Legal marketers are busy, busier than ever as a matter of fact. Inflation is still high, global growth is projected to fall and the war in Ukraine remains a major threat to vital industry sectors.
After growing 3.7% in 2021, demand for law firm services fell 0.1% by the end of November 2022, according to the 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market. Moreover, that contraction was fueled largely by declines in transactional work and general uncertainty about the direction of the economy.
If the deal flow is down, what is keeping legal marketers busy?
After a week-long visit to London, where I met with fellow legal marketers, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that law firms are dedicating time to marketing and business development, in order to better position themselves for the day when markets will recover.
Although this seems obvious – invest in marketing and BD during a downturn, this was not common practice in the legal industry.
What happened this time to make firms engaged?
The answer ties into to post-Covid legal trends, mainly:
• During Covid, firms had to shift to crisis mode, look inwards and utilize resources. Among many things, creating task forces, strategic planning and communicating efficiently all stood out. In short, law firms had to closely examine all aspects of their business.
• Easier to run professional development programs, using online tools and platforms, whereas before Covid, it was common practice to do such initiatives in person. This resulted in much less interactions between the marketing and BD professionals with the partners.
• Business development has shifted towards the client experience, client development and cross-selling. All these have one thing in common – they look at the firm’s current client base, thus making marketing and business development efforts much more tangible and proactive.
• The most interesting factor, which is driving this, is data analytics. There is so much data out there and now firms are realizing the importance and power of data. In a big data world, valuable in-depth insights allow us to be in a much better position to make informed decisions on how to support existing clients, as well as the targeting of new business. Due to this, we are seeing new roles emerge in the legal industry, such as data analysts.
Partners have more time and they are listening. Looking ahead, the optimism for 2023 remains positive and business development, specifically, is seen as a crucial component in the recovery.
Good planning is key to success and law firms today engaged in professional development, client value initiatives, data analysis and business development metrics – will be the ones to reap the biggest rewards.
