Legal Marketing & PR

Law Firms Spend Less on Branding, More on Business Development

By Larry Bodine, Esq.

According to branding expert Leigh George, legal marketers are talking about spending less money on traditional brand awareness marketing and investing more time and money into business development and attorney coaching.

"Once the work stopped falling into their laps, a realization set in: attorneys don't know how to market. They need to be taught business development skills – and fast – in order to hold on to existing clients and meet prospects. But something more is going on beyond the commitment to generating new business. What we're seeing is not simply a change of focus from traditional brand awareness marketing to business development, but a rise in an entirely new kind of branding for law firms," she writes on the LawMarketing Portal.

• Cummins & White, LLP, a 16-attorney firm with two offices in California, has devoted itself to client outreach activities. It has increased spending allowances for meetings with clients and referral sources and opened those up to any attorney who is interested in business development.
• Bingham McHale, a 140-attorney firm based in Indianapolis, doubled its coaching budget.
• Green & Seifter Attorneys, PLLC, a 30-lawyer firm in Syracuse, New York, has shifted dollars away from print advertising and reallocated those funds to a business development consultant who works with a handful of attorneys one-on-one and with another ten in monthly group meetings. Not only is the program a success, having already paid for itself in new business, but it's paying dividends. Kathleen Ryan, director of marketing and public relations at the firm, has seen 'an increase in confidence and in traditional business development techniques like articles, referral development, [and] speaking engagements.'

For the full story, visit the LawMarketing Portal at http://bit.ly/5NzX1.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on July 22, 2009 (boomark / email).