Melissa Davis

The latest attempt by the ICAEW to have greater global presence and break into other markets through its support of Chartered Accountants Worldwide (CAW) highlights the difficulties professional bodies and accountancy firms, or any professional service provider, have in exporting their brand overseas.

While doing business in other markets has its challenges, building a reputation beyond familiar orders through brand, public relations and media is an even tougher challenge. The trick is to be a cross-market brand – rather than specific to one market.

Whether it’s the ICAEW or an accountancy firm, the aim of any entity attempting to build a name for itself is to win ‘clients’ – also known as customers, members, students – or even those with influence.

Throw into the mix the Global Accounting Alliance – which appears to be made up of the same bodies as the CAW – and you find yourself asking how the new ‘partnership’ fits with the old setup.

Those clients or audiences need clarity over who they are dealing with. Is it the ICAEW or an amalgamation of bodies with no clear lines of who does what? Joint working, or collaborations, especially cross-border, are confusing.

You can throw every penny you have at promotion but if the brand and name don’t work you have wasted your money.

Change name lose clients

A law firm in England once changed its name to something more modern, spending a lot on branding and PR, but it lost so many clients it had to revert back to its old name and remarket itself. The firm learned its lesson.

However, no one rule applies. In some markets a more modern sounding name and marketing strategy might work more than, say, ‘Ye Olde Davis & Sons Tax Accountants LLP’.

But you have to get it right, because nine times out of ten you play catch-up with already established competition.

Avoiding sub-optimal sub-brands

It’s not just about the name but how it’s marketed and promoted. Attempts at sub brands have been made market by market and sector by sector, which can work and allow firms to concentrate on establishing a particular identity in a specific market with out having to compromise the original brand, for example, Virgin Australia (formerly Virgin Blue). Even Tesco Express and Sainsbury’s Local cater for specific customers and have adapted their whole PR package to suit.

Many firms looking to break into new markets will buddy up with local firms in that market and share expertise. That’s fine to a point, but if a firm decides to progress and go it alone they need to back that up with a PR plan in that new market to establish their own identity.

That brings with it new challenges of how to handle the local media and client expectations. Joining up also raises the nightmare of two PR companies, strategies, brand names. There are way too many egos to keep happy. Keeping it simple pays dividends, complicating it leaves the customer, client or other stakeholder confused.

Communications is sometimes bottom of the list for accountancy and law firms, or other businesses looking to break into new markets, but it shouldn’t be underestimated how vital a communications plan, sitting alongside your business plan, really is.

You might provide the best audit on the planet and have worked out how you can operate in a new market without breaking local laws, but if no one knows about you it’s not much use.

I am sure the ICAEW will get there in time. But from the outside looking in, this whole new CAW looks muddled. To those involved, it might seem clear and I don’t doubt I will receive messages clarifying the arrangements, but that would strengthen my point – CAW needs clarity. A good brand backed by effective communications doesn’t need any explanation.

This blog first appeared in Accountancy Age on 13 May 2013.

Melissa Davis

Membership of the legal profession is often viewed as a very privileged position to be in, both by those who are currently in it, as well as those on the outside. This is because it is a great place to work – full of brilliant minds, exciting opportunities and the most fascinating and challenging of projects. However, it is also a high pressure environment and one in which many find themselves struggling to cope with all the usual societal pressures of debt, family, growing older, as well as the law-specific billing targets, case management and having a responsibility for influencing the course of people’s lives. It is to provide support for those within the legal profession when times get a little tough that legal charities exist.

Whilst most of us blindly go through life assuming that ‘it won’t me be’ the statistics relating to the legal profession reflect the highly stressful place that it is. In 2011, the charity LawCare published research that showed that 15-24% of lawyers suffer from alcoholism at some point in their careers – not just one glass too many at a client function, but clinical alcoholism. The same charity released figures last year that found that a fifth of lawyers were suffering from clinical depression or another type of mental illness, whether or not they had admitted it to family or colleagues. From these numbers – and for anyone who has ever worked with the typical gruelling deadlines and heavy responsibilities in law – it’s clear that there is plenty of potential for those in the legal profession to end up snapping on the wheel, whether or not it is acceptable to admit it.

Legal charities such as SBA The Solicitors’ Charity, The Barristers’ Benevolent Association, LawCare, The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives Benevolent Fund, The Institute of Barristers’ Clerks Benevolent Fund and The United Law Clerks’ Society provide essential support to all those in the legal profession, whether solicitors, barristers or clerks, who need help either in financial terms or in dealing with something like depression, alcoholism, bereavement, disability or divorce. They essentially offer a safety net under those life events that most of us dread and few of us can handle with the kind of unemotional, practical strength that we wish we could. However, these charities need funds and, particularly in the current economic environment, these are often fairly hard to come by.

The Legal Charities Garden Party is an annual event that aims to highlight the valuable work that these charities do, as well as to raise crucial funds to make sure that they keep going as long as they are needed. The Garden Party began in 1968 and takes place in the leafy surroundings of Lincoln’s Inn with more than a thousand guests enjoying some light refreshments and a catch up with others in the profession – and all for a great cause. The proceeds go to the six charities named above, keeping open a key source of funding so that these organisations can go on ensuring there is support for legal professionals and their dependants for years to come.

The 2013 Garden Party takes place on Thursday 20th June (6-9pm) on the North Lawn of Lincoln’s Inn. Buy your tickets here.

This blog first appeared on Roll on Friday on 10th May 2013

Melissa Davis

If there is one profession where the dangers of making a controversial statement in a public forum like the internet should be well appreciated it’s the law. For the most part – for the sake of their reputations and the reputations of their chambers or firms – most legal professionals tend to steer clear of rabble-rousing comments on controversial issues that are the subject of a media frenzy. However, now and again there are those who do put something in writing. Possibly the most controversial set of comments from someone within the law in current circulation are those of Barbara Hewson, a barrister at Hardwicke chambers who on Wednesday of this week published an article entitled ‘Yewtree is destroying the rule of law’ on the website Spiked.

In that article Hewson was essentially questioning whether Operation Yewtree – the investigation set up to look into the allegations of abuse by Jimmy Savile, and which has recently also caught up Stuart Hall and the deputy speaker of the House of Commons – is flouting the rule of law. However, much of what Ms Hewson wrote was rather inflammatory. The parts of the article that have been the most widely quoted refer to Stuart Hall’s 13 offences against girls as young as nine as “low-level misdemeanours… nothing like serious crime,” that “the post-Savile witch-hunting of ageing celebs echoes the Soviet Union,” and that “touching a 17-year-old’s breast, kissing a 13-year-old, or putting one’s hand up a 16-year-old’s skirt” are not the same as more serious crimes such the 1986 Fordingbridge gang rape and murders. She adds, “Anyone suggesting otherwise has lost touch with reality.”

What is remarkable about this is not only the comments that were made in that article, but also the way that they have gone viral. It’s a demonstration of the power of social media that the article was only posted on Wednesday but yesterday Hewson’s comments were being reported in the wider media and even made it onto Sky News. #Hewson is now a Twitter hashtag (as is #offherrocker…) and an article covering the story was yesterday the top shared item on the BBC website.

Content written by members of the legal profession rarely gets this kind of coverage in the media and so perhaps Barbara Hewson was relying on the same level of anonymity and disinterest in the case of her article for Spiked. Or perhaps she really does feel that this is an important angle to the debate and this was all a very cleverly orchestrated way to use the power of social media to get her message across. The statement issued by her chambers – Hardwicke – might lead us to believe that the latter was not the case:

“We did not see or approve the article pre-publication and we completely dissociate ourselves from its content and any related views she may have expressed via social media or any other media outlets.”

What happens to Barbara Hewson now that her article has been so publicly hacked over remains to be seen. Whether the high rankings her chambers’ website says she has achieved for public and administrative law, human rights and civil liberties, and professional discipline and regulatory law – as well as her future career – will be affected who knows. One thing we do know for sure from the wave of attention her article has gleaned is that lighting the touch paper of social media remains as explosive as ever.

If you want to know how best to handle a social media storm – our useful infographic will show you how. If you would like social media training or further advice on how to handle a social media crisis get in touch.

Further reading:

HMV and Burger King feel the sting

Paris Brown falls foul of twitter

Out of context – the Hilary Mantel kerfuffle

Melissa Davis

With Deaf Awareness Week taking place this week, the spotlight is being shone on those consumers who are Deaf and how legal advice can best be provided to them. In this context, research by the Royal Association for Deaf People’s (RAD) Deaf Law Centre (DLC) has revealed statistics that show that an enormous 85% of Deaf people would prefer to have legal representation from someone who is able to communicate directly in British Sign Language (BSL), rather than through a BSL/English interpreter.

These statistics may not come as a shock to many. The intricacies of legal speak and its ‘translation’ into something that the average man or woman on the street can understand is difficult enough, without there being a third person effectively providing another comprehension hurdle that must be negotiated without any of the correct meaning being lost. Those who have never had to do so may not even have considered how communicating through an interpreter is likely to feel like something of a stilted process and, as the trust between solicitor and client is an essential relationship, how having what is essentially a middleman (or woman) involved can put that relationship on far shakier ground.

This issue was summed up by Rob Wilks, director of legal services at RAD Deaf Law Centre, who said: ‘The statistics prove that specialist legal advice from a solicitor who uses BSL is vital in order for Deaf people to be able to fully understand what can be very complex legal language – talking person to person rather than through a third party.’

So, what can the legal industry do to provide proper support and client care to deaf people who are looking for legal advice? At RAD DLC, they have established a system whereby a deaf person from anywhere in the country can obtain legal advice from a BSL competent solicitor at any time via a webcam. The centre is also using Deaf Awareness Week to try to encourage individual firms and solicitors to learn BSL themselves on a low-key basis in order to be able to provide legal advice to a wider range of clients. To this end they have set up a website that was launched this week, which offers legal professionals the chance to learn five BSL essential phrases each day until the end of the week. For those who want to continue learning at the end of the week there are numerous ways to do it, including online courses run by Signworld.

With around 8.7 million people who are classed as Deaf or hard of hearing in the UK, this is one consumer group that many firms would be wise not to ignore, particularly in the current environment where new instructions are enormously valuable. If Deaf Awareness Week results in more firms being able to offer Deaf clients BSL-competent solicitors, as well as opening up new channels of instructions at the same time, then it will have been a success all round.

This blog first appeared on The Law Society Gazette on 9th May 2013

Melissa Davis

My commute to work takes around 35 minutes but in life expectancy terms I am sure it shaves off several minutes each day. It is not the hot sweaty tube journey or the need to be on time that is responsible. It is the maniacs crossing my path each day who can’t wait for the green man and instead dart through lanes of fast traffic on the road outside our offices on Aldwych. Every day I shake my head and ask the same question “why can’t they wait another minute.” I can only assume that the world we live in is now so instant that people can’t wait for anything any longer.

There is no doubt that technology is partly – if not wholly – to blame for this situation. Although some might argue that our need for technology to enable an instant ‘everything’ is an effect of the constant human desire for ‘progress’ rather than the cause of it. So perhaps it is chicken and egg. Either way, the new horizons of communication have encouraged an environment where it is simply not possible to not respond when someone puts communication out there. So does this mean that it’s time to say ‘NO’ to all this instantaneous gratification that is leading us to become so impatient we can’t even wait two minutes for a green light – before we have an accident?

Like fast lanes, the great thing about technology is to learn how to make it work for you – to know what moves to make to get ahead and to avoid recklessness that’s most likely to lead to a dead end or a painful end result. Impatience is not a virtue, but there is a fine line between this and striving to be ahead of the game that many accidentally cross. Although the instant nature of the modern world often encourages an instant response, sometimes, those two extra minutes that we take to avoid running a red light can make the difference in avoiding reputational damage

I have recently highlighted in previous blogs where others have gone down the reckless route when it comes to their use of instant communication. From Paris Brown’s unfortunate ill-advised tweets about her lively social life, Chantelle’s angry tweets, to some of the more offensive conversations about the death of a certain recently demised former prime minister, when driven at without caution, forums such as Twitter and Facebook can become sledgehammers to a reputation. Over the weekend we saw another rather revved up response that is causing a social media storm – this time from the leader of the Chechen Republic Alvi Karimov concerning the potential Chechen origins of bombers apparently responsible for the tragedy at the Boston Marathon last week. Via an independent Moscow Radio Station he said that the suspects moved “many years ago from Chechnya to another region of Russia…then for a long time they lived in Kazakhstan, and from there moved to the US, where family members obtained residency. So the persons concerned did not live in Chechnya as adults, and if they became ‘bad apples’ then it’s a question of who was educating them.” Mr Karimov’s comments are now all over Twitter and Facebook, being quoted in whole, in part and unfortunately also inaccurately. Whether Mr Karimov’s self defensive finger pointing might come back to haunt him is yet to be seen, but there may well come a point when he might wish he had stepped back and made a less bold statement for others to repeat.

For all of us, even if we’re not international leaders commenting on global events, if you can wait that little extra time before revving up and putting something out there that you might later regret then – like the revving engines at the traffic lights or the impatient pedestrians – you can avoid having an accident.