Digital White Papers

18 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER MARKETING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT This means evaluating your firm's current tools through the lens of marketing and business development (which I am purposely lumping into the same category) can allow for greater creativity in the way these resources are utilized, which can lead to direct results (i.e., dollars walking in the door). Unexplored and Unused If you are like most law firms, you have put a lot of technology in place, but the deeper capabilities of all that technology remains unexplored and unused. You might not be aware of all the technology you already have at hand (this happened to me) or thought about how to use what you have to accomplish a different result. This is not because you or your team are uninterested but rather because time is scarce; marketing staff in midsize law firms oen wear dozens of hats and, like everyone else, are juggling many different projects. However, making time to meet with other departments, especially IT, will help accelerate your ability to explore all your options. At my law firm of about 40 lawyers, we have a document management system (DMS), graphic design tools, a robust customer relationship management (CRM) system, a multitude of miscellaneous soware, email, old marketing brochures and materials, etc. This seems to be a standard set of tools for a firm of our size, but the age-old question still remains: How do we use what we have to maximum effect? Here are some examples. Your DMS Is More Powerful Than You Think Most law firms have a DMS, and yours probably has a lot of capabilities you have not explored. You can probably use your existing DMS to accomplish the same things being bragged about in new product offerings. For example, your existing DMS can probably generate documents for clients automatically, with one data set populating multiple document types. This is oen utilized for maer intake and discovery, but marketing can also make use of the DMS in many other ways. Since it is our firm's culture to save everything to our DMS, my team can quickly locate useful pitch documents and materials for request for proposals (RFPs) and other business development needs. This allows us to work with the aorneys and staff in a collaborative and efficient way. We have no struggles in making one team member's documents available to others, which cuts down on errors and several working dras. Oen, marketing staff only need base-level maer information. Having limited access to secure client files without disrupting aorneys or their assistants allows the marketing team to keep information confidential and secure while garnering the vital information needed to complete a project. Recently, the marketing team was assigned a large project that required maer information from an aorney who was unavailable. We turned to the DMS. By hunting with as lile as two keywords, we were able to find materials that addressed the project's needs precisely. "In- text" search capabilities and the ability to lock down editing features allow for process management and accurate audit trails. Continuous efforts like this ultimately propel the marketing staff into the valuable "trusted adviser" category because we utilize a proactive approach — all without costing a dime. Hack What You Have Find out what your IT department has in its closet. Any disconnect between your marketing and IT staff — a common complaint of midsize firms — does a hugedisservice to the firm's productivity. Geing IT's help to understand a soware's intended use is a start, but that is not as relevant as finding out what all that program can do It turned out we had owned a tutorial software system for years that was originally purchased for human resources. When You Cannot Have the Bright, Shiny New Thing

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