What do you get when you cross a firm unaccustomed to pursuing business strategically with the internal announcement of a major business development initiative?

Answer: Confusion.

Many firm leaders coming out of the economic downturn realize that “random acts of marketing” are not going to see them into the future. They are adopting disciplined marketing and business development plans to grow their businesses.

For lawyers who were trained that business development is a way of life, a firm focus on driving revenues with a disciplined and strategic plan is common sense.

But there is a whole generation of lawyers — associates and young partners — who have spent the bulk of their career billing hours rather than building books of business.

This same group of lawyers has witnessed three years of law firm closures, layoffs and a decline in demand for legal services. It’s understandable that many live in fear of what their future holds.

As a result, an unintended consequence of a new strategic initiative may be that some attorneys actually perceive it as a sign of an underlying problem at the firm.

This shouldn’t deter firm leaders. Rather, it reinforces the need to craft clear messages that don’t assume everyone in the firm immediately understands why change is taking place.

Communication should happen globally and be reinforced in one-to-one communications with individual attorneys on an as needed basis.

An effective communication plan can take time as not everyone embraces change at the same pace. Ultimately, solid communication can clarify understanding and avoid otherwise unintended consequences.

My husband ran the Boston Marathon on Monday. Even as a spectator, it was a pretty amazing experience. Steve finished with a PR of 2:50:26, placing him 646 overall out of 27,000 runners. He smiled the whole time he was running.

Training for the race was time consuming. He qualified last October at the Chicago marathon. Since then, he’s had a plan in place that included weekly running goals for mileage and for time, group runs with friends who have more race experience than he does, and weekly visits to an active release therapist to help keep him healthy.

He did this while balancing work and family obligations. It was hard work, but he set a goal and was determined to see it through.

One of the biggest excuses I hear about marketing and business development is that there is not enough time. I say excuse not because I don’t think people are busy. We are. We all have demands on our time and we have to prioritize.

But time is a funny thing. There is never enough of it. But when you really want something, you’ll find a way to do it. You can find away to make it to your kid’s ball game. You can find a way to write that article for an industry publication. You can find a time to take your client to lunch.

And once you do all of that, you can think about running a marathon. After all, isn’t that what life is anyway?

It was a good week at work. One of my clients launched a major business development initiative. Another finalized materials for a marketing campaign to promote a new service line. A third got through a tedious set of meetings in preparation for a CRM deployment.

I even got my taxes done.

All of these projects — especially my taxes — could have been done weeks ago. What got in the way? Excessive planning.

Listen, no one believes in planning more than me. I’ve made a career out of  it. But when it comes to marketing and business development, there are times when planning gets in the way of progress.

Plans are not legal briefs. They do not require you to spot every single issue at hand — just the most important ones. They don not require every potential objection to be anticipated. They just need to be rational.

Plans are a simply a road map that define what you want to accomplish, how you are going to go about doing it, and what success will look like when you are done. If something doesn’t work, you can alter the course or change the approach to improve the results. For marketing and business development, the journey is half the fun.

Some times you just need to dive in and do it.

My birthday is today (yay me!) and my husband gave me a new iPad2 as a present. It’s very shiny and has a pretty blue cover that folds backward to create a computer stand. I know it is going to make my life easier and more fun both for work and at home.

I’m also a bit intimidated by it.

I’m pretty tech savvy and no one makes it easier to learn technology than Apple. But it is still different. I’m going to have to think about the “stuff” I do each day using my computer, cell phone and other technology devices, and figure out how/if I can do them better with the iPad. If I want to get the most bang for my buck, I’m going to need to do things different than how I do them now.

It’s really about change management. Even when change is good, it can still be hard.

Probably the toughest environment to manage change is inside a law firm. There are so many easy ways law firms can make themselves better — more efficient, more responsive, more effective — yet taking those steps seems to be so hard.

Take CRM technology. Client relationship management systems are probably the single most effective way to collaborate with your partners and take a disciplined, strategic approach to business development. But it requires many people doing things different.

Consider launching a new marketing initiative that will allow you to differentiates your firm and generate new business opportunities in a way that none of your competition is doing. If you’ve never done it that way before, it’s still hard.

Embracing social media, letting go of law firm directories, saying goodbye to unprofitable clients… Like the iPad, all of these things offer benefits but law firms are still slow to embrace them.

Let’s face it, change is a trust fall with the future. There are no guarantees. But do you want to sit from the sidelines while the competition boldly dives back, or do you want to experience the potential of what is out there?

I’m diving in. Hope to see you on the other side of my new two-way camera.

Star waiting for Sophie

My dog Star hasn’t made an appearance in my blog in many months, but I’m thinking about her today because we are contemplating a family addition — a new dog.

It wasn’t exactly planned. My friend just moved from a house with big yard in Denver to an apartment in Los Angeles. The move is great for her but it hasn’t worked out well for her dog, Sophie. So she and her son are bringing Sophie down to San Diego on Saturday to meet Star. If the meeting goes well, we may just take her in. We’ll just have to see.

Star loves everyone, but bringing a new dog into our home on a permanent basis is unchartered territory for us. There are a lot of variables at play. Some things you can see on the surface. Others take longer to uncover.

So we’ve put together a “dog integration” strategy. We’re going to start with a meeting. If that works out, we’ll do a week. The dogs can get to know each other. We can find out if they are compatible, see if it is a fit for Star, and see if it is a fit for Sophie.

It got me thinking about lateral partner hiring. It’s a tough business bringing in a new equity partner. While there are certain “check the box” things a firm can seek out in a potential candidate, there are a host of issues relating to culture, leadership, commitment and communication that can’t be uncovered during the “dating” process.

With lateral hires there are no trial runs. Law firms have to make the best decision they can with the information they have at the time and take their chances.  The best they can do is develop a comprehensive lateral integration plan to facilitate the transition.

My money is on the dogs.

A great leader I know used to conclude his staff presentations by saying, “They say that showing up is half of life. I thank you for showing up today.”

There is a lot to be said by that statement. Showing up is important. It means you care enough to take time out of your day to consider, and maybe even engage, in important discussions. It gives your voice a chance to be heard. You can offer solutions. It beats doing nothing, but it is only half.

The other part requires you to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes risk. It’s hard. But it is half of life. Too many people, lawyers, law firms only show up.

It’s a tough legal climate out there. The economy seems to be turning, albeit slowly, for the better. Opportunities appear to be on the horizon. For those that spent the downturn showing up to talk about what they needed to, it’s not going to be enough.

It’s time to put plans to action. It’s time to make the investment. It’s time to execute. Don’t let half your life go by.

BTI Consulting Group hosted a webinar last week detailing findings from its 2011 Litigation Trends survey. My favorite slide of the presentation was titled “Clients Blind to Law Firm Changes.”

The slide depicts a two-bar graph. One bar reflects the percentage of litigators who believe they are delivering more value to clients. The other depicts the percentage of clients who say they are getting more value. The findings are revealing: More than a third of litigators believe they provide more value to clients, yet less than 12% of clients say they are getting more.

What’s more, it is client service and satisfaction — not depth of experience, reputation and legal skills — that are driving litigation hiring decisions by a margin of 2-1, according to BTI.

Where does your firm stand? Here are a couple ways to find out:

1) Ask your clients. If you don’t have a formal client service plan in place, get one. If your current program has fallen off the priority list, move it back up to the top.

2) Talk to each other. Identify specific ways in which you and your colleagues have solved a problem that is unique or different. Define areas outside of your legal expertise that your firm offers clients that others don’t.

3) Create a plan with specific goals around value and execute on it. Once that is done, ask clients to validate your efforts.

It is time for law firms to do a gut check. Are your lawyers truly bringing more value to clients or do they just think they are?

One month ago today I was confined to a hotel room with severe back pain. It was the aftermath of Legal Tech New York and I was supposed to be on a plane back to San Diego. Instead, the hotel doctor was giving me a Cortizone shot and ordering me not to move. I’m 41. I run. I do yoga. I drink spinach smoothies for breakfast. This should not have happened.

Thanks to the miracle of modern medicine and a new active release therapist, I’m fully recovered and I went back to the gym for the first time this week. It’s hard. I feel slothy and out of shape. Because I am out of my routine, even the simplest activities seem to take a lot of effort. But I know the most important thing to do this first week back is be consistent. I don’t need to run a marathon, but I need 60 minutes a day doing something. When my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and I want to roll over and go back to sleep, I say to myself, “If not now, when?”

This new mantra has a law firm application. Since the start of the year, I’ve been involved in a number of discussions about how to motivate attorneys to contribute to firm marketing and business development activities. The plans are in place. The heads are nodding. But the work isn’t getting done. For some reason the motivation isn’t there.

As partners, doesn’t the need to grow or at least maintain a thriving practice provide enough motivation to find ways to build business — both as an individual contributor and as an owner? It would seem that if the demand for legal services is down and more attorneys are competing for the same dollars that there would be a sense of urgency to raise your firm profile and create a more disciplined approach to growing business.

After all, if not now, when?

TechnoLawyer’s BlawgWorld (free subscription required) had an interesting item a few weeks ago about how LegalZoom is beta testing a concept that would allow it to offer its legal services through small firms under the LegalZoom brand. It’s fraught with ethcial complications, which were outlined by the blog’s author Richard Granat on his eLawyering Blog.

From my perspective, LegalZoom is merely emblematic of why law firms need to reevaluate the way the offer legal services.

For those unfamiliar, LegalZoom provides commoditized business services for flat rates. You can do everything from forming your LLC to filing a trademark. They provide easy to understand descriptions of the requirements for filing. They walk you through a series of questions to help you fill out the required forms. They will even call you on occasion to point out facts that will help you make sound decisions without the advice of a lawyer.

For example, I recently used LegalZoom to create an LLC in California. They called to ask me what day I wanted to file, noting that if I filed before a certain date I would be assessed a tax in 2010. If I filed after that date, I wouldn’t be assessed the tax until 2011. They didn’t advise me on what to do, they merely read me the rules.

In sum, LegalZoom has taken an area of the law that can seem onerous and has demystified it by making it easy to understand.

Legal ethicists and regulators will have the last call on whether this constitutes practicing law. For lawyers practicing in this area, the onus is on them to show what added value they can bring to the table that makes the one-on-one service worth the cost of admission.

That’s not a bad thing. It is just different and it’s a reflection of how the practice of law needs to change to provide better service.

In the quest for the perfect law firm business model, I’m often asked about the best way to balance the practice of law with the time needed to develop new business.

While there is no silver bullet, here are three first steps to consider when developing a plan to grow your practice.

1) Start with the partnership.

If your firm has a strong business development culture, your equity partners are regularly out there marketing themselves and your firm. But do a gut check. Typically 20% of partners generate 80% of a firm’s business. That may mean that more attention should be focused on helping rainmakers generate more rain. However, it does not mean that they are the only ones who need to be marketing.

Every attorney in the firm has a responsibility to dedicate non-billable time on helping the firm grow. In my experience, not every attorney needs a personal business plan. Non-rainmaker attorney time may be better spent supporting specific marketing and business development initiatives at the firm or practice group level.

2) Evaluate your current workload.

Where does your work come from currently? If it’s another partner that is feeding you work, how can your support her business development goals? If you rely on referrals, what are you doing to stay in touch with those referral sources? If you are trying to develop a new area of practice, what speaking or writing opportunities are available to you to raise your visibility before prospective clients?

3) What is your current utilization?

To meet your professional goals (firm or personal), how much of your time are you willing to work?

What percentage of that time must be spent on billable matters to meet your minimum financial goals?

How much time is left?

If the answer is zero, you need to rethink your business plan. There are only 24 hours in every day. To maintain a steady pipeline of business, you need to make time to do it. That means spending less time on current clients or devoting more non-work time toward your business development efforts.

It’s all about balance.