Utilising Marketing Knowledge can save Legal Firms enormous amounts in marketing costs, can generate greater new business and build long-term advantage over competitive firms.

Marketing for Legal Practices and Law Firms

The advent of marketing of legal services has changed the marketing and business development for law firms.

In the USA, the legal profession saw the contingency of ethics in conduct changing to where fellow lawyers would solicit clients, hire runners or chase ambulances.

Inept in the science of marketing management, they fell victim to bad marketing, while successful business management of legal services, reinforced the adage “marketing makes selling unnecessary”.

Marketing management of legal services must always take a sophisticated and positive focus on driving revenue and building client loyalty, but it is MUCH more than simple promotion.

The smartest lawyers in Australia can still make the mistake of perceiving 'marketing' as a fancy term for ‘personal selling’ or ‘advertising’, the creation of brochures, newsletters, press releases and other public relations.

Some grasp branding, accept advertising, direct mail, seminars and Web sites, as necessary and constructive in relationship building. Stopping to think recognises cross-selling, networking, generation of referrals, and creating client service and partnering strategies.

But Strategic Marketing management is a intricate and complicated supervision of more than promotion, price, exposure, service, people, processes and physical evidence that fulfils clients’ needs and expectations.

Marketing considerations for successful legal marketing management must delve into market needs, competition analysis, product lifecycle, environmental changes, product portfolio management and attack these and other issues with the scientific tools possessed by the sharp end of marketing qualified practitioners.

One example might be considering client relationship management that caters for how clients account for their legal fees. If they will be capitalised, as opposed to recorded as an expense, there will be much less fee resistance... so it's important to know how their corporate budget works so you will make prudent decisions how to manage the account that might vary significantly if the legal budget is a catch-all budget that’ll be taken away if not spent.

Medium-sized firms can get an edge over mega-law firms by offering lawyers who have cross-functional skills,

A medium size firm can compete with the big firms, where the lawyers are not encouraged to develop cross-functional skills.

The best marketing money a law firm can spend it to develop recommendations for their firm.

To lower their costs, improve client satisfaction, and secure new, profitable business internal marketing must be a major focal point... Is the Service (the product) understood and analysed from a marketing perspective... what latent needs are waiting to be addressed by the law firm?

Are invoices informative, immediate and free of errors?

Is re-work in control and are clients confident they are NOT paying for it?

Is the firm's geared to evolving from creative new approaches of talented team members, rather than stuck with predictable, systematic process?

Is innovation and breakthrough process improvement warmly received?

The beginning is a Marketing Audit. Why not contact us for an obligation-free chat how to deal with your marketing?