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Webinars
Welcome to the webinars page
Join two of America's marketing and management thought-leaders as they delve into questions that keep you up at night:
- Why are clients so tolerant? Why do they continue to allow law firms to operate with poor client service and adverse policies like billable hour pricing, when these have been driven out of most other professions.
- Why do law firms have a fascination with branding programs when these are demonstrably ineffective?
- Why do law firms evaluate their marketing success solely on volume of revenues, when it’s clear that some work is very profitable (per partner) and other work is not? Why have they not evolved to costing systems?
- Why are lawyers so willing to lead miserable unfulfilled lives, working harder than anyone else on things they don’t particularly care for?
- Do lawyers distrust each other because of their weird compensation schemes, or do they have weird compensation schemes because they distrust each other?
- Why are there so many people willing to become law firm marketers when it’s a thankless, almost impossible job?
- Why does everyone keep copying the “size mania” firms, when the most profitable firms are like Wachtell and focus on quality and profits rather than locations, size and volume?
This is your chance to get answers to eternal mysteries like:
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Why don't law firms have goal-oriented marketing strategies that make them focus on 'platinum accounts' but instead let their rosters fill up with $1,500-per year clients?
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Why do most law firms fail to survey their clients about their satisfaction and inquire into their unmet needs, when it is clear this is what clients want?
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Why is it so hard to motivate most lawyers to market and to get them to get out of their offices and build revenue-generating relationships?
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Why do law firms respond to corporate RFPs when many are "wired" or are fee-finding fishing expeditions, and all of them subject firms to penny-pinching procurement processes?
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Why don't law firms propose the service, problem-solving and cost innovations that their clients eagerly desire -- and when this is the best way to distinguish the firm?
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Why doesn't cross-selling work in most law firms, when it is such an obvious way to generate more files from current clients?
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Why don't most lawyers return client phone calls quickly, remain unresponsive in client communications, and fail to keep in-house counsel apprised of their cases and changes in the law?
 David Maister is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on the management of professional service firms.
In 2002, he was identified as one of the top 40 business thinkers in the world (BUSINESS MINDS, Financial Times/Prentice Hall.) For two decades he has advised firms in a broad spectrum of professions, covering all strategic and managerial issues, building a global practice that finds him spending about 40% of his time in North America, 30% in western Europe, and 30% in the rest of the world. It was while a young faculty member at the Harvard Business School in the early 1980s that Maister started focusing on the previously unexplored territory of professional service firms. Says Maister, “Most professional service firms have nothing to sell but their people. There are no machines to bail you out of trouble and keep up production. So, whether you’re talking about serving customers and clients, or attracting and retaining employees, you end up having to figure out what makes people tick. Which is hard, because few of us are ever taught these things.” He found that trying to manage the exceedingly independent, creative individuals, who make up any professional service firm, was a particularly difficult challenge. His ability to convince these clients of the urgent need for them to grapple with issues like standards, commitment and career frequently elicits “Ah Ha” moments of enlightenment. Maister’s approach is highly personal. He frequently outlines dilemmas he faces in his own life (to lose weight or to stop smoking: “You know you need to do it, but it’s hard to find the self-discipline”) to illustrate why new ways of thinking are consistently being put off or sabotaged. “Clients know more and understand more than they ever actually put into practice,” he says. His first book on the professions, Managing the Professional Service Firm, published in 1993, collected many of his best articles. It was followed in 1997 by True Professionalism, and in 2000 by The Trusted Advisor, written with Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford. In 2001 he published Practice What You Preach and in 2002, First Among Equals, co-authored with Patrick McKenna. His books are currently available in English, Arabic, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Chinese (Taiwanese and Mainland.). A native of Great Britain, Maister holds degrees from the University of Birmingham, the London School of Economics and a doctorate in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. He began his teaching career at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and then joined the Harvard faculty, where he taught courses in managing service businesses and managing production operations from 1979-85. During that period he published seven books on academic business topics such as managing trucking and airline companies, factory operations, and architectural firms. Maister lives in Boston with his wife and coach, Kathy. He is an avid collector of popular music, and owns more than 15,000 CD’s and a rapidly growing number of DVDs. In March of 2005, he finally took his own advice, gave up smoking and lost 30 pounds. |
 Larry Bodine is a strategic marketing consultant who helps law firms generate revenue and get new business by:
He has advised firms as large as a 3,000 lawyer global law firm to a 12-lawyer trial boutique in
He co-founded the Professional Business Development Institute, an online post-graduate educational university, teaching business development for professional service firms.
He is the former Director of Communications of Sidley, Austin Brown & Wood, where he served for eight years. He has 15 years' experience as a journalist, serving as Editor and Publisher of the American Bar Association Journal, the National Law Journal, Lawyers Alert (renamed Lawyers Weekly) and other news publications.
Larry launched several online ventures that are considered the top destinations online for information about law firm marketing. He founded:
He practiced law in |
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