The Business of Law – Marketing and Business for Enterprising Attorneys

Seems counterintuitive right?  Well, James Wilber over at the must read Legal Intelligencer has a great article on how internal corporate law departments are increasingly placing responsibility for non-legal administrative tasks in the hands of business managers, instead of the general counsel. Wilber writes:

“The law departments of most major companies have business managers, and for good reason: by leveraging the important but non-legal work required of the general counsel and getting it into capable yet less expensive hands, the cost of administration of the law department is reduced…”

Wilber is right of course, and to be sure many law firms employ business managers to handle the non-legal administrative aspects of their business. That said, Wilber’s logic could and should also apply to the marketing functions at law firms.

Here’s the argument. Lawyer’s skills (and their expense) are best leveraged when they spend their time doing what they do best…litigating cases and serving clients’ needs. Every hour that a partner or associate spends “marketing” the firm is an inefficient hour. Moreover, many lawyers are not necessarily comfortable marketing themselves or their firm for fear of being labeled as “ambulance chasers”. (As an aside, why marketing legal services is any different than marketing any other service is something that continues to amaze me.)

Here’s the point, lawyers should be lawyers and let the marketers be marketers. At Sokolove Law, we have hundreds of affiliates who outsource their legal marketing to us. That model sounds straightforward enough; lots of industries outsource their marketing activities, and the marketers churn leads to the client. But we’ve expanded that basic model. At Sokolove, we advertise legal services by specific case type, and vet the incoming cases through a sophisticated pipeline of social workers, nurses and case managers who ensure that the claimant has a good cause of action. We even sign the claimant up and take care of the paperwork.

The result we deliver for our clients is a fully vetted ready-to-litigate case that enables them to do what they do best, and fully leverages their time and money.