How to get ahead in marketing

Marketing is still a fairly new concept for the legal profession, but times are changing as rapidly as the competition is intensifying. Caroline Poynton talks to marketing representatives at Taylor Wessing, Berwin Leighton Paisner, Addleshaw Goddard and Baker & McKenzie about their marketing strategies and just how far they’ll go to secure competitive advantage.

There are few areas quite like marketing for revealing some of the key changes impacting the evolution of the legal profession. As firms face varying levels of competition, brought about by market consolidation and an uncertain economy, marketing has become a major component of many a law firm’s progression from profession to business. In the future, lawyers will no longer be mere professionals, imparting expert knowledge to a grateful client, but business-development gurus who understand the profit imperatives of the modern age, and look to ways to secure firm-wide advantage through winning clients and nurturing existing relationships.

Of course, this concept is an extreme ideal that would make some law firms cringe with horror. The thought of a lawyer acting as some kind of business entrepreneur appears like a juxtaposition; the quiet, independent expertise of the legal professional wildly at odds with the go-getting determination of the corporate manager. And yet, in many firms it is a vision that is beginning to be realised, as corporate structures replace partnership models and marketing directors find themselves training lawyers in techniques as seemingly outlandish as cross-selling.

Determining whether this is the right direction for law firms, or the extent to which it has already happened, is central to the marketing debate. Gillian Khan, marketing director at Berwin Leighton Paisner, has spent nearly four years with the firm. In that time, she has created the basic marketing infrastructure and developed a firm-wide strategy, which encourages all partners to become involved with marketing. “Most of our partners realise that marketing impacts all areas of their day-to-day life,” she says, “whether they are seeking new work, a new client, working with an existing client or engaging in general promotional activities.” She also believes that they are not alone, that law firms are generally better at understanding the opportunities of marketing, the need for partners to demonstrate sector expertise and understand their clients’ businesses.

Carolyn Roberson, client and business-development director at Addleshaw Goddard, and Beverly Landais, marketing director at Baker & McKenzie, agree with this outlook, although both say that the speed at which firms have embraced marketing has varied, from those that still see it as a tool to those who see it as an essential part of the firm’s business planning.

It is Simon Slater, however, director of business strategy at Taylor Wessing, who takes the debate to the next level. He says that marketing has evolved rapidly in just a decade, but only in line with the evolving expectations of clients (themselves often in-house lawyers). “The PR-driven marketing of the 90s has given way to real strategic marketing, though the pace of this change needs to increase further,” he says. “Lawyers still need to be properly educated as to a more scientific approach to business development – one that delivers real and measurable value.”

As if to demonstrate his argument, Khan, Roberson and Landais all mention the importance of marketing in ensuring a firm meets its clients’ needs. For Khan, the firm’s CRM and key-account programme has been designed: “To ensure that any client plan adequately reflects the wishes of our clients.” Roberson similarly says: “My role is to make partners see themselves through ‘the eyes of the client’ and to ensure we excel at client service and the new business-acquisition process.” Landais also mentions the importance of mapping client relationships and encouraging a client-centric approach.

It is not that Slater disagrees with this. Indeed, he himself talks of transforming firms into “client-centric service providers”. However, his ultimate vision and the methods for achieving this are different. Slater argues that the real challenge for law firms is to over-ride specific strategies of vision, service and differentiation, to exploit the opportunity to heighten the relevance of legal advice in light of recent corporate-governance scandals. “Law firms are supremely well placed to encroach on the territory previously occupied by the large accounting/consulting practices and to reposition themselves as commercial advisers. In order to do so, they need to reduce the mystique still further and demonstrate law as a key driver for business.”

The key to achieving such a vision, Slater says, is to see marketing as a deeply cultural phenomenon driven on an internal rather than external level. Hence: “Culture is the great under-exploited weapon in creating real and sustainable differentiation in a fragmented market”. It is also, he says, the dominant force ignored by most firms.

What this actually means in practice, Slater believes, is an inward-looking strategy that makes the firm’s marketing synonymous with its HR strategy. He even goes so far as to suggest a 50 per cent reduction in marketing budget, diverting it to boost investment in the training of fee earners in business-development skills. “By all means make your people better lawyers, but make them better businessmen too,” he concludes.

For Taylor Wessing, the practical implications of this outlook are that the marketing emphasis has changed. “Very much more attention is paid to the internal audience now,” he says. “External marketing is a secondary – though still important – priority.” The firm’s marketing strategy is focused on key-account management techniques and engendering teamwork across legal disciplines in the form of developing proper client-account teams and simple client-development plans. “In short,” he says, “our objective is to augment very strong personal relationships within a more institutional setting.” The HR/marketing strategy is at the heart of achieving this goal.

Slater’s views represent an extreme of long-term strategic planning, where the very nature and culture of the law firm is questioned and overhauled as part of a move to become a more business-oriented operation. In a profession that is so often criticised for being risk-averse and slow to change, Slater appears full of exciting propositions that may just work to give his firm real competitive advantage. However, is there also a danger that his long-term strategic thinking could undermine the effective delivery of the basic services that clients want, here and now?

Roberson’s strategy is perhaps most closely aligned with the long-term/internalised views of Slater. With the recent merger of Addleshaw Goddard, Roberson has her work cut out in developing an effective marketing strategy for the combined firm. She is not, however, without useful experience from her time with Addleshaw Booth & Co, where she and her team won two prizes at the Legal Marketing Awards 2003. With the support of past experience, she says: “Managing the culture of the firm: hiring, training, promoting and retaining the best lawyers and driving up client and employee-satisfaction levels, are the building blocks of managing profitable growth.”

Like Slater, she sees opportunities in competition, not least because it keeps them on their toes. Equally, she says that a key component of stretching the gap on the competition is to better manage the firm’s culture to ensure that the firm demonstrates the greater depth and broader capability that the combined firm can offer.

Perhaps Roberson’s views are inevitable considering her current position in establishing the identity of a merged firm. At such times, the firm’s internal strategy must take precedence, and it may be some time before we see the external impact of internal changes currently being implemented across the firm.

Khan also has the experience of managing a firm’s marketing strategy through merger. However, it is two years since Berwin Leighton Paisner was born, and the firm is now commencing a firm-wide strategic review to look at all parts of the business. Maybe this has made her more appreciative of both the short and long-term goals necessary for an effective marketing strategy. In the long term, she says: “Internal communication is essential for underpinning a combined team approach, where everyone is moving in the same direction and focusing on clearly defined objectives and targets.” She is also aware of the need for partner training in areas such as sales and the firm has a dedicated resource that works with the partners on identifying targets, pitching and generally selling.

However, she is also keenly aware of the short-term challenges for maintaining profitability in a recession. In a time when all law firms have faced budget constraints, Khan says that activities have had to be highly focused and a challenge has been to ensure partners are very targeted in all their activities. Equally, she is well aware of the personnel constraints facing many firms. Turnover in a marketing department can be very high due to the fact that it is still an immature field in professional-services firms. Perhaps her four years with the firm has been key to ensuring that turnover has been quite low at Berwin Leighton Paisner, but she is still conscious of this potential problem for firms attempting to implement a long-term, strategic-marketing plan.

In the face of economic uncertainty and recessionary limitations, Khan’s strategy has very specific short and long-term characteristics. This is best demonstrated in the way in which the firm’s marketing strategy is linked to other key functions within the firm. In working with IT, Khan says: “IT is becoming one of the key areas for differentiation when both pitching and innovating for clients.” In the long term, their CRM system is also part of a key-account programme designed to “create a more uniform and intensive approach to client management”. Equally, while the marketing team works closely with HR to provide on-going marketing training for partners and fee earners, they also manage one-off projects such as recruitment-advertising campaigns.

Perhaps Landais best sums up the real challenge in implementing an effective marketing strategy when she says: “A key challenge is finding the right balance between a hands-on approach to day-to-day business development and the need to remain strategic.” She argues that law firms, in an attempt to differentiate themselves, can actually make their brochures/websites sound hauntingly familiar. Baker & McKenzie has the advantage in this respect as she says that it is the only law firm that is purpose-built to handle complex international assignments. “We began with this vision in mind,” she says, “and have followed it through with our marketing.”

From this, it has been easier to lay down the specifics. The firm’s internal and external marketing strategy contains five elements: focus, communication, delivery, assessment and continual improvement. A web of marketing people, positioned throughout the firm, bring these elements together. Hence, Landais reports to a marketing partner who is a member of the management committee, and each department has a specific business-development liaison partner who takes responsibility for co-ordinating activities within their practice area. Integral to all of this, Landais says, is communication and collaboration.

If the comments in this article demonstrate anything, it is that marketing strategies will vary depending on the type, size and even location of the firm. Comments from a very small firm would, no doubt, be very different to the strategic theme featuring in many of the arguments highlighted above, as marketing becomes a fight for survival rather than competitive differentiation. For others, the integration of sales and marketing, combined with intensive internal training, will realise the vision of lawyers as business people, cross-selling their expertise, and targeting and pitching clients like true entrepreneurs.

However, there are some recurring themes. The evolution of marketing is significant and for many it has been absorbed into the overall culture and business thinking of the firm. That Slater equates marketing with an HR strategy does not refute this, it merely confirms the extent to which marketing has become part of the firm’s internal make-up. Similarly, his long-term view of marketing indicates an argument that perhaps no law firm could refute, that is, the need to understand what you are and where you want to go. Get this right and there’s a whole lot of room to develop the short-term strategies necessary for overcoming economic uncertainty and competitive pressures.

Gillian Khan is marketing director at Berwin Leighton Paisner. She can be contacted at: gillian.khan@blplaw.com.

Beverly Landais is marketing director at Baker & McKenzie. She can be contacted at: beverly.landais@bakernet.com.

Carolyn Roberson is client and business-development director at Addleshaw Goddard. She can be contacted at: carolyn.roberson@addleshawgoddard.com.

Simon Slater is director of business strategy at Taylor Wessing. He can be contacted at: s.slater@taylorwessing.com.