The invisible hand of the free market hasn’t been able to exert much control over law firm billing rates, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff said at a Cardozo School of Law panel discussion about the high cost of the legal system, reports Bloomberg Law.

Rakoff cited a 2016 report that showed average hourly rates for partners rose from $122 in 1985 to $532 in 2012, as average associates rates grew from $79 to $370.

Reporter Rebecca Beyer quotes Rakoff as asking: “Why isn’t the free market operating?” The  answer, he said, lies in the fact that the legal profession operates much like a guild, with “substantial barriers to entry,” not least of which is the cost of a legal education.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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Legal departments aren’t just asking their outside law firms to field diverse groups of attorneys — they’re asking those firms to put attorneys in leadership positions, and they’re asking for data to back it up, reports Bloomberg Law.

Facebook bow requires outside counsel working on its projects to have at least 33 percent women and ethnic minorities. In addition, the firms must show they are actively creating “clear and measurable leadership opportunities for women and minorities” in the company’s legal matters, The New York Times reported.

“Facebook’s new policy comes on the heels of HP’s announcement in February that it would start withholding fees from law firms that don’t meet diversity requirements,” writes Stephanie Russell-Kraft.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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Dennis Garcia, Microsoft Corp, assistant general counsel, offers an insider’s perspective on how in-house counsel trying to “sell” themselves to their business clients and senior legal department leaders. His observations are published on the Bloomberg Law website.

He starts at the beginning: “Start Strong:”

“Make sure to capture the hearts and minds of in-house counsel at the  very beginning of your pitch. If you do not generate a high level of enthusiasm, energy and compelling reason for in-house counsel to focus on your message early on in your presentation, you will not command their attention and they will lose interest.”

Other observations come under headings such as: know your audience, keep it simple,differentiate, the technology factor, highlight client references, don’t forget cybersecurity, and post-pitch activity.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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Two Dallas lawyers are good examples of professionals who have found clever ways to make their personal passions part of their legal marketing efforts, writes Amy Boardman Hunt in a post on the website of Muse Communications, LLC.

These two role models show that — rather than insisting on keeping our work and non-work lives separate — we should find ways to incorporate the personal into what we do professionally, within reason, Hunt writes.

One of the examples is is Amy Elizabeth Stewart, founder of Amy Stewart Law, an insurance coverage law firm.

“Next to deciphering insurance policies, Amy’s other passion is an organization called Attorneys Serving the Community, a volunteer group of Dallas women lawyers,” Hunt writes. “Every year, ASC selects a beneficiary organization whose programs benefit women, children or families. The group spends the year fundraising for the non-profit, including a fun run and an annual luncheon.”

The other example is  Michelle May O’Neil , a founding partner in O’Neil Wysocki, a prestigious family law boutique. “For several years, Michelle has been active with Team in Training, a fundraising arm of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. She runs in their events, holds periodic fundraisers in her home and makes her support of the organization an integral part of her work and personal life.”

Read the article.

Above the Law is reporting on another big layoff of BigLaw staff, asking the question: Has the Great Associate Pay Raise of 2016 ushered in the Not-So-Great Staff Layoffs of 2017?

David Lat writes that “approximately 60 staffers at Dentons were informed that [March 10] would be the last day at the firm. We heard from a number of the affected individuals, and some of them speculated that the layoffs were caused in part by the need to trim expenses in the wake of increased costs for associate compensation.”

Lat’s reporting found that the cuts appear to be centered on support staff. Also, bonuses and raises expected for remaining staff on April 1 will be delayed.

Read the Above the Law article.

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Successful law firm marketing in today’s electronic environment can include everything from online banner ads to Twitter feeds to Facebook pages and more, writes Bruce Vincent in a blog post for Muse Communications.

Amid the many available options, one of the most effective tools for attracting the attention of referral sources can be found in a well-orchestrated email campaign, he says.

In a question-and-answer format, Vincent’s post recounts a discussion he had with Dennis Weber , founder of General Counsel News.

Some of the questions they discussed included: What makes email marketing effective fo the legal industry? Aren’t people so buried in email that they might simply tune out? What are the key elements of a solid email marketing campaign?

Read the Muse Communications article.

Freeborn & Peters LLP announces that it is combining with the New York City firm of Hargraves, McConnell & Costigan P.C. The development, which establishes Freeborn’s first office in New York, represents a further geographic expansion for the Chicago-headquartered Freeborn, which last year combined with the Richmond, Va.-based Brenner, Evans & Millman P.C.

“A common client of the two firms urged the combination. We are always pleased when clients’ needs result in continuing strategic growth for the firm and for our internationally acclaimed insurance/reinsurance practice,” said Joseph T. McCullough IV, Leader of the Insurance/Reinsurance Practice Group and member of the Freeborn Executive Committee. “With the firm’s growing emphasis on international arbitration and litigation for other industries, New York is an ideal location in which to offer our sophisticated litigation capabilities. A presence in New York enables us to better serve our international, as well as domestic, clients.”

In a news release, the firm said:

The combination with Hargraves, McConnell & Costigan P.C. advances Freeborn’s strategy of geographically expanding its strongest practice areas when faced with demonstrable client demand. This objective is fulfilled through Hargraves’ strong reputation in the insurance and reinsurance industries in litigating and arbitrating disputes arising out of both domestic and international contracts. The combination also serves Hargraves by extending the scope, reach and depth of its practice.

“In seeking a partner for growth, there were very few other firms that had the same depth of knowledge and experience in insurance/reinsurance as Joe McCullough and his large team at Freeborn & Peters,” said Daniel Hargraves, Founder of Hargraves, McConnell & Costigan P.C. “We look forward to this combination and to collaborating with our new colleagues to the benefit of all our clients.”

Hargraves and his team in New York have extensive experience in complex commercial litigation and arbitrations across many industries, including reinsurance. He also has the unique distinction of being admitted to practice across three continents: before the Courts of the State of New York, U.S. Court of Appeals (Second and Third Circuits), and U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; High Court of Justice of England and Wales; and Supreme Court of Queensland, High Court of Australia and Federal Courts of Australia.

According to Freeborn’s Co-Managing Partner Michael A. Moynihan, Freeborn has been able to maintain its independence and stature in a rapidly evolving profession by focusing on its strengths and expanding opportunistically from its legacy offices in Illinois. This is a testament to the firm’s dedication to its cultural identity, which enables it to attract well-credentialed attorneys with similar values.

“Our combination with Hargraves is a great example of our philosophy on growth,” Moynihan said. “We believe that practicing together with attorneys who share similar values produces superior legal results and best serves our clients. We anticipate additional expansion in other key markets for the firm.”

Freeborn plans to expand the New York office’s practice areas to include real estate, where the firm will draw on its existing national footprint to serve investors and developers in the multistate region in and around New York, and corporate law, where Freeborn will leverage its considerable experience with buyers and sellers of varying sizes to service clients with merger and acquisition needs in this region.

The combination will be complete on March 1, 2017. At that time, Freeborn will have four offices: Chicago; Springfield, Ill.; Richmond, Va.; and New York.

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The New York Times is reporting that two large law firms said on Tuesday that they would combine to form a global firm amid continuing consolidation in the legal industry.

The combination of Norton Rose Fulbright and Chadbourne & Parke will create a single entity with more than 4,000 lawyers and expected annual revenue almost $2 billion. The combined firm will be known as Norton Rose Fulbright, reports Elizabeth Olson.

“Rumors had swirled recently that Chadbourne was looking for a combination, especially after some partners left the firm, including corporate and project finance partner Margarita Oliva Sainz de Aja, who joined Baker McKenzie last month, and bankruptcy partner Douglas Deutsch, who joined Clifford Chance last summer,” Olson writes.

Read the NYT article.

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By Amy Boardman Hunt
Muse Communications

If you’re a small law firm looking to grow your business, you may have encountered the phrase “content marketing” while exploring your marketing options. You may be asking yourself, “What the heck is that?”

This blog post will explain some of the main concepts of content marketing and discuss how it can be a potent tool for solos and small law firms with limited marketing budgets.

Content marketing is an umbrella term that incorporates the following elements (among others):

• Blogs
• Website text
• Social media
• Email marketing
• Search engine optimization for website text and other online content (i.e. making your content easily findable by online)
• Online profiles
• News releases
• White papers
• Ebooks

Become a Source of Genuine Value

The essence of content marketing is that you’re promoting your subject matter expertise (whether it’s labor law, family law, or any other practice area) by providing consistent, relevant content of interest to your clients and prospective clients. That could be answers to FAQ-legal inquiries, updates on new regulations, pending legislation that could affect your industry, interesting trends your clients need to know about, or just your “hot take” on a news story that intersects with your practice area.

Content marketing is primarily about two things:

• Building a reputation as a source of genuine value in your practice area; and
• Staying top-of-mind among your clients, prospective clients and referral sources.

It is not primarily about self-promotion, though that can play a part in your overall communications strategy.

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The general counsel of HP has informed its outside law firms that the company may withhold up to 10 percent of invoiced fees for failure to meet its diversity standards, reports the ABA Journal.

HP Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel Kim M. Rivera put law firms on notice of her “diversity holdback” mandate in a Feb. 8 letter.

The Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss writes, “HP says its definition of a diverse lawyer ‘is limited to race/ethnicity, gender, LGBT status, and disability status.’ A lawyer who is both a woman and who is racially/ethnically diverse and performs or manages at least 10 percent of the billable hours worked on HP matters satisfies the minimal diversity staffing requirement.”

Read the ABA Journal article.

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Above the Law has fleshed out earlier reporting about significant staff layoffs at K&L Gates, this time with fairly specific numbers of people who have lost their jobs with the big law firm.

Quoting one of his sources, David Lat reported: “The firm let go nearly 200 staff across the firm, including director levels in Human Resources and Marketing. IT was the hardest hit, but other departments, including Human Resources, Business Development, the paralegal group, and marketing, also saw large numbers let go.”

Another source confirmed that the number of staffers affected was in triple digits.

That source also said he or she knew of no attorneys who were included in the layoffs.

Read the Above the Law article.

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A federal jury awarded the former general counsel of BioRad Laboratories $8 million in back pay and damages — which will increase to $11 million — for whistleblower retaliation involving potential bribery in China, according to a Courthouse News article.

Sanford “Sandy” Wadler won $2.96 million for economic losses and $5 million in punitive damages. Because the Dodd-Frank Act allows double back pay damages for whistleblower retaliation, the back pay award will increase to $5.92 million, bringing the total to nearly $11 million, explains reporter Nicholas Iovino.

Wadler sued Hercules, California-based BioRad Laboratories and its CEO Norman Schwartz in May 2015. He alleged he was fired in June 2013 for reporting potential bribery in China, a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

David A. Nenni and Jessica L. Sussman of Jackson Lewis also wrote about the verdict in the firm’s Corporate Compliance and White Collar Advisor blog:

This case implicates a number of key issues confronting companies and their in-house legal teams, including:  (1) protections and scope of the attorney-client privilege; (2) what constitutes protected activity from an in-house attorney or compliance officer; (3) the importance of consistent and timely performance critiques; and (4) preparing adverse employment decisions to be scrutinized by a judge, jury, or arbitrator.  The case also highlights the existing split among federal courts regarding what constitutes a “whistleblower” under the DFA.

Read the Courthouse News article.

Read the Jackson Lewis blog item.

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A federal judge plans to appoint a special master to investigate whether prominent law firms in Boston and other cities padded their legal bills by millions in a class-action lawsuit against State Street Bank, saying the lawyers may have to pay up to $2 million, in advance, to fund the investigation, reports The Boston Globe.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf said he wants a review legal bills submitted by Thornton Law Firm of Boston, Labaton Sucharow of New York, and seven other firms to justify the fees they received from the case last year, writes Andrea Estes.

A Boston Globe review of the records submitted to justify the legal bills showed that three law firms submitted bills for the same lawyers, and often with different hourly rates. And the hourly rates claimed in the firms’ filings, which ranged from $335 to $500 an hour, were often 10 times more than what the lawyers normally earned.

Read the Boston Globe article.

Cornell ranked first in a recent report that looked at salaries of recent law graduates, according to a Bloomberg Law article.

Online loan refinancing company Social Finance, Inc. ranked law schools according to which touted the highest salaried graduates.

“Cornell Law School ranked No. 1 for graduates with the highest salaries, averaging $183,377 in salary, with an average debt load of $148,443,” Bloomberg reported.

Two New York university law schools rounded out the top three: Columbia and New York University.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Women promoting their careers or their law practices need to understand that they’re marketing their skillset, and everything they do is marketing, advises Andrea S. Kramer, co-author of Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work.

She co-authored the book with her husband, Alton B. Harris.

In a question-and-answer exchange with Amy Boardman Hunt of Muse Communications, Kramer talked about challenges women lawyers face when developing business.

Kramer, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP, answered such questions as:

• What challenges do women lawyers face when it comes to business development?
• How can we combat bias, particularly unconscious bias?
• What’s the best way for women to develop relationships with male clients? What’s the gender-neutral version of a hunting trip or a suite at the football game?
• What’s the key to schmoozing male clients or prospective clients when you don’t want to suggest it’s something other than business?

Read the interview.

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Up to 90 percent of law firm work is done outside of the traditional billable hour model, according to the 2017 Report on the State of the Legal Market.

The ABA Journal reports on a study released by Georgetown Law’s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession and Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute.

“One of the most potentially significant, though rarely acknowledged, changes of the past decade has been the effective death of the traditional billable hour pricing model in most law firms,” the report says. “Plainly, the imposition of budget discipline on law firm matters forces firms to a very different pricing model than the traditional approach of simply recording time and passing the associated ‘costs’ through to the client on a billable-hour basis.”

Read the ABA Journal article.

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Hunton & Williams LLP announces the formation of a global cross-disciplinary legal team to advise corporations and investors on issues related to sustainability and efforts to increase utilization of renewable energy.

In a news release, the firm said this move, which reflects increased client demand for Hunton’s capabilities in these areas, brings together lawyers with global experience in transactional, finance (including “green bonds” and similar programs), corporate, securities, tax, environmental and real estate law to counsel clients on the complex legal issues arising out of participation in the market for renewable energy and related transactions. This initiative also centralizes the firm’s knowledge and experience with data center development and financing.

The release continues:

“Retailers, manufacturers and technology companies are either entering the renewable energy arena for the first time or are significantly bolstering their current positions,” said partner Eric R. Pogue, who heads the firm’s efforts in this space. “This multidisciplinary initiative will focus on the unique legal issues that companies face in meeting their sustainability and clean power procurement goals.”

As part of the firm’s renewable energy practice group, the sustainability and corporate clean power team will counsel corporations and investors on matters related to

– clean power procurement;
– green bonds and similar clean power financing and investment transactions;
– development of sustainable facilities, including data centers;
– tax equity investments;
– joint ventures with renewable energy companies;
– securities law compliance;
– renewable energy certificate (REC) trading;
– project permitting and real estate; and
– environmental law compliance.

The Hunton & Williams global energy practice dates back to the firm’s founding in 1901, and the firm’s experience in the area of renewable energy and clean power started decades before the current global focus on renewable and clean sources of energy. Since these beginnings, the firm’s renewable energy and clean power practice has grown and evolved to meet the changing needs of clients in this dynamic sector of the energy market.

BigLaw firm Latham & Watkins spends between $30,000 and $70,000 making client presentations to potential clients, reports Bloomberg Law.

Bloomberg pulled the information out of a New York Times article on the state of the legal industry going into 2017.

Quoting the Times‘ original report:

[Latham & Watkins, according to managing partner William H. Voge] routinely competes for big-ticket legal work, with partners often flying from different parts of the world to showcase Latham’s skills against those of five or six competing firms. The cost is not cheap; the firm pays $30,000 to $70,000 per presentation.

And it works, he said, because most of the firm’s existing clients last year each paid over $1 million in legal fees. Over all, the firm had profit of $1.6 billion in 2016, Mr. Voge noted.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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Houston-based law firm Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anaipakos, Alavi & Mensing P.C. has added seven attorneys to the firm.

The seven include:

• Ifti Ahmed, an engineer who focuses on patent litigation and complex technical cases
• Weining Bai, who focuses on patent litigation
• Jason Ballard, a former software engineer who focuses on intellectual property litigation
• Rey Flores, a trial lawyer and combat veteran
• Sammy Ford IV, who has tried over 20 cases in the last five years
• Kelsi Stayart, who focuses on commercial litigation
• Jordan Warshauer, who focuses on commercial litigation

Read about the new hires.

Amy Boardman Hunt of Muse Communications says she sometimes encounters lawyers who aren’t necessarily concerned about their websites ranking highly on Google searches, mainly because they get most of their clients through referrals.

Most prospective clients probably find their websites by searching for the name of the firms or the lawyers themselves, she writes in an article published on her firm’s website. In those cases, whether Google likes you may be irrelevant.

“But if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, Google may not be your problem,” she writes. Because many legal consumers use mobile phones to find a lawyer, “lawyers and law firms that want to make a good first impression should ensure that their site can be easily read and searched from phones and tablets.”

Read the article.

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