Marketing and Business Development in Law
The Practice
November/December 2016
Law firms are brands, like any company. How are they wrestling with marketing and business development in an increasingly competitive legal marketplace?
November/December 2016
Building a Brand to Create Competitive Advantage
This article explores the role of brand in the legal industry, how the firm and individual lawyer brands interact, and ways in which clients distinguish firms from one another, thereby forming the basis on which firms can build differentiation. It also looks at the competitive landscape and the challenges of building a stand-out brand in such a crowded industry—and how this differs around the world.
Coffee-stained Communication
Sitting together with clients, chatting informally, openly, with vulnerability; not feeling the need to have all the answers; a back and forth—a conversation. A couple of pages, perhaps, are passed around. Damp ring marks from cups and glasses pepper the pages. This is coffee-stained communication.
Innovating to Grow
A recent Harvard Law School case study, “Vieira de Almeida (VdA): Legal Innovation Pioneers in Portugal,” examines how a Lisbon-based law firm came of out nowhere to win the Financial Times’s 2013 Most Innovative Law Firm in Continental Europe award. Given the focus of this issue is marketing and business development, of particular interest in this story is VdA’s shift toward what the case study calls “systematized business development efforts."
The Past, Present, and Future
We review the past, present, and future of marketing and business development for law firms, both how it has changed over time and the increasing role that business professionals play in the increasingly competitive legal market.
Thought Leadership as Marketing
Scott Westfahl, the director of HLS Executive Education, argues that “there’s a real market need” for partner-client integrated programming and notes that Am Law 100 and 200 firms regularly “spend a tremendous amount of marketing,” including on typical marketing and business development expenses like sports tickets and restaurant meals.
Building Loyalty
Das Narayandas is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and senior associate dean for External Relations at Harvard Business School (HBS). He is also the senior associate dean for Harvard Business Publishing. Narayandas recently sat down with David B. Wilkins, faculty director of the Center on the Legal Profession, for a one-on-one conversation on marketing in the legal profession.
