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LexisNexis Market Intelligence
Understanding the business challenges law firms face in obtaining and leveraging Competitive Intelligence is critical for legal IT professionals to help provide the support and expertise marketers need for client development. In addition, keeping up-to-date on new technology tools for law firm marketers will help IT professionals as they drive the technology selection and implementation process.
The Business Need for Competitive Intelligence
Law firm marketers and business developers must be able to tie their efforts and programs to results. For partners to understand and appreciate the value of the marketing and business development function, they must understand the nexus between marketing investment, expenditure, rate of return and firm profitability.
To help establish this connection, tools should be used that help marketers document the market research and analysis process and establish a methodology for the client development function. Business development decisions should no longer be made based on hunches, instinct and past experience alone, but instead must be supported by data and numbers.
With a strong analytical foundation to the market analysis and segmentation process, marketers can then more easily tie their efforts to ROI and demonstrate their value to the firm.
With limited resources, law firm marketers also want confidence that their efforts are being directed to projects that will have the greatest return. Tools that can streamline the market analysis and research process and, help marketing identify industry trends and assess client share are critical to making difficult decisions about where efforts should be most productively directed.
Moreover, many law firm marketers report that they are so overburdened with pressing projects that they must operate in reactive mode rather than proactive mode. The time required to manually investigate and analyze market and client development opportunities acts as a drag on marketers' time and therefore a drain on the firm's resources and profitability. If tools were available that could exponentially reduce this effort, then marketers could comfortably focus their attention on proactive client development initiatives engineered to maximize profits and ROI.
New Tools for Competitve Intelligence
One tool recently brought to market to address law firms' Competitive Intelligence needs is LexisNexis Market Intelligence. Market Intelligence combines offerings from various LexisNexis products including LexisNexis CourtLink, Martindale-Hubbell, and LexisNexis Company Dossier, to gather litigation trends and business and news information that can be used to identify and evaluate growth opportunities among both clients and prospects.
Specific market needs addressed in the current version of the product include:
- Identify Key Target Industries: Strategic market planning often involves difficult decisions about which industries a law firm should pursue and which industries it should not. Industry Dossier, a component of Market Intelligence, empowers marketers to research and analyze target markets and facilitate the decision making process by profiling more than 1,000 industries.
- Profile Industry Segments: Market Intelligence offers in-depth Strategic Market Analysis reports that provide a complete view of critical litigation activity and trends relevant to key practice areas in jurisdictions of choice. They leverage the CourtLink database comprised of 20 years of federal civil litigation history and are written, and assembled and reviewed by attorney editors.
- Identify Prospective Clients: After an industry has been profiled and it is determined to be a good fit with the firm's strategic client development objective, next comes the task of identifying which companies within that industry should be pursued as prospective clients. Company Dossier allows marketers to execute queries to identify specific companies that meet the firm's criteria for potential new business. Company Dossier reports cover more than 35 million companies, including 10 million non-U.S. companies and millions of private companies.
- Understand the Prospect's Litigation Needs: Marketing must also be poised to evaluate whether an identified company would be a likely consumer of the types of legal services a firm provides. This can often be the most challenging intelligence to obtain, as most companies do not publish their litigation history or otherwise make that data easily available. Market Intelligence's Company Profiles, powered by Court-Link, offer a fast and efficient mechanism to obtain insight into a client or newly targeted prospect's litigation history, trends, law firm representation and share trends. By executing a Market Intelligence query, marketers can have access to a company's litigation history. The Company Profile report includes such information as the number and types of cases a company has been involved in over a specific date range, the jurisdictions and courts in which those matters were litigated, and the law firms that represented the company, including each firm's percentage share in the company's overall litigation activity.
- Understand the Competition: Understanding the competitive environment is as important to sound market research and analysis as understanding the prospect environment. Effective client development requires knowledge about the competitor's business, its strengths and weaknesses in order to devise effective strategies for winning. Market Intelligence's Law Firm Profile reports provide the type of Competitive Intelligence marketers find helpful to formulate effective strategy relative to competitors' strengths and weaknesses. The Law Firm Profile report provides a snapshot of a selected firm's litigation history within a specified date range. The report also specifies the clients the firm represented in the litigation, whether the litigant was a plaintiff or defendant, the case name and type, and the opposing and co-counsel. Armed with this information, a marketer can then more easily assess whether a competitor is a true threat, identify its vulnerabilities and strengths, and as a result formulate a more effective strategy for winning.
- Understand Market Demand: Knowing where to invest client development resources requires an understanding of the marketplace and the litigation trends that will directly impact a firm's prospects for revenue in any particular practice area. Market Intelligence's Market Profiles and Case Type Profiles can help in this analysis by providing in depth litigation trends within particular jurisdictions or courts. A Market Profile report provides a snapshot of a single court and the litigation activity in that court. A user can narrow the search, specifying particular types of suits. A Case Type Profile provides analysis of a single case type across multiple jurisdictions, giving users a broader perspective on litigation trends for particular types of suits filed.
- Anticipate Client Needs: One way in which law firms demonstrate their strategic value to clients and prospective clients is by anticipating needs. Market Intelligence's CourtLink Alerts provide an automatic e-mail notification when one of the firm's clients or prospects are sued, so lawyers are among the first to know of new activity impacting their clients or prospects. Users create unique alerts for clients whose litigation activity they wish to monitor. Market Intelligence then sends automatic alerts, notifying the firm when a suit naming that client as a party has been filed.
- Stay Abreast of Clients' Business: Anticipating clients' needs extends beyond tracking litigation. Client development and service opportunities arise in myriad ways as clients engage in their day-to-day business activities. For these reasons, tracking news stories about clients provides firms with an excellent periscope into deals and other business ventures of which outside counsel might not otherwise be aware. Market Intelligence's News & Business Alerts help address this problem by creating an automated e-mail news alert.
The market for legal services is extremely competitive and growing more so by the day. Legal IT professionals must be aware of the tools on the market to help law firm marketers streamline the client development process. LexisNexis Market Intelligence represents another effective tool for successful client development using real, competitive data.
Julie Savarino is an attorney and managing director of Business Development Inc. where she specializes in assisting lawyers to develop business and in taking marketing departments to the next level. She has worked with over 2000 lawyers and hundreds of law firms, helping generate millions of dollars in new business. She may be reached at 734-668-7008 or [email protected].
Understanding the business challenges law firms face in obtaining and leveraging Competitive Intelligence is critical for legal IT professionals to help provide the support and expertise marketers need for client development. In addition, keeping up-to-date on new technology tools for law firm marketers will help IT professionals as they drive the technology selection and implementation process.
The Business Need for Competitive Intelligence
Law firm marketers and business developers must be able to tie their efforts and programs to results. For partners to understand and appreciate the value of the marketing and business development function, they must understand the nexus between marketing investment, expenditure, rate of return and firm profitability.
To help establish this connection, tools should be used that help marketers document the market research and analysis process and establish a methodology for the client development function. Business development decisions should no longer be made based on hunches, instinct and past experience alone, but instead must be supported by data and numbers.
With a strong analytical foundation to the market analysis and segmentation process, marketers can then more easily tie their efforts to ROI and demonstrate their value to the firm.
With limited resources, law firm marketers also want confidence that their efforts are being directed to projects that will have the greatest return. Tools that can streamline the market analysis and research process and, help marketing identify industry trends and assess client share are critical to making difficult decisions about where efforts should be most productively directed.
Moreover, many law firm marketers report that they are so overburdened with pressing projects that they must operate in reactive mode rather than proactive mode. The time required to manually investigate and analyze market and client development opportunities acts as a drag on marketers' time and therefore a drain on the firm's resources and profitability. If tools were available that could exponentially reduce this effort, then marketers could comfortably focus their attention on proactive client development initiatives engineered to maximize profits and ROI.
New Tools for Competitve Intelligence
One tool recently brought to market to address law firms' Competitive Intelligence needs is
Specific market needs addressed in the current version of the product include:
- Identify Key
- Profile Industry Segments: Market Intelligence offers in-depth Strategic Market Analysis reports that provide a complete view of critical litigation activity and trends relevant to key practice areas in jurisdictions of choice. They leverage the CourtLink database comprised of 20 years of federal civil litigation history and are written, and assembled and reviewed by attorney editors.
- Identify Prospective Clients: After an industry has been profiled and it is determined to be a good fit with the firm's strategic client development objective, next comes the task of identifying which companies within that industry should be pursued as prospective clients. Company Dossier allows marketers to execute queries to identify specific companies that meet the firm's criteria for potential new business. Company Dossier reports cover more than 35 million companies, including 10 million non-U.S. companies and millions of private companies.
- Understand the Prospect's Litigation Needs: Marketing must also be poised to evaluate whether an identified company would be a likely consumer of the types of legal services a firm provides. This can often be the most challenging intelligence to obtain, as most companies do not publish their litigation history or otherwise make that data easily available. Market Intelligence's Company Profiles, powered by Court-Link, offer a fast and efficient mechanism to obtain insight into a client or newly targeted prospect's litigation history, trends, law firm representation and share trends. By executing a Market Intelligence query, marketers can have access to a company's litigation history. The Company Profile report includes such information as the number and types of cases a company has been involved in over a specific date range, the jurisdictions and courts in which those matters were litigated, and the law firms that represented the company, including each firm's percentage share in the company's overall litigation activity.
- Understand the Competition: Understanding the competitive environment is as important to sound market research and analysis as understanding the prospect environment. Effective client development requires knowledge about the competitor's business, its strengths and weaknesses in order to devise effective strategies for winning. Market Intelligence's Law Firm Profile reports provide the type of Competitive Intelligence marketers find helpful to formulate effective strategy relative to competitors' strengths and weaknesses. The Law Firm Profile report provides a snapshot of a selected firm's litigation history within a specified date range. The report also specifies the clients the firm represented in the litigation, whether the litigant was a plaintiff or defendant, the case name and type, and the opposing and co-counsel. Armed with this information, a marketer can then more easily assess whether a competitor is a true threat, identify its vulnerabilities and strengths, and as a result formulate a more effective strategy for winning.
- Understand Market Demand: Knowing where to invest client development resources requires an understanding of the marketplace and the litigation trends that will directly impact a firm's prospects for revenue in any particular practice area. Market Intelligence's Market Profiles and Case Type Profiles can help in this analysis by providing in depth litigation trends within particular jurisdictions or courts. A Market Profile report provides a snapshot of a single court and the litigation activity in that court. A user can narrow the search, specifying particular types of suits. A Case Type Profile provides analysis of a single case type across multiple jurisdictions, giving users a broader perspective on litigation trends for particular types of suits filed.
- Anticipate Client Needs: One way in which law firms demonstrate their strategic value to clients and prospective clients is by anticipating needs. Market Intelligence's CourtLink Alerts provide an automatic e-mail notification when one of the firm's clients or prospects are sued, so lawyers are among the first to know of new activity impacting their clients or prospects. Users create unique alerts for clients whose litigation activity they wish to monitor. Market Intelligence then sends automatic alerts, notifying the firm when a suit naming that client as a party has been filed.
- Stay Abreast of Clients' Business: Anticipating clients' needs extends beyond tracking litigation. Client development and service opportunities arise in myriad ways as clients engage in their day-to-day business activities. For these reasons, tracking news stories about clients provides firms with an excellent periscope into deals and other business ventures of which outside counsel might not otherwise be aware. Market Intelligence's News & Business Alerts help address this problem by creating an automated e-mail news alert.
The market for legal services is extremely competitive and growing more so by the day. Legal IT professionals must be aware of the tools on the market to help law firm marketers streamline the client development process.
Julie Savarino is an attorney and managing director of Business Development Inc. where she specializes in assisting lawyers to develop business and in taking marketing departments to the next level. She has worked with over 2000 lawyers and hundreds of law firms, helping generate millions of dollars in new business. She may be reached at 734-668-7008 or [email protected].
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