In this Issue...

Viewpoints - 2007 Legal Industry Trends

Trade Show Booth Strategies - Just in Time for LegalTech

Viewpoints

Legal Industry Thought Leaders Weigh In for Legal Marketing News

Envision asked the following question of a group of consultants and media contacts - "Name a current trend that you are seeing in the legal industry and explain how it will impact the legal community in 2007 (the present and near future)."

Monica Bay - ALM Media, Inc. - Editor of Law Technology News & The Common Scold

E-Discovery will continue to dominate the legal technology landscape for the next few years, with interesting issues to watch -- including Darwin issues (consolidation, road kill, niche "Long Tail" product/services survival). Business Intelligence  will continue to grow, especially as uber-search engines evolve. Green Law (use of technology to reduce facilities costs while being environmentally responsible) will screech to the front of the line, as more and more folks realize that we MUST pay attention to global warming -- with a lovely byproduct that installing appropriate technology will actually reduce costs.

Charles Christian - Editor-in-Chief of Legal Technology Insider

Workflow - after years of pretending they are members of 'Ye Olde Professione' lawyers are finally waking up to the fact that the practice of law is a series of business processes. Just look at all the hoops you have to jump thru when a new email comes in to ensure the message and its attachment is stored against the right client or matter - that's not law you are practicing, its filing and workflow or BPM (business process management) systems can do it fare more efficiently. What's really interesting about workflow is that after years of being a fringe technology that only a few vendors talked about, its now becoming mainstream. Workflow is hot.

Matt Homann - President and Chief Thinking Officer of LexThink!

The "Legal" in Legal Technology will begin to disappear. As lawyers rely more and more upon off-the-shelf software and web-based services to run their practices, legal software vendors will realize they no longer are just competing with one another, but with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and that 19 year-old entrepreneurial, caffeine-laced programmer who's building the next killer app in his parent's basement just because it's "cool." New legal software must no longer do "more," it must do "less" -- and do it WAY better than the non-legal alternatives for lawyers to care.

Karen Jones - Publisher & Editor of Citytech

Toward the end of 2006 the ‘noise’ about staggering implementations started to build into a roar. With implementations of bigger systems taking as much as 18 months to complete and tech staff ‘losing their way’ during the process, the message for 2007 is, plan to achieve small wins with implementations. Look at what your end goal is, then break the project into pieces with time deadlines. This will keep innovative tech plans fresh and on-track rather than a bungled final burst of energy just to get the project finished. It hopefully also avoids expensive licenses becoming dusty shelf ware.

Tom O'Connor - Director, Legal Electronic Documents Institute

The ongoing convergence of litigation and enterprise content management technology will continue to be a major development as the merging of litigation support tools and enterprise CM systems will help law firms take an IT-enabled business-process approach that spans the entire discovery management process. Last year we saw the acquisition of Verity by Autonomy, the CA acquisition of Ilumin and KM vendor Recommind announcing they will enter the ED space as well as the recent addition of e-mail management thru a DMS by companies such as Worldox. Given that litigation support companies such as CaseLogistix already combine standard database and full text searching with web access, I fully expect this management of enterprise data from origination to litigation to become more prominent throughout the course of the year.

Adam J. Schlagman - Editor-in-Chief of The Legal Tech Newsletter

A significant trend that I see is the proliferation and deployment of technology for case analysis and assessment in litigation matters. While there is much talk about bringing more of the e-discovery process in-house to save costs the same cannot be said of the actual litigation process. Further, with every in-house counsel survey that you read, it becomes clear that the competition for outside counsel to get these cases is increasing. Given that, I think that a law firm's ability to break down and analyze a case with the use of right technology could well be the deciding factor in a firm's ability to get work.

Neil J. Squillante - Publisher & Editor of TechnoLawyer

One trend I've noticed consists of creating solo and small firm versions of enterprise software. Though fragmented, this segment of the legal market is too large for most vendors to ignore forever. This trend stems from the ease with which companies can now set up online stores, which not only eliminates the need for expensive sales calls, but also enable vendors to offer prices low enough for impulse buys. Also important in this trend are tools that replace sales calls, such as Flash demos, on-demand Webinars, case studies, white papers, and of course free trials. 

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Trade Show Booth Strategies

At this point, if you are an exhibitor at LegalTech, your company has already spent a fair amount of money on booth space, booth artwork, promotional items, sales materials, travel expenses for your booth team, etc. In order to realize a good ROI, and present a good corporate image, it’s important that you take advantage of your time in the booth and really work to get the quality leads.

Best booth practices for trade show teams

1. Have your team at the booth at least 30 minutes before the show starts to insure that the booth is clean and everything is working properly and in its place.
2. Your team should be standing in the booth, facing the aisle at all times while traffic is in the hall.
3. Make sure that your team doesn’t block your message that you are trying to get across with your booth. If you have too many team members in your booth, rotate them on shifts.
4. Make eye contact with the attendees as they walk by. Engage them by saying hello. If they stop, ask them if they are familiar with your company’s products/services, if they have any questions and what they are specifically looking for at the show. Don’t use the “in your face” approach and go out in the aisle and drag people into your booth or make it a practice of touching them, it’s bad form.
5. Keep your booth uncluttered. Don’t leave bags, literature, notebooks etc. lying around on the floor where the attendees can see them.
6. Try and keep the aisle uncluttered in front of your booth. If you have a group of people that have stopped to chat in front of your booth and are interfering with your demo area, politely ask them to step to the side.
7. If you are giving away promo items, require that the attendee give you something first, like a few minutes of their time to tell you about their firm to see where your product or services might fit.
8. Keep food out of the booth.
9. Keep breath mints on hand at all times for your booth team. Nobody will stay long for a “Dragon breath” demo.
10. If you are the only person working a show or in the booth, and you need to take a “mandatory break”, find someone to stand in your booth to hand out cards and literature while you are gone. It really reflects poorly on a company when their booth is empty.
11. Perform attendee triage. Quickly assess the interest levels of attendees that are standing at your booth. Some may just have a quick question, some may want a short demo and other may require a longer meeting. Make sure you put the right team members with the right attendees. In the even, you find your team swamped with attendees that require more of your time, quickly get their business cards, cell numbers and try to make a quick appointment with them at your booth for later on that day at the show. Attendees don’t like to wait long at a booth to get the information that they are looking for. Don’t let any good prospects slip away. It is also important to quickly identify any attendees that are just feigning interest in your company just to get any “freebies” that you might be giving away.
12. When sales people from other companies solicit you at your booth, kindly ask them to set up an appointment with you during the show or to come back when the hall is less busy.
13. If you are doing software demos in your booth, keep them real short as an attendee’s attention span is usually real short at a show due to the background noise and other distractions. If attendees require a longer demo, set up an appointment for them at your booth before the show opens or get a demo room. If you are having lunch or dinner with a client or prospect, do it somewhere other than the trade show facility. Always assume someone around you is going to be listening to your conversation. I have been amazed at what I have heard from neighboring tables while having a meal at trade shows.
14. Be a good neighbor and be courteous of the booths around you. Make sure that your backdrop, displays, or booth personnel do not block their backdrop or displays.
15. Take your lead info out of your booth every day after the show closes. Better to be safe than sorry.
16. Trade shows offer you an excellent opportunity to network with other legal vendors and look for strategic partnership opportunities. Some of the biggest deals are landed because of strategic partnerships.

Post-show Follow-up
Follow up on your leads immediately after the show. When you first talk to the leads after the show, don’t assume that they will remember you or your company right away. Remember that they have spoken with many other people at that show. Refresh their memory at the beginning of the call as to what your company does, where your booth was located and anything unique about your booth that would jog their memory. Also remind them of any “show specials” that they might want to take advantage of.

Larry Crāpo is President of The Lawson Group, a legal sales and management consulting service.