Marketing 101_ The problem with legal solutions.png

Intro: Your solutions aren’t really special

Dear Lawyer: Please take a few seconds to review your law firm’s marketing materials for an explanation of what your firm is selling.

I bet that your firm is selling “solutions”. How do I know? Because that’s what ALL lawyers do (as well as consultants and nowadays pretty much everyone else in the service industry). And, that’s the problem.

When you tell potential clients that you are doing the exact same thing as your competitors, you are missing out on a key opportunity to differentiate yourself from them. In other words, you are screwing up your chance to persuade potential clients to choose your firm.

In this article, you can find 3 + 1 solutions to your solution problem. In particular, I discuss below the following:

Solution 1: If you have to be selling solutions, then make them a little distinctive by slapping a name on them.
Solution 2: Give your solutions weight by transforming them into packaged products.
Solution 3: Give your solutions even greater weight by spinning them off into their own business.
Bonus Solution: If you don’t have special solutions, just try to focus on some details.

Solution 1: Slap a name on it!

As the first step to making your solutions distinctive, I recommend that you name them. Many firms think that they are already doing this by using creative adjectives like:

Innovative solutions
Client-oriented solutions
Business-focused solutions
Well-balanced solutions
Effective solutions
Robust solutions

While you might think that this actually makes your solutions a little special, the problem once again is that many other firms are saying the same things. Even worse, clients have seen this adjective trick so many times that they have become immune to it.

As an alternative, I recommend that you actually apply a name to your solutions. For example, Dentons does a great job of naming a client-oriented solution with its NextLaw In-House Solutions. This solution involves a Dentons-related team of 50 experts possessing in-house counsel experience. The team provides “strategic consulting” to its in-house clients.

Solution 2: Package it as a product!

The benefit of naming your solution is that you make it feel more distinctive by emphasizing its concreteness for clients. However, you can still make your solutions even more realistic and distinctive by transforming them from services into products.

Interestingly, Deloitte Legal is providing a similar type of in-house consulting services as Denton’s. The service is called Deloitte Legal Management Consulting.

However, Deloitte makes its service feel even more concrete by turning its solution into a product by describing its deliverables as “a collection of models, frameworks, and systems to help in-house lawyers run their departments more efficiently and comprehensively meet their business needs.”

Solution 3: Spin it off as a “separate” business!

If you can give your solution a cool name and also develop attractive packaging, you might want to consider going the extra step of spinning the solution into its own business. For example, Dentons has taken the step to make its in-house solutions a business created “by Dentons”.

However, if you want to see the best practices for this approach, just check out Allen & Overy. They have at least three spin-off businesses focusing on the following:

Peerpoint - a sophisticated outsourcing service connecting their clients with experienced attorneys
Aosphere - a developer and provider of online legal risk management products
Fuse - a legal tech incubator

Bonus Solution: Just focus on some interesting details!

It can be difficult to come up with creative solutions. If you find yourself struggling with this exercise, I recommend that you avoid talking about solutions and focus on details that are (i) unique to your firm and (ii) definitely interesting to potential clients.

For example, when clients are choosing between law firms, they frequently are searching for examples of a firm’s past clients and matters. To match client needs, Weil Gotshal dedicates a portion of its home page to “Prominent Matters”. When you click on the link, you are taken to a simple page that provides a list of big name clients as well as the type of representation and the dollar amount of the representation, like the following:

Westinghouse Electric in its $9.8 billion chapter 11 case

Clearly, its not always easy to get client permission for using their name and details in marketing materials. As a final alternative, I suggest that you focus on promoting your other marketing efforts, in particular your client updates, blogs, social media, etc. A great demonstration of this approach is used by CMS with its Home Page turned into a mosaic of all CMS news sources including:

New Releases
Articles
Social Media Posts (e.g. Twitter, Linkedin)
Links to its CMS Law-Now news service

Can we help you?

I hope that you will find the above solutions useful for making your solutions more appealing to clients. If you want help with fancying up your solution offerings, drop us an email.

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3+1 Solutions to Your Law Firm’s Solution Problem