No one ever went to law school to become a periodical writer, a newsletter publisher or a Web-site designer. But thanks to a crowded and demanding legal marketplace, all these marketing skills and more have become part of day-to-day life in the legal trenches.
The big firms have the luxury of big dollars, of course, and they can afford to spend time and resources formulating and implementing a marketing strategy, if they wish. But what about the thousands of small-firm lawyers across Canada? How do they develop their marketing message and how do they get it across?
Mary Anne Freedman of Toronto's Freedman and Associates says successful marketing breaks down into two parts: strategy and implementation. She says lawyers are increasingly seeking assistance from marketing consulting firms like hers in both these areas. It's a demand that's growing and evolving as lawyers become more comfortable with the concept of marketing.
Freedman points to the use of market research as a prime example. "Until about 1995, the idea of a lawyer asking a client, 'How am I doing?' brought with it a lot of anxiety and concern," she says. Today, however, law firms are asking her: "What do you think about client surveys?"
Another example is the venerable firm newsletter. "In 1995, the newsletter was right," says Freedman, "but today, with the Web, it may not be most effective way to get your message out." That's because no one will scroll through a 6- to 8-page newsletter on a Web site. Writing for the Web is a totally different way of writing. "It's smarter and better than print."
Heather Ferguson, principal of Caledon Marketing Consultants of Toronto, sees many lawyers who, put bluntly, "don't know what they're doing. (They're) doing everything on the cheap, not thinking about their unique essence, their brand, their position in the marketplace. They aren't doing all the conceptual work." Her job is to help lawyers conceive and implement a marketing strategy.
Ferguson is often called upon to implement a pre-existing marketing plan for smaller firms, but finds that "sometimes the strategy isn't all that it could be. I prefer to implement something I believe in, that makes sense from a marketing point of view."
That means getting good help at the right time – before you start spending your precious dollars on concrete marketing material. Smaller firms in particular must say, "Look, this is important. I'm going to put a realistic budget to this and I'm going to find somebody to help me," Ferguson says.
Getting help
"I can't tell you how many law firms we've walked into that have these 10-, 20- or 200-page marketing reports gathering dust," says Burkey Belser, a founder of Greenfield/Belser Inc., a professional services marketing firm in Washington D.C. Those firms are disillusioned, says Belser: "They feel like marketing will never amount to anything."
The solution, he believes, is for firms to choose the consultant that's right for them, one who has experience with law firms, knows how to develop consensus for a marketing program and demonstrates real creativity. "You want to challenge the marketplace, to stand out," Belser notes. "It's so easy to do ordinary stuff."
Many small practices, however, balk at the prospect of paying a consultant to handle the entire marketing initiative. For them, an alternative is to purchase individual services to look after distinct portions of the marketing plan.
Alan Koltin, President and CEO of Practice Development Institute Inc. of Chicago, has been offering that kind of help to American law firms for years. His company's service is now becoming available in Canada through its Toronto affiliate, Fuller Landau.
PDI provides niche marketing newsletters that law firms can brand with their own logo and send to their own clients. For example, PDI will produce a polished newsletter updating the latest news on wills and estates law, which the law firm can send to its clients under its own name and brand.
"For very large firms, we do custom newsletters," says Koltin. "For local and regional firms, we do industry-specific and function-specific newsletters: for example, estate planning, bankruptcy, tax planning, labour and employment, and technology law. We try to hit the hot practice areas and create a newsletter."
This lets lawyers do what they do best, says Koltin. "Lawyers' time is best used serving clients, doing billable work and making rain. They didn't go to law school to learn writing."
And the cost of producing a newsletter in-house can be significant. Koltin estimates it takes between 10 to 20 hours to write a good-quality article. Typically, a firm will produce six newsletters a year, with four articles in each issue. If the average partner bills just $200 an hour, the annual cost in terms of lost billings could approach $100,000.
Articling experience
But a law firm's marketing strategy should still include good articles written by firm lawyers, articles that reflect a firm's unique expertise, says Megan Hill, executive director of London- and New York-based Mondaq Inc. The challenge, she says, lies in getting those articles out where they can do the most good.
That's where Mondaq's article placement service comes in. The company takes useful and informative articles from professional service providers and electronically publishes them on a wide variety of Web sites and databases, where people who most need the lawyer's service are likely to find them.
Mondaq started feeding material from professionals to Reuters in 1994. Then the company developed similar relationships with other databases like Lexis-Nexis, Bloomberg, Dialogue, West Law, and Dow Jones, Hill says.
"One of the most exciting things we've done recently is set up data feeds with at least 50 targeted, sector-specific Websites like The Economist, Butterworths, discretebanking.com and ideapath.com," she says. And they've now added Canada to their list. "Recently, we approached QuickLaw and said, 'We've got all this fantastic content we can give you.' They jumped on it."
Law firm contributors to Mondaq pay nothing for the first three articles submitted, and US$70 per article thereafter. Mondaq's revenue comes from the value-added enhancements it sells to contributors. One is a usage report that tells not just how many hits the article received, but gives the name, company and title of the reader. "Users must register," says Hill, "It's a filter. The users who come to our site have a real need for the information. They are serious."
Web assistance
Topping the list of marketing functions that a firm may wish to outsource, regardless of size or resources, is the development and maintenance of a firm Web site. "I used to say we created the most dynamic dead Web sites we could," Belser recalls, "because lawyers would not maintain them."
His firm's research shows that nearly two-thirds of American corporate executives and in-house counsel have searched online to find outside legal services. Seventy-one percent look for experience in specific subject matters, while 69% look for experience in a specific industry.
Significantly, though, less than 50% consider the number of lawyers in the firm, the firm's history, or its recent press releases. Even more importantly, two-thirds of those surveyed reported that in choosing a law firm online, they are "likely to be influenced by how effectively the firm uses its Web site."
So what does an effective law firm Web site look like? "The degree that a firm can take its work product and convert it into Web product is the degree to which they'll have a successful Web site," Belser says. But if lawyers don't update the sites they already have, then what?
Obviously, lawyers need Web management tools that let them update their sites without the need for technical, computer-coding knowledge. So Belser's firm created "Point and Clique," Website software that makes it easy to get the firm's articles, memos, updates, newsletters and anything else they produce on to their Website. Once that information is posted on the site, the same software works to get that information out to clients, working in harmony with the firm's database.
West Law, a division of American legal publishing giant West Group, also creates Websites for lawyers. "We don't build them for anyone else,"says Doug Hoover, marketing manager of West's Firm Site product line. "We cover the spectrum, from using the Internet as a marketing platform and beyond, to a customer relationship platform."
At one end of the spectrum, Firm Sites use pre-designed templates that are quick and easy to build. At the next level, lawyers work with the company's designers to select appropriate content for the site. At the high end, the site is custom-designed and database-driven, which "allows everyone in the firm to make content contributions – and they don't have to know coding," says Hoover.
Then, using a product called Firm Site Communicator, the law firm can send out personalized e-mails to selected clients notifying them of recent developments in the firm, the law, their business, or any other area that interests them. When the client clicks on the items she wishes to view, she is brought directly to the firm's Web site.
"It allows a law firm to be a personalized information source within the look and feel of the firm's Web site," says Hoover. "You're getting really close to providing legal services online."
The lawyer's role
Regardless of whether a law firm goes with a full service marketing consultant or a single-item supplier, all the experts are unanimous on one thing: the lawyer and the law firm must be involved.
"Some firms say, 'Okay, you take care of my marketing program,'" says Freedman. "But the lawyer still needs to take ownership of marketing, because the client is still hiring the lawyer."
Belser agrees. "Lawyers can't get out of the mix," he says. "To think you can hire out the responsibility is a complete fallacy." What it really takes, he says, is "a marketing consciousness. You've got to have a marketing culture within the firm itself. Law firms, as a rule, do not."
But if you do, then your marketing strategy and your concrete marketing efforts will work in harmony, and both will back up the fundamental marketing activity that law firms have known and practised for eons. "There's no substitute for relationship marketing in the legal industry," Belser says. "It is very referral-driven."
Tom Carter is a legal writer in Edmonton.