Can Your Brand Be Too Premium? by Katherine Hollar Barnard
It
is almost an enviable problem. After a law firm—let’s call it Stark & Banner—won a number of high-profile, high-stakes cases, the firm earned a reputation as a premium litigation boutique in its area of specialty. The challenge: The market has started to perceive Stark & Banner as only handling the biggest, baddest matters…and referrals for basic work have slowed. The lawyers are hearing comments like, “Well, it’s not quite a Stark & Banner case, so who would you send this client to?” This stings for a number of reasons: • The high-profile cases in their realm are sporadic; focusing exclusively there is not a reliable source of revenue. • Stark & Banner can quite profitably handle more commonplace matters. • The firm recently hired a couple of younger lawyers to handle exactly this type of work. In addition to wanting to keep them busy, Stark & Banner counts on straightforward matters to provide experience and grit. How can the firm re-capture its referrals for basic work without losing its big-case cachet? To be sure, referrals from the lawyer community are critical for Stark & Banner, just as they are industrywide. According to Clio research, 59 percent of consumer clients seek a referral of some kind when they need a lawyer. On the corporate side, they are even more significant; Greentarget states that both the C-suite and in-house counsel rely on “recommendations from trusted sources” most when scouting potential law firms. Stark & Banner needs to reiterate to the market that it is ready, willing, and able to handle bread-and-butter cases in its area of expertise—but the firm is understandably hesitant to launch a campaign that dilutes its standing as the firm of choice for complex matters. (And we’re not that keen on “Stark & Banner: Here for your run-of-the-mill-stuff, too.”) When a marketing problem is this nuanced and complex, it helps to fall back on the fundamentals. Specifically, let’s look at the “Four Ps” of the marketing mix: product, price, place, and promotion.
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Attorney Journals Orange County | Volume 185, 2021
Product. Since the firm is targeting basic cases, there is a considerable opportunity to analyze this work and create a rich bank of knowledge; basic cases are more likely to be frequent and similar. Stark & Banner can consult its various sources of data (intake, billing, and timekeeping systems, among others) to learn: • Who is doing the work? How do the tasks break out between paralegals, junior attorneys, and senior partners? What kind of capacity is necessary? • Where is the work coming from? Who are the specific referral sources that matter most? • How much does this work cost? How much does it cost to complete this type of matter—not in billing rates, but in actual cost to the firm? • What are the meaningful subtypes of this work? For example, does one jurisdiction take substantially more time and effort? Are we promoting one homogeneous case “product,” or are there several of them? • How long do these cases take? This doesn’t refer to attorney hours; think weeks, months, years. How long do matters last from matter opening to resolution? At what points are there bottlenecks or significant lags? In addition to the quantitative information, the lawyers should think qualitatively too: • Why does this work matter? While every case is different, within this given area of focus, what are the common themes, stakes, and client fears? • What happens next? After resolving these cases, are there complementary services required or common next steps? Does it make sense to bundle this work with anything else? • What are common misperceptions or client issues? • How could this be improved? • How are we better at this work than our competitors?
