Event strategies: Making legal events work for your firm

Feature

posted 2 Oct 2001 in Volume 4 Issue 6

Event strategies

Making legal events work for your firm

The International Bar Association's (IBA) major annual conference (1) which regularly attracts over 3 000 lawyers from around the world has established itself as the largest international market place of the legal year. This year it is in Cancun but who is selling what to who? After promoting the event in-house for the IBA Moray McLaren joined the marketing team at Denton Wilde Sapte where he finds himself struggling to find a framework to explain what the event means in terms of the firm's day-to-day marketing.

October will once again witness what has become an annual migration of many of the world's leading lawyers to their autumn resting place at the IBA conference. Having attended myself for the last four years I can attest to its unique nature. With over 150 specialist conference sessions lavish social spectacles and more than 300 law firm parties it has become the place to see and be seen.

While the IBA is developing a very active pro bono and human rights element attendance can be expensive and the majority attend for marketing purposes. At $870 per person the participation fee is about half the price of commercially organised events. But while flights hotel and entertaining can be expensive for most lawyers it is the heavy commitment of time that makes the conference a serious financial investment. It could take perhaps 20 plus hours to prepare (more as a speaker) a week travelling and attending and if things go well time following-up. Perhaps 100 non-chargeable hours in total.

As we shall see the conference is a mix of distinct groups that for want of better terminology we can call experts managers and newcomers. While experts spend their days debating the minutiae of international law in the conference sessions managers shun the conference centre for a gruelling schedule of meetings in the hotels and restaurants around the event. Both link-up in the evening where the roles can be combined for the endless round of social receptions and dinners.

For the majority the event is a marketing success. Regular attendance allows learning by trial and error with participants maintaining key contacts while developing new relationships. But for others the first event can be unsatisfactory and they never return.

As Handy among others suggests while we can learn by our mistakes it is often useful to find principles that can be applied universally. By understanding the 'theory of heat' we avoid years of pain before learning what does and does not burn us (2).

By starting to examine the basic principles of conference marketing - using the IBA as a case study - we can make tentative steps towards understanding why it works for some and fails for others.

While I was at the IBA the marketing material promoted the event as a networking opportunity. Now that I am writing from within a firm I find myself struggling to explain what this means in terms of marketing activity. My questions are:

How should we view the IBA and all conferences within the spectrum of marketing activity?
Where does attendance fit within our international strategy?
If we decide to attend how do we get the best from the event?

Placing conferences within the legal marketing mix

As marketing manager for the firm's 40 plus partners involved in corporate law - the corporate competition employment pensions and tax departments - my starting point is which types of services is it appropriate to promote within a conference format.

Today we all appreciate that our main marketing attention and spend should be focussed on developing relations with current key clients. At the same time although perhaps a lesser priority we need to keep generating leads to attract new clients. Aside from attending an industry conference with clients we would typically view conferences as a new business activity.

David Maister's well-known classification of the nature of professional services as being either expertise experience or efficiency is a good starting point (3). Maister highlights three project types along the spectrum of professional services:

Expertise projects: Brains work where each matter raises new challenges and is a one-off
Experience projects: Grey Hair projects where similar work has been completed for clients in the past and where there is less innovation /creativity
Efficiency projects: Procedure-type work that solves well-recognised and familiar problems.

Typically clients are willing to pay more for expertise-type work than efficiency-type work. As we would expect each project type relies upon different relationships with clients and should be marketed with different means and messages:

Expertise-based work typically requires a wide range of contacts and clients who depending upon the cycles of their commercial activity use the firm on an occasional basis. Marketing activity aims to establish that an individual lawyer is an expert in their area. Subsequently the individual's profile is promoted above the firm in order to develop their reputation within the profession. Effective marketing activities would include writing academic articles for journals or books being quoted as an expert in the media and speaking at conferences.
A firm with experience-based work would typically have a small but stable mix of clients. Marketing would establish past experience with brochures experience statements newsletters and internal client seminars showing that the firm has done similar work for other clients.
Efficiency-type work relies on a high volume of work from a small number of clients. Marketing aims at demonstrating how the firm has established systems and procedures to complete difficult processes - which the client can often do in-house - with ease. Depending on the nature of the work marketing activity would be wide establishing the benefit of speed reliability and cost in targeted mailings specialist brochures and articles in the trade press.

Within our corporate group at Denton Wilde Sapte I would view the competition work - where there is a sector focus in the energy banking telecom media and aviation - as expertise-based. The department has recently advised Liberty Media on its $20bn spin-off from AT&T.

The tax employment and pensions advice which is often a central part of the M&A work may be more experience-based. Depending upon the nature of the deal the role of the corporate department in M&A work could be expertise or experience-based. The firm has a separate office for handling bulk banking property litigation and company secretarial work as part of an efficiency-type service.

By raising the profile of an individual's expertise conferences are clearly suited to promoting expertise-type practice like our competition department and it is no surprise that the IBA's competition law committee is one of the most active and successful groups.

For speakers there are also a number of marketing spin-offs. Delegate papers are promoted on the conference website and are regularly published as articles in the IBA's wide range of journals and magazines. A readership of about 45 000 makes the IBA's International Business Lawyer the world's most widely read international legal journal. The organisers can also arrange to have conference papers co-published.

As a result there is a lot of pressure on speaking slots. Conference sessions and speakers are chosen by the committee chair or an appointed session chair. The majority of expert participants are therefore content with a role as active participant.

Why speak to a group of fellow lawyers?

Maister's framework highlights the fact that in-house counsel ask the advice of current advisers/lawyers when seeking expertise-type lawyers. As their business expands into new jurisdictions where they have less contact with the legal profession they may rely more heavily on this advice: either to instruct foreign lawyers directly or by asking existing their lawyer to help them select foreign counsel and manage this relationship.

Martindale-Hubbell who publishes the world's largest international directory for lawyers have made a success from the fact that lawyers are regularly asked to recommend or contact lawyers in different jurisdictions. It would be interesting to know if the publication is used more often to locate expertise-type practice.

In foreign jurisdictions clients may prefer to work with one instead of the myriad of law firms they use at home. Perhaps firms build their international reputation and gain work based on their expert-type services. Once selected they end up providing a wide range of services that are more readily available.

For law firms developing an international expertise-type practice the opportunity to address or attend an international lawyers conference has more significance than a domestic event.

Getting the most from the event

Law firm marketing is perhaps an art and not a science and there can be no right or wrong way to approach a conference. But over the last few years I have seen firms that appear more successful than others.

The wider picture

While the conference is ideal for promoting expertise-type practice this is only part of the picture. In fact the conference and IBA as a whole attracts large numbers of efficiency-type practitioners. Examples include the successful immigration and the international trust administration committees.

In line with Maister we would expect experience and efficiency-type practices to approach the event in a different way. For this group raising an individual's profile in the specialist sessions may be less important than more formal firm-wide presentations (4). At its simplest they need to reach beyond the highly specialist conference sessions and present the firm in a more formal format to the appropriate managing partners at the event. We would expect the marketing approach and messages to be different with an emphasis on building more strategic relationships with a core of current or potential contacts. This change of approach is outlined in Figure two.

The bigger picture: international strategy

It is clear that the event is good for promoting services to a wide audience but where should it fit within the international strategy of a firm? Strategy is always a difficult area and Stephen Mayson (5) provides a suitable framework and common language by which to approach this. As we see in Figure three Mayson categorises three main strategic options that are followed by:

Domestic firms that only practice home law and attract inward international work from their existing office
International law firms who gain foreign capacity practising either home law or local law by opening offices abroad or through alliances and joint ventures with firms abroad
A handful of multinational law firms with an integrated network of offices with multinational or parallel partnerships practicing local law. As there is no home office domestic law is local law.

The three groups have a choice of two basic strategies:

The competitive / integrated approach where a firm develops its own international practice without entering into affiliations or other arrangements
The co-operative approach of developing relationships with other firms be they less or more formal arrangements.

While a firm may follow both strategies perhaps developing referral or alliance relationships in jurisdictions where it is difficult to open an office one approach will usually be dominant.

Overlaying this framework with Maister's classifications throws up some interesting issues for the conference:

Domestic firms

Both competitive and co-operative firms would benefit from attendance. As it is difficult to make direct contact with in-house counsel abroad competitive firms without friends abroad need to get referral work from a wide base of contacts. For co-operative firms the conference is an ideal place to seek-out develop and finally promote formal relationships.

It should be no surprise that a large number of domestic firms play an active part in the conference. Many large competitive firms are highly visible. UK firms include niche/expertise practices for example Bird & Bird Kingsley Knapley and Peters & Peters as well as the broader and perhaps less expert-based firms like Eversheds and Wragge & Co. All benefit from having leading individuals involved in the IBA and invest heavily in the event.

But with larger resources the law firm networks (Lex Mundi Commercial Law Associates US Association of Law Firms etc) have a higher profile. Lex Mundi hold their own major conference to coincide with the IBA.

International law firms

Both competitive and co-operative international firms are highly active at the conference including the medium-to-large UK and North American firms.

A sample of the most visible would range from Ince & Co SJ Berwin Debevoise & Plimpton to Slaughter & May Coudert Brothers and Herbert Smith.

While some promote themselves primarily as expertise-based (Ince & Co for shipping and insurance; Debevoise & Plimpton and Herbert Smith for dispute resolution etc) others have developed a wider profile through key IBA members eg Coudert Brothers and Slaughter and May.

Multinational law firms

Once firms have developed integrated networks of multinational offices there may be an assumption that they have least to benefit from referral networks and subsequently the conference.

But the emerging global firms - perhaps Clifford Chance Allen & Overy and Baker & McKenzie - remain active sending in the region of 30-40 delegates each. Over recent years Clifford Chance has had a number of high profile speakers. Senior Allen & Overy partners have been particularly active in the committee section and IBA wide meetings. For this group perhaps the need to be perceived well by fellow lawyers particularly in new jurisdictions may still be crucial.

In preparation for this article Francis Neate who has recently moved from Slaughters and May to Schroders plc as legal counsel suggested The IBA is the centre of the international legal grapevine... you cannot afford not to be visibly involved in the centre of the grapevine .

While I have noted simple guidelines for making the event a success - either as a sales opportunity or within a wider strategic framework - the reality is far from black and white. We would need to know more about individual firms to understand the extent to which they follow clear strategies or make it up as they go along. Learning by experience is very important but the increasing scrutiny over marketing spend puts pressure on making the event a success.

Our division of experts and managers is naïve with many firms adopting a successful dual-track approach. In the past this has typically posed a resource issue: do we send the rising stars or the managing partner? As careers progressed expert speakers moved on to become the practice heads and managing partners graduating from active committee members to senior IBA officers. But while it is increasingly difficult for practice managers to retain a fee-earning role it is ironic that many of the forces driving change in the profession (in particular greater specialisation and the need to keep on-top-off of an increasing volume of law and practice) often make it necessary to retain both roles.

David Maister and Stephen Mayson's frameworks are two of many that can help us better understand the conference. But addressing these issues as part of a discussion on the IBA is a case of placing the cart before the horse. This analysis should ideally take place within a strategy and planning process that incorporates all marketing activity.

With a lot of thought and preparation the IBA conference can provide an excellent marketing opportunity. At worst perhaps we should view it as the legal industry's version of the Cannes Film Festival - an opportunity to spend time away from the office learning from people who face the same day-to-day challenges.

Moray McLaren is a marketing manager at Denton Wilde Sapte and can be contacted at mmclaren@dentonwildesapte.com.

IBA at a glance

Inspired by the United Nations (UN) the IBA was formed in 1947 as a forum for law societies around the world to meet and discuss international practice issues. It currently has 178 law society members.

For the last 20 years its main focus has been its 16 000 individual lawyer members who come from 183 countries. Depending on their practise members join one or more of three main sections: the Section on Business Law Section on Legal Practice and Section on Energy & Natural Resources Law.

They can then sign-up to a wide number of specialist committees. The committees co-ordinate newsletters conferences publications legal reviews as well as ad hoc projects.

1. The following group of regular IBA participants were kind enough to complete brief surveys on the conference as reflected in figure 1 & 2: Keith Barker of Croft Baker & Co Ward Bower of Altman & Weil Francis Neate of Schroders pls Michael Simmons of Finers Stephens Innocent.

2. Handy C. (1993) Understanding Organizations Penguin UK.

3. Maister D. (1997) Managing the Professional Service Firm (Free Press).

4. While speaking will not be a priority it does of course provide a good peg upon which to hang attendance at the event.

5. Making Sense of Law Firms: Strategy Structure and Ownership

Stephen Mayson