Strategic Selling Helps Small Law Firms Narrow The Gap And Bring In New Work

Firms that want to be successful in bringing in new business must do more than simply tell prospective clients that they are better than their competition. Law firms must be able to show why they are different, and more importantly, how they will help the general counsel improve his or her bottom line. For a small to midsize firm, keeping up with the large firms who have unlimited marketing budgets can be tough. But technology is allowing small firms like ours to narrow that gap.

Before meeting with prospective clients, our partners use LexisNexis CourtLink Strategic Profiles to investigate that company's litigation trends and the law firm or firms the company is currently using and the quality of work product being put out by those firms. We can gather all of this information in a matter of minutes for a relatively low cost. We can then use this information to tailor a presentation demonstrating what we would do differently to help the company's bottom line. (See sidebar below.)

For example, before a recent meeting with in-house counsel for a large company, we pulled the docket sheets for all pending cases and noticed two patterns. First, the company was settling cases after filing for summary judgment. Second, the company's current counsel frequently engaged in motion practice on discovery disputes. While the company's in-house attorneys understood that neither approach was cost-effective, because he was managing so many different cases and firms one case at time, he had simply never observed these trends.

On another occasion, we were able to demonstrate to a prospect that they were using multiple law firms from throughout the country in a variety of jurisdictions with no coordination among its legal counsel. We told the prospect that the firm could reduce the resources the company needed to manage all those cases by consolidating the work with us, and. Using court information from CourtLink, we showed that we did litigation in the same regions where they needed representation.

We have also been able to pull our competitors' substantive work product from CourtLink, so that we could explain how we would have approached legal problems differently.

This process of market analysis is eminently do-able by a firm our size, even though we can't afford a marketing director or look to one managing partner to be devoted to client development. All of the partners are engaged in sales and marketing on behalf of the firm. At first, that seemed impossible because naturally the partners want to spend their time practicing law.

More and more full-service firms are now aggressively pursuing employment law cases because they want to be competitive and take advantage of the fact that the number of employment claims are growing. What sets us apart is our ability to look forward, rather than back and that we are always looking for ways to improve our practice, both from a technical standpoint in how we practice law and from the economic standpoint.

The cost of competitive research may seem beyond most small law firms, but it certainly doesn't come near to the cost of hiring a marketing director. And the effort is relatively simple to perform using today's electronic information sources.

The trick is to find the tools that streamline the process of conducting business intelligence so the partners can identify the clients most likely to need their services and then present that compelling story about why the prospect will receive the best service from their firm.

We probably spend more on business intelligence tools than most of our competitors, but it gives the partners the opportunity to tell a prospect what they are doing with their labor and employment litigation rather than just what the law firm is all about. That is a powerful competitive edge.

Sidebar: About CourtLink

LexisNexis CourtLink Business Development Solutions include Strategic Market Analysis reports, Strategic Profiles, and alerts. Together with other business intelligence sources, they can help identify and target client development opportunities and prepare for high impact presentations.

These reports help identify new potential clients and gain a complete view of litigation activity and trends relevant to key practice areas over a selected period of time. They provide:

• Identification of prospective and existing clients regularly involved in litigation in the practice areas and jurisdictions of interest to the law firm;
• A complete overview of emerging competitive firms and counsel in those practice areas and jurisdictions; and
• A synopsis of top firms and individual counsel engaged in litigation to consider for possible lateral hire or merger/acquisition.

CourtLink Strategic Profiles are a mid-level view into a newly targeted prospect or current client's litigation history, trends and current law firm representation. It helps a law firm further evaluate and target the top opportunities uncovered by the CourtLink Strategic Market Analysis Report. Types of Strategic Profiles include several types:

• Litigant. Identify client or prospect litigation trends and drill down to see activity by a specific nature of suit. Used to help identify matches between a litigant's needs and the law firm's area of specialty it allows the user to target client development activities, get a better handle on the firm's share of total available business from a client and see trends within a prospect or client base.
• Law Firm. Provide a copy of the firm's own Strategic Profile to demonstrate its expertise during client presentations.
• Nature of Suit. View nature-of-suit trends and identify growth opportunities nationally. Compare trends on a court-by-court basis. Monitor case types that seem to be on the decline and flag emerging risk. Gain insight into market trends so that the firm can make the best business development and practice area expansion decisions.
• Court. Conduct geographic analysis and evaluate litigation trends by practice area. Compare nature of suit trends within a U.S. District Court so you know what practice area to expand in.

Once a user has pinpointed the opportunities, they can set up CourtLink Alerts to provide automatic notification of newly filed court cases of interest to the firm often before the party is served. The user can pinpoint the types of new cases and/or the individuals or companies the firm wants to learn about.

' Rachel B. Cowen

Firms that want to be successful in bringing in new business must do more than simply tell prospective clients that they are better than their competition. Law firms must be able to show why they are different, and more importantly, how they will help the general counsel improve his or her bottom line. For a small to midsize firm, keeping up with the large firms who have unlimited marketing budgets can be tough. But technology is allowing small firms like ours to narrow that gap.

Before meeting with prospective clients, our partners use LexisNexis CourtLink Strategic Profiles to investigate that company's litigation trends and the law firm or firms the company is currently using and the quality of work product being put out by those firms. We can gather all of this information in a matter of minutes for a relatively low cost. We can then use this information to tailor a presentation demonstrating what we would do differently to help the company's bottom line. (See sidebar below.)

For example, before a recent meeting with in-house counsel for a large company, we pulled the docket sheets for all pending cases and noticed two patterns. First, the company was settling cases after filing for summary judgment. Second, the company's current counsel frequently engaged in motion practice on discovery disputes. While the company's in-house attorneys understood that neither approach was cost-effective, because he was managing so many different cases and firms one case at time, he had simply never observed these trends.

On another occasion, we were able to demonstrate to a prospect that they were using multiple law firms from throughout the country in a variety of jurisdictions with no coordination among its legal counsel. We told the prospect that the firm could reduce the resources the company needed to manage all those cases by consolidating the work with us, and. Using court information from CourtLink, we showed that we did litigation in the same regions where they needed representation.

We have also been able to pull our competitors' substantive work product from CourtLink, so that we could explain how we would have approached legal problems differently.

This process of market analysis is eminently do-able by a firm our size, even though we can't afford a marketing director or look to one managing partner to be devoted to client development. All of the partners are engaged in sales and marketing on behalf of the firm. At first, that seemed impossible because naturally the partners want to spend their time practicing law.

More and more full-service firms are now aggressively pursuing employment law cases because they want to be competitive and take advantage of the fact that the number of employment claims are growing. What sets us apart is our ability to look forward, rather than back and that we are always looking for ways to improve our practice, both from a technical standpoint in how we practice law and from the economic standpoint.

The cost of competitive research may seem beyond most small law firms, but it certainly doesn't come near to the cost of hiring a marketing director. And the effort is relatively simple to perform using today's electronic information sources.

The trick is to find the tools that streamline the process of conducting business intelligence so the partners can identify the clients most likely to need their services and then present that compelling story about why the prospect will receive the best service from their firm.

We probably spend more on business intelligence tools than most of our competitors, but it gives the partners the opportunity to tell a prospect what they are doing with their labor and employment litigation rather than just what the law firm is all about. That is a powerful competitive edge.

Sidebar: About CourtLink

LexisNexis CourtLink Business Development Solutions include Strategic Market Analysis reports, Strategic Profiles, and alerts. Together with other business intelligence sources, they can help identify and target client development opportunities and prepare for high impact presentations.

These reports help identify new potential clients and gain a complete view of litigation activity and trends relevant to key practice areas over a selected period of time. They provide:

• Identification of prospective and existing clients regularly involved in litigation in the practice areas and jurisdictions of interest to the law firm;
• A complete overview of emerging competitive firms and counsel in those practice areas and jurisdictions; and
• A synopsis of top firms and individual counsel engaged in litigation to consider for possible lateral hire or merger/acquisition.

CourtLink Strategic Profiles are a mid-level view into a newly targeted prospect or current client's litigation history, trends and current law firm representation. It helps a law firm further evaluate and target the top opportunities uncovered by the CourtLink Strategic Market Analysis Report. Types of Strategic Profiles include several types:

• Litigant. Identify client or prospect litigation trends and drill down to see activity by a specific nature of suit. Used to help identify matches between a litigant's needs and the law firm's area of specialty it allows the user to target client development activities, get a better handle on the firm's share of total available business from a client and see trends within a prospect or client base.
• Law Firm. Provide a copy of the firm's own Strategic Profile to demonstrate its expertise during client presentations.
• Nature of Suit. View nature-of-suit trends and identify growth opportunities nationally. Compare trends on a court-by-court basis. Monitor case types that seem to be on the decline and flag emerging risk. Gain insight into market trends so that the firm can make the best business development and practice area expansion decisions.
• Court. Conduct geographic analysis and evaluate litigation trends by practice area. Compare nature of suit trends within a U.S. District Court so you know what practice area to expand in.

Once a user has pinpointed the opportunities, they can set up CourtLink Alerts to provide automatic notification of newly filed court cases of interest to the firm often before the party is served. The user can pinpoint the types of new cases and/or the individuals or companies the firm wants to learn about.

' Rachel B. Cowen