with their vision or hearing, or those with mental health issues or childcare responsibilities. In 2019 the Government admitted that 31 out of 56 courthouses in the Greater London were inaccessible. Did BBK find anything had improved one year on? You can read the detailed results of their investigation here.

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Regular readers of this blog will know we are all fans of award-winning freelance journalist Catherine Baksi here. I just love her totes minx style, and her humour. We spotted on Twitter that she was preparing a talk this week to the Westminster Legal Policy Forum about the state of legal aid and to sum up her thoughts on the matter she created this brilliant graphic (with a little technical support from @LegalCheek_Tom, she tells me). Genius!

Arpita Dutt Talks to Adele Baxby Meehan

2021-03-12T13:56:00.001+00:00

This week, our Content and Creative Director, Adele Baxby Meehan takes over The Conversation

“Childcare is as essential to this country’s infrastructure as roads and bridges. It’s time government recognised this. This latest budget was a missed opportunity.” This came from Arpita Dutt, a leading equality and whistleblowing lawyer, ELA Legislative & Policy Committee member and Lawyer Hot 100 alumnus, in our recent conversation. We were talking equality in the workplace and what might really change things for women. Arpita then quoted a stat which floored me – an investment in good quality childcare would produce 2.7 times more jobs as an equivalent investment in construction. Real action is needed to ensure women reach senior positions, especially in light of the pandemic and the step backwards equality has taken. And it’s not about paying lip service to the problem but taking real action. “We don’t all need mentoring. Women generally know what they’re doing. They just need the space to do it”, Arpita said and I couldn’t agree more.

In relation to this, Arpita pointed to a positive trend she’s noticing in law – the rise of the boutique firm led by women. “We’re seeing more and more niche boutique employment firms established by women. Karen Jackson’s didlaw, Farore Law established by Suzanne McKie QC, CM Murray founded by Clare Murray and Workwise Legal from Alison Humphry and MadeleineHughes, for example. No one is treading on anyone’s toes in this market as they all operate in their own niche practice areas. I think we will see more firms like this emerge and that should be celebrated.” Arpita expects to see more female legal entrepreneurship too and when asked why, she said: “The traditional law firm reward and recognition structure doesn’t suit women and women often aren’t encouraged to express their own vision or voice in some firms.” Speaking of the pandemic’s impact on workplace cultures, Arpita thinks that although working flexibly and working from home might be more accepted when we get back to ‘normal’, part-time work is still resisted by many firms, especially litigation teams. Forging their own way is a path increasingly explored by female lawyers who find the traditional law firm unsupportive and stuck in the past.

It was enlightening to speak to Arpita – her observations of the legal market are made through a particularly clear lens. She has recently deliberately taken some time out to reflect and this act of slowing down, she says, has allowed her to see where the legal market is heading. After helping to establish the employment firm BDBF, Arpita has decided to chart a new career. For now, she has a renewed focus on charity work and has also taken a step towards front line work again, volunteering for the Rights of Women workplace sexual harassment helpline and sitting on the advisory committee. This, she told me, has been eye-opening as many of the women calling the helpline have strong cases of discrimination or even sexual harassment and physical abuse but still feel too vulnerable to take legal action because they don’t want to experience retaliation and be out of work. Another example of the long-lasting impact COVID-19 could have for women.

In light of International Women’s Day this week and the worrying statistics around how the pandemic has impacted equality, Arpita, who speaks so passionately about the issue, left me feeling hopeful. There is still a way to go but I am confident with individuals like Arpita at the forefront, the conversations will continue to go in the right direction.

Please consider supporting the Rights of Women cause here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/rights-of-women/

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This week we enjoyed seeing the number of businesses celebrating women in recognition of International Women’s Day. One of our clients, Brook Graham, gave a lovely shout-out to some of the women who have helped shape their business (including our own Clare Rodway). Since working with Brook Graham, after they became part of Pinsent Masons Vario last year, we have learnt so much from this team of expert diversity and inclusion consultants. From conversations with the team, I know much more about intersectionality for example and how gender and race e.g. can combine to create a particular type of discrimination, and how much businesses need to wake up to this. And Brook Graham’s ethos of taking a meaningful approach to culture change is so important – in this day and age it’s not enough to talk about D&I issues. What’s needed is meaningful change. So, consider this a shout-out back at you, Brook Graham – keep up the great work!

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Favourite news story of the week easily went to the announcement that Terry Boot is replacing Peter Foot as the Finance Director of ShoeZone. This highlights the brilliant phenomenon of nominative determinism – the idea that you lean towards a job that fits your name. Indeed, when I was a teenager, I worked for a bookbinder and bookshop owner who went by Scrivener. In law, Corporate Counsel wrote about nominative determinism in 2009 and highlighted that in 2002, 0.002% of the population had the surname Counsell or Councell but three people of this surname were listed as barristers - over 1,000% more than might be expected based on statistical probability. And of course, there was Lord Judge, LordChief Justice, who served from 2008 – 2013. It’s clear – there’s more to your name than you might think.

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Amelia Jones, Senior Account Manager at Kysen PR writes about IWD and the real issues businesses need to think about

A Mumsnet survey for IWD highlighted 1 in 5 working mothers during the pandemic have had to slash their hours in order to cope with the increased childcare, and most frustratingly of all “more than a third said their careers had been affected in a way that was not true for their partner”.

Do businesses need to be alive to these issues? I think so.

Women taking on more caregiving responsibilities than their partner, despite working full-time, sadly isn’t a shocking statistic, and the pandemic has only exacerbated this problem due to school closures. We can’t change individual family dynamics, but what businesses can do is create more support and opportunity for women, taking into account what their personal circumstances might be.

Despite the lack of good quality investment in childcare by the government, companies can do more to support families with their childcaring responsibilities. The ROI highlighted by Arpita could do much to help women flourish in their careers – giving them the space, time and opportunity to do so. The alternative is that we continue to lose talented and skilled women in our workplaces.

Steps should be taken to improve equality for women at work, taking into account the responsibilities and pressure in today's society. Although it’s frustrating - we can’t change cultural expectations and socially constructed roles overnight - companies could take more of a tough approach in challenging why women’s careers are negatively impacted by the pandemic. As in the end, our industries will lose out the most.

Tania Hemming

2021-03-05T16:16:00.000+00:00

Tania Hemming thinks the word ‘innovation’ is overused. Morton Fraser’s Marketing & BD Director believes expectations and clarity around when the word innovation should be used needs to be challenged more often. The word 'innovate' is to make change, do something in a new way, to introduce as or if new - not all innovation needs to be monumental or life changing. And are we talking innovation or differentiation?

We’ve all been there, when you are asked to promote something as "ground-breaking" yet it is essentially a "seen before” initiative. Whilst these developments by a firm may be important to promote in some form or other, dressing them up as innovations runs a very real risk of undermining credibility in what the firm says and how it is perceived by its clients.

Tania believes the answer is in being far more precise about what we mean by the term innovation, rather than using it glibly as a buzzword: are we talking radical change? True market disruption? Or just incremental progression of a market idea? The lines may be blurred and that's ok, but let's be clear and communicate that by using the right language and label.

I met Tania at The Lawyer’s Marketing Leadership Summit last November, when she took part in a roundtable discussion we hosted entitled “When every law firm is an innovator, how do you differentiate your innovations?” Her contribution was insightful, particularly around the use and misuse of the term innovation, but sharing the floor with a dozen other top law firm marketers meant it could only be short. So I invited her to a one-to-one over Zoom to hear more.

“Our understanding and expectation of what a new idea or initiative can do needs to be crystal clear”, she told me. “When we first think of innovation we probably think of radical change but it doesn’t need to be seismic change to be of value. Incremental changes can be just as important in moving everybody and the market itself forward. But you need to present developments as they truly are, because exaggeration undermines credibility. We need to challenge our perception of what we are seeing as being innovative, we need to be clear about the level of change you are talking about and can we truly say they are disrupting the market? Is the change architectural, or is it radical? Is this something entirely new? Or a development of an existing idea or taking a concept from one market into another?"

Tania also pointed me towards a survey conducted by Altman Weil last year (Spring 2020) called “Law in Transition”, which revealed shockingly that 70% of law firm partners see themselves as the main obstacle to change … and 60% of those are unaware of what they need to do differently.

Tania is keen to ensure that innovation is not seen as a one-off initiative but should be a strategy within the firm and an evolutionary process. She also said, "The question is how to embed that into a professional culture that is often seen as conservative. With law as a cornerstone of society how brave do you want to be, what risks are you prepared to take, and are you prepared to fail". She continued, "These factors aren't something that comes naturally for law firms. I am fortunate that my career in professional services has been with law firms that look to push the boundaries and 'put their head above the parapet', what is radical change for one person is often incremental for others. If we are going to speak "innovation" to our clients, we have to understand what their perspective is and what the value is to them."

The importance of “Client-centricity” is a topic that comes up regularly in this blog as I interview leading legal marketeers on a wide range of topics. Lawyers need to communicate in their clients’ language and they need to understand the value they are adding in the context of clients’ own business worlds, and as they see it. Law firms need to distinguish between radical and incremental change from their clients’ perspective. Let’s take a good hard look at the word innovation in our press releases and marketing speak and challenge ourselves to be realistic about what the initiative can really do. Let’s focus on describing it accurately, promoting the benefits and value-add that will give clients true advantage, but let’s not bury their true value under meaningless buzzwords.

***

Our good friend Catherine Baksi, award-winning legal journalist and all-round dudette (remember her rocking up on Sky News sporting a leather bomber jacket and in her cut-glass British accent quoting a Clash lyric to explain the Supreme Court's prorogation judgment?) told us this week about a campaign her father @ArunBaksi is leading. He is working tirelessly, she says, to point out the inherent unfairness in how social care is means-tested, but health care isn’t. It's a no brainer when someone brings it to your attention so right away we signed his petition to bring about change. You can read about the campaign here and sign the petition. Please do also share on social media and help us put the word out far and wide.

***

My home town of Reading was all a-buzz this week after the sudden appearance of a very cool piece of graffiti on the side of the old Reading prison wall. "Is it a Banksy?", tongues wagged on Facebook and in real life? It looks like one". It certainly does, the image depicting a convict escaping down the outer prison wall on a rope made of bedsheets weighted down by a typewriter. Is it supposed to be Oscar Wilde, famously interned in Reading Gaol for gross indecency in the 1870s? (Reading is very proud of this history.) The face looks more like Robert del Nadja to me, founding member of the band Massive Attack and Bristol graffiti artist, often rumoured to be Bansky himself. But maybe it's just the rock star sunglasses...

Sure enough a few days later Banksy claimed the artwork was his. Just love this video s/heposted on Instagram showing how s/he did it, with wonderful art direction from the US's famed Bob Ross, presenter of The Joy of Painting. Enjoy!

Vanessa Ugatti

2021-02-05T11:13:00.000+00:00

I had a fascinating discussion recently with a woman who describes herself as the “True Worth” expert, and knowing so many lawyers who work themselves into the ground at times, run ragged by client demands and huge workloads, I had to share what I learned from her on this blog. Quite simply, Vanessa Ugatti believes too many conscientious lawyers are not getting a fair return on their hard work and the value they provide.

Clients come to Vanessa overworked and underpaid because they have difficulties around pricing and billing, and because they so often find it hard to resist pressure from their own clients to over-service. The good news is she has solutions that can turn this around for them, for good. Her service is something I believe every lawyer should know about!

From my days working in-house in law firms, I remember the levels of anxiety I would see when talking to lawyers about their approach to billing clients. So many times I saw intelligent professionals avoid talking to clients about money, then drop an unexpected bill and duck for cover! When the client responded in shock and horror, the lawyer would be quick to discount the bill, writing off hours of valuable work they had done. And of course this negative experience then created a perpetual cycle, as they were even more nervous about approaching the topic of billing the next time around. And this doesn’t even touch on the subject of the swathes of Work-In-Progress that never gets billed. This type of behaviour around billing is not only a disaster for the individual lawyer, meaning they have to work doubly hard to meet their financial targets, but it makes financial management and capacity planning a nightmare for firms. So I started to run coaching sessions to encourage better behaviours around billing: open and up-front communication with clients at the outset to manage expectations around costs and payment stages, and then again at the time of billing, so clients would know what to expect before an invoice hit their desk or inbox. In talking to lawyers about why they were so shy to talk money, I soon learned how tied this was to their level of confidence in the true value of their own work and their standing as professionals.

Vanessa takes this to a whole other level. She digs deep to unearth the psychological blocks that get in the way of people seeing their own worth and the value they add in their work for their own clients.

“My clients are clever and self-aware”, she tells me, “But it can be hard to see, acknowledge and tackle these sort of issues by yourself. In theory it’s a no-brainer: better billing practices mean generating more revenue ethically without having to get more clients, do more work or compromise value (or personal values) simply by lawyers charging what they’re really worth and getting it. But in practice, it can be a whole other matter, impacted by some very personal issues people carry with them about where their identity comes from and the strength of their own self-worth.”

Through consultancy, in-house workshops, one-to-one coaching and motivational speaking, Vanessa gets to the bottom of what’s really happening in people’s minds to make lasting changes to their attitude about themselves and their worth, and their behaviours around pricing their work and billing.

Given the legal profession is working so hard to address mental wellbeing in the workplace, and challenging unhealthy but long-entrenched work patterns and cultures, surely it makes sense for more focus to be placed on why they are so often keen to write off WIP and discount bills. Making sure lawyers see the value in their own work and encouraging them to bill properly can short-circuit the need to over work and make a big difference to their mental health. A subject close to Kysen’s heart, and that of many of our friends-in-law. (If you missed Emma Cessford’s guest blog last month, interviewing RPC’s Ed Fitzgerald on the topic of mental wellbeing, you can access it here.) Thanks for the insights Vanessa!

***

The debate continues about how to clear the backlog in criminal trials that’s been created by
social distancing requirements (although many believe the crisis is rooted in the withdrawal of funding from this part of the justice system over decades). The numbers are alarming: there are now 54,000 criminal cases in the queue, which is a record, and means defendants are being held for longer without trial, and victims and their families are having a long wait for justice.

The Labour front bench has called this week for a reduction in the number of jurors from 12 to seven and we are being told that the Justice Minister us ruling nothing out… including the idea of judge-only trials for less serious cases. But as a top trial lawyer, 7BR’s Collingwood Thompson QC, told me last summer and wrote in The Times, trials without juries MUST be the last resort. He came right off the fence in expressing his views that this would be very bad for justice, as for a number of reasons judges are far more likely to convict. If you have a subscription, you can read his full article here.

So what’s the solution? Answers on a postcard please...

***

The news that the Lawyer’s Hot 100 has recognised Fred Banning made us all smile this week. It’s highly unusual for the legal title to recognise marketing specialists in their annual list of the profession’s most excellent and relevant movers and shakers. However, Fred, Head of Corporate Communications at Pinsent Masons (and with great pride, a Kysen alumnus) is not just a stand-out marketer but also this year, a campaigner who has made a huge splash nationally. Diagnosed with cancer, Fred has been tirelessly fighting for the terminally ill to receive the Covid vaccine, appearing on the Today programme and across many other outlets, attracting support from NicolaSturgeon amongst others. We’re behind Fred 110% and so pleased to see his well-deserved Hot 100 inclusion.

You can ask your local MP to support Fred’s Early Days Motion here: https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/57850/terminal-illness-and-covid19-vaccination

Ed FitzGerald

2020-12-15T09:24:00.015+00:00

In this edition of The Conversation Kysen account director Emma Cessford talks to the RPC director of brand, marketing and sales Ed FitzGerald.

“I really don’t believe you can typecast people on the topic of mental health awareness and make assumptions about their attitudes simply according to age, gender, seniority or social background. Different people bring a whole host of different life experiences to how they think and feel about mental health. I’m Gen X, but for personal reasons I am very alive to the issue of mental wellbeing.”

I recently spoke to RPCs Ed FitzGerald on a subject close to my heart: mental health. The three things that particularly chimed with me throughout our conversation were the need we all have for community in our working life; the importance of law firms collaborating with clients if they are to address unhealthy working practices; and the truism that mental health issues don’t discriminate and can affect anyone.

“You can’t parcel people up into boxes when dealing with mental health. This is why firms need to offer a variety of mental wellbeing initiatives, as different people engage in different ways and have different needs”, Ed explains. Indeed, it seems that RPC have done just that over the last couple of years, from offering counselling sessions to all staff across the firm with a clinical psychologist from Hello Self, to training specialist mental health first aiders. Are these good initiatives being used? And who within the firm is using them? Ed explained that take-up over the last couple of years has grown consistently, with large numbers of people across the firm taking advantage of them enthusiastically. Importantly, all levels of seniority use the support available, which promotes an important point that even the most successful professionals have issues with mental health from time to time. Old stigmas are thankfully fading, (ie that mental health issues are for the mentally weak), and are being replaced with a much healthier attitude that the mind, like the body, needs care … and fixing from time to time.

Without the buy-in and support of clients, firms can only progress so far in promoting healthy working practices, such as calling time on a long hours culture. This is why the Mindful Business Charter is such a unique and brilliant initiative. RPC have recently signed up to the Charter and I was keen to ask Ed all about it. “The Charter is based on the idea that true cultural change is most effective when clients and firms work together and have the same expectations. It recognises that one of a law firm's greatest commodities, ‘brain power’, needs taking care of, which means firms and clients alike have a vested interest in avoiding burnout.” As one big bank GC famously put it, “If I’m paying top dollar for a lawyer’s clever thinking, I want to know I’m getting the best of their brainpower. A strung-out, stressed professional is of no value to me.”

Ed outlined that RPC were thoroughly supportive of the Charter and “are currently working internally with each team as to how to implement it meaningfully”. He believes the number of firms committing to the Charter tells a positive story, that real, long-term change is starting to happen in the legal sector.

“Sense of community” is a recurring phrase used by Ed throughout our conversation, as he sees it as a key part of fostering mental wellness. Of course, it’s a commodity we are all valuing more than ever this year, thanks to our Lockdown experiences…and it’s captured perfectly in John Lewis’ new Christmas advert. Whilst ‘sense of community’ is nothing new to RPC, (its culture is rooted in this), Ed admits that the firm has had to work harder to ensure people maintained their feeling of community during lockdown and sustained periods of working from home. This is not a unique challenge with many companies having to get inventive to keep that spirit going – albeit virtually. For RPC, Ed explains that they’ve been “running creative projects to keep people connected, from coffee roulette to exercise challenges on Strava" to, see how far people can run, walk, cycle or swim during lockdown, with the added benefit of encouraging people to leave their desks and get physically active. “We wanted to make sure people still felt that sense of collective purpose which comes with working at RPC. It’s important for everyone to maintain their presence within our community,” he says.

I asked Ed if one of the positives coming out of Covid-19 was a greater awareness and compassion for mental health and whether the sector would keep the conversation going post-pandemic. His response was interesting:

“Without a doubt, awareness of mental health issues has increased during this year with more conversations taking place to ensure people are being looked out for and the right level of support is being provided. This is a conversation that needs to happen a lot more across all sectors – and society in general – during normal times. There is a greater need for compassion and to be more accepting of people’s individual circumstances and the challenges they might be facing in their personal lives.”

Our conversation inevitably turned to the future, to which Ed hopes that the “conversation around mental health continues until it becomes part of everyday discourse and that people are as comfortable talking about it and seeking treatment for it in the same way they are for physical issues”. Now, I’m sure this is a sentiment we can all get on board with, so take five minutes out to ask a colleague, a friend or a family member “Are you OK?” and keep that conversation going.

Julie Mortimer

2020-09-01T14:52:00.000+01:00

Julie Mortimer is very pleased her firm had been investing so heavily in its wellbeing and flexible working programme before Lockdown. It couldn’t have been better preparation as the infrastructure and the team to manage it were all in place.

Mills & Reeve is regularly listed in The Sunday Times’ Best 100 Companies to work for, and last year was voted top UK firm in a RollOnFriday poll for work-life balance and flexible/remote working. “We’ve always been pretty good on flexible working, with the technology in place to support it. So when Lockdown hit, the firm was able to press the button on increased remote-working and have it in place across the entire business – so 1100 people – overnight”, Julie told me. “And our market lead in the field of staff wellbeing meant we were able to anticipate what the issues might be in Lockdown and take a highly nuanced approach to looking after our staff. We had the basics covered already, so next the challenge was to think through how support might need to vary to suit different groups: eg how the needs of people living with children, or with other responsibilities in the home, might differ from those living on their own, who might need more communication or more or different IT kit or furniture for example. And how they might differ again in the case of young professionals in shared accommodation with less space to themselves and perhaps no garden.” The firm’s HR team was already well used to working closely with the tech team and the firm’s management, to deliver the excellent working environment it is famous for. When we spoke (over Zoom rather than coffee of course), Julie was full of praise for her colleagues and the brilliant job they did identifying the varying needs of different people and making sure the firm customised its response in supporting all of them. “In fact they did such a good job, that some of our clients asked us to help them fathom this challenge in their own businesses.” Impressive. “A number of our clients didn’t have the resources and skill-sets to approach this challenge in the same way or they just needed something to get them started, and we were able to help by sharing content and materials with them. They saw this as a significant value-add and it was nice to support them in a different way in these difficult times.”

Julie and I chatted about what the future holds post-Lockdown and the permanent changes we all expect to see, if we ever do get back to “normal”. Most firms I talk to are saying they are planning a hybrid model in the post-Corona era (whenever that might be), offering most staff the option to work a portion of their time in the office and a portion from home. However Julie was particularly mindful of the Government’s keenness to encourage workers to return to the office this Autumn if they can, because office working is such an important stimulus for the economy. “It will be interesting to watch the trend in the wider business world. We don’t expect to ditch our offices any time soon, but we do expect our centre of gravity to shift towards more homeworking. We’ve been piloting returning to office based working and it’s gone well. Our people felt confident we’d made the office environment Covid-19 secure and it was great to see some different people face to face.”

Given Mills & Reeve is one of the handful of firms that lead best practice on staff engagement and satisfaction in the profession, it’s safe to say all eyes will be watching what they choose to do and how they go about it.

***

Thanks to Lockdown, TikToK has come out of nowhere to become one of the biggest names in business, and is expected to be bought any minute by Oracle, Microsoft or some other tech giant. (By the time you read this, it will probably already have happened!) And don’t we just love it! So much creativity and humour in so many ordinary households! It’s definitely been one of the major Lockdown silver linings for me.

Here are a few of my favourites:

Handwashing

Shoe Shuffle greeting

The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights (of course!)

And my latest favourite, ‘Not being productive’

How about you? Do please share yours in the comments section below.

***

And from next week, we’ll be subjected to a Government and campaign to get us all back to the office. Although we will be staging our return gradually, you can bank on us to be doing our part to support the local hostelries, cafes and bars in and around Mayfair and the City. We are PRs after all

Kate McMahon

2020-08-10T16:40:00.002+01:00

Kate McMahon thinks our new Lockdown work habits make us miss out on creativity and that lawyers need to take care to find other ways to bring it in.

Kate is one of the founding members of private prosecutions specialist firm Edmonds Marshall McMahon (EMM), which was set up in 2012 and has been phenomenally successful since then. The firm handles cases that the police and CPS don’t have the resources to pursue, (online fraud being the classic example), providing a private service alternative. We’ve all heard the stats on the meteoric rise of online fraud in Lockdown. Needless to say, Kate’s firm is having a bit of a moment.

EMM has long promoted remote working, most of its lawyers working from home one day a week. So it was in a good position compared to most to cope with the challenges of Lockdown. Still, she has a lot to say about its limitations. “We all know that remote working has been brilliant for efficiency and that generally speaking productivity levels have gone up as lawyers and staff don’t waste time travelling to the office or client meetings, and every Zoom is governed by an agenda which keeps everyone much more focussed. Of course this is good news, and no wonder many firms and chambers are rethinking their property requirements and how they expect lawyers and staff engage with the business once Lockdown is over. But there is often a spontaneous creative flow that happens when people are sitting across a table from one another in real life, throwing ideas around in an organic way, and this is missing in the new [mew] Zooms and Teams environment."

“Strict timelines and a focus on efficiency can be the enemies of creativity”, Kate continues. “Lawyers love procedure and often place more emphasis on this than on creative thought even in normal times. Lockdown has only made this worse. Of course procedure, process and consistency are all vital when it comes to implementing a legal strategy, but there is no point in following procedure if the initial idea you are attempting to put into practice is not right. We take great pains to find ways to put the creative back in to our work.”

“Another limitation of Zoom communication we’ve found is the way it tends to silence the more junior members of our team. We need to make sure they are included properly in discussions because they may have a perspective that no-one in the senior team has. But the nature of video conferencing makes it harder for people to interject in the flow of a conversation, so the less experienced won’t push themselves forward in the same way they would in a physical meeting room environment. In a small video conference, our senior team makes a conscious effort to watch for people who look like they’re about to say something, then clam up. They may open their mouth, but close it again before saying anything. And when you know someone well, you know they have something valuable to say, so you can invite them when you see that happen. It can be difficult to observe non-verbal signals on a screen.”

Kate describes a similar issue that happens in her work for clients. “With clients in particularly tricky situations, or who are going through a legal process that is very unfamiliar to them, the job for us as lawyers is not just about “doing law”. There’s a big handholding element too. And this is difficult to do in a digital environment. You need to be able to pick up how your client is feeling at any one time and spot where they look confused so you can make sure they are understanding what is happening to them and what your advice is, and give them the right support. As a legal advisor you have to be extra vigilant in a digital set-up to pick up the cues.”

But what Kate misses most of all she tells me, is face-to-face communication with colleagues. “As we’ve grown since we first began in 2012 we have been incredibly selective in our hiring, picking people we really want to work with professionally and personally. I miss seeing them in real life!”

Let’s hope a return to near-normal is just around the corner.

***

I just love The Family Law Company’s “Only Human” campaign that launched this week. It’s carefully crafted to run across multiple channels - video ads, client guides, website, social – and is such a powerful way to put across the culture this firm is most famous for: driven by empathy for clients much more than by fees. I’ve always said that the best forms of communication are about ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’. This campaign is such a good example. Do take a look.

***

Without doubt this is the year of the staycation. For some reason nearly everyone I know is planning a visit to Hayling Island, so right now I’m hearing the name on a daily basis, having not thought about it for decades since childhood holidays there myself. Seems we are all exploring long forgotten corners of our own country… and we’re loving it! I’ve long been a fan of being a tourist in your own back yard. It forces us to notice the wonderful things right under our noses. Silver linings of Lockdown, see….

Linda Lamb

2020-07-27T19:09:00.000+01:00

As the founder of a fast-growing family law business, when Linda Lamb spends money on marketing it has to count. So Return on Marketing Investment is a subject very close to her heart. How does she measure it?

“I wish it was as simple as just looking at the bottom line. But it isn’t. When you’re establishing a new brand, developing your profile is crucial and you need to find the right business partners to help you achieve that. You’re balancing lots of different priorities at the same time – creating a strong recruiter brand as well as nurturing business, both directly from clients and via law firm referrals – so an effective PR strategy is fundamental to future success. Our focus is on quality and building for the long term – and that requires investment.”

LSL Family Law already has a loyal following - Linda’s thoughtful advisory style and her dedication to client service (she used to be a midwife!) are a winning combination – the next step is attracting other family law professionals to join the team. LSL Family Law can provide an empowering career alternative for successful family lawyers who want to stay at the top of their tree, work flexibly and achieve that all-important work-life harmony. Linda has created an exciting way forward for family law professionals who are weary of the same rigid career paths, of relentless hours in large firms and who are not enamoured with the idea of branching out on their own as a sole practitioner.

A passionate advocate of new technology, Linda has integrated AI software with her website to enhance efficiency and to create the best possible client experience. Client feedback is amazing. She has also developed an impressive consultant portal system enabling those who join her team to share LSL Family Law’s well-established resources and third-party services. In addition to benefitting from LSL’s cutting-edge software and systems, consultants are offered IT support, mentoring and business development advice and are relieved of the responsibilities of compliance issues, credit control, indemnity insurance and marketing, leaving them free to concentrate on the needs of their clients. And of course in the challenging environment created by the pandemic, Linda's focus on technology has been massively beneficial. She has been using her technology and processes to induct clients online before setting up a video or phone chat. She has also taken pains to develop the ranking of her website and using social media to highlight LSL Family Law is very much open for business, even conducting mediations online.

“When evaluating the benefits of marketing, it helps to establish your objectives and expectations early on. We wanted to grow our brand in a specific way and we chose Kysen because of the team’s excellent reputation and their track record in the legal sphere. We were impressed by Kysen’s warm, friendly, client centered-approach - which mirrors our own - and we felt that the team understood our needs from the start. How do we judge success? Initially, by achieving coverage on the right topics and in the right places – articles and comments being published in national broadsheets and legal trade titles – so that we can make that vital connection with our target audiences. The next step is to consider the level of engagement generated by these pieces – the likes and comments on social media, responses from established contacts and enquiries from new clients and prospective consultants. When a top family law lecturer and practitioner at a magic circle family law firm publicly express support for your views on the importance of business savviness in legal practice - that’s when you know your marketing strategy is having the desired effect.

“Kysen have been instrumental in boosting our profile and in helping us to achieve our strategic aims. The team are a delight to communicate with and are incredibly supportive. From writing articles for top legal publications to penning comments on family law storylines in soaps, our PR journey together has been extremely productive and tremendous fun.”

We’ve enjoyed working with you too Linda!
***
Suspension of Jury trials a threat to the rule of law, reads a Legal Futures headline this week Too right! There have been lots of positive changes to working practices during Lockdown, not least the revelation that we are all actually very productive when working from home and appreciate spending less time commuting and slowing down to enjoy the simple things. But doing away with juries would most definitely not be one of them! There must be another way to deal with the pressure on the criminal justice system posed by social distancing requirements.

7BR's Head of Chambers Collingwood Thompson QC put it best in a recent piece in The Times, saying trials without juries must be the last resort as there are legitimate fears about how judges would reach a verdict on their own. He doesn't pull any punches! If you have a subscription, you can access the full article here.
***
Love this latest Coronaviral clip: an Indian journalist interviews a pair of donkeys on the road about why they are not wearing facemasks. Supposedly he did it to help raise awareness of the importance of mask wearing. And as the video went viral, he can certainly claim he achieved that aim.

For me, I just enjoyed the light relief. If it passed you by, you can enjoy the interview here.

Ruth Napier

2020-07-17T13:14:00.000+01:00

Cripps PG's Ruth Napier believes in a layered approach to marketing law firms. With almost 20 years experience in legal marketing, and before that 15 years marketing big banks, what she doesn’t know about professional services marketing isn’t worth knowing. When she agreed to share her wisdom on the subject of Return On Marketing Investment, I was all ears.

"The secret to getting the best returns is to focus your marketing effort on the areas that will give you the most value.” I couldn’t agree more. Now in an ideal world you shouldn’t need to spell this out, you may think. But from my own 30 years in legal marketing and PR I am well aware that a good proportion of many legal marketing teams’ activity happens because senior partners or QCs ask them to jump and they respond by asking “How high?” It takes a strong marketing professional to direct a firm’s or chambers’ marketing, rather than merely implementing the requests of the lawyers. “Once you have identified those key areas, the next golden rule is to plan joined-up campaigns that organize, co-ordinate and synchronise layered streams of marketing activity around them,” she continues. “So you might be marketing fewer initiatives, but you are making sure that each is promoted thoroughly, and in a multi-faceted way. So you will put together a programme that involves maybe a direct mailer to clients, a seminar, a page on the website and also press activity, all on the same topic area to really make an impact.” This is the way to do it! In my book, co-ordinating activity that puts partners and barristers into face-to-face conversations with existing/potential clients, with promotional initiatives that place the firm/set in the best possible light for the particular area of work in question at just the right moment, is the best way to deliver tangible results – i.e. new instructions. And of course any marketeer who can demonstrate clear returns on marketing investment will earn respect and therefore have much more say as to how the organisation’s marketing is done going forward. Not many are in such a privileged position as Ruth. But she’s earned it. What a refreshing change from the all-too-familiar picture of the massively overworked marketing team running breathless from one stand-alone marketing task to another: a seminar for the corporate team one week, then a press push for the real estate group the next, flipping their attention to a cocktail party for the private client department after that.

“When I’m deciding what type of initiatives to include in my marketing mix for any one campaign, I have a picture in my mind of a marketing and business development “hopper”: you begin with activity targeted at audiences of hundreds of thousands, such as press work where your messages will be reaching vast numbers of people you can never hope to meet; mixed together with initiatives that reach thousands, such as a conference; then hundreds, such as events hosted by your own firm; then finally when you are talking about one-to-one conversations between partners and prospects, (or with clients where you are hoping to get a new type of instruction), you are reaching people in their tens; and hopefully at this point individual clients (or new mandates from existing clients) start popping out the bottom of the funnel.

And of course the flow from prospect to new piece of business may not be linear. For example appearing in the press may become most critical at the point you are meeting clients and prospects face-to-face. The key is to have a good spread of activity from each of these levels in the hopper, in your mix.”

I can count on one hand the legal marketeers who are as determined to show tangible new business results from their marketing programmes (and most of those I can count have been profiled in this blog). Far more often the claim is that it’s impossible to show a direct correlation. But does she feel ROI is as important in these strange times we live in? Is it even possible in this Lockdown-disrupted market? "As we are in an uncharted period of global change, it might be tempting to throw ROI out of the window, but it's still an important part of understanding the impact of specific marketing activity. However target-setting for a particular activity or campaign is being less informed by historic benchmarks of course, which makes the job of pinpointing ROI harder", she says. That's a natural challenge that comes with doing business in "unprecedented" times, I guess! It's clear Ruth thinks we shouldn't give up. After all, when financial times get hard, ROI plays a critical part in justifying what marketing spend needs to continue.

Let’s all be more ambitious! Ruth is proving it can be done – and that the more you can demonstrate results, the more autonomy you are given to run your firm’s/chambers’ marketing programme the way you think it should be run.

***

So the entire legal profession appears to be planning its return to the office (or chambers). Have you already started allowing people to return? And are you phasing it in between September and the New Year? Many people we speak to are busy making workplaces safe, to enable a safe return after the Summer for those who want to, (who feel starved of the social interaction that office life brings / are desperate for other reasons to escape home confinement!), but limiting numbers, with a view to encouraging more to return in the New Year. But hardly anyone is planning a return to previous office working patterns, nor a complete switch to a remote-working model. Many firms and chambers have been canvassing their people to gauge appetite for continued home-working post-Coronavirus and the overwhelming trend seems to be people requesting a hybrid, so the freedom to create a new pattern of home and office working in a mix that suits them individually.

What’s your experience? We’d love to hear. If you’d like to share, please use the Comment box below.

***
We heard this week that facemasks are not going to be made compulsory office-wear, but looking at some of the wonderfully creative designs popping up on the market, many of use may well choose to make them part of our new professional look. Here is a selection of my faves….

Andrew Gilmore

2020-07-10T15:13:00.000+01:00

Grosvenor Law's Andrew Gilmore believes working practices have changed forever because of the Lockdown experience, as remote and virtual hearings have become prevalent, but that in the area of criminal law sometimes face-to-face just can't be replaced.

Andrew and I were speaking after he had helped Kysen with a media enquiry from the Express, requesting expert legal comment on an EastEnders crime storyline. As you can imagine Kysen never likes to turn journalists away empty handed, so through a mutual friend and client Derrina Jebb from SA Law we were put in touch and Andrew prepared some insightful comments at breakneck speed. We were extremely grateful for his input (you can take a look at the full article here), so thank you Derrina for the introduction. (Readers, do bear us in mind if you are sat on your sofa watching a TV or film plotline that has a legal angle. We have a little-black-book of TV journalist friends who love to hear how real legal life compares with the stories they are reviewing.) Andrew knows the system pretty much better than anyone I know. He began his career at the Serious Fraud Office before moving to East End criminal law firm JR Jones, followed by a 14 year stint at Janes Solicitors, finishing up at Mayfair's best, Grosvenor Law, which specialises in complex cases for high net worth individuals, whether arising from business or personal life. Not only was he super helpful with this press enquiry, but we also got talking about the justice system. And when he opines, given his background and expertise, you really want to listen.

We talked at length (over Zoom of course, as this is the way The Conversation has evolved in recent months 😉), about how everyone's Coronavirus-induced experience working remotely from home is the way forward and how it has expedited the courts' take-up of technology as well, most of which is a very positive experience. "However with criminal work you have to appreciate how stressful it is for an individual being defended from accusations in the context of the Criminal Justice System", Andrew explains. "It's so highly personal, and threatening, so when clients meet the lawyers defending them, it needs to happen in person. They want to know you're there for them and they will want to check out the cut of your jib, to see who it really is that they have on their side. Often the defendant will feel backed into a corner and that everyone is against them. And usually that first meeting with the lawyer(s) takes place at a police station, which is an intimidating environment for a defendant, so clients certainly don't want you attending by phone or video. They need your physical presence because in this distressed situation they will want an element of personal comfort and support, at a level that doesn't occur in the commercial law world. Criminal defence work is very much a trust based service industry."

There is a place for online hearings in the Criminal Justice System and for this reason Andrew has been very pleased to see how the use of technology has ramped up in the criminal courts. "They bring tremendous efficiencies when it comes to smaller, preliminary hearings. For these, online is perfect. It's so much quicker, cuts down on travel time and cost, and is convenient all round: better for prisoners and for the prison system, as it dispenses with the need to transport defendants between prison and court, so to this end it saves tax payers money. It's also been interesting to observe another benefit of running these smaller hearings online; there's far less space for people to talk when a hearing is conducted via a medium like Zoom. And when people do talk, what they say is to the point. This all cuts out time that is usually wasted when hearings happen in person. It also dispenses with the physical "faffing about" that happens in real life as people take their seats in a room, and the additional talk and chatter that happens at this point. So in all, the whole process is slimmed down considerably. However when the case gets to the full trial, the in-person element is critical. Yes, online can help speed up the system, but detachment is not good when it comes to a trial and is likely to be detrimental to defendants. Anyone accused of a crime will want to see their accusers face the full trial process."

When judging the fairness of the Criminal Justice System, empathy for defendants is generally in short supply. But to my mind, one of the central tenets of justice and respect for human rights is what happens to an innocent person who is put through the system. Do they emerge unscathed? Or is the process so frightening and stressful that they are left with lasting damage? "Whilst efficiency in the system is important", Andrew continues, "we need to be wise as to when technology should take a back seat in the courtroom and understand when face-to-face shouldn't be substituted."

I was keen to ask Andrew about a point Head of 7BR Chambers Collingwood Thompson mentioned to me last week, that "judge-only" criminal trials are being suggested to deal with the backlog of cases resulting from the need to socially distance in the courtroom (meaning far fewer trials can take place a day). Collingwood gave me his view (which we placed in The Times, available to view here if you have a subscription), that judges are far more likely to convict than juries. "That is precisely why the profession has been up in arms about the suggestion", says Andrew. Yes we need to deal with the backlog, but judge only trials are not the way."

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In case you missed it, New Law Journal recently published a three-page feature detailing the results of a joint study with Kysen on how top legal marketing professionals measure Return On Marketing Investment. You can access the full article here. Measuring ROI is a thorny challenge for the professional services sector at the best of times. And now even more so, as firms, chambers and other legal businesses scramble for position post-Lockdown, at a time when every single penny of the marketing budget has to count.

Over the next few weeks on this blog we will be publishing in full the individual interviews summarised in this feature, to give you even greater insights.

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So we are gradually returning to pub culture and I have to say the British Public has never in history looked so coiffured, all at the same time. By the end of next week, I imagine everyone in saloon and public bars up and down the country will be pumped and preened without exception. Rare for everyone's haircut cycle to be so in sync. Time for the great national selfie?

Victoria Ash

2020-02-14T14:47:00.000+00:00

For the next few months, The Conversation will be focussing on the challenging topic of Return On Marketing Investment, as it applies to legal businesses. This is a study we have been doing jointly with New Law Journal. I have had a lot of fun gathering these words of wisdom from some of the best management and marketing thinkers in the field. I know you will find their insights as fascinating and informative as I have. Enjoy!

Victoria Ash believes that, often, a law firm can only assess Return On Marketing Investment over the mid-to long-term, maybe 12-24 months. As a partner in RCR, a firm that specialises in helping boutique and specialist law firms grow, she says she’s frequently observed that if the objective is about changing culture to secure a business’s long term future, then in some cases you could even be talking as much as five, 10 or even 15 years before you reach the desired result. “But you do need interim goals to keep everyone focussed and on track to meet those long-term goals.”

And it’s important to track not just “outcomes", but “source activities” as well, she says, “Because whilst you can’t directly control outcomes, you can control your source activity. And it’s important to make sure you are selecting the right marketing initiatives to focus on and that you are executing them well.”

The starting point of any marketing and BD programme has to be clarifying what it is you are trying to achieve as a business and then setting outcomes-oriented goals to define what success looks like, she says. “This might be increased revenue, whether generally or through on-selling or up-selling to a specific client; or it might be enhanced client retention rates; or some other measure. Now whilst financial returns can take time to become apparent, especially if there are long sales cycles, there are other things you can measure in the interim. So for example if the goal is to bring in new clients, whilst it’s important to decide on longer-term measures that will tell you when your goal is reached, in the meantime you can set interim goals to track e.g. the number of pitches you do; meetings with new clients; number of follow-ups, etc. Another helpful interim measure might be “levels of engagement” with your marketing, which is much easier to ascertain in this social media age than previously.”

Whilst these disciplines are the norm in most sectors, in the legal industry they are sadly actually quite rare, Victoria points out. Far more usual is for in-house marketing and BD teams to be running around breathlessly “doing stuff”, but without much (if any) strategic or even tactical direction, she says.“We ran a survey a while ago to assess how much money firms wasted on ineffective marketing. The answer? A shocking £60m!”

Victoria also agrees with Serle Court’s John Petrie who commented in this blog last year that the success of marketing programmes has to be judged holistically, rather than measuring individual initiatives in isolation. “Everything should work together in an integrated way. For example a heightened press profile and social media presence will help your lawyers’ conversations with prospects on the ground at conferences and seminars.” I love the cycling analogy Victoria uses: “If you want to get better at cycling, it’s not just about buying a bike. It’s about getting fit and doing training to learn techniques. It’s the whole programme that gets results, not just one activity.”

On your marks, get set, go!

Catherine Baksi and Jessica Learmond - Criqui

2019-09-27T15:08:00.002+01:00

Didn't you just love Catherine Baksi's Sky interview on the Supreme Court prorogation judgment this week? This award-winning legal journalist, (regular contributor to The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian to name just a few of the top titles she regularly writes for), has been a regular on Sky News over the last couple of weeks, dissecting the issues in the prorogation drama and especially this week's shock Supreme Court judgment that our Prime Minister broke the law in suspending parliament. She has succeeded in explaining to viewers some very complex legal issues in terms beautifully concise, clear as crystal, perfectly delivered in a cut glass British accent - whilst sitting in the hot seat dressed in a leather bomber jacket. Choice quote: "I'm reminded of that song from The Clash - I Fought The Law and The Law Won". Don't you just love her style!

We first introduced Catherine to the Sky team a couple of years ago when they approached us for help finding a female Joshua Rozenberg, (you should take this as a compliment Joshua!). If this last two weeks is anything to go by, they have certainly found her. :) You're welcome!

**

Employment law guru Jessica Learmond-Criqui never disappoints. One of Kysen's first ever clients in 1999 (when she worked in Big Law, before setting up her own boutique Learmond Criqui Sokel), she always stretched us with her original twist and unusual take on legal topics.

Back then she got everybody's attention with the concept of "love contracts": HR professionals can manage potential fallout from workplace romances by getting both parties to sign legal documents saying the relationship is consensual. This can flush out any issues of "imbalance of workplace power" in office romances that may need to be managed (even more relevant now in the post-Harvey-Weinstein age) and also avoid problems where perfectly balanced relationships end sourly.

She has taken up her pen again for the press recently and gave us this gem for The Times - "Facebook users should be classed as workers and paid" (£). Here's how the argument goes: given they make money from our data, we are all effectively their data-inputters when we're active on the site. And they haven't been paying us, so they owe us our money in arrears. She even calculated how much they owe: " if 42 million users claimed an aggregate of £853.84 over two years, that would mean a very large bill for Facebook", she says.

Jessica! We've missed you! Glad you're back!

***

Talking to General Counsel and other in-house lawyers face-to-face, I can tell you for sure just how important the legal trade press is to them. For years I’ve been impressing on our law firm clients that the leading legal titles don’t just reach private practice lawyers, but a large community of in-house lawyers as well – and of course these are often the people in large corporates who choose which law firms to instruct. Our PR programmes focus heavily on national and broadcast media, (The Times, FT, BBC, etc) and the leading sector trade titles (Estates Gazette and Property Week for the property sector, Retail Week for the retail sector, Spear’s for private clients etc etc and so on and so forth). But we almost always include a strong thread of legal trade press in the mix, depending on the target audiences for our campaigns.Very often lawyers will challenge us, saying: “Why do we want to be in the legal press? We don’t want to talk to our competitors! Where’s the value in telling our story only to other firms?” But this misunderstands the audiences of the top legal press. Yes they are read avidly by law firm partners, fee-earners and staff (and our barrister clients love them for this, as private practice solicitors are primary work-givers to the bar). But a good 30-40% of the readership will actually be lawyers in in-house legal departments. Each of the main legal trade titles has invested hugely in developing this part of their audience and their knowledge and contacts go deep.

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to spend three days on a residential GC strategy conference in Spain in the company of about 50 or so top-ranking in-house lawyers, thanks to The Lawyer who were hosting the event and a US client of ours UnitedLex who were headline sponsors. They specialise in large-scale business transformation projects for the in-house legal teams of big corporates, and have recently come over from the States, taking the European legal market by storm. I made the most of this golden opportunity - of course, I hope you’d expect nothing less of me! - to find out what really makes in-house lawyers tick, what their pressure points are and what keeps them awake at night. Here’s what they had to tell me.

A recurring theme was ‘commoditisation and disruption’. Brad Swann, Senior VP at Inmarsat, called these ‘the two major factors’ in business today. GCs have a challenging role advising their business on how the risk matrix changes as their organisations change structure and shape. Moreover, in-house legal departments themselves are being challenged to go through their own business transformations, perfecting how human lawyers, AI and other technology are deployed alongside one another, seamlessly and to best effect.

I had expected this to be a big theme for GCs, I have to say, especially as our client and event sponsor UnitedLex had helped to put the conference agenda together; we knew the delegates were interested in the large scale business transformation projects they had run for large corporate legal departments. What surprised me more, speaking to GCs, was the emphasis they placed on the people issues in their businesses. As one Europe GC put it, ‘our business involves the gathering of thousands of people in one place and, whilst we take security and health & safety very seriously indeed, there is always the prospect that something might go wrong – whether that is due to mechanical failure, human error or bad actors.’ When you put it like that, you can see exactly why a GC would have sleepless nights! Even more unexpected though, was the emphasis that almost all of them placed on the management of their legal teams. For example John Abramson of Travelers stressed to me the benefits to the wider business that stem from the stability in his legal team. Having a group of lawyers who’ve worked in their respective roles for a long time, so have a deep understanding of the business and its issues, and who are well practised (efficient, effective), at working together, is invaluable he says. So one of his biggest preoccupations is how to keep them engaged and enjoying their work, so they continue to stick around. And how best to manage the workflow to make the most of the team’s potential in delivering what’s needed for the business. Others I spoke to agreed with this and talked to me about the positive difference a well managed team can make and the importance of giving this sufficient focus. They also spoke about being mindful of issues outside of work that can affect how an individual feels and performs in their role.

It was such a privilege to be part of the UnitedLex team and get a hot ticket to this event, to be able to speak to these GCs direct. I was extremely lucky to have these conversations in person and glean these insights face-to-face, but my point is that the leading legal trade titles are communing with this GC audience all the time and are exceptionally close to how these professionals live, work and breathe. They know what’s most important to them and they know intimately their likes and dislikes when it comes to selecting and working with private practice firms. Don’t leave this element out of your marketing planning. It has huge value.

The Ambassador

2019-07-28T11:02:00.000+01:00

We’re at a champagne reception for in-house lawyers, and The Ambassador tells me (over a Ferrero Rocher of course 😉) how hard he works to promote his chosen law firm advisors to the rest of his business - and why. ‘I choose my law firm advisors very carefully, looking both for technical excellence and commercial astuteness, so once they’re on board I’m keen to recommend them actively to colleagues. That way I’m upping the quality of advice the business as a whole is getting. And it also consolidates their position on our supplier panel, which gives me security in my own supply. And if all this increases the workflow for the law firm concerned, well that’s a bonus for them, isn’t it?”

It was my good friend, legal marketing sage Liz Whitaker, who introduced me to The Ambassador on this evening and started the conversation about in-house lawyers’ attitudes to instructing private practice firms. I was fascinated to learn just how different people’s approaches are. For example, a colleague of The Ambassador came over to join the discussion, let’s call her The Assassin (you’ll see why, in a moment). She told us over canapés her very strong belief in the importance of holding herself at arm’s length from her external providers, to keep an objective view. She didn’t want to get into a close relationship and she didn’t want to take responsibility for anyone else’s relationship with them. Another in the same team was different again: a junior lawyer, nicknamed by colleagues the Eager Beaver, because he’s ambitious and rising up the ranks fast, talked openly about working his relationships with private practice lawyers to help skill himself up and get on.

Liz's observations on these different personas was interesting. She said it was perfect evidence of why a customised marketing approach is required for each person you’re dealing with. “If you’re looking for a good return on your marketing investment, the Golden Rules are: be sure that investment is in personal relationships. Forget the One Size Fits All Approach. Jettison marketing plans that focus on talking to thousands when it’s obvious your best opportunities lie with ten individuals, whom you already know by name.”

I’ve written before in this blog about Liz’s book The Power of Personal and I’m delighted to say it’s now out. The central premise of the book is about tailoring your marketing approach, taking time to get to know the personalities you are engaging with and adjusting your tactics accordingly.

My favourite chapter is the one on The Characters, which is in truth where I really met The Ambassador, The Assassin and The Eager Beaver. Its entertaining to spot the ones you recognise from real life!

Liz organises these character types across a Royalty–Loyalty matrix which is enormous fun to work through: she pinpoints characters with both High Royalty (importance) and High Loyalty, such as our Ambassador friend; those with High Royalty but Low Loyalty, eg our Assassin; and those with rising Royalty and fierce Loyalty such as our Eager Beaver who we’ve met already. These persona types are just three of many. If I’ve whetted your appetite, you must read the book! (click here!)

What I love about Liz’s writing is how she uses humour to get her readers focussed on the right issues: honing in on the handful of personalities we need to manage for business success. And how she’s developed a ‘manual’ for handling them all; each character she describes comes with a helpful guide as to “how to spot them”, what your “mission” and “game plan” should be with each, and also some handy “health warnings”.

This book should certainly be required reading for anyone studying the Professional Services CIM course, (can we campaign to get this on the syllabus please?) and it should also form part of the induction for anyone stepping into a professional services marketing role for the first time.

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I have been enjoying the First100 Years project’s monthly “centenary countdown” parties since the start of this year, 2019 marking the 100^th anniversary of the first women lawyers being accepted into the profession. I have mentioned in this blog before that each party celebrates a particular decade of achievements and milestones of women in law.

This month, the event was hosted by White & Case and we were treated to the video history of one of the firm’s partners Jacquelyn MacLennan, as part of the Project’s series celebrating extraordinary women in law. Jacquelyn acted on the 2018 ECJ case that established same sex marriages must be recognised across the EU, regardless of whether gay marriage itself is allowed in that country. A brilliant example of women lawyers bringing in significant and important change. Why were they ever refused entry to the club?

The film was created by a very talented team including award-winning documentary maker Angela Holdsworth who’s been profiled in this blog before.

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It’s also been fascinating to compare our own experience of women in law with the story of our US cousins, who this year celebrate 150 years since being allowed entry.
I’ve had the pleasure recently of working with AmLaw’s Corporate Counsel editor Heather Nevitt, who runs a series of excellent and inspiring initiatives across the pond, celebrating exceptional women in the profession: most notably AmLaw's "Women, Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) Awards" and also a women’s networking group that’s coming to London this Autumn (you heard it hear first!).

I had to put the women behind these two parallel sets of initiatives in touch, so had great pleasure in introducing Heather to First 100 Years founder Dana Denis Smith. Now just watch this space...!

John Petrie

2019-05-24T15:28:00.001+01:00

Serle Court CEO John Petrie believes measurement of Return On Marketing Investment needs to be approached in a holistic way and over the long term.

I was talking to John over lunch at The Law Society's 113 restaurant (if you've never tried this establishment you really must!) for the first in a new series of investigations into how legal managers and marketing folk measure the success of their programmes. As a sequel to last year's joint study with New Law Journal on the impacts of the social media mix, this year we are working together again to explore the topic of ROI. As before, we are devoting the first few months of our study to a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews, some of which we will publish in this blog. From this we will draw out some common themes which we’ll test at the end of the summer with a statistical survey of NLJ's readers. The final report will appear in the pages of the NLJ at the end of the year.

“When the barristers ask me 'what did we get from this or that event?" John says, “I'll politely respond that I don't think it is the right question. Yes, we have many circumstances where one of our barristers will get a new instruction on a big case just by sitting next to someone at an event dinner, but that's just a bonus and it doesn't mean anyone else will have the same luck. Far more important is the role that event plays in our growth of instructions across the board over a concerted period. At Serle Court, we have a number of long term initiatives aimed at developing instructions from new jurisdictions and increasing work in existing jurisdictions. So we need to look at all the marketing we do in the context of our broader brand building in that region, so how the combined effort of profile-raising and establishing a regular presence on the ground, through events, face-to-face meetings, PR, social, is effective in positioning our set for the right type and level of work.

"Success of a marketing programme needs to be judged by how the different elements all work together to build recognition in our name and increase opportunities for face-to-face conversations, to capitalise on that increased profile and turn interest in what we do into concrete instructions. So it follows that return on that marketing investment in a specific jurisdiction is not to be judged one event at a time, but rather seeing how the pattern of instructions in the region changes in the medium and then the longer term."

So holistic is the holy grail. Wise words. Thanks John.

If you have strong views on this subject or interesting insights to share, then do please volunteer to take part in this study. You can send me your contact details, with a brief note if you like, using the comment box below.

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Did you get to see Anthony Gormley's "Lunatick" exhibition while it was still in town? I managed to snare a couple of the very last tickets so my good friend Helen Obi and I were able to go. I can honestly say it was out of this world. Literally! We donned our VR headsets and found ourselves on a beach modelled on a Pacific island before being lifted up into the sky past the clouds and into space, then landing on the surface of the moon. Gormley collaborated with space scientist Dr Priyamvada Natarajan to use actual NASA images from space and moon missions to create this amazing virtual space journey.

I’m starting to see VR tech popping up everywhere. It’s definitely becoming mainstream. A new property makeover show recently started on BBC Two using VR to help homeowners choose which design to go for, and a new history programme on BBC One uses VR to uncover the hidden history of Italian city life. So how long before law firms and barristers start to use VR? One use could be to offer VR recordings of seminars and conferences for clients who miss out on the day.

If you haven't had a chance to try out this new medium, do find an opportunity as soon as you can. It’s coming our way!

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There’s never been a more pointed lesson on the importance of preparing properly for media interviews than Ben Shapiro's disastrous-hilarious interview with Andrew Neil. The US conservative political commentator ended up storming off the set, the interview went so badly - and entirely the fault of Team Shapiro. He’d clearly been briefed to expect an easy ride, indeed even an opportunity for a PR moment. But his cry of "[this] is a way for you to make a quick buck on the BBC off the fact I'm popular and no one has ever heard of you" baffled viewers as for them, Mr Neil is one of the most recognisable faces in UK news. More puzzlement was to come when Shapiro accused the famously right wing journalist of having a left wing agenda. Oh dear. If you didn’t catch the interview at the time you can watch it here. But it comes with a health warning: this clip may cause serious toe-curling.

Angela Holdsworth

2018-11-12T16:11:00.000+00:00

Sitting at Spark21's 2018 conference celebrating the First100 Years of Women In Law, the phrase "Out of the Dolls House and Into the Fire" comes to mind. Partly because the conference is featuring a series of video histories of women in law produced by Angela Holdsworth, the documentary maker famous for her seminal 1980s mini-series “Out of the Doll's House”; partly because one of the main guest speakers is Dany Cotton, the first female commissioner of the London Fire Brigade; but mostly because so many stories I'm hearing at this conference have a common theme: women break through barriers to take on top jobs, to then find their challenge has only just begun.

I'm a big fan of this First 100 Years project and the way its organisers weave together varied and intricate layers of communication to get their message across. The video histories that Angela and her team are creating are a prime example: rather than polemic, these are highly personal, and therefore relatable, stories. These are a sure-fire way to engage audiences and a rich complement to the conferences, blogs, press pieces and social media activity Spark21 is famous for.

Another fresh approach they are taking to ensure everyone in the profession is aware 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the first women appointed as solicitors, (and those of you who know me well will clock straight away why I love this idea), is to run a series of 12 parties, one a month throughout the entirety of next year. Each party will celebrate one decade of achievements and milestones of women in law. Now that's what I call dedicated partying!

I was curious to know how Angela first became involved with Spark21 and the First 100 Years project. Catching up over coffee and cake at the Law Society she told me: "We found each other on Twitter, just because we were often sharing similar content. Isn't that great? To make a connection on the basis of the commonality of themes and topics and issues you're interested in? So we began our conversation on Twitter and then transitioned to the real world” and it wasn’t long before Spark21 founder Dana Denis-Smith was asking Angela to take on the role of executive producer for a new stream of video content for the project.

"The plan is to capture stories of women's firsts in law, or of women who have succeeded against the odds, and women who have used law as a stepping stone into another Sphere, such as Major General Susan Ridge, the army's Director General of Legal Services. There's a Finders Committee who decide together who should be profiled. Some choices are obvious, such as Brenda Hale as the first woman President of the UK Supreme Court. Others less well known, such as Khatun Sapnara, the first woman of Bangladeshi origin to be a High Court Judge."

So who else can we look forward to learning about via these video stories?

-Dame Fiona Woolf, previously Law Society President 2006-2007 and Lord Mayer of London 2013-2014 (amongst other significant City of London positions she's held),

-Funke Abimole MBE, multi-award-winning lawyer and business leader who at the start of her legal career had to make 120 calls to secure a training contract (then "articles"). She talks of turning up to one of her first interviews for a legal job only to be told at the door "Sorry, we're not looking for secretaries",

-Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the first female Lord Justice of Appeal,
-Dorothy Livingston, first female partner at Herbert Smith Freehills,

-and of course celebrity barrister, broadcaster and Labour Peer, Baroness Helena Kennedy

...to name just a few.

As regular readers of this blog will know, one of my recurring themes is clever use of the visual media to tell a story. So face-to-face with Angela I had a golden opportunity to learn from one of broadcast's best. I wanted to know how she approaches a video story differently from one in print. "You're always looking for what I call the Telling Shot, the one visual that sums up the entire story." I was enthralled as she described a classic telling shot she set up in another of her seminal TV documentaries, "Now The War is Over", chronicling how life changed in Britain from 1945 to 1951. In close-up, her interview subject reminisced about the pre-fab she once loved, sat in her living room looking wistfully out of the window. Then the telling shot: with the audience assuming she was looking out onto a street, the camera pulled away from her and out of the building to reveal she was on the 40th floor of a high-rise. A brilliant encapsulation of how housing policy had changed, how this impacted people’s lives and how they felt about it. All in one single, but cleverly conceived, camera shot.

Do make sure to catch Angela’s video histories as they are released by Spark21. You can follow them on Twitter here to make sure you don’t miss out.

The First 100 Years project aims to Celebrate, Inform and Inspire. The organisers are certainly ticking each of these boxes: we can celebrate at the monthly parties; inform and be informed at the conferences; and be inspired by the video histories. Roll on 2019!

All the work on the project relies on volunteers and donations. If you’d like to give your support, you can make a donation here, or contact the team here to offer your time.

Copies of BBC’s Out of the Doll's House are hard to get hold of now but you can easily order the book linked to the series here.

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Of the many stories that London Fire Chief Dany shared with us, the one that set the room alight, sparking a moment of levity, was the tale of her efforts to get the makers of Fireman Sam to change his job title. She told of the storm she created inadvertently last year, by calling for a change to “Firefighter Sam” as part of a campaign to encourage more women into the Fire Brigade. "For the past 30 years, no one’s had the job title Fireman", she explained. Everyone’s a firefighter. “There’s only one Fireman in the country, and he’s a cartoon called Sam!” The outdated language in the TV cartoon puts young girls and women off from considering firefighting as a career, she says, and they miss out on what could be a very rewarding profession for them.

Dany strongly believes in fighting for equality, allowing both boys and girls to follow whatever career path they want and not be restricted by gender archetypes and prejudices. She used the occasion of Fireman Sam’s 30th birthday to call for the change, as it coincided with her thirtieth year as a firefighter and she thought it was about time. A cute move I thought, although she did experience a strong social media backlash (or should I say backdraft?) However it was worth it to make the point. Nicely (and bravely) done Dany. Thank you.

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Last call to take part in our social media study. As you know, we are currently running a survey together with New Law Journal, exploring how social media is shaking up the legal marketing mix. The research period is about to close, so if you haven’t had a chance yet to give us your thoughts on the matter, please click here to answer our 3-minute questionnaire. Your views will make our final study report all the richer and we are keen to capture them.

The results will be published in New Law Journal at the end of the year, together with a selection of in-depth one-to-one interviews exploring some of the recurring themes in a bit more depth.

Lydia Rochelle

2018-09-18T14:56:00.001+01:00

Lydia Rochelle warns that social media is no "silver bullet" for law firm marketing. “But used the right way”, she says, “in a well-considered mix of marketing activity, it can bring a whole new level of engagement, adding real value to how a firm communicates with the outside world”.

I spoke to Lydia in the week Kysen launched its joint survey with New Law Journal, designed to explore how social media is shaking up the law firm and barristers chambers marketing mix. I was keen to collect her views as she is a highly experienced legal marketer and PR, having worked in consultancy as well as in-house in law firms.

“Neither is social media a one-trick pony”, she insists. “Different social media tactics will be more appropriate for different lawyers depending on their specialism and their target markets. For example, its role in business-to-business communications [B2B] is very different compared to a business-to-consumer [B2C] campaign.”

Lydia is passionate that legal marketeers need to think in a nuanced way about social media and its place in the mix, otherwise the potential benefits will be lost. “With traditional corporate clients, often there is a rigid new business routine around formal RFPs [Requests For Proposals]. I query the value of social media campaigns in this context. Also, a target client who’s a General Counsel at a private equity firm is not going to hire us on the basis of a video we push out; they will be more impressed with long-form written content. However, with property clients I have found social media activity combined with thought leadership to be a very positive combination. And differently again, with personal injury and clinical negligence work, social media comes into its own, because the target audience isn’t corporate; indeed the website and social media can be a direct means of actually reeling clients in. This is one of the biggest differences between B2C and B2B marketing.

“Yes, the rise of social media as a mainstream communication channel for professional firms means we have entered a brave new world, but all the usual marketing rules still apply: know your target audience and decide on the appropriate channel accordingly (social or otherwise) for communicating with them.”

I was particularly keen to know whether Lydia thinks the rise of social has changed the role of traditional media relations. “Traditional media remains vitally important: that’s where you get your valuable “third party endorsement”, eg a respected newspaper or journal validating that your lawyer is the expert in the area in question. It stretches the reach for your communications as well. And once published, you can use that content elsewhere too, including on social media. I place so much importance on press activity that I personally always start with the press when planning a mixed media campaign. Typically I plan a cascade of activity in this order: press, client alert, website, then social media and others “liking” it.”

Lydia also has strong views that one-way engagement on social is a mistake. Indeed this is as much a faux-pas as having conversations with clients and prospects in which you only talk at them and don't listen. But surely this begs the question whether a corporate Twitter account can or should engage in conversation? "It doesn’t need to, but can instead listen and share, without getting in to individual conversations", she says. "Individual lawyers’ Twitter accounts can pick up and continue conversations started on the corporate Twitter account if necessary."

And has she seen a change in how visual media is used in law firm communications over the years she’s been marketing and promoting them? “Visual communication is becoming increasingly important as our target audiences’ attention spans get ever shorter. Clients love visual media because of speed of download! One good infographic can explain 40 pages of technical information. The digital information space is very competitive for lawyers and brevity trumps everything!” [I spoke to Lydia about Julie Gingell’s concept of creating “thumb-stopping moments”, ie making sure it’s your firm’s explanation of a breaking news topic that captures people’s attention first.] “More and more firms are getting good at it too”, she says, “Even the most conservative firms are now embracing good graphics as the norm, whereas once they would have seen it as “dumbing down” their communication. Freshfields and Clyde & Co put out their financial results in the form of an infographic, which is a very interesting development.

“Do firms embrace visual media more than they used to? Yes. Do they do it better than they used to? Yes, with better finish, certainly. Have they learned how to tell a story better with these new media? Generally no. They are much better at producing beautiful graphics, but do they do any more than present prettily? The opportunity with graphics and other visual media is to help people understand better/quicker … and so far in many cases this opportunity is being missed.”

I agree there is no doubt the legal sector has come a long way and law firms and barristers chambers are now much more creative in their approach to marketing. But there is still a lot for many firms and chambers to take on board. At least we have excellent marketing professionals such as Lydia, and others I have profiled in this blog, to help them on their way.

***

*Drum roll*… Kysen’s joint survey with New Law Journal, exploring how social media is shaking up the mix, is now live. In a unique piece of research, the study investigates law firms’ and chambers’ use of different types of media for marketing purposes, how they see the different strands of marketing working together and how this has changed in the digital and social age.

If you would like to get involved and express your opinion, you can access the survey questionnaire here. It takes minutes only to complete and your answers will be anonymous. We want to hear from you, so please do take part! The results will be published in New Law Journal at the end of the year. As regular followers of this blog will know, Kysen has also been conducting a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews with lawyers and legal marketing/comms professionals on this topic, some of which, (as Lydia’s above), have appeared here. More of these interviews will be included in the final report, accompanying the survey findings.
***

Kysen’s famous Tonic event is coming to Bristol! In partnership with The Samphire Club, the South West’s premier business networking group, on 18 October Kysen is hosting its first ever Tonic outside London. Because we like to mix things up, to keep them fresh.

Are you familiar with Kysen’s Tonic Club? It’s a social mixer, designed as a "tonic" for those working in PR, marketing or management roles, in law firms or barristers sets. It offers the opportunity to bond over gin & tonic, (or non-alcoholic equivalent!), with like-minded people working in a similar sphere.

If you’d like to know more about our Tonic Club, please explore our LinkedIn Group here.

Liz Whitaker

2018-08-07T19:01:00.003+01:00

Legal marketing supremo Liz Whitaker thinks social media has completely changed the role of “traditional” PR.

A firm’s relationships with the media used to be much more “intense” in the days when they were the only conduit for pushing the firm’s stories.” Liz has been marketing and promoting law firms as long as I have, and we both remember the days when (ahem, this really shows our age...) when lawyers didn’t even have websites, let alone any social media channels. So at that time, apart from direct mail, press really was the only way to get their news out there. And that could be quite a challenge if the story just wasn’t that interesting to journalists (but hey, that’s where we honed our creative skills, finding interesting angles to turn boring news into something intriguing and publishable), or if the journalist allocated to cover your firm had a very different perspective on the story from you. In contrast, Liz says “Today, if I have an appointment story for a firm, I can get it out to more people and more quickly on social media than I ever could via a press release. And the timing and wording are both within my mine and the client’s control: I could push a story out this afternoon if I wanted to and get it in front of 1000s of people.”

I’ve had several chats with Liz about this recently, in the course of Kysen’s joint study with the New Law Journal in how social media is impacting the legal marketing mix. (See more below.) Our conversation began at a PM Forum conference at which she was speaking on Return On Investment and talking about her forthcoming book “The Power of Personal: how to connect, convince and create exceptional client relationships”. The book is a distillation of Liz’s 25+ years in professional services marketing, (including four years in-house at KPMG and nine at Wragge & Co, now Gowling WLG) and, she says, “identifies 100 reasons why organisations spend time and money on marketing and communications activity but not achieving the ROI” and includes Liz’s pearls of wisdom on how to make sure marketing spend does reap dividends. You’ll have to wait until November to buy The Power of Personal from a bookshop, but you can pre-order your copy here.

The next chat we had was at a quaint tea shop in Ledbury, and the third over a beautiful dinner under the smile of the Malvern Hills. Liz’s home is just a few miles from my Malvern cottage, which is a lovely coincidence. Malvern is one of England’s hidden gems for sure: most people haven’t heard of it, but anyone who’s been there will wax lyrical about its magic. The hills and surrounding landscape were the inspiration for CS Lewis’s Narnia after all.

Given her preference for the control that disseminating news on your own platform allows, I was curious to know if Liz thinks there is no longer any value in traditional media activity, or raising profile in the press. Certainly I would argue that stories placed through the press have more “influence”, precisely because audiences know you don’t have control. You appear solely on merit. The press act as “gatekeepers”, only giving lawyers space if they’re convinced they are expert and authoritative. Indeed this is precisely where the value of media profile is: the third party endorsement, so an independent party confirming your lawyers’ expertise and authority on a subject. In other words, if the BBC or the FT choose one of your lawyers as the best person to be explaining to their viewers/readers what the implications of a major court decision is, then that’s a brilliant endorsement of their market standing. But does Liz think has completely changed in the new social media environment?

“Traditional media still has its place. Absolutely. For example press coverage can create a great impression about a firm if a potential client is looking for information about it and googles the firm. Also thought leadership achieved by pushing expert comment out via the press is still a very important tool for professional services marketing, but the point is today it’s no longer the only one. Previously when putting campaigns together, media coverage was the be-all and end-all, but that’s no longer the case as there are so many other channels for pushing out content.”

Liz also had some interesting things to say about how digitisation has changed law firms’ attitude to visual communication: “Firms now have a far more sophisticated approach. For a long time clients were way ahead of firms on that one. Indeed professional
firms were significantly behind the curve. But they have now caught up. The Big 4 accountancy firms do it particularly well. Some law firms do it well too... and most make a good effort. Generation Y in particular has grown up with good visual communication as the norm, and now these are the people in decision-making positions in firms.”

Liz also believes that the channels you choose for your marketing mix say a lot about you, even before you get to the content of what you’re saying. “The main point of my book is that with all professional services marketing there is in reality only a small number of people you want to talk to. So why waste time talking to anyone else? Just talk to them! And why limit your communications to arms-length media like the press, instead of writing to them direct? At the very least you should be reaching out to them in person, before they see things in the press from you on the same subject. If you get this right, these people then tell others and your work is done. Word-of-mouth communication and recommendation are more powerful than ever. Both can be managed.”

This echoes our experience at Kysen where over the last few years we’ve seen our work expand into multi-channel campaigns, where it’s the “chiming together” of press with other profile-raising and business development activity that delivers results. We love this new way of working, not least because it means we work more closely with in-house BD managers as well the PRs. And of course the other plus of working in a digital environment is that results are far more transparent. And that’s very satisfying for us as well as our clients.
***
Today ...*drum roll*... New Law Journal and Kysen announce the launch date of their joint "Social Impacts" survey of law firms and chambers - investigating how social media is shaking up the legal marketing mix. The survey will open this September, with the start of the new legal term.

Since the start of this year Kysen has been conducting a series of in-depth one-to-one interviews with lawyers and legal marketing professionals, asking how the rise of social media platforms as mainstream communications channels for lawyers had changed how firms/chambers are marketed. You will have read extracts from some of these interviews in this blog. Through these interviews, we have identified a number of common themes, which we are now preparing to test statistically with this quantitative survey launching after the Summer break.

Questions include: What social media sites does your firm/chambers use? Do your lawyers post on social media? What's your own first port of call for the day's legal news? Is social media changing the way firms / chambers use visual props in their marketing? Have you heard or seen new business leads come in directly from social media?

If you would like to take part in the survey, and you are a lawyer or communications professionals in a firm or chambers, you can register your interest here and we will send you a link to the survey questionnaire as soon as it’s live. Otherwise you will be able to access the survey via the New Law Journal and Kysen websites after the Summer. The survey will remain open throughout the September and October, and the results will be published at the end of the year.... blogged about, tweeted and posted on LinkedIn of course!
***

We're over the moon to see our good friend Nicola Sawford listed in Cranfield Schoolof Management's 100 Women to Watch, just out. We worked closely with Nicola for many years when she was Chief Exec of Serle Court chambers, before she "retired". As you can see, she's arguably busier now than ever! We keep in regular touch and I hear about her various trustee and non-exec-director appointments. How wonderful that her post-career career has taken such a stellar turn.

Dana Denis-Smith

2018-07-06T16:36:00.000+01:00

The world is catching up with Dana Denis-Smith. In conversation with her at last week’s FT Innovative Lawyers Summit, I commented on how fantastically her First 100 Years of Women In Law project has caught the imagination of so many people in my world, and men and women alike. For any of you unfamiliar with its aims, the initiative is designed to showcase the contribution of women to the law and highlight female role models for young lawyers, by telling stories of the barriers and opportunities female lawyers have encountered since they were first allowed to become practising lawyers almost 100 years ago.

“I’m quite astonished that it’s become so zeitgeisty. I’m far more used to being the squeaky wheel in the corner, the lone voice banging on about things I think are important but nobody else seems interested in” she tells me shyly. “I thought it would be the same with this initiative. But when I first conceived the First 100 Years of Women In Law project I had no idea what was around the corner: Trump, Harvey Weinstein, the whole #MeToo movement. Suddenly equality and dignity for women have become mainstream issues rather than specialist interest topics.”

Dana invited me to her next event so we could talk more about her work and I couldn’t believe my luck! Suddenly I had the hottest ticket in town: First Women of the Supreme Courts in Conversation, hosted by Gray's Inn and sponsored by Serjeants Inn Chambers (one of its joint CEOs is the effervescent Catherine Calder who is a trustee of Dana’s project) Mischon de Reya, Clyde & Co and LexisNexis. So I was treated to a panel discussion on what it is to be a woman in law between Baroness Hale, the famed law reformed and the first woman to serve as President of the UK’s Supreme Court; Susan Kiel, another law reformer and the first female Chief Justice of Australia; Beverly McLachlin Who was the first female Chief Justice of Canada and the longest serving of any Sec; and Georgina Wood, the first woman to service as Chief Justice of Ghana. Given a key aim of the First 100 Years project is to role model success for younger women, way to go!

These awesome women gave us gems, such as “Women are half the population so bringing your “womanhood” to your work is just as valid as men bringing “manhood” to theirs!”

More than one said “My life changed as a young woman after reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex”, describing the dawn of their realisation that women are somehow secondary persons to men. [Note to self: order copy for daughter right away.] Whilst the first wave of feminism was focussed on legal rights for women, the next wave, these world-leading custodians of the law told us last night, must be to deal with the more insidious cultural issues that prevail to this day, which subtly, not directly, telling women over and over they are subsidiary to men.

Indeed the premise of the First 100 Years initiative is based on marking next year’s centenary anniversary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, which ended the notion that women weren’t ‘persons’ in the eyes of the law, which had prevented them from being able to practise law. But law reform only gets us so far. It’s a cultural shift we need to achieve next, for everybody’s benefit, men’s and women’s alike.

Last night Dana invited us to join her on a journey. “The First Women of the Supreme Courts event is just the first of a whole series of exciting and inspiring initiatives and events taking us up to the centenary moment next year, 23 December 2019. There will be storytelling, events and an amazing digital museum documenting the journey of women lawyers from 1919 to the current day. We will be promoting interviews and biographies of prominent women in law on our website and also asking about the pioneering women who inspired them."

Today, everyone wants a slice of Dana and her First 100 Years project. This is definitely an initiative of our time. As I say, everyone is finally catching up with her thinking.

***

The other hot ticket that landed in my lap unexpectedly was for the FT Innovative Lawyers Summit. A client over from New York asked at the last minute if I could meet him there and help with some introductions. What a privilege! I can't divulge any detail of what was discussed in the sessions, (Chatham House Rules, you understand), but I can tell you that my brain definitely expanded several inches hearing discussions about the role of humans v machines in the delivery of legal services today and into the future.

And I learned from a new friend at UnitedLex, Nancy Jessen, that the smart firms are thinking about this and using classic management consultancy concepts such as the "stratification of legal services". This is not a new concept they told me, but I have to say I'd never come across the terms before and I've been in conversation with law firm managers for some 30 years. I definitely think that that some management consultancy discipline could be very good news for law firms just now as they navigate through how technology an digitisation is transforming the business world. UnitedLex we need you!

***

We loved The Telegraph's story about the use of foreign words in advertising. Audi, for example, has relied on ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ (advantage through technology) for over 30 years to bring to mind Germany’s reputation for high quality craftsmanship and technical expertise.

The reason foreign words and phrases work is down to psychology apparently: they encourage people to embrace a fresh outlook. This is a subject close to our own hearts of course, our company name Kysen being a phonetic interpretation of the Japanese business term "Kaizen" which means "continual improvement". A concept we buy in to as we are all keen here to keep learning....

Jonathan Ames

2018-06-29T15:50:00.001+01:00

There’s no one I can think of who produces more legal news stories each day than The Times’ Jonathan Ames. With an average of 12-15 stories per day, (ok he takes a break at weekends, but still...). To achieve this level of output, he currently does two shifts daily, starting at 7am and finishing at 7pm. Gruelling! But no wonder The Times’ email bulletin The Brief has been such a huge success.

The words “brutal” and “relentless” are mentioned when I ask Jonathan about the pressure of filing so many stories every day. But he’s clearly relishing the role and rightly proud of what he and his colleagues have achieved. “It’s a lot of work, no doubt about it. But it’s very satisfying to look back each day, week, month, and see how much we’ve produced. We aim for as wide a spectrum of legal stories as possible, combined with a bit of gossip and some opinion. And about 80% of our news stories are sourced by ourselves, rather than responding to press releases. The Brief is all about old school newspaper journalism, but in a digital context.” [Great soundbite Jonathan!]

I spoke to Jonathan just days before The Brief is to be housed on the main Times Law website. At a time when newspapers and magazines are struggling to monetise content, given there’s so much information available free online, and in an era when most newspapers have been reducing their legal coverage (The Telegraph dispensed with a full time legal correspondent, and The Guardian its legal editor role, as far back as 2009) I was keen to know how his paper has managed to make a success of bucking the trend and expanding legal content.

“The Brief was launched in October 2015 as an experiment, The Times wanting to see if they could take a specialist subject the paper was already well known for and create some added value”, he tells me. The Times' legal editor is none other than Frances Gibb, the pre-eminent legal editor amongst all national newspaper editors, so The Brief is starting from a strong base in this regard. Frances oversees all legal content in the main paper as well as in the Law section, in hard copy and online. “The idea was that the new specialist email bulletin, free to anyone who signed up for it, would remind specialist audiences about The Times’ excellent coverage of legal issues, and reel more subscribers in to the main paper.” Three years on, it’s been a huge success. Job done! Jonathan, all that hard work has been worth it!

It has to be said that The Times has form in this area: The Brief was based on the highly successful Red Box bulletin that worked the same way for its political coverage. As Jonathan put it, “The Times is famous for grabbing commercial enterprise on the web by the scruff of the neck”. [Wow this man IS good for a soundbite! Made me wonder if he'd ever consider a job in PR. But knowing Jonathan as well as I do, I wouldn’t dare ask for fear of the expletives!] “There was a lot of scepticism when we first installed the paywall. But now, arguably it’s the healthiest Fleet Street paper online, along with the Mail and the FT.”

“This next stage”, he tells me, “Is about bringing The Brief closer in to the main Times brand. From Monday [2 July] The Brief will still be sent out as a daily email bulletin as usual, but the content will be housed on the main Times website, in the Law section.”

So does this mean it will no longer be free to non-Times-subscribers? “Existing Brief subscribers will need to sign up and pay for a Times subscription if they don’t already have one. But for a certain period we’re offering a special deal for these readers, to reward them for their loyalty to The Brief.”

Don’t miss out! If you haven’t done it already, sort out your Times subscription this weekend!

***

Next week sees one of the best women-in-law events yet: First Women of the Supreme Courts in Conversation. UK Supreme Court president Baroness Hale will be joined by former Chief Justice of Ghana Georgina Wood, Justice of Canada Beverley McLachlin and Chief Justice of Australia Susan Kiefel, to talk about the experience of women in law. The event is hosted by Gray's Inn and sponsored by our friends at Serjeants' Inn Chambers (among others). It forms part of the First 100 Years of Women In Law project, in association with Spark 21, (the charity that celebrates, informs and inspires future generations of women in the professions).

I assume everyone is now aware that 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, which enabled the first women - initially four, each with a first class degree from Cambridge - to pass their law exams and be admitted as lawyers for the first time.

I'm planning to catch up with First 100 Years founder Dana Denis-Smith at next week's event and will be writing up our Conversation for this blog, so watch this space...

***

What an amazing coup for The Lawyer Awards: snaring star comedian David Mitchell as the evening's entertainment. Fantastic! He regaled the Grosvenor House Hotel audience of solicitors, barristers, legal marketers, PRs and journalists with a tale of a disastrous mini-pupillage he did as a youngster, when a client was refused the return of a driving licence after a ban because the judge mistook Mitchell for the driver and decided he didn't look trustworthy enough.

For me personally, as regular readers of this blog will know, it was particularly cool seeing Mr Mitchell as only a month ago I was lucky enough to catch his Peep Show partner Robert Webb at the Hay Festival, discussing his book How Not To Be A Boy. Now I have the set!

Fay Gillott

2018-06-15T16:06:00.000+01:00

Fay Gillott believes internal marketing is as important as external marketing. Particularly so in the case of law firms and barristers chambers. In fact she goes so far as to say the success of your external marketing depends on getting the internal bit right.

I caught up with Fay during the Hay Festival so I had a good opportunity to quiz her about her 20 years’ experience as head of operations and business development in legal businesses. (In her time she has covered a variety, including a silver circle law firm, a patent attorney and two sets of barristers chambers.) She is famous for leading successful revenue enhancement and change management programmes, so when she offers her pearls of wisdom on the practical and tactical points that really make a difference between “nice in theory” and “success in reality”, you listen!

“The markets for legal services are more competitive than ever before. This means there is a need for a professional approach to marketing and more paid-for activity. But lawyers are “on a journey” to understand this.” [Nice euphemism Fay]. “Those who "get it", use marketing effectively, but with others you need to work hard to bring them along with your thinking. Internally lawyers put the barriers up: advertising is tacky, they say, and social media is not just tacky but dangerous too! It takes quite some persuasion to show that if these communication channels are used the right way, they are completely capable of communicating messages about the business’s expertise, imparting knowledge and offering something serious and valuable, in a way that is wholly consistent with a top law firm / chambers brand.”

I was particularly keen to hear Fay’s thoughts on how the rise of social media as a mainstream channel is shaking up the professional services marketing mix, given the study on this topic Kysen is currently working on with New Law Journal.

“Many lawyers don’t yet accept social media as a fact of business life. Some still dismiss it as merely something that students do, not believing that it projects a professional image. And with some the resistance is not just to Twitter and Facebook, but LinkedIn too. More are comfortable with LinkedIn, it has to be said, and some get professional help with their profiles and use their LinkedIn accounts for creating a regular blog. But Twitter is seen by many as a scary frontier to be avoided altogether. So you can see how much work there is to do in a firm or a set, to convince lawyers that a properly managed social media stream is necessary for the business, before you even get on to what they might do as individuals to support the corporate channel, eg posting and tweeting themselves.”

This social media example is just one illustration of how the success of internal marketing directly impacts the effectiveness of the external effort: with everyone engaged and working together with the central marketing team, the traction in the external marketplace is going to be so much more. You can extrapolate from the following and apply the same principles across all the other areas of the marketing mix…

“Time needs to be set aside and sessions arranged to present the planned approach for how the business is to engage with their audiences through social media, using reasoned arguments and lots of evidenced examples as to why it is important and why the particular approach has been chosen. It needs to be an interactive session, so people engage properly, as this encourages buy-in. These sessions also need to cover what the role of individuals and teams is within the programme, so everyone is clear not only what the business-wide plan is, but what their own role is within this. And of course, very importantly, support needs to be offered, to skill up and encourage those individuals and teams as they give to the programme what is being asked of them.

“Once you’ve cracked this internal challenge, the rest of the marketing effort becomes easier. Not only is everyone in the business clear about what they need to do, but also the more understanding they have of the rationale behind the strategy of the professionals they employ, the more lawyers will listen to them and let them get on with their job! The sum total of all of this is that the marketing actually happens, rather than being half-done. Lawyers are always keen to ask about Return On Investment in marketing. To my mind, the most important factor in maximising the ROI, is making sure that that the marketing activity prescribed in the strategic plan actually happens in real life!”

From my own experience working 12 years in-house in law firms, I have to say I completely agree: at the end of the day, strategy is delivered through people, and particularly so in a legal business. This is why investing time in making sure everyone is clear about the strategic plan for developing the business, and their role within it, will reap dividends.

***
A personal highlight at the Hay Festival was Peep Show’s Robert Webb talking about “How not to be a boy”, promoting his book of the same name. He challenged the audience with some very interesting thoughts on the unhelpfulness of gender assumptions and how ‘The Patriarchy’ is as bad news for men as it is for women. I was inspired to buy the book and I read it in just three days. Very entertaining. A definite recommend. Favourite bit: his little daughter talking over the family breakfast table about “the trick [she meant the patriarchy] that makes men sad and women get rubbish jobs." That about sums it up in my book!

You can buy "How not to be a boy" here.

***

Here’s Adele’s favourite story of the week: the racoon that scaled a skyscraper in Minnesota over a period of 20 hours.“Just look at his little face”, she says.

On a serious point, she went on to point out what it says about viral memes. This story was broken by a small local radio station and was soon livestreamed and was trending on Twitter (#mprraccoon) – all major news outlets covered it around the world (which is mad). It's interesting, she says, how the news agenda is set more than ever by what the people want, rather than what newspapers think people should know about.

Julie Gingell

2018-03-16T12:26:00.000+00:00

SA Law’s Julie Gingell has been talking to me about the importance of creating “thumb-stopping moments” (love the phrase!) in an increasingly digital world. She insists she didn't coin this phrase herself, but she was certainly the first person to introduce me to it. What she means by this term, is the importance of making all the marketing content her firm pushes out so arresting, that it stops people in their tracks as they scroll through their inbox and news feeds on their phones throughout the working day. “There’s so much legal content out there now on social media channels and email arriving direct to people’s phones, that if you want to make sure it’s your firm’s update on a topic that people look at, rather than a competitor’s, you’ve got to offer something eye-catching to stop them scrolling past. There was a time that you could bank on people using their commute into work to catch up on longer reads and in hard copy – whether perusing a national broadsheet, or catching up on industry magazines. That’s where we would often choose to place our updates. Now however, most people are expected to be up-to-date with their inbox by the time they reach the office, so commuter time now means heads down and eyes glued to phones. Time is so short for everyone. So if you can offer something on social media as snappy as eg “a 30-second guide to the new regulations on…”, you’ll have a much better chance of snaring readers’ attention and making sure it’s your firm’s take on the topic that’s the one everyone’s digesting, rather than anyone else’s.”

This is also where a good visual comes in to its own of course. As Julie says, a picture really can sometimes paint a thousand words and a well-designed infographic can be just the sort of 30-second download that a busy scroller will prefer.

Julie gave me these pearls of wisdom in the context of an interview for Kysen’s joint study with New Law Journal into how the rise of social as a mainstream channel is impacting the law firm marketing mix.

“There’s no doubt the shape of my marketing budget has changed entirely in the last 10 years or so, thanks to the rise of social media”, she tells me. “Where once the dominant spend was on printed material, after a while shifting to expensively designed e-mailshots, now all you have to do is to Tweet a link to a soft copy and, if you have been diligent in making the right connections on social media platforms and listening to what people say they want in terms of content, it will be downloaded hundreds of times within minutes. We had this experience with our Recipe Book recently: 2,000 downloads in just a day-and-a-half. No need to spend tens of thousands on hard copy print runs. No need to check email addresses. And of course with GDPR coming down the line this May, releasing material on social platforms is a brilliant way to get around the new restrictions on direct mailing people.”

Does she think that press coverage still has an important role to play in the marketing mix, given how easy it is for firms to push material out themselves, on their own terms, with far less restrictions on what they can say and far more control over when they can say it? “A strong press profile is still incredibly important”, she says, “because it’s the one channel that carries with it a built-in Third Party Endorsement, which is incredibly valuable; it counts for a lot when The Times chooses one of our lawyers to be their authoritative expert voice on a new legal development. What we may lose in control, compared to putting out our own stories, a good press profile gains us kudos and influence. What I will say social is brilliant for is extracting more value out of your press cuttings, or other marketing material, once the initial news moment has passed.” She explains how you can tweet a repeat days or even weeks after initial publication with a simple message of “in case you missed it…” This is a good example of how Julie talks of using social platforms as “glue” between all the different strands of her marketing mix. “Only a few years ago it was the website address that was the central pin linking everything together. Now it’s the social media activity… the ability to mention on social platforms the event you attended, the roundtable you hosted, the press article you appeared in, etc etc. For our Lexcel accreditation we are asked to detail our social media strategy and plan, but I have to say I think this is the wrong way to look at it; I don’t have a separate social media plan, instead seeing it as just one thread that’s integrated into everything we do.”

Another interesting observation Julie shared with me is the key role social media plays in the life of firms whose business opportunity is to a large extent bound up with their standing and influence in local marketplaces. Having one of the biggest Twitter followings amongst the main players in the Herts/Beds/Bucks region where the firm has its roots, confirms SA Law’s place as a centrepin of the local community. “Being linked in with the key influencer groups in our locale, and regularly retweeted and endorsed by them, increases the value of our own retweets and endorsements of other people’s material. In other words it increases our own stock as influencers. And the strength of our engagement with the local marketplace being so visible in this way has been very important in demonstrating our continued commitment to the region, particularly at a time when we have been busily expanding into London markets.”

You’ll see as I post more survey interviews that Julie really is in the vanguard, amongst the best of the legal marketeers. She made sure that her firm was one of the earliest adopters amongst professional firms of Instagram. My word, this firm even has a Spotify account to communicate elements of the SA Law brand that only their taste in music can express! No wonder she was one of the first (we think possibly the very first?) non-lawyer marketing professionals to make partner when Legal Disciplinary Practices first came in. Thanks for your insights Julie! Valuable as ever.

If you would like to take part in the Kysen / New Law Journal study into the impacts of social media on the law firm marketing mix, do please send me your contact details using the comment box below, and we can start a conversation.

We are in the midst of a series of one-to-one 'qualitative' interviews, some of which (like Julie’s) we are publishing on this blog over the next weeks and months. In addition, NLJ will soon be conducting a 'quantitative' survey amongst their readers. Do get involved! We look forward to hearing from you!

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On the subject of the new digital lingo, I just have to share this wonderful "Digital Terms Deciphered" glossary, that our good friend Simon Marshall has created. It tells you everything you need to know about the trendy new digital terms constantly being bandied about these days, but might be too afraid to ask. Do you know your rich snippets from your alt tags? Your backlinks from your iframes? The difference between agile and waterfall platforms? As Simon says, it can be as confusing as knowing your lattes from your flat whites - but the good news is we did all eventually master ordering a coffee, didn't we!

You may know Simon from his time as an in-house marketeer at Osborne Clarke and then Burges Salmon. You may also be up to date with the news that he's recently set up his own legal marketing consultancy called TBD (To Be Determined). If you don't know Simon, take it from me he is one of the best social media sages for professional firms around. You can connect with him here on LinkedIn.
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Everybody’s talking about Slaughter & May’s gender pay gap news: one of the most iconically ‘City’ of the magic circle law firms is paying female associates more than their male counterparts. This story is one of those watershed moments for the profession, not so much because of the stats themselves, (see below), but because when a firm like this considers gender equality something to be proud of and integral to their brand, then other firms will surely follow. And this is precisely the claim Slaughters has been making: their publicity machine has been explaining how their “one-firm culture ... values remunerating employees in a less differentiated and more egalitarian way”. (*waves* to ex-Kysenite, now Slaughters communications manager, Ollie Hibberd).

Yes it’s true that digging in to the stats arguably raises more questions than this story answers, (not least whether paying women more than men can actually be considered achieving equality; also whether the firm was justified in excluding their all-female secretarial pool from stats they publicised about pay for business services staff). And yes, I know this new-found interest in promoting equality is only happening because of the gender pay gap reporting legislation. But however we’ve arrived here, all firms are now suddenly interested in addressing inequalities in their own workplaces. This is definitely a moment to celebrate.