Imagine you’ve completed a course of rigorous academic study in communications and find, as your tassel is moved to the right, that there is no work awaiting you on the other side. Or you have gainful employment at a socially productive enterprise suddenly cut short for no reason of your own doing. You have debts, obligations and nowhere to go in the morning. What to do?

The first obvious choice is to turn to a life of crime. Not the nasty, violent stuff, but the Jean Valjean sort.  The other option is to become a legal marketer, where thin qualifications are met by a day or two at a conference and a few hours on twitter. With a list of ten simple things, usually available online for cut-and-paste usage, you can become an expert and demand your  seat at the table at any major law firm.

That’s it?  Oh no. It’s hardly that simple, as Laura at the  Legal Shakeup explains. There are also rules of etiquette with which you must comply.

I must say…I was disappointed that people I consider colleagues took to Twitter to voice their negative opinions. Fine, you don’t like a presenter. Maybe a session was a joke, and you think you can do better. Or, maybe you’re listening from afar, and feel like you need to poke fun (I mean, who doesn’t have unlimited time to do this? [sarcasm, people]). It’s one thing to give criticisms, but entirely another to rip someone to shreds. And to do it on a platform where meanings are easily misconstrued. Online communities make it easy to “hide” behind a profile picture or as “anonymous,” but it’s cowardly to do so to hurt another human being.

I hope these people realized that senior members of our organization were “listening.” And so were the presenters who worked to put their presentation together – that doesn’t change, good presentation or bad. And these users who decided to publicly attack – their reputation is on the line because of the things they decided to publish. No one thinks you’re any funnier for making a mean-spirited quip about someone else.

Laura is rather harsh in her denigration of behavior with which she disagrees, but haters gonna hate, and Laura hates anyone who isn’t happy.  Happy, you see, is the key to legal marketing success, not merely for the individual who must be loved by all, but for an industry that is so flimsy that it can’t withstand the slightest scrutiny.

But doesn’t she say that criticism is fine, as long as you don’t “rip someone to shreds?” 

As marketing professionals, especially legal marketers, we have to be very careful about how we’re perceived. It’s hard enough to work for lawyers, who have ethics they must abide by; now pile on some negativity and it’s likely you’ll be talked to about it. Why make it harder on yourself? Your colleagues, your lawyers, your law firm aren’t going to find the humor and may be quick to judge. Social networks still haven’t “earned” their rightful place in law firms, so it’s pertinent that you put your best foot forward, and not do anything that may jeopardize the hard work you’ve put in. Not only the hard work in your realm, but the work all of us in legal marketing have collectively put in.

Laura doesn’t really mean it. Criticism isn’t only not fine, but it’s negativity. Negativity is evil. People will talk about you.  And lawyers (who have this stuff called “ethics,” which apparently is the devil to legal marketing’s angel) will reject that marketers have “earned” (her quotes) their rightful place in law firms.  To her credit, Laura appreciates that the legal marketing industry (or its practitioning “professionals,” used in the sense of an occupation in search of respectability) isn’t well perceived.  But it’s not because they don’t work hard, but irrelevant stuff like those darn ethics and those mean-spirited negativity people.

While one might think this was a reaction to some untoward stimuli, Laura was  ready and waiting for the attacks in advance of the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference in Grapevine, Texas.

NOTE:

There are a few “haters” of legal marketing who will be trying to interject their thoughts in our stream. Fine, let them. Engaging them isn’t going to do anything but egg them on. They’re not worth it. So block them if you feel like it, don’t reply, and let their thoughts fall on deaf ears. Seriously. It’s not worth it. They have nothing better to do than pick fights.

Maybe those awful “haters” have one thing better to do than pick fights.  While Laura promotes a cult of positivity, it’s the mortal enemy of a culture of integrity.  As the bulk of lawyers struggle to understand the implications of the internet, of social media, of whether their failure to join the race to the bottom will negatively impact their practice, Laura would have them only hear happy thoughts about legal marketing.  After all, how cool is it to make a grand announcement that you are Number 1!!! in a poll created by the kid you pay to teach you how to twit. (Shh! Don’t mention the “pay” part.)

Most telling is that if the cottage industry of legal marketing had any juice, it would be capable of withstanding scrutiny, from within and without, and nice people like Laura wouldn’t feel compelled to admonish the haters to shut up and stop trashing her beloved source of income.  But she does. And it doesn’t.

Lawyers should understand and become part of the technological future, both of society as well as the profession.  But not because they’ve been fed a bunch of nonsense by happy people whose dreams are crushed by the honesty of the handful of people who actually know what they’re talking about.  And the worst part is, some of this very small, very select, group are legal marketers themselves, the ones who actually have a clue what they’re doing and understand the significance of legal ethics in any course  of action taken by lawyers, aren’t happy at all.