Influencing Your Legal Market as an Attorney

A basic marketing tenet is the concept of delivering what the market needs—not what the provider wants to sell. This places the emphasis on the consumer or client, which is the driving force behind a client-focused marketing agenda. How does this client-focus impact attorneys who want to increase the professional and financial success of their practices? Research shows that clients perceive law as a service business. Yet a common criticism from clients is that law seems to provide "work products" more than it provides a service. This means clients want to buy solutions to their problems, not papers. Many attorneys simply are not providing what the market wants: law as a service rather than as a product.

The most important difference between legal practices can be classified as being either transaction oriented or relationship oriented. The difference is between providing clients with discrete transactions or with ongoing advice and counsel. Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration Professor Christian Gronroos calls this approach to business "relationship marketing." He states that a significant portion of what the client expects to receive in return for payment is the establishment, maintenance, and enhancement of a mutually interactive relationship. This is accomplished by a mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises. Conversely, Gronroos calls another approach to business as "transaction marketing," which is less flexible and more tangible.


Taking these definitions one step farther, Gronroos provided a marketing continuum (for purposes here, adapted to the law profession) which demonstrates the differences between relationship marketing and transaction marketing or between the marketing of a service and a product. In the case of a transactional approach to marketing legal services, probably the most visible and significant strategy will be the aggressive, overt marketing efforts. A fairly obvious illustration would be the retail or consumer market for legal services. The marketing strategy and implementation is geared specifically to provide a stream of discrete transactions for many customers. Communication tends to be more reactive, except while actually engaged in client matters. However, this strategy can be equally appropriate for attorneys serving business and corporate clients, such as litigation, real estate transaction work, and Initial Public Offering (I.PO.) and Leveraged Buy Out (L.B.O.) securities work, to name the more obvious types.

On the other hand, a relationship approach to marketing legal services would imply a more or less continual, ongoing relationship between attorney and client providing advice and counsel. Often this type of practice will involve not only a variety of law practice areas but, on occasion, frequent referral out for more specialized assistance. Illustrative cases could include individual consumer clients as well as business and corporate clients.

The marketing strategy for this type of practice will, as the name implies, be focused on developing and maintaining a close attorney-client relationship. Far less effort is aimed at overt marketing activities, but
rather concentrated on identifying all the legal needs of clients, regardless of practice area involved.

For example, the attorney's marketing efforts focus on client need and satisfaction surveys, client newsletters, "client alerts," legal audits, relatively frequent semi-social occasions, emphasis on developing relations between legal staff and clients' staff (when appropriate), and other devices specifically for the purpose of enhancing the relationship. In other words, more concentration on interactive communications.

In recently completed research, Dr. Lawrence Crosby of the Arizona State University marketing department points out that business clients want not only reliability and quality but, more important, a stable relationship with their service providers. Clearly this means that for lawyers serving business and corporate clients, a strategy aimed at ongoing interactive communications is critical to establishing and solidifying relationships.

Another concept important to understand before a successful marketing program can be developed is the six "Ps" of marketing. These elements form the heart of any marketing effort, which in turn affects the formation of business development strategies. Let us, however, begin at the beginning with Jerome McCarthy, of Michigan State University who originated the four "Ps" model with these ingredients: price, product, place, and promotion. McCarthy's four "Ps" are applicable to law business development. Price clearly refers to the hourly rate or value billing standard; product refers to needs satisfied; place refers to the method of distribution (clinics, do-it-yourself operations, public attorneys, private attorneys, and so forth); and promotion refers to public relations, advertising, personal marketing, and similar activities. Any combination of the four "Ps" becomes the "marketing mix."Following McCarthy's development of the four "Ps," two additional "Ps" were identified by Philip Kotler of Northwestern University: politics (legislative, regulatory, and judicial) and public (beyond the targeted clients and direct recipients of services). These are also considered important ingredients of the marketing mix. All six "Ps" can be used to help identify why an individual attorney is serving a particular niche or segment and how that attorney can shift to an additional or perhaps altogether different niche. For example, an attorney might analyze his current clients and assess that most (although not all) of his efforts are devoted to corporate real estate acquisitions. How do the six "Ps" affect this?

• Price: a billing rate to be geared toward the typical value of real estate acquisition legal services.
• Product: contract and financing review service.
• Place: for client convenience or only at law office? Where? The location may speak to corporate versus small business or alternately individual clients,
• Promotion: includes image, reputation, various activities to gain visibility, and so on.
• Politics: legislative, executive, administrative, land use zoning, tax treatment, environmental, and so on. The way current events affect the practice may show that the need in this area is great and has regulatory impact.
• Public: public opinion toward proposed projects. The perception people have of the practice can combine with the other "Ps" to reinforce the current practice area and determine the type and caliber of any new clients.

Clearly price, product, place, promotion, politics, and public can be influenced by the attorney to guide his or her practice development. Viewing these elements as ingredients to the marketing mix and consequently adjusting for their individual impacts will determine the course of all practice development efforts. The fact that law as a profession has not consistently paid attention to all six "Ps" contributes to current perceptions.