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Editor's Note: This story is adapted from ALM's Mid-Market Report. For more business of law coverage exclusively geared toward midsize firms, sign up for a free trial subscription to ALM's new weekly newsletter, The Mid-Market Report.

Most law firms will tell you they keep their important clients by doing the best work. But clearly, it takes a little more than just good work alone.

Firms are increasingly implementing client-focused C-suite or director-level roles, and hiring experienced business professionals to fill them, which oftentimes puts the focus on value from a pricing perspective. That's born out of client movement away from the billable hour, even though many firms deny such movement is taking place.

But it's not just pricing that has evolved. Relationships, too, have changed as in-house clients seek better customer service from their outside counsel.

And that extends to client events. Firms are forgoing the traditional golf outing or long lunch for more practical gatherings, like educational seminars and family-friendly social events.

Kristen Leis, the chief of marketing and business development at North Carolina-based Parker Poe, said clients have told her they were too busy with work and family commitments to attend ballgames or more leisurely events. But they welcomed the chance to take part in client interviews.

She credits that approach to focusing not on “what can we do better,” because that's about the firm rather than the client. Instead, she said, the firm asks, “How do you get a bonus at the end of the year?”

Those interviews led to the implementation of a recent event, Leis said. Clients have expressed that in-house lawyers feel pressure to understand the business processes their in-house clients employ. And they want outside counsel to understand those processes too.

So last year Parker Poe gathered about 25 clients and 25 of its lawyers for a two-day workshop on the Legal Lean Sigma philosophy. Seated at eight tables in Charlotte, the attendees worked together to solve problems to learn how to become more efficient and provide higher quality, more predictable and more successful services.

“I still have clients calling asking us to do it again,” Leis said.

Law firm leaders and professionals said educational events and firm-sponsored CLEs, particularly those where both the client and the law firm learn from one another, can deepen the relationship and lead to new business. Several noted that the aim of their events is to create a “value-add” for the client.

Likewise, networking-centered events can be mutually beneficial, and lead to new avenues for firm work.

“It helps me be invested with these people and it helps me build relationships,” said Bess Hinson, a senior associate and cybersecurity chair at Morris Manning & Martin.

Hinson was referring to an event she spearheaded beginning last year—the quarterly Atlanta Women in Cybersecurity Roundtable.

Hinson said she was motivated to establish the group because statistics show that only one out of every 10 professionals in cybersecurity is a woman. When the first group met last fall, Hinson said, one attendee let out a big sigh and said, “It's so great to be around all of these women.”

She said her guests included chief privacy officers, chief information security officers and general counsels who oversee privacy issues within their companies. Some are clients, while others aren't, and they come from Atlanta-based companies including AT&T, SunTrust, Coca-Cola, Porsche North America, UPS, Turner Broadcasting, McKesson Corp., and Cox Enterprises.

The attendees share strategies among one another, and Hinson, she said, benefits from hearing their experiences. All of the participants sign confidentiality agreements so they are able to speak more freely at the roundtable.

Along a similar vein, Florida-based Berger Singerman holds an annual event for clients called BusinessTalk. It offers a hybrid of engaging informational content—last year's keynote speaker was Isaac Lidsky, the first blind U.S. Supreme Court clerk—and the social and networking aspect of a cocktail party. Last year's BusinessTalk was in a decidedly nonlawyerly location: the Design Center of the Americas, a massive facility that showcases dozens of unique interior designs.

Berger Singerman also puts on a March Madness watch party for clients. Such events, which cater more to the social bonding than strict business development, still have a place at firms, some firm leaders said.

Texas-based midsize firm Porter Hedges has found that by focusing on family-friendly events, it gets better client participation, managing partner Rob Reedy said. For example, two to three times a year, the firm reserves a movie theater and shows a new film the day before it is released widely in theaters. And it's always a kid-friendly title, he noted.

“We tell the clients to bring their kids. That is the magic,” Reedy said.

Clients simply don't have as much time as they used to, he said. Getting them out for a game of golf during the work day isn't as easy as it once was. But getting the kids involved allows clients to multitask networking and family time, while making for deeper connections.

Of course, movie nights don't make up the entirety of Porter Hedges' client-development strategy. The firm also conducts client interviews, Reedy said, noting that those involve himself and the firm's director of business development and marketing, rather than the partner in charge of that client.

“Obviously some partners don't want you to go talk to their clients. We've built up enough experience that people realize what comes out of these meetings is almost universally positive,” Reedy said.

What he's learned from those interviews, he said, is that clients place a high value on responsiveness—having a lawyer who will answer the phone. Price has become less of a talking point, he noted, because as a midsize firm, Porter Hedges already has much lower rates than its larger competitors.

“I think most of the time, our relationships tend to be personal,” Reedy said.

Jonathan Ringel and Cathy Wilson contributed to this report.