More than two-thirds of law firms are increasing their emphasis on business development and marketing efforts.
This statistic is one of the conclusions of a joint research study by Bloomberg Law and the Legal Marketing Association (LMA), and the trend is the direct result of the changing legal landscape. As a result of economic forces, client demands and trends in technology, law firms large and small need to rethink and reinvent their business models to remain competitive. In response to these internal and external pressures, many law firms are increasing their investment in marketing and business development functions and, in turn, marketing and business development professionals are widening the scope of their duties. While marketing duties within law firms have historically held a fairly limited communications role, firms are increasingly finding marketing professionals to be an untapped resource for the business aspects of law such as pricing, firm strategic planning, client relationship management and more.
At the same time, LMA has developed a Body of Knowledge (BoK) to clearly define the accepted domains, competencies and associated skill sets needed at the essential and advanced levels of the legal marketing profession. The BoK is a constantly evolving blueprint for legal marketers’ professional development, setting out the desired behavioral traits for each domain to assist professionals in identifying their strengths and development needs. The BoK better defines the expanding roles legal marketers are playing in their firms and the skills required to perform them. It also creates a common language in which to have these conversations.
The BoK is structured around six overarching domains:
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Business Development, which creates new business and increased revenue;
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Business of Law, which includes law firm strategy and evaluating financial and operational performance;
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Client Services, which entails all aspects providing efficient and effective services to clients, such as legal project management;
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Communications, which involves internal and external communication strategies;
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Marketing Management and Leadership, which creates an effective marketing organization; and
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Technology Management, which identifies and leverages technology to support marketing and business development goals.
These six areas are the foundational content areas of expertise that legal marketers must understand and master in order to elevate the profession to one with a broader business focus.
Budgets for marketing and business development in law firms have recently grown proportionally to overall firm budget growth, and, according to the LMA/Bloomberg Law survey, this trend is expected to continue over the coming years. Two of the most common catalysts for law firms putting more emphasis on business development and marketing are the pressure to generate more revenue and clients requesting new billing models. Unsurprisingly, there has been a corresponding increase in law firms investing resources in full-time positions focused exclusively on business development, among other roles.
Two of the most common catalysts for law firms putting more emphasis on business development and marketing are the pressure to generate more revenue and clients requesting new billing models...
The competencies listed under each domain in the BoK represent the value legal marketers bring to firms. They make an impact where firms need it the most — and are currently investing in. A marketer’s skills, outlined in the BoK, can help close the gap between where a firm is and where it wants to be. Legal marketers and business development professionals can, for instance, focus on the business of law: developing and implementing individual attorney marketing plans, integrating profitability measures and models into business development strategies, analyzing the impact of pricing practices on profitability, and 
deeply understanding clients’ non-legal wants and needs, to name a few, can directly influence firm revenue and help firms meet changing client expectations. And as marketers lend their business expertise to law firms, lawyers will be able to focus their energy on the practice of law.
A Tool for Professional Development, Recruitment, and Management
Taken together, the competencies and skills listed in the BoK lend themselves to a supplemental competency analysis tool (CAT) for each domain. The CAT serves as a checklist to objectively determine where a professional’s skills fall along a spectrum of expertise: skill levels are defined as novice, competent or expert. As a result, this is a useful tool for professionals at every stage of their career as well as the individuals who manage them. It is not only a resource to determine what is necessary for success, but it also acts as a self-assessment tool and mechanism to close the gap between current and desired skill level. More broadly, it serves as an effective management and recruitment tool for legal marketing departments.
...this is a useful tool for professionals at every stage of their career.
As the role of legal marketers and business development professionals continues to evolve and expand, the BoK provides a roadmap to navigate this new territory. With its broad perspective of marketing, the BoK recognizes that the role of legal marketing can go far beyond its traditional scope to make a positive impact on the business of law: It can generate new business, improve inefficiencies and impact a firm’s bottom line. As the legal industry continues to change, it is increasingly important for law firms to respond accordingly; working collaboratively with marketers and acknowledging their roles as business leaders within firms is a great place to start.
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Holly Amatangelo is the education director for Legal Marketing Association. She can be reached at hamatangelo@legalmarketing.org. LMA is the universal voice of the legal marketing and business development profession, a community that brings together CMOs to entry-level specialists from firms of all sizes, consultants and vendors, lawyers, marketers from other professions and marketing students to share their collective knowledge. LMA has more than 4,000 members from 48 U.S. states and 23 countries. More than 90 percent of the largest 200 U.S. law firms employ an LMA member. Members at every stage in their career development benefit from participating in LMA’s array of programs and services.
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