Douglas McPherson

We all know that law is a people business. Clients buy from lawyers whom they like, respect, and trust, and they judge those lawyers and their firms on the quality of service that the firm provides, the results achieved, and whether they receive value for money. This applies to corporate, institutional, and private clients alike. For their business plans to be connected to reality, partners and law firm leaders must learn how they are perceived by their clients and adapt accordingly. They do this by listening to their clients. Historically this was through informal, fireside chats. In recent years, many firms have devised formal client listening programs and in recent years there has been an explosion of review sites and social media channels enabling clients to leave their unfiltered and public feedback, whether solicited or not. Forward-looking firms are adopting multi-channel approaches to taking feedback to maximize the intelligence they gather and to adapt to clients' own preferences. As ever, the most nimble and adaptable will reap the rewards. The Client Experience: How to Optimize Client Service and Deliver Value looks at the client experience from end-to-end, from client listening programs to journey mapping, from customer audits to how legal tech can help improve the way a client interacts with a law firm throughout its relationship. A client-centric business model is essential for future law firm success and the authors of this far-reaching title utilize their own experience and real-life case studies to drill down into the importance of maintaining the one thing no business can do without: its client.

Why this report, why now? It is of course an understatement to say our lives have changed massively since the end of March 2020. The restrictions that have had to be brought in to control COVID-19 saw almost all of us forced to work from home, only connected to our colleagues and clients by Teams, Zoom, and Facetime. At the time it looked like this was going to be a six-month blip. We’d ride it out then things would start to go back to normal and we could carry on as we were. We all now know that is definitely not the case. As I started writing this book in late October 2020 we had started to see a slight return to the office - albeit in shifts to maintain the required social distancing - and face-to-face meetings over coffee or lunch were starting to creep back in. However, it now looks as though in the short-term at least the restrictions will get tighter before they relax again. But you know all this. What does it have to do with business development? Way back in March, a lot of law firms pushed business development to the bottom of their priorities. Work had to come first. And, as we can’t do business development the way we always have, there was no way to keep it going even if we wanted to. The only problem is, if you don’t do any business development, you are not going to generate the new work required to sustain your practice. You are also going to put yourself at high risk of losing the client relationships you have worked so hard to build. This meant we had to quickly come up with new ways to do business development from home. We had to adapt our approach by using the tools that were available to us. We had to replace physical business development with virtual business development. The Virtual Lawyer examines those new virtual ways of approaching marketing and business development, explaining how you can continue to strengthen your existing relationships, boost your visibility in the markets you serve, and generate the new introductions and new opportunities you’ll need to grow your practice whilst working remotely. The book uses a three-step model, designed to take us from where we are today to where we need to be in the future, whatever that future ends up looking like. These three steps are React, Refresh, and Return.

Roll up! Roll up! See the wondrous new face of Circus Mania, 250 years in the making! Full of the remarkable tales of circus life that made it a classic on its first outing. Learn about the origins of the circus from Roman times, to the colourful characters that make the circus the international phenomenon it is today. Circus Mania 2.0 is bigger, better and couldn't be timelier. Two hundred and fifty years after Philip Astley invented the circus it has never been more diverse and captivating, the global success of the spectacular Cirque du Soleil just one testament to its enduring and universal appeal. In Britain alone there are traditional family circuses for kids and arty shows for adults, circuses in tents and circuses in theatres, circuses with animals and circuses without, the Circus of Horrors for clubbers, the comedy-based Circus Hilarious and cabaret-style hybrids on the burlesque circuit - and this form of entertainment is popular around the world. What all circuses have in common are the extraordinary skills, dedication and lifestyle of those involved - a unique strain of performers who blend the discipline of sports stars with the razzmatazz of showbiz; itinerant entertainers who have often had circus blood in their families for generations; world-class gymnasts who risk death twice daily, serve on the tea stand in between shows and help take down the big top afterwards. Circus Mania is a journey into this unique world, each chapter an access-all-areas pass to a different circus, talking to the trapeze flyers, clowns, animal trainers and showmen about their lives, work and customs and offering insight into the development of this traditional entertainment from the earliest times.

The legal market is changing rapidly. But much of law firms’ marketing activity is based on what the firm is today, rather than what it needs to be tomorrow. The activity centres on `quick wins’ rather than addressing how the firm will need to be packaged, positioned, and perceived in the future in order to attract new purchases and the type of client it really wants. This book has been written to show you how to package and position your firm in a way that will allow you to profit from your efforts. We’ll cut through some of the marketing-speak that all-too-often either prevents or puts lawyers off getting to the heart of building a viable, relevant marketing strategy. We’ll also look at some practical examples of how best to design the right strategy for your firm and, most importantly, how you can implement those ideas easily so that they start delivering commercial success. If you are to pilot your firm, practice, or department through the next phase of the legal industry’s development, you need to be cannier in the way you take it to market. The good news is that if you get the packaging, positioning, and promotion right, you are well on the way to winning the work you want at the fee level you want, and that simply has to be the most direct route to profitable growth.

This book has visibility as its central theme. It will help you to establish where you need to be visible, how to achieve and maintain visibility with clients, and how to convert visibility into new work. It shares a variety of tried-and-tested approaches to boosting visibility, so you can choose those that suit you best. Every suggestion is designed to be put into practice around fee earning responsibilities. Features of this book: Chapters on how to create visibility and stay visible to clients as well as referrers, how to effectively network to get the best results, and intelligent marketing advice that will aid you and your firm in being more visible. Practical tips to manage your day-to-day marketing activities that can be implemented easily and without a huge requirement for time or budget. Highly practical advice you can put into immediate action, including a series of mini-masterclasses with step-by-step guidance and various templates that can be adapted for your own use.