What Keeps Law Firm Leaders Up at Night?

Gina Rubel: Welcome to season six of On Record PR, where we dive deep into the strategies and insights that matter most to law firm leaders who are charged with decision-making that drives their growth, innovation, and of course, success. I’m Gina Rubel, CEO and General Counsel for Furia Rubel Communications. I’m a licensed attorney and a former litigator. I’ve been helping law firm leaders navigate the intersection of law, business crisis, and communications for more than 30 years.

Jennifer Simpson Carr: And I’m Jennifer Simpson Carr, a former in-house law firm marketing leader. And I’m hitting my five-year anniversary this month as a member of the incredible team at Furia Rubel Communications. Together with Gina, we’re bringing you a new podcast format that’s more focused, actionable and relevant than ever before.

Gina Rubel: We’ve heard your feedback and we’ve revamped our format to bring you concise, engaging episodes packed with insights tailored to law firm leaders and what’s happening today, tomorrow, and as we move into each business cycle. Through this new format, our goal is to provide you with a deep dive into timely topics that law firm leaders are facing and leave you with that actionable advice that I mentioned earlier. We also want you to be able to implement it immediately, whether it’s about navigating industry challenges, staying ahead of trends, or enhancing your firm’s reputation and growth.

Jennifer Simpson Carr: In this season, we’re also making it even easier to engage with us by embracing a video-first format. Now you can watch our full episodes on YouTube and you can listen to the audio version of our episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

So, Gina, it’s Monday, January 6th, 2025. We are six days into the new year and it’s already shaping up to be a pivotal time for law firms. In this past week alone, we’ve seen several significant mergers and combinations go into effect. Technology and its impact on the practice of law continue to be top of mind, and today in the United States, we’re witnessing the beginning of a transition in our administration. So a significant part of our role working with clients is working really closely with law firm leaders to anticipate how changes like these globally will impact their firms, their practice of law and their position in the market, as well as how it may impact their clients and their clients’ expectations. It’s kind of that old adage, what keeps you up at night?

So what we’re seeing in the market now are some great pieces on this exact topic. And recently Law360 published an article, What’s Keeping Law Firm Leaders Up at Night, a great piece written by Aebra Coe that covers some of the most pressing issues that law firm leadership face. They’re very much aligned with what we’re seeing every day and today we break out three topics that we are supporting clients on pretty much daily, which is the need to be flexible, talent and culture, and technology.

So let’s dive into these individually and start with flexibility. Things are changing very rapidly, and the need to be flexible by law firms is paramount. Gina, what does this mean to you?

Gina Rubel: Thanks, Jennifer. You know, flexibility has never been more important and we’ve talked about agility over the years. And the law firm industry in particular. Every firm kind of fits in its own silo, and many firms are used to doing things the way they’ve always done it, and that’s not how things can be done anymore. The world is changing as we’ve seen here in the United States in 2024 with our election and we’re not going to get into whether or not we like what’s coming or don’t like what’s coming, we know that change is coming.

And so it’s really important to be flexible, to be able to manage that change as it relates to our law firms in particular and then how we serve clients because one of the things we tend to forget is every law firm is its own entity. And the law firm leaders have to manage the firm and have to help the firm manage the clients and the shifting needs, so we need to lead by example. So being agile, being able to make change, being able to adapt to new technologies, being able to put our best foot forward all the time is going to be super, super important.

One of the things that I wanted to mention. In the Law360 article that you mentioned with Aebra Coe. One of our clients – full disclosure, everyone, we do have clients mentioned in the media all the time, so I will always and Jennifer will always mention when it is a client who is quoted.

Shipman & Goodwin, that’s up in the Connecticut market. They were quoted. I should say it was actually Kent Nevins who was quoted. He’s there on the management committee. He talked about avoiding squandering opportunities. I think that’s really important because there’s so much that every law firm has worked for to position themselves. to put themselves out there, and to take advantage of the opportunities and to anticipate opportunities. It’s going to be really important moving into 2025 and knowing when to shift is going to be important as well. So that’s really this idea of flexibility, this idea of agility. You just need to be more ready and reticent for change.

Jennifer Simpson Carr: Yeah, that’s a great point. And, I think so many firms are in the habit now of creating plans and working internally and with strategic partners to come up with what a path forward looks like. But those plans need to be written in a way that they can be flexible when needed when things change in the world, which they do every day.

Gina Rubel: I can’t help but wonder. Jennifer, how many firms actually have a significant budget for geopolitical tensions or incident response? Or some of the things where everybody’s been through their budgeting season and some are still finalizing their budgets for 2025, do they have that ability to be flexible within the budget to manage change that’s coming? Law firms, every one of them is so different than the next. Who knows if they have those budgets or not? We know that some of our clients do and we know some of them don’t, so it’s something to think about.

Speaking of this idea of agility and flexibility, Jennifer, what are your thoughts about the talent wars that we’re seeing and how that’s keeping law firm leaders up at night?

Jennifer Simpson Carr: So that continues to be a big conversation with clients and in the market. I think what we’re seeing from our perspective is that firms that are really successful with recruiting and retaining strong top-tier talent have a clearly defined brand and they’re communicating that brand. They’re investing in strategies where they’re communicating that brand clearly in their recruiting efforts and in the messages that are put out by the firm. I found a really interesting survey that Law360 partnered with Major, Lindsey & Africa on and I found an interesting point that they came up with, which is that generally throughout the survey they noticed that respondents who had moved firms actually moved firms based on a better alignment of culture with their own personal values, so as much as sometimes it may feel like talking about your culture or weaving in cultural aspects or values into your firm’s communications might seem like fluff, it actually is resonating with the talent that you want to be joining your firm.

So I think as law firm leaders think about recruiting and retention in the new year, how are your communications positively or negatively impacting how potential talent views the values and the culture that your firm has? You could be making your firm more or less attractive just by the words or the images you’re putting out in the world.

So I think it’s an opportunity for leadership to partner with recruiting and professional development departments and those professionals on how communications are being created and what the message is going out in the market.

Gina Rubel: Jenn, I think what I hear you saying is that it’s not just compensation. It’s also how a firm presents itself, and one of the things I find is and this is just me speaking, this is my opinion. I’m not speaking on behalf of Furia Rubel or any of our clients when I say this.

I find it really interesting that there are different types of people who are attracted to different types of firms, and we’re seeing with the different generations that not all talent cares about about their first year salary, or their associate’s salary or are they going to make the most? Some do, and they might stay at a firm until they get tired of the old-school ways of that firm and then go to another firm that has a better culture and we see that a lot. And so in the talent wars, I really think that firms need to be more cognizant of their culture than ever before. Do you agree?

Jennifer Simpson Carr: I completely agree. It’s interesting because in some of the surveys in the market, lateral talent and particularly junior talent cares a lot about mentoring and training opportunities and work-life balance and they rank those higher than salaries. So in that Law360 article we mentioned, salary definitely comes up. There are some quotes about that. But what we’re seeing is that positive work culture and values that align with talent are really what’s attracting talent to their next role.

Jennifer Simpson Carr: Keeping up with technology has been on the forefront of conversations at conferences, events in the media. I mean, it’s kind of been non-stop the last 18 months. So I’m curious, with the pace of technology rapidly evolving and also how it’s impacting client expectations, what do you think law firm leaders should be thinking about as as it relates to AI and technology this year?

Gina Rubel: Well, I know this is one of the big topics that are keeping people up at night, especially the C-Suite, the executive committees and their technology suites and their partners. And a big thing happening, Jen, it’s not just the generative AI which has been at the forefront of conversation for the last two years, but it’s also cybersecurity, and I know that it’s imperative that law firm leaders take cybersecurity even more seriously.

I want to read something that Cat Casey, the Chief Growth Officer of Reveal, said. I’m quoting this from Legal Tech News on January 2nd, so just a few days ago on their predictions in cybersecurity in 2025, and I couldn’t agree with her more.

“2025 is shaping up to be the year cyber risk officially crashes the legal party—and it’s not leaving quietly. With ransomware running rampant and regulators breathing down everyone’s necks, law firms and legal teams will have no choice but to up their cyber game. We’re talking less fire drills, more fireproofing. AI will step in as the ultimate sidekick, spotting threats before they blow up and keeping sensitive client data out of the headlines. Let’s face it—being cyber-savvy isn’t a nice-to-have anymore; it’s the cover charge for doing business in the digital age.”

And I say that because she couldn’t be more right with the geopolitical tensions that we’re facing, the change in administration here in the US, the fact that the cybercriminal industry – cybercrime is a multi multi billion dollar industry. No matter the size of your firm and we don’t target any particular size of firm with this podcast – so from solos on to your AM law 100, your AM law 10, cybersecurity must, must, must be top of mind. There is no choice. And with that, it’s really important that firms be thinking about their incident response plans. Because it’s not just technology and cybersecurity that you need to be concerned about. It’s everything.

So I’m going to just go off topic for a quick second, Jennifer.

We had a pandemic in 2020, started in 2019. Well, we may see another pandemic with the bird flu and so few people even know that it’s happening. So these are the types of things that should be keeping law firms up at night. Their leaders are talking about cybersecurity, but they also need to be talking about future pandemics.

Jennifer Simpson Carr: It’s scary and I remember you saying multiple times that throughout your 30 years in between legal practice and communications, you thought you’d seen it all. And then a pandemic happened. So I think you know one thing that I say a lot is no one is immune to this anymore. It’s not if something happens, it’s when. I know that that’s become kind of a cliche in the market. But if we’ve learned nothing else, no one is safe from, unfortunately crises or incidents or things that will happen unexpectedly.

Gina Rubel: Which goes right back to where we started, full circle – being agile.

Jennifer Simpson Carr: So this was our first episode. This is such a great way to kick off the year. If law firm leaders could take one thing away from this episode, what would you recommend?

Gina Rubel: Well, I would say – planning for what could happen. And that means, for example, taking what you learned from the COVID pandemic and having a strategic plan to deal with a future pandemic and taking everything that we’ve learned from past cyber breaches and getting ready to thwart mostly, but also deal with any sort of cyber breach that could happen. I think those are really two of the most important things.

And Jennifer, I’m going to ask you the same question and I’m going to ask you to bring us home. What do you suggest to our listeners? What are their key takeaways?

Jennifer Simpson Carr: I would say if talent acquisition and retention and hiring are a big part of your strategy this year in the future, sit down with the teams within your firm that touch that part of your work and take a good hard look at what it is you’re communicating and how you’re communicating your firm’s culture and value.

And I will take that one step further. If you don’t have a well-defined culture and value, that’s the place to start. Sit down and define what that looks like. Define what is true to your firm and start by writing that down and then using that to communicate internally and externally about your values and who you are as a firm.

Gina Rubel: Jenn, before you bring it home, I’m just going to say to our listeners, stay safe out there. We know many people are in the Midwest and East Coast and we’re getting these crazy blizzard ice storms from you know where and so stay safe. And one of the things we’ve all learned is that we know how to work from home so I hope many of our law firm listeners and leaders will be heeding that message this week in this in these blizzard conditions.

Jennifer Simpson Carr: Thank you so much to our listeners for tuning in today. We welcome your feedback on this new podcast format, which we’re really excited about. We’d love to hear topics that you want to learn more about. We’re here for you.Please e-mail us at podcast@onrecordpr.com. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and we’ll see you next week.

Watch the Full Episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/FuriaRubel