Technology is changing more rapidly than ever impacting our work, and personal lives. With technology playing such a huge role, it is important for legal marketers to be familiar with technology trends to understand the potential impact on our clients and law firm.
With the intense competition for new legal work, demands on lawyers' available time and the increasing discounts clients demand, it's getting harder for law firms operating under a billable-hour business model to support the consistent development of new legal work by investing in and maintaining a marketing department alone.
As more and more attorneys realize that turning to mental awareness education and consulting is a sign of strength and not weakness, the ship of despair is beginning its turn toward better days of mentally strong and agile teams. So, where does one start this new practice? Enter emotional intelligence.
Law firms are clearly in important player in the legal services value stream; as the legal operations movement continues to take hold in corporate client organizations, in-house teams are looking to outside law firms to join them in their efforts to reduce operating costs, improve staffing, take greater advantage of technology, and improve project management processes.
One of the most effective components of legal marketing is thought leadership content. With today's available palette of media tools, law firms are able to design, build and customize the content that their client's experience like never before. Ensuring that this "content experience" is profound and impactful is a necessary and critical endeavor.
Requests for discounts have become a routine step in the legal services purchasing process. Lawyers face the uncomfortable task of defending their billing rates in both RFPs and client pitches. But too often, lawyers don't make an effort to resist giving a discount when asked. Mostly because they haven't been trained in how to do it.
In an era of "what's in it for me," leaders seeking to ensure the long-term well-being of the firm and its talent often find change initiatives especially challenging.
Sometimes, we over-engineer solutions. And most often, we don't need to.
With the intense competition for new legal work, demands on lawyers' available time and the increasing discounts clients demand, it's getting harder for law firms operating under a billable-hour business model to support the consistent development of new legal work by investing in and maintaining a marketing department alone.
It's not enough these days to simply react to clients, the best attorneys are those who can anticipate a legal need before it happens and be proactive in reaching out to clients. To be first to a client, lawyers need a keen understanding of how business indicators connect to legal needs and have a strategy to track and analyze the path as it unfolds.
