Where it starts

In case you may be thinking that these conversations are a little one way, and that I am somewhat critical of lawyers, this post looks at it from a somewhat different perspective.

When I was a lawyer, I always tried to understand, so far as I was able, what it was that my clients did. It wasn't necessarily that easy. In the latter part of the 1980s I had two very demanding clients. The first was a large book manufacturer. Understanding their processes and business wasn't that difficult, although I still puzzle my children when I refer to books being case bound. The other was a software house, writing bespoke programs for main frames. This was much more of a challenge. I had learnt some coding in the late 1960s (don't ask), but that had long left me and I struggled to make sense of what exactly they did. They remained a client, but not mine. 

Understanding what a client does, how their business operates, what their challenges and their opportunities are - essentially what makes them tick - is for most lawyers an integral part of acting for that client. And if it isn't, it should be.

And so it must be for marketers acting for or employed in law firms. For without that understanding, how can you market the firm and its services? 

And yet I have come across people in marketing and communications, both working inside and outside law firms, who don't have this understanding, and who remain incurious about the firm - they will learn about the service offering but leave it at that.

I don't think that that is enough. One of the reasons for starting my consultancy is to help lawyers and marketers understand each other - and the place to start from is what makes them tick.

And I couldn't resist this photo. One of my daughters is Marketing Lead at a large London hospital - and here she is, in scrubs, getting to understand what makes cardiac surgeons tick.

Some thoughts on branding

Back in 2005 I read Good companies are from Venus, a piece by Richard Tomkins in the Financial Times. I still have the index card on which I copied out a quote (I have a number of these, all now somewhat dog-eared). This is one I often refer to. For in less than 100 words Tomkins catches what “brand” means (and in doing so highlights the particular challenge for law firms when thinking about brand, if indeed they do).

A high quality product is just the price of entry to a market. Beyond that, what companies are really selling is the thing they can use to differentiate their products from their A high quality product is just the price of entry to a market. Beyond that, what companies are really selling is the thing they can use to differentiate their products from their competitors: the set of emotions, ideas, and beliefs their brands convey . . . The most successful brands and companies are those that establish a relationship with consumers based on communicating with them, understanding their needs and empathising with them.

Although Tomkins was writing about companies, much of what he said is equally applicable to professional service firms.

Law firms, by and large, accept that to succeed in today’s legal services market they need to establish differentiators (see my last post Futurology sucks). Not least, as in terms of legal expertise there is often very little to choose between good law firms and good lawyers.

Where lawyers have difficulty, is in articulating their brand, and communicating it. Lawyers don’t really do emotions, ideas, and beliefs - well, not in business. What they do is “law” - but then so do any number of other law firms.

Asking law firms to think about the intangibles of "brand", rather than what they do, is not always a very rewarding exercise. But it should be, because this is the first step for a law firm and its lawyers in identifying and then realising their brand. And in helping them to use this to build those long term relationships with clients which are so necessary to the success of the law firm.

Futurology sucks?

To which the answer is yes and no. (And to ensure you don't waste your time, this post is NOT about the Manic Street Preachers).

But you can be sure that the future is not going to be more of the same. Which seems to have escaped a lot of law firm leaders.

I had already started this post when I read, a little late, Reena Sen Gupta's article A self-deceiving return to business as usual in June's Legal Business. She argues that "an improving economic climate is leading top law firms to wrongly assume the ‘new’ normal is the same as the old one." This is very much what I have heard when talking with UK lawyers - and it is having  an impact on the approach law firms are (or aren't) taking to marketing and business development.

The discussion goes as follows,

"We've always done it (whatever "it" is; marketing, business development, client relationship) like this. Why do we now need to change? It's always worked before."

And my reply?

"You may not need to change immediately, but you will need to, sooner rather than later, so wouldn't it be sensible to at least look at how you might?"

For along with the certainty of change happening, is that change doesn't wait for anyone to catch up.

And perhaps one of the most important changes is in the dynamic between law firms and their clients. Once upon a time it was the lawyer who decided how legal services were to be delivered. No longer. Now it is the client who decides whether, how, and what legal services to buy. And who from (and the 'who' may not be a traditional supplier). There are any number of reasons for this: increased competition, new entrants into the legal services market, technological change, changing attitudes to lawyers. But the reasons, interesting as they may be, are not really important. It is happening and there is nothing that law firms can do to reverse this: Clementi, Moore's Law, and the impact of the recession let the genie out.

Instead what is important is how your firm will survive, and prosper, in this buyers' market.

For in terms of their expertise, law firms and lawyers are, by and large, all very much the same. So what is going to make your law firm different? How do you get noticed? And is it going to be enough?

More of the same is not a strategy that should recommend itself to anyone but it appears to be the default position for a lot of law firms. Change for change's sake is also not a strategy - but in a crowded and increasingly competitive legal services market place, there are going to be winners and losers. George Bull writes in Baker Tilly's most recent PPG briefing, Are you going to be one of the fifty survivors? that "of the 200 or so mid-tier law firms, only 50 or so may survive in the short-medium term". And whereas the briefing focuses on those necessary practical steps that law firm leaders should be taking to be in the successful 50 (and the pitfalls they need avoid) - in George Bull's summary, financial fitness, a clear strategy, and real differentiators - I would add getting your marketing and business development right, aligning it properly with that strategy, and ensuring that you communicate the message effectively.