Lawyer Marketing Strategies for Lawyers Marketing Strategy Mix

Hong Kong-based solicitor Kenneth To takes a positive view of such strategies, observing that "Traditionally the most common marketing methods used by the legal profession have included writing articles, providing newsletters and legal credentials to clients, speaking at seminars, doing topical studies, sponsoring sporting events, publishing brochures, setting up websites, giving press interviews and placing advertisements. And a survey conducted by consultants Wheeler Associates reported that the most effective promotional methods are seminars, newsletters, conference presentations, and research."

1.1 Providing professional information newsletters

As one of the important means of reaching out to clients, many of China's leading firms have their own legal publications edited and published on a regular basis, featuring information on China's legal dynamics, major policy enactments, laws and case studies, and firm developments, which are distributed electronically or in print to their existing and potential client base. 2.1 Conducting market and professional research

The firm can appoint specialized professional support lawyers or set up a special research department to engage in professional research on new legal issues and projects, and regularly publish the firm's various legal practice research reports and results, so as to build up the image of a market leader and visibility among clients. 3.1 Tangible services

Tangible services have many specific contents, from macro to micro aspects can be implemented. Micro aspects such as treating a nagging customer patience, quickly answer and reply to customer calls, unified standardized style of paperwork until the clean, neat office environment, can be your service to focus on the interests of customers, rigorous professionalism and other intangible concepts conveyed to the customer in such a tangible way. Macro aspects such as the implementation of ISO service quality control system, take the case team model, take the initiative to report to the customer on a regular basis, the quality of the case regularly review the system, the case return visit system, etc., to establish the customer in the level of professionalism, the quality of service, the sense of trust, so as to cultivate the customer's satisfaction and loyalty to the firm.

3.2 Information service

Modern technology has been widely used in China's leading firms, in addition to multi-threaded exchange systems, computer-assisted work, such as conflict of interest review system, lawyers' fee management system, work log management system, business archive management system, telecommuting system, legal information retrieval system, and so on, a number of computer systems and networks. Technical support for the internal local area network has been applied to the firm's daily work, greatly improving the efficiency of the firm's work.

3.3 Team-based services

At present, most of the firms in China are still stuck in the level of the lawyer's business alone, the business of self-revenue from the self-management, and occasionally joint cases are also in a very loose cooperative relationship, and there is no formation of a close *** with the development of the economic basis. The disadvantages of this way is obvious, a lawyer's time and energy is limited, at the same time for too many cases, it is easy to take care of; Secondly, at the same time for too many types of cases, can not carry out in-depth professional research, and over time has become a "oil" lawyer.

Only in a few leading firms in Beijing and Shanghai can we see a close-knit team service model. For example, the "King & Wood Mallesons Model" - a system of division of labor and cooperation among specialized departments, the "Zhengshi Yongshen Model" - a system of specialized committees, organizing lawyers and co-counsel. The "King & Wood Mallesons Model" - a system of division of labor and cooperation among professional departments, and the "Masazumi Yongshen Model" - a system of hierarchical responsibility among professional committees, organizing attorneys, and co-counsel are all relatively unique team models. These models are characterized by two features: first, the implementation of the senior lawyer (partner) overall responsibility system, that is, the senior lawyer (partner) to take the lead in charge of each case fees and quality control; second, the realization of professional and technical support, that is, the professional departments at any time for the handling of the case team to provide technical support.

In the complex legal service projects or permanent legal counseling services, the most can highlight the advantages of the team model. For example, the acquisition of a Chinese company by a foreign investor requires many legal aspects, such as corporate, securities, finance, intellectual property rights, taxation, etc. Only a close-knit team can provide legal services in various aspects at the same time. In the perennial legal services, customers need to consult and design legal services may involve various aspects of the project, if the team model for customers to provide services, will be more powerful to ensure the quality of service. One obvious difference between domestic and foreign lawyers is the variety of legal services. Of course, the service varieties first by the social and economic development level of constraints, followed by the overall quality of lawyers and service concept. At present, the overall level of Chinese lawyers, first, a single knowledge structure, most lawyers in addition to a certain understanding of the law, the knowledge of other industries is extremely lack of, engaged in lawyers and lack of continuous self-study and further training, so most lawyers can only according to their original business direction, difficult to develop new areas and new business; Second, the market sensitivity and research is not enough, all day long! Exhausted in the specific business, little attention to the national macroeconomic policies on the legal services market impact and change.

As a leading firm, first of all, to win in the competition, it is necessary to maintain sensitivity to the development trend of the legal services market, timely introduction of innovative service varieties, to obtain the market first entry advantage. Perhaps some people think that the so-called new business are some of the business is very small amount of pioneering work, its value is not much, this is a wrong view. For example, guangdong south of the Desai law firm in 1997 had been the first to launch the second-hand building mortgage law business, although the development of the initial stage is difficult, but constantly adhere to, and then the market share up to 90% of the second-hand building transactions in guangzhou, has become one of the main sources of business income.

In addition, from the point of view of mining and enhance the value of legal services, we can try to develop a "legal prevention program. As mentioned earlier, the lawyer's marketing is now focused on the "situation value" marketing level, belonging to the speculative marketing tools. In fact, the deep value of legal services lies in the prevention, for customers, loss prevention is always much more important than loss control. Just like a doctor's regular medical checkups for his clients, a legal prevention program reminds clients to fix legal loopholes in advance through regular checkups of their legal affairs, thus effectively avoiding financial losses and creating a smooth and fluid career for them. As Canadian author Diana Pitt observes, "Today's labor lawyers are no longer wearing the same old robes of the past; their practice includes training corporate clients, giving them seminars, and providing legal prevention counseling, among other services." In order to maintain customer loyalty, it is essential to establish a mechanism for feedback and handling of customer information. For example, a unified customer relationship management system should be set up to conduct regular tracking surveys of customer opinions; in the process of case handling, customers' opinions should be regularly investigated and consulted, and timely improvements should be made to improve customer satisfaction; after the case is closed, all case documents should be organized into a booklet, and sent to the customer for review and signing of the closure opinion; after the case is closed, there should also be regular return visits to keep the customer's loyalty; and for the long-time inactive customers, the For long-term inactive clients, they should be contacted and informed on a regular basis, and given free information publications or legal prevention programs.

In addition, for customers who purchase services again or buy long-term services at one time, a variety of incentives should be given that are significantly different from new customers. For example:

Recurring Client Fee or Service Discounts - For repeat clients with multiple engagements, a tiered discount on the price of the service or a free plan for the legal service in question.

Fees or service concessions for long-term service relationships - for clients who have signed long-term service contracts, fee concessions with different discount registrations or free gifts of legal service plans are given. Law firms can establish service alliances, collaborative networks or chain consumer programs. In order to improve the comprehensive service capacity, expand the scope of services and industry influence, the firm can with different geographical or field of law firms, accounting firms, appraisal agencies and other intermediaries, as well as industry associations combined with the legal services alliance or strategic partners, jointly provide customers with training, consulting, information exchanges, business concessions and other series of promotional programs. For example, some firms have tried to implement chain consumer discount programs, i.e., forming consumer discount alliances with similar service groups such as insurance companies and intermediary organizations to provide clients with discounts on the consumption of legal services. The advantage of this practice is that it can rely on the strength of other service groups to broaden their marketing surface and increase market awareness.

Secondly, marketing networks can be established through professional exchanges. By participating in the activities of various associations, participating in professional seminars, you can get to know the elite of various industries, establish a wide range of business networks, timely understanding and grasp of the relevant industry trends and adjust the service mode in response to the development of various industries.

Thirdly, the firm can hire expert advisory groups in the form of a wide range of experts and scholars, government departments, professional organizations to establish information exchanges and professional collaborative relationships, which can establish a network of information exchanges and mutual referral of customers.