[After Orrick's recent successful deployment of its GDPR Readiness Assessment Tool, we asked Helena Lawrence, a senior marketing and business development manager at the firm, for her quick thoughts on the collaborative process around designing and marketing legal products for client cultivation and BD. Here is what we heard back:]

Innovative value-added services provide a means to service clients and drive business when the traditional methods of outreach – blog posts, CLEs, and pitches – will not suffice. One approach is to create legal products that attract prospects’ attention while establishing a relationship with your firm. 

Legal products make the law accessible

Keeping high-value commoditized client work with outside counsel, law firms can continue to provide these services at a valued price point while increasing the likelihood that to be called when strategic advice is needed.

Convenient tools help organizations solve legal problems or navigate the law by:

• Value add: Providing commoditized value adds that clients want at fixed costs.
• Relationship building: Strengthening relationships with current clients and creating relationships with new clients.
• Revenue generation: Scaling to provide legal services by providing firm revenue at minimal variable cost.
• Technology: Using technology to provide client solutions.
• Legal expertise: Positioning your law firm as expert advisors in the practice associated with the product.

Idea generation, opportunity spotting, and creative thinking drives marketing innovation

Consider what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you will do it to figure out the right product design and approach.   

Design considerations:

• Business Strategy: What objective/s are you looking to achieve?
• Client needs: What solutions do you want to provide?
• Insights: What do you want to solve?
• Impact: What value are you looking to deliver?
• Opportunities: What gaps in service/solutions are in the marketplace?
• Innovation: What do you want to make easier and more accessible?
• Trends: What macro factors may impact your project?

Marketing campaigns target all phases of the buyer lifecycle

To maximize the value of your product, conduct a marketing campaign with activities across the buyer sales funnel. While your legal product is the anchor of the funnel, to get prospects to trial your firm, a variety of activities drive them to your product. Then user experience can be harnessed to grow relationships.  

The success of building a legal tool and marketing it well relies on the power of collaboration across departments such as communications, marketing, sales, and technology.

The success of building a legal tool and marketing it well relies on the power of collaboration across departments...

Teamwork drives success

Creative market solutions deliver value-added service to clients while generating revenue for firms. Important parts of the process include:

Team

• Collaboration: Across departments 
• Coordination: Among product team members
• Inclusion: Outreach to all possible stakeholders 
• Communications: Providing information, status updates, knowledge and resources

Client service and marketing

• Proactivity: Capitalizing on gaps in needed services
• Targeted marketing: Messaging and activities appropriate for the audience (e.g. regional, industry)
• Prioritization: Conducting marketing campaigns versus random acts of marketing  
• Innovation: Leveraging resources to deliver client service
• Product design: Creating solutions delivering legal value
• Mini-value propositions: Driving conversations
• Value-add: Delivering what is important to clients

And, of course, the trick to impactful market solutions is: if you are not the first mover, be better. 

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[Helena Lawrence is the immediate past president of the Legal Marketing Association Mid-Atlantic Region. She is a Senior Marketing & Business Development Manager at Orrick. Connect with Helena on LinkedIn.]