Law Firm Departments

 

In the last post in this series, we began talking about marketing techniques for keeping the customers you have.  The first point we covered was continuously reminding your customers of the services that you offer.  The second thing you need to do is to look for new ways to help the customers that you have.

You have a significant advantage here… you know the litigation process, you know how attorneys work, and you know what they need.  In short, you know what’s coming.  Be proactive.  Anticipate what your clients will need and let them know how you can help.  And if their needs are outside the scope of what you do, determine if that work should and could be within the scope of your offerings.  You may uncover ways to expand your department’s services.

The last – and probably most effective – way to keep existing customers is to provide suburb customer service.  All the time.  Without fail.  You need to treat your clients well; you need to get them what they need, when they need it; and you need to make it very easy and painless for your clients to work with you.  Establish customer service guidelines for your staff and establish top priorities for the department.  At a minimum, the department’s priorities should include meeting deadlines, delivering high quality work, and effectively communicating with clients.

Customer service guidelines include things like making sure that it’s easy for clients to reach you and being responsive to phone calls and email.  You need to make sure your staff is trained in dealing with clients.  For example, make sure that everyone on your staff knows the right way to respond if client is unhappy about something.

Tomorrow, we’ll conclude this blog series on Marketing a Litigation Support / eDiscovery Department within a Law Firm.  Let us know if you’ve got any questions or comments.  And be sure to let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

Yesterday, we concluded our discussion about getting new customers.  Today, we begin discussing how to keep the customers you already have.

Getting repeat business from your clients is essential.  If every client only used your services once, at some point you’d be out of business.  You need to focus, therefore, on getting repeat business.  There are three things you should be doing: 

1. Continuously remind your customers of the services that you offer.
2. Look for new ways to help the customers that you have.
3. Focus on providing premier customer service. An attorney will not use your services a second time if he or she was not happy with the service you provided the first time!

Let’s start with reminding your customers about the services that you offer.  Don’t let them forget that you are available to help them.  Many of the mechanisms we covered in the posts on Getting New Customers apply here too.  Here are a few suggestions:

1. Make sure that all of the clients for whom you’ve done work are on your newsletter distribution list.
2. Invite them to presentations that you’ve got scheduled.
3. Contact them when you see they have a new case and ask how you can help.
4. If you see an article that is relevant to a client, forward it with a personal note.
5. Pick up the phone and call an attorney for whom you’ve done good work and ask how they are doing, what they are working on, and if you can help.
6. Be visible.  Be everywhere.  Attend every firm event that you can.  Eat lunch in the firm dining room.  Walk around and schmooze.  Of all the points on this list, this one is the most important.  Everyone is familiar with the saying “out of sight, out of mind”.  Don’t be either!

Next week we’ll continue talking about ways to keep the customers that you have.  In the meantime, we’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

Last week, we started talking about techniques and mechanisms for one-on-one marketing to individual attorneys and litigation teams in your firm.  Here are a few more tips:

• Be enthusiastic about what you do.  It’s contagious and it will get others excited about your offerings.
• Be prepared for objections.  If you’ve been working with attorneys for a while, you know what objections might be raised to using your services and products.  Be prepared to address them.  Some of the repeated objections I’ve encountered are:
  • “My client won’t pay for this”:  Be prepared with cost information and cost analyses and comparisons.  You know that what you do fosters efficiency and saves money in the long run, so have the information you need to demonstrate that.
  • “Only an attorney can do this”:  Be prepared to describe a process that will make them comfortable and ensure them that substantive decisions and answers remain in the hands of attorneys.  Have testimonials from other attorneys in the firm that rave about how well it worked for them
  • “I tried that once and it was a disaster”: You may face some attorneys who have had a prior bad experience with the services you offer.  The costs may have been out of hand, deadlines may have been missed, or a database may have not been useful.  Be prepared to discuss the mechanisms that are built into your approach for controlling costs and meeting deadlines.  Be prepared to discuss the planning and design steps that you take to ensure that a database will be useful.  Be prepared to discuss the approach you take to monitoring service providers to ensure that they live up to the commitments they make.
• Provide references.  When you’ve done good work for someone, ask if they will serve as a reference, and have references on hand for potential new clients.
• Make “Getting that first sale” your primary objective.  Don’t try to sell them the whole ball of wax.  Identify what they need right now and focus on that.  Focus on solving an immediate problem.  If you get your foot in the door with one task and you do a good job, getting them to buy off on future work will be easier.  And, don’t give them too many options unless that’s necessary.  You are the expert and you know the best options.  If you give them too many options, the decision will be harder to make.

So far, we’ve covered several mechanisms and techniques getting new customers.  Tomorrow we’ll start talking about techniques and mechanisms for keeping your existing customers. 

In the meantime, we’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

Successful marketing efforts have two components – ‘big picture’ marketing aimed at spreading the word about what you offer, and one-on-one marketing to individual attorneys and litigation teams.  In the last several posts in this series, we covered ‘big-picture’ marketing.  Now let’s move on to techniques and mechanisms for one-on-one marketing.  Here are some suggestions aimed at doing one-on-one marketing that work:

• Know your audience.  Find out everything you can about people you will be marketing do.  Do your homework and find out about the cases they handle, the types of litigation they specialize in, the prior experience they have with litigation support and eDiscovery technology, the vendors they have used, the problems they’ve had, and their level of technical expertise.  You will always find it easier to sell to someone who you know something about.
• Understand the dynamics of the litigation team:  Before a meeting with a litigation team, find out what you can about how the team works together, who the decision makers are, how decisions are made, and who – if anyone – may have objections to what you are trying to sell.  Know whether an individual you’ll be meeting with is a decision maker, a gate-keeper, someone with influence over the decision maker, or a saboteur.  Knowing who you are marketing to will set your expectations and help you prepare for a meeting aimed at getting a project.
• Start building a good relationship.  Even if you haven’t worked with someone, you can start building a good relationship with them.  Here are some tips:
  • Always deliver what you say you can.  If you haven’t worked with someone yet, this may be delivering references, or information about your offerings.
  • Always be upfront about what you don’t know and what you can’t do.  But, fill in those gaps quickly and get back to them with information they need and contact information for others who can solve their problem.  Even if you can’t directly help them, you can become their “go-to” person for problems.  That will usually lead to business at some point.
  • Be incredibly responsive and punctual.  Never be even a minute late for a meeting and always respond quickly to phone calls and email.
  • Ask lots of questions.  This demonstrates that you have a genuine interest in your audience.

Check in next week for some more techniques and mechanisms for doing one-on-one marketing to individual attorneys and litigation teams in the firm. 

In the meantime, we’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

Last week, we covered several ‘big-picture’ marketing mechanisms and techniques that work well in a law firm.  There are just a few more I want to mention: 

• Get on the firm’s New Matter distribution list and reach out to attorneys with new cases. Find out about every new case that comes in the door and do research on every new client.  Reach out to the attorneys handling each new case and remind them about how you can help.  Establish a routine for this (for example, create an email template that you can reuse).  This serves two purposes:  it reminds attorneys that you’re available to help, and it may get you involved earlier in a case.
• Keep on top of what’s going on in the industry.  You need to be the expert in litigation support and eDiscovery trends, so attorneys turn to you for news and information.  If you become the “go-to” person, your level of business will almost certainly increase.  Here are some ways you can stay in-the-know:
  • Subscribe to trade publications, like eDiscovery Daily!  😉
  • Join litigation support and eDiscovery professional associations.
  • Attend trade shows
  • Join professional social networking groups
  • Attend webinars
  • Keep in touch with peers in the industry
  • Become part of the firm’s new-hire orientation program for new litigation associates and paralegals.  Educate new-hires about what you do and how you can help.
  • Network and schmooze!  Be everywhere.  Talk to everyone.  Make it a goal that everyone in the firm knows who you are, what you do, how you can help, and how to reach you.

So far, we’ve covered several mechanisms and techniques for big-picture marketing – that is, marketing that is aimed at spreading the word about what you so.  Tomorrow, we’ll start talking about techniques and mechanisms for doing one-on-one marketing to individual attorneys and litigation teams in the firm. 

In the meantime, we’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

Yesterday, we covered a couple of ‘big-picture’ marketing mechanisms and techniques that work well in a law firm.  Here are a few more: 

• Distribute a newsletter.  A newsletter is a great way to keep your services in the minds of litigators in your firm.  Many law firm litigation support professionals have told me that they would love to do a newsletter, but they don’t have the time.  It doesn’t have to be all that time-consuming!  Here are some tips for creating an effective newsletter that won’t take up too much of your time:
  • Keep articles short and to the point.  Attorneys won’t take the time to read long articles.  If you do write a long article, break it up and publish it across multiple issues (just like I’m doing with this blog series!).  If this is done well, your readers will look forward to your issues.
  • Use a template with a few consistent sections.  Have a section for “News and Announcements’, another for “Articles and Features”, another for “Client Highlights”.  Make sure there’s a section for contact information for you and your staff.
  • Maintain a list of “topic types” to include in your newsletter.  Examples of “topic types” are “How to’s”, “Creative ways to use your services”, “New technology trends”, “Significant case rulings”, “Stories about people in the firm”, and so on.
  • Ask others for articles.  Vendors and consultants you work with would probably love to get their names in front of your litigators, so ask them for articles.  Associates and paralegals in the firm may likewise want the exposure.
• Create a web site or get some pages on the firm’s internal web site.  Consider these web pages:
  • A page with descriptions of your services.
  • A page with descriptions of the technology tools you make available.
  • A page that describes your staff with bios and location/contact information.
  • A page that describes the physical facilities you have, like training and review rooms.
  • A page with testimonials from attorneys for whom you’ve done good work, and descriptions of success stories
• Find champions who have influence.  One of the best marketing techniques you can employ is to get people with influence in the firm to market for you.  Establish relationships with senior partners, department chairs, managing partners and rainmakers who support your department and have an interest in seeing you succeed.

Next week, we’ll cover a few more techniques and mechanisms for getting new customers.  In the meantime, we’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

Your marketing efforts should be aimed at two goals: getting new customers and keeping existing customers.  We’ll start with marketing techniques for getting new customers.  We’ll cover ‘big-picture’ marketing activities – that is, marketing activities aimed at spreading the word about how your department can help litigators in the firm.  And, we’ll talk about one-on-one marketing to individual attorneys and litigation teams. 

‘Big-picture’ Marketing Mechanisms

Here are some marketing techniques and mechanisms that work well in a law firm environment, assuming they are done professionally and with your clients’ needs in mind:

• Create descriptions of your services.  Describe what you do in writing.  Create simple, professional brochures that you can distribute to litigation department members.  Here are a few tips for creating effective service descriptions:
  • Identify the Problem.  Make sure that each description starts out by identifying the client’s problem or need that the service addresses.
  • Don’t include too much detail.  Attorneys are not likely to read a long document, and — more importantly – if your descriptions raise a few questions, that gives the reader a reason to contact you.
  • Categorize related services together.  This puts your services in a context that will be easier to understand.
• Offer educational presentations.  There are three keys to making a presentation an effective marketing tool.  They are:
  • You need to get people to come!  Make sure you pick topics that are of interest to your audience and that you do good promotion of it.  One of the best ways to promote an educational presentation is to get buy-in from a senior attorney in the litigation department and have him/her promote it for you.
  • You need to give a good presentation.  Provide useful information.  Use terminology that your audience will know and examples that are relevant to them.  Make sure that the content is well organized.  Stay on topic and on schedule.  Use visuals and provide handouts.  And, make sure that the facility is comfortable (if your audience is not comfortable, they may have a hard time staying focused).
  • You need to do good follow-up.  Your work isn’t done when the presentation is over.  You need to follow-up with attendees.  Solicit feedback after the presentation and find out what other topics are of interest.  Send emails to thank individuals for attending.  Make phone calls to anyone who seemed particularly interested and find out what they are working on and how you might help.

Tomorrow, we’ll cover a few more techniques and mechanisms for getting new customers.  In the meantime, we’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

In the last two posts, we’ve talked about some “marketing mind-set” principles that are appropriate for a litigation support / eDiscovery department.  There’s just one more for you to consider:

In all of the marketing that you do, you need to stay focused on selling solutions to your clients’ problems rather than on selling your services.  Don’t promote products and services.  Promote solutions.

Always be thinking and talking about:

• How you can make your clients more efficient.
• How you can save your clients money.
• How you can make your clients’ jobs easier.
• How you can free up their time so they can focus on substantive work.

Always focus on the problem you can solve, or the task that you can make easier, or the costs that you can cut.  This will get their attention.  This will peak their interest.  This will be the deciding factor in their choice to involve you in a case. 

Selling solutions rather than services should be part of any “big picture” marketing that you do as well as part of one-on-one marketing that you do to individual attorneys and litigation teams in the firm.

The mind-set principles that we’ve covered in the past few posts are critical. Regardless of how many presentations and newsletters and brochures that you do… those activities are likely to fail if you haven’t approached them with these mind-set principles in mind. So, let me recap them here:

1. Marketing is anything that you do to get a new customer of keep an existing customer.
2. Whether you realize it or not, you are marketing all the time.  It is not an occasional, planned activity. It is a mode of operation.
3. Think of your department as a stand-alone company, and think of the litigators in your firm as clients.
4. Focus on selling solutions to your clients’ problems, not on selling services and products.

Be sure to look for posts in this series next week, when we start discussion of marketing mechanisms for getting new customers. We’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

Last week, we started talking about the right “marketing mind-set” for a litigation support / eDiscovery department.  Here are a couple more mind-set adjustments you may need to make:

1. Stop thinking of your group as a department within a law firm.  Instead, think of your group as a “stand-alone business” – specifically, a service business.
2. Stop thinking of the attorneys and paralegals in the firm as your co-workers.  Think of them as your clients.

There’s a really good reason for thinking like this:

It’s appropriate for a litigation support department.

Unlike other departments in the firm, attorneys can choose whether to use your department or not.  Unlike most other departments in the firm, you have competition.  Attorneys can’t go outside the firm to have invoices generated.  They have to use the firm’s accounting department.  They can, however, go outside the firm for litigation support services. They can turn to consultants and litigation support / eDiscovery service and product providers.  You need to take steps to ensure that your department is their first choice.

What does this mean – to operate as a stand alone business — in practice?  There are three key things you need to do:

1. Stay focused on promoting your offerings to litigators in the firm – both litigators who are using your services and litigators who are not yet using your department.
2. Make it very easy and painless for your clients to work with you.
3. Stay focused on delivering premier customer service to your clients.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to give you tips and suggestions in each of these areas.

We’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

As we discussed yesterday, successful marketing of a litigation support / eDiscovery department within a law firm is a significant “key to success” to the success of such a department.  For marketing efforts to be successful in a law firm, they have to be approached with the right “mind-set”.  This may require making some adjustments to how litigation support / eDiscovery department members think about marketing, and perhaps even some adjustments to how the department operates.

As a first step, it’s important that everyone in the department has a common understanding of what “marketing is”.  I looked it up in the New Oxford American dictionary, and here’s their definition:

“The action or business or promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising”.

This definition is accurate, but I’m not crazy about it.  I don’t think it makes a strong enough point.  I like this, bare-boned and “to the point” definition better:

Marketing is anything that you do get a new customer or to keep an existing customer.

Yes, marketing includes advertising and market research.  Successful marketing also includes lots of little things that you do everyday.  It even includes all the casual conversations you have people in your firm.  So, here’s a “mind-set adjustment you may need to make:

Mind-Set Principle #1:  Don’t think of marketing as an occasional, planned activity.  Think of it as a mode of operation.

Whether you realize it or not, when you are on the job, you are marketing.  Every time you speak with someone in the firm, you are marketing.  Every time you send an email to someone in the firm, you are marketing.  Every time you have someone in your office and they look around and see how organized or disorganized you are, you are marketing.  And this goes for everyone in the department. 

Stay tuned for next week’s posts in this series, where we’ll cover a few more marketing mind-set principles.

In the meantime, we’d really like your input on how you’ve approached marketing in your firm.  How much marketing do you do, and what’s worked well for you?  Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.