eDiscovery Daily Blog

Marketing a Litigation Support / eDiscovery Department within a Law Firm: The “Marketing Mind-Set”

 

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.

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