Having a rival pick off a group of partners is never a welcome occurrence, but how a law firm handles such an event can help mitigate further damage. Skillful communication about such departures – both internal and external – is crucial.

Watching colleagues depart en masse can be an alarming experience, and can spur  lawyers who remain to reassess their own status within the organization. According to a Law360 article, firm leaders need to act immediately: assemble the remaining partners, lead an honest discussion about what difficulties might lie ahead, and be attuned to attorneys’ concerns.

Honesty and openness doesn’t necessarily mean focusing on the negative aspects.

Legal consultants offer the following components of an open and effective communications strategy following a law firm raid:

1. Stop the Bleeding: Conduct damage control, but be aware that the audience might be composed of both partners who are eyeing their own departures and partners who are inclined to stay.
2. Get the Story Straight: Whether departures reflect deeper problems, it’s important that leaders present a clear picture of what’s going on and what it means for the firm. Experts warn against efforts to downplay the impact of departures, as this likely would be met with skepticism.
3. Don’t Just Talk, Listen: Leaders should hold discussions to determine what factors are the source of discontent. Mary K. Young, a strategist at the Zeughauser Group, emphasizes that listening to the concerns of others is key to “creating more glue” to keep a firm intact.
4. Be Honest, But Be Positive: Honesty and openness doesn’t necessarily mean focusing on the negative aspects – leaders should also recognize that “mobility is part of the game,” according to the Law360 article.
5. Take Stock: Once the departures have taken place, leaders should reassess the firm’s future – and perhaps realize the former attorneys ultimately may not have been a good fit.
6. Recruit: Actively recruit new talent – but make sure the timing is right and not too soon after the departures.

As we’ve detailed previously, we find ourselves in an era of high-profile firm mergers and high-stakes lateral acquisitions. Executing a sound communications strategy is critical to finding and keeping lateral talent. For firms facing the aftermath of attorney departures, skillful and strategic communication is just as important.

Recently, the Legal Times blog reported that Squire Sanders was losing four healthcare partners to competitor Jones Day. This news isn’t in itself particularly shocking—according to The American Lawyer’s 2014 Lateral Report, more than 2,500 partners in the US moved to different firms last year and 96 percent of law firms say that more lateral hiring is part of their growth strategy. What is unusual is that, according to Legal Times, the partners announced their intent to move in April, but Square Sanders did not allow the partners to leave for another 60 days.

The Chicago Tribune reported on a similar situation in October 2010, when Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon enforced its requirement that departing partners give 90 days notice.

For the firms adding new partners, the messaging around the lateral hire becomes increasingly complex.

That is not how these transitions have traditionally gone.  Although most firms include notice periods in partnership agreements, they are not usually enforced. According to the American Lawyer, laterals generally move to new firms within two weeks after they give notice (and sometimes within a day). Among other reasons to waive the notice period, no one wants to subject the entire office to two or three months of uncomfortable interaction with partners who have one foot out the door. “Usually they feel it’s in the best interest of everybody for the partners to move to their new home…and cut the cord,” legal recruiter Dan Binstock, of Garrison & Sisson, told Above the Law.

So why might these law firms want to hold their partners to their notice periods? While we might never learn the truth about any particular partner move—tight lips and non-disparagement clauses make that unlikely—the motivations behind this potential trend are worth considering.

Interestingly, the firms mentioned above that held their partners to the notice period had one factor in common: an upcoming merger. For a firm engaged in merger discussions, perhaps there is some value in maintaining its head count, and its collective book of business, for a few extra weeks during negotiations? There is also the possibility that firms might choose to enforce notice periods simply to wring every last dollar of profit from them, regardless of the discomfort that ensues. And, of course, a more petty motivation might drive a law firm to prevent laterals from starting a happy life with a new firm. Break-ups are never easy, and even the most civil divorce brings about a certain degree of resentment.

The most likely explanation, however, is a more strategic one. In its 2013 publication “Lateral hiring: be prepared,” Clyde & Co recommends not only that law firms lengthen their notice periods to discourage lateral moves, but that firms include “gardening leave” clauses, which place limits on the activities that departing partners can engage in during the notice period (leaving them to tend their home gardens for the interim period). The garden leave period gives firms an extra couple of months to bolster their existing client relationships, in the hope that clients will stay true to them, and decide against following the departing partner.

Given the heated competition for business today, it seems like a strategy that could catch on.

If it does, what does it mean for the future of lateral hires? For one thing, extended notice periods combined with garden leave clauses, if enforced and effective, could discourage lateral movement.

For those lateral moves that go forward, the trend has significant implications for law firms’ strategic communications. For the firms adding new partners, the messaging around the lateral hire becomes increasingly complex. While the firm is itching to promote the new hire, it becomes difficult to take advantage of the momentum created by the announcement when the new partner is not actually joining the firm for 60 days or more. Holding off an announcement until the new partners arrive will be the ideal approach in many cases, but to do so effectively means controlling leaks from any number of sources in the meantime, which could prove an impossible task, especially in the case of high-profile hires. Furthermore, the firm adding partners cannot control the messaging of the spurned firm, which may or may not make some announcement of its own in connection with the departing partners. All of which means that on both sides, communications is likely to become an even more important part of the lateral hiring equation.

Earlier this year, HC launched LATERAL proMOTION, a program designed to help law firms promote laterals to key audiences and turn new hires in positive business results. Whatever the actual reasons driving firms to enforce notice agreements and gardening leave are, law firms should have a strategy in place to deal with the substantial communications issues that arise from this new trend in lateral movement.

Law firms and law schools have been having some difficult conversations lately: breakup conversations. As the legal job market continues to shrink, law firms and law schools have been faced with tough decisions about separating with attorneys and professors, respectively. However necessary they might be, breakups are difficult, uncomfortable, and stressful for all parties involved. Harsh words are often spoken, and once they are it’s almost impossible to take them back.  Go about them the wrong way and you could end up damaging your own reputation (as Albany Law School has had to learn the hard way).

Departures, like breakups, are really all about messaging. Institutions never want to appear to be vindictive or bitter towards departing employees. From a PR standpoint, it’s important to remember that those on the outside—who haven’t seen the messy details of the relationship up close—are naturally more likely to sympathize with an individual who has just lost her livelihood than a faceless entity.

There’s something about being negative towards colleagues that turns people off.

In order to avoid significant public embarrassment or a Fatal Attraction-type situation, institutions should follow these “departure etiquette” tips and maybe, just maybe, both parties can move on unscathed:

1) Be Short & Direct. Employers need to be brief, upfront, and direct.  Letting people go is unpleasant, and it’s best not to drag it out.

2) Be Honest. Recently, Albany Law School came under major fire when it attributed its layoff of tenured professors on the school’s troubled financial situation, only to have the dismissed profs bring in an independent account to counter that the school was “in very strong financial condition.” Institutions need to be open and honest about their reasons for letting employees go, in order to avoid increased controversy.

3) Listen. Employees who are blindsided with dismissals are undoubtedly going to have some strong feelings about the situation, and while it might be awkward, they should be given the chance to speak their minds directly to decision makers.

4) Avoid Trash Talk. In order to maintain an appropriate level of professionalism throughout the departure process, it’s best that institutional leaders avoid any kind of personal attacks on dismissed employees, internally or externally.

5) Buy Some Good Will (sometimes literally). There’s something about being negative towards colleagues that turns people off. It’s the reason why job applicants instinctively know (or should instinctively know) not to speak ill of their former employers. The same principle applies to employers who ask for comment about former employees. Short of putting their own reputations on the line (by, for instance, giving glowing recommendation letters to those they know to be bad employees), they should be as positive about their former employees as possible. It makes both parties look better, and at very little cost buys a measure of goodwill from former employees who don’t need any encouragement to become bitter. External praise is a small but important complement to whatever monetary compensation (through severance or other measures) the firm or school can afford. Nothing is easy when it comes to breakups, but sometimes a healthy amount of goodwill can avoid much more expensive—and embarrassing—public feuds.

Amy Kolz’s revealing article on the disappointing results of lateral hiring [“Building a Better Lateral,” February] notes that an Am Law 50 firm found that lateral hiring had been only a breakeven proposition from 2007-09. Revenues generated by its lateral just covered the compensation paid to them. While those results are discouraging, they understate the problem. Firms do not just lay out compensation to laterals. They pour tremendous resources into recruiting them – as much as [the lateral’s] annual compensation, according to the estimate you cite, and up to 50 percent of the valuable time of law firm leaders, according to the American Lawyer’s Law firm Leaders Survey.

Everyone hears that they are going to be made into a star.

The head of the Am Law 50 firm said: “We keep searching for [ways to improve], and if we knew what they were, we would do them.” The firm chief need not search far. Valuable aids to lateral success sit right down the hallway: the marketing and business development departments.

New laterals continue to underperform as a group despite increasingly elaborate integration plans. sometimes overlooked in those plans are large firms’ significant marketing resources, which when thoughtfully directed toward the support of new laterals can pay very handsome dividends.

Thought leadership and public relations campaigns focused on new laterals and executed throughout their first year at the firm serve a number of the firm’s goals well. First, they often achieve the primary purpose of gaining new business for the lateral. Perhaps more importantly, the attention and care of the firm’s marketers typically makes new laterals feel that elusive sense of “support,” the lack of which many cite as the reason for leaving their prior firms in the first place. and while partners seemingly lack a direct monetary incentive to follow through on a lateral’s integration plans – explaining why many end up in the proverbial drawer – marketers are highly invested: The success of a campaign, as measured by the new lateral’s revenue growth, provides an objective demonstration of value to firm leadership.

Campaign plans can be used even earlier in the lateral process, as a valuable part of a firm’s recruiting pitch. After all, everyone hears that they are going to be made into a star, but firms that demonstrate how they’ll make it happen, and who are able to provide examples of success, will set themselves apart.

Star Makers

In a recent column for Above the Law, Michael Allen of Lateral Link enumerated the top five reasons that attorneys move from one firm to another. Here’s the list he came up with:

1) Management: “A popular complaint I hear from lateral partners,” Allen writes, “is that they do not have confidence in their department chair or chairman.”

2) Prestige: A self-explanatory motivation (with great appeal in the legal profession).

3) Platform: The term “platform” means different things to different people, which is one reason why we try to avoid jargon like this. We’ve most often heard “platform” used by large firms with numerous offices and practice areas to refer to the opportunities they offer to cross-sell a given lateral’s services. Allen uses the term in a different way, referring instead to the infrastructure that a firm has in place (including its bench of talent) to service its clients. When a firm like Bingham McCutchen starts losing partners, Allen suggests, that harms its “platform.” What he really seems to be talking about, then, is the degree of confidence that a firm’s clients and attorneys have in the firm’s ability to serve its clients.

4) Compensation: Everyone can understand this one.

5) My Client Said So: This refers to conflicts of interest, as well as other reasons why a client may require that its work be taken to a different firm.

Good communication is paramount when it comes to lateral movement.

We might quibble at the edges here, but overall the list looks accurate to us. And for law firms seeking to avoid losing laterals (that’s everybody), the list offers some important insights. Let’s reorder the list in terms of the factors firms can control, which will point to specific action they can take to avoid lateral losses.

1. Compensation: Unless a firm has been unfair in its allocation to a specific partner, this is largely outside of a firm’s very-short-term control.
2. Client Said So: If a client (and, by consequence, the partner attached to that client) has to leave for conflict reasons, there is little a firm can do beyond separating itself from the conflicting client. The decision on that point will probably be a relatively easy one, dictated by how much business each client is giving the firm.
3. Prestige: This is difficult to impact in the very short-term as well. However, media relations campaigns, successful awards nominations, and other public relations initiatives can have a meaningful impact on a firm’s prestige factor over time, and thus are worthy of attention for firms that believe they are losing laterals for this reason.
4. Platform: This is the most nebulous reason, but of the four thus discussed, the most capable of being addressed immediately. Aggressive communication to attorneys and clients about the firm’s resources can do much to ameliorate concern that it is not equipped to handle a given client’s legal needs. And to the extent that “platform” means the resources in place to support the growth of a partner’s practice, firms can address that through enhanced marketing support.
5. Management: This is Allen’s number one reason, and also the one within the greatest control of the law firm seeking to prevent lateral losses. Strong internal communication from firm and practice-group leaders can give partners confidence in the direction of the firm, and thus pay huge dividends in keeping them around.

This analysis confirms a point we’ve made before: that good communication is paramount when it comes to lateral movement. That’s the reason HC has become a leader in this area, and why we have, for instance, partnered with ALM to develop LATERAL proMOTION, a new service that allows firms to maximize the value of their new lateral hires.

Indeed, it’s clear to us that the firms that communicate best around issues of concern to laterals are far more likely to see their numbers increasing, and seeing themselves winning the ongoing war for talent.

It’s official: Howrey LLP has dissolved. It’s a sad end for a proud firm, which was undone by a slow drip of partner departures that began in the fall of last year.

Even before the dissolution vote, journalists had begun extracting lessons from its demise about the modern law firm business model. Legal marketers should consider Howrey’s experience as well, as it illustrates a number of significant points about our work. And while we’ve discussed many of these points over the last 10 years, the downfall of Howrey provides a potent and contemporary case study.

Alas, the clients came for the partners, not the name. So despite all the resources spent marketing the firm as a product, when the partners left, their clients left with them. Just like the recruiters would have predicted.

1) A Law Firm Is Not a Consumer “Brand”

From a marketing perspective, one of the more revealing reports about Howrey came in connection with its talks with Winston & Strawn LLP.

In late February, when Winston was the presumptive destination for many Howrey attorneys, the Recorder reported that Winston had offered $2 million for the Howrey name. Above the Law, meanwhile, openly questioned whether the name was worth even that much. Two million dollars may not be peanuts, but it had to be a bitter pill indeed, for a firm that poured so much money into marketing itself as a “brand,” to see its name going for clearance prices.

Like Brobeck Phleger & Harrison LLP, another defunct firm, Howrey was widely admired for its well-executed advertising campaigns. It was also a pioneer: it broke ground as the first corporate defense firm to initiate a print ad campaign (called “The Human Side of Genius”) to promote its name. It even went as far as to obtain a mention in Hollywood’s Runaway Jury, based on the John Grisham novel. But as of late February, the name it had advertised so vigorously was worth a mere fraction of the annual salary of one of its rainmaking partners.

The reason the Howrey name returned so little for so much effort is simple: for buyers of legal services, the law firm “brand” is not a relevant product. Clients don’t come to law firms for the name chiseled on the wall, but rather the individual attorneys doing their work. Clients are famous for saying “I hire the lawyer, not the firm” — and although a cliché, it’s true.

Recruiters understand this principle and operate by it: business is portable, tied to the lawyers that manage the relationship. If a firm wants to grow revenue, it can — in most cases — do so simply by attracting a lateral partner with the business it wants. Meanwhile, just down the hall from the recruiters, marketing departments often operate on an entirely different premise: that business can be institutionalized. In this view, the firm itself is a product independent of the individual partners that practice there.

But by and large, that is not the case. If it were, the partner departures from Howrey would have had little effect. Impressed by the power of the Howrey name alone, clients should have continued to support Howrey with their business; all of the partner departures should simply have created an opportunity for new partners to fill the gap and service Howrey’s blue-chip, institutional clients.

Alas, the clients came for the partners, not the name. So despite all the resources spent marketing the firm as a product, when the partners left, their clients left with them. Just like the recruiters would have predicted.

2) The Lawyer Is the Consumer “Brand”

None of the above should be taken to suggest that firms do not have distinct reputations — or if you prefer marketing-speak, “brand identities.” They do. The names Skadden, Cravath, and Covington all mean something in the marketplace for legal services.

Those firms, however, did not get their reputations through fancy branding campaigns. They developed their “brands” over time through the collective reputations of their individual partners. Because the service of those partners is what clients are interested in, even the finest law firm reputations, built up over decades, remain entirely dependent on the firm’s individual partners.

Ask a recruiter how long Skadden would remain a preeminent M&A firm if all of its stellar M&A lawyers walked out the door to another firm tomorrow. (Their answers will range from “immediately” to “a few days.”) The lesson here is that Skadden’s “brand power” in the M&A field belongs to its M&A lawyers, not the firm.

3) Partners Are the Product; The Firm Is the Product Marketer

As Howrey demonstrates, clients don’t hire law firms. And if lawyers are what clients are buying, then they should also be what law firms are selling (i.e., branding, marketing, promoting, advertising, etc.).

Successful brand marketers, after all, build their campaigns around the products consumers buy, not the companies that own them. Look at the corporate world for the best examples: Eli Lilly doesn’t market Eli Lilly — it markets Cialis and Cymbalta. Kraft Foods doesn’t market Kraft Foods — it markets Chips Ahoy, A1 Steak Sauce and Crystal Light.

While there are significant differences in the marketing of pharmaceuticals, food products and professional services, in all cases the thing being marketed should be the same as the thing being bought. Which again, in the case of law firms’ services, means the bulk of marketing resources should be placed on marketing (i.e., branding, selling, promoting, advertising, etc.) individual partners and their expertise.

It’s tough to do when those partners can walk out the door for another firm, but that’s actually where the law firm as an institutional brand comes back into play: the institutional brand — developed by the collective reputation of its partners over time — acts as a credential for the lawyers that work there. Few Skadden lawyers, for instance, would feel silly beating their chests about being Skadden lawyers.

Moreover, as a filter in a buyer’s decision-making process, a product (i.e., partner) of Skadden comes with an enormous amount of trust capital. As a consumer, I don’t buy Procter & Gamble, but I trust it to develop quality products. In this way, an institutional brand can be an influential factor, along with the partner’s specific talents and expertise, which encourages prospective clients to choose that partner for their legal needs.

4) A Firm Should Be Marketed to Partners, Not Clients

Although law firms should not be marketed as law firms to clients, they should be marketed that way to their partnerships and competitors’ partnerships (i.e., the lateral market). This, too, is an often overlooked role for marketing and communications departments — and one that is evident in Howrey’s demise.

To extend the analogy from above, Eli Lilly does not market Eli Lilly to its consumers, but it does market Eli Lilly to its current and potential shareholders — those that capitalize the company and those whose presence suggests confidence about its future. The partners of a law firm are not simply analogous to shareholders; in the case of incorporated firms, they are literally shareholders. And for all law firms, they are the audience to which the firm — as an institutional brand — is most relevant, and whose good opinion of the firm — as an institutional brand — is necessary to its continued success.

Communicating effectively about the firm to this audience and its potential members, then, should be viewed as an essential management activity.

In fact, in a detailed analysis of Howrey’s struggles, The Washington Post noted: “When talent is your most valuable asset, any crisis in confidence can shake a once-stable firm to its core.” After a down year in 2009, the article pointed out, lawyers became restive about Howrey’s perceived “lack of transparency in decision making.” The discontent increased after a 2010 annual partnership meeting — a shareholder meeting, if you will — at which the leadership failed to present convincing plans to stem the decline in revenue.

Many of Howrey’s partners surely would have preferred to stay at the firm. And reports like the one in the Post suggest that if the firm had conceived of its partnership as the most important constituency to which it should communicate its benefits, such action may have had an effect. Certainly, for law firms that are not under severe distress, improving marketing and communications to partners can have nothing but a beneficial effect on retention.

5) Broaden Your Marketers’ Mandate

While the portability of business may at first seem lamentable to marketers and firm leadership, there is a hidden upside to it. If losing talent leads to lost business, then marketers and leadership know what they must do to keep their business: keep their lawyers. In other words, if firms want to institutionalize clients, they must institutionalize their talent first.

It is within the power of marketers to make a difference. But for a firm to make the most of its marketing function, its leadership must allow marketers to go beyond business development in the traditional sense and aggressively support the HR and recruiting functions, making marketing a valuable asset to the firm’s retention and recruiting efforts.

With all of the benefits described above, re-orienting the marketing focus of law firms is without a doubt the way of the future. A firm must market its lawyers to clients and the firm as an institution internally to its own partners and externally to the lateral market. Raising the profiles of individual partners is the best way to raise the overall profile of the firm; at the same time, by making the partners buy into to the firm brand, the brand itself is solidified. It’s ironic that Howrey, a firm out in front in so many ways, didn’t evolve in time. But the lessons it leaves can benefit all who remain.

Five Marketing Lessons From Howrey’s Graveside

Read the 2004 Marketing the Law Firm article John wrote as a precursor to the lessons learned here.

For lawyers the perennial question is:  which marketing activities actually get clients to hire me?

To answer this question Hellerman Communications recently teamed with the BTI Consulting Group to commission a new research study called “The Attorney Hiring Zone: Top Activities to Win New Clients.” It reveals the business development activities that most effectively differentiate attorneys and lead to hiring decisions.

PR is a “credentialing activity” more so than an “awareness activity.”

The independent BTI report is the result of 270 in-depth, one-on-one interviews with top legal executives at large corporations (average annual revenue of $25.7 billion), including 28% of the Fortune 1000 and 15% of the Global 500, spanning more than 15 industries, including healthcare, energy, banking, financial services, manufacturing, and technology. Participating legal executives scored the effectiveness of various business development activities on a numerical scale, and also responded to extensive probes about the actual act of hiring an attorney.

Many of the findings are surprising. For example:

1) It typically takes 7 follow-up calls to get the GC to agree to a meeting, because GCs routinely reject requests for meetings to test for follow-up. Astonishingly, 90% of attorneys fail to follow-up at all after the first rejection! We believe that the content generated from PR activity can and should be the grease to facilitate many of these follow-up calls.

2) PR is a “credentialing activity” more so than an “awareness activity,” and it takes as little as 3 quotes in respected publications to equal the trust value of an actual referral by a peer, which is the number one activity for receiving hiring consideration. [As the research indicates, we think quotes are the touchstone of a modern professional reputation and the backbone of any solid PR effort.]

3) To GCs, feature articles about an attorney or the firm, are only slightly more valuable than ads. This is due to the fact that GCs are unclear about how subjects for features are chosen and sense it has little to do with actual merit (unlike being quoted as an expert). [We found that while features don’t resonate as powerfully for GCs as you’d expect, they – and bylines, especially bylines – do beget interview opportunities and quotes. In fact, we can share multiple examples where shifting 30% of PR effort to bylines and features led to an increase of quotes in excess of 50%.]

For more findings from “The Attorney Hiring Zone”, check out the full study here.