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Leveraging Your Microsoft Assets in this Remote Access World

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an enormous increase in remote work. Organizations without remote access capabilities have adapted and implemented new solutions, while organizations with existing solutions have been forced to evaluate new capacity requirements and scale their solutions accordingly. You may be surprised to learn that your existing Microsoft assets include functionalities for remote access, and you can get rid of redundant or more costly solutions. Your Microsoft subscription, license, operating system, software, service, etc. should all be reviewed in some capacity at this time.

“In recent years, Microsoft has made a multitude of investments and changes to its portfolio and offerings,” says Scott Riser, Director of Microsoft and Data Management Services at Plan B Technologies, Inc. (PBT). “Some of these changes are quickly noticed during renewals or annual reviews, such as Microsoft Server Operating Systems licensing. However, many changes have happened ‘in the background’ and could easily be missed by organizations,” Riser says. “Make sure you’re taking advantage of your existing Microsoft assets, and know your entitlements – especially now.”

Most of these changes go beyond the typical Microsoft portfolio of Office products and Operating Systems. Microsoft has placed significant focus in the areas of security, video and audio conferencing, VOIP, virtual desktop, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. Many of these Microsoft assets, which are likely already in your organization, are gaining additional functionality for your remote workforce. This can be done with minimal management overhead and reduced implementation costs over competitive third parties. So how do you ensure that your organization is properly leveraging its current Microsoft assets?

Know What You Have

Leveraging Microsoft assets to the fullest starts with knowing what your organization has purchased, and to what it is entitled. This goes beyond Microsoft assets alone and a full inventory of software, services, and features within your environment should be performed sooner rather than later. This full evaluation serves three purposes. First is that of an internal audit to ensure your organization has the proper number of licenses for each product and to correct licensing infractions before you incur hefty true-up costs or additional licensing fees. The second purpose is educational, as it provides technical staff and administration an understanding of the entitlements each software or service provides. This is particularly valuable since Microsoft 365 cloud subscriptions now include licenses for some on-premise systems. The third purpose of this evaluation is to identify overlaps in features and functionality among products to lower costs, simplify management of the environment, and promote productivity.

Failure to perform a review of current entitlements can result in a significant overspend and an overly complicated environment that is more difficult to manage. For example, your organization could be using a third-party Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) provider when an already purchased Microsoft subscription has MFA built in, or you may have purchased an MDM solution that overlaps with an existing entitlement to System Center and Windows Intune.

With information from these internal audits, organizations are better suited to make impactful decisions while controlling cost. Once your organization understands what it is entitled to within your existing environment, you must then determine situational awareness for future planning and sustainability. Items that should be included in planning for the future include (but are not limited to) security, management, user workflow and communication.

Secure the Environment

If your workforce is now remote, has your organizational data gone remote as well? Now that most organizations have been required to provide users with remote access, either through Virtual Desktop infrastructure (VDI), cloud-based applications or internet portals, the attack surface for exploitation by bad actors has never been larger. This puts organizations at greater risk of a security breach. Knowing this, Microsoft has invested billions of dollars to protect their product offerings and combat cyber criminals.

Microsoft now has a full portfolio of security offerings, and buildings full of teams dedicated to securing their services and platforms as well as assisting criminal investigations. User identity has become the new perimeter for data as organizations move to cloud-based technologies and a remote workforce. This has been the case for years as VPNs and firewalls have limited preventive impact when a bad actor has credentials to access them. Microsoft has been active in making user identity more secure with easily implemented tools and access policies while also integrating artificial intelligence and improved reporting. These products and features include Windows Hello, Azure Multifactor Authentication, Conditional Access, Credential Guard, and User Sign-in Risk Reporting/Alerting amongst others.

Identity of course is only one attack vector that can be exploited. Therefore, it is essential to secure end user devices and the infrastructure where data is located. Microsoft Defender and Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is ideally suited to protect servers and end user devices when implemented properly. Plus, it’s included in many Microsoft 365 subscriptions.

“In the past, Defender has received a stigma of being unreliable and faulty,” says Scott Riser, “but Defender has since become one of the most reliable pieces of security software available today. Why? According to Microsoft, over 1 billion devices are currently running the Windows 10 operating system, providing trillions of telemetry data points to continuously improve all Microsoft security services. And as a result, Microsoft has the largest security footprint in the world.”

The data provided by Defender from these devices is reported to artificial intelligence algorithms as well as Microsoft security teams to patch security flaws and update anti-virus definitions at unparalleled levels in the industry. It is also important to note that Microsoft Server Operating systems utilize Defender and the Defender platform can be upgraded to Defender ATP software to enhance built-in capabilities and provide additional security for on-premise data.

With an increasingly remote workforce, many organizations have moved their data to Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business. Microsoft has built-in security solutions for these platforms as well. Depending on the Microsoft subscription that you’ve purchased, Exchange Online Protection, Azure Information Protection, Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection and Azure Advanced Threat Protection, can all be utilized to secure data stored in these locations. Furthermore, Microsoft understands that some organizations require more control over their data and systems in Infrastructure as a Service solutions such as Azure and AWS. For this, a combination of Defender ATP and Azure Sentinel can provide real time analytics and automated responses for detected breaches based on custom workbooks in a pay-as-you-go model.

All these security measures protect against bad actors attempting to breach an organization’s data. This of course does not protect an organization from internal threats, such as disgruntled employees or the inevitable human error. Organizations must now secure data from exfiltration which is not as simple as preventing all data from leaving the organization. The problem is more nuanced. A full lockdown, though simpler, would prevent your organization from essential collaboration with its staff and clients. Failing to protect data internally may result in proprietary data inadvertently shared with a client, or competitor, or being lost entirely. In healthcare and financial services, it can result in a loss of personal identifiable data, or banking information, which carry hefty fines from regulatory bodies.

Microsoft Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is the solution to this issue. With DLP, custom policies can be defined by an organization to determine data that should not leave the organization. It can also remind a user to review data being sent as it could possibly be confidential. DLP continues to gain traction in Microsoft 365 settings as the need to protect cloud-based collaboration platforms such as Teams and OneDrive grows. DLP can also be implemented in some areas of on-premise infrastructure. Exchange has built-in DLP features that often go overlooked. Organizations tend to use Mimecast, Proofpoint, and other third-party vendors for these solutions while the built-in functionality remains unconfigured.

Device Management and Compliance

Another challenge of a remote workforce is the ability to maintain and manage devices, both corporate-owned and user-owned. Multiple organizations have made significant investments in System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), only to find that policies and updates have not applied to end user devices unless they are on the network or connected via a VPN. Organizations can expand their SCCM environment to include cloud distribution and management points for devices that are not on-premise. But this is not always an ideal solution as it requires additional infrastructure and configuration with SCCM. This has led to a rise in the use of Mobile Device Management and Mobile Application Management solutions such as Microsoft Intune. Through co-management, organizations can continue to utilize SCCM in conjunction with Intune for management of all devices regardless of corporate connectivity. This was further emphasized by the recent integration of the license offerings to provide Intune subscriptions for those with SCCM Client licensing and vice versa.

Collaboration and Communication

Securing and managing a remote work environment is important but ensuring users can communicate and collaborate on work that was previously performed in the office is one of, if not the biggest, challenges. Daily interactions between corporate users should be considered since the ability for face to face interaction through office meetings, business lunches, and other personal touches has significantly declined. These interactions are now being held through chat programs and conference calls. External communication is one of the primary reasons that Microsoft is still considered the industry leader for collaboration software with many companies utilizing the Microsoft Office suite.

A frequently overlooked solution included in your Microsoft 365 subscription is Microsoft Teams which provides instant messaging, document collaboration and audio/video teleconferencing. Furthermore, Microsoft Teams is integrated with and supported by other Microsoft products. It’s also governed by Advanced Threat Protection and Data Loss Prevention services to provide a more secure platform than its competitors with minimal (if any) additional investment. Microsoft Office can be customized based on the needs of the user and can easily be secured and managed when used in combination with other Microsoft offerings.

Getting the Results

Challenges continue to present themselves as users work remotely and organizations refine how they operate. With a vast majority of organizations utilizing Microsoft products in some way, it is important that entitlements are understood to reduce costs and complexities. Organizations can improve their return on investment (ROI) or make new investments once this is understood. Leveraging Microsoft service offerings can be optimized beyond the traditional use of Office products and Operating Systems, to provide a secure, managed, agile, and accessible environment for users regardless of their location. The result will be a streamlined, cost effective, collaborative environment that strengthens your organization’s bottom line.

ARTICLE BY Dustin Lloyd, Jason McKenry and Katie Percy at Plan B Technologies.

For more on technological solutions for law firms and other industries, see the National Law Review Law Office Management section.

IMS Insights Podcast: Episode 9- Rudhir Krishtel On Mindfulness And Wellness For Attorneys Amid COVID-19

In this episode, Rudhir Krishtel joins us to share guidance on mindfulness and wellness for attorneys. He also provides tips and strategies to help with adjustments for those balancing the intense demands of a legal career during the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his lawyer days, Rudhir practiced law for fifteen years as a federal clerk, patent litigation partner at Fish & Richardson, and later as senior patent counsel at Apple.

Today, he is a certified Co-Active Coach and facilitator, focusing on workplace wellness and intensity for law firms and attorneys. Many lawyers struggle with stress and lack of purpose in their practice. As a former lawyer, Rudhir coaches clients and hosts workshops to identify the issues that hold lawyers back from advancing in their career with clarity and fulfillment.

His work during his lawyer days led Rudhir to train as a yoga teacher through the Baptiste Institute and on mindfulness meditation through Warrior One. He also a Professional Certified Coach through the Coaches Training Institute & International Coaching Federation, and uses this training along with his experience as a practitioner to deliver much-needed support for the legal community. Details on Rudhir’s consulting and mindfulness workshops for attorneys can be found at www.krishtel.com.

Transcript

Teresa Barber: Rudhir, hello, thank you. I really appreciate you joining us today. Could you tell me just a little bit for our listeners… Tell us a little bit about your background as an attorney and a little bit about your consulting practice.

Rudhir Krishtel: Yeah, Teresa, thank you so much, and thanks IMS for having me here. I was practicing law for 15 years. I started at my practice as a federal clerk. I was ultimately a partner at Fish & Richardson in their patent litigation team in the DC office. Then for the last five years of my practice, I was senior in-house counsel at Apple out here in the Bay area where I moved to seven, eight years ago.

Rudhir: After 15 years of practice, I started to notice… What I started to see were cycles of behavior in the practice over 15 years, just ways that we all behave at work that I felt like were somewhat compromising to our practice. I started to notice that we accept that stress is a part, a natural part, of our work life. We wouldn’t get paid as lawyers at the rates that we charge, and we wouldn’t be able to do the work that we do if it wasn’t something that was challenging or stressful, so I totally understood that.

Rudhir: But there’s this interesting relationship where work caused stress, but then stress actually started to impact the quality of our relationships and ultimately the work product. It is this weird cycle where work causes stress but then stress impacts the work. I think everyone just accepted that as the norm, and I felt like this was a dialogue that we needed to have and a cycle in the system that we needed to improve.

Rudhir: It’s when I decided to leave the practice. Three years back I left the practice. I retrained first as a mindfulness instructor and yoga instructor. And not wanting lawyers on their yoga mats all the time, I ultimately trained as an executive coach. Now, I coach attorneys. I have a coaching business that’s Krishtel Coaching. I coach attorneys in their practice one on one, and we identify some of the most challenging aspects of your practice and try to move them out of the way so that attorneys have a more fulfilling practice. I also host workshops. I visit law firms and legal departments and host dialogue on ways that we can start shifting our culture, build a greater resilience, incorporate emotional intelligence and mindfulness practices. I also host online coaching programs and webinars on these topics.

Rudhir: The consulting and the coaching practice has evolved over the last many years. I’ve now coached over 100 attorneys, managing partners at law firms, general counsel at companies, a wide range of attorneys on really how they can be better for themselves and others in their practice and really trying to shift and improve our culture in the legal workplace.

Teresa: Rudhir, it sounds like you identified the need while you were in the boiling pan yourself and didn’t really see anyone meeting those needs. As you’ve worked now for a number of years with clients, especially at big law firms and at corporations in house, what have you seen as the return on it? It sounds like you also had a theory that if we start to apply this, it’s not only going to improve quality of life and wellness and balance, but will also impact work product. I would be interested in some antidotes from clients you’ve worked with so far.

Rudhir: Teresa, what you said first is what I want to tap into a little bit, which is what I did notice during my time at Apple. You make this switch from a partner in law firm to go in house, and we think about it as sort of this greener pasture switch, attorneys going in house. What I notice is I got more senior in the practice. With every level up, growing of the team, salary bump, promotion, whatever it was, every time the further I got up, the lonelier I felt.

Rudhir: It’s very interesting that here we are achieving this so-called dream, and yet I felt somewhat more isolated, and I’m a pretty social person. I’m the person at Fish that was head of recruiting for our office. I’m definitely the person that planned all of the March Madness pools and getting everybody back together outside of work. I’m that person. For me to feel somewhat isolated was really fascinating, to be naturally connected and connecting and yet feel lonely at the same time was a very odd experience.

Rudhir: But I felt it more and more as I got more senior. I started to realize, “Well, if I’m experiencing this, how many other people are experiencing this?” There’s this unique thing that happens in legal practices that we are shrouded in confidentiality and in adversity in this adversarial experience. There’s a lack of trust that we have oftentimes with our colleagues. The thing that’s most challenging for me at work, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable talking to my colleagues about, whether it be a difficulty with a technical issue or a difficulty with building business or a challenge with how I’m managing my team. Sometimes we’re not comfortable being necessarily open about that with our colleagues just because of the legal work environment.

Rudhir: I started to notice this, and I realized I’m so senior in this practice I wish I had my own set of advisors. I’m at this point where I’m generating enough revenue. I’m generating enough revenue for myself that small businesses generate. We’re in the hundreds of thousands now. Some lawyers are in the low seven figures in terms of their business generation and their income. Yet, I don’t know who my closest advisors necessarily are that I just deeply trust.

Teresa: Right.

Rudhir: I started realizing, “Well, if I’m having that issue, there must be other attorneys that are having this issue.” And it becomes even that much more compounded with intersectionality. Now we’re talking about women that might be having these challenges, attorneys of color that might be having these challenges, really everybody. When I started to notice this, I thought, “Here’s a space that I feel like we need someone to step into.” That’s the decision that I made. It’s very interesting. I work with a wide range of clients, and to sort of address your second question, the second part of your question, is it’s just been deeply valuable this work for the clients that I’ve worked with, and it shows up in many ways.

Rudhir: People don’t often think about connecting with… Well, let me say that differently, Teresa. When we have somebody in our corner that is willing to champion us, that is willing to hear us out, that is willing to co-strategize with us, that is sort of a peer in the practice and that has real confidentiality, so much is possible. I’ve sort of seen that with my clients. I’ve seen a lot of growth and evolution on people having much better relationships with their teams, managing their groups in healthier ways, finding ways to solve problems with some of the challenges they face in their teams, interacting with people in a healthier way, becoming that much more adapt at generating business and for people that are looking for some sort of a transition and feeling stuck really having place where they can start to dialogue and strategize and brainstorm on that, and we come up with just incredible directional shifts for people in their life and their business. This practice I feel like has been a huge benefit to the clients that I work with.

Teresa: You touched on something that was interesting to you a minute ago, Rudhir. You were talking about this feeling of isolation, social isolation. We’re talking today and it’s later in March 2020. Back on December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization first identified an epidemic in China. Today, we’re looking at shelter in place orders not only around the San Francisco Bay area but throughout that entire state possibly with more coming in other markets and many people now working in a brand new environment, work from home environment where those lines between family and work are blurred a little bit.

Teresa: Looking at the 2019 novel Coronavirus pandemic, this is unprecedented territory, with you and your work with clients, what are you seeing right now?

Rudhir: It’s very interesting because I tend to think that lawyers as I mentioned despite us working with each other and connecting tend to have somewhat more of a natural isolation and loneliness already. This is just me saying this. There have actually been studies. The ABA has put out studies. There are psychologists that have put out studies that identify and indicate that lawyers have less sort of a lower social tendency than others than most.

Rudhir: And so at a time when we’re now even doubling down on the isolation, I’ve seen a lot of challenge. I see lawyers that are expressing concerns over a lot of things. Here we have a group of people that are natural problem solvers, lawyers are natural problem solvers. We are always thinking ahead. As we think ahead, we’re thinking ahead to how long is this going to last. There’s an uncertainty.

Teresa: Right.

Rudhir: We’re thinking to how is this going to impact my business? For in-house attorneys the business that they’re in and corporation that they’re in, but for outside counsel attorneys, how is this affecting my business development and business generation? What does this mean for my income? What does this mean for my team? What might this mean for the health of my family and the people around me? What might this mean for others? There’s just a lot of concern layered on top of a business and a practice that already has us sort of in a position where we’re “constantly putting out fires.”

Rudhir: I think that what I’m seeing is a higher level of anxiety in some than what might usually be the case. I think when anxiety comes up, we are not at our best self. We are not behaving in a way that is sort of rooted in our best self. We’re being reactive. We are thinking about we’re in sort of a flight or fight mode. We’re thinking about ways that we can run and save things or we’re thinking about ways that we can sort of fix things right away. I think there’s a deep discomfort that’s happening in this moment.

Teresa: With the questions that you’re seeing from clients right now, I know you’ve set up a webinar right now. You’re providing some guidance to people who are looking for it. What can people do right now? With the sense of what do I have control over, there is so much certainty. What are you telling people right now?

Rudhir: Yeah. I set up a free webinar Wednesdays mornings at 9:00 a.m. Pacific, noon Eastern on mindfulness tools for managing uncertainty. I find that mindfulness practices, resilience practices, emotional intelligence practices are very much relevant in this time. I think that even just paying attention to the news has me at a slightly higher level of anxiety. I’m waking up a bit more tired than usual this week. It’s just very interesting. Not much has changed because we work from home my wife and I, and so for us to practice social distancing and kind of put a barrier around our house is actually not too different than what we’re usually doing.

Teresa: Right.

Rudhir: I’m slightly more on edge and slightly more tired. These practices of mindfulness and resilience and emotional intelligence, I think, are just really valuable in this moment. I’ve started to offer them out on a weekly webinar, just simple tools. For example, you asked what might be something that we can do. Lawyers, we tend to be very head heavy. I didn’t even understand what that meant a few years ago because I didn’t know what the difference was between that and anything else.

Rudhir: We tend to be thinking people. We’re valued for our knowledge. People want us for our advice, and we want to offer our advice. We’re problem solving. We always respect and value the attorney that “knows more.” So much of our work is in our head. Settling the body and settling ourselves in these times actually happens in the body. What percentage of our livelihood is our mind physically, and what percentage is our body? That’s an interesting question to ask. So much of us is our body. In fact, most, if not all of us, is our body.

Rudhir: One of the first tools that we talked about in this webinar was a body scan technique. A body scan is a meditation technique that allows us to just pay attention to what else is happening right now in our body. There’s just a lot of information there. Lawyers are great at gathering information. We’re incredible at intake. I think in this moment one of the tools is just actually take intake for yourself. We’re always asking someone else, “So what’s your problem? What happened? Who are the people involved?” Et cetera. The questions that I offer are, “What’s happening in my body right now? What’s happening in my breath? What am I noticing in my chest? Is it tighter? What am I noticing in my stomach? Am I at unease? Are my feet grounded? What happens? What’s the difference between grounding my feet versus sitting them elsewhere? What’s the quality of my breath? What’s my body temperature?”

Rudhir: I think when we scan our bodies… And on my website I have mindfulness audio recordings and guided meditations, and these are available all over the place. There’s apps like Calm and Insight Timer and Headspace. UCLA has an incredible meditation center, and they have some great guided meditations. I offer a few on my website at Krishtel.com. Basically, what we’re inviting people to do is actually just pay attention to what’s happening for them in a moment.

Rudhir: This isn’t something that we need to do all day. A body scan meditation can be 10 minutes of your day, five minutes of your day. Pay attention to your breath. Even right now is one of those podcasts, Teresa, if you just sort of take a breath and pay attention to what’s going on in your lungs and what’s going on in your throat and just breathe. You just notice sort of a different quality show up. We kind of exist in this on edge slightly underlying nervosa, and it’s normalized in our practice. I think we can in this moment because it’s even exacerbated, it’s slightly more acute because of all the information coming in and everything that’s changing, I think is an incredible time to pay attention to breath, pay attention to body and just what’s going on for us.

Teresa: That’s really helping in hearing you talk about almost an inventory of awareness. Rudhir, for those, wellness has been a buzzword that’s been around and gaining increasing traction and attention in recent years. Can you break down mindfulness for those that may not be familiar with that term and just help us understand when we say mindfulness, when you say mindfulness, what do you mean?

Rudhir: I’d love to. I’d start by actually just saying that when I started regularly meditating, it was the beginning of an incredible shift in my life both professionally and personally. It’s for those who are exploring meditation and dabbling, the commitment to a practice of 20 minutes a day, 20 minutes twice a day or even 10 minutes a day of mindfulness practices I think can be the beginning of a huge evolution and even revolution in your life in terms of how you feel and just fulfillment.

Rudhir: When I was at Apple about a year or two in, I started a daily practice of 20 minutes twice a day of meditating. I’ll tell you a little bit more about what is mindfulness and different ways of practicing. Just to kind of get people in tune with the benefits, I started practicing, and so much changing. Three months of regular practice, I committed to 20 minutes twice a day, and I did it because actually I paid for a class. When you pay for a class for some reason, it’s just like a gym membership. Something happens, and you’re like, “All right, I’m paying the money. I’m going to make a commitment.”

Rudhir: I make the commitment of 20 minutes twice a day. I’m a coffee drinker. It’s not the morning coffee. It’s the 2:00 p.m. coffee for all my friends at Fish and Apple. At 2:00 p.m. it was clockwork. I’d come around the halls and say, “All right, let’s just go get coffee.” I noticed after two or three months of practicing… It’s not like it has an alarm set, it’s just at that time of the day you start feeling a little bit tired. My morning energy is I’m ready to go. Around 2:00 p.m. it starts to wither.

Rudhir: I started to notice three weeks had gone by and I hadn’t asked anyone for coffee. I’m an engineer by trade. Trained as an electrical engineer, studied, became an IP attorney, so I need a logical underpinning for a mental practice. At least I did at that time. I don’t anymore. I’m all in now. But back then I sort of needed some evidence. The evidence was just clear. I have so much more energy that I don’t need coffee. I don’t drink coffee from 7:00 a.m. until midnight, and I’m just fully functioning.

Rudhir: I couldn’t believe the shift that happened for me in that moment that I was getting a physical benefit to a mental practice. That’s when I decided I was all in. I started to have healthier interactions professionally. I started to notice that things were slowing down. People talk about time is going by fast. That’s not a thing for me anymore. Time actually does not go by fast. I started to worry less about all the things that were coming and about what was happening. I just started to feel more present.

Rudhir: There’s so much energy there. The energy is because… And this is for the people that are just looking for the logic. If your mind is moving less, and it’s sort of moving at a less rapid pace, it’s triggering less emotions. If you think about when you pay attention to what your thoughts are in a two minute period, “What am I going to eat for lunch?” It’s the basic thoughts. “What am I doing this week? What’s my schedule? What am I going to eat for lunch? What’s for dinner? What’s happening with that meeting?”

Rudhir: Each of those thoughts… And you notice in a two minute period they just keep spinning. Each of those thoughts may trigger and may bring out an emotion. When emotions come up in our body that is a moment where your energy starts to get drained because an emotion can trigger you to hunch your shoulders, and you don’t even realize. It may start reducing… slowing down your breath. You don’t even know. When that email comes in from that challenging client or from that colleague, you sort of hold your breath.

Rudhir: Those little moments add up in the course of the day. In our jobs you can work from 8:00 a.m. until midnight, not leave your desk, and feel like you ran a marathon that day. Mindfulness and meditation practices start to slow that down. They start to slow down the rapidity of the thoughts. They start to readjust how reactive you are to these things. They relax your body in these moments when you might naturally be tense or stressed. You’re gaining back 5% to 10% energy.

Rudhir: There’s this book Ten Percent Happier. I relate to almost everything that’s in that book because you really are. Ten percent more energy in this moment can be huge. How much more energy do you have at the end of the day for your colleagues, your clients, your family? You just have so much more energy. Just 10% can make such a difference. You were asking about what is mindfulness, but before I go into that, I’m curious if any questions are coming up for you based on what I’m saying?

Teresa: Well, I’m just anticipating questions. I think seeing the email come in or thinking about the email, it’s not saying that email is not important or that client’s need isn’t important, it’s putting it into a place where we’re not maybe as reactive to it, where it’s kind of processed in a way that is a little more centered. Right?

Rudhir: Yeah. This is a great dovetail into what is mindfulness because I think there’s a lot there. When I think about mindfulness you’ll see a range of definitions. But I consider if we’re paying attention to ourselves, our thoughts, our emotions and our body, and noticing what’s happening with those things, without judgment. And the without judgment piece is actually really important because oftentimes what’s happening for us we might think is wrong or something’s not great about it or amazing about it. Mindfulness is actually just let’s just pay attention to what’s happening.

Rudhir: I talked about this body scan technique as sort of one way which is paying attention to what’s happening with your feet and your legs and your stomach and your lungs and your shoulders. When that email comes in as an example. We all know that email, that alert, that case alert. That colleague, that person we don’t like, all of it. It happens at least 10 times a day. Ten times a day, 20 times a day, 100 times a day you tense up when that message comes in, and just sort of noticing what’s happening in your body in that moment rather than necessarily solving the email. Because our first reaction is what am I going to say? You might notice the quality of your breath in that moment that you’re actually not breathing. It’s fascinating just taking a deep breath in that moment rather than reacting right away and just noticing what happens to your body that it settles.

Rudhir: Noticing what happens to your shoulders, they tighten up, that you sort of take a forward learning approach, that you might get uneasy in your stomach. All these things are happening. As we pay attention to that, when we’re responding to that email from that place, it’s actually fight or flight. We’re responding from a place of fight or flight. Fight or flight is sort of an old… It’s an old system. It comes from an old brain of ours. It’s the amygdala. It’s an old brain. It’s a lizard brain that we have. It basically really comes from this era and this time of evolutionarily when we were sort of fighting bears and lions. You’re sort of out in the wild and you’re worried about fight or flight. Either I attack this thing that’s in front of me or I’ve got to leave.

Teresa: Base survival.

Rudhir: It’s survival. Yeah. By and large in our legal office, outside of that scary partner in the corner, there’s no bears around. There’s no tigers. For us to be experiencing fight or flight as much as we do in the course of our day is really a ratio that it happens versus the actual need is way out of proportion. The other thing is that creativity, centeredness, true leadership, aren’t happening when we’re in fight or flight. We’re not coming from a collected and a gathered place. We’re coming from a reactive place.

Rudhir: When we write a brief in a case, we don’t write a react, we write a response. I use these two words differently. There’s reacting, and there’s responding. I think responding comes from a place when we gather data and information, we use our wise lawyer selves, we are using wisdom, and we are responding in a gathered and a collected way. We’re reviewing. We’re able to come back to people from a centered place. That’s what we want in our briefing. That’s what we want in our responses to our colleagues, in our communications. We end up feeling in a reactive place, and so it’s fight or flight. It’s like, “If they say something, I can defend myself,” or “I’m going to avoid this email for a few hours because I’m nervous about what’s going to happen.”

Rudhir: So all these things come up. But when we take a breath we notice what’s happening in our shoulders, we notice what’s happening in ourselves, we notice the thinking and the nervousness that might be happening in our head. Maybe we can respond in a healthier way. Maybe we can slow down some of that movement and gain some energy back.

Teresa: Interesting using the word creativity. We’re in a transformative moment. Whether it’s a temporary transformation or whether we’re going to see lasting effects. We have the White House signing the Defense Production Act. Many people working from home. I’m sure for many there’s a lot of scary elements to what we’re seeing with the public health crisis around COVID-19. You and I we’ve had some earlier conversations about possibilities out there, but what do you see, Rudhir, right now as possible in this moment?

Rudhir: We have to be very thoughtful about many people whose health is being compromised in this moment, and we have to really be thoughtful about many people whose lives have shifted and are challenged by access to resources and hourly workers and wage workers whose jobs are being eliminated in the short term. There’s a lot of challenge and compromise that’s happening at this moment. We want to make sure that we keep our awareness on that.

Teresa: Right.

Rudhir: I actually feel like interestingly enough a lot is possible in this moment. I think there are new ways that we’ll be able to connect with people and we’ll be testing out. For example, this webinar that I’m doing or the greater number of video calls and group calls that I’m having online where people are finding healthier ways to interact. I actually think it’s an incredible time to call that colleague or that contact that you haven’t been in touch with for a while and just say, “Hey, how are you doing?” And just get on the phone or get on a video call and just listen and be with somebody and connect in a way that you might not have otherwise.

Rudhir: I do feel like people might have a little bit more time now, and if you think it’s a time where, for example, business development dies down, I think actually it’s the exact opposite. People are looking to connect in this moment, so fill that void. Finding new ways to connect right now, to reach out, to interact, to connect with your families and yourselves, I think that’s huge in this moment.

Rudhir: I think time alone can be an incredible time for coming up with new solutions and to be creative. I think about Isaac Newton came up with some of his most valuable theories, the roots of calculus, and the basic understandings that we have on gravity, some of the most critical theories that he came up with were during the Plague when he had to leave Cambridge and isolate during that moment.

Rudhir: Social distancing, this isn’t the first era of social distancing. This has been going on with every pandemic that we’ve experienced in the history of time. Even in that moment he came up with some of the most valuable scientific principles and mathematic principles that we lean on today. There’s this huge opportunity in this moment to be creative, to think about what’s possible.

Rudhir: And as lawyers we are in this service industry, and so there’s this incredible opportunity to think about what are the new ways and the different ways in which we can serve others and add value? When we are reactive and in fight or flight, we aren’t thinking from that place. We’re wondering how to protect ourselves or wondering how… what’s going to happen to us. But when we start slowing down and rooting in, we remember that there’s so much possible in this moment for all of us, so many systems that we can build to serve our clients and to support our colleagues.

Rudhir: I’m going to be offering team building webinars in the next few weeks. Here’s an opportunity. Your entire team is isolated. How do we stay connected in this moment? So maybe we jump on an hour and a half Zoom call, and we actually do a team building exercise, facilitated exercise, in this moment. For me, I just feel like so much is possible, and it’s time to really start thinking about creative ways that we can connect with others, which we all need as humans and in our professions, and so what are the ways that we can do that now?

Teresa: That’s really interesting. We’ve been hearing talk about… We’ve all been hearing the guidelines around social distancing, but moving to the term physical distancing to recognize that we need… We still as humans we still need a little bit of that connectivity that you’re talking about. Interesting. Rudhir, some of the resources we’ve been monitoring and sharing with our clients have been resources you have been sharing with broader audiences. Can you talk to us about what’s out there right now? What resources are there? You’ve really been pouring a lot of your focus to provide some guidance and help right now in the recent days and weeks. What’s out there right now? What are you working on, and what could you suggest as resources for people?
Rudhir: Well, we mentioned it once already, but I’m doing this weekly webinar on mindfulness tools for handling uncertainty, and I’m doing this every Wednesday morning through my relationship on the co-chair of the wellness committee for the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. We’re doing a similar webinar on Thursdays every week right now, myself and a mentor of mine, Angela O., are doing this webinar every week for that community.
Rudhir: I’m talking with the Association of Corporate Counsel on putting out a webinar on what tools we can use to manage the challenge. There’s a couple of bar associations that I’m working with on how we can exhibit our leadership in this moment. How can we show leadership in this moment of challenge and difficulty? From my perspective, there’s a lot of offering that’s happening in this moment, and I think what’s really beautiful and really nice about the community is actually seeing all the things that are being offered up in this moment and ways that we can support each other.

Rudhir: I think it’s a great time to pay attention and listen and get online and see what’s being offered by others. There’s a lot of opportunities to interact in workshops and dialogues and ways to connect from home right now that I think people should be tapping into. I think it’s also just a time to connect for people that have the luxury of doing that with family in their home or even with nature. There’s no restriction on necessarily going out in some areas and actually just taking a walk and connecting in that way.

Rudhir: I do workshops on building resilience. Part of those dialogues we talk about, “What’s restorative for you?” What’s restorative for you? The answers that people typically come up with are things that are just very accessible to us even in this moment, which is time with my family and my friends, connecting with my pets, eating a really good meal, watching a good show, taking a walk in nature. All of these things people find restorative are by and large free and still very accessible to us in this moment.

Rudhir: This might just be a nice healthy hibernating moment for all of us. I think that another thing is this is actually a great opportunity for skills building. I work with a range of clients. For some of them, presentations and stand up are something that they like working on. There’s nothing stopping people from being at home and recording a presentation and seeing how they are. When we start thinking about what’s possible in this moment, I feel like there is so much opportunity.

Teresa: One of the other areas, we were discussing earlier, Rudhir, related to the new work at home scenario. Looking at the normal heavy workload that an attorney deals with, at least having that separation between work and home, without being blurred now, which not the case for you necessarily. You’re accustomed to it. What guidance are you providing right now for how to handle that new blurred line and how to handle what is really a novel situation for many professionals and especially for attorneys?

Rudhir: I think that it’s very interesting seeing this transition that people are making to being at home. Luckily, I’ve been working at home for a few years now, and so this transition wasn’t so difficult. I definitely feel like there are things that we can do to make this that much more comfortable. First, I think for people that don’t work from home a lot, it’s actually setting up a comfortable situation for sitting.

Rudhir: Some people might think this is the time to just work at the dining table or in that uncomfortable chair, but we might be here for a while. Maybe it’s time to get a nicer chair, a nicer desk at home. Maybe it’s time to invest in that, a standup desk or something, a chair that’s got good support for you. So actually just sit in a place that’s comfortable and not necessarily in the thing that you might default to when you do a little bit of work from home.

Rudhir: Second, I think that things that are really helpful are really when we’re working from home the boundaries really start to fade between work and home literally. There’s really no boundary anymore. You might have this urge to almost work all the time. There’s really no limit to it. I think there’s this mentality around clocking in and clocking out that I think can be a really welcome shift in this moment.
Rudhir: If you’re putting in certain hours, actually when does the pen go down? When does the laptop get shut? What are the few hours during the day where you’re actually just doing the thing that you need to do to take care of yourself or center? For some people, they’re not commuting anymore. They use that commute time as the period to transition from work to home. Create that transition period for yourself. Sit for five or ten minutes and do nothing and allow the mind to settle and shift. Let’s not just use all of our time now or fill all of that time with work because doing that along with all the information that’s coming in and the way that the world is changing can really start draining you further.

Rudhir: I think healthy boundaries with work right now are imperative and actually maybe just creating some mental shifts. When I go down to the living room, when I’m in my next room, that’s when I put the laptop… The laptop stays in this area of the house. I don’t let it carry everywhere. Just trying to think about physical and mental barriers that you can start to create between work and home even when you’re in one place so that it’s not all bleeding together. We work effectively when we are restored. We need to reenergize. So think about the things that reenergize you and try to build in systems at home that allow you to keep that energy.

Teresa: That’s helpful. Rudhir, you mentioned one mentor a few minutes ago in our conversation. Can you talk to me about any mentors that you’ve had throughout your career who’ve especially shaped your thinking, shaped your own career?

Rudhir: There’s so many. It’s a difficult question. I remember when you emailed me in advance about some of the things you might ask, I said let’s do this at the end. I was hoping it wouldn’t even get to these. I have so many mentors. There’s so many people that have been valuable. In the work that I do I always feel like I stand on the shoulders of so many people that came before, and so there’s just so many experiences that I have that are learning.

Rudhir: I think the place to start is that I just feel like every opportunity and every interaction is a moment of learning. I feel like I’m learning from people all the time. Mentors is a really higher elevated state for somebody I feel to hold that space. I learned so much from my clients. I learned so much on calls like this. I learned so much from every interaction. I think the first thing that comes to me is actually just not losing sight of the learning opportunities in every interaction. What can you learn about this person across from you and the rich experience that they have? What value might you be able to get in that possibility of that conversation?

Rudhir: The person that made this entire next chapter of my life that much more possible for me was my wife. When I was in my last few years at Apple, I started to feel this itch, and it was… I’m not sure, but I can’t say that I’m as happy as I’d like to be in my life professionally. I think there’s something else. I don’t know exactly what I want to do. I’d sort of come home every few days with this dialogue with her.

Rudhir: I’d sort of talk about different things that I want to do. I’d tell her, I’d say, “You know, I think I need a month or two off. I need a month or two off. I’m going to ask my manager and team if I can combine my four weeks of vacation with one other month off. It could be unpaid. I don’t care. I just need a couple of months to sit.” She said, “You don’t need two months. You need a year.”

Rudhir: I just thought, ” A year?” Apple doesn’t have a year long sabbatical program. How are we going to do that? She said, “I’m giving you a year.” She said, “For one year you don’t need to do a thing. You don’t have to generate any income. You don’t have to do anything around the house. You don’t have to do anything for a year, and whatever you do after that I don’t care. But for one year just take a break.”

Rudhir: I have never had that kind of permission before or just being met by somebody that was saying, “Look, you’re good as you are. You don’t need to do anything.” I think that that’s amazing. I just felt like to get that type of support from somebody… My wife runs a nonprofit. My mind was, “How are we going to manage the finances and everything?” She’s like, “We’ll budget. We’ll plan the way that organizations plan when they go through a transition.”

Rudhir: So we made the plan. As soon as the plan came into place, and I saw that it was possible, everything that was happening was leading to signs of leaving and taking this time off. I think she has a way of thinking and a being that’s very different from what I’m used to in my environment. It’s very refreshing. She really values people taking the time to restore because we don’t know what’s possible. She’s really at the sort of root of this transition, which is allowing me the time and space to think and see some of the challenges in our workplace.

Rudhir: What I did during that time off is I just wrote a lot and investigated and understood a lot about our work, and that’s what allowed me to see this opportunity for stepping into this whole new career path for me. When I think about people that I look up to or I look to, I think about right now in this moment of my life I think about my wife first.

Teresa: Rudhir, that’s really wonderful to hear you say it, and I appreciate you sharing too on such a personal level that story.

Rudhir: Well, I just want to offer that in this moment I feel like we’re experiencing challenging times. I feel like we’re part of an amazing profession that can actually offer a lot. If anyone could use any support or has any questions, please feel free to reach out. My website is Krishtel.com. My email is simple. It’s my first name Rudhir@Krishtel.com, and I’m sure you’ll be providing it, Teresa.

Rudhir: But feel free to reach out in this moment because I just feel like it’s an incredible opportunity for making sure that all of us are feeling good in a way that allows us to support our community in the way that lawyers do. We are very important center, I feel like fabric, of the world. I feel like we are really the center of a lot of leadership in the world. I feel like we’re in this position to offer a lot, and for anyone that needs support through that process I just welcome people to reach out and connect.

Teresa: Thank you, Rudhir. It’s been really wonderful speaking with you learning more about what you’ve been doing. We’ve enjoyed seeing it and really are happy to be able to share it with our audience too. We will be in touch for sure. We’ll definitely have your resources available on the podcast.

Rudhir: All right. Fantastic. Thank you, Teresa. Talk soon.

Teresa: Thanks, Rudhir. You too. Bye-bye.

Rudhir: Bye.

ARTICLE BY Teresa Barber of IMS ExpertServices.

For more on Law Office Management, see the National Law Review.

Protecting Privilege when Communicating with PR Consultants

In high-profile cases in 2001^[1] and 2003,^[2] federal courts recognized exceptions to the third-party waiver rule for privileged communications shared with public relations (PR) consultants. Since then, courts have repeatedly been tasked with determining the status of PR firms for purposes of asserted waivers of attorney-client privilege and deciding whether Kovel^[3]or the third-party waiver exceptions recognized in In re Copper or In re Grand Jury Subpoenas apply. Recently, multiple courts have rendered decisions on whether a third-party PR consultant falls within the scope of the privilege by virtue of one of the exceptions. These decisions have demonstrated that, as of 2020, the standards for these doctrines remain fluid, if not illusive. By contrast, disclosure of attorney work product to third parties does not so readily waive protection. Below we review recent cases and offer best practices to maintain privilege and work-product protection.

Third-Party Waiver Exception Doctrines Applied to PR Firms

The attorney-client privilege protects communications made in confidence with counsel for the purpose of legal advice, but the privilege is waived if the communication is shared with a third party. Starting in 2001, courts applied two developing exceptions to the third-party waiver rule to PR firms. The court in In re Copper Market Antitrust Litigation^[4]held that a PR firm was the functional equivalent of an employee such that the privilege was not waived when counsel shared communications with the firm.^[5] In doing so, the court recognized that the PR firm was within the scope of privilege as defined by Upjohn Co. v. United States.^[6]Two years later, the court in In re Grand Jury Subpoenas Dated March 24, 2003,^[7] applied the Kovel^[8]third-party waiver exception to retention of a PR firm and held that the communications of a grand jury target with that PR firm did not waive the privilege because counsel needed to engage in frank discussions of the facts and strategies.

Decisions Finding No Waiver

In NECA-IBEW Pension Trust Fund v. Precision Castparts Corp.,^[9] the plaintiffs in a securities action moved to compel documents listed on the privilege log drafted by counsel for Precision Castparts Corp. (PCC) and shared with AMG, PCC’s PR firm, for comments. The defendant asserted that the documents were privileged, arguing that AMG was the functional equivalent of an employee such that disclosure did not constitute a waiver.^[10] The court agreed:

AMG is the functional equivalent of an employee under Upjohn and Graff. PCC retained AMG in August 2014 to provide “public relations counsel and other strategic communications services.” AMG’s retainer was not a test run, as the relationship was established by the time Berkshire and PCC began talks in March 2015 and was apparently maintained throughout the acquisition. Under the terms of its engagement, AMG was required to “take instructions from [PCC] and . . . consult with other members of [PCC] management and with [PCC’s] legal and financial advisors as necessary, while PCC promised to “provide AMG with the information and resources necessary to carry out [PCC’s] instructions.”^[11]

Significantly, in addition to serving as a functional equivalent of an employee, the court found that AMG was clearly receiving “legal advice from corporate counsel to guide its work for the company.”

In Stardock Systems v. Reiche,^[12] a federal trademark action, Reiche’s counsel retained PR firm Singer to provide PR counseling. Reiche withheld communications between its counsel and Singer as privileged.^[13] Citing In re Grand Subpoenas,^[14] Reiche asserted that Singer had been retained to help present a balanced picture and that the withheld communications related to legal advice about the appropriate response to the lawsuit and making related public statements.

The court found that Reiche’s counsel hired Singer for the purposes of litigation strategy and that the communications between Singer and counsel pertained to “giving and receiving legal advice about the appropriate response to the lawsuit and making related public statements.”^[15] The court cited specific examples of privilege log entries that all “relate[d] to Defendants’ counsel’s litigation strategy in dealing with the present suit.”^[16] The court also held that the attorney work-product doctrine had not been waived because the work product shared was intended to be kept confidential.

Cases Where Courts Found Waiver

Other courts, however, have reached different conclusions. Following the premiere of “Blackfish,” a film critical of SeaWorld, SeaWorld and its counsel retained two “crisis” PR firms to work with counsel in developing a legal strategy, including considering potential litigation. In Anderson v. SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, Inc.,^[17] the PR firms produced documents regarding their work with SeaWorld, but SeaWorld redacted some documents and withheld others based on attorney-client privilege and attorney work product.

The court, relying on Behunin v. Superior Court, the only California decision addressing the issue as applied to PR firms,^[18] held the standard of “reasonably necessary” had not been met:

[I]n order for disclosure to a third party to be “reasonably necessary” for an attorney’s purpose, and thus not to effect a waiver of privilege, it is not enough that the third party weighs in on legal strategy. Instead, the third party must facilitate communication between the attorney and client. Here, the evidence submitted and documents lodged for in camera review show at most that SeaWorld and its counsel sought advice from public relations firms to better predict the public reaction to legal activities and other efforts it considered in response to Blackfish, and to determine how best to present such activities to the public and other entities.^[19]

The court rejected SeaWorld’s argument that its PR consultants were functionally equivalent to employees, stating that, even assuming that the remaining elements of the test were satisfied, “there is no evidence that any such consultant “possessed information possessed by no one else at the company,’” ^[20]one of the factors established by In re Bieter Company,^[21] which established the functional equivalent doctrine in the Eighth Circuit.

However, the court held that disclosure of the attorneys’ work product to the PR firms had not waived work-product protection because there can be no waiver “unless it has substantially increased the opportunity for the adverse party to obtain the information.”^[22]

In Universal Standard Inc. v. Target Corp.,^[23] a trademark infringement and unfair competition case, Target sought to compel production of emails sent among Universal Standard, its attorneys and its PR firm, BrandLink, arguing that privilege had been waived. Universal argued that BrandLink was the functional equivalent of an employee, hired to serve as Universal’s “public relations arm” with independent decision-making authority. The court found no evidence of that, however; the only specific evidence was that BrandLink would monitor and respond to inquiries directed to a PR email address, duties unrelated to legal advice. Further, BrandLink had no independent authority to issue a press release — the email in dispute suggested the Universal overruled BrandLink’s recommendation.

Further, BrandLink did not work exclusively for Universal and provided services for more than a dozen other brands:

It is of no great significance that, as Universal Standard argues, BrandLink has “particular and unique expertise in the area of public relations, whereas Universal Standard does not.” Or that BrandLink “works closely with Universal Standard’s owners on a continuous basis regarding PR issues. To the contrary, the evidence presented by the parties “contradict[s] the picture of [BrandLink] as so fully integrated into the [Universal Standard] hierarchy as to be a de facto employee of [Universal Standard]”^[24]

The court also rejected the assertion that the In re Grand Jury Subpoenas exception applied because there was no evidence that the purpose of the communications with BrandLink was to assist counsel in providing legal advice.^[25]

Finally, the court in Pipeline Productions, Inc. v. Madison Cos.^[26]reached a mixed result. In this case arising out of a failed music festival, the plaintiff moved to compel documents listed on the defendants’ privilege log that involved two third-party contractors — Suzanne Land, hired to negotiate related transactions, and Marcee Rondan, a PR consultant. The court found that Land was the functional equivalent of an employee, citing affidavits from the defendant:

Madison submitted a detailed factual record that establishes Ms. Land was an authorized representative for purposes of seeking and receiving the legal advice at issue. Mr. Gordon’s affidavit explains that he brought Ms. Land on board in the winter of 2014-2015 as his “right hand person” to oversee negotiating certain proposed business transactions, including the dealings with Pipeline that are the subject of this litigation. . . . He authorized and asked Ms. Land to communicate with counsel and other Madison representatives in order to obtain information needed or requested by Madison’s attorneys, he authorized Ms. Land to act in this capacity as Madison’s representative, and he relied upon her to do so.^[27]

The court rejected the defendants’ argument that the purpose of communications with Rondan was to guide their counsel relating to PR issues with potential litigation:

These descriptions suggest only that the predominant purpose of the communications was to obtain public relations advice from Ms. Rondan and, even further afield, as they sought to set up a call about that advice. Although Madison argues counsel was included on all communications and that the communications would not have occurred “but for the fact that a lawsuit was filed,” these considerations are insufficient to show that Ms. Rondan provided any information to Madison’s attorneys to enable them to render legal advice or to provide legal services.^[28]

Best Practices

While each case will turn on its facts, there are steps counsel can take to best ensure privileged and protected communications with PR firms retain their protection by making a clear record of what role the PR firm will play.

First, it should be counsel who engages a PR firm, and counsel should provide a clear, written description of the PR firm’s role in the litigation in their engagement letter. To the extent that an engagement expands beyond the initial scope, additional engagement letters should make clear what the PR firm’s role will be in each.

Not every communication with PR firms will involve the provision of legal advice and so companies should not try and overreach by copying counsel on routine communications. If a communication is to remain privileged, there must be a legal reason why the PR firm is involved. Communications designed to address nonlegal matters, like public perception, will not be deemed privileged. Privileged communications should only be shared with PR firms to the extent necessary, and only with PR consultants so integrated into the client’s business and structure that the consultant can be qualified as a functional equivalent of an employee.

When challenged, counsel should prepare affidavits that evidence the specific tasks assigned to the PR firm and why its involvement was necessary for the provision of legal advice. If establishing that the consultant is the functional equivalent of an employee, the affidavits should establish the PR firm’s integration into the company’s structure and routine interaction with counsel for legal advice.

Finally, regardless of whether a communication remains privileged, because attorney work-product protection is not so easily waived, counsel should demonstrate that disclosure did not make the information available to their adversaries.

_{[1] See In re Copper Mkt. Antitrust Litig., 200 F.R.D. 213 (S.D.N.Y. 2001), where the court held that the public relations firm was the functional equivalent of the corporation’s employee and, therefore, the attorney-client privilege was not waived when the corporation’s counsel shared communications with the public relations firm. In so holding, the court rejected the argument that third-party consultants came within the scope of the privilege only when acting as conduits or facilitators of attorney-client communications, the requirements of the original third-party waiver doctrine adopted in United States v. Kovel, 296 F.2d 918 (2nd Cir. 1961).}

_{[2] In In re Grand Jury Subpoenas Dated March 24, 2003, 265 F. Supp. 2d 321 (S.D.N.Y. 2003), a target of a grand jury investigation hired a public relations firm to assist in influencing the outcome of the investigation. When subpoenaed by the government to produce documents and testify before the grand jury regarding communications with the target, the public relations firm asserted the attorney-client privilege on behalf of the target. The court upheld the privilege, recognizing the need for lawyers to be able to engage in frank discussion of facts and strategies with the lawyers’ public relations consultants.}

_{[3]United States v. Kovel, 296 F.2d 918 (2nd Cir. 1961). The Second Circuit held that the privilege could extend to communications between a client and a nonattorney third party if “the communication [is] made in confidence for the purpose of obtaining legal advice from the lawyer.” Id. at 922. In applying this rule, the court found that the privilege could reasonably extend to an accountant assisting a law firm in an investigation into an alleged federal income tax violation.”}

_{[4] 200 F.R.D. 213 (S.D.N.Y. 2001).}

_{[5] Id. at 219-20 (citing In re Bieter, 16 F.3d 929 (1994) (privilege would apply to communications between independent consultants hired by the client and the client’s lawyers if those consultants were the functional equivalents of employees)).}

_{[6]449 U.S. 383, 391 (1981) (Supreme Court rejected that only corporation’s high-level “control group” could communicate with attorneys without the privilege being waived and held that lower-level employees could be used as agents of the corporation when they had relevant information needed by corporate counsel to advise client).}

_{[7] 265 F. Supp. 2d 321 (S.D.N.Y. 2003).}

_{[8] United States v. Kovel, 296 F.2d 918 (2nd Cir. 1961).}

_{[9] No. 3:16-cv-017756, 29019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 168088 (D. Or. Sep. 27, 2019).}

_{[10] Id. at *14-15 (“The Eighth Circuit . . . applied Upjohn to cover communications between corporate counsel and outside consultants” when the outside consultant “was in all relevant respects the functional equivalent of an employee.”) (citations omitted).}

_{[11] Id. at *17-18, distinguishing Universal Standard Inc. v. Target, 331 F.R.D. 80 (S.D.N.Y. May 6, 2019).}

_{[12] 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 204438 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 30, 2018).}

_{[13] Id. at *5.}

_{[14] 265 F. Supp. 2d 321 (S.D.N.Y. 2003).}

_{[15] Id. at *17.}

_{[16] Id. at *17-18.}

_{[17] 329 F.R.D 628 (N.D. Cal. 2019)}

_{[18] 9 Cal. App. 5th 833, 215 Cal. Rptr. 3d 475 (App. 2d Dist. 2017) (court held Behunin had not proven the communications were reasonably necessary for counsel’s representation and determined the privilege had been waived).}

_{[19] 329 F.R.D. at *634.}

_[20] Id.

_{[21] 16 F.3d 929 (8th Circ. 1994).}

_{[22] Id. at *635-36.}

_{[23] 331 F.R.D. 80 (S.D.N.Y. 2019).}

_{[24] Id. at 90 (citations omitted).}

_{[25] Id. at *91-92.}

_{[26] No. 15-4890-KHV, 2019 U.S. DIST Lexis 71601 (D. Kan. Apr. 29, 2019).}

_{[27] Id. at *3-4.}

_{[28] Id. at *5-6.}

ARTICLE BY Matthew J. Hamilton and Donna L. Fisher, National Law Review’s Guest Contributors.

For more on protecting privilege, see the National Law Review Law Office Management section.

What Is the CARES Act and How Can It Help Legal Professionals?

On March 27, Congress passed the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) to mitigate the negative economic impact of COVID-19. The CARES Act provides small businesses and individuals with extended unemployment insurance benefits, loans for paycheck protection, refundable tax credit, and business tax provisions. Attorneys who own their own practice can take advantage of the 2020 CARES Act to protect their business and employees during the economic downturn brought on by COVID-19.

How the CARES Act Applies to Lawyers

The CARES Act could alleviate the negative economic impact of COVID-19 on your law firm while the entire world waits for what’s next.

The CARES Act helps law practices with:

Paycheck protection program (PPP): completely forgivable loan to cover payroll costs
Employee retention credit
2020 Payroll tax deferment
Economic injury disaster loan emergency advance (EIDL)

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for Attorneys, Legal Administrators, and Staff

Law firms with fewer than 500 employees are eligible to apply for a CARES loan to cover payroll costs. Some businesses with more than 500 employees are eligible if they meet certain criteria.
Sole proprietorships, independent contractions, self-employed persons, private non-profit organizations, or 501(c)(19) veterans organizations are all eligible to apply.
Legal professionals may be eligible for a CARES loan that covers up to two months of your average monthly payroll costs, figured by last year’s payroll expenses plus an additional 25%, up to a $10 million cap. Each employee is capped at $100,000 annualized.
Lawyers can use the PPP loan to cover all payroll expenses including benefits. You are also allowed to use it for rent, utilities, and mortgage interest, as long as these expenses were in place before Feb. 15, 2020. (In other words, you can’t use the loan to lease a new office).

For more detail, please refer to the PPP FAQs published by the Treasury Department on Wednesday, April 8, 2020.

Coverage for Payroll Costs

Salary, wages, commissions, or tips
Employee benefits including costs for vacation, parental, family, medical, or sick leave
Allowance for separation or dismissal
Payments required for the provisions of group health care benefits including insurance premiums
Retirement benefits
State and local taxes assessed on compensation

For more detail, please refer to the Tax Foundation’s summary of the SBA Paycheck Protection Program in the CARES Act.

Coverage for Sole Proprietor or Independent Contractor

Wages, commissions, income or net earnings from self-employment, capped at $100,000 on an annualized basis for each employee
Extends duration of benefits from 26 weeks (available in most states) to 39 weeks
Provides an additional $600 per week in benefits for first four months

For more detail, please refer to the summary from the law firm Rudman Winchell.

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Loan Forgiveness

Applications are already in play. While there is a lot of money available, it is not unlimited. Apply as quickly as possible.

You use the money strictly for allowed expenses
75% of the loan amount is spent on payroll costs
You maintain your entire full-time staff until June 30
Rehire fired or laid-off employees quickly
Caps payment at $100,000 per person
You do not cut employees wages more than 25% for any employee who made less than $100,000 in 2019
For whatever amount is not covered, PPP loans have a 1% interest rate and payments are deferred six months with interest during the deferment. The loan must be fully repaid in two years.

For more detail, please refer to the Small Business Administration’s Docket No. SBA-2020-0015.

Employee Retention Credit

You may qualify for a refundable payroll tax credit for 50% of wages if:

your law practice was fully or partially suspended due to COVID-19 related shut-down orders.
you lost more than 50% in gross receipts compared to last year’s same-quarter performance.

Payroll Tax Deferment

To further lower expenses at your law firm, you may defer your share of payroll taxes and split the deferred payments over the next two years, with half due by Dec. 31, 2021, and the other half due by Dec. 31, 2022.

Economic Injury Disaster Loan Emergency Advance (EIDL)

If you are a sole proprietor, you may be eligible for a EIDL loan of up to $2 million, repayable over 30 years at 3.75% interest rates for small businesses and 2.75% for most private non-profits under the EIDL. Payments are deferred for the first year, but interest accrues during that time.

You’ll have to put up collateral for loans over $25,000 and a personal guarantee for loans exceeding $200,00.
If you qualify for an EIDL, you can use the money for any business expense (with a few exclusions).
Under the same provision, small business owners may be eligible for a one-time grant of up to $10,000 that you won’t have to pay back.

For more detail, please refer to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s “Economic Injury Disaster Loan Emergency Advance” overview page.

What Happens If You Enroll for PPP and EIDL?

If you decide to enroll for both the EIDL and PPP, the amount of the EIDL grant will be subtracted from the PPP amount eligible for forgiveness. In other words, you’ll ultimately wind up paying it back.

The 2020 CARES Act Can Help Your Law Firm

Law firms are uniquely poised to understand the full extent of the CARES Act and its protections. With the financial boost from the CARES Act, attorneys are more likely to retain talent and be ready to hit the ground running when court activity ramps up again.

CARES Act 2020 Resources

ARTICLE BY Reece Guida at PracticePanther.

For more on the CARES Act, see the National Law Review Coronavirus News section.

How to Get Loyal Clients

For the purpose of running a successful law practice, all clients are not created equal. As a lawyer, a critical element to running a fruitful practice is managing your time in an efficient manner. How and where you invest your time can make all the difference.

As a history buff, I love thinking about government, war, and political change what discussing topics that are relevant in business today. The Declaration of Independence states “all men are created equal.” While this may apply to how we treat others with respect and dignity, we can choose to be more selective with whom we invest our valuable time with.

Invest in Clients Who Have Already Invested in You

Imagine you’re standing in front of an apple tree teeming with fresh apples. Some of these apples are literally right in front of your face, while others are way up high in the tree. For the sake of efficiency, which apples would you select? The lower apples may seem like an obvious choice. And yet, many attorneys are still climbing ladders for those elevated apples. When discussing low hanging fruit with my attorney clients, I always start with a discussion of their existing clients. Our goal is to uncover opportunities, which will produce the highest possible value for the time invested.

As we all know, before you can begin selecting apples you must first plant the seeds and water the trees. As this relates to leveraging existing clients, there is a myth that must be eradicated first. The myth is simple; if you service your client properly, they will be loyal to you. If you believe this for even a moment, welcome back to the ‘80s!

Learn How to Develop Client Loyalty with Intent

Times have changed and so must you in the way you manage your client relationships. Statistically, it’s six times more work and energy to find a new client rather than to keep an existing one. That being said, we all have to step up our game to insure that client loyalty is developed with intent. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to develop a client retention and loyalty plan.

3 Steps to Plan for Client Retention and Loyalty

Before groaning at the idea of writing a plan, I assure you this shouldn’t take more than an hour to accomplish and can make the difference between success and failure in maintaining and building your law practice. Here are the three important elements of a client retention and loyalty plan:

Step 1: Rank Your Clients in a List

Develop a list of your key clients and rank them as an “A, B or C” client. As I stated earlier, all clients are not created equal, so be careful in how you rate these folks. I suggest three qualifiers for determining what makes up an “A, B or C” client.

Ask yourself the following questions about each client — and be honest.

How good is my relationship?
Can I develop and expand this relationship?
Are we friends socially or is our relationship more transactional in nature?
Does the client call me for general business advice or just about the deals?
Have I helped my client in ways beyond providing legal advice?

Next, try to determine how much opportunity the client has to grow or how connected this client may be.

Does the client have a solid network of decision makers that she can introduce me to?
Is the client’s company growing and expanding?
Are there opportunities to cross-market and share work with my partners?

The last factor in determining who to invest the most time with relates directly to the amount each client has invested with you and if you like or dislike this client.

Does this client invest a significant amount of dollars with you or did they invest almost nothing a few years ago?
Was this client a complete nightmare to deal with?
Did the client cost my firm money due to poor follow-through?
Did the client continually question and argue my rate?

Based on these three factors and any others that you believe to be important, invest 20 minutes to create a master list of your top A, B and C clients so that you can move on with step two of this plan.

Step 2: Use the Ranked List to Determine Which Clients to Invest In

Develop a list of contact and relationship building points to help ensure that we are investing the right amount of time with the right clients. Based on their ranking, you are going to do more for the higher-ranked clients and less for the lower-ranked clients. To be clear, if you have a “B” that you want to make an “A” then be sure to increase the amount of touch points with that specific client.

Here are a few examples of different touch points that you can use to develop stronger and stickier relationships:

Schedule a lunch or coffee meeting with your client.
Go out for drinks and get to know one another better.
Send a card on her birthday and for the holidays.
Take your client to a game or concert. (It’s important to know what she’s into.)
Call your client to see how you can help her business.
Email or call your client to congratulate her on something she’s accomplished professionally or personally.
Email your client with an article that is relevant to her business. (You can use RSS feeds for this.)
Invite your client to a firm event or another high level networking event.
Be a resource for your client. Find her a new vendor, strategic partner or an actual new client.

Use these ideas as a guideline to create your “A” column, where a number of these type activities would be used. The “B’s” would receive less contact and the “C’s” less again. For example, you might want to have lunch with your “A” clients four times a year, call each one monthly, email each one monthly and find a solid contact for her twice a year. Again, the “B” clients would get less of your attention and time, unless you want to make that client an “A-lister.”

These are just a few of the many things you can do to stay in constant contact and help ensure longevity with your clients. The side effect of this activity will be to open up more doors for additional business and much needed referrals. The stronger the relationship becomes, the less likely it is that a client will leave over price and the more open to referrals she will become.

Step 3: Make Time to Communicate with Your Clients

While it’s great to set up a plan like this, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on if you don’t implement it. My best suggestion here is to find 30 to 60 minutes a week and schedule time as “client loyalty and development time.” Without making the time and setting it aside, it will never happen for you.

There will always be work and distractions keeping you from this important task. Look at your calendar and find a spot weekly where you are least likely to be distracted or busy. You can even do some of this work on the train, in the evenings or on the weekends.

Develop Client Relationships to Retain Clients

What is a better use of your valuable time: choosing between retaining and developing relationships that already exist and have high potential for growth OR attending local networking events to essentially meet groups of strangers?

Though there is value in both activities, investing time with people who already know, like, and trust you bears fruit much more quickly.

ARTICLE BY Practice Panther.

For more on legal client management, see the Law Office Management section of the National Law Review.

Law Firms Are Increasingly Using Case Studies to Build Client Trust

Case studies are one of the most powerful forms of marketing communication. This is hardly a controversial stance; a survey of 600 marketers by the B2B Technology Marketing Group found that case studies were viewed as “the most effective tactic and format”. But while they are widely deployed in the tech industry, case studies are far less common in legal.

That’s changing, as more law firms realize the immense potential. For this reason, case studies were included in the “2020 Legal Marketing Trends Report”, which identifies the year’s most significant developments.

There are many differences between marketing a SaaS platform and marketing a law firm, of course, but let’s look at the commonalities. In both industries, marketers need to demonstrate that a service solves a problem. They need to articulate an approach and show how this provides value to clients.

Too many law firms expend all their efforts telling prospective clients why they are great. Case studies show why a firm is the best choice. They go beyond vague claims about “client service” to show what that looks like in action. They offer concrete evidence that a firm has what it takes to solve complex problems and they do so in the form of a compelling narrative with a problem, a cast of admirable characters, and a resolution.

Why has the legal industry been so slow to embrace case studies? Client confidentiality is a real concern. But often this barrier is less absolute than imagined. Ask your clients—you might be surprised how many are willing to speak openly about their experience with your firm.

It is interesting that law firms, which are built on the expertise of their people, tend to avoid telling stories and putting a human face to their marketing. You can often find more emotive storytelling from a financial tech company than from a corporate law firm. Part of this is the legal industry’s aversion to risk and the widespread belief that it’s better to be safe and boring than flashy and gimmicky.

The truth, however, is that people are expecting more concrete information from the companies and firms they interact with. The internet has trained us to check reviews, rating, testimonials, and case studies before making purchasing decisions. We no longer accept marketing claims at face value. Instead, we look for social validation.

Purchasing legal services is not the same as filling up a shopping cart on Amazon, of course. It’s far higher stakes. This means that social validation and concrete evidence are even more important.

In 2020, we’ll see more firms investing in video case studies. Video production is costly and some firms will have sticker-shock. But others will see the value in investing in core marketing content that can be repurposed for blog posts, newsletters, advertisements, podcasts, pitches, and proposals.

To choose your firm, clients need to know you and they need to trust you. Trust begins with a good story.

ARTICLE BY Lynn Foley of fSquared Marketing.

For more on building law firm client trust, see the National Law Review Law Office Management section.

Brand Storytelling for Lawyers

Creating a narrative is vital as an attorney. Just as you want to lead your potential jurors or a judge to the kinds of emotional conclusions that will drive the right kind of verdict or settlement, you need to guide your potential clients on their understanding of how your brand was formed. Brand storytelling is the perfect vehicle to connect outsiders with your successes, your story, and your law firm’s core values.

What is Brand Storytelling for Law Firms and Why Do You Need It?

Brand storytelling blends natural creativity with marketing efforts, establishing a marketing tool that helps firms foster more genuine connections with clients and write a narrative that people remember. As an attorney, you can use this technique to draw in new clients and increase client retention.

Build Emotional Connection

Brand storytelling gives potential clients a way to become engaged with your brand in a personal way—a necessity amongst younger demographics like Millennials and Gen X.

A recent study from Cone Communications shows that 87% of consumers would purchase a product based on values alone. Brand storytelling allows these potential clients to see your law firm as “standing for something” and shows the human side of a brand.

Create a Marketing Foundation

Storytelling is also a flexible marketing tool. Once you have shaped your brand’s narrative and started utilizing it, you can continue using the dialogue you build with your brand story to engage with people in different ways. Consider engaging through social media to strengthen the connection you have started to create. You can also use the narrative you have crafted to guide content marketing strategies, increase traffic to your web properties, and ultimately improve conversions. For example, a multi-part series produced by a law firm may boost traffic and encourage community engagement with your brand.

Hone Your Core Values

When people choose a law firm for legal services, they want to know that they are part of something that is both bigger than themselves and aligned with their core values. In the process of creating a cohesive narrative about your law firm’s brand and how it has come to be, you have the opportunity to really hone in on those core values—and core clients—that are most attractive for your law firm.

Consider Apple, which has developed a commercial campaign showing its users changing the world and finding their own paths (and using their products along the way). The company has developed a reputation as an innovator and now uses that reputation to frame its customers’ stories in a similar light. By using a similar strategy, you can reinforce your own competence and abilities while still making your clients the focus of your marketing efforts. A good example for a consumer based practice would be the showcasing the journey that a family law attorney helps their client on before, during, and after their divorce.

Key Questions for Developing Your Law Firm’s Story

Writing your story and editing it to suit your audience is a powerful way to change how you market yourself and shape perception of your brand. There are three key questions to consider when you are developing your law firm’s story.

What are Your Goals?

Although any type of legal marketing has the goal of building your law firm, the reason for presenting your brand story when and how you choose to will depend on the specific goals for doing so. If your firm is experiencing rapid growth, your brand story might be a reflection on successes and celebration of upcoming high-profile projects. If you are in the midst of a rebranding campaign, you may want to change public perception about your brand or give your firm a metaphorical “face lift.” By defining the ideal outcome of your storytelling efforts, you can determine whether or not it is an effective tool for your brand.

What is Your Emotional Hook?

An emotional hook speaks to the character and vision of your law firm’s brand while encouraging visitors to dig deeper and learn more. Explore client feedback to find out how your services have made their lives easier. If you’re an employment attorney, you may find that clients feel supported and validated with you as their attorney. Those working in bankruptcy law may speak to the overwhelming relief their clients feel once they are free of their debt. Always acknowledge the strong emotions your legal services bring out in people. A quarterly case review is an excellent way to find out which cases reflect your core values and drive your brand growth.

How Can You Tell the Most Compelling Brand Story?

Whether you choose a three-act structure, a compare-and-contrast model, or even tell your story backwards, every brand story should include a few key items: the background of your business, the “characters” that drive the action of your story, the challenges that you and your law firm have faced, and the failures and ultimate successes you have earned. Then, explore the role your brand will have in your community as the years pass, how the brand will evolve and give back, and how clients will benefit.

Storytelling marks a major shift in how law firms big and small are making a name for themselves in the world. Social media and digital technology make pushing this aspect of your marketing out as easy as ever. By telling your firm’s brand’s story in an honest and approachable way, you can show current clients that they made the right choice and win over your future clients.

ARTICLE BY Meranda M. Vieyra of Denver Legal Marketing.

For more on legal marketing see the Law Office Management section of the National Law Review.

Avoiding RFP Mistakes to Win More Business with Matthew Pinn, Principal of RFP Advisory Group [PODCAST]

Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst podcast. Today, my guest is Matthew Pinn, Principal of RFP Advisory Group, a consulting company that specializes in managing requests for proposals, RFPs, in the legal industry. Matthew and his company work with law firms in their response to RFPs as well as with corporate counsel who want to use the RFP process to better manage their legal span. Matthew will share some of his experience in this area with us today. Matthew, welcome to the program.

Matthew: Hello, thanks for having me.

Sharon: So glad to have you. So, can you tell us a little bit about your background and your career path?

Matthew: Sure, I have a little bit of a unique career path as do most in the legal marketing industry. I actually started my career after graduating from Boston College. My first job was at a talent agent in Hollywood. Yeah, so I worked with a talent agency where we were pitching actors and actresses for film and television roles. So it was kind of an interesting first job. One of the nice things about the talent agency industry, it was a very fast-paced, high-pressure environment and after I had worked there for a few years, it was a really good transition to move from selling actors and actresses over to selling lawyers and law firms. So yeah, it really was. It was a great training ground as my first job, but it really set me up nicely to move into the legal marketing area because I was used to working with some unique personalities in some challenging instances, but my first career in the legal industry was at Latham & Watkins, one of the large global firms based out of California.

So after kind of cutting my teeth a little bit at Latham & Watkins, I then moved back to the East Coast, where I worked under Beth Cuzzone at Goulston & Storrs, a mid-size regional firm in Boston, and I just thought that was great for my career progression. I really got to wear a lot of different hats, but after a few years there, I worked at another mid-size firm, Robinson+Cole, before moving over to what is now K&L Gates. When I first went there, it was a mid-size firm of about 600 lawyers in eight offices, but in the 12 years that I worked there, it grew to a firm that’s one of the largest in the world that ended up—when I left it, it had 48 offices on five continents and nearly 2,000 lawyers. So it was a career path that I think started a little unique in that I didn’t go straight into the legal industry, but once I got in, I did have a lot of experience at different-size law firms.

Sharon: When you were with law firms, you were in marketing and business development, and you had quite an extensive career it sounds like. What made you decide to focus solely on RFPs?

Matthew: So I think the main reason was I saw a real demand in the industry for people with a certain type of expertise. One of the projects that I worked on when I was at K&L Gates was, we revamped our entire RFP response process globally. So when you have such a large firm like that and you’re responding to nearly 200 RFPs a year, you really need to have a formal process installed in the firm to make that you’re making the most of these opportunities, and as I took a deeper dive into that industry, it timed well with the advent of legal operations and legal procurement.

What we saw was just a tremendous growth in the volume of RFPs that we were receiving and we really needed to quickly identify best practices in order to use this to drive revenue. What I found was I got a lot more involved with both the legal operations and legal procurement side to really learn where their industry was going. I did some presentations with the buy-in legal counsel, where I talked to legal procurement and legal operations folks about how they improved their RFPs from the law firm’s perspective—and how they could ask smarter questions to get better answers from the law firm. So what I realized was that I had developed a strong set of skills based on how to negotiate with corporate counsel and how to respond to put together a winning RFP response.

What I saw in the market though was more and more companies issuing RFPs, but not just the Fortune 100 or Fortune 200 companies. We saw the same process trickling down to smaller companies and I had a lot of general counsel call me while I was in the law firm saying, “Hey, we’d like to do an RFP. We’re hearing about all the great results they’re getting, but I’m not quite sure how to manage it. Do you have a template? I’m really just trying to learn about how to do something like that.” And so what I realized was I think there was an opportunity for someone like me to work with these companies who might not have a full-time legal operations staff, but who were still interested in using an RFP and then I would also be able to help them manage the process because RFPs can often be time-consuming, and why a lot of general counsel put them off is they just feel like they’re stretched so thin that they don’t have the time and resources to manage the process.

Sharon: So I think you said it when you said that some legal marketers and lawyers, law firms hear the word “RFP” and they think, “Oh that only applies to large firms. It doesn’t apply to my firm,” if they’re a smaller firm, but you’re seeing something different in the marketplace. Can you tell us a little bit about the work you do on both sides of the desk?

Matthew: Yes, absolutely. We’re seeing a definite change in the market, not only in the volume of RFPs, but also the complexity and the sophistication of them because the people who are issuing RFPs have really progressed in their jobs. So what originally started as procurement at moving in and you had people procuring these RFPs who didn’t understand the legal industry. They might have used procurement to purchase raw materials or other services in a company, but the legal department had always been kind of closed to the procurement group. But what we saw happening was more and more companies were saying, “Why can’t we use the same procurement method in purchasing legal services?”

So one of the changes that we saw originally was really these Fortune 100 and Fortune 200 companies who had massive outside counsel spend budgets. If you have $100 million that you spend on outside counsel, you have a lot of leverage with law firms in pushing these RFPs and it really gives these companies a good chance to not only compare the law firms to one another, but also to really negotiate the prices against each other a bit. When we saw that happening with the large companies, it then trickled down more to the smaller companies, but we saw an added technology that I think has made the evolution a little easier, and what I mean by that is, historically, a lot of RFPs were issued via a Word document and if you’re receiving them and grading them, you were doing it manually and the whole process was time-consuming and not very easy to compare the answers from different law firms. But what happened was there have been companies that have created software that has made it a lot easier for general counsel and legal operations to issue RFPs. There are three companies in particular that have taken over a large part of the legal market—Pursue It, BanyanRFP and RFP360 are three that I see a lot out there. These software programs really allow general counsel or legal operations to much more efficiently issue the RFP because it’s all done through the software program and then when they’re comparing the answers, you literally can see how each different firm answered the same question and they can have multiple people score them and the whole process. The data that’s collected is then already all collected in your software program and that can be used for benchmarking down the line.

The whole process has really evolved with the technology and I think the more and more that technology progresses, the more and more smaller companies will be issuing RFPs, which is why I think you’ll see more and more smaller law firms who didn’t think that they were going to be impacted by the RFP process will now really have to come up with a strategy and plan how to use them. And one other thing on that, the thing I’ve noticed too, is because of the unbundling of legal services—and this is going to impact the solo law firms or the boutique and mid-size ones in competing for working against the larger law firm—is a lot of corporate counsel and legal operations have unbundled their work. So they’ve categorized their work, for example, in categories such as complex bet-the-company matters, core legal services and commodity work, and what they’re realizing is they can use different law firms for different types of work to save money and create cost efficiencies. If they’ve categorized a certain type of their work as commodity work that you don’t need a $1,000 an hour lawyer to work on, historically they might have felt it was easier to just use the same firm for a lot of this work. Now, they’re often using an RFP to compare other options and some of those options are smaller law firms or mid-size law firms or alternative legal service providers. They’re now kind of comparing that work to say, “O.K., we know we’re going to use this Am Law 100 firm for our bet-the-company litigation, but for our filings and for some of the lower-level work, are there other options that are more cost-effective where the value and service will still be up to par?”

You asked me how I’m working with each of the different types, law firms and corporate counsel. So for corporate counsel, I work with them when, for example, they might not have a legal operations or legal procurement team and they might be a legal department of one to ten people, and they just don’t understand the RFP process and they want to have someone come in and manage them and guide them through it. But I also work with, for example, some companies that have no general counsel and one of my clients is that right now where they have no general counsel, but they’re not happy with their current firm and so they’ve said, “Hey, what are our other options,” and because they don’t know the legal industry and the RFP process as well, I basically help them set the table and then help them make the decision as to what might be the best new legal strategy for them. And then for the larger, companies, I’ll work with them more on consulting on specific initiatives that they might have.

For a lot of the larger companies, we’re seeing the convergence method as the number one reason for an RFP. They’ll be using 100 law firms and they’re spending $10 million a year on all 100 firms and they say, “We want to reduce the number of firms we use down to 20 law firms and in that same time, we’re going to try to reduce that $10 million spent to $8 million,” and they typically do that by trading a higher volume of work to get a better price or create more efficiencies.

So, those are kind of the three levels of corporate clients, how they would use my tech service and then for law firms, it’s really just two ways. There are some law firms who will come in and say, “Hey, we want to install an RFP response process. So from the minute the RFP hits the lawyer’s inbox to even after it’s been submitted and you’re collecting feedback, we want to install a formal process so that all the lawyers understand what these opportunities are, what the best practices are and how to kind of manage it as law firm.” And as part of that, I’ll often work with firms on presentations about the latest trends or if they have a specific RFP opportunity—it might be one of their top clients and they don’t want to take any chances.

Sharon: I suppose that part of that process that you have offered is just helping them decide which ones not to respond to also.

Matthew: Absolutely, I think that is one of the biggest mistakes law firms make these days is they don’t have an efficient evaluation process or what we call a go or no-go process, and particularly at law firms, you’re dealing with owners of a company and multiple owners of a company, and every time a partner receives an RFP, the first thought in their mind is, “Hey, this could be more compensation for me. I can make more money. Let’s give it a shot.” And you have to really take a step back and evaluate each opportunity as to if it’s a go or a no-go and you really want to have that be a firm decision as opposed to an individual lawyer’s decision because sometimes you can have competing interests.

Sharon: Also, just that RFPs are such a time suck and so intense of time, effort and thought. I mean, you just want to be very judicious about the ones you respond to. So you give a presentation with the five mistakes that law firms make in responding to an RFP and you just said that one of them is just the go or no-go. What are the other mistakes that they make?

Matthew: Sure, like I mentioned, not having a formal process is what I see as the biggest mistake just because too often if you don’t have a formal process—and what I mean by that is actual formal guidelines too, because if you’re the legal marketer, you need some leverage to push back against opportunities that you don’t think make sense and it’s much easier to say, “Hey, these are the firm guidelines.” You don’t want a partner of a law firm thinking that the BD person is trying to limit their ability to get new work.

Next I think would be the failure to communicate the opportunity internally. So when an opportunity comes to the firm, how is that information communicated and who’s it communicated to? Which lawyers in the firm know about the opportunity? What practice chairs or leaders need to know about it? How does it impact other strategy that the firm’s doing? Are we going after work from a competitor where this might not even be a good opportunity, but you wouldn’t know that if the information wasn’t shared properly? A lot of times, you’ll have RFPs coming into a law firm where you might have 20 different points of entry at a firm with a specific client. If you’re responding to an RFP from that company, you want to make sure that all the people who do any work for that company are aware of it. You also want to make sure that you don’t agree to certain conditions that are going to impact other work that you do in the firm which I see happen frequently with law firms, where they’ll agree to something for a small piece of work and then find out that that same agreement impacts the work in a completely different practice area and they’ll end up losing some money in deal. So that’s another issue.

I think the other mistake that law firms make is their knowledge management system as far as what information they are collecting and extracting from their lawyers and firm management and how that information is making its way into the RFP responses. For example, all law firms collect representative matters and you might have a bullet about your corporate practice that says, “We represented Company A in an M&A transaction in China for $200 million.” That’s really just a statement, and what RFPs are now looking for is more examples of what makes you different than other law firms. What they want to know is for that M&A transaction you did, what was it about your service that was better than had another law firm been selected? What is the competitive advantage of the value that the client got? And too often, law firms don’t have this information in the legal marketing departments. A lot of it is still inside the heads of lawyers and getting that information from the lawyers into a formal system in your firm that can be used for different pitches is one of the biggest struggles I think legal marketing departments in particular face. They’ll often tell you a majority of the RFP response time was spent chasing down information, and a lot of lawyers will turn around and say, “Geez, I’ve already given you this information,” or, “I’ve already done this,” and so this becomes kind of a constant battle for firms to really manage that data and then turn it into a weapon to help them compete against other firms.

Pricing is a major part of our piece and I think that’s the fourth mistake when it comes to law firms with their approach to pricing. Very often, an RFP will come in and the party that gets it or the team that’s responding to it, might not get to the pricing section until later on down the line and then they’ll realize, “Geez, we don’t have enough information to even provide a fixed fee or to provide a competitive fee against other firms,” and then the Q&A question deadline might already be gone or you’re down to the last 24 hours and you’re kind of scrambling around to see what kind of discount you can get approved from firm management.

The firms that don’t make these mistakes, they’ve either brought in a pricing director who’s usually implemented a system that kind of managed the pricing part of the RFP responses, or even the firms that don’t have that, they often have a committee that approves AFA’s or a committee that will look at the pricing because, oftentimes with pricing, some of the biggest battles we’ll face on the legal marketing side are with the actual relationship partner because they want to give a bigger discount than the firm thinks we should give because that’s that partner’s work and he doesn’t want to lose it, so he or she might say, “Hey, I want to give a 20 percent discount,” and sometimes the firm has to look at that and say, “That’s going to really kill the profit margin on this matter. We think 10 percent is more appropriate.” Those are the types of arguments that we’re seeing in our discussions with law firms. Having a formal system and process in place at least helps you manage those situations a lot more efficiently.

And the last, and probably the most important thing as far as mistakes firms are making is—and there was a survey recently in one of the publications that said 50 percent of lawyers at law firms don’t feel like they can clearly and distinctively pitch their firm’s competitive advantage, and that’s really what RFPs are asking is what is it about your firm that’s better than these other firms, and to a buyer of legal services, law firms look very similar. The questions they get back on RFPs are very similar. Their websites are very similar. We all understand that there are many lawyers who can handle legal expertise and who can handle the legal function of the matter, but in the RFP, they want to know what else makes you different. Is it because of where you’re located? Is it because this is a specialty of the firm? Is it because you know the judge and the courtroom? What is it that we should select you? And I always say the firm should have an answer that when the general counsel gets asked by the president of the company, “Hey, why did you hire ABC law firm,” that’s exactly what your competitive advantage is and that’s got to be clearly defined in the RFP, and too often firms just aren’t compelling with their value proposition.

Sharon: So you’ve talked about the five questions that a law firm should ask before they even respond to an RFP or before they start—I want to say pen to paper or when they put their fingers to the keyboard. What are the five questions that law firms should ask themselves before they even start?

Matthew: Sure, so the five questions I would suggest they ask are, number one, how did the opportunity originate. Just because there’s an RFP opportunity for your firm does not mean it’s worth the time and resources to go after it. You want to look at things like, “Have we previously done work for the company?” If you haven’t, the chances of winning the work are significantly lower. At a lot of firms, it might be in the 10 percent to 20 percent where you’re going to win work, whereas, if it’s a current client, you might be at the 60 percent, 70 percent or 80 percent, so that’s a real strong factor, but you also want to look at the relationships. General counsel moved from the company. Maybe you’ve never done work for the company, but you have worked with that particular general counsel, or you went to law school with a woman who’s now issuing an RFP at a company. So you want to look at pride in their work. You want to look at relationship connections. Are there any contacts in the company? But then you also want to have the ability to understand why they’re issuing the RFP. Are they unhappy with their current counsel? Are they looking to reduce rates? Are they expanding and they want a firm that has more global capabilities? If you don’t know why they’re issuing the RFP, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to come up with a good solution to their problems noted in the RFP. So you want to make sure that you at least have access to that information and if you don’t, there are a lot of RFPs that I think are used as stalking horses where they might be happy with their current counsel, but they say, “Hey, let’s issue an RFP and see what other type of information we can learn,” or they’ll use it as a price check and then they’ll go back to their current counsel and say, “Geez, you guys said you could do this matter for $1 million. We think the market rate is closer to $700,000,” and then if they aren’t willing to budge, then maybe you do look at the RFP on the responders, but you want to be careful to make sure you’re not just being used as a stalking horse.

You want to look at, are you eligible? For example, if you’re responding to an RFP from a bank and you’re a small law firm, you might not have the cybersecurity in place to even pass their requirements or you might be conflicted due to certain types of work, so you want to make sure you are even eligible before you waste a lot of resources.

The next one I think is the toughest one to do and that’s, what are our chances of winning? And this again, who’s making the decision as to what our chances of winning are, because if you leave it just to a partner, he or she will often say, “Well, what’s the harm in not responding?” But what you really want to do is say, “What are our chances of winning?” You don’t want a partner who’s going to say, “Well, I want to respond to as many as we can. It’s a good way to get our firm’s name out there.” You really want to know exactly from them, who are our competitors. Is there a realistic chance we’re going to win? Is Nike going to choose a really small firm for their bet-the-company case? Probably not. So you want to have a realistic way to provide feedback so it’s not just from the partner who originated the opportunity, but also either someone on the management committee or practice group chair or the marketing team who might say, “Geez, we’ve responded to 20 RFPs from this company and we’ve never won. Why have we been doing this?”

And that leads to what I think is one of the next things, which is, what resources will be required? There are some RFPs where they might only ask a handful of questions and you can get a response done fairly easily between marketing and the partner, but there are other RFP responses that might require a lot of manual time spent collecting data, filling out forms—some of the government RFPs in particular, you have to fill out a lot of forms and those forms take a lot of time, and does the firm have the bandwidth to spend time on that?

And then, lastly, is the work; if you want it, is it desirable and profitable? Do you think when negotiations are done, that you’re going to be able to come up with a price to do the work where the firm’s still going to make a profit on it and is it the work you want to do? There are evaluation factors when it comes to the type of work. If it’s low-level, commodity work, is that the work that your practice group wants to be known for doing or the firm as a whole, or is it a different type of work? So it’s just something to give consideration as to will this be something down the line that we want to dedicate lawyers in our firm to?

Sharon: I’m sitting here just nodding my head thinking back on my days of doing a lot of RFPs, responding to RFPs, and when you talk about a system, I’m sure everybody remembers that one that came in. I remember when it used to sit on a partner’s desk beneath a stack of others until the day before and they go, “Oh my gosh, I think there’s something due tomorrow,” and everybody would be scrambling around, so a system is a really great idea.

So what are you seeing for the future in RFPs? You mentioned technology and that makes a lot of sense. What else do you see? You’ve said it’s trickling down to just—

Matthew: I also think what we’ve started to see a lot of now—and I think that trend’s going to continue—is what I call almost pricing audits. So it’s an RFP, but it’s not necessarily focused on your legal capabilities. A lot of times, it is focused just on your pricing and your billing models.

For example, I did an RFP recently for a massive company and they owned a lot of sub-entities and they originally had each entity handle their own outside counsel spends. They created their own deals and their own arrangements. So the master company said, “That doesn’t make any sense. We’re going to do a broad panel for all of our sub-companies and they’re going to all have to agree to our terms and conditions and our outside counsel guidelines,” and they’ll put their rules in these guidelines that firms, if they do work for them, are going to have to abide by, and so, for this particular example, if you are negotiating—originally we had all these smaller deals—so you might have been doing $5 million with one company, $2 million with another, $6 million with another. Once they collected all of them, it was $20 million and then they came to the law firms and said, “O.K., we want really good volume discounts. We’re not giving you $2 million; we’re giving you $20 million of work.”

We’re starting to see a lot more RFPs that are going out really with a price focus and the rise of the outside counsel guidelines is going to continue, and what I mean by that is historically when a law firm and a company would agree to a working arrangement, the law firm would issue a terms of engagement, and basically these were the rules that the law firm said is what you have to follow. Companies have gotten a lot smarter and legal departments have created their own guidelines, and so what we’re seeing in these guidelines is, for example, “We don’t want first-year associates working on our matters.” “You can’t bill more than X hours a day on a particular matter,” or “We want a secondment included with work.” So basically, it’s a wish list of what these companies now expect from their law firms. “We want free CLE training,” or whatever their desires are or whatever their complaints are, they’ve worked them into the outside counsel guidelines and they go out to law firms and say, “If you want to do our work, you have to agree to these.” And so what we’ve seen is a lot more negotiation.

For example, I had one recently where the company asked a law firm for 25 or 30 different pieces of the outside counsel as far as what they wanted, and we went back and forth and negotiated with them and it was determined to be millions of dollars and I think you’re going to see more of that in the future because now you have more counterparts. So instead of it just being the general counsel and the partner, you’ve got legal operations and legal procurement who are now acting as the counterparts to the law firm’s pricing director, business development people, and project management people, and so now you’ve got another layer of communication and connections and I think we’re going to see that grow where those two groups of professionals become a lot more involved in the RFP process and become a lot more efficient in how everything works.

And then, lastly, I’d say one trend I’m seeing a lot now that I think will continue is firms that had the preferred panel providers—they would put preferred firms and say, “O.K., you’re one of the firms on our panel,” but what I’m seeing is, let’s say it’s intellectual property work, they’re asking three types of firms to be invited on their panel and they’re selecting a large global law firm, a mid-size or boutique law firm and then maybe an alternative legal service provider, and when a matter comes up, instead of it automatically going to their preferred firm, they’re saying, “O.K., let’s look at our different options. For this particular matter, what’s the best combination? Is this a bet-the company case where we need to win, so we’re going to use the top choice, or is this something where we think it’s not as high a priority. We think the smaller or mid-size firm could handle that work.” And we’re starting to see more of those types of discussions going on.

Sharon: That makes a lot of sense. I want to say the old-fashioned world of RFPs seems to be really changing and catching up, just as law firms are in terms of technology and in terms of leveraging what’s out there today that other industries are already making use of. Matt, thank you so much for sharing this with us today. I think that’s a lot of great food for thought, and to everybody listening, that wraps up another episode of the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst and if you’d like to contact Matt or the RFP Advisory Group, we’ll have the contact information in the show notes, and if you like what you heard and you would like to hear more, you can subscribe at iTunes or wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. We’ll be back next time with another thought-provoking guest who can help move your firm forward. Thank you so much for listening.

END OF AUDIO

Sharon Berman on the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast, Berbay Marketing & Public Relations Firm.

E-Filing is Coming, E-Filing is Coming!

Spreading the news that e-filing is coming might not have quite the same importance as the message delivered by Paul Revere and his fellow riders in 1775 – but e-filing is still worth noting. I attended the Maine State Bar Association winter meeting in January, which gave Maine practitioners a sneak preview of the state courts’ new e-filing system, File & Serve. It was an interesting and informative session.

The tentative plan, as attendees were informed, is to begin the process of rolling out e-filing at the end of this year. As many already know, e-filing is likely to be introduced first for Penobscot and Piscataquis Counties. But, of importance for appellate practitioners, it sounds like the court is also considering including not only the Business Court but also the Law Court in the initial implementation.

We are still waiting to see all of the rules surrounding e-filing, but the system that was previewed at the winter meeting appears to be user-friendly and promises to significantly streamline the process for filing with the Law Court. And, happily, filings will be easily available online (without cost). Also of note, the e-filing system includes a search tool, re:Search, that will make it easy to find previous filings – including Law Court briefs.

These tools will be very helpful for the appellate practitioner. But, it also means that appellate practitioners (as well as any other lawyer), will need to pay attention to the new filing system. As we were reminded, Rule 5.3 of the Maine Rules of Professional Responsibility obligates lawyers to supervise their assistants and ensure compliance with all filing requirements.

So take note: e-filing is coming!

ARTICLE BY Joshua D. Dunlap of Pierce Atwood LLP.

Learn more about e-filing on the National Law Review Administrative & Regulatory law page.

Law Firms and Bar Associations Must Plan Now for Coronavirus Outbreak

Our sources in Washington are indeed very worried about the coronavirus emerging from China.

Many of our sources believe that containment will not work.

In the event of a major pandemic, “social distancing” will be enforced. Schools, restaurants, movie theaters – and even law firms – will be closed, perhaps for an indefinite time, presenting unprecedented challenges.

At the very least, bar associations and law firms should begin thinking about logistics now using “peace time” wisely.

Viruses that originate in an animal and jump to a human can and often do change or mutate, presenting challenges to doctors and researchers. Especially during rapidly developing situations, reporters will likely demand simple and definitive answers, even in situations where simple and definitive answers don’t exist. As well, bloggers with political agendas may accidentally or purposely report fact as fiction and vice versa.

On the internet, anyone can be a “reporter” with the ability to publish immediately and without the safety net of editors, fact-checkers and other traditional media gatekeepers. Consider also the pressure on traditional media of balancing the need to report immediately vs. reporting accurately. Given those factors, the emerging coronavirus provides another fertile field for confusion with consequences.

The Spanish flu killed some 50 million to 100 million people worldwide over about a year in 1918-19 — one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. The 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak turned out to be less than a pandemic, but caused 774 deaths in 17 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The 2009 swine flu (H1N1) outbreak featured high rates of human- to-human transmission, yet was thought to have been less lethal than originally feared, with a minimum of 18,449 confirmed deaths. In fact, though, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has since estimated the global death toll at 284,000 — 15 times those confirmed cases.

All of these examples should serve as cautionary tales for how we approach and talk about this latest potential pandemic.

I reached out to Peter Sandman, perhaps the United States’ pre-eminent risk communication speaker and consultant. Here’s what Sandman told me in his email reply:

The key lesson here: The word “pandemic” means an infectious disease has spread to lots of people in lots of places. To be a pandemic, an outbreak has to be widespread and intense. It doesn’t have to be severe; 1918 was, 2009 wasn’t — at least in comparison.

This coronavirus? The experts are pretty sure it’s going to go pandemic. They don’t know yet how severe it will be, though many are guessing it will be closer to 2009 than to 1918. Even a mild pandemic kills a lot of people, simply because a small percentage of a huge number is a lot of people. And a mild pandemic can certainly be disruptive: hospital overcrowding, absenteeism, supply-chain problems, etc.

If it’s mild and stays mild, it won’t be catastrophic.

Whether it’s mild or severe, though, a pandemic eventually makes containment efforts futile, and therefore a waste of effort. Patient isolation, contact tracing and monitoring, quarantines and travel restrictions are the four main containment tools. The first two are conventional. The last two are controversial, not because they’re less effective than the first two but because they have bigger downsides.

None of the four, separately or together, can stop a pandemic. They can slow it a little, which isn’t nothing: It buys time for preparedness (emotional as well as medical and logistical). But as soon as the virus is spreading widely in a place, that place has no further use for containment.

The risk communication lesson now: Stop telling people that containment will “work.” If the coronavirus goes pandemic, as noted immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and nearly every other expert expects, eventually (and probably pretty soon) it will be spreading widely in the U.S., too, and containment won’t make sense.

One feature of the 2009 flu outbreak was the changing nature of advice. At first, pregnant women were to receive priority for inoculations. Then, it was anyone with a compromised immune system, followed by those over the age of 60. As I recall, during this era before social media exploded and become a main source for news, reporters, columnists and other pundits were quick to criticize the CDC, the World Health Organization and other federal, state and local health officials for the lack of definitive advice and prognostication.

As this is being written, there is no way to tell whether the coronavirus is going to be highly infectious but not lethal or highly infectious with a high degree of lethality. It might even burn itself out — or it may seem to go into hiatus but then come roaring back in the fall (as did the Spanish flu).

Government agencies are already placing visitors from China into quarantine. This may suddenly escalate, with the closure of airports and other ports of entry. Stock markets may dramatically tumble — but then recover just days later. Or they may not. And if things really escalate, offices, schools, malls, theaters and other venues may close — and grocery shelves may empty. In the face of this uncertainty and volatility, prudent bar association and law firm leaders should be using “peace time” to prepare for the worst.

Now is the time to:

Examine your sick-leave policies. Family-leave policies, too, should be looked at because many employees may unilaterally decide to hunker down at home, especially if they have small children or elderly relatives to care for.
Encourage and utilize good hygiene practices (e.g., hand-washing, coughing into the crook of the elbow instead of the hand).
Consider what a travel ban might do to your business.
Remind your employees — and yourself — to depend on only the most reliable sources for information about coronavirus. The WHO, the CDC and state and local health boards are reliable. Facebook isn’t — and the advice given by the pundits on cable television must be taken with more than the proverbial grain of salt.
Remember to remind all of your stakeholders that situations like this are fluid and the information given out now may be preliminary and subject to change. Even advice from the CDC and WHO can change, depending on the facts at hand.

Employees, customers and other stakeholders will cross-check what you tell them against other sources. If you mislead them, they’ll hold it against you. Be especially careful not to sound over-reassuring or overconfident, which Sandman says are the two most common crisis risk communication mistakes other than outright dishonesty (also common, sadly).

ARTICLE BY Bruce M. Hennes of Hennes Communications.

For more on Coronavirus risk mitigation, see the National Law Review Health Law & Managed Care section.

Know What You Have

Secure the Environment

Device Management and Compliance

Collaboration and Communication

Getting the Results

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Transcript

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Third-Party Waiver Exception Doctrines Applied to PR Firms

Decisions Finding No Waiver

Cases Where Courts Found Waiver

Best Practices

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How the CARES Act Applies to Lawyers

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for Attorneys, Legal Administrators, and Staff

Coverage for Payroll Costs

Coverage for Sole Proprietor or Independent Contractor

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Loan Forgiveness

Employee Retention Credit

Payroll Tax Deferment

Economic Injury Disaster Loan Emergency Advance (EIDL)

What Happens If You Enroll for PPP and EIDL?

The 2020 CARES Act Can Help Your Law Firm

CARES Act 2020 Resources

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Invest in Clients Who Have Already Invested in You

Learn How to Develop Client Loyalty with Intent

3 Steps to Plan for Client Retention and Loyalty

Step 1: Rank Your Clients in a List

Step 2: Use the Ranked List to Determine Which Clients to Invest In

Step 3: Make Time to Communicate with Your Clients

Develop Client Relationships to Retain Clients

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What is Brand Storytelling for Law Firms and Why Do You Need It?

Build Emotional Connection

Create a Marketing Foundation

Hone Your Core Values

Key Questions for Developing Your Law Firm’s Story

What are Your Goals?

What is Your Emotional Hook?

How Can You Tell the Most Compelling Brand Story?

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