InsideLegal

Just in time for the New Year...2010 Master Legal Events Calendar Released by InsideLegal.com

115+ Legal Events at-a-Glance!  We have just published the InsideLegal Legal Technology/Law Firm Management Master Events Calendar for 2010 - the most comprehensive, one-stop, legal industry event resource available.

If you have an event you would like us to consider adding, please email us the event name, event owner, dates, location and event URL.  InsideLegal already works with publishers such as ALM and peer networking organizations such as ILTA on providing their legal event calendars, and we’d like to invite you to link to the calendar as well.

ILTA Vendor Education/Media Program - Produced by InsideLegal.com

For the sixth year, we at InsideLegal.com will be producing the Vendor Education/Media Program at the Annual ILTA Conference (August 23-27).  If you will be attending ILTA and have not already signed up to attend, please do so.  Again, we want to thank ILTA for making it possible to provide additional valuable education for vendors onsite Monday, August 24th in meeting rooms Potomac 1&2...

ILTA Vendor Business Meeting & ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey Results – 2:00-2:30 p.m.
This session will include an opportunity to meet the ILTA staff, to receive updates on conference activities, find out about future conference locations and get an update on general ILTA programs.  We will also be doing a short presentation on the findings of the 2009 ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey.  Take a look at the 2008 ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey to get an idea of the information we'll be covering and stay tuned to InsideLegal.com for more information.

ILTA Vendor Education Program – 2:30-4:30 p.m.
We are offering 4 sessions, with each panel consisting of 3-4 faculty - ILTA staff, ILTA officers and recognized industry experts.  Once again, one of our goals this year is to make sure the program is applicable to established vendors who may have attended all past events as well as new vendor attendees.  To participate, please RSVP for each attendee with their name, company, title and email address to JoAnna Forshee.

The 4 panels will cover the following topics:
• Working with ILTA (outside of the Annual Conference)
• Advice for Selling to Law Firms in this Economy (Economic Impact & Doing More with Less Marketing Budget )
• Utilizing Social Media to Maximize Your Company’s Message
• Working with Media

ILTA Vendor Reception – 4:30-5:00 p.m.
Join us following the program for an in-room networking reception affording vendors the opportunity to mingle with other attendees, participating media, and the panelists. 

Again, please make sure to RSVP for each attendee with their name, company, title and email address to JoAnna Forshee.  Thanks again to Peggy and ILTA!

Ten Rules for Conference Vendors from Matt Homann

Just in time for ILTA, below is a list of ten rules for conference vendors from LexThink's Matt Homann.  How many of the rules does your company break? 

1.  If the only way you can sell your value proposition is with a white paper, you don't have a value proposition.

2.  You do not earn my attention by giving me a pen. You earn it by solving a problem I can't solve without you.

3.  The more your booth looks like everyone else's the more I think your product does what everyone else’s does, too.

4.  Don’t get offended if I don’t believe your product will do what you promise.  I’ve been burned before by people who sounded and looked a lot like you.

5.  Everyone working your booth should have a 7 word answer to the question “What do you do?”  The first three words of that answer should be “We help you…”

6.  The number of words on your booth is inversely proportional to the likelihood I’ll read any of them.

7.  These five words should NEVER appear on your booth: Trusted, Leading, Innovative, Premier, and Unique.  If they do, you probably aren’t.

8.  Dump the booth babes.  If I can’t trust you to make good decisions about your marketing, how can I trust you to make good decisions about serving me?

9.  Your product’s benefits are not as different from your competitors’ as you believe them to be.  Instead of selling me “unique” features, sell me outstanding service.

10.  Capture my attention before you capture my contact information.  A one-dollar USB drive in exchange for a year of emails and telephone calls is not a fair trade.

You can view the rest of Matt's "10 Rules" Posts here.

Tune in to the Get A Life Conference Free Live Stream Wednesday & Thursday (May 27 & 28)!

As you might be aware, the Total Practice Management Association is hosting its inaugural Get a Life.™ Conference (follow #GAL09 on Twitter) Wednesday and Thursday of this week (May 27-28^th) in Chicago. True to its mission of educating legal professionals with practical, “how to” marketing, operations and practice management advice, the conference will be streamed live and free of charge during the two day event. Simply visit www.TotalPMA.org (and click on Watch the LIVE Conference Web Cast banner) beginning Wednesday, May 27^th at 8:30am CST to listen in live on any of the 19 sessions focused on helping attendees get more out of their law practice and life. The agenda highlights sessions from speakers such as practice development consultant Gerry Riskin; legal blogging expert Kevin O’Keefe; author of Law Business Revolution blog Alexis Martin Neely; law firm marketing expert Larry Bodine; and Rainmaker Institute CEO Stephen Fairley on the following topics:

·         Bulletproofing® Your Clients and Your Joy of Life (keynote)

·         Effective Blogging and Social Media

·         Building Your Personal & Client Business Development Plans

·         Billing 101: Fees, Finance & the Bottom Line

·         Insights on Outsourcing

·         Recruiting and Selecting Talented people

·         Create Your Own Strategic Plan

Get A Life Conference Agenda

Get A Life Speaker List

Outside Insights for Legal Exhibitors

Often, vendors spend more effort preparing for a trade show and talking about maximizing their efforts there, than they do actually "working" the show.  Tim Corcoran of Altman Weil wrote an article about this topic that has some great points to think about when exhibiting (and when interfacing with prospects/external audiences in general) ... How does your team work the booth?  Are they engaging but not intimidating?  Can you succinctly articulate what makes you/your product or service unique? Do you and your staff make the most of the show and maximize your investment by participating in the networking events?

Sticking with the theme of "vendors trade show/general business preparedness",  here are some "tweets" uber-consultant/blogger Matt Homann composed while walking the exhibit hall at the ABA TECHSHOW recently in Chicago...

• "Vendors: If the only way you can "sell" your value proposition is with a white paper, you don't have a value proposition."

• "Vendors, the more your booth looks like everyone else's the more I think your product is too."

• "Vendors: You do not earn my attention by giving me a pen. You earn it by solving a problem I can't solve without you."

Back to the Basics

When's the last time you received a fax that wasn't a solicitation or offer for a 50% off lunch coupon? With emails cluttering our Inbox, blogs (of course not this one ;-)) popping up by the thousands, and twitter starting to chirp, maybe using fax as a proactive, targeted communication tool once again makes sense. Obviously, the efficacy of the medium all depends on its intent, but why not go back to the tried and true?

What triggered this post was a friend's comment that he faxed a customer survey to select clients and he received a phenomenal 75+% response rate ... unheard of these days in the email age.

InsideLegal Vendor Marketing Survey - Results Analysis: Budgets ... Rags and Riches

Earlier we introduced our inaugural InsideLegal Vendor Marketing Survey that we administered last fall.  Here's the first in a series of posts containing the results. The survey, primarily completed by senior marketing folks (90+% are managers or higher), provided a balanced cross-section across the legal vendor community from small companies to large, publicly traded, multi-billion dollar companies.

• Of the 67 vendors completing all 40 survey questions, roughly 60% of respondents work for legal technology companies ranging from 11-100 employees, with the largest single percentage (22%) stemming from within the 11-25 employee range.

• While most companies (70+%) staff their marketing departments with 1-4 marketers, a much smaller number (roughly 15%), count 6+ marketing team members.

With the recent trend of workforce reductions and across the board marketing-related belt tightening, it will be interesting to compare these statistics with the upcoming 2009 InsideLegal Vendor Marketing Survey.  (All participants receive a copy of the complete final results. Email us now if you would like to participate in the 2009 survey.)

One of the key focus areas of the marketing survey is the budgeting and marketing spend section. While we realize that budget and spending realities and outlooks have worsened since our survey completion in the fall, the data proves very useful when looking to establish industry spend benchmarks, marketing mix priorities based on marketing investment, and broader marketing cost cutting trends.

• Marketing spend based on total company revenues:  Nearly half spend 4+% of their annual company revenues on marketing, while 25% (highest single percentage) answered more than 6%. (Check out our separate post on this topic)

• 67% reported marketing budget increases for the past year.  What will happen in 2009 and even into 2010 with the state of things?

Cost cutting priorities: When forced to trim their budgets, the respondents rank the following in order from first to go...

• Advertising must go, or at least be trimmed back

• Promotional items/giveaways

• Industry events (besides the ‘usual’ legal technology trade shows)

• Direct mail

• Market research

Oddly enough, this does not match up with where respondents indicate they are spending marketing dollars. the following is the rank of the breakout of allocation in order from biggest budget line items...

• Events

• Web design (development and maintenance)

• Collateral

• PR

• Industry relations (consultant arrangements, whitepaper development by third parties, etc.)

Does this provide insight into marketing executives budget challenges?  We think so. Stay tuned for more survey insight on legal technology vendor marketing - targeting and segmenting, goal setting/planning, outsourcing, and vendors that have reputations for great marketing efforts. 

Legal Technology Vendor Marketing Spend vs. Total Company Revenues Benchmark

How many times have you wondered how much your competitors are spending on their marketing initiatives compared to you or even compared to the industry as a whole?  Based on our decade long conversation with the legal technology vendor community through Envision Agency, this question has come up a lot but without many answers.

Where other industries routinely benchmark marketing spend as a percentage of overall company revenue, our market has had no standards to measure against ... until now. The inaugural InsideLegal Vendor Marketing Survey of the legal technology community reveals that 46% of vendor respondents spend more than 4% of their company's total revenue on marketing, with 25% spending more than 6%. While this might sound like a healthy allocation, it pales in comparison to other overall industry standards.

According to Go-to-Market-Strategies (GTMS), a resource center for sales and marketing professionals and business leaders, 45% of companies spend over 6%, with most of those between 6-10%.  GTMS adds: "The general guideline for using the percentage of revenue approach is 8-10% of revenue should be spent on marketing, with approximately 5% of that going to labor (either for a department, or outsourcing to a marketing firm). What percentage you use is determined by a number of factors, how mature is your market (how much education do you have to do), how well known is your company in your industry (are you a new or established business, how much brand awareness do you have to do), and how fast do you intend to grow ..."

We'll be talking more about this in the upcoming months, but it's a good time to think about where you stand in the mix...

ILTA's UK Event, INSIGHT 2009 - Still Time to Get Involved!

As most legal technology vendors know, there is usually a stampede to get involved with ILTA events as a sponsor.  ILTA’s 4th annual U.K. event, INSIGHT 2009, is right around the corner and there is still availability for vendor sponsorship.  Here are the details...

Audience:  CIOs, operational managers, lawyers, litigation support specialists and in-house legal staff.  There is no fee to attend for law firms, but you must register at their site.

Where:  Hilton London Tower Bridge Hotel

When:  March 31, 2009

Theme:  “Optimise and Innovate” Sessions will include: virtualisation, consolidation and relocation including cloud computing and software as a service; real world open source solutions; green initiatives for legal; managing external service providers; update on new e-filing systems; knowledge management with a focus on technology including social networking, wikis, blogs, legal mash-ups; LITIG presentation on competition law and much more.

Format of event:  This is a networking, relationship building event.  All of the sessions are being planned for interaction with the audience and they encourage vendor sponsors to participate in the discussions.  They offer a continental breakfast, lunch, breaks, and reception for attendees to spend additional time with the sponsors.  Vendor sponsorships will be limited. 

Current Sponsors:  BigHand; Copitrak Systems UK Lt; eFax Corporate/J2 Global Communications, Inc.; Elite, a Thomson Reuters business; Hubbard One; IntApp, Inc.; Integreon; Intelliteach; Interwoven UK Ltd; Interwoven, Discovery Mining; Kroll Ontrack; LexisNexis Redwood Analytics; Microsoft; Microsystems; Mimecast; MiniSoft Worldwide; Omtool, Ltd; Phoenix Business Solutions; Proposal Software; Recommind; Tikit; TimeKM Europe

If you think this event is a fit for your organization, the sponsorship fee is £2K and includes:

• Two representatives to attend event 
• Networking with management from the top law firms and law departments in the U.K. 
• Breakfast, lunch, breaks and reception 
• Opportunity to place literature on tables in meeting area 
• Listed as event sponsor in mailing to attendees 
• Listed as event sponsor in reminder e-mail sent to attendees a week prior to event 
• Listed as event sponsor on event webpage and event materials 
• Listed as event sponsor in thank you message sent to attendees after the event 
• One complimentary Exhibitor Badge/Consultant Pass (Valued up to £799) to ILTA '09

If you are interested in attending (you don't have to be an ILTA member!), you can find more information and register here.  If you are interested in possibly sponsoring the event, email ILTA's Program Director, Peggy Wechsler or call her at 512.795.4660 ext 4662.

LegalTech New York - Exhibit Hall Pictures

For those of you that didn't make it to New York for LegalTech, here are some pictures of the exhibit hall (Floors 1-3), taken Monday morning between 11-1.

 

[New for 2009 - Ballroom turned into exhibit space]