Some quick updates

Observations on key industry trends, some personal updates, and gratitude for everyone who's been supporting this newsletter over the years

Happy Labor Day weekend! I can’t believe summer is over. I know I’ve been kind of quiet over the past two months as work and life has been super hectic. But now the kids are back in school, and I found some time during this long weekend to get back to writing. I have a few drafts that aren’t quite complete yet (stay tuned for more content in the coming weeks/months!) but here are some quick industry observations and personal updates.

Market Observations

• In House Legal Continues To Struggle To Gain Resources: Lately I’ve had lots of conversations with senior in-house counsel who are all dealing with the challenges of getting more resources. This is not a new thing but I suspect it’s in the zeitgeist because we’re approaching the end of the year, and 2025 planning is under way. Long story short, legal departments don’t seem to be getting significantly more resources (and are often being asked to shrink their teams). Although there is more interest in AI (more on that below) there doesn’t seem to be a corresponding rise in legal technology budgets. I wonder how much of all this is related to an increasing number of legal departments being scrutinized on the numbers. Lately there’s been quite a bit of discourse on social (check out this post from Greg Raiten of TechGC, and the comments) about whether legal should report to finance, and while all the public comments seem to say that it’s a bad idea—behind closed doors some legal executives are saying that it’s not as bad as it sounds. My sense is that GCs are being practical about it, because the chain of command to finance is being forced upon them. The pragmatic GCs are often optimistic, believing that reporting to the CFO means they have a powerful voice (or decisionmaker) when it comes to resourcing.

• Biglaw Finances and Rising Hourly Rates: There are quite a few articles about how the biggest law firms are making record profits. Seems like there are a couple of big drivers, including throttling equity partner growth & raising hourly rates. On equity partner dynamics, I highly recommend David Lat’s extremely well written piece about the nuances of creating a non-equity partner class. Relatedly there does seem to be rumors of firms de-equitizing partners—which I have zero firsthand knowledge of, but totally can see happening. On rising hourly rates, it seems to me that the top large firms are trying to “move upmarket” which is a term used in the b2b tech world to signify when mature startups start focusing on serving the largest and most lucrative customers. Existing customers complain about higher prices but the end result is a far healthier business (for the startup or firm) with stronger underlying economics. I’m thinking of following the lead of my friend Jessica Markowitz, who shared a great post on LinkedIn about rising hourly rates. Lots of interesting comments there. My personal view that I’m still working out is that firms are “getting away with it” because many clients’ revealed preferences indicate that Biglaw is actually, shockingly— underpricing matters! And the upside of losing price elastic clients means your team is freed up to meet demand for higher paying clients.

• Legal AI Continues To Flood The Market - It’s crazy how the generative AI wave shows no signs of stopping. (You know it’s gotten big when Business Insider starts weighing in on fundraising rounds.) As of Aug. 2024, I am continuing to hear random tech voices and outsiders talking about how AI will transform the legal industry. I don’t disagree with the premise—genAI will absolutely change a ton of how lawyers work. But the fact that outsiders are betting big on legal AI means we will continue to see a flood of well funded vendors enter the space. It seems like every week I hear about a new fundraise. Personally, I’ve received a regular stream of inquiries from founders with minimal legal industry exposure, asking for sales/marketing advice—probably because of my old article How To Sell To Lawyers. All of these signs point to a relentless amount of marketing pushed towards lawyers of all kinds. In the long run I think this is a good thing for legal innovation; in the short run, it’s just going to make it really hard for law firms and legal departments to figure out which vendor to go with.

• LinkedIn: From Megaphone to Social Proof Tool - The word has gotten that social media platforms are an incredible marketing channel. I mean how else can a single individual generate millions of views on something they publish? In the legal industry I think there historically has been a lot of skepticism, ridicule, and cringing at social media. Over the past few years though, those negative views have made a dramatic shift. Now it seems like every lawyer has a social media presence. I think that’s a great development by the way. But now that everyone’s piled in—everyone’s trying to one up each other on engaging content. As a result it’s been incredibly hard to grow your views/engagement on LinkedIn, unless you post outrageous, click-bait type of content. If that’s you—no judgment at all, personally I’ve been guilty of doing the same in the past. But it does seem that LinkedIn’s success has led to some audience fatigue in the past year or two. As a result I have been quietly recommending to my friends to adjust their use of LinkedIn by viewing it as a way to gain social proof. You don’t need to maximize your views, followers, and connections—instead optimize your profile and content strategy to show your contacts that you’re someone worth paying attention to. For me, I have been trying to “write for the lurkers” instead of continuously posting Tik Toks I know will get thousands of likes. I mean I still post them, just a lot less frequently than I used to.

Personal Updates

• 5 months at Latitude, as Chief Revenue Officer - I can’t believe it’s already been nearly half a year since I started! Work is going great, and the company is absolutely crushing it. The entire team is just as impressive as I thought, and we really are generating a ton of buzz in the flex talent space. Personally, it’s been a fantastic opportunity to stretch outside of my comfort zone. In previous legal tech roles, I was focused primarily on selling widgets myself, or managing a small team of sales reps. Here at Latitude, my work is more indirect. Because my goal is to take this impressive group of highly experienced, deeply talented former Biglaw partners and GCs—and work indirectly, through them to spread the word about Latitude. These lawyers have enormous credibility; they’ve each built up deep trusted networks over the course of practicing law in their local market for years. Which is so important as we have ongoing conversations with law firms and legal departments on how to use flexible legal talent. So for me, a Latitude newbie who’s trying to have a big impact, my top priority (and what I’m constantly thinking about) is to take my past biz dev experiences¹ and see what tactics/strategies our client services team can implement and potentially be even more effective at what they do. Not everything will work, but everyone has been so open to trying new things. So it’s been an incredibly fun challenge and I am loving every minute of it.

  • On that note, if you are a lawyer with a strong local network & keen interest in sales/biz dev—keep an eye out for a future job opening announcement! In the coming months we will be adding to the client services team nationwide, with an eye towards former senior lawyers in specific cities, who have deep local networks, and sales/biz dev experience.

  • This also goes without saying but I wouldn’t be a sales professional if I didn’t: If you or someone you know could benefit from an introduction to Latitude’s bench of flexible legal talent, please let me know!

• Speaking of lawyers turning into business people - These days I feel like I have very little in common with most lawyers. I didn’t always feel this way—but now that I’ve been in business roles for nearly a decade, I sometimes find myself wondering what exactly I have in common (these days) with my main audience. This usually arises when I’m thinking of sharing a LinkedIn post. I’m often tempted to share sales/marketing content, since that’s what I spend most of my time doing. One way I’ve been able to bridge the two worlds is by providing “sales advice” for legal executives who are trying to persuade finance to give them more resources. Not sure how my content will continue to evolve—but those of you who have been following this newsletter from day one probably notice the shift in themes. I’m not the same person I was when I first started out posting on LinkedIn. Back then I was six years out of law school, and had just left the practice. Now I’m 14 years out, and have spent the bulk of my career thinking about sales and marketing to lawyers. I don’t have a conclusion here, just something I’ve been thinking about lately.

• This Substack - I wanted to thank everyone who has followed me during my journey. Especially those who have provided financial support through premium subscriptions. I am posting a bit less these days, and the topics are changing—less pure legal content, and more persuasion/industry content. And so I just wanted to let you all know—if my newsletter has shifted too far away from what you originally signed up for, I understand if you’d like to unsubscribe. In fact, many people already have and I’ve issued plenty of refunds. I guess this is my way of saying, if you’d like, please feel free to cancel and/or let me know if you want me to issue a refund. I just want to express my gratitude and thank you for following me along in this journey.

If you made it all the way to the end of this email—thank you for reading! You all rock. Stay tuned for more typical articles & programming in future weeks. And hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing Labor Day weekend!

Alex

1. Sorry, did I say biz dev? I meant sales.