I’m a swear-word enthusiast. I actually have that in my LinkedIn profile headline.

To know me is to know my creative use of the F-word — noun, verb, adjective, adverb, expletive.

I love a good unmentionable word. 

And I’ve noticed a taboo term popping up lately in legal service marketing — the “S-word”…

Sales.

There, I said it.

The idea that lawyers and firms don’t — or shouldn’t — “sell” to clients and prospects remains widespread.

I think it’s time we change this perspective. It’s neither practical nor sustainable in a legal services marketplace, where competition to keep clients and attract new ones is intense and the ability to stand out from the crowd is increasingly challenging for both lawyers and firms.

It’s also not what clients want or what serves them best in the long run.

In a recent blog post, we talked about how to make the most of the annual process of gathering the matters and references needed for submissions to research-based legal awards and directories. (You can read our blog post here: https://www.create-cmm.com/blog/making-the-most-of-rankings-and-awards.)

In this blog post, we’re giving you tips for getting the most visibility out of your recognitions, whether that’s one or many this awards season.

To truly get the most visibility out of rankings, recognitions and awards, you need to do some planning before the first submission packet is ever uploaded.

Every time a marketing content writer takes on a client in a new industry, we’re faced with learning at least one new set of business jargon— the client’s jargon — and often the industry-speak of the client’s clients as well.

The question is: How much jargon should we use in the content we create for our clients?

On the one hand, our job as marketing content writers is to help our clients show that they speak their clients’ language. On the other hand, peppering copy with too many industry-specific terms can alienate even the intended audience, not to mention the broader audience.

Jargon refers to terms and expressions used within a profession or industry that may be difficult for those outside the industry to understand. It often takes the form of shorthand for more complex processes. Often, jargon isn’t too difficult to figure out. For example, “capability uplift” is a human resource term that means investment in training and development to help employees build skills and knowledge. In the website development world, the term “breadcrumbs” is short for a site’s secondary navigation system that shows users the location of a webpage in relation to the rest of the site.

At the end of 2023, BTI Consulting Group released its yearly in-depth look at the legal services market, “BTI Practice Outlook 2024: Navigating Legal Spending and Needs in the New Unpredictable World.” BTI’s report (and follow-on webinar) suggested an increased demand for outside counsel hiring, predicting that this area of legal spend is on track to set another record in 2024. The anticipated growth is being driven by increased regulatory concerns, the rapid adoption of technology—including generative AI—across industries, employee activism, and the need for companies to be both resilient and innovative in the current economy. The report identified six industries (high tech, pharma, financial services, health care, private equity and food/agritech) and six practice areas (labor and employment, cybersecurity, commercial litigation, bet-the-company matters (including regulatory enforcement matters), class actions and intellectual property litigation) that BTI predicts are poised for rapid growth in legal spending.

Based on research interviews with general counsel and chief legal officers, the report also concluded that while clients are open to hiring new firms, there is a desire to give more work to a core group of their existing firms, in what BTI is calling “quiet convergence.”

A perennial question in legal services marketing is whether recognitions and rankings such as Chambers and Legal 500 actually have any impact on legal hiring. Just this week alone, I listened to two different guests on the same legal marketing podcast discuss this question. (The upshot: rankings are not entirely inconsequential, but they are not as impactful as the ranking organizations want you to believe.)

Participating in these programs is time-consuming and labor-intensive for lawyers and marketing professionals. Beyond the costs of those resources (or the cost of hiring an outsourced resource to assist with the submissions process), these programs are becoming increasingly expensive in other ways. Call it “shrinkflation.” While research-based ranking programs are typically not “pay to play” in that you don’t pay to submit, what you receive “for free” seems to be shrinking as the organizations running these programs offer more and costlier paid add-ons—enhanced firm and lawyer profiles, client and market intelligence reports, and extra “tools” for better submission development and management, for example.

If you’re not actively using LinkedIn, you’re missing out on opportunities to connect with clients and referral sources.

The No. 1 professional social media site, LinkedIn has evolved well beyond its roots as a digital job board in the almost 20 years it’s been around. As of June 2022, LinkedIn had more than 190 million users in the United States and 830 million worldwide, professionals from 149 industry categories, including Information Technology and Services (No. 1 as of January 2022), Hospital & Health Care (2), Construction (3), Financial Services (6), Accounting (7), Government Administration (11) and Banking (13) in the top 20 alone.

Your clients and referral sources are on LinkedIn, and so are your competitors (Law is No. 39).

You need to be there too.

Typos can be funny—funny when you discover them in someone else’s content, that is. Not so much when they are in yours.

On one hand, typos in any form of written content are inevitable—no content is 100% perfect, 100% of the time. On the other hand, recurring typos can damage a brand’s credibility.

A road sign recently erected in Pennsylvania pointing the way to Central Philadelphia misspelled the first word as “Cenrtal” (https://6abc.com/post/new-philadelphia-sign-misspelled-cottman-avenue-state-road/14994878/). The typo made international headlines, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation apologized and quickly corrected the sign, and life went on. Mistakes happen—not often writ that large—but they happen.

At a recent social event I attended, I met a lawyer — let’s call him Mark. When Mark heard that I run a content marketing agency focusing on legal services, he chuckled and said, “I bet you run into a lot of lawyers who think they know how to do marketing better than you do.” Before I could assure him that this was rarely a problem and that I very much enjoyed working with lawyers and law firms, Mark leaned in close to tell me that, in his opinion, “most law firms are doing it wrong” and “should be focusing on business development rather than marketing.” After imparting this piece of wisdom, he sat back with a satisfied smile.

As ironic as the scenario might have been, Mark’s suggestion started me thinking.

I read a statistic this week that hurts my marketing professional heart.

An estimated 60% to 70% of B2B marketing content goes unused.

Ouch.

The statistic actually refers to finalized content that then doesn’t get used in the marketing and sales process. It doesn’t include content that never gets over the finish line, for one reason or another.

It’s a tremendous waste of time, resources, money and good, effective content.

But it doesn’t surprise me. I regularly see all kinds of marketing content, at various stages of completion, go into a content black hole, never to see the light of day — and never to reach and influence its intended audience (which is, after all, the point of content).

Blogging has been a hot topic among the firms, lawyers and legal marketing professionals I work with lately—and for very good reason.

Done strategically and consistently, blogging can be an excellent visibility and engagement tool.

“Blogging” at its most basic is writing and regularly posting content in one dedicated location where your clients, prospects and referral sources can find it. It can help you connect, build and deepen your relationship with your target audiences—to be seen as a trusted resource for excellent information. Blogging regularly allow you to showcase your expertise and experience, as well as stay in front of the people who make or influence legal hiring decisions.

So, should you blog?

Maybe…

The theme for this week is rules, why they matter and when you can—and should—break them.

Earlier this week I worked with a lawyer on a firm-branded alert covering regulatory developments in a particular financial market sector that’s in the headlines right now. The copy was both informative and brimming with wit and humor around what the lawyer saw as regulators getting (perhaps unnecessarily) hot under the collar. I thought the piece was great and told her so. She promised the final draft by the end of the day, after the head of her department reviewed it. But when I received the final version a couple of hours later, all of the humor was gone—as was any hint of insight and opinion from the previous draft. All that was left was a straight, lawyerly reporting of the facts.

Effective legal marketing requires determining the right mix of marketing tactics and strategies for your firm. One way to sift through the options is to look at them in terms of push vs. pull marketing. Push marketing — sometimes called outbound marketing — involves proactively reaching out to potential clients and referral sources, presenting them with tailored content designed to capture their interest. On the other hand, pull — or inbound — marketing focuses on drawing clients to your firm by offering valuable content that addresses their needs and interests. For law firms, an approach that combines both can be a robust and effective strategy.

As a writer, I don’t understand the push to use artificial intelligence to craft creative content. Finding the right word and developing the perfect sentence can be a thrilling, aggravating and downright painful process. Don’t take that away from us!

As every writer knows, language continually evolves to reflect our changing culture. In September, Merriam-Webster added 690 new words to its dictionary. Is it me or does that seem like a lot of new words? They come from slang, emerging industries, and gaming, among other areas, and I wonder how many will be relevant in five years.

In a collaborative content process, lawyers as subject matter experts can conceptualize the topics and frame the discussion to address the needs and questions of their audiences, provide guidance and feedback throughout the process, and review, finalize and approve the content before release.

Do you know which AmLaw 200 law firm describes itself as: “Sophisticated counsel that partners with clients to manage risk and take advantage of an opportunity in an evolving market”?

Perhaps you recognize the firm that declares itself to be a global firm “dedicated to helping clients achieve their strategic business goals.”

Maybe you know the firm that is "a trusted advisor to corporations and individuals navigating complex legal landscapes”?

Actually, that last one was generated by ChatGPT from a prompt asking it to write the description of a law firm modeled after the current AmLaw 100 descriptions.

[I originally wrote this article after the complete solar eclipse that happened in 2017. At the time, I don’t think I was aware that we would have the chance to see another eclipse this year. The path of totality is much closer this time around, so I won’t be having nearly as grand an adventure for this one. That said, a total eclipse is an exciting and infrequent event—the next one visible in the U.S. is not for almost nine years—and the lessons from #Eclipse2017 are just as relevant today.]

A few weeks ago, I read about a case pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit about a dispute over $4.85 million in insurance proceeds. The issue at the heart of the case is whether the language of professional liability policy covers alleged gross negligence related to auditing work done by a consultancy.

The policy’s definition of covered management consulting services reads: “Services directed toward expertise in banking finance, accounting, risk and systems analysis, design and implementation, asset recovery and strategy planning for financial institutions.”

The insurer denied coverage, arguing that the phrase “for financial institutions” modifies the entire set of services and therefore the definition does not apply to the auditing work done for the client of the consultancy: a food distribution company.