BIG

BD
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Social media
is the new frontier but
the face-to-face
relationship is still an
integral part of bringing
in new business.
By Glenn Kauth

26 June 2009 w w w.C ANADIAN Law yermag.com

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A
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$ $ lawyer with a small Victoria firm, Erik
Magraken doesn’t have the luxury of
a business development department
to help him drum up clients. His
firm still does lots of marketing,
but Magraken has also taken it
upon himself to do some of
the work on his own, much
of it from home. “What I’ve
done is I try to commit
one to two hours a day,
usually in the evening,
for business develop-
ment and law firm marketing,” says Magraken,
a 32-year-old partner practising personal injury
law at MacIsaac & Co.
But while people like Magraken work to get
their names out there, lawyers at major firms find
they, too, are having to work harder to market
themselves. With the recession taking a toll on
business mergers, corporate lawyers are finding
themselves with extra time to seek out new work.
While insolvency files and litigation stemming
from the financial distress are filling part of the
gap, the economic turmoil nevertheless presents
a new imperative for practitioners, says Deborah
Glendinning, a partner and co-chairwoman of
the national class actions specialty group at Osler
Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in Toronto. “Obviously,
in these economic times, business development is
something that people need to be focused on.”
Adding to the pressure to mingle at conferenc-
es and shine off the clubs for golfing season are
changes with the profession itself. Rick Powers,
a lawyer and associate dean at the University of
Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, says
the big firms can no longer count on rainmakers,
the three or four senior partners with connec-
tions, to bring in work that fills the in-baskets
of junior lawyers. “Those people are retiring,” he
notes, adding the impetus to network is some-
thing many lawyers find difficult. “It doesn’t
come naturally to them. In most cases, they’ve
never had to do it. Times are changing. They’re
expected to do it now.”
But as Glendinning points out, generating
new files shouldn’t be about forcing people into
situations they’re not comfortable with. “It really
is a very personal and individual thing,” says
Glendinning, who spoke recently about business
development at the Rotman’s Business Leadership
for Women Lawyers program. Younger lawyers
with smaller Rolodexes (if they even bother to
have one), for example, might better spend their
time publishing articles on developments in their
field in order to build their reputations.
Glendinning prefers a personal touch whereby
she makes extra efforts to get to know her corpo-
rate clients through daily interactions so she can
later ask them to lunch, a golf game, or even less
obvious activities like skiing or a hockey game. “It
could be an additional five or 10 minutes on every
phone call that could add up to an hour every
day,” she says.
But as with so many aspects of life these days,
a new key strategy for success appears to lie with
technology. Magraken’s one to two hours a day,
for example, involves for the most part sitting in
front of a computer screen updating his Twitter
feed, his Facebook profile, and his own Insurance
Corp. of British Columbia Law Blog (icbclaw.com/
blog). Magraken also posts content on JDSupra.
com, a web site for sharing legal documents, as
well as a new Canadian web site aiming to be a
hub for legal information, advicescene.com.
“It’s basically old-fashioned wine-and-cheese
schmoozing but it’s done online,” says Magraken,
who notes success in Internet-based marketing
now involves going beyond having a static web
site. Instead, generating files requires regularly
keeping current on developments in his field,
which in his case means tracking cases dealing
w w w. C ANADIAN Law yermag.com June 2009 27

with the ICBC, the sole provider of auto
coverage in that province. “I don’t provide
legal advice on my blog but I do provide
a heckuva lot of information,” he says.
Finding that information isn’t always easy,
but often what he does is tease out an
interesting tidbit within a court judgment
involving ICBC and then writes about it.
Blogs aren’t new, but Twitter is a rela-
tively recent phenomenon for many peo-
ple. It limits people to 140-character post-
ings that are basically micro-blogging.
That doesn’t leave much room for posting
useful legal information but, as Magraken
points out, Twitter is part of his overall
web strategy for driving traffic to his blog.
The idea is that many of the 949 people
who follow him on Twitter will click over
to the ICBC law site.
At the same time, Twitter has been a
great source for networking with other
lawyers as well as people who know about
using the web to generate business. “What
I get from Twitter is I learn how to better
market myself online through the people
I follow,” he says.
The key is search-engine optimization.
“My goal is always to be on the first page
of these search phrases that people use,” he
says. Recently, a Google search for “ICBC
injury claims lawyer,” for example, ranked
Magraken as No.1. Regularly updating the
blog is a big help, as well as posting infor-
mation on highly ranked sites such as JD
Supra, he points out. Linking his own blog
to people who subsequently return the
favour also boosts his rankings.
As a result, his blog is getting about
9,000 hits a month and generating lots of
inquiries from potential clients. “I get con-
tacted probably 60 times a month through
the blog from people with personal injury
claims,” he says, noting that while the
initial calls or e-mails may involve simply
providing information to people consid-
ering legal action, he’s often the person
they think of once they take that step.
Legally speaking, social media sites
such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are
so far largely the domain of smaller law
Legal connections
Erik Magraken of MacIsaac & Co. icbclaw.com/blog www.jdsupra.com/profile/erikmagraken
firms or individual lawyers while most
of the largest national firms hold back.
At Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, Simone
Hughes, the firm’s national director
of business development, says BLG is
using Facebook and LinkedIn but for the
moment is content with testing some of
the newer social media options. “Most
of our audience [is] general counsel in
Canada, CEOs, [and] CFOs. So if you
think about the demographic . . . not all
of that audience is on YouTube. If we’re
on that, and our audience is not on that,
it’s not very cost efficient. We want to be
ahead of where they’re going, so in some
social media we’re in [a] test phase waiting
for more bulk usage of it to make it more
cost efficient, and in some we’re already
there.”
A few Big Law firms have made the
leap into tweeting on Twitter: Oslers,
Ogilvy Renault LLP, and Gowling Lafleur
Henderson LLP. BLG, too, was there by
mid-May. For the most part, their tweets
consist of links to news items already
posted on their web sites. It’s a conserva-
tive approach but one people involved in
“It’s basically old-fashioned wine-and-
cheese schmoozing but it’s done online.”
— Erik Magraken, MacIsaac & Co.
legal marketing say is an appropriate one
given the need to protect a firm’s image
and brand on a web site known for speed
and information overload. “You always
want to do more, but my hat is off to them
for starting to test it out,” says Michael
Rabinovici, senior vice president of stra-
tegic initiatives, at AR Communications
Inc. north of Toronto. The goal, he says, is
to use social media to establish oneself as
an expert in the field, the benefits of which
outweigh legitimate concerns about them.
“In terms of the business risk, I would say
that the risk of inaction is far higher than
going into it.”
A boutique firms that is on Twitter is
Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie
LLP in Toronto. It, too, is moving cau-
tiously on what Susan Carnevale, the
firm’s manager of marketing services, says
is a test to see how Twitter can benefit the
firm. “It’s hard to tell at this stage what it’s
w w w. C ANADIAN
twitter.com/erikmagraken www.facebook.com/pages/Victoria-BC/BC-Personal-Injury-Lawyers-and-ICBC-Claims-Lawyers/36839493643?ref=ts • Borden Ladner Gervais LLP www.linkedin.com/companies/borden-ladner-gervais-llp twitter.com/BLGLaw
doing for us other than [increasing] our
hits to our web site,” she notes, adding
that as a firm focused on employment law,
it’s already developed a Twitter follow-
ing among other lawyers and arbitrators
since launching its tweet feed in March.
Reposting news items from the Hicks
Morley web site takes little work. “On
the firm side, it’s very low maintenance
[and it takes] little time to post that,” says
Carnevale.
The firm has given licence to a hand-
ful of its lawyers to take a more liberal
approach to social media. One of them,
Dan Michaluk, operates similarly to
Magraken by posting information on legal
topics on his blog, which now links to his
Twitter page. The benefit is it is cheap and
has helped generate client referrals from
other lawyers. Twitter, Michaluk points
out, takes very little time since it usually
involves posting snippets of information
that he puts up elsewhere. “I tend to do it
in cabs and airport lounges,” he says.
In Michaluk’s case, his Twitter feed is
a blend of the professional and the per-
sonal. In one recent tweet, for example,
he briefly described a 17-hour drive with
a cat that “wouldn’t leave my lap!” The
choice was deliberate, something he says
“shows the real Dan Michaluk as well.”
And he adds, he and fellow Twittering col-
leagues have the blessing of Hicks Morley
which trusts their judgment to use the
platform responsibly. It’s an arm’s-length
model that he argues is better than that of
some firms that force lawyers to embed
their blogs within their own web sites.
“You limit the ability to use a voice that
connects with people when you do that.”
Still, Michaluk points out he has his
own rules, including not tweeting or blog-
ging about his own cases. “I’m not going
to use a matter that I’m working on to
promote myself or Hicks Morley. It’s just
not worth it,” he says.
Countering the business impacts of
the recession isn’t just about connect-
ing to new media, of course. Law firms
Law yermag.com June 2009 29
 Law student Omar Ha-Redeye: www.omarha-redeye.com/ www.slaw.ca/author/redeye/ twitter.com/omarharedeye • Ogilvy Renault LLP twitter.com/ogilvyrenault
Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP twitter.com/Osler_Law • Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP twitter.com/gowlings_law • Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP twitter.com/HicksMorley • Hicks Morley’s Dan Michaluk: danmichaluk.wordpress.com twitter.com/danmichaluk
Legal connections
note, for example, that a lot of Canadian
companies have been issuing requests for
proposals for legal work, a trend Hughes
chalks up to corporations trying to pare
down the number of lawyers they deal
with. As a result, Oslers’ Glendinning says
firms are busy assembling teams to bid
for the work. In some cases, companies
are asking for a legal strategy document
during the bidding process, something
that essentially means lawyers are provid-
ing free legal advice. “It can take several
lawyers dozens of hours to put something
together,” Glendinning notes.
Thechangeswithincorporatelegalwork
also put a particular onus on law firms to
do more to retain the clients they already
have, according to Michael Rynowecer, the
president of BTI Consulting Group Inc. in
New York. “Much less [work] is going to
outside counsel. It’s shrinking,” he said
at a recent Legal Marketing Association
event in Toronto. Citing statistics from a
recent survey of U.S. in-house counsel, he
noted only 40 per cent were truly satisfied
with their primary law firm. Instead, most
graded outside firms at “perfect B-minus
performance,” they do what the client asks
of them but aren’t proactive.
To rate higher, Rynowecer said law
firms must do better in four key areas:
client focus, understanding the client’s
business, showing they have a commit-
ment to help, and delivering value for
money spent. Firms that get there can
earn a 20-per-cent rate premium — thus
improving client satisfaction can be an
important business development goal. But
as Rynowecer pointed out, his data show
that less than a quarter of law firms seek
client feedback to see where they rate.
For her part, Glendinning already does
some of the things Rynowecer says will
help boost client satisfaction, including
devoting extra time to researching what
a business does even if it doesn’t relate
directly to the legal matters she’s dealing
with. “It’s actually about partnering with
the people you work with to help them do
the job they do,” she says, noting that with
regulated companies, for example, corpo-
rate clients will appreciate a lawyer who
takes the time to advise them on new laws
or rules that might affect their business.
The goal is to improve the relationship by
showing that she can solve a client’s prob-
lems, she points out.
30 June 2009 w w w.C ANADIAN Law yermag.com
At BLG, meanwhile, Hughes says her
firm does use metrics and other feedback
practices to gauge what clients think of
the service it’s offering. “We visit clients
and we ask them how they’re doing. We
look at retention numbers. We look at
trends in the financials.” But, she adds,
doing business development at a large
firm, including during a recession, is
largely about strategy. In order to cross-
sell existing clients on legal services in
other practices, for example, the firm has
to look at where business is booming and
where it’s ramping down. “Cross-selling,
or cross-buying, as I would prefer to say,
is a function of your strategic plan,” she
says. “Are you interested? Are you a niche
market and just doing one thing, or are
you a broader-based line of business, and
you’re going to do it anyway? So if we’re
in a recession, what we did is look at our
strategic plan and asked, ‘Does this pres-
ent new opportunities, and what do we
do about it?’”
But with the competition for client
business increasing, predicting where
work opportunities are has become more
complex. So far, much of it comes from
educated guesses about what law firms
believe will happen, but as Hughes points
out, they are also considering adopting
the complicated models financial compa-
nies use to predict what their clients will
need. “In the law industry, we are evolv-
ing into a more sophisticated, data-driven
model. In the current form, it’s more of a
hypothesis and [then] test and evolve.”
The key question is how to take that
data to sell legal services to clients. Some of
it involves marketing, something Hughes’
team at BLG recently did through a direct-
mail campaign targeting bankruptcy and
insolvency work. But, she notes, closing
a deal often requires lawyers to do the
actual sales work. “Our lawyers are the
front line,” she says. “They’re the people
who are directly dealing face-to-face with
clients. . . . It seems to work from my
experience that the person who does the
work, or the top relationship professional,
is usually that salesperson, although we
don’t call them a salesperson.”
For Glendinning, it’s this last aspect that
can be hardest for lawyers. Nevertheless,
after taking clients to dinner, inviting
them to sports games, or playing a round
of golf, it’s something she has to do. “At the
end of the day, if you don’t tell them what
you’d like from them, it’s going to be a
waste of time,” she says, adding that being
direct is often the best way.
Magraken, however, finds he doesn’t
have to aggressively sell his services to the
people he hears from on his blog. Instead,
they often approach him for help after
a few interactions by e-mail or on the
phone. “It shows them that I know what
I’m talking about rather than me having
to tell them that I know what I’m talk-
ing about.” That strategy is a good one,
especially for personal injury lawyers who
risk a negative reaction by coming on too
strongly, says Doug Jasinski, a law firm
marketing consultant in Vancouver. Key
to success, he notes, “is understanding
the channel that they’re using. The danger
is for lawyers to come in and misunder-
stand the tone of something like Twitter
and then suffer a backlash if they miss
the mark by coming off as ambulance
chasing or bringing some of the negative
stereotypes in.”
Of course, avoiding the direct approach
takes away from some of the efficiency of
social media as people like Magraken
spend up to 10 hours a week on online
marketing without necessarily seeing the
immediate benefits of their efforts. But
as Jasinski notes, the approach is cheap
and ultimately can be more effective than
other online marketing efforts such as a
standard web page. “Really, the big trend
is away from the online component being
the firm web site . . . to innovative firms
looking at ways to extend their presence a
lot more deeply. I think that makes a lot of
sense in recessionary times because a lot of
these tools are either free or inexpensive.
What they’re doing is giving lawyers a
chance to repurpose and redistribute their
content in multiple forms.” Moreover, he
adds, platforms like Twitter actually work
with lawyers’ busy lives.
Even law students are using the Twitter-
blog combination to get their names out
there and position themselves in the field.
Omar Ha-Redeye, a second-year student
at the University of Western Ontario law
New Canadian web site billing itself as providing free legal resources: www.advicescene.com • Canadian Lawyer twitter.com/canlawmag
school, has garnered a lot of attention
through his blog as well as through the
web sites Law is Cool and Slaw, too,
which he says is already benefiting him
as he develops a reputation well before he
graduates. “I have lots of informal men-
torships with lots of lawyers practising in
the field.”
Perhaps surprisingly, people like
Magraken say that mastering social
media wasn’t very difficult. Noting that
less than a year ago he knew very little
about the technology, he says after hiring
a company to set up his blog, he has been
able to figure out most of the details on
his own.
Nevertheless, some law firms still prefer
conventional advertising to get the word
out. At personal injury firm Diamond &
Diamond Lawyers in Toronto, for example,
w w w. C ANADIAN
David Diamond says ads in places like the
Yellow Pages and on radio continue to
work. “Advertising has always been effec-
tive but it’s very expensive. We wouldn’t do
it if it’s not worth it.” Still, after 30 years in
business under a prominent brand name,
Diamond says younger lawyers at the firm
have convinced him to consider social
media as well. “The younger generation is
pushing me in the right direction.”
Law yermag.com June 2009 31