"ABA Law Practice Magazine" Tag Archives

Published on: October 8, 2024

LP Magazine – Ethical Issues When Incorporating AI Into Law Firm Marketing

ethics-regulations-ai-artificial-intelligence-hammer-gavel-judgement-legal_1162612-1423-300x200 A few months ago, I was asked to provide the ethics attorney perspective for a Legal Marketing Association (LMA) program, AI for Communications and PR: What You Need to Know Now. At that point, I had not put a lot of thought into the ethical considerations. As with most business development professionals, I had already incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) into my day-to-day. But as is often the case for many lawyer speaking gigs, I delved into the topic and learned it–quickly. And because I believe strongly in taking a presentation and turning it into an article (or vice-versa), my marketing column addresses the issues in the September/October 2024 issue of Law Practice, Ethical Issues When Incorporating AI Into Law Firm Marketing.

Where I come from, when you say “A.I.” it can only mean one thing—Allen Iverson. But in most parts, AI has become a part of our everyday lives—whether we’re talkin’ about practice, not a game, or almost every aspect of business operations (IYKYK). The bottom line is that AI is integrated into almost everything. Thus, the need to understand where the Rules of Professional Conduct (RPC) and other ethical issues in law practice come into play. As I note in my column, no less than 15 different RPCs were noted in one state’s AI task force report, as it relates to potential ethics issues that overlap with law firm marketing concepts.

If you are blocked from reading the column behind the ABA paywall, it is provided below in its entirety.

Published on: May 29, 2024

LP Magazine — TikTok Is Gospel to Generation Z

by Micah Buchdahl

TikTok In recently reviewing a law advertising campaign, I found myself saying that we need to run this on TikTok. I looked at the matter and the target audience, and it seemed quite clear that this was the best way to engage. My growing fascination with one of the newer online tools—from something I considered a ridiculous kiddie timewaster—to an app that someone sends a link with useful (and/or entertaining) information nearly every day. When it comes to effective law marketing in 2024, you need to know TikTok—and that is why I wrote TikTok Is Gospel to Generation Z in the May/June 2024 issue of Law Practice.

If you are blocked from reading the column behind the ABA paywall, it is provided below in its entirety.

Summary

Published on: January 19, 2024

LP Magazine — The Morgan & Morgan Effect

by Micah Buchdahl

Phillies Scoreboard at Citizens Bank Park

Sometimes the subject matter for my marketing column just hits me…like when I’m driving down I-95 in Philadelphia and see one law firm billboard after another, after another, after another. It’s the Morgan & Morgan Effect—and I write about it in the January/February 2024 issue of Law Practice, entitled, of course, The Morgan & Morgan Effect.

If you are blocked from reading the column behind the ABA paywall, it is provided below in its entirety.

Published on: November 17, 2023

LP Magazine — At the Intersection of Leadership & Marketing

by Micah Buchdahl

Is law firm leadership and law firm marketing synonymous? Or better yet, should they be? I try to answer that very question in the November/December 2023 issue of Law Practice, At the Intersection of Leadership & Marketing.

Please note that if the ABA paywall prevents you from accessing this column, send me an email and I’ll forward you a copy.

The leaders of most law firms—sometimes a managing partner, other times a management or executive committee—are often going to have first and final say on marketing and business development decisions. If not the strategies themselves, then often the dollars approved to staff and finance them. The problem lies in that not all great law firm leaders are great marketing minds.

Published on: July 11, 2023

LP Magazine — Market Share Competition Among Diverse Law Firms Heats Up, and Gets Heated

by Micah Buchdahl

The cover of the final hard copy issue of Law Practice There seemed to be some irony in receiving the final, hard copy, mailed issue of Law Practice magazine in the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities across the country. I won’t get overly political here except to say that I’m not a fan of SCOTUS these days, between these harmful rulings and ridiculously unethical behavior by appointed Justices that I would not welcome at my dinner table. It’s quite sad.

In Market Share Competition Among Diverse Law Firms Heats Up, and Gets Heated, my marketing column in the July/August 2023 issue of Law Practice, I address the state of doling out work to diverse lawyers and law firms—for the first time since my March/April 2017 column—a lot had changed. The first section of the recent column subtitled “Diversity in Reverse,” seemed so apropos after the SCOTUS decision. It already felt like progress that took decades to implement now saw courts turning back the clock. Again, quite sad.

Writing about competing for work in the diversity space was triggered by a joint report last year from the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms (NAMWOLF) and the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP), “Understanding and Assessing the Use of Minority- and Women-Owned Law Firms by Corporate Clients.” Blend the George Floyd murder in with the COVID world of Zoom and Teams…and you get a picture of the modern landscape of the legal industry. There isn’t even a clear definition anymore of what diversity is, when contemplating the distribution of work.

Published on: March 1, 2023

LP Magazine – Guilt by Associations

by Micah Buchdahl

ABA Law Practice Magazine In my March/April 2023 marketing column in the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Magazine, I address the pros and cons of organizational involvement in Guilt by Associations.

It should come as no surprise that I tout my ABA involvement as a core component of my own business development strategy. At some point, I decided I was going to go “all in” on ABA activity—and it has been beneficial on so many fronts. For me, as an attorney, I wanted to network with other lawyers. And because my own business and practice is national in scope, a broader-based organization made more sense. As a bonus, many of my closest friends today are people I met through ABA activity.

Now my home for most of the last 20+ years of ABA membership has been the Law Practice Division. But choosing the right places to hang your hat have a lot of variables—geography, practice type, cost, ability to travel, ability to meet on nights or weekends, ability to build a referral network, exposure through writing or speaking, and opportunities to be a leader. Are you an introvert or extrovert? Who else is active in the organization? The thinking should go well beyond, “I live in Chicago. I should join the Chicago Bar Association.” Or “I’m an IP lawyer, I should go to INTA.” It might involve a women’s initiative, or something outside the scope of legal, like a House of Worship or Museum group. Some of the wisest moves in organizational involvement is to sit on a board with huge potential clients on the left and right of you—but in a completely non-work, non-legal setting.

Published on: November 10, 2022

LP Magazine – Marketing Ethics Compliance Continues to Confound

by Micah Buchdahl

Marketing Column

In the November/December 2022 marketing column in the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Magazine, Marketing Ethics Compliance Continues to Confound, I combine a number of business development topics into one.

When writing my column, I often start by thinking about what “hot” areas I’m working on at the moment. In the 21 years-plus since launching HTMLawyers, I’d say most years that the bulk of law firm clients have been on the marketing and business development guidance side; a slight amount dedicated to my related but separate ethics practice. However, in recent years, it has flipped. I find myself spending a lot of time behind the desk reviewing a vast variety of marketing campaigns for law firms around the nation—not to give my two cents on the marketing aspects, but to review for ethics compliance. I help law firm managing partners and GCs sleep better at night. They don’t want to be at the helm when that disciplinary letter rolls in, or worse. It is a practice area loaded with inconsistencies, confusion and varied levels of enforcement. All of which makes it a super fun area to practice.

Published on: July 21, 2022

LP Magazine – Recruiting and Staffing Your Law Firm Marketing Team

by Micah Buchdahl

LPcover_JulyAugust2022-231x300 The last few years of recruiting and hiring marketing staff for law firms has certainly been interesting. On the plus side, law firms continue to invest in marketing and business development personnel. Some might argue that it is even more important as we come out of COVID and start to connect and reconnect with clients, prospective clients, and referral sources. The law firms that have retained me have been wiling to make the proper investment to hire the right people. On the minus side, depending on geographic location (I’ve placed marketers in the MidAtlantic, Northeast, Midwest, and South in the last year), the pool of candidates can be quite shallow. I won’t go into specifics, but some markets simply have more available talent than others.

My marketing column in the July/August 2022 issue of the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Magazine, Staffing Your Law Firm Marketing Team, addresses many of the issues and concerns that law firms have (or should have) when it comes to new hires. Like the job market everywhere, there are lots of moving people and moving parts. In some cities, the best some law firms can do is poach junior personnel from competing law firms by overpaying. This is happening more at the lower to mid-level positions on a marketing team. To oversimplify things, you end up hiring someone else’s marketing coordinator by offering him/her $75k when they are earning 50k where they are.

Pre-COVID, there was no talk of hybrid versus fully remote, and less discussion of a willingness to hire in a satellite office market versus one of a law firm’s more substantial office locations. As I often tell my law firm clients, I’m still a bit old school when it comes to having a marketer that you can see and interact with at the water cooler on occasion. On the flip side, I’ve had some marketers complain to me that it made no sense to sit in an office when 95% of the attorneys there are working from home (or the shore, or in the Virgin Islands somewhere). I’ve found that “back in the office” is more about geography than a law firm deciding across the board. I’ve sat down in many law firm offices across the country in the last year—yet not a single visit to New York City (which is a quick New Jersey commuter train from my home), although I’ve been to ballgames and other sporting events in NYC.

Published on: March 2, 2022

LP Magazine — The Return of Law Firm Retreats

by Micah Buchdahl

LPcover_MarchApril2022-232x300 In that brief time snugly between delta and omicron, I had the opportunity to speak at a law firm retreat. Live. In-Person. With people. No masks. In a hotel. Food served. It was circa 2019 and it was so nice to put on a suit and close the Zoom app. In the March/April 2022 issue of Law Practice, I discuss The Return of Law Firm Retreats.

An argument can be made that the law firm retreat in 2022 or 2023 will look and feel a lot different from those in the past. For a myriad of reasons:

Mergers and movement of attorneys and practice groups did not stop over the last few years, meaning there are lots of people at your law firm that you’ve never actually met before. The retreat becomes the perfect venue for getting acquainted.

Published on: November 18, 2021

LP Magazine – The Law Marketing Up/Down Drill 2021

by Micah Buchdahl

LP Magazine - Leadership Issue The third annual Up-Down Drill, which played off my favorite morning-after column in The Philadelphia Inquirer after an Eagles game (why did Jeff McLane stop doing it?), was one of the more difficult to write. In the November/December 2021 issue of Law Practice, The Law Marketing Up/Down Drill tackles relationship-building, lawyer ratings, webinars, social justice and getting back out in the real world for in-person business development.

It was especially difficult to write due to my failure to prognosticate exactly how COVID would play out since the first quarter of 2020. It is still hard to believe we’re getting ready to hit the two year mark—and normalcy still seems to still be slightly in the rear view mirror (remembering that “objects are closer than they appear”). However, I finally got to go out and do my first in-person presentation last weekend—a law firm retreat in the DC area—in front of a crowd and without a mask over my mouth), so there is that. See my next LP column for more about the return of the law firm retreat.

Roaring back—hopefully—is true blue relationship building. While Zoom happy hours and wine tastings were quite the creation, the option of grabbing a drink or lunch or golfing has never looked so good. And as I’ve been counseling my law firm clients, strike while the iron is hot. People are not overbooked or over traveling yet—and are eager to accept the invites. That will not last forever. The “I’m way too busy to get together” will return in time.