Digital White Papers

7 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER MARKETING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Taking Care of the Business: Six Trends in Legal Marketing Firms with more sophisticated BD operations are instead implementing processes and tools that assist marketing and business development teams to work more effectively with aorneys across the firm to stay focused on the activities that generate results. These tools help teams beer share information and client intelligence, facilitate strategic planning and client plans, build relationships and collaborate across the firm. As a result, firms can help prospective clients solve their most pressing problems or solve additional problems through cross-serving initiatives. Products on the market can provide BD teams the ability to plan and track their business development activities and more effectively focus on strategic and targeted activities while allowing them to monitor progress and abandon their efforts more quickly if success isn't likely based on analysis of past activity. These tools also allow teams to hold aorneys accountable for focusing on and completing activities that will best drive their pursuits toward a true, winnable opportunity. Experience management adds additional insights into these collaborations, which helps teams uncover relevant experience and success to highlight and formulate how to best solve prospective clients' needs and create a more personalized story that shows they know their business. Employer Branding / Recruitment Marketing A March 2016 study by Cornerstone OnDemand revealed that 25 percent of employees would consider a lateral move away from their current employer, and nearly 60 percent would do so if they 5 thought it would increase their personal satisfaction with their career. This trend is even more relevant in law firms where talent is highly specialized. When researching new potential firms, applicants oen look at the firm's website to see how they communicate with clients and prospects and the brand they hold in the marketplace. This means the brand identity of the firm must speak not only to how they service potential clients, but also provide a preview into the experience of working for the firm, merging its unique aributes with what aorneys are looking for from an employer. Once firms have aracted applicants, the next step is veing candidates to determine their fit within the firm. A November 2015 study by ALM showed that only 50 percent of lateral partner hires meet the expected revenue and profit goals of their new firm. Given this, an important part of the recruitment process should be assessing the potential return on investment (ROI) of a particular candidate. This is where geing marketing or business development departments involved in the recruitment process can play a role in the long-term success of a hire. Just like a marketing campaign, a candidate should be subjected to an assessment of what kind of BD skills and relationships they can bring to the table to see if the high cost of the move will have a positive effect on revenue. Once hired, the marketing department can still play a part in geing new employees onboarded and acclimated to the firm's environment. Training on the customer relationship management (CRM) system can show the new hire how to collaborate with other practice groups, get the lay of the land on current clients' businesses and relationships, and help track progress toward BD Gain alignment and buy-in on what success looks like and then deliver objective data against those goals.

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