Category Archives: Elsewhere on the Web

Mobile-Only Internet Use Up: Is Your Firm Website Accessible?

Posted on May 29, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Is your law firm’s online content accessible to mobile-only users? It should be. An increasing number of people access the Internet through their mobile device, preferring the private access inherent in using their personal smartphone. Given that law firms often deal with very private matters, it’s important that your firm’s website is accessible to these users.

“One of the most persistent misconceptions about mobile devices is that it’s OK if they offer only a paltry subset of the content available on the desktop [website],” Karen McGrane wrote in an HBR Blog Network article. “If you’re trying to reach specific audiences, you can’t afford to ignore mobile-only users.”

According to Pew Research, 55 percent of Americans planned to use a mobile device to access the Internet in 2012; 31 percent of whom said it’s their primary way of going online. Further data found that 45 percent of young adults aged 19 to 29 use a mobile device as the primary way to access the Internet, with online giants such as Amazon, Wikipedia and Facebook reporting that 20 percent of their traffic is from mobile-only users.

McGrane writes that “mobile-only users aren’t some strange new breed of customer … they’re just your customer,” so firms need to make sure they provide a mobile-only interface that is more than a link to their desktop website.

“Asking mobile-only users to pinch and zoom their way through a website designed for a monitor five times larger is an ergonomic nightmare—and a cop-out,” McGrane writes. “We can do better for these users than tiny fonts, untappable links, and broken hover states.”

Over on the TemplateMonster Blog, Alex Flow offers the following six tips to create a mobile version of your website:

  1. Layout. “Put all of the most important information you want mobile users to see on the top of the page,” he writes. And “minimize left-to-right navigation, which is difficult on a phone.”
  2. Content. Since users are probably on the go while accessing your mobile site, make it easy to read and navigate—and avoid zooming. Also be aware that most mobile browsers are not compatible with Flash, JavaScript, pop-ups or “other things that people like to use to spice up their sites.”
  3. Coding. He recommends using either XML or XHTML, though you can use very basic HTML and CSS coding. Just keep it simple and maximize optimization through carefully crafted keywords.
  4. Images. Mobile devices can take a long time to load images, therefore only use a few and in lightweight formats such as JPG, GIF or PNG. Also note that users can choose to browse sites with images turned off, so always use alt text.
  5. Page Size. The maximum mobile page size is 20 Kb, so keep the page sizes small and simple. It’s also a good idea to set your screen size as variable, letting the mobile device scale the page size and resolution according to its screen size.
  6. Page Links. Since most mobile phones don’t have back buttons, “a good mobile website design provides back buttons and links” that help users avoid dead ends, Flow writes. He also suggests adding invite-to-call links on mobile phone sites.

“You don’t get to decide which device your customer uses to access the Internet. They get to choose,” McGrane concludes. “It’s your responsibility to … deliver a good experience to them—whatever device they choose to use.”

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Bye-Bye Borrowing: Firms Increasingly Rely on Capital Contributions

Posted on February 28, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Fewer firms are borrowing from banks, instead relying on increased capital contributions from partners. That’s the finding of both the American Lawyer and a survey Citi Private Bank’s Law Firm Group.

“Attitudes have shifted remarkably since a decade ago, when borrowing by firms was on the rise, and banks found a willing audience for sales pitches,” an American Lawyer article says. “After 2008, in particular, many firm leaders began to question the whole idea of bank debt.”

American Lawyer spoke with dozens of Am Law 200 firms about their partner paid-in capital programs. Of the 20 firms for which data could be confirmed, six increased or broadened capital requirements and seven—Dechert; Weil; K&L Gates; Day Pitney; Perkins Coie; Morgan, Lewis & Bockius; and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher—said they do not borrow at all.

This echoes the findings of the Citi survey of 171 law firms, which discovered that average paid-in capital for equity partners at the 20 largest firms increased from $423,000 in 2007 to more than $500,000 in 2011. The survey further found that “after an increase in 2008, debt levels fell steadily between 2009 and 2011.”

For details on how the 20 firms in the American Lawyer story handle their capital, see “The Fine Print: How 20 Firms Deal With Partner Capital.” See the American Lawyer article for a full discussion of the issue, as well as several graphs illustrating the Citi data.

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Eight ‘Golden Rules’ of Successful Transition to Equity Partner

Posted on February 19, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Partnership. It’s the goal of many a young lawyer. But how does one successfully transition to an equity partnership? Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie, authors of How to Make Partner and Still Have A Life, outlined eight “golden rules” for equity partners in Legal Week (sub. req.).

1. Hit financial targets. Equity partners are part of the business, not employees, and have to bring in the profits to support the business. As the authors state, “As an equity partner, all your excellent work won’t count if you don’t record, bill and collect the cash.”

2. Grow your practice. As an equity partner, the authors say it is essential to get to know the skills and abilities of the other partners and leverage that knowledge to not only build your own part of the practice but the firm as a whole. It is also important to make marketing and business development a top priority.

3. Develop your team and others. “If you’re going to hit the profit targets you have committed to deliver,” the authors write, “doing all the work yourself may not be an option.” You need a strong team that you can delegate work to and whose skills you consistently develop by passing on your own knowledge and experience.

4. Identify and develop your potential successors. As an equity partner, the success of the firm—even after you leave—is tantamount. “If a practice is going to remain profitable and sustainable in the long term, there needs to be good talent in the pipeline at all levels, ready, able and willing to make the next step up,” the authors write.

5. Be politically savvy, but not “political.” All firms occasionally suffer from what the authors nicely call “strong personalities, sensitivities, and empire protectors.” Successful equity partners are politically savvy, accepting this reality and being aware of the impact of what they say and do upon others so they can get work done “without triggering unnecessary negative reactions.”

6. Have a plan and ­strategy for your part of the practice. “To achieve many of the golden rules,” the authors write, “successful equity partners will need the discipline and diligence to plan, communicate, monitor and review business, marketing and people plans for their part of the practice.”

7. Look after yourself. You’ve heard this one before: If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything. The authors stress that it’s vitally important to actively take care of yourself in order to enjoy the fruits of your labor both during your time at the firm and long after.

8. Build your influence within the partnership. Much of an equity partner’s success comes down to the relationships he or she builds within the practice. By “building a strong internal network,” the authors write, “an equity partner is able to have a greater influence over how the practice is run, while finding it easier to achieve their own particular goals and objectives.”

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How to Succeed: First, You Need to Show Up

Posted on February 14, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Success doesn’t come easy. But as a recent Harvard Business Review blog article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter points out, nothing will happen if you don’t show up and be present.

“For companies,” she writes, “being there means having a presence on the ground to deeply understand places that hold resources important for the future.” That’s something that law firms understand, as illustrated by the uptick in global expansions that Hildebrandt Institute has reported on before. But why, in this increasingly Internet-connected world, is it so important to have feet on the ground? She explains:

It’s an apparent paradox: The declining significance of place is associated with the rising significance of place. Technology helps us connect with anyone anywhere nearly instantaneously, crowdsource ideas, and work on virtual teams without ever being in the same place. But being in the same place at the right time means being able to make serendipitous connections…. Showing up in a particular place is also critical to the new globalization, which increasingly means localization. Instead of inflicting one-size-fits-all standardized universal products on every market, companies realize the importance of adapting to local customs and tastes and learning from them.

For law firms, that means expanding into emerging markets, especially in Asia and the Middle East. The first 11 months of 2012 saw 56 foreign-office openings, which was the same number of openings for the whole of 2011. (Our records indicate that there were three more foreign-office openings in December 2012, rounding out the year’s total to 59.)

Moss Kanter also gave a talk at TEDxBeaconStreat on the “Six Keys to Leading Positive Change. (You can view the video in full at the bottom of this post.) In the talk, she outlines the six keys and what they mean for success:

  1. Show up. If you don’t show up, nothing really happens.
  2. Speak up. No one knows what you’re thinking unless you express it.
  3. Look up. Remember your vision and values.
  4. Team up. Everything goes better with partners.
  5. Never give up. Everything can look like a failure in the middle.
  6. Lift others up. Share the credit and recognition for success to motivate further success.

For the most part, law firms seem to have No. 2’s speaking up (lawyers are a loquacious bunch) and No. 4’s partnering for success down pat. But how do you think we do on the others? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Is Lateral Hiring Good for Law Firm Business?

Posted on February 13, 2013 by | 1 Comment

Thanks to the dissolution of Dewey & LeBoeuf, lateral hiring had a record year—both in the United States and in U.S.-based London firms. Am Law Daily reports that 2012 lateral hiring hit a three-year high with 2,691 moves, a 9.7 percent increase over 2011. In London, U.S.-based firms fueled an almost 40 percent increase in senior lateral recruitment over the last year. But is lateral hiring good for business? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Reporting on an American Lawyer article that examines the profitability of aggressive lateral hiring, the ABA Journal states:

By one measure, aggressive lateral hiring doesn’t work. The authors find no statistically significant relationship between an aggressive lateral strategy and profits per partner. In fact, the most profitable firms tend to have the lowest rates of lateral hiring. But on a different level, [William] Henderson and [Christopher] Zorn say, lateral hiring works because it can bolster a law firm’s ability to survive.

An ALM LexisNexis survey cited in the American Lawyer article found that “96 percent of managing partners said they expected to grow through lateral partner hiring over the next two years, yet only 28 percent reported that lateral hiring had been a highly effective strategy in the past.”

And it’s inefficient and expensive, or so reports Am Law Daily:

At the same time that many firms are wooing expensive lateral talent, they are also shedding dozens of lawyers at home every year—their associates. Finding, recruiting, and teaching these younger lawyers isn’t cheap. Wouldn’t more careful training and management of associates and junior partners help firms avoid the need for so many lateral recruits in the first place?

The Am Law Daily article further urges firms to look closer to home, asking:

[W]hat would happen if firms made more of an effort to take the long view? What if they tried to figure out which practice areas and regions of the world will be strong in 10–15 years (even if they aren’t now) and tried to train more associates in those areas? What if they identified companies for the associates to learn about (even if they aren’t yet clients)?

Lateral hiring, however, remains the fastest way to grow a firm, increase its ability to serve the market and, therefore, to bring in more business and profits. And “large, profitable firms are least likely to fail since they are better able to weather a loss of a large group of lawyers,” the ABA Journal article states. “These big firms may also be better positioned to pitch for work requiring a global reach.”

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