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The Future of the Profession Lies in Its Past

By Bruce W. Marcus
May 29, 2012

The alternative title of this article is “Professional Services Marketing 3.0.” Why? Because in this rapidly changing economic environment, intensely competitive landscape, and highly charged electronics age, it's the best way to define significant evolution from one distinct professional services marketing and management period to the next. And when you understand that evolutionary process, you can better and perhaps more accurately project the future of not only professional services marketing, but of the profession itself as well. Competition and evolution are exactly what's happened ' and will continue to happen ' in law firm marketing. And significantly, in firm practices, business models, and structure as well.

How It All Began

The first stage of contemporary practice ' call it Professional Services Marketing 1.0 ' was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, which, in 1977, struck down the long-standing and traditional Codes of Ethics and Rules of Professional Conduct that prohibited what we now call “frank marketing,” or any form of promotion or commercialization. In one stroke, it wiped out the many generations of practice development achieved almost solely by social contact. The word “compete” was long considered an obscenity in the world of law firms. But competition, and all that it entails, turned out to be at the heart of Bates.

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