Today rounds out three predictions for 2013. The first was the importance of The Team, and the second the reality of keeping The Score.

Today, we talk about The Practice. Years ago, “practice” referred to what an outside counsel called his work, for his clients, charging what he wanted, thank you very much. And yes it typically was a “he.”

Today, though, I am referring to practice not like that, but more like what a team does that wants to score better and win.

You know, like what Allen Iverson spoke eloquently about in 2002, when he had “creative differences” with 76ers coach Larry Brown about whether, he, “AI” (aka The Franchise) had to attend practice (like everyone else):

People who watch this video focus on the classic repetitions of the word “practice.” But the true lesson for today’s intrepid lawyers is in the single Q&A at the end of the video:

Reporter:

Is it possible though, from where he is coming from that, with practice, not you would be better, but your teammates would be better?

Allen Iverson:

How the hell can I make teammates better by practicing?

I’m not saying that some superstar lawyers agree with Mr. Iverson, but at least he is a refreshingly honest person, who could not hew the company line if he tried.

We are entering an era when even superstar lawyers need a team. And to score well together requires some practice at key skills.

New technology (for project management or collaboration, for example) can’t easily take hold because people don’t know how to (or don’t want to) work together. In fact, I think many lawyers today think that technology is more often the problem, not the solution.

I know that “practice” is a hard concept to explain without it degrading into visions of firewalks and rope ladders and teams of people zip-lining over crocodile-infested waters.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I will offer some examples of what to practice early in the new year.

For now, I think 2013 will show us that when a well-selected small group (a team) uses a few key metrics (the score) and takes seriously the importance of working together well (the practice), they are more likely to best the competition than those who continue with the status quo.

And they just might have a bit of fun in the process. Here’s to more fun in the new year.

This is the second installment of predictions for 2013. The first was “The Team.” (No, I didn’t think about a sporting tone at the start.)

Number two in this hit parade is “The Score.” As in lawyers working in the enterprise space (inside or outside) need to know that some things count and other things are just part of the process in getting there.

It used to be easy for outside counsel to keep score. They counted hours, and regaled peers about going beyond 2,000 hours posted and paid in a calendar year.

In-house counsel also kept score years ago. They typically regaled their former peers in firms about how they did not count hours.

Now in-house counsel need to keep score about how their corporate legal function drives top line revenue, removes costs to bolster bottom line earnings and controls risk so shareholders see gains (and keep them).

It’s harder for outside counsel to keep score now, since they are being pressed by those same in-house counsel to lower costs. Billing higher rates by the hour is a luxury for a few law firms, not a strategy for the rest.

As a general counsel, I remember when an outside lawyer would push back on a given issue when I tried to calibrate it by linking it to a discrete corporate result. The refrain on at least one occasion:

That’s a business issue.

(I wish I had an iPhone then and could have grabbed it and played this. Loud.)

Part of keeping score in 2013 will require an understanding that if something isn’t a “business issue” then it probably shouldn’t be worked on by corporate counsel in the first place.

Pursuing legal questions for the law’s sake is great. It’s just not part of the corporate landscape any more (if it ever was).

We have heard this through the Great Recession:

Do more with less.

I think in 2013 many in-house counsel will move past that bromide. They will be part of growing the enterprise, which will involve handling more work with existing staff.

The “less,” if at all, may refer to fewer outside law firms, charging lower unit costs. And getting better results along the way.

That’s how we keep score today.

[Story.]

OK, I’m going all in. We needed Herm Edwards in law school, or a least as a keynoter for an Association of Corporate Counsel annual meeting:

This is the time of year for predictions. Last year I put forward seven (State of Legal 2012: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7). I was tempted to just pick three and update.

Honestly, the first one is an outgrowth of last year’s “It takes a lawyer.” Here’s the essence of that point:

What I mean is that for all the talk of cost control, collaboration, teamwork, project management or social media “connecting,” nothing gets done unless someone does something. Each of those laudable concepts or techniques can get bogged down by the fact that often everyone is expecting someone else to take ownership and initiate action.

As change in the enterprise legal industry continues at its glacial pace, I find myself less interested in large organizations and more interested in the small teams inside that can actually do something.

How big of a team, you ask?

Well, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos observes the “two pizza rule.” To encourage innovation and limit groupthink, he holds that if a team can’t be fed with two pizzas at a lunch meeting, it’s too big. (The team, not the pizzas).

Does that mean five? Probably not many more than that. If you have the brawny lad from IT onboard, it may be four.

In the legal sphere, we see this when an excellent small team in a lawsuit can prevail over a larger, if more diffused, group.

We also see this in the sometimes metaphysical realm know as “collaboration.” My working definition: where many are “on” but few are “in.” Like when many are on a conference call, but few are in on key decisions, and almost no one is all in: staking one’s reputation on getting a result.

That last person is called a project manager, or, more generally, a leader.

Change in the law only happens when a small group of well-selected lawyers does something important in a better way.

This is a sobering fact for large law firms and big corporate legal departments: there used to be strength in numbers. Now there can be inertia in that historical critical mass. But when they leverage their people properly, watch out.

If you have ever been on a small team that worked well and got good stuff done, you are lucky. You know how rare it is and much it makes you look forward to going to work.

So I hope in 2013 you are part of such a team. And that you don’t take the last slice of pizza.

This is day seven of a new-year tour of the enterprise law landscape. Day one was an overview and focused on the lawyer; day two was Cost Control 2.0, day three was about legal tech going app-centric, day four examined why close counts with clients, day five suggested that thinking all lawyer training involves CLE may be a CLM; and day six looked at the primacy of selling in the brave new legal world, and in doing that we are all solos.

Today we come full circle from where we started, which was positing that all things legal start with one lawyer. And in 2012 and beyond, what matters are results.

When a legal issue arises, here is how the process works:

1. Figure out “The Law.” We call it X.

2. Determine “The Facts.” That’s Y.

3. Someone takes X + Y and gets a business “Result.” That’s Z.

Successful lawyers and law firms will spend most of their quality time focused on getting to Z.

Increasingly X (The Law) is the province of search engines, digests, and FAQs. You don’t even need to be a lawyer to know the law. Heck, we learned in law school that ignorance of it is no excuse. On a standalone basis, it’s not just low value work, it’s trending toward free.

When we talk about Y (The Facts), that is increasingly the province of data. Data mining, databases, and data rooms. Software munches data with almost no incremental cost. Legal software will eat some lawyers and law firms for lunch in the coming years. So unless you are a software company or a bleeding-edge legal process outsourcer, you don’t want to be exclusively there, either.

Which brings us to Z (Results). The more time you spend delivering results, the better the air and the view of the legal landscape. If you deliver the final regulatory approval that triggers closing of a billion-dollar merger, you get to charge more than fixing a CEO’s traffic ticket. (But if it allows her to drive to the closing, it’s value-bill-city).

Over the last few decades, law firms have made billions splashing around in the X and Y ponds. We may not be past that stage of enterprise legal, but we are at least closer to its end. And in-house lawyers who are narrow subject-matter-experts better hope they can draw a line to Z more often.

A good many enterprise legal clients don’t know that they should expect clear results from lawyers, since they still think The Law is mysterious and The Facts are hard to come by. But that will change as they compare notes and realize that much of what they’ve been paying for is not worth much without Results.

Results make the value of legal costs clear, and offer the chance to compare lawyers, firms, and third-party options on other metrics as well. (Sharp-eyed readers may think this sounds similar to day four, which examined why close counts with clients. The difference is that focused on client proximity, and today examines the bottom line particularly.)

I can hear some readers groaning a bit, and I know that this sounds like baseball, hot dogs and apple pie. But when you talk with enterprise legal clients, they remark about and refer lawyers who get great results. And they bemoan lawyers who are all about long memos and longer invoices.

So that’s the State of Legal 2012. It started with a lawyer, and it ends by getting to Z.

This is day six of a quick tour of the enterprise law landscape. Day one was an overview and focused on the lawyer; day two was Cost Control 2.0, day three was about legal tech going app-centric, day four examined why close counts with clients, and day five suggested that thinking all lawyer training involves CLE may be a CLM.

Today we examine why many lawyers think “selling” is a dirty word and why, in the real enterprise legal world, we are all solos when it comes to selling.

You remember the first time you heard about sales. If it wasn’t before college, you recall the time in your junior or senior year when everyone starting making plans for post-graduation. The wannabe lawyers and doctors knew grad school was required, as did the MBAs. The engineers were sifting through multiple job offers.

And then there were the outgoing types who got through college by force of personality as much as by dint of hard work. The comment then was “he’s going into Sales.” For the early years after college, a mention of his name might produce the response “On, he’s in Sales.” It was not explicitly intended as an insult, but those words just sort of hung there in the smoky haze of the local watering hole.

Flash forward and where is everyone now? Well the doctors have too much business; selling is typically turning the phones on at 9:00 am, and sometimes losing money on each patient. The lawyers are wondering what the hell happened (as are many engineers). The MBAs are either toiling away in the bowels of Finance or Procurement, or, if they are lucky enough to have a senior position, wish they were better at sales.

And then there is that “Sales Guy” from college. He is gainfully employed. He’s worked for a number of companies, and upgraded his base, bonus and stock options each time. He never had to look for a job, as the offers come looking for him.

And you don’t see him much in the summer, as he is at his house on the lake.

One reason we may have gone to law school is precisely because we didn’t want to sell (second only to not tolerating the sight of blood).

How is that working out for us now?

Let’s look at the three major lawyer categories in enterprise legal, and how they are positioned, sales-wise:

1. Lawyers at large firms. The good news: they often have marketing personnel inside the firm. The bad news: they are typically building the firm name, not the names of 500 individual lawyers. When it comes to networking, some of that (maybe) can be outsourced or automated. But when it comes to selling bit-ticket legal services to billion-dollar companies, it takes selling. As in face-to-face meetings, and many of them. Sometimes over months or years. Can you take a lot of rejection, but not take it personally? If so, you have part of what it takes.

2. Lawyers at smaller firms or solos. The bad news: you are likely the marketing department. The good news: your name may be the brand mark. Your challenge is how to define and describe a niche that can put you on equal footing with large firm lawyers. Our friend Joe B. above is not going to cut it.

3. In-house lawyers. Ah, you’re in luck, right? One reason you went inside was to do away with timesheets and endless marketing efforts. You have a captive client, you don’t need to sell. Really? If you’re not selling the fact that the legal department is advancing business objectives, then you are falling behind. If you’re not selling yourself as about 5x better than outside counsel in cost, speed, and outcomes, then you may be falling out.

Clients buy the lawyer, and justify the purchase with the firm. On the in-house front, internal clients should use “legal” because they want to, not just because they have to.

There is so much room for improvement in the selling of legal services. For those who are so inclined, take heart. If you do anything somewhat regularly, you are going to be better than the other 99%, who typically do nothing ever.

I want to close this essay by recounting recent personal experience. There is a well known lawyer in town who started in a very large firm, and then left to build his own, which is quite successful. I saw him twice in the last few months. Over the holidays, I saw him at a nearby Starbucks, early on a Saturday morning. He was talking to a current or future client, as far as I could tell over the din of the espresso machine.

That’s not the best part. I saw him a few months earlier, at a local restaurant. Again, one-on-one with someone, talking business as I walked in, and talking about civic matters when I went back out to my car to retrieve a legal pad. Now why was I there? I was at a luncheon sponsored by the State Bar of Michigan. The agenda: legal marketing. The attendees? A bunch of lawyers. As I sat there listening to a speaker talking about how to stalk potential clients through Linked In, I couldn’t help but think about the name partner just outside. He has been “linked in” to marketing and selling for years. (Yes, he’s on Linked In; I just checked. I’d wager $100 that he doesn’t know his password.)

Does this all come easy to him? Maybe. But he is consistently out there, talking one-on-one to people who hire lawyers. Sounds somewhat like Legal Sales 101.

Neither of these episodes may involve some exotic social media infused, SEO-enhanced, lead-gen strategy, utilizing cloud-based CRM.

Works for him, though. And did I mention that the once and future client at Starbucks bought the coffee? What a concept!