Who is actually doing the marketing now?
Who should now take care of the marketing of the law firm? In the context of a representative study that we conducted in 2019 within the German legal profession, a sad picture emerges. The result beforehand: no matter who is in charge of law firm marketing - it is not satisfactory. Most law firm owners look after the marketing of the law firm alongside their work for their clients.
Let's take a look here at how responsibilities are distributed within the legal profession:
How satisfactory is that?
Let's take a look at how satisfied the lawyers are with the respective solution. Result: only about 20% of the law firm owners are very satisfied with themselves. However, it can be assumed that the answer to this question was more critical of external service providers than of themselves. Perhaps a "hand on heart" should have been inserted at this point.
21.42% of the respondents who personally perform the marketing tasks are very satisfied with the result. 57.73% are satisfied with themselves on average, only 7.64% are dissatisfied with themselves. 11.11% cannot assess the question. If office employees take over these tasks, 16.83% of the respondents are very satisfied, 34.86% are satisfied on average and 2.4% are not satisfied at all. 29.89% cannot make a statement on this. 13.88% are very satisfied with external marketing agencies, 24.71% are satisfied on average and 8.47% are not satisfied at all. The question does not apply to 35.21%. The acquaintance, "which knows itself" provides with 7,42% to very large satisfaction, 12,76% are averagely content and 4,15% not at all content. In 39.9% of the firms, this "acquaintance" is not used. Marketing freelancers generate great satisfaction at 4.25%, average satisfaction at 14.73%, and 5.95% are not at all satisfied. 41.47% do not use freelancers. Management consultancies generate great satisfaction only at 1.26%, 3.77% are averagely satisfied, 3.14% are not satisfied at all and 45.69% cannot judge the question.
It has to be said quite clearly: No matter who is in charge of the lawyer marketing - one is predominantly average or not satisfied at all! Or to put it even more clearly: there is one area in most law firms, namely marketing, that performs merely below average or average. Average marketing cannot work, we all know that.
Findings: For 86.79%, marketing is at least also a "matter for the boss". 54.09% rely on internal employees, marketing agencies are used by 47.06% of the law firms surveyed. Marketing freelancers are used in 24.93% of the firms, acquaintances "who know their stuff" in 24.33% and management consultancies in 8.17% of the firms. The view on the satisfaction values shows that interestingly the groups not professionally trained, i.e. the respondents themselves, law firm employees and acquaintances are evaluated more positively than those service providers from whom one would expect a significantly higher expertise, i.e. marketing agencies, marketing freelancers and management consultancies. In general, there is a clear uneasiness on the part of the industry with regard to the persons acting in lawyer marketing.
Why is that? Because no one has learned it!
If you look at the people who are predominantly responsible for lawyer marketing, the first thing you notice is that there is a lack of expertise. A lawyer is a lawyer, not a marketing specialist or web developer. And he doesn't really have the time for that either. Marketing agencies are a dime a dozen, and you don't need any professional qualifications. This is the reason why expensive marketing measures fail to achieve their goal. The same applies to freelancers and the nephew's acquaintance who knows computers. Management consultancies are rarely used in this field.
But there's another sticking point: for attorney marketing to be successful, three skills are necessary:
The checklist for the selection of the partner or agency for lawyer marketing
- Sound marketing know-how (not merely claimed, but proven!)
- Deep understanding of legal work: if you don't know and understand legal work very well, you can't market legal products. He may produce great colorful pictures and beautiful homepages. But a beautiful homepage alone sells exactly nothing. Therefore, when selecting your marketing partner, check his understanding of law. If he does not have this, keep looking.
- Technical understanding: The requirements for what a law firm website should have under the hood, for example, are enormously high.Your agency partner should therefore be able to guarantee at this point that the generated inquiries and mandates can flow seamlessly into the law firm operations. And that the required CRM, tracking and analytics tools are installed and working, otherwise you're transferring all your money to Google and Facebook and nothing works.
Bottom line: if you are unhappy with your marketer or agency, replace them. If you are looking for a new partner for your marketing, please tap into the three points above. If you are alone with the issue, get support!