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Researching the Competition

ALM Research Online provides business intelligence information about large firms.

By Larry Bodine

Larry Bodine is a strategic marketing consultant who advises law firms across the United States on
marketing strategy, offers marketing coaching and provides business development training at
lawyer retreats. He can be reached at Lbodine@lawmarketing.com.

There is a new online database that marketers, law firms and corporate general counsel can use to get in-depth business intelligence about law firms. ALM Research Online was launched in early 2005 and offers users 137 different points of data to compare and contrast law firms.

It has information a researcher can’t find anywhere else — such as law firm billing rates and lawyer compensation — because it draws on decades of surveys and rankings published by ALM publications such as The National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, AmLaw Tech surveys and state legal publications the company publishes in New York, New Jersey, Florida, California and other states.

Marketers will be pleased to see ALM Research Online fills a major gap left open by LexisNexis’ Market Intelligence and Thomson Corp.’s Firm360, which are competing services that show how many cases a law firm handles in a practice area, but not the value of those cases. For example, Market Intelligence and Firm360 can show that a firm handled 20 tort cases for a client, but neither reveal whether they were minor slip-and-fall cases or bet-the-company class action lawsuits. ALM Research Online fills in this blank by identifying select major transactions and cases, as well as the dollar amount involved in each.

A user can look up a firm and get a 20-plus page report about it, including billing rates, profits per partner, firm gross revenue, a list of major clients, a list of “Big Deals” and “Big Suits,” and which lawyer handled them, names of lateral partners who joined or left the firm, technology spending and more. Corporate general counsel can compare the law firms that represent their company according to the year and type of cases handled.

The Web site also provides a Martindale-Hubbell link where users can look up profiles of the attorneys who handled major matters for a company profiled in a “Big Deals” or “Big Suits” item. Through Martindale-Hubbell, the service identifies headquarters information, a firm’s rank and rating, and a list of lawyers and their practices.

ALM Research Online offers custom research and survey services, according to Katherine Daisley, marketing manager of ALM Research in New York. “We will work with you to develop the best strategies for searching our database to produce custom reports,” Daisley said. “And we can assist you with your primary research needs, including developing questionnaires, conducting Web surveys, performing data analysis and managing projects.”

The target users for the database are large law firms in the Am Law 200 and NLJ 250 that want competitive intelligence on each other; corporate general counsel who want to profile firms they are using or might want to retain; and consultants, real estate companies and endemic vendors that target law firms as customers.

Some of the information provided by the service is free — there is no charge for the information under the heading “ALM Research Tool Box” on the home page. It includes “Law Firm Search,” which searches 800 law firm Web sites for data; “ALM Lists & Rankings Related Articles,” which includes all the published surveys with data about compensation, use of technology and companies represented; and a link to the ALM Research Blog.

Digital Data

ALM Research Online was developed in partnership with an online data aggregation company named Alacra Inc. to compile and make searchable all data ALM collected about law firms throughout the years. ALM Research Online offers a stellar collection of objective data about major firms. According to Daisley, the online database actually contains more information than the published reports and adds information for which there was not room in the print publications.

The information can be purchased by subscription. The base subscription price of $3,500 per year per user gives access to data for the current year and one-year law firm reports. The premium subscription, which costs $8,500 for one user for one year, permits unlimited searching of all data, which dates back to 1978 for some data. Users also can buy a full 20-plus page report about a law firm, covering a one-year ($249), three-year ($599) or five-year ($899) period. Just pick the firm you want and click “add to shopping cart.” Reports are downloaded into your computer’s “documents” folder and can be downloaded again for up to 30 days. New information is updated automatically, making the online data always current.

The report comes in Microsoft Word or Portable Document Format. The Word document can be cut and pasted into an article or Microsoft PowerPoint file. ALM Research Online also sells single surveys, lists and rankings. Users can locate a specific study, such as the 2005 Am Law 200 listing, from among 20 national and 11 state law firm rankings. They are downloaded in Microsoft Excel files, which allow users to sort and search the data (something that can’t be done in the published print versions). The three- to five-year law firm reports also feature colorful graphic charts.

Custom Searching

For marketers researching whether to open an office in a particular city, ALM Research Online lets users search by location — throughout the United States and several other countries — to find competing local law firms. The database identifies where the real headquarters office is, piercing the marketing fiction in which many firms assert that they don’t have a central office. Also, users can find law firms by their previous names (e.g., Mayer, Brown & Platt) and their new names (e.g., Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw).

To begin a search, a user can click on buttons for a firm’s name, location, rank, revenue, number of attorneys, clients and topics. Once you have zeroed in on a particular firm, there are nine topics and 16 subtopics to choose from. Within those topics, there are 137 data points along with the publication name and date showing the source of the information. Most of the data points can be selected individually; some automatically are selected when you choose a topic. The database allows you to display several law firms at once and compare them on any data point. The only downside of the database is it mainly displays the results of large law firms. If you are looking to compare firms with 20 attorneys in a Midwestern city, you will not find anything.

Snooping Into Client Business

ALM Research Online isn’t designed to be a comprehensive database of client corporations, and it isn’t aimed at duplicating LexisNexis or Westlaw as a repository of court opinions. However, marketers can find ample useful information about major transactions and court cases with an A-to-Z list of companies with ALM Research Online. Users can look at companies and select them according to the type of legal services they buy, from acquisitions to wrongful eviction. Or a researcher simply can click “all” to see everything a corporation is buying from law firms. If you work with or compete with a big law firm, ALM Research Online is an excellent place to collect competitive intelligence about that firm’s strengths and weaknesses.

Entire contents copyright © 2006 James Publishing, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

ALM Research Online offers custom research
services for law firms seeking competitive intelligence about other firms.