Former Soap Actor Takes Center Stage in Small-Firm Marketing By Terrell Johnson Small Firm Business Magazine, October 2006 He's not a doctor. But he could play one on TV. Darryl Cohen has hardly had the kind of career that one would call conventional. A veteran Atlanta attorney with a practice focusing on entertainment law, he has also enjoyed a decades-long side career as an actor -- including a stint on "The Catlins," a daytime soap that aired in the early '80s. Add to the mix work as a model and as a television commentator for everything from local news outlets to CNN Headline News and Fox News Channel. Now a founding partner in his own firm, Cohen says his experiences at the start of his law career as an assistant district attorney in Atlanta in the 1970s -- when he also began seriously pursuing acting and modeling auditions -- gave him an early lesson in the value of what he calls "constant marketing," staying alert to potential opportunities to bring in business in any environment. "When I would go to auditions, I would realize that the talent all had problems they needed solved, and they didn't have any lawyers," says Cohen, of Atlanta-based Cohen, Cooper, Estep, Mudder & Whiteman. "Since I knew their world, I understood their language. It was a way of thinking and a way of speaking, so I was fortunate to give them someone they could talk to." The value he was able to offer his clients -- an intimate knowledge of the entertainment industry gleaned from his own experience as an actor and model in print and television advertisements, including Wrigley's chewing gum and Old Spice deodorant -- is something few larger Atlanta-area law firms could replicate. After working for the district attorney's office, he moved into law firm life, ultimately opening his own firm, which in 1998 became part of the Atlanta office of Greenberg Traurig, where he was of counsel. Five years ago, Cohen co-founded his current firm with partner Lawrence Cooper. But Cohen adds that he has no illusions about the challenges in attracting clients to his five-attorney firm -- which also specializes in commercial litigation, medical malpractice, mergers and acquisitions, and workers' compensation. "Manpower, person-powerwise, we cannot go head to head with a large law firm, just because of depth -- we don't have that, and no small firm does," he says. "So we try to give people an alternative." The challenge of communicating the benefits of such an alternative effectively to potential clients, as well as coming up with marketing vehicles that reach the audiences they want to reach, are a constant for law firms of the five-, 10- and 15-attorney variety, notes law practice management consultant Marcia Wasserman. "Some things they just can't do because of economies of scale; they just can't afford it," says Wasserman, president of Encino, Calif.-based Comprehensive Management Solutions, Inc. "A big firm can brand itself with a big PR campaign and blitz the different legal publications and do radio and TV. They have the budgets to do that, and the small firms don't." As a result, small firms must focus their marketing dollars and energy on efforts that will provide a real return on their investment. One vehicle small firms are using to stand out successfully is what Wasserman calls the "signature event," a seminar or other sponsored public event that helps put small firms in front of the audiences they want to reach. "This helps a small firm get active in the community, so people know who they are, and helps them develop their own brand," says Wasserman. "Having a signature event and getting to be known for that event can make a big difference for small firms." Cohen knows well how valuable such an event can be to a small firm. In 1987, he founded what has become an annual conference that today attracts lawyers from across the country: the Southern Regional Entertainment, Sports Law, and Intellectual Property Conference. The idea for his conference came from what Cohen says were the shortcomings of the many seminars he attended back in the middle and early 1980s. "The events I was going to were terrific, but they were extremely expensive -- about $750 for two days, with the air and hotel costs," he adds. "Plus, when speakers were finished, they walked out the door, and you couldn't get to talk to them. If you were speaking and I thought you had an interesting point and I wanted to find out more about it, forget it." To offer attendees a more interactive experience, Cohen structured his conference -- held each year at a resort outside the United States and this year in Cancun, Mexico -- around a four-day format that features seminars from 8 in the morning until about 12:30 p.m. The rest of the day is open to meet and talk with the speakers, which last year included leading lawyers, judges and academics ranging from Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, to Bertis Downs, general counsel for the Grammy award-winning rock band R.E.M. The cost of Cohen's event ranges from $700 to $1,100. The return he reaps on his investment in the conference -- which has grown from a dozen participants in 1987 to more than 350 today -- isn't an immediate one. Cohen adds that he spends "hundreds and hundreds of hours" each year in its preparation and production. He works with corporate sponsors, including the music company BMI, for events such as the dinners and panels. "Do I get a lot of business out of it? No. Do I get a lot of contacts out of it? You bet I do," says Cohen. He credits a number of his clients to contacts he has made there each year, including The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore, to whom he was introduced by a colleague from the conference. With Cohen assuming such a prominent role outside the firm -- he is active also in the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Southern Regional Emmy Awards Committee -- there is always the risk that his public persona could eclipse the other four attorneys in the firm. But partner Hal Whiteman says the variety of the cases they take on allows each attorney his own niche. "If there's a spokesman for the firm, it's often Darryl," he adds. "He likes the role, and we don't mind when he assumes it. But we each have separate revenue-producing business, and each person's a little different. We market as groups and as individuals, and we all look for creative ways to get face-to-face with people who can refer us business." For partner Steven Estep, who specializes in business litigation, that means getting involved in a wide range of local lawyers' clubs, state bar association committees and speaking engagements. "My marketing is geared towards getting out there and being visible in the public, and things that connect me with other lawyers," he says. "When you're with a small firm, we're just as much salesmen as attorneys. So every single time you go to an event, it's a chance to get a new client." Traditional advertising, he adds, is of little value in his practice. "When you have a high-end litigation practice, being on the side of a bus doesn't work," he says. "No sort of print or television advertising is going to get you the kind of cases that you want. With shareholders that are interested in pursuing large class actions, or companies that need to hire you for those kinds of cases, that's not where they look." Instead, the firm puts its marketing dollars into efforts like its Web site, www.ccemlaw.com, which attracts little new business on its own but serves as a way to bolster the firm's credibility with new clients once a relationship has been established. For Ron Payne -- the CEO of Atlanta-based promotions and sweepstakes materials manufacturer Intaprize/GTT Entertainment Inc. and a longtime friend of Cohen's -- the site played an important role in his recent decision to retain the firm's services. "I've known Darryl a long time, but you still want to look at things currently, because things change over 20 years," he says, adding that in the past he had usually worked with larger law firms. "I relied on the Web and looked at what he was doing now, how he was positioning his firm now. That information is absolutely essential for any law firm, because for my purposes, it had to communicate that there was a balance in the practice of different skills and expertise." The site, he added, lent the firm an air of credibility. "What was clear was that they are all about entertainment on every level, and I just kind of got the sense from the material I reviewed and talking to other people that [with Cohen] we were going to get more of the old-fashioned kind of personal service that guys like me look for," he says. A view of the Web site reveals that the firm has only limited time to spend on it -- though Estep says that the firm has plans to update the Web site "fairly soon." At press time, it had not yet been updated to include Whiteman, the firm's newest partner who joined in 2004. Even so, it provides a portrait of the attorneys in ways that few other firms do, with Flash animations and anecdotal biographies of the partners' career highlights and interests and hobbies outside the firm. For instance, Estep's bio provides the expected recitation of credentials, in this case noting that he was formerly a partner at King & Spalding, but adds a touch of humor: "He is a pretty good golfer, a decent surfer, and a lousy downhill skier." Offering those kinds of insights into the firm, Cohen says, gives it a way to brand itself without the marketing budget a larger firm would have. "I'm a big believer in branding, that you have to give somebody something that's a little bit different from your competitor," he says. "We're not stuffy, we're not uptight, and the Web site certainly portrays the firm as we want to be portrayed." ###