The Latest issue of Originate! is Now Online

The newest issue of the online rainmaking newsletter Originate, is now online at http://www.pbdi.org/originate/.  Here's the lineup of articles aimed at helping individual lawyers get more clients and make more money.  Get your own subscription and don't miss an issue.

Featured Articles

7 Principles of Client Development: Making Their Bottom Line Yours Darryl Cross sees 7 key principles in successful client relationships and client business development, whether you're an individual, part of a small firm, or in a big city one.  The attorney's bottom line gains from focusing energies on improving a client's bottom line. Generating Business: Doing What Does NOT Come Naturally

Most of us assume that rainmakers are fundamentally different from them, that they enjoy natural advantages we can only marvel at. The truth is very different, according to Michael Cummings. Most attorneys simply have to leverage their personal strengths and their existing professional skills in new ways. Learn from one non-natural rainmaker how you too can succeed in getting business .

Memo to Senior Partners: Motivate Younger Lawyers for Your Business's Sake

Motivating younger lawyers to get business is possible, says Larry Bodine, if you take some simple but powerful steps. Start by recognizing how much their world and their experience differs from their seniors in the firm. Then mentor and involve them so you stir their interest and build their capabilities. The result will be rewarding for both the firm and the individual lawyer.

Marketing Partner of the Year: What Does It Take?

In January, Mark A. Long, managing partner and head of marketing at Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, earned recognition as Marketing Partner of the Year at the Marketing Partner Forum. What he did to merit that accolade was not revolutionary; mainly he did some important things well. Barry Schneider reviews what it took, and what you or your firm can learn from this example.

Ten Most Effective Marketing Techniques for the Little Guy Larry Bodine presents a brief and pointed podcast in which he identifies the ten most effective marketing techniques for solo lawyers and small firms. Learn what your priorities should be and what it takes to get results, even if you're a small part of a big firm. They Say They Want a Revolution: Reconnecting Legal Costs to Value Delivered

Amy Spach reports on the sparks generated by a new initiative from the Association of Corporate Counsel, one that aims to narrow a perceived gap between billings and value received. Hear now what your clients may be telling you soon about your worth to them.

Best Practice Tips

Case Study: Nothing Succeeds Like Your Clients’ Success

Charlie Miller, Esq., Deputy Managing Partner of Patton Boggs, recounts two specific stories that illustrate how the firm wins by helping its clients win.  Here’s how their lawyers actually listened to the Voice of the Client, how they put themselves in position to gain new work and how they actually landed two major new clients.

A Day in the Life of a Rainmaker...and How You Can Do the Same Are you missing out on Business Development opportunities today? Definitely, unless you heed the simple guidelines that rainmakers set for themselves. Michael Cummings looks at the day-to-day life of some rainmakers you can emulate for your career success. A Shout out to Younger Lawyers: Business Development is the Key to your Destiny

Larry Bodine shouts this message from the rooftops, telling his tale of how younger lawyers must and can take charge of their own destiny.  Don’t let your career just happen to you; get into the arena.  Seize on the work that you want, make strong contacts, and do what it takes to become the captain of your own destiny.

Relating through E-mail: Talk to Your Clients, Not at Them E-mail newsletters and alerts can be a great way to communicate with clients, and complement other business development activities. But Darryl Cross laments that too many lawyers lose a great opportunity by delivering the equivalent of junk mail. Here are some hard facts about using e-mail effectively, and what to do about it. Make Your Garden Grow: 10 Ways to Invigorate Your Referrals

As in cultivating a thriving garden, there are no "secret shortcuts" to generating referrals. Clients and colleagues most often refer business to lawyers they know, respect and trust - and such relationships take time to cultivate.  Carolyn Elefant, Esq. offers ten tips you can use though to nurture future business from referrals.

Market Beat: Hildebrandt Report Warns of Services Downturn

In its first downbeat client advisory in 10 years, Hildebrandt warns that law firms are in an economic downturn that has not been accompanied by the usual upturns in litigation, bankruptcy or reorganization.

Subscribe to Originate, the only newsletter aimed at helping an individual lawyer get more clients and earn more revenue. Simply visit here or go to http://www.pbdi.org/Originate/users.asp and subscribe today.  The newsletter is 100% original, new material that will show you how to boost your practice.

Get Smart on Marketing with Technology at ABA Techshow

Marketers will find a feast of programs on how to use technology to connect to new clients at the annual ABA Techshow 2008 coming up on March 13-15 in Chicago.  More than 1,500 people will convene at the Chicago Hilton.

There are 16 educational tracks including Advanced IT/Security, Client Relationships, E-Discovery, Going Green, Internet, Large Firm/Corporate Counsel, Litigation, Mac Track, Microsoft Office, Mobile Technology, Paperless Office, Records Management, Roundtables, Show Me How, Solo/Small Firm I and Solo/Small Firm II.

Among the programs that caught my eye were:

• 60 Sites in 60 Minutes with speakers Tom Mighell, Reid Trautz and Craig Ball. This perennial favorite is always one of the best attended sessions. The panelists will review the hottest new websites for lawyers and legal professionals -- great web resources on legal technology, practice management, research, ethics, and they'll toss in some practical and fun stuff, too.
  4:15 PM, Friday March 14
• Lawyering In a Virtual World: How to Snag the Connected Client, with Judge Monty Ahalt, Will Hornsby and Greg Siskind
  8:30 AM , Friday March 14
• Working Together from Wherever You Are: The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaborating on the Internet, with Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell
  1:00 p.m. Friday March 14
• Winning the Beauty Pageant: Catching Corporate Counsel’s Eye with Technology, with Ted Banks and Toby Brown
  1:00 p.m. Friday March 14
• Matchmaker, Matchmaker: Connecting with New Clients Using Technology, with Kevin O’Keefe and Greg Siskind
  8:30 a.m. Saturday March 15
• Client Retention: Technology to Avoid the Seven-Year Itch with Toby Brown and Carolyn Elefant
  9:45 a.m. Saturday March 15
• Who's Watching You? A Conversation About Privacy on the Internet
  ABA TECHSHOW 2008 Keynote Address: Marc Rotenberg is Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC.ORG) in Washington, DC. He teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center and has testified before Congress on access to information, encryption policy, consumer protection, computer security, and communications privacy.
  1:00 PM, Thursday March 13

You can register for ABA TECHSHOW 2008 online at http://www.abanet.org/techshow/

Awesome Discoveries at the ABA Techshow Exhibits

For the first time I can say that a vendor expo was awesome. The ABA Techshow had the usual collection of case management and time-and-billing stuff, but I found some really cool items:

I bought a top-of-the-line fast laptop/main computer at the Dell booth.  I got A Latitutde D630 for 35% off -- for a total of $1831! Ask for salesman Jesus Ortega, a big guy with a big smile. The system includes:
- Core 2 Duo T9300 2.50 GHz processor with 6M Level 2 Cache with an 800 Mhz bus
- XP home edition.  No Vista for me, thank you.
- 120 Gig hard drive -- a faster one that runs at 7200 rpm.
- DVD player and burner
- built in wireless card
- MS Office 2007 Small business edition (I winced that I would have to learn yet another version of Word, but Jesus told me I could master it in 3 days).
- a 9 cell batter that lasts 9 hours
- 3 year mail in service warranty

The next cool thing was the KeyScan KS810 keyboard scanner.  Most scanners have huge footprints.  With KeyScan you just insert your document into a slot in the keyboard. KeyScan can save it as a PDF and automatically insert it as an attachment in Outlook.  Or, if you're working on a document, you put the cursor where you want the image to appear, scan it, and it is automatically inserted there.  Here's the best part: the price is $159.  If you want one, call Ophira Rosolio at 781.658.2020 or ophira@keyscan.com (see www.keyscan.com)

Thirdly, I was walking down a aisle as saw my face flash up on the TV monitor.  Being curious I tracked down the camera and found Audience Response Systems, Inc.  I congratulated Regional Sales Manager Doug Kinsella on his eye-catching marketing.  It's the best draw in the entire Expo.  They sell Pulse, a continuous real-time audience polling system.  Each audience member (or mock jury member) is given a little keypad, and every 5 seconds they indicate whether they are bored (click 1) or that they're fascinated (click 10).  The results appear live on a screen viewed by monitors.  A speaker or lawyer doing a closing argument can instantly see when he's losing the audience, or when he's got their total attention.  Level 2 Pulse for 24 participants is $4,160.  For more info go to www.audienceresponse.comk or call Doug Kinsellla at 800.458.9081.

Finally the best "gimme" was a yo-yo that lights up when you spin it.  I'm meeting my son Ted for lunch (he's an analyst at Fidelity Investments in downtown Chicago) and I'm going to give it to him.

Stay tuned for more.

7 Principles of Client Development: Making Their Bottom Line Yours

By Darryl Cross in discussion with Larry Bodine  

Darryl Cross is Senior Vice President of Business Development of Concep, Inc. in New York. The company does client surveys/market research, communications, client relationship management (CRM), graphic design, holiday cards, marketing, survey software and web site development.  He can be reached at (212) 925-0380 and darryl.cross@concepglobal.com.

Darryl Cross:  We're talking looking at things from the client's bottom line point of view instead of ours. That idea leads to seven principles of client development, consistent principles that we see on a regular basis, whether they are a 30 lawyer shop in Dallas or a big New York City law firm. 

Number one is leveraging our existing assets.  There is so much content and so much information available at law firms about clients; they're swimming in it.  We're talking about things like what relationships do we have?  What is the billing history of some very large maybe pharmaceutical clients?  It tells us a lot about what kind of problems they have.  We also look at things like who are the other people we know outside of here?  What is our matter history?  What part of our existing client base could be duplicated?  We have all this content at our finger tips.  A lot of times it's out of context, but we can bring that together using technology and some good old fashioned elbow grease be able to make some sense of it. 

Principle two is once we start compiling information and seeing all those assets, we have to have the ability to think small.  Think about last time you were asked to write a short 400-word article.  Hard, isn't it, Larry? 

Larry Bodine:  It's much harder than writing a 2000-word article. 

Darryl Cross:  It's a great exercise to take a 1000-word article and nail it down to 500, then 250, and then a 50-word synopsis.  It's a great exercise in thinking small.  Here's another one you should take back to your law firms to illustrate the need to think small when it comes to business development:  When you have a gathering of lawyers in the room, ask every lawyer to pull out of piece of paper and take 15 seconds to write down 5 clients they've never done work with before.  I've never run into a group that can't.  The world is way too big, and there are too many opportunities and too many possibilities. 

For the rest of the article visit the Originate Web Site at http://www.pbdi.org/Originate/default.asp?Action=GetDetails&ArticleID=99.  An annual subscription costs only $397.