Post by Nuno B.M. Lumbrales, lawyer, partner at Lumbrales & Associados and LawRD user:

The use of social networks for marketing and promoting a vast array of economical activities is definitely in and there are some several examples of its good results.

The opposite is also true, though. Many economy players have real doubts on the return of their companies investments in that area (namely the non physical resources, such as time allocated to that task by employees, among others) which, given its nature, are hard to quantify.

Therefore, there is room enough for debating on the efficacy of this sort of marketing, and which are the best procedures to go about it through all different products and economy branches.

There are sectors, like the legal practice, that are bound to restrictions concerning its publicity, either by deontological or professional culture when displaying their image towards the market and society at large, thus making them more reticent and cautious when using these social tools  of promotion.

However, that trend has been slowly changing and, still far from being a universal attitude, a growing number of lawyers and law firms are taken an open and noticeable stance in that area.

Actually, in a business area where personal trust between lawyer and client is paramount, even more so than in any other business activity, there is a natural and reasonable mistrust as to the efficacy of social networks as tools for promoting and marketing services provided by the legal practice.

But there is no turning back on the increasing numbers of law professionals adopting social networks for promoting their businesses, and in the end time will tell who was right, after all.

Post by Gustavo Rocha, lawyer and consultant in management, IT and quality for law firms. He’s the author of Gestão.Adv.br (content in Portuguese only):

For quite a long time word of mouth has been the best way of getting new clients. Nowadays, with the growth of social networks, there is a new form of pointing, interacting and gather new clients.

Is it?

Social networks are an excellent means of adding new contacts and followers for our view points, yet this is just a medium, not the core reason for contracting services.

Recommendation results from good work, best client management, fair pricing and perfect service. These adjectives will make your clients to recommend your practice to others.

Adding to good work, client management, pricing, etc, there’s the need for all that to be advertised, i.e. marketing.

How can that be done? There are lots of ways! Some are ethically legitimate, others are not. Publicity alone doesn’t cut it, though. Marketing must walk along side with credibility. Such credibility is gained by stances that reflect our practice, e.g.labour law, just debating or giving tips about it isn’t enough. One must have
effective actions on this law area and its target demographics.

And how can you act toward this?

Through social networking.

Keep up with the times. The younger generation is talking to one another through social networks. Overlooking that is writing a death sentence to your practice.

So, which is best: recommendation or social networking? Recommendation along with credibility, including on the social networks.

Post by Gustavo Rocha, lawyer and consultant in management, IT and quality for law firms. He’s the author of Gestão.Adv.br (content in Portuguese only):

There are over 192 millions Internet domains registered on the Internet, until 2009.

What does this mean? To put it simply: your brand depends on you. There’s no turning back: Internet, social networks, contacts, connections, businesses.

When it comes to Internet domains, lots of people register the “.com.br” and the “.com” even if it is one and the same law firm. Two different law firms that have the same name have different Internet domains, i.e. one is “.com.br” and the other “.adv.br”.

It is a basic need to register their practice with the same name on the most common domains in the business area. The online brand management can not be overlooked.

Adding to this, it is important to keep you ears and eyes open to what’s being said about you, over the web.
Keeping up with your “online name” can prove to be an excellent path for new contacts, to check the degree of your clients satisfaction thus leaving a subconscious trail of your brand on those surfing the web.

How come? If I Google my name and find that there few references to it, I may start writing more and being more active in social networks and online groups and chats concerning my area of activity, i,e. make my online presence more noticeable. By doing that and always having some sort of online signature on my emails with my contacts, name, practice name, etc,  I’ll be broadning my brand.

Sharing and participating on online debates, will provide for others to better know of my work and to quote me in future references.

The more virtual contacts I get online the more they can turn into live ones, not to mention the ever growing of my brand.

So, don’t just read this, take action. Try this:

• Verify your present domain(s).
• Register your practice in all others that are most common in your business area.
• Be active in social networks. Interact.

Be online and keep at it. Your brand may depend on it!

Post by Braz Pereira, muchBeta’s Chief Commercial Officer:

Since we got LawRD out, we’ve had a two way approach as to spread its users community: the Internet and its social networks and the direct approach to legal practice professionals.

When contacting law firms for demoing LawRD (on the premises or online), we’ve systematically faced the ’software salesperson stigma’, which recalls them an array of bad memories from previous cases of IT deployment: the need for training, trying to figure how ‘this and that’ is done or bothering someone with tons of questions about it, trying to get in contact with the vendor to solve problems and glitches and never getting to solve them in due time, …

It’s by the time when clients realize that LawRD is altogether different from what they’re used to, or someone who has used or already using LawRD recommends us, that the ’software salesperson’ label gets yanked off. From then on things get smoother, our clients can immediately spot what sets our app from the rest: easy and intuitive use, available from any Internet connection, free 30 day trial, great pricing and no need for upfront investment.

Aiming to override this hurdle when presenting LawRD, we’ve come up with an affiliates program so we can support and reward those willing to make LawRD known and used by the most number of users. This means that we will pay a monthly amount for as long as 10 years, per active user each affiliate brings to us. Whoever has tested LawRD’s performance has the chance of having an extra source of income, helping us overcome the ’software salesperson stigma’ by scheduling LawRD demos.

We have a SaaS application for supporting the email contacts from our affiliates, which allows them to keep up with their contact performance and who have read their emails and when.

The challenge is set. It pays to pay a visit to affiliates.lawrd.com:

Ah, the good old days when selling a product or a service was all about ‘the five marketing Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion and People.

Today we live in a more complex universe:

• Complex and globalized;
• Complex, globalized and online;
• Complex, globalized, online and interactive.

That’s right! Clients are different now. A client will search online for matching prices and bargain the delivery with the product seller, then he/she will use a credit card to buy that product made in China, which is sent as a gift to a friend in India, who happens to be in the Bahamas on holidays seating in front of a computer in some hotel.

Clients are debating companies on social networks, nowadays. They demand. They want technical support. They want solutions.

Let’s not verse on those people that are not within reason at all, they’re just looking for reasons to argue about anything.

Let us picture this practical example: I buy a Dell computer over the internet. Why this brand and not any other? Here are some tips:

• Dell’s website is great for customizing your PC;
• They always have sales promotions on Twitter;
• I always get on line support from them.

Supposing that PC has some video glitches.

I contact their technical support services and, let’s us imagine I get no reply, (actually I’ve witnessed the opposite, but for the sake of the example, we’ll say they didn’t), then I’ll Twitt about this issue.

Within few hours, people are bad mouthing the brand.No mass marketing and advertising will keep any brand imune from those that can really jugde it.

Some might say: Well, that goes for products, but services are different.

Are they? Really?

If I can show to my clients that I’m using IT means, what they’ll notice it’s just the file I’m working on and not reams of other papers. If I keep them updated on their files by email and have ‘their backs’ with little nothings like this, are they going to focus that much on my pricings?

If they’re looking for low rates, let them look for it. If they’re looking for quality services they will look for the assistance I’m offering.

Don’t fool yourself about clients. Keep always a step ahead from them. Surprised them on the details. There are others in your businness, with technical and qualification skills.

Your smile, reports, management, presentation, way of talking and acting are unique, though.

That is the essence that will make the difference by the time of hiring or not, of buying or not.

To conclude:

On this day and age, marketing goes beyond the traditional, it is supposed to be interactive, to make use of social networks and to accept criticism as a lesson for constant and full growth.

Legal on Ramp network gives us an excellent example, wherein an associated firm has 14 thousand members writing articles, questions and answers on the upside felt by clients and lawyers and a protected work.

How’s that?

Well, a network that contains countless lawyers and third parties, constitutes a real associative network thus benefiting both lawyers and their clients.

Looking for a lawyer in Manaus but you are in Sao Paulo? If your firm is in a collaborative network, you may have associates there.

The same goes for increasing partnerships, deals, better projects and initiatives.

There are some projects with this focus in Brazil, though American bigger proportions are inspirational.

How do you plan to collaborate with fellow lawyers?

• Do you find that exchanging ideas is the same as giving them away to the competition?
• Splitting fees on a suit is, for you, losing money?
• Do you think it’s a waste, investing time on a social network?

I suggest you think again about this issues.

Nowadays collaboration is more than an idea. It’s a matter of survival. We are living the social network era. The era of exchanging information, of growing together, of strategic alliances:

• We are partners, not competitors.
• We are the sum of ideas, not of monopoly and exclusiveness.
• We are the multiplication of projects and the division of dividends, unlike individualism.

Think and rethink your attitudes.  Your firm ’s future, as well as, all legal practice’s depend on: your vision, reflection and, mostly on the verb action, the action you’ll take.

CRM – Customer Relationship Management. Some professionals in the legal area are acquainted to this notion which is increasingly standard in legal management systems.

In the IT field there is a growing care for technology and clients,for management of clients data in order to answer them back, to expand possibilities to close deals, etc. To speak clearly, a CRM system can be very effective for keeping in check which clients you have already proposed any legal service to, whether a client was one of yours long time ago and no longer is, etc. CRM has many control and management features for its users.

Nowadays there is a plethora of social networks: Plaxo, Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Ning and many more. With that in mind, the IT people are developing CRM focused on social networks, which means we will be able to able to keep up with what is being written about us on the web, to answer to social networks surveys, i.e. to reinforce our interaction with our clients.

What is the upside of that?

Social networks are characterized by a function to which lawyers aren´t much accustomed to: clients praise,quarrel, discuss and ‘do the laundry’ on social networks. With this, their interaction  with lawyers is wider than it used to be. This leads to some of them being tagged as bad, sloppy and other ‘qualities’, throughout the web. While some are considering law suites for on line slandering, others are looking elsewhere for a new lawyer, after pondering.

Taking in consideration this factor of instant spread, interconnection and web organization, the need for a  CRM integrated with social networks is an important and interesting reality.

Do you use CRM in your practice?
Do you  professionally or personally use social networks?
How do you interact with your clients?
How many of your clients have never contacted again since the conclusion of their actions?
Do you know what legal services have you proposed to any one of your clients?

If you have no answers to these questions and more importantly, if you don´t know how to start answering them, I suggest you begin to interact with your clients by taking on a legal management CRM integrated system.

Picture this: if your dentist contacts you by surprise because its been 6 months since your last cleansing, you’ll feel happy even if you don’t take on the invitation. However if they only contact to charge you for the latest root canal you had, you feel like looking for a different dentist. The same goes for lawyers.

Use over and over again CRM to manage clients, partners and deals. The growth of your practice and income will appreciate it.

An interesting, even impressive, number on a post in Larry Bodine ’s blog: there are over one million lawyers registered in LinkedIn. According to it, at least five thousand of them have got their professional profile in LinkedIn.

With those many American and lots of Brazilian lawyers using LinkedIn, what can we do with this tool? A lot. And that goes for other social networks such as Facebook, Plaxo and Twitter.

Interact, this is the motto. Many may think that success on a social network is the amount of friends or posts one has there. Absolutely not. If you’re following 300 people (maybe less) on Twitter, you won’t be able to keep up with your friends’ posts and to do your work at the same time. You might even fail to answer to an important invitation or any other issue of interest. There’s no way to keep up with it all on the fly.

Here’s the secret: focus. Interact with focus.

In order to place my brand on the social web I must focus on themes, subjects and goals I’m interested in.
An example: I register in LinkedIn  looking for partners in the US. There I start to interact in lawyers groups, to post articles written in English etc. Thus I’m working focused. If I’m looking for new clients, participating in social webs is interesting, unlike in lawyers groups. Except for rare cases, lawyers will be more lawyers, partnerships or mutual businesses, but not final clients.

So, use and over use the social web. Just remember the secret: interact with focus!

Today’s post takes its title from a 1984 movie: 2010 - The year we make contact the sequel of 2001- A space odissey.

Looking back on 2009, I find it a fruitful year regarding the legal and entrepreneurial areas. We had a lot of technological developments, more lawyers are facing their practices as companies, more management, technology and quality are embedding the judicial minds. This was a year of big legal marketing, social networks and strategic alliances.

And what has 2010 in store for us? Dreams, longings, wishes and mostly work.

Yes, I wish you dream a lot, for dreams feed our hope and bring happiness from the smallest thing, from the minimum acomplishment, from what is palpable.

May your wishes come true. Hope for good things and they will come true.

May the yearning fill your life. Hope for happiness, love, friendship, endearment and after dreaming, thinking and whishing, do the main thing: work. May work guide your path in 2010. Not just in the professional acomplishment sense. Work as a verb of construction. Work as a will to change. Work as a new way to see the world.

I think that the movie predicted legal practice and entrepreneurship in 2010.The legalpractice and its marketing, as well as entrepeneurs are totally interconnectd through this word: contacts. This is how networks emerge, be they virtual or face-to-face. This is how people trust each other. This is the way to hire a professional.

Everything is contacts! Not the contact per se, but the display of trust, i.e. forwarding. Learn that forwarding is as important and should be as criterious as establishing contacts is. When you forward a contact, you commit your name, your good name and you give credibility.

Learning to deal with social networks is key for 2010. It is not enough to be connected and have thousands of followers on twitter, facebook or plaxo. Be connected and interact with this audience.

2010 will be the year we will make contact.