Successful Thought Leadership for Law Firms

Although a somewhat pretentious-sounding expression, the “term thought leadership” has gained widespread usage across the business service and technology sectors and increasingly those working in law firm marketing. A quick Google search reveals over one million pages using the expression, including numerous consultancies paying it for the privilege of their link appearing when the term is input.

Whether you like the term or not, it is about the inarguably beneficial practice of establishing a clear lead in a market through identifying major trends early, aligning your services with meeting the consequences of these trends, positioning your firm as the market leaders and, ideally, charging a premium through being recognised as the leader in this area.

Where it differs from more established marketing is its emphasis on building a reputation for expertise through sharing new ideas with clients and other opinion-formers – ideas that are interesting, relevant and thought-provoking. (As opposed to much standard practice of hitting prospects over the head with a fat brochure full of credentials). Simple in theory, but much harder in practice. Perhaps as a consequence the term has become widely debased by people using it to cover many forms of marketing communications

The main tool consultancy and larger accountancy firms use to position themselves as having leading expertise is through commissioning research into the opinions of executives or other decision-makers. Indeed this is such a common tactic for them that the large accounting firms issued more survey-based research in January than all the leading law firms combined in the whole of 2007.

But even when the large law firms did invest in opinion research, their output falls wide of the mark with many merely presenting the research findings with little interpretation or development of the implications from their findings.

One example of the right approach was a report published last year by Osborne Clarke into the sourcing strategies of large businesses. Research as part of this, undertaken by Acritas, allowed Osborne Clark to identify that two thirds of businesses now take a more collaborative ‘open-book’ approach to working with their suppliers, forming the basis for them to provide advice on the implications of this shift to a less adversarial relationship with suppliers.

However, thought leadership is not something that is reserved for big firms who can afford research agencies. Smaller law firms, especially those who find themselves competing against teams in large firms, have the most to gain by combining their nimbleness, lack of client conflicts and coal-face insights to help them stand out.


So why should lawyers care about being thought leaders?
Lawyers have always attempted to establish their intellectual firepower through publishing erudite articles on rulings and other legal developments. However, such articles are generally only read by other lawyers so this has become of less relevance in today’s business world. The challenge for lawyers is to combine their understanding of the law with emerging trends, interpreting the consequences of these in order to engage with clients and prospects at a more strategic level. Once this relationship is established the door is open to providing services to deal with these trends.

Researcher Fiona Czerniawska identifies six reasons for seeking to establish thought leadership: internal knowledge sharing; recognition among clients; reinforcing relationships; lead generation; differentiation; and/or agenda setting. Generally, the more senior-level an audience you need to reach, the more your material needs to be at a strategic, public policy and ‘agenda setting’ level: the lower down the corporate hierarchy, the more technical and specific the content should be.

For example, one of my clients embarked on a thought leadership campaign because its senior banking clients had stopped coming to its partners for their opinion when they had a major problem. This is exactly the sort of reputation problem that a campaign of insightful research can address when backed up by a strong and persistent marketing campaign, providing the firm with strong content and insights to enable it to re-engage at board level, combined with media coverage providing a public reaffirmation of them being leading commentators.

This of course highlights an important aspect to bear in mind. Thought leadership campaigns are hard work, time-consuming and are a long-term investment. The final report won’t market itself – seminars, meetings, PR, mailings, newsletters, articles and presentations are all needed to rapidly disseminate insights while they are still fresh, using the relationships generated to gain appointments for your firm. Clearly a plan is required and resources identified. An understanding managing partner or departmental head is essential.

How to start a thought leadership programme

Firms should not see thought leadership as equating to doing an opinion survey or other forms of research into emerging issues. Certainly surveys are good ways of getting robust and interesting material for reports, but if you can’t afford opinion research there are other options. First, you need interesting hypotheses and developing these is key. Your own experience may point you in good directions, but you need to beware of lawyers with strong views or a narrow perspective (including yourself) being too prescriptive. Perspectives from clients and industry participants are needed.

I recommend starting with discussion dinners where clients and your colleagues discuss industry issues in the broadest terms. Not only are these easy to do and convivial, the insights emerging from these, if facilitated properly, will be hugely beneficial in informing your next steps, aside from any additional business development opportunities such events can generate. Thorough desk research (that is, reviewing research by other firms and bodies) is important. It will throw up ideas, it may well provide useful data, and it certainly will help you avoid investing in research that someone else has recently done. Certainly, the insights from this alone may well have opened up numerous opportunities for engaging with clients and as content for a PR programme or the basis for further, more detailed, research programme.

For more details about Kelso Consulting and its award-winning thought leadership PR campaigns, please click this link kelsopr.com.