in July, 2010. )

In my experience, lawyers as a whole are not overly enthused about talk of brands and branding. If you must focus time, thought, money or all of the foregoing on a marketing effort of some kind, most would prefer to spend it on something distinctly more tangible – hosting a seminar perhaps, or taking clients to lunch, or even organizing a client golf tournament.  Anything but being locked in a boardroom with the consultant-du-jour talking incoherent marketing-speak as part of an abstract navel-gazing exercise, or being asked to foot an exorbitant bill for a designer squiggle to adorn the firm’s letterhead and business card.  “Where’s the value in that?” many may well (and frequently do) ask.

However, two items in the mainstream news this month relating to Vancouver landmarks have got me thinking afresh about the powerful influence brands can and do exert over all of us.

You Say Stanley Park, I Say XwayXway

In the first instance, a proposal to “rename” Vancouver’s iconic Stanley Park as XwayXway (pronounced “Kwhy-Kway”) in recognition of an ancient Aboriginal settlement in the area surfaced seemingly overnight and caught many Vancouverites utterly by surprise.

While a closer reading of the story revealed that the proposal was not in fact to eradicate the name Stanley Park but rather to add the aboriginal moniker as a second or supplemental name, the wheels of resistance from a startled populace were already in motion.  Comment sections on news media websites were immediately inundated with howls of outrage and vitriol. I noted several hundred comments on the Globe and Mail site alone within hours of the story breaking.  The reactions were intensely visceral – even with dozens upon dozens of what were presumably the most incendiary responses having been expunged from the various media websites for violations of the news outlets’ comment policies. Clearly, a nerve had been touched.

By the next day the story had been covered in all the Vancouver dailies as well as on local TV, and had garnered further national attention. Shortly thereafter, the federal government – no doubt sensing the prevailing political winds – swooped in with an announcement that the Great Stanley Park/XwayXway debate of 2010 was a non-starter, and that the proposal would not even be considered. Game, set and match, nothing to see here folks, please keep it moving.

A Hockey Rink By Any Other Name

In the second story, before the dust even had time to settle on the Stanley Park furor we learned that the Vancouver Canucks’ hockey rink heretofore known as General Motors Place (a.k.a. GM Place, a.k.a The Garage) had been swiftly rechristened Rogers Arena thanks to a shift in corporate sponsorship. Unlike the Stanley Park/XwayXway affair, this time resistance was futile. The twittering classes and sports-talk radio callers were welcome to their opinions and their brand-related chit-chat (of which there has been a great deal), but sponsorship dollars had spoken and the deed was done. Following as it did the temporary re-naming of the same facility as “Canada Hockey Place” during the Olympics, Vancouver hockey fans are now familiarizing themselves with a third name for the same building within the span of six months. As a result, many are left with a distinctly unsettled sensation in that corner of their brains that is reserved for matters pertaining to the local shinny squad.

Most lawyers and other professionals I know like to think ourselves largely above the shallow allure of “branding”; smart enough to ignore the huckster-ish entreaties of marketers, and to make decisions about what goods and services to purchase, use, and invest in based on purely objective factors such as quality, product design, and value rather than illusory distinctions like brand names.

And yet, disproportionate numbers of us continue to buy Tide instead of no-name detergent, and to care what our hockey rink is called, and to have strong opinions on whether a stand of trees in the downtown Vancouver peninsula should be referenced as Stanley Park or XwayXway.  Why?  I suspect that If your clothes were submitted to a blind detergent test you likely couldn’t tell which had been washed in detergent A and which in detergent B if your life depended on it.  The hockey team will play just as well or just as poorly regardless of the name of their rink. Further, the trees and grass in that wonderful Vancouver park won’t change by virtue of the words on the sign, and the grass won’t care what it is called. It’s the same park either way.

I submit that the underlying reason we care about all of these things is identical: the brand has exerted its influence on us. Our experience of the laundry soap, the hockey rink, and the park are all inextricably tied up with specific visual and linguistic cues that the stewards of those places and products have put into place.  Change those cues and you change the experience.

Meanwhile, Back At The Law Firm

So what does all of this have to do with law firms?  Simply this: Your firm’s brand matters.  A great deal in fact.

I am currently working with a handful of different law firms – some new, some of long standing – on name development or name changes.  If branding is truly irrelevant, logic dictates that naming the firm should be the simplest of all marketing exercises.  In reality of course, it is anything but.  Experienced legal marketers (and indeed any partner who has been part of a firm name change and sat in on the decision-making meetings) will tell you that passions are easily inflamed and resentments can run deep when a position on the firm masthead is at stake.  The parallels to the emotional debate about Stanley Park are strong.

So if we can at least acknowledge that brands matter – even to law firms – why is the idea of branding held in such low regard? I believe that part of the reason many lawyers eschew “branding” is that the concept so often lacks the clarity that lawyers invariably crave.   There are seemingly almost as many definitions of “brand” and the process of “branding” extant as there are marketing consultants.

The definitions I prefer are simple ones:

1. Your brand is what people think about when they think about you.
2. Branding is the process by which you try to shape and influence those thoughts.

By that standard, brands and branding are very important indeed.

Earlier this month, British Columbia residents witnessed political awkwardness at a level unusual even by West Coast standards when a special prosecutor cleared B.C. Solicitor General Kash Heed of wrongdoing in a criminal investigation. Mr. Heed was re-appointed to cabinet later that day, only to re-resign the next morning after the special prosecutor stepped down as a result of his law firm’s $1,000 contribution to the Heed campaign shortly before the last provincial election.

The special prosecutor has stated that he was aware of his law firm’s donation early on.  However, he did not consider it an apparent or perceived conflict of interest until too late in the day to avoid the media storm that inevitably followed when he stepped down immediately after exonerating Mr. Heed. The Law Society of British Columbia has launched an investigation, the Premier has called for a review of the process by which special prosecutor appointments occur, and the Vancouver Sun (B.C.’s major daily newspaper of record) has dutifully pulled out a list of other prominent counsel who have acted as special prosecutors subsequent to making political donations to the governing party in B.C.

Let me be clear that I do not have any belief whatsoever that the campaign contribution in the Heed situation had any bearing on the special prosecutor’s decision-making process – a view I’m confident the vast majority of those in the legal profession would share. Despite that, it is equally clear that the very small financial donation in this case has had significant repercussions for each of the Solicitor General, the governing party of British Columbia, the Attorney General’s criminal justice branch, and the special prosecutor and law firm involved.

While unique on its facts, this incident raises the larger question of whether law firms ought to still be in the business of making political donations or campaign contributions.  In fact, the law firm at the center of the Heed incident has subsequently announced that it will no longer make such donations. While some may consider this an example of firmly closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, it nevertheless represents a policy rethink that most Canadian law firms have yet to undertake.

As seen through the lens of a law firm’s marketing strategist, what is the risk/reward ratio of a firm making a financial contribution to a political party or an election campaign at any level of government?

In recent years, we have seen many firms move away from active participation by their lawyers on boards of directors, both for liability reasons and to avoid potential conflicts of interest. It strikes me that when it comes to conflicts, the argument for declining to make political contributions is at least equally strong.

Media reports and opinion polls regularly state that public confidence in the institutions of government, including both Parliament and the judicial system, is decreasing over time.  Meanwhile, scrutiny of these institutions continues to grow. As such, any whiff of perceived bias or potential conflict of interest is certain to be seized upon, both by political factions seeking to take tactical advantage of an opportunity that has presented itself and also by the general public, who increasingly throw up their hands in disgust at all players involved whenever such stories appear in the media. TheVancouver Sun article referenced earlier about other special prosecutors who have made political donations is a classic example of the guilt-by-association ethos that prevails once public confidence founders.

I would also factor into the equation that in any law firm beyond a handful of lawyers and employees, different political preferences will prevail, even within the firm. There will be those who chafe – loudly or otherwise – at the idea of firm funds being spent in support of a cause, party or politician they don’t favour.  The resulting disconnect has a corrosive effect on the culture of the firm.

To my mind, all of the above are reasons why the risk/reward ratio for law firm political donations is frequently too high to make it a prudent part of law firm marketing strategy. Firms interested in pursuing government-related work of any kind need to be both completely transparent and utterly pristine in their dealings with public bodies and political organizations. This will help preserve their opportunity to act in a legal capacity later on.  Campaign contributions muddy the waters, and where mud exists, mud-slinging is sure to follow.

Legal Futurist Richard Susskind speaks to the BCCA Centenary Conference in Vancouver, April 23, 2010

“Dressed smart like a London bloke, before he speak his suit bespoke.”

- Kanye West, from the song American Boy.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend the academic and judicial conference held as part of the British Columbia Court of Appeal’s centenary celebrations.  Of the many excellent presentations that day, I was most intrigued by the opportunity to hear first hand Professor Richard Susskind, and he did not disappoint.

Professor Susskind began with an anecdote involving power drills.  As the story goes, Black & Decker routinely takes their new hires for a period of training, shows them a picture of a power drill and asks them to confirm that this is what the company sells, which the new recruits blithely do.  The company then shows them a picture of a hole in a piece of wood (as illustrated above) and advises that this is what their customers are in fact buying – not a product the company offers but rather a solution to their problem.  The message is a stark one – do not become so focused on your current product or service offering that you become myopic and lose sight of the client’s perspective – and their willingness to move their business elsewhere if a simpler, cheaper or otherwise better solution is presented.

Susskind feels that law firms are currently geared towards providing what he calls “bespoke” legal service, by which he means individualized, custom legal advice created for and tailored to the specific client and situation and provided almost exclusively directly by the lawyer(s).  Almost by definition, this sort of personalized attention is a very expensive offering.

He sees the types of legal service or legal staffing possibilities along a spectrum and predicts a transition along this path:

Bespoke>standardized>systemized>packaged>commoditized

Susskind posits that most corporate and government in-house counsel face “a dilemma in 3 parts”:

1. They are being instructed to reduce their in-house legal staffing;
2. They are being instructed to reduce their external legal spend; and
3. They are being asked to assume more legal risk and manage more compliance related activities.

The result is that there is an inevitable and increasing market pull to the right of the bespoke > commoditized continuum.

Susskind asks the critical question:  ”What parts of lawyers and judges work could be undertaken differently – more quickly, cheaply, efficiently or to a higher quality – using alternative methods of working?”  He believes that most lawyers spend too much time doing routine work others can do.

Many lawyers, he says, insist that what they do is not capable of being reduced to a fixed fee or otherwise re-imagined in a way that leads to significantly lower costs, a position he flatly rejects. He points to the fact this commoditization trend is already taking place or has taken place in other complex professions (tax accounting, healthcare) and believes that legal services are not immune to the same pressures.  He insists that we will see more “decomposing” of legal work  - by which he means deconstructing or unbundling complex processes into their task-based components, with many of these unbundled components then being provided by lower-cost, more efficient alternatives such as outsourcing, off-shoring, automated drafting, closed client communities,de-lawyering, etc.

Despite what some may see as Susskind’s negative prognosis for the legal industry, my impression was that he is merely describing the forces he sees at work, and that he in fact imagines a bright future for those lawyers and law firms that recognize the tectonic shifts underway and position themselves for prosperity by aligning their offering with market demands.

Professor Susskind closed with a quote from a local: Vancouver-based science-fiction writer William Gibson, who has famously said: “The future is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.” I am left with the impression that Professor Susskind has received a greater distribution than most of us.

Personal Anecdote Postscript:

While reading his book, two phrases that Susskind uses extensively – “bespoke legal services” and “decomposing legal services” – rang noticeably off-tune to my staunchly North-Americanized ear.   “Bespoke” exclusively conjures up custom-tailored suits to my minds’ eye, while “decomposing” immediately brings to mind any number of corpse/autopsy scenes from the endless cycle of CSI: Everywhere episodes that proliferate on cable television.  Professor Susskind actually referenced this very point during his lecture with respect to the word bespoke, and confirmed that he had only belatedly learned of the term’s unfamiliarity in this part of the world.

Legal technology fanboy that I am, I availed myself of the opportunity to speak briefly with him in the conference hall after the session and mentioned that the word decomposing also sounded unorthodox to me.  Susskind laughingly informed me that he had similar commentary on a late draft of the book from a close North American friend who is a senior executive at a major American corporation (my memory fails me as to exactly who it was) who also made the decomposing – bodies linkage.  Consider this then my public standing offer to the good professor to “Canadianize” any draft treatises he may choose to publish in the future – a place he seems to already inhabit.

Screencaps from the Torys iPhone App

Torys LLP has launched what appears to be the first Canadian law firm iPhone application.  Available as a free download via the iTunes app store, the app includes sections incorporating the firm’s twitter stream, publications, a lawyer directory, video content and firm contact information and maps.

While they may be first to market in Canada, this app is not something that has been haphazardly banged together – quite the opposite in fact.  The firm has clearly put some solid thinking behind what information should be included and how it is presented.  For example, the lawyer directory goes beyond a simple list to include the lawyers’ photos, short form versions of their bios and links to the full website versions.  The contact information includes GPS functionality and live directions to their offices.  As already noted on Slaw:

The GPS features might be useful for visitors to Toronto, or the hapless OCI student trying to find their way to an in-firm interview.
The app might even be useful for that cocktail party where you know the lawyer across the room works at Torys, and quite embarrassingly cannot remember their name.

Earlier this year well-known legal blogging and technology thought-leader Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog wrote on his blog about why firms should forget about building an iPhone App.  To summarize his arguments, Kevin says: 1) in a sea of 150,000+ different apps, yours will never get found or widely used, and 2) the logic behind building a law firm app is flawed because that’s like asking people to download a separate app for every content source they follow instead of using well-known destinations where content is already aggregated. For those reasons, he concludes that developing an iPhone app is a waste of resources and time and makes your firm look silly by demonstrating a misunderstanding of how content is consumed online.

I have great respect for Kevin and he and I see the world alike more often than not, but on this topic I think he’s DEAD WRONG.

My position is that the goal of a large law firm iPhone app is not to be magically discovered by the world at large in that giant app-sea of games, productivity tools, and time-wasters.  Rather, it is to provide existing and prospective clients that already have the firm squarely on their radar another access point and contact opportunity, and to strengthen their sense of connection with the firm.  If I’m a new client sitting in the lobby in advance of my second meeting, I might very well appreciate having easy access to the names and faces of lawyers two, three or four that I’ve only met briefly even though I already know my primary contact well.  If I’m a General Counsel sitting at the airport and find myself with a half-hour flight delay, I might well browse through my apps and decide to scan a few headlines from the firm’s twitter feed, which the app makes dead-simple for me to find.

As an end-user, the mere presence of the App on my phone also creates ongoing additional top-of-mind awareness for those firms that do make it onto my system, every time I scan through my phone, which is daily.  Kevin himself points out in his post that the way we consume content is changing at lightning speed.  That being the case, why would we presume to speak for whether or not it is “silly” for someone else to consume law firm content via a standalone app instead of via a blog, a twitter client, or a website?  If there is one thing the 300 channel tv universe and the explosion of social media online has shown us, it is that we don’t all want our content in one homogenous fashion.

Kevin also writes that he thinks the upcoming iPad is going to be “a game-changer”.  Well guess what – those standalone law firm iPhone apps he dislikes are going to work from day 1 on the iPad and could be great high-tech “lobby material” in lieu of the traditional printed firm brochure – that would send a pretty clear message to clients about the level of technological savvy they can expect from their counsel.  My money also says that the firms building iPhone apps now are also going to be the early adopters in getting blackberry versions rolling as well and while there may be apps beyond count in Apple’s store, there certainly isn’t yet in the blackberry world, where a heavy concentration of lawyers, in-house counsel and corporate clients reside.

I also had the opportunity to speak with Torys’ Chief Marketing Officer Stuart Wood earlier today and he made several points that solidified my thinking on this topic even further.  Mr. Wood pointed out that the project was neither expensive nor particularly time-consuming, and will provide the firm with real data about usage and adoption rates, which they can then use to make better decisions about further iterations, supporting other platforms etc.  He also reports that initial feedback from clients in the first week has been both significant and highly positive and is frequently coming directly from the clients to their own lawyers as opposed to marketing or firm management. Other firms’ I.T. departments are also calling their peers at Torys to find out more about the technical aspects. When the client is taking the initiative to make contact with your lawyers directly to congratulate you on a new marketing initiative and have a chat, and the competitors are calling to see how they can replicate what you’ve done, my money says the small investment in developing that free app has just paid for itself in spades.

The new BCCA100.ca website includes a photo gallery drawn from the Court’s archives including portraits of every Chief Justice of British Columbia, the original ground-breaking of the old courthouse building (now the Vancouver Art Gallery), and significant historical events such as Lord Denning’s visit for the opening of the current Vancouver Courts in 1979, and the first all-woman panel of the Court of Appeal.

Plans for the 2010 centennial include a one-hour documentary “Though the Heavens Fall: 100 Years of the BC Court of Appeal“, a book by author Christopher Moore, and a judicial and academic conference in April 2010 featuring professor and legal futurist Richard Susskind and keynote speaker the Right Honourable Madam Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin P.C.

For more information, please visit the Court’s centenary website here: http://www.bcca100.ca

On a personal note, I must add that this project has afforded me the unique privilege of learning more about both the inner workings of the Court of Appeal’s operations and British Columbia’s legal history. For that I am deeply grateful.

In making their determination, the magazine asked a panel of nine legal technology professionals, including web designers and consultants, for their views and rankings, including Skunkworks’ own Client Services Director Marni Macleod, LL.B. (Fans of due process can rest assured however that Marni was duly excluded from pitching or voting for our own work). You can read more of Marni’s thoughts about what makes a good legal website on our agency blog and download a pdf of the full National article here.

Turning to the blogosphere, on New Year’s Eve Stem Legal’s Steve Matthews also announced this year’s winners in the 2009 Clawbie Awards, where two more Skunkworks’ clients fared well. David Bilinsky’s Thoughtful Legal Management blog and the Courthouse Libraries BC’s new blog The Stream were winner and runner-up respectively in their categories.

In reviewing all of the winning entries in both the Clawbies and the National article, I am heartened by how far legal marketing on the web has come in this country over the past decade. The depth of content, the overall level of design, the adoption of current technology and the resulting competitive differentiation that the leading firms display as we enter 2010 makes me excited for what’s to come in the year(s) ahead. My congratulations to all of the firms and lawyers recognized in these recent awards.

Here are my three picks:

1. SLAW Slaw is a perennial award-winner of myriad blog awards. While that might make it a boring pick, it doesn’t change the fact that it continues to deliver the goods month in, month out with a wide list of contributors that collectively provide insight into recent developments and current trends in Canadian legal practice, technology and scholarship that make it the online equivalent of the local watering hole for Canadian law geeks. Essential stuff.

2. Thoughtful Law David Bilinsky’s Thoughtful Law blog is another multiple award winner that covers a broad territory – from change management to technology trends to personal renewal – with aplomb. The difference is that it’s all being powered by a single person instead of the large ensemble cast that contributes to Slaw. (Disclaimer: Dave is both a friend and a Skunkworks client. Don’t hold that against him – the blog stands on its own merits).

3. ICBC Law Blog I frequently use Victoria lawyer Erik Magraken as a poster boy for how younger lawyers and smaller firms can successfully use online content marketing to showcase their expertise, establish themselves as thought leaders, and disrupt the old hierarchies that historically made age and firm size key criteria for winning work. A plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer based out of Victoria, Erik’s blog (and facebook page and twitter profile, and JD Supra documents etc. etc.) succeed(s) because he provides useful, factual information to his readers about his area of practice without resorting to salesmanship. In the process, he also demonstrates his passion for and knowledge of the subject, and gives himself terrific top-of-mind presence to a large online audience. The result is an informative and effective practitioner’s blog that builds business and no doubt makes him a better lawyer for the very act of writing it.

So there you have it – three blogs that make my personal list for some of the best CanCon of the 2009 blogosphere. Check them out if you haven’t already, and be sure to make your own Clawbies picks via email, twitter or blog post as described here.

P.S. A final word – Jordan Furlong’s Law 21 and Steve Matthews’ Stem Law Firm Web Strategy Blog are also both gold medal winners in my view, but have selflessly removed themselves from Clawbies contention due to the small technical complication that they are the ones dishing out the awards. I hope it doesn’t spoil my ballot, but consider this a ceremonial vote for them anyhow.

One of the areas of discussion that generated quite a bit of interest was around the availability and utility of full-sized external keyboards for smartphones. I had such a setup WAAY back when for a very early-edition Palm Pilot and found it made the device significantly more useful. Fast forward a decade and despite the almost infinite number of iPhone accessories on the market, I have been unable to locate this seemingly obvious add-on.

However, during my research I did come across one apparent option for Blackberry owners that is both an external keyboard and larger monitor/display screen. One of the session attendees also alerted us to and personally vouched for another external keyboard that she has been using with her blackberry with great success.

In the non-legal technology press and blogs there seems to be some disdain for external smartphone keyboards as being poor value for dollar with the cost of netbooks constantly hitting new lows but that misses the point for most lawyers in my view. Between home and office computers and a smartphone, most attorneys are more than sufficiently equipped with computing power and the addition of another standalone device would complicate, rather than simplify the technology picture. However, maximizing the value and utility of your smartphone just makes good sense. So, without further ado, here’s the two external keyboards I’ve surfaced so far.

Option 1: Celio RedFly External Keyboard + Display

The RedFly by Celio looks very intriguing – essentially giving your blackberry a NetBook-like footprint with a near-full sized keyboard and a much larger monitor. The caveats are that support for blackberries has just been added within the last month, and for Canadians, I don’t see a buy-in-Canada option anywhere on the site yet, although they do note one distributor for the Canadian market.

Option2: The Freedom Universal Keyboard2

Unlike the RedFly, the Freedom Universal 2 is a one-trick pony: it is an external keyboard full-stop. However, it is already a second-generation device which means it’s more battle-tested than the RedFly at this stage, and I have one strong recommendation from a lawyer I know with hands-on experience with the device so that might be the more conservative option at this stage. As with the RedFly though, it’s not clear that the device has been fully deployed in the Canadian market yet (their website doesn’t list a Canadian contact, but does reference a Canadian distributor) so regardless of which option you choose, it might involve a pickup the next time you visit our friends south of the border.

If any readers have hands-on experiences to share about either of these two options, or other choices I might have missed, I’d love to hear from you.

* Integrated search – a single, powerful search application that can search any or all of 10 different library sources (e.g. the library catalogue, their in-house “asked & answered” database, their unreported decisions database, etc.);
* Practice Portals- practice-specific hubs designed to provide practitioners’ with ready access to key resources, texts, legislation, leading authorities and recent news in a single environment. There are five practice portals initially (Civil litigation, Family law, Personal Injury, Wills & Estates, and Practice Management & Technology) with plans already underway to add more;
* User Accounts individual user accounts that can save preferences, order histories and searches;
* News filtering by practice area – self-explanatory; and
* A new blog, “The Stream” which will serve as a platform for Library staff to provide their insight and commentary on law and legal research developments relevant to British Columbia lawyers.

Also of key importance in my view is that CLBC’s extensive involvement in the development and operation of a separate (and excellent) legal information site geared specifically to the public – CLICKLAW – has enabled the organization to focus the new Courthouselibary.ca site squarely on the needs of practicing lawyers. While both sites are fully accessible to anyone, separating out the offerings to cater more specifically to their respective user bases can only result in better user experiences across the board.

Skunkworks is proud to have been involved in several aspects of this project although full credit goes to our friends at Habanero Consulting Group for the top-notch site build and to the Courthouse Libraries’ team for their vision both in engaging in extensive user consultation and research into what users wanted from a new library website and in their willingness to explore new approaches and priorities even where such choices represented fundamental shifts away from established library processes. It’s accepted wisdom in marketing circles that brave clients make for interesting work. For me, this has been a textbook example of exactly that.