Set in Style

An interesting article in today’s paper about law firm recruiting efforts. It’s about using videos as recruiting tools, about attracting youngsters comfortable with YouTube. “The firms hope to persuade students that their lawyers, and by extension the firms, are young-thinking and hip.”

Results are mixed. The article quotes Brian Dalton, senior law editor at Vault: “A lot of them [law firm recruiting videos] come off seeming like hostage videos.”

The article also refers to four videos produced by Greenfield Belser for Choate Hall & Stewart as exceptional!

The Choate videos (costing a total of $75,000) mimic those ads for Apple computer where the big, dumb guy represents Windows, and the hip, smart dude represents Macintosh. The dumb guy is an associate at a Big Law Firm who spends his days (including his vacation days) toiling through mounds of mundane work. The smart gal works at Choate. She gets to do lots of interesting work, and she doesn’t spend all her time working.

Note: I suppose that — one of these days — we’ll be hearing about some lawsuit that goes like this. Some Big Law Firm posted a recruiting video suggesting that new associates get to do all sorts of important things. A new associate goes to work for that firm and then — after two years of spending 60 hours a week in document review — claims the video — which bears little relation to reality — just goes to show that the firm doesn’t stand by its claims.

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David Lat (Above the Law) has some interesting comments about the article. Apparently, he’s no big fan of Karen Donovan, who’s been writing about law firm marketing efforts of late.

ATL also has this post about a recruiting video (also mentioned in Donovan’s article) that never got posted by Quinn Emanuel.

Note: Seems as if upper management at some firms still haven’t gotten that message about treating women as equals.

Over at Void for Vagueness, Brian Dalton writes:

So, I’m quoted in the New York Times today. Cool, right? Not exactly.

As David Lat correctly points out, this is a paraphrase of something he wrote in the NYObserver. In my defense, I did make it clear to the reporter that the “hostage” line was not my own.

Anyway, now I’m the Carlos Mencia of people who get quoted in articles about law firm recruiting.

Greenberg Traurig gets favorable mention in this article from yesterday’s paper.

The article’s about the plight of some of those who recently bought homes they can’t afford.

Greenberg Traurig gets kudos (and some pretty good press) for helping them!

Check out the revised Gibson Dunn Web site.

How refreshing! While most big firm sites are busy and much adorned, this site is relatively simple. It’s easy on the eyes: narrow columns of black, serif type set on a white background, like a newspaper.

Take a look at the home page. It’s clean and sparse. But then check the copy: a blurb (one of several) pitching some aspect of the firm. Here’s one:

The world of business and law is constantly changing. But the beliefs that enable a law practice to perform at the highest possible level — as well as the reputation — remain remarkably constant. In a world where change of virtually every kind is accepted as good, there is still a place for uncompromising standards, thoughtfulness and tireless pursuit of the best possible outcome.

I don’t know about you, but I’d not publish that blurb, not with that dangling aside in the second sentence. How is that supposed to read?

More lofty talk. Another blurb claims that information is a type of knowledge, and the best place to get it is in an office:

Information is the most valuable intellectual property. The best place to obtain such knowledge is in the offices of business and government where crucial decisions are being made. Our attorneys are leaders as well as lawyers. The intellectual property they are privy to can be turned into a powerful competitive advantage for our clients.

I’d not publish that one either, because it’s silly. Nor would I make the claim that “Our standards are uncompromising.” It would be better to claim the firm’s standards are high. Better yet — to do it in a way that supports the claim.

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Form & Substance: Gibson Dunn came up with a potentially effective and distinctive design for its Web site, but the copy doesn’t follow suit. The site gives the impression of a newspaper — narrow columns appear where there’s room for much more — but the copy reads like it wasn’t written to complement the design. It’s more boring than lively. It’s doesn’t get much more riveting than this:

Together, the lawyers of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Intellectual Property Practice Group represent and counsel clients on a wide spectrum of intellectual property matters. The Practice Group’s litigators are additionally part of a Litigation Practice Group that has been a finalist in all three of The American Lawyer’s Litigation Department of the Year competitions since their inception in 2002.

In other places, it seems as if no one has looked at the copy at all:

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Crisis Management Practice Group of-fers a vital and increasingly es-sential resource in today’s com-plex and threatening legal envi-ronment. The Group includes skilled and battle-tested lawyers with the experience to assist cli-ents facing a major, company-threatening crisis. Our lawyers have demonstrated their effec-tiveness in dealing with all three branches of the United States government, state law enforce-ment and regulatory officials, and international regulators.

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Function: See what happens when you look for a page at the firm’s site that doesn’t exist (i.e., generate a page-not-found error). See what happens when you look for http://www.gibsondunn.com/missing_page. I suppose that functionality was not intended.

The revised site also offers some of the latest in law firm Web site technology: Recruiting Videos! One of them claims you can tell how smart people are by looking at their grades! (An oblique critique of President Bush? Or of Einstein?)

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Other large firms talk about how open they are to people who don’t all look, act, or think alike, but Gibson Dunn is proving it’s an active advocate of real diversity: it’s representing — at no charge — John Langan (Langan v. State Farm), who is suing to have New York recognize his civil union (under Vermont law) to Neal Conrad Spicehandler as marriage.

If you’re a law student, if you want to work at a big firm, and if you like sleeping with people just like you, then you should check out this recruiting video (titled Out) from Gibson Dunn.

A potential client is doing some research: he’s looking into the legal implications of sharing a vacation property with his brother and his sister and their families.

It’s Sunday morning, and he’s at home, looking for informal legal advice. He fires up Google and searches for “Family Property Agreement.”

And then he finds this: a client alert titled SHARING A FAMILY RETREAT: THE FIVE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF A FAMILY PROPERTY AGREEMENT.

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Go ahead and take a look at the alert. Give it a read. If you’re short on time, read just the first paragraph (the one that’s supposed to grab the reader’s attention and inspire him to continue reading). Here it is:

Sharing a treasured family retreat can be a traumatic and divisive issue unless handled with great care.  For example, who decides which family members can use the property during optimal times such as July or over the holidays?  Who decides when it is time to replace the pool or build a new guest house, and how these capital costs are to be paid? What is the annual budget? What if one owner won’t pay his or her share?  Who decides to hire or fire the groundskeeper, a gardener or the cook?  What if some, but not all, of the owners want to sell the property?  What if one owner dies and faces significant inheritance taxes?  What are the rights of any divorced non-lineal spouse?

The first problem is obvious: questions are not examples of traumatic and divisive issues, are they? We know what the authors meant, but they didn’t express themselves clearly, and that’s not a good way to advertise legal services, is it?

The second problem isn’t quite so striking. It has to do with audience. Who is the target audience for this piece? If it’s a potential client looking for advice, then using a cryptic term like non-lineal spouse sends the wrong message. It says, “We speak to you in a way you can’t really understand.”

Quite obviously, the attorneys who wrote this alert are very sharp thinkers. But the firm they work for doesn’t provide them what they (and all good writers) need. It doesn’t provide them an editor. If it did, that opening paragraph would engage readers, rather than leave them wondering if this alert is representative of the firm’s concept of excellence.

So, what might become of that first paragraph if the authors have access to an editor? Perhaps this:

Sharing a family retreat can be a very rewarding experience. Then again, it can lead to some serious disputes. What happens when there are competing claims to use the property over a holiday weekend? What happens when one family member wants to build a new pool house, and another thinks the old one just needs some repair? What if someone’s not paying his or her fair share of the costs, or is letting friends use the property? What if one owner dies and faces significant inheritance taxes?

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Read the very last line of the alert:

To opt-out from future communications please visit: http://www.acmelawfirm.com/vtu/p70978671VVyMcf98

This is absurd. Imagine this: imagine picking up a copy of a newsletter, and then finding instructions in it on how to not get any more copies of it!

The firm’s upper management claims that, “We know that focusing on excellence works,” but adding an unsubscribe notice to a Web page doesn’t support the claim. In fact, it suggests the lack of an essential ingredient for excellence: attention to detail.

Here’s my guess: this firm’s upper management is up to its ears in far more pressing matters. If it considered this for just a minute — if it considered the potential cost of not having a system in place to make sure attorney-authored articles aren’t published before they’re ready to be published — then it would employ an editor. And it wouldn’t wait for some embarrassing episode to occur before it made sure its publications supported its claims about excellence.

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It’s an odd thing. My guess is the two lawyers who wrote this alert regularly spend good money to get their hair done, because they know that appearances certainly do matter. But an editor?

I recently ran across this client alert written by René Thorne, an attorney at Proskauer Rose. It’s about an “alarming trend in employment law cases: executives, managers, and other decision-makers are being sued personally for their workplace decisions.”

I was favorably impressed. I found it well written, well structured, very readable, and containing excellent advice.

Unfortunately for Thorne and her firm, people are not going to be able to find this alert — not even those who are looking for the very advice it contains.

Open the alert and take a look at it. Then, search for alarming trend. The string can’t be found, even though it’s in plain sight. Search for employment law cases. Once again, it can’t be found, though it’s right there.

How can this be? How can Acrobat not find copy that’s obviously there?

Do this — copy the first paragraph in the alert, and then paste it into Word or some other text editor. Rather than, “Recently, there has been an alarming trend in employment law cases: executives, managers, and other decision-makers are being sued personally for their workplace decisions,” the copy reads like a bunch of mumbo jumbo:

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And that’s how it is with all of Proskauer Rose’s client alerts and newsletters. Open any of the firm’s recent alerts or newsletters, and then do a Google search for key phrases in the document. Documents from other firms show up, but not those from Proskauer Rose.

That’s too bad. Ms. Thorne goes through the effort of writing a really good alert, and then no one who might be interested in it can find it.

I’m going to give the firm a call and see if they think they could make good use of a skilled and experienced editor. They’ll say, “No, but thanks.” But you and I know otherwise.

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If you do a Google search for oÉÅÉåíäóI=íÜÉêÉ=Ü~ë=ÄÉÉå=~=äçí=çÑ=éêÉëë=~Äçìí=~å, the alert does show up.

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While you’re at it, check out Proskauer Rose’s privacy law blog. It’s top notch.

The Times has this article about law firm advertising. The focus is on Holey Foag and its decision to run ads in BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, and the WSJ.

Bingham McCutchen’s campaign is also mentioned.

In both cases, the goal is to be seen and noticed.

It works for Coke and Pepsi.