At the LMA's Annual Conference in Los Angeles last week, Peter Marx served as "roving reporter" capturing the essence of the conference through Web video. Click here to view his interview with keynote speaker Cherie Booth Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Colleges continue to be in the forefront of recognizing the power of Web video. Click here to view a video we just produced for Syracuse University's College of Law showing alumni all that's happening at the school.
An article in this morning's Boston Globe called "Colleges turn to Web tools in hunt for '08 freshman" has important lessons for law firms seeking to recruit law students.
College admissions is rapidly moving to online social media and taking advantage of podcasts, blogs and videos. Students are all wired and relate to the Web far more than traditional media. Web 2.0 is clearly here with regard to the online generation.
In order to keep up with the younger generation, recruiters need to speak to them through Facebook, YouTube, iTunes and other websites with which they're involved every day.
What students really want is to understand through a medium of their choice what it would be like to be a student at a school that interests them. Law students are no different in how they narrow their choice of law firms.
This morning's Wall Street Journal describes how M.B.A. programs are adjusting to the new generation. The article mentions that GMAC is incorporating new media into their website to make it more millennial friendly. Not mentioned, however, is that it's even more important for M.B.A. programs to add new media to the admissions sections of their websites. If schools want to have a chance to welcome these new millennials, new media is the best way to show what it's like to be one of their students.
An article in today's New York Times called "Lawyers Compete, Except in Bonuses" describes how 12 elite New York law firms just raised bonuses in identical amounts. The article mocks the business sense of this since bonuses are for people who are already on board, so it won't help recruiting. But this thinking is based on a former era when these firms were the only game on town if you wanted to join a law firm.
Today law students have the choice of numerous top firms such as Latham & Watkins, Jones Day and DLA Piper if they want to be in New York. Recruiting is incredibly competitive, so if 12 firms can maintain the myth that they are the elite, that will help them recruit top law graduates in competition against those outside the 12. That makes good business sense.
An article in this week's Business Week describes a trend toward quality with regard to online video. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that more than 57% of U.S. Internet users say they have downloaded online videos. But the days that anyone with a video camera could put something up on YouTube and expect people to watch are coming to an end. Slick new shows produced for the Web are coming on rapidly, so a clever idea has to be pretty good if the graphics don't measure up. Law firms, that need to be aware of their image as professionals, should recognzie that "cute" videos may not be as effective when everyone's producing them.
Intel announced today a new generation of microprocessors that substantially improve the performance of computer chips. The new chips called xeon 5400 significantly increase switching speed, reduce power consumption and raise clock speed. The bottom line result is that a new generation of PCs is about to be introduced that will greatly enhance the ability of PCs to view high quality video on the Web.
To appreciate the job that Microsoft has done in their video described in the previous post, check out Google's recruiting video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcXF1YirPrQ.
Although Google's recruiting video tries to be down to earth and authentic. It just doesn't work. It adds minor video effects that don't support authenticity, and most important the employee interviews appear to have been carefully scripted. In fact, some participants appear as though they've memorized their lines.
Google may be giving Microsoft a tough time in the marketplace and it's one of the hottest places to work, but they've got a long way to go to catch up in their recruiting videos.
Microsoft's recruiting video called "What is it like to interview at Microsoft?" has now been viewed more than 250,000 times. The deceptively simple video can be seen at Microsoft's Channel 9
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=18472
The beauty of the video is that it's shot with rudimentary video equipment and untrained employees as the participants. Normally, I'd recommend that law firms present themselves in videos in the most professional manner possible. However, if a large impersonal firm wants to present its human side, Microsoft demonstrates a great way to do this. But don't be fooled by the simplistic videography. This still requires creative thinking and professional planning and production behind the scenes.
An article in this morning's New York Times discusses how law firms are waking up to the fact that online video is a great way to reach law students. The article discusses examples of firms that have spent substantial amounts to create professional videos. This may be the YouTube generation, but that doesn't mean that YouTube quality will impress Web savy law students. If you want your firm's video to achieve the desired effect don't just grab a video camera and start shooting. Get professional help. For example, here's a link to play a recruiting video we produced for the U.S. Navy JAG.
This morning's Wall Street Journal talks about how the time for video ads on the Web has arrived. See article at this link. Websites from Facebook to newspapers and yellow pages publishers are finding that video can add impact to ads, thus increasing their value and how much advertisers might be willing to pay. The article quotes Charles Laughlin from the Kelsey Group that "Online video ads may appeal to a wide range of businesses such as law firms that want to present the faces of the proprietors as a selling point."
The marketing for recruiting M.B.A. grads is getting just as competitive as that for law students. On September 17th, the Wall Street Journal included a lengthy article on how companies are being creative to recruit M.B.A. grads. Some of the techniques include
The complete article can be found at this link.
I will be speaking on law firm videos at a Legal Marketing Association event on Wednesday, September 12th in Boston. The panel will be moderated by law firm adviser Larry Bodine and will include Jamie Heller of the Wall Street Journal talking about blogs and Beth Cuzzone of Goulston & Storrs talking about podcasting. For more information, go the the LMA, New England website at www.lmanewengland.org.
Last week, Steve Jobs announced Apple's new fall lineup. To see his presentation, click here. Of particular interest to law firms was a tiny 8GB iPod nano that will show video. At its price of $200, even the poorest law student can afford to have one without much effort. The lesson for law firms is that for recruiting, podcasts should now be video. CEOs are unlikely to be carrying the new nanos, so audio podcasting is still fine for marketing.
In his Law Marketing Blog, leading law firm adviser Larry Bodine describes how the Web video produced by Legal Insight Media puts the Navy JAG in the forefront of legal recruiting. To read the article, click on this link.
A Federal District Court has ruled that part of New York's draconian advertising rules are unconstitutional. Unfortunately the ruling relates to the use of pop-ads on the Internet, so it is of little relief to most law firms. On the other hand, this is a step in the right direction, and hopefully another court will strike down some of the other rules such as the requirement to put the words "attorney advertising" on the bottom of a firm's website. All industries, including professional services, are making sensible use of the Web to display their credentials and other information through commentary, images, video and other media. The more that lawyers are permitted to do so, the more potential clients will be able to evaluate them.
In the BroadbandVideo360 blog, Will Richmond talks about the Navy Jag Recruiting video. He says "If I were a recent grad looking for some adventure beyond sitting in a window-less associate's cubicle, the JAG opportunity looks pretty enticing!" For more of Will's commentary, go to www.broadbandvideo360.com.
Thanks to David Meerman Scott for pointing out in his WebInkNow blog a very interesting video by Randstad. It's too cutting edge for most law firms today, but it's fascinating to see what innovative companies are doing.
Here is a photo of us shooting the Navy JAG recruiting video aboard the USS Harry Truman.
We're pleased to be helping the US Navy JAG be a leader in recruiting law students. Check out a video we just produced for them on the Navy JAG’s website www.JAG.NAVY.mil or by
clicking on this link or by pasting this url into your browser:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid979054715
I've included a copy of the news release below:
Navy JAG AT FOREFRONT OF legal REcruiting with WEB VIDEO
TrueView Video
Captures the Experience of the Navy JAG
July 10, 2007
—The U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General Corps (Navy JAG) has become one of the
first legal employers to produce a Web video to recruit the next generation of
lawyers. The TrueView* video, which can
be viewed on the Navy JAG’s website, was developed by Legal Insight Media, Inc., a firm that produces electronic
media for law firm recruiting and marketing.
“Given
how competitive the legal marketplace is we knew the best place to reach law
students was online,” said LCDR Colleen M. Shook, JAGC, USN, JAG Corps Detailer
for Accessions and Recruiting. “This
compelling Web video captures the sense of adventure that attracts lawyers to
become JAGs better than any other medium could.”
“The Navy
JAG is in the forefront of using Web video for recruiting,” said Legal Insight
Media President Peter Marx. “We
conducted an informal survey of the AmLaw 200 and found less than 20 percent
were using video on their career websites. Yet, they’re all competing to reach
a generation that has grown up in an electronic world where the Web is their
lifeline to everything and everyone.”
“Videos have taken the Web by storm,”
according to law firm marketing consultant and business development advisor
Larry Bodine. “YouTube is the fourth
most popular Web site on the Internet, reaching 10 percent of all the people online
every day. That says to me that video is
a must for recruiting Web pages. Static pictures and text just won’t attract
them.”
The
three-minute video highlights the experiences of Navy JAGs against a backdrop
of action-packed visuals. In addition to
being used on the U.S. Navy JAG website, it will be shown to prospective JAGs
around the country and will be available as a download from iTunes.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid979054715.
It also can be found on the U.S.
Navy JAG website at www.JAG.NAVY.mil.
About Legal Insight Media
Legal Insight Media, Inc.is a marketing services company that helps law firms
differentiate themselves using electronic media. The company produces TrueView Web videos and
podcasts that help to drive a firm’s marketing, practice development and
recruiting efforts. All of Legal Insight
TrueView videos authentically convey the unique character and culture of a firm
and its attorneys. They can be displayed
on the Web, within PowerPoint, in e-mails and on handheld devices including
iPods. Legal Insight Media has received honors for two consecutive years in the
Legal Marketing Association’s national and regional Your Honor Award
competition for electronic media.
In an article called "Chasing the iPhone" in this morning's New York Times, Martin Fackler describes the response of other manufacturers. Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola will all be coming out with competitive offerings. Unfortunately, no word on any alternative for the Blackberry or Palm Treo.
Today is the launch of Steve Jobs' new sensation the iPhone. Starting with the selection of AT&T's slow network, it's too bad that business users, much less lawyers, are of little interest to Apple at this time. The iPhone is clearly a consumer product. But lawyers have the same frustrations with cell phones and Blackberries as everyone else. These devices are just not very user friendly.
Lawyers love their Blackberries or Palm Treos because of their terrific ability to keep in constant touch with e-mail. They do the job but are no match for the easy control and large crisp screen of the iPhone. Lawyers in particular need to be be in constant touch with the Web, not just e-mail. And that's a Web increasingly rich in video and other media. Lawyers are eager consumers of online information. That's no pleasure on the Blackberry or Palm Treo.
Although there are hints of upcoming versions of the iPhone that will be addressed to business users and that some day the current one might be bought by AT&T business customers, it will be a long time before this will be a device used by many lawyers. I hope that the iPhone will serve as a stimulus for adding features to the Blackberry and Palm Treo that will make them more pleasant to use, including a larger, higher resolution screen. Put it on a high speed network and lawyers would flock to such a device.
This year's class of summer associates was probably the most pursued in history. It's clearly a sellers' market for law students.
Here are some interesting statistics by Leigh Jones in the May issue of "Marketing the Law Firm", essentially a republishing of the article in the February 16th issue of the National Law Journal.
Ward Bower, a consultant with Altman & Weil estimates that the Am Law 200 firms require about 10,000 new associates each year. Assuming they restrict themselves to the top 100 law schools, they will pick up about 50% of all graduates from those schools.
Firms outside the Am Law 200 will pick up the remaining 50%. It's unbelievably competitive for all firms to hire the associates they want, and as long as the economy stays strong, the demand for legal services will stay high and so will the competition for law students.
"The New Rules of Marketing & PR" by David Meerman Scott has just been published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. The book is about the use of blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media. While not directed to law firms, there's a lot lawyers could learn from it. I highly recommend it as a way to get familiar with all of these.
The forward is by Robert Scoble, who while an employee of Microsoft, showed how even large organizations can covey compelling messages using video on the Web at minimal cost. While in the book, Scott acknowledges that Web video is still new (It's barely started for law firms.), he points out that it's a great way to convey information and leave the competition behind.
An article in this week's National Law Journal called "After 30 years, law firm advertising is slow to change" describes the current state of law firm advertising. Little has changed since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Bates v. Arizona. As attorney and marketing expert Micah Buchdahl states "The law firm marketing world is still not very sophisticated." Another veteran of the legal marketing community Ross Fishman points out that law firms only think of marketing when they're in trouble.
There are plenty of firms that are hungry for business. Why can't they adopt some of the strategies that have served firms in other industries well. Ads in print, on the Web and even TV don't have to be tasteless.
An article in this week's National Law Journal quotes a study that says that sixty-one percent of professional services companies, including law firms, conduct Google searches on job candidates. Given that they use the Web to check up on the law students they're considering, you'd think they'd assume that law students are doing the same check ups on them.
The vast majority of law firm websites show little regard for the Web sophistication of law students today. Even those firms that have redesigned their websites, provide little of substance that can distinguish them from their competitors or give law students a real idea of what it would be like to work there.
Three blogs have provided excellent coverage on the Law Firm Growth conference held in New York last week. These are Janet Moore's International Lawyer Coach blog, Arnie Herz's Legal Sanity blog and Jonathan Frieden's E-Commerce Law blog.
At the conference, Peter Marx, President of Legal Insight Media, moderated a panel on Legal Blogs and other Technology. Other speakers on the panel were Arnie Herz, Jim Hassett and Jonathan Frieden.
From audience response, it appeared that major firms are not ready for podcasts generally, much less video podcasts. Separately, our analysis of the websites of the AmLaw 100 shows there is almost no use of audio or video.
On May 15th, Peter Marx will be speaking about legal blogs, podcasts and Web videos at the Law Firm Growth Management conference in New York. One of the questions to be addressed at the conference is whether law firms are ready for video podcasts and vlogs.
About a year ago, we offered several firms the opportunity to produce video podcasts. We had many takers for audio podcasts but none were ready for video. Our sense is that that is still the case. It will be interesting to get the perspective of the other panelists.
By the way, if you get the last minute urge to attend the program and haven't signed up, we have a couple extra tickets. Get in touch with us if you'd like to use them.
"Video is popular on Web sites everywhere." Or so says an article in this morning's Wall Street Journal called "As Web Ads Grow ..." The article talks about all the sophisticated capabilities that are now available.
But "everywhere" doesn't seem to include law firms. Our informal survey of the websites of the top 25 AmLaw 100 firms found virtually no video, no audio and no rich media. It's not that law firms aren't spending heavily on their websites. If they haven't had a major overhaul within the past two years, they're probably working on it or at least planning one.
In states that don't have draconian rules like New York, Web video is ideal way to provide client testimonials with impact and authenticity. How much more believable is it to hear a testimonial in the client's own words, rather than reading a paragraph they may or may not have written?
When it comes to recruiting law students or laterals, career websites are ideal for videos that can give prospective associates an authentic feeling for what it would be like to work at the firm. Since the careers sections tend to be the most heavily visited sections of a law firm's website, it's long overdue for firms to enliven them and appeal to a generation of law students who scour the Web for information and are hungry for authenticity.
After the previous post, we received a number of inquiries regarding legal issues for bloggers. The list of issues is long:
These and other issues are discussed extensively on the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We recommend you check it out at www.eff.org/bloggers.
On May 1st, Aviva Directory published an interesting article called "12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know". It can be found at www.avivadirectory.com/blogger-law.
The topics covered are:
Legal background and recommendations are provided for each issue in an easy to understand way that may be particularly helpful to non-lawyers. Also, although the subject is blogs, the issues and analyses may be equally applicable to websites and other media.
An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal's Careers Journal discusses how companies are incorporating technologies that are popular among students to attract high-quality candidates. Some of the points made in the article:
There's a lot for law firm recruiters to learn from the article. It can be found at this link.
An interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal describes how corporate recruiters are surfing the Web to find or evaluate job candidates. The latest trend is to surf blogs to find out about candidates, either from their own blog or from others blogs which may reference the candidate.
Law firm recruiters should be doing the same thing, particularly with regard to lateral hires. The competition among firms to recruit is intense, so they need to be creative in how they find and evaluate attorneys. Reading blogs can be particularly effective with regard to lateral attorneys since there is more likely to be information about them available on the Web.
The buzz is increasing on the efforts by 100 law students to impact billable hours and the work environment at AmLaw 100 firms. The National Law Journal reports that the law students plan to publish prior to fall recruiting season a list of firms that do not sign on to their principles for improved working conditions at law firms.
This morning's Wall Street Journal and the Journal's blog discuss a letter from 125 law students to 100 major law firms. The students ask for more balance in the work environment and a reduction in billable hours in exchange for ending the escalation of associates' salaries. Here is a link to the students' letter as published in the Wall Street Journal's blog.
The group has also established its own blog.
It will be interesting to see how much impact these students will have in effecting change. They've already shown the power of the online generation to take advantage of the Web to get the attention of serious people. At a minimum, the hiring partners at every law firm will be reading the students' letter and checking out their website. Many of them will probably respond with some action.
Legal Insight Media
and its client Goulston & Storrs were awarded second place in the nation by the Legal Marketing Association for
their recruiting podcasts in the category electronic media. The podcasts series was
the first to be produced by a law firm to recruit law
students. They enable law students to download perspectives from
current associates and partners on their experiences working at the
firm. The Your Honor award was given for excellence in marketing programs within the legal community across the country.
Mintz Levin, the fourth largest law firm in Boston, has added podcasting to its business development program. Starting with Alden Bianchi on the new Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act, Mintz is demonstrating its expertise in a dynamic way through interviews with their leading lawyers. Mintz is including the podcasts as links in e-mail alerts, and they can be found on their home page (www.mintz.com) under "News and Events".
