K2M

Making the Case for Marketing: What Attorneys should be Doing to Market Themselves

honest lawyerWe have several types of attorneys and law firms as current and past clients.

The marketing of the services of lawyers is a fairly new innovation. In the old days, a person graduated law school, joined a firm or hung out their shingle and that was the nature of their marketing.

In the past 30 years,  certain types of legal work lent themselves to some directed marketing, because these specializations depended on getting the message out to potential clients and because of need for volume.

Now, the legal world is undergoing significant changes, because:

  • Law school graduates aren’t necessarily getting work that requires passage of the bar.
  • There is still an oversupply of lawyers in certain urban and suburban areas.
  • The growth of corporate law firms has stalled in many sectors.

So now is the time for all attorneys to consider how they market themselves. Some marketing and public relations activities that are well-suited for lawyers:

  • Consistent social media postings on a whole host of issues. Having an authentic voice on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, and even Instagram and Snapchat allows clients, potential clients and colleagues to feel like they know you and understand your point of view and your strengths.
  • Revisit your website and honestly assess how accurate a portrayal of your legal services the website provides. Is the website easy to navigate? Is it up to date? Do the images seem dated?
  • Create regular blogs on your website on a wide range of topics from legal issues to the intricacies of the type of clients you have to local legal issues. Some examples of these would be articles about the Detroit bankruptcy, articles about legal issues facing automobile dealerships or articles about changes in tax law,  employment law and discussions of how same sex marriage laws will have an impact on Social Security. Your blog offers you a way to show what you know without overtly advertising.
  • Colleague referrals and networking are invaluable. Make yourself reach out to colleagues within your own firm to brainstorm who you can both serve clients so that all of their legal needs are met under one roof. Reach out to possible mentors and those who can provide ideas for leads and networking, too.
  • Speaking at local, regional and national legal seminars and conferences, and offering podcasts or articles or materials afterwards is a worthy activity.
  • Publish in bar journals and trade publications, always under your byline. These articles can then be listed on your bio page or attorney page on your website and be hotlinked to them.
  • Maintain a strong presence in relevant publications like business magazines and journals, trade publications, community magazines and papers and daily and weekly publications.
  • Consider producing traditional advertising including billboards, radio and TV, as well as internet advertising, including select Youtube programming.
  • Create client newsletters celebrating your successes that demonstrate the breadth and depth of your practice.
  • Revisit any of the old fashioned collateral that is part of your practice from binders and brochures to stationery and bills.

We can and have helped our legal clients choose which of these marketing techniques is a good fit for them and helped develop effective marketing materials for all of their legal needs.

Corporate Law Firm Revenues: What’s Changing and What It Means

lincoln law officeLaw firms pay attention to the bottom line, as well they should. And the recent data is telling a story about the changing nature of the practice of law in the business world.

Partners in small, medium and large, international law firms regularly analyze the data in their various practice areas and have been noticing a few trends. This data has also been aggregated by Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor and Legal Executive Institute. Peer Monitor culls data from 141 firms, paying particular attention to billable hours. Peer Monitor focuses on large firms for its data.

Here is the takeaway:

Litigation work is declining among all law firms. The percentage of litigation work as part of the ratio of total law firm’s legal work has been declining for years. There were economists and law watchers who believed that litigation numbers would bounce back after the 2008 recession, but in fact that has not happened.

Litigation work is being concentrated in the largest law firms. Litigation isn’t totally dead. There are still cases to be had and billable hours to accumulate. But corporate clients are either utilizing their in-house counsel for a lot of the hours or only giving their litigation hours to so-called top tier law firms.

On the other hard, transactional work is being redirected to smaller firms. There is still plenty of legal work to be done. Peer Monitor’s data said that transactional work (real estate, tax, mergers and acquisitions, contracts and agreements) comprises 32% of all legal billable hours (compared to litigation’s 36%, which keeps decreasing). This transactional work is increasing more among the Am Law Second Hundred firms, which are the firms that rank between 101-200 in American Lawyer’s register of top 200 firms. So, this work is not going to the most expensive, elite firms. In fact, there is even evidence that corporate clients are splitting up their accounts, reserving their money for litigation for one set of law firms and using other firms for transactional expertise.

Companies are still trying to find a balance between legal work that gets done by in-house counsel and work that is done by law firms. Part of watching the bottom line is running a cost-benefits analysis. Law firms that can get excellent results in transactional work for a little less money will do so.

The Marketing Takeaway for Law Firm Management Teams: If you want to swim with the trend, then playing up your firm’s ability to manage transactional law, especially positioning your firm as more able to provide customized service at a more reasonable billable rate may position you much more favorably than the top 100 firm’s offerings.

Finding litigation work may continue to be difficult, as this work continues to be consolidated among the largest law firms. Occasional investment in experienced litigators, especially ones with experience at a top 100 law firm may be prudent, but only if that attorney has enough clout to bring his or her previous clients along to a new law firm placement.

Your law firm should also do its own data analysis on billable hours in the various practice areas to determine who and what are the true rainmakers in your firm. Finding what are your greatest revenue sources will guide how you market your firm and make hiring decisions as well as case assignments.

 

 

 

 

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WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

“We definitely saw a huge increase in leads and calls.  There was no question about it because there was proof in our CRM.” Small Law Firm
“I never had the time to do marketing before because I was always so busy doing what I considered my “real” work.  Working with K2M made a tremendous impact on our office.  Not only were we busier with patients but we knew how to represent ourselves because we had a better sense of who we were.” Dental Practice
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If you are considering marketing, give us a call.  There is no hard sell.  No pitch.  Just a conversation.  We are happy to share our ideas and impressions.  Nobody loses from an honest conversation.  Give us your questions and we’ll give you answers.  Really.  No strings, no magic smoke.

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