This is part II of GMT's in depth discussion with Bill Schroeder principal and founder of Clarity Group Consulting, the premier professional services brand advisory. In this episode we talk through how firms, especially those with global components, can approach the brand elements of the merged firm. Best in class firms think though the implications of the soon to be merged new entity far earlier in the process than we have seen historically. Listen to Bill discuss the ways firms can approach this effort while both maximizing the efforts of management while also allowing for strong input from both partners and clients.
Contact Rob and Murray:
Robert C. Bata, Founder and Principal, WarwickPlace Legal
Email: rbata@warwickplace.com
Murray M. Coffey, Founder and Principal, M Coffey
Email: murray@mcoffey.net
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Robert, welcome to GMT, the podcast for globally minded
(00:05):
law firm leaders with your host.
Robert Bata, principal ofWarwick place legal and Murray
Coffey, principal of M Coffey,between them, Rob and Murray
have about three quarters of acentury's experience working
with some of the most notablelaw firms on the planet. This
podcast is designed to helpthose law firm leaders tasked
with growth make great decisionsabout whether and how to
(00:28):
implement cross border expansionfor their firms and what it
takes to succeed. All right, andwelcome back. This is part two
of GM T's discussion withclarity groups. Founder and
principal, Bill Schroeder,well, one thing I think is
really important we've talked alot about is the client right,
and that's critical right tobuilding brands. So one of the
(00:50):
things that we try to gage whilewe go through interviews
internally is how ready forchange is this organization is
this firm, and oftentimes wefind that leaders, top level
leaders, think that theirpartners are not as ready for
change as they might be. And sothere are exercises that we do.
(01:11):
We do this with the clientinterviews as well, and we do it
with the firm where we will, wecall it a speed round, where
we'll ask, in the interview witha client, we'll ask them, let's
go down a set of words, justpairs of words, and there's
about 10 of them. Is this firmthat we're talking about today
that services you? Are they morethis or more this, more this or
(01:32):
more this? And they sort of rankthem across measures for pairs
of words, so one might be moremodern, more traditional, for
example. And then after they dothat, we'll say, now let's talk
about your ideal law firm. Ifyou could create the ideal law
firm, what would that look like?
And they go through the samepairs of words, and invariably,
you tend to see a shift moretoward modern, more toward
(01:54):
innovative, more toward all ofthose things we do the same
thing internally. Talk about thefirm today, to the partners and
others. We talk to boom, boom,boom, boom, boom, and then we
say, tell us how you'd like tosee the firm evolve. So what
comes out of that is data thatshows you what your clients
think of you today and whatthey'd like you to be, what you
think of yourselves today, andwhat you would ideally like to
(02:14):
be. And if there are any gaps,and I would say most of the
time, you're very aligned withyour clients. Law firms are very
aligned with their clients andwhere they want to and where
they want to go, and they wantto go further. So that gives
leaders the impetus to say, weheard from you. We talked to a
lot of you, and this is what weheard from our clients as well.
So we're gonna, we're gonnastart to make a bigger shift,
(02:36):
which moves toward theactivation work that you're
talking about Murray, which isworkshopping things to try to
figure out within the context ofour positioning and who we say
we are. What do we need tochange around here? What do we
need to do differently aroundhere, and how do we generate
those ideas within the firm?
Rob Bata (02:57):
So how, how do you approach a merger, when
obviously two different firmsand in order to create a brand
that reflects what will be theultimate one hopes the product
(03:18):
of the merger? How? Do you howdo you assess the different
cultures and the brands thatthose different firms already
have, and what is the process bywhich you kind of try to merge
those ideas and concepts? I meanthe
Unknown (03:37):
simplest terms. We're looking at, what are the firms
saying about themselves on theirwebsites and in their marketing
materials? Definitely,materials. Definitely, that's a
starting point. And then we'redoing a significant number of
interviews. One of thedifferences between corporate
branding and a branding whereyou're doing where you're
working with a partnership ofowners is we believe you have to
(03:58):
hear from a large number offolks who are the owners. So
whereas you might go into acorporate structure and talk to
10 people, I might go into a lawfirm of 3000 lawyers and talk to
100 partners, I will do focusgroups with senior associates
and with senior administrativefolks. Again, in addition to
(04:19):
client data, we're doing clientresearch as well, but through
those interviews, you're reallytrying to dig into, again, what
are the values around here? Whatdo we do? Give me examples of
how we're different. If youworked at another firm and you
lateraled In, how is your firmdifferent from this one? We're
really trying to dig into thosekinds of values and
characteristics that set thefirm apart. They're hard to get
to, right? This is a categorythat is not highly
(04:41):
differentiated, but as firmscome together and merge, and
there are fewer of them thatwill, that will naturally play
out, and then what we're doingis we're comparing what we're
hearing from the one firmagainst the other, and hearing
what we're hearing from them.
And we're looking forcommonalities that are
positives, of course, and we'relooking. Are commonalities that
might want to be we might wantto leave behind, and then we're
(05:02):
pulling that together andsaying, Here's what we heard
from both firms that we thinkare really exciting, and you're
in agreement on, how do we startto leverage those things?
Because they're really clientbenefits too. We're hearing from
clients they like that aboutyou, you're particularly agile,
you know, you don't noodleeverything, you're not super
academic, you're very businessfocused. You build these really
deep relationships. And here are10 examples of how you do that.
(05:24):
So we're starting to build thosekind of commonalities, and then
we're presenting that back as astrategy, like here are the
shared values. We think that youall have. Some are going to be
aspirational, because we'rebuilding something new. We're
not just going to rest on whoyou are. And here are some
things that weren't so great, sowe're going to need to turn
those it's going to take somework. So here's a new sort of
value, or here's a newcharacteristic we want to be
(05:46):
living. So that's how we startto build a strategy that makes
sense.
Rob Bata (05:53):
And do you get resistance about that? Internal
resistance? Obviously, you'rehired to do a job and so on. On
a macro level, clearly, peoplewant you to do your job, and
it's accepted that you do a jobthat's worth doing. But when you
when you dig down into thesethings, do you feel that you're
(06:16):
able to draw out people'sgenuine perceptions. And I
didn't just mean, is somebodyshy talking about or not shy? I
just mean, are you going to havepeople who think that that's a
great opportunity to to have alot of complaints, or people who
think that's a great opportunityto tell you that branding
doesn't matter to them and it'sjust just a load of nonstick
Unknown (06:42):
I surprisingly, we had really good, really good
experiences. To be honest, Ihave not really had any major
challenges, oftentimes,especially in the more
conservative firms, will saywe've never had this exercise
before. This is great. I feellike I'm in therapy and I'm able
to talk about all sorts ofthings no one's asked me about
before, and we're like, well,you're an owner in the firm,
(07:04):
this is really important thatyou think about these things and
you talk about them. So nowwe've had really good
experiences. And when we presentthe strategy, because we've
heard from so many people, it'shard to argue with it. It's hard
to say, well, you know, you're aconsultant, you made all this
up. I didn't make it up. We'repulling it from what we heard
from your people and your peopleand your clients, and just sort
(07:24):
of, you know, formulating itinto a strategy, I will say. And
we hear this all the time in lawfirms, people don't hire the
firm, they hire me, and my brandis what's critical. That is 100%
true, right? You hire thelawyer, the best lawyer you can
for what you need, especially inthese big, you know, corporate
(07:45):
on these big corporate mattersat the same time, you know, we
like to say a rising tide liftsall boats. So, you know, we want
you to have a stellar individualbrand, but we also want the firm
to have a stellar brand. And thestory I tell is, I was
interviewing a client of a lawfirm one day, this is several
years ago, and she said, youknow, you don't hire Jane Doe at
(08:08):
McKinsey. You hire McKinsey, andthe law firm that figures that
out will have somethingformidable. And there certainly
are firms that have figured thatout. There are firms that have
brands. You could argue,Kirkland has a strong brand,
right? Skadden has a brand.
There are there's a when youthink of these firms, you think
about the way they perform in aconsistent way, and the way they
look and feel, and there's asense, right? And there's
others, plenty of others too.
(08:31):
But that idea that it isn't justabout you, and for law firm
leaders, you obviously want tokeep your your best people, so
the more you can build a firmbrand that stands for something
internally as well and keeps andattracts talent, the better for
you, right? We know laterals areconstantly jumping and going to
other firms, if it's just aboutmoney, and money, of course, is
(08:54):
a main driver. Probably the maindriver. You're going to miss out
on something. I think so. Ithink it's a way to help to
attract and retain talent too.
Is if you start to build this,this entity that we want to
belong to, right? You don't wantto be part of
Rob Bata (09:09):
something. Yeah, it's an interesting point about
you're not hiring the lawyer,you're hiring the firm. Of
course, there are people whofeel exactly the opposite, who
think that it doesn't matterwhat firm I'm with, I have this
personal relationship withclients that they're hiring me
this that kind of thinkingactually could be empirically
(09:33):
demonstrated as as being flawedwhen I think back on my
experience in the in the late90s, when US firms were
beginning to enter London, andas was I with my firm and many
of these US firms, which didn'thave major Wall Street
practices, one of the firms,ironically, that that happened
(09:56):
to was a firm, Chicago firmcalled the sun and shine. And
Rosenthal, which, as, as youknow, in a later incarnation,
became Dentons, but they were anenormous failure in London at
that point, which I'm sure youknow, this is part of legal law.
This is not anythingparticularly insulting to say.
(10:17):
So I think it is important when,when people think that they are
hired simply for their ownrelationships and their own
capacities. I think it's it'sgreat to be very confident about
that, but you also have to knowthat behind you stands of that
firm with a strong brand.
Unknown (10:37):
Well, you know the other thing I think to this
conversation, if you're saying,you know, they hire me, not the
firm. Oftentimes, the thing youalways hear about, why are we
having this big merger rightcross border mergers, is because
we want to have this platformwhere we can service our clients
(10:57):
and we so that, in and ofitself, to me, says we need to
have a consistent level ofquality and approach and ways of
working across the firm. So itkind of doesn't make any sense
if you're thinking aboutmergers, and you know, going to
this major platform, if you'renot willing to think about the
firm as a brand, as a as anorganization with similar ways
(11:20):
of working and similar ways ofbeing right, if you're just
going to what's the what's thevalue to me as an individual, if
I just want to worry about myown matters and my own clients,
and I don't want to takeadvantage
Rob Bata (11:30):
of that platform, okay? And sometimes that
happens, especially with crossborder and speaking of that, so
I just want to explore with youa little bit how difficult is
it, when you're looking at me,we've been talking about culture
and law firm, when you'relooking at dramatically
different cultures, there arenational cultures and and can
you talk a little bit about whatyou've seen in that area where,
(11:54):
of course, you know the sayingabout the UK and the US you
know, To to countries, you know,divided by common language. In
some ways, those can be the mostchallenging. The UK solicitor
culture is very, very differentfrom from us, lawyer culture,
but maybe you can address that alittle bit.
Unknown (12:18):
Yeah, it's a challenge you can't really talk about, you
know, brand culture, if youdon't talk about geographic,
regional, national, local,cultural differences, right? And
as I have traveled significantlyand lived overseas, and I've had
international clients, but I'mnot, you know, a native UK
(12:40):
person or a native German, youknow, you just there's no way
you're going to be that person.
So you have to try to learn asyou go, in some ways, you have
to learn from the people in thefirm about the way they do
things around here and whatfeels right and doesn't feel
right to them. Language, ofcourse, has huge implications,
because what one word means heremight mean a completely
(13:01):
different thing there, and theway you operationalize it, we
sometimes rely on local peopleon the ground. So we'll work
with other consultants we'veworked with outside of the US.
But I think you know, you justhave to, you have to acknowledge
it with leadership, that theseare going to be part of the
cultural issues that we'redealing with. And I think it
gets to a larger point about howyou start to bring the
(13:23):
organizations together, and howyou start to use your
administrative folks throughthis process too. Where I've
seen it really go off the railsis when you have two firms
coming together from differentgeographies, with two sets of
everything, right? Two CMOs andtwo, you know, heads of this and
heads of that. And they're notworking together. They're
(13:48):
working at cross purposes,because they're still seeing
themselves reporting up todifferent leaders who say that
they're aligned on the visionand the mission, but maybe
aren't quite as aligned as wethink they are. So that's,
that's one of the things I wouldsay, is you have to get all of
your senior administrative folkslined up with your senior
leadership at the firm tounderstand what are the
(14:09):
objectives here, and how are wegoing to make this work
together? And we're going tohave to learn as we go. We've
also worked with coaches whocome in, who specialize in
working cross culturally to getteams to work better together.
And we do a lot of workshoppingourselves, where we bring people
together to do that.
Rob Bata (14:28):
And Murray, you've undoubtedly done that in house,
so where you've, you've, you've,you've had that sort of
consultation when there was somekind of international approach
with, for example, your formerfirm,
Unknown (14:42):
right? Yeah, and, and with my former firm, the the
mergers that we had were not,we're not what you know, we
euphemistically called mergersof equals, right? So there
weren't, there weren't, thereweren't. Often times there
wasn't a lot of duplication.
But. What I will say is thatwhat I found in those mergers
(15:02):
with smaller, smaller firms, isthat they didn't have same
infrastructure levels that thethat the that our firm has, and
so they didn't have a CMO, andthey weren't used to working
with professionalized businessdevelopment people. They weren't
(15:24):
used to working withprofessionalized, you know,
available, 24/7, it folks. Andso there was a that too. And
this is kind of gets outside of,I think, the brand discussion a
little bit. But that too is a isa challenge as well, because,
you know, we would find with,with some of the with, with at
(15:44):
least one of the smaller firmsthat we merged with, they would
show they wouldn't talk to usabout a client meeting that they
were going to have, and thenthey would show up at the client
meeting with the US basedpartners, and they would each
have different kinds ofmaterials where somebody at the
(16:05):
somebody at the at the firm thatwe had merged with, had grabbed
some artwork, and I'm sure youcan grab some artwork off the
off the website, and, you know,threw it into a Word document
and hoped that they had gottenthe branding right. And, you
know, it it just, it was thatthat's just a little example of
it, but it was, it was alsotrying to get them to to to
(16:27):
understand, hey, these resourcesare here, and this is what it
means for for you, at least froma, you know, from an identity
perspective. Now, I do have aquestion for both for Rob and
Bill, and maybe we should wrapthis up shortly. But what is the
role we see that that firms thatare merging, especially these
(16:50):
larger firms that are merging,will hire professional services,
consulting to to represent themerged entity, or the soon to be
merged entity. You know, when Ilook at what's going on at ao,
ao and Sherman Sterling, I'mlooking at the comms work, and
it's, it seems to me, and I justsome indicia is that there's
(17:12):
somebody working on behalf ofthe merged entity and creating
the creating the comms from themerged entity, where, where does
the Where does a clarity sort ofget or should a clarity get
inserted into this process? Atwhat point, Rob, we've talked
(17:35):
about, you know, sort ofdifferent points in the in the
merger process. Is there a, isthere a pre merger role, like,
like, I mean, when they're stillin discussions or, or is it the
decisions been made, and now webring in a clarity to reverse
engineer this brand that we'regonna be putting out into the
(17:57):
market? I just, I'm curiousabout this. I don't know if it
happens or it should happen, orexperience you've had with it,
Rob Bata (18:05):
because I'm going to give you that bill,
Unknown (18:07):
that's me, okay, if I can add, I feel like the earlier
and the better. Again, itdepends on your perspective on
what you're trying to achieve.
But if you really are thinkingabout brand the way we talk
about it, right, which is a 365degree way. It isn't just about
the comms. It's about how we dothings around here. I think it's
really important to bring peoplewho do this kind of work early
(18:30):
on to talk to leadership. Rightnow, there's going to be some
sensitivity, obviously, tohaving you talk to their
partners before there's a vote,but I think there can be real
value to that too, becauseyou're in the process of not
just trying to understand what'scommon between these two firms
(18:50):
cultures and how you do things,and what you're aspiring for in
your vision, but you're alsohaving an opportunity to tell
them, Oh, I talked to yourcolleagues At the new firm, the
other firm, and they feel thesame way about some of these
topics. So you're starting tocement that. You're trying to
show them that you're educatingthem on the fact that there are
some real synergies. There'sthat word, again, commonalities
(19:13):
and shared ideas and valueshere, and that can help to pull
things together. And then you'realso, when you're doing that
research, and we're learning,and I've talked a lot about the
cultural aspects and how we dothings around here, but you're
you're learning right aboutthose commonalities. You're then
building a strategy. Thatstrategy is then used for
thinking about, how do we dowhat's our client service model
(19:36):
look like that reflects thatstrategy? What is our recruiting
and retention initiatives? Whatdo they look like that reflects
that strategy? In fact, who arewe trying to recruit that fits
who we say we want to be, theEni, all sorts of other things
start to bubble up from thisstrategy. And of course, then
what you also do is you use thestrategy to inform what the
communications look and feel.
(20:00):
Going to sound like. So ifyou've included all of your
partners, the vast majority ofthe firm, in these
conversations, in the researchand clients, you've heard from
clients, of course, as well, andthen you've developed the
strategy. It's very it's mucheasier than to go forward and
say, and based on that strategy,this is what the new logo looks
like. This is what our top levelmessaging sounds like because
(20:22):
you see how it reflects thestrategy that came from clients
and you. And that makes thingsmuch smoother than just going
forward and saying, We got a newwebsite, we got a new logo.
Doesn't it look great? Well, youknow, everybody's got a
subjective opinion. I like blue,I like red, I like green. I
don't like reading. So you getinto that if you don't have the
foundational research andstrategy to inform the process.
Rob Bata (20:45):
And I think just going back to the point you made
earlier, at the very beginning,you know, there's also the issue
of, you know, two, two plus twomakes five. So you're not just
looking at the commonalities andhow all that works with, with
that hated word synergy and soforth, but how the things that
(21:06):
both firms have as assets aremaking it possible to
metamorphose into somethingelse, but something that builds
on those things. But that's new,but that's actually a whole new
concept. You know, that's why somany people are talking about a
and oh and and and Chairman andSterling. Because this idea, if
(21:30):
it happens, is that this couldbe one of the first really
successful transatlanticmergers, which is global, but
where there's, first of all,there's, they are equal in many
ways, in some significant ways,they're not and and how this
(21:54):
becomes a whole new concept, asit were, and Hogan Lovells, I
Think, pulled that off prettywell. But, you know, here we're
talking about a much, muchbigger size, and we're talking
about a so called Magic Circlefirm and a Wall Street firm, you
know, so, so it's different.
That's why it's getting thatmuch attention. It's, it's that,
(22:15):
it's that when the two plus twobecomes five, that's interesting
to people, and that's whythere's so much commentary on
it. Yep, so and just to, just tofollow up a little bit on
Murray's question, I think, Ithink the idea of of branding
versus, say, in house marketing,but going to a branding
(22:40):
consultant and so forth,sometimes it doesn't come up
that early and and sometimes ithappens that people say, gee,
we're just about ready toannounce. Shouldn't we get
somebody to to help us withthat? So I think it is important
to get to it sooner and earlier,especially when you were talking
(23:03):
about the kind of thing thatclarity does, which is this very
intensive and extensive reviewand interview and a workshopping
process and survey process andand building on that you Can't
do that the last 48 hours.
Unknown (23:20):
So, so yeah, or message too, and
we haven't even touched on otherstrategic aspects, which maybe
is another podcast. But youknow, when you're combining, you
have to think in terms about,how do you migrate the equity
from the legacy brands into thenew brand? So, you know, we
talked about sun and shine. Whensun and shine became SNR Denton
(23:44):
and then ultimately Dentons. Youneed to focus on, how do we
migrate, right? So you need tobe able to tell the marketplace
what happened to sun and shine,which had a fairly strong brand
in its market. The name wentaway completely. No one knew who
SNR Dentons was. So you have toreally be thinking in terms of
(24:04):
that too. How are we going tomaintain any of the equity we
had and transfer it over? Howare we going, you know, what's
the name going to be?
Oftentimes, that becomes asticking point in the
negotiation. So how do we getdata to support the decision on
name? We went through a veryfairly exhaustive process to
come up with named Dentons frommany, many different names. And
(24:26):
we aim to show where the equitywas in all of those names. And
it just so happened that thename Denton had the most equity.
So we were able to go to thepartners and say, Look, you can
have your personal feelings andall of that. Of course, let's
keep our eye on the prize, whichis, we're trying to create this
new challenger brand of a firm,and the equity is in Denton. So
(24:48):
let's, let's go with that andthat that made that process
easier. So the more you can dothe data and the strategy that
informs those kinds ofdecisions, the
Rob Bata (24:59):
better. Sure it's really important to see how you
use the word equity, differentfrom, you know, the the
valuation of equity, themonetary valuation, but I think
that's an important point,because I find that when I
prepare an initial discussionitem, the discussion agenda. I
(25:29):
always put down name, and thisis the sort of thing that people
get very excited about and startthinking about, and gets pretty
heated. I didn't used to, but Ilearned that this is something
that's going well, what's,what's it going to be, and whose
name is going to be up front andso forth. And I think these are,
(25:52):
this is exactly the sort ofthing that somebody like Hugh
can come in with a cool head andsay, well, well, let's
investigate what's what, whatthe equity is in in these names,
what, what the brand, theprecisely, right. So that's an
important point. Ultimately,reasonable people can agree on
(26:14):
names, and they can also agreeon the fact that maybe one name
will fade, fade away into thepast like SNR did,
Unknown (26:23):
but Rudnick and Wolf, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Rob Bata (26:27):
you know, absolutely not to mention Piper Matt and
Murray. Although Piper stillremains, Piper
Unknown (26:33):
still there, Piper remains. That was interestingly.
You know,
Rob Bata (26:37):
Murray, of course, was the Murray of Murray against
Madison. Sorry, we're going toBata, which is one of the most
important constitutional casesever decided in this country,
and that name is gone. But,yeah, alright. Well, having said
that, I think, I think this hasbeen a fantastic discussion, and
I think, as as you've said,Bill, maybe there's, maybe
there's going to be occasion fora second one of these with you.
(26:59):
You have so much insight and somuch experience and and you come
at this from from a reallyinteresting angle that maybe we
should have you on again, ifyou'd like, I'd
Unknown (27:13):
love to. I I'm very passionate about brand because
of the way I think about it andwhat it means. And I'm also
really excited to work with lawfirms. I think, you know, my
first foray was I went in housewhite and case years ago, my
first marketing job thinking,Oh, what's this going to be all
about? And learn that, you know,I think they're full of smart
(27:34):
people who are incrediblyaccomplished. And I think it's a
business that is constantlyevolving, although all
businesses are evolving, but Ithink there's a lot of work to
be done, and I think I loveworking in the category. So
thank you for having me, guys.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. No that was that wasgreat. I always learned
something bill when we havethese conversations. So and with
(27:59):
that, I think we'll wrap andthanks again.
Rob Bata (28:04):
Thank you very much, and thanks for watching. You.
Robert, welcome to GMT, the podcast for globally minded
(00:05):
law firm leaders with your host.
Robert Bata, principal ofWarwick place legal and Murray
Coffey, principal of M Coffey,between them, Rob and Murray
have about three quarters of acentury's experience working
with some of the most notablelaw firms on the planet. This
podcast is designed to helpthose law firm leaders tasked
with growth make great decisionsabout whether and how to
(00:28):
implement cross border expansionfor their firms and what it
takes to succeed. All right, andwelcome back. This is part two
of GM T's discussion withclarity groups. Founder and
principal, Bill Schroeder,well, one thing I think is
really important we've talked alot about is the client right,
and that's critical right tobuilding brands. So one of the
(00:50):
things that we try to gage whilewe go through interviews
internally is how ready forchange is this organization is
this firm, and oftentimes wefind that leaders, top level
leaders, think that theirpartners are not as ready for
change as they might be. And sothere are exercises that we do.
(01:11):
We do this with the clientinterviews as well, and we do it
with the firm where we will, wecall it a speed round, where
we'll ask, in the interview witha client, we'll ask them, let's
go down a set of words, justpairs of words, and there's
about 10 of them. Is this firmthat we're talking about today
that services you? Are they morethis or more this, more this or
(01:32):
more this? And they sort of rankthem across measures for pairs
of words, so one might be moremodern, more traditional, for
example. And then after they dothat, we'll say, now let's talk
about your ideal law firm. Ifyou could create the ideal law
firm, what would that look like?
And they go through the samepairs of words, and invariably,
you tend to see a shift moretoward modern, more toward
(01:54):
innovative, more toward all ofthose things we do the same
thing internally. Talk about thefirm today, to the partners and
others. We talk to boom, boom,boom, boom, boom, and then we
say, tell us how you'd like tosee the firm evolve. So what
comes out of that is data thatshows you what your clients
think of you today and whatthey'd like you to be, what you
think of yourselves today, andwhat you would ideally like to
(02:14):
be. And if there are any gaps,and I would say most of the
time, you're very aligned withyour clients. Law firms are very
aligned with their clients andwhere they want to and where
they want to go, and they wantto go further. So that gives
leaders the impetus to say, weheard from you. We talked to a
lot of you, and this is what weheard from our clients as well.
So we're gonna, we're gonnastart to make a bigger shift,
(02:36):
which moves toward theactivation work that you're
talking about Murray, which isworkshopping things to try to
figure out within the context ofour positioning and who we say
we are. What do we need tochange around here? What do we
need to do differently aroundhere, and how do we generate
those ideas within the firm?
Rob Bata (02:57):
So how, how do you approach a merger, when
obviously two different firmsand in order to create a brand
that reflects what will be theultimate one hopes the product
(03:18):
of the merger? How? Do you howdo you assess the different
cultures and the brands thatthose different firms already
have, and what is the process bywhich you kind of try to merge
those ideas and concepts? I meanthe
Unknown (03:37):
simplest terms. We're looking at, what are the firms
saying about themselves on theirwebsites and in their marketing
materials? Definitely,materials. Definitely, that's a
starting point. And then we'redoing a significant number of
interviews. One of thedifferences between corporate
branding and a branding whereyou're doing where you're
working with a partnership ofowners is we believe you have to
(03:58):
hear from a large number offolks who are the owners. So
whereas you might go into acorporate structure and talk to
10 people, I might go into a lawfirm of 3000 lawyers and talk to
100 partners, I will do focusgroups with senior associates
and with senior administrativefolks. Again, in addition to
(04:19):
client data, we're doing clientresearch as well, but through
those interviews, you're reallytrying to dig into, again, what
are the values around here? Whatdo we do? Give me examples of
how we're different. If youworked at another firm and you
lateraled In, how is your firmdifferent from this one? We're
really trying to dig into thosekinds of values and
characteristics that set thefirm apart. They're hard to get
to, right? This is a categorythat is not highly
(04:41):
differentiated, but as firmscome together and merge, and
there are fewer of them thatwill, that will naturally play
out, and then what we're doingis we're comparing what we're
hearing from the one firmagainst the other, and hearing
what we're hearing from them.
And we're looking forcommonalities that are
positives, of course, and we'relooking. Are commonalities that
might want to be we might wantto leave behind, and then we're
(05:02):
pulling that together andsaying, Here's what we heard
from both firms that we thinkare really exciting, and you're
in agreement on, how do we startto leverage those things?
Because they're really clientbenefits too. We're hearing from
clients they like that aboutyou, you're particularly agile,
you know, you don't noodleeverything, you're not super
academic, you're very businessfocused. You build these really
deep relationships. And here are10 examples of how you do that.
(05:24):
So we're starting to build thosekind of commonalities, and then
we're presenting that back as astrategy, like here are the
shared values. We think that youall have. Some are going to be
aspirational, because we'rebuilding something new. We're
not just going to rest on whoyou are. And here are some
things that weren't so great, sowe're going to need to turn
those it's going to take somework. So here's a new sort of
value, or here's a newcharacteristic we want to be
(05:46):
living. So that's how we startto build a strategy that makes
sense.
Rob Bata (05:53):
And do you get resistance about that? Internal
resistance? Obviously, you'rehired to do a job and so on. On
a macro level, clearly, peoplewant you to do your job, and
it's accepted that you do a jobthat's worth doing. But when you
when you dig down into thesethings, do you feel that you're
(06:16):
able to draw out people'sgenuine perceptions. And I
didn't just mean, is somebodyshy talking about or not shy? I
just mean, are you going to havepeople who think that that's a
great opportunity to to have alot of complaints, or people who
think that's a great opportunityto tell you that branding
doesn't matter to them and it'sjust just a load of nonstick
Unknown (06:42):
I surprisingly, we had really good, really good
experiences. To be honest, Ihave not really had any major
challenges, oftentimes,especially in the more
conservative firms, will saywe've never had this exercise
before. This is great. I feellike I'm in therapy and I'm able
to talk about all sorts ofthings no one's asked me about
before, and we're like, well,you're an owner in the firm,
(07:04):
this is really important thatyou think about these things and
you talk about them. So nowwe've had really good
experiences. And when we presentthe strategy, because we've
heard from so many people, it'shard to argue with it. It's hard
to say, well, you know, you're aconsultant, you made all this
up. I didn't make it up. We'repulling it from what we heard
from your people and your peopleand your clients, and just sort
(07:24):
of, you know, formulating itinto a strategy, I will say. And
we hear this all the time in lawfirms, people don't hire the
firm, they hire me, and my brandis what's critical. That is 100%
true, right? You hire thelawyer, the best lawyer you can
for what you need, especially inthese big, you know, corporate
(07:45):
on these big corporate mattersat the same time, you know, we
like to say a rising tide liftsall boats. So, you know, we want
you to have a stellar individualbrand, but we also want the firm
to have a stellar brand. And thestory I tell is, I was
interviewing a client of a lawfirm one day, this is several
years ago, and she said, youknow, you don't hire Jane Doe at
(08:08):
McKinsey. You hire McKinsey, andthe law firm that figures that
out will have somethingformidable. And there certainly
are firms that have figured thatout. There are firms that have
brands. You could argue,Kirkland has a strong brand,
right? Skadden has a brand.
There are there's a when youthink of these firms, you think
about the way they perform in aconsistent way, and the way they
look and feel, and there's asense, right? And there's
others, plenty of others too.
(08:31):
But that idea that it isn't justabout you, and for law firm
leaders, you obviously want tokeep your your best people, so
the more you can build a firmbrand that stands for something
internally as well and keeps andattracts talent, the better for
you, right? We know laterals areconstantly jumping and going to
other firms, if it's just aboutmoney, and money, of course, is
(08:54):
a main driver. Probably the maindriver. You're going to miss out
on something. I think so. Ithink it's a way to help to
attract and retain talent too.
Is if you start to build this,this entity that we want to
belong to, right? You don't wantto be part of
Rob Bata (09:09):
something. Yeah, it's an interesting point about
you're not hiring the lawyer,you're hiring the firm. Of
course, there are people whofeel exactly the opposite, who
think that it doesn't matterwhat firm I'm with, I have this
personal relationship withclients that they're hiring me
this that kind of thinkingactually could be empirically
(09:33):
demonstrated as as being flawedwhen I think back on my
experience in the in the late90s, when US firms were
beginning to enter London, andas was I with my firm and many
of these US firms, which didn'thave major Wall Street
practices, one of the firms,ironically, that that happened
(09:56):
to was a firm, Chicago firmcalled the sun and shine. And
Rosenthal, which, as, as youknow, in a later incarnation,
became Dentons, but they were anenormous failure in London at
that point, which I'm sure youknow, this is part of legal law.
This is not anythingparticularly insulting to say.
(10:17):
So I think it is important when,when people think that they are
hired simply for their ownrelationships and their own
capacities. I think it's it'sgreat to be very confident about
that, but you also have to knowthat behind you stands of that
firm with a strong brand.
Unknown (10:37):
Well, you know the other thing I think to this
conversation, if you're saying,you know, they hire me, not the
firm. Oftentimes, the thing youalways hear about, why are we
having this big merger rightcross border mergers, is because
we want to have this platformwhere we can service our clients
(10:57):
and we so that, in and ofitself, to me, says we need to
have a consistent level ofquality and approach and ways of
working across the firm. So itkind of doesn't make any sense
if you're thinking aboutmergers, and you know, going to
this major platform, if you'renot willing to think about the
firm as a brand, as a as anorganization with similar ways
(11:20):
of working and similar ways ofbeing right, if you're just
going to what's the what's thevalue to me as an individual, if
I just want to worry about myown matters and my own clients,
and I don't want to takeadvantage
Rob Bata (11:30):
of that platform, okay? And sometimes that
happens, especially with crossborder and speaking of that, so
I just want to explore with youa little bit how difficult is
it, when you're looking at me,we've been talking about culture
and law firm, when you'relooking at dramatically
different cultures, there arenational cultures and and can
you talk a little bit about whatyou've seen in that area where,
(11:54):
of course, you know the sayingabout the UK and the US you
know, To to countries, you know,divided by common language. In
some ways, those can be the mostchallenging. The UK solicitor
culture is very, very differentfrom from us, lawyer culture,
but maybe you can address that alittle bit.
Unknown (12:18):
Yeah, it's a challenge you can't really talk about, you
know, brand culture, if youdon't talk about geographic,
regional, national, local,cultural differences, right? And
as I have traveled significantlyand lived overseas, and I've had
international clients, but I'mnot, you know, a native UK
(12:40):
person or a native German, youknow, you just there's no way
you're going to be that person.
So you have to try to learn asyou go, in some ways, you have
to learn from the people in thefirm about the way they do
things around here and whatfeels right and doesn't feel
right to them. Language, ofcourse, has huge implications,
because what one word means heremight mean a completely
(13:01):
different thing there, and theway you operationalize it, we
sometimes rely on local peopleon the ground. So we'll work
with other consultants we'veworked with outside of the US.
But I think you know, you justhave to, you have to acknowledge
it with leadership, that theseare going to be part of the
cultural issues that we'redealing with. And I think it
gets to a larger point about howyou start to bring the
(13:23):
organizations together, and howyou start to use your
administrative folks throughthis process too. Where I've
seen it really go off the railsis when you have two firms
coming together from differentgeographies, with two sets of
everything, right? Two CMOs andtwo, you know, heads of this and
heads of that. And they're notworking together. They're
(13:48):
working at cross purposes,because they're still seeing
themselves reporting up todifferent leaders who say that
they're aligned on the visionand the mission, but maybe
aren't quite as aligned as wethink they are. So that's,
that's one of the things I wouldsay, is you have to get all of
your senior administrative folkslined up with your senior
leadership at the firm tounderstand what are the
(14:09):
objectives here, and how are wegoing to make this work
together? And we're going tohave to learn as we go. We've
also worked with coaches whocome in, who specialize in
working cross culturally to getteams to work better together.
And we do a lot of workshoppingourselves, where we bring people
together to do that.
Rob Bata (14:28):
And Murray, you've undoubtedly done that in house,
so where you've, you've, you've,you've had that sort of
consultation when there was somekind of international approach
with, for example, your formerfirm,
Unknown (14:42):
right? Yeah, and, and with my former firm, the the
mergers that we had were not,we're not what you know, we
euphemistically called mergersof equals, right? So there
weren't, there weren't, thereweren't. Often times there
wasn't a lot of duplication.
But. What I will say is thatwhat I found in those mergers
(15:02):
with smaller, smaller firms, isthat they didn't have same
infrastructure levels that thethat the that our firm has, and
so they didn't have a CMO, andthey weren't used to working
with professionalized businessdevelopment people. They weren't
(15:24):
used to working withprofessionalized, you know,
available, 24/7, it folks. Andso there was a that too. And
this is kind of gets outside of,I think, the brand discussion a
little bit. But that too is a isa challenge as well, because,
you know, we would find with,with some of the with, with at
(15:44):
least one of the smaller firmsthat we merged with, they would
show they wouldn't talk to usabout a client meeting that they
were going to have, and thenthey would show up at the client
meeting with the US basedpartners, and they would each
have different kinds ofmaterials where somebody at the
(16:05):
somebody at the at the firm thatwe had merged with, had grabbed
some artwork, and I'm sure youcan grab some artwork off the
off the website, and, you know,threw it into a Word document
and hoped that they had gottenthe branding right. And, you
know, it it just, it was thatthat's just a little example of
it, but it was, it was alsotrying to get them to to to
(16:27):
understand, hey, these resourcesare here, and this is what it
means for for you, at least froma, you know, from an identity
perspective. Now, I do have aquestion for both for Rob and
Bill, and maybe we should wrapthis up shortly. But what is the
role we see that that firms thatare merging, especially these
(16:50):
larger firms that are merging,will hire professional services,
consulting to to represent themerged entity, or the soon to be
merged entity. You know, when Ilook at what's going on at ao,
ao and Sherman Sterling, I'mlooking at the comms work, and
it's, it seems to me, and I justsome indicia is that there's
(17:12):
somebody working on behalf ofthe merged entity and creating
the creating the comms from themerged entity, where, where does
the Where does a clarity sort ofget or should a clarity get
inserted into this process? Atwhat point, Rob, we've talked
(17:35):
about, you know, sort ofdifferent points in the in the
merger process. Is there a, isthere a pre merger role, like,
like, I mean, when they're stillin discussions or, or is it the
decisions been made, and now webring in a clarity to reverse
engineer this brand that we'regonna be putting out into the
(17:57):
market? I just, I'm curiousabout this. I don't know if it
happens or it should happen, orexperience you've had with it,
Rob Bata (18:05):
because I'm going to give you that bill,
Unknown (18:07):
that's me, okay, if I can add, I feel like the earlier
and the better. Again, itdepends on your perspective on
what you're trying to achieve.
But if you really are thinkingabout brand the way we talk
about it, right, which is a 365degree way. It isn't just about
the comms. It's about how we dothings around here. I think it's
really important to bring peoplewho do this kind of work early
(18:30):
on to talk to leadership. Rightnow, there's going to be some
sensitivity, obviously, tohaving you talk to their
partners before there's a vote,but I think there can be real
value to that too, becauseyou're in the process of not
just trying to understand what'scommon between these two firms
(18:50):
cultures and how you do things,and what you're aspiring for in
your vision, but you're alsohaving an opportunity to tell
them, Oh, I talked to yourcolleagues At the new firm, the
other firm, and they feel thesame way about some of these
topics. So you're starting tocement that. You're trying to
show them that you're educatingthem on the fact that there are
some real synergies. There'sthat word, again, commonalities
(19:13):
and shared ideas and valueshere, and that can help to pull
things together. And then you'realso, when you're doing that
research, and we're learning,and I've talked a lot about the
cultural aspects and how we dothings around here, but you're
you're learning right aboutthose commonalities. You're then
building a strategy. Thatstrategy is then used for
thinking about, how do we dowhat's our client service model
(19:36):
look like that reflects thatstrategy? What is our recruiting
and retention initiatives? Whatdo they look like that reflects
that strategy? In fact, who arewe trying to recruit that fits
who we say we want to be, theEni, all sorts of other things
start to bubble up from thisstrategy. And of course, then
what you also do is you use thestrategy to inform what the
communications look and feel.
(20:00):
Going to sound like. So ifyou've included all of your
partners, the vast majority ofthe firm, in these
conversations, in the researchand clients, you've heard from
clients, of course, as well, andthen you've developed the
strategy. It's very it's mucheasier than to go forward and
say, and based on that strategy,this is what the new logo looks
like. This is what our top levelmessaging sounds like because
(20:22):
you see how it reflects thestrategy that came from clients
and you. And that makes thingsmuch smoother than just going
forward and saying, We got a newwebsite, we got a new logo.
Doesn't it look great? Well, youknow, everybody's got a
subjective opinion. I like blue,I like red, I like green. I
don't like reading. So you getinto that if you don't have the
foundational research andstrategy to inform the process.
Rob Bata (20:45):
And I think just going back to the point you made
earlier, at the very beginning,you know, there's also the issue
of, you know, two, two plus twomakes five. So you're not just
looking at the commonalities andhow all that works with, with
that hated word synergy and soforth, but how the things that
(21:06):
both firms have as assets aremaking it possible to
metamorphose into somethingelse, but something that builds
on those things. But that's new,but that's actually a whole new
concept. You know, that's why somany people are talking about a
and oh and and and Chairman andSterling. Because this idea, if
(21:30):
it happens, is that this couldbe one of the first really
successful transatlanticmergers, which is global, but
where there's, first of all,there's, they are equal in many
ways, in some significant ways,they're not and and how this
(21:54):
becomes a whole new concept, asit were, and Hogan Lovells, I
Think, pulled that off prettywell. But, you know, here we're
talking about a much, muchbigger size, and we're talking
about a so called Magic Circlefirm and a Wall Street firm, you
know, so, so it's different.
That's why it's getting thatmuch attention. It's, it's that,
(22:15):
it's that when the two plus twobecomes five, that's interesting
to people, and that's whythere's so much commentary on
it. Yep, so and just to, just tofollow up a little bit on
Murray's question, I think, Ithink the idea of of branding
versus, say, in house marketing,but going to a branding
(22:40):
consultant and so forth,sometimes it doesn't come up
that early and and sometimes ithappens that people say, gee,
we're just about ready toannounce. Shouldn't we get
somebody to to help us withthat? So I think it is important
to get to it sooner and earlier,especially when you were talking
(23:03):
about the kind of thing thatclarity does, which is this very
intensive and extensive reviewand interview and a workshopping
process and survey process andand building on that you Can't
do that the last 48 hours.
Unknown (23:20):
So, so yeah, or message too, and
we haven't even touched on otherstrategic aspects, which maybe
is another podcast. But youknow, when you're combining, you
have to think in terms about,how do you migrate the equity
from the legacy brands into thenew brand? So, you know, we
talked about sun and shine. Whensun and shine became SNR Denton
(23:44):
and then ultimately Dentons. Youneed to focus on, how do we
migrate, right? So you need tobe able to tell the marketplace
what happened to sun and shine,which had a fairly strong brand
in its market. The name wentaway completely. No one knew who
SNR Dentons was. So you have toreally be thinking in terms of
(24:04):
that too. How are we going tomaintain any of the equity we
had and transfer it over? Howare we going, you know, what's
the name going to be?
Oftentimes, that becomes asticking point in the
negotiation. So how do we getdata to support the decision on
name? We went through a veryfairly exhaustive process to
come up with named Dentons frommany, many different names. And
(24:26):
we aim to show where the equitywas in all of those names. And
it just so happened that thename Denton had the most equity.
So we were able to go to thepartners and say, Look, you can
have your personal feelings andall of that. Of course, let's
keep our eye on the prize, whichis, we're trying to create this
new challenger brand of a firm,and the equity is in Denton. So
(24:48):
let's, let's go with that andthat that made that process
easier. So the more you can dothe data and the strategy that
informs those kinds ofdecisions, the
Rob Bata (24:59):
better. Sure it's really important to see how you
use the word equity, differentfrom, you know, the the
valuation of equity, themonetary valuation, but I think
that's an important point,because I find that when I
prepare an initial discussionitem, the discussion agenda. I
(25:29):
always put down name, and thisis the sort of thing that people
get very excited about and startthinking about, and gets pretty
heated. I didn't used to, but Ilearned that this is something
that's going well, what's,what's it going to be, and whose
name is going to be up front andso forth. And I think these are,
(25:52):
this is exactly the sort ofthing that somebody like Hugh
can come in with a cool head andsay, well, well, let's
investigate what's what, whatthe equity is in in these names,
what, what the brand, theprecisely, right. So that's an
important point. Ultimately,reasonable people can agree on
(26:14):
names, and they can also agreeon the fact that maybe one name
will fade, fade away into thepast like SNR did,
Unknown (26:23):
but Rudnick and Wolf, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Rob Bata (26:27):
you know, absolutely not to mention Piper Matt and
Murray. Although Piper stillremains, Piper
Unknown (26:33):
still there, Piper remains. That was interestingly.
You know,
Rob Bata (26:37):
Murray, of course, was the Murray of Murray against
Madison. Sorry, we're going toBata, which is one of the most
important constitutional casesever decided in this country,
and that name is gone. But,yeah, alright. Well, having said
that, I think, I think this hasbeen a fantastic discussion, and
I think, as as you've said,Bill, maybe there's, maybe
there's going to be occasion fora second one of these with you.
(26:59):
You have so much insight and somuch experience and and you come
at this from from a reallyinteresting angle that maybe we
should have you on again, ifyou'd like, I'd
Unknown (27:13):
love to. I I'm very passionate about brand because
of the way I think about it andwhat it means. And I'm also
really excited to work with lawfirms. I think, you know, my
first foray was I went in housewhite and case years ago, my
first marketing job thinking,Oh, what's this going to be all
about? And learn that, you know,I think they're full of smart
(27:34):
people who are incrediblyaccomplished. And I think it's a
business that is constantlyevolving, although all
businesses are evolving, but Ithink there's a lot of work to
be done, and I think I loveworking in the category. So
thank you for having me, guys.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. No that was that wasgreat. I always learned
something bill when we havethese conversations. So and with
(27:59):
that, I think we'll wrap andthanks again.
Rob Bata (28:04):
Thank you very much, and thanks for watching. You.
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