Case Study: Improving Directory Submissions Process Efficiency
Background
The client is a Southeast Asian law firm with multiple offices, specialising in business law and TMT. The firm is modernising and expanding and recently hired a new marketing team.
The Marketing Legal was asked to assist with developing a series of processes to assist the inexperienced business development team with getting the most out of directories and awards submissions.
Challenges
There were a few challenges the firm wanted to overcome:
The firm had recently restructured its teams and was unsure where to target their efforts in relation to directories.
The marketing team had little experience with directories submissions.
Solutions and Results
We agreed to work with the firm over the period of a year to embed various efficient processes for legal directories.
Practice area targeting
The firm had recently restructured its teams. Practice groups and team heads didn’t quite map onto the practice areas specified in the guides.
In tandem with the client, The Marketing Legal conducted an analysis of the new practice groups and provided suggestions in relation to where the firm’s submission efforts would be most effective.
As a result, we identified nine categories common to Legal 500 and Chambers where the firm could make progress and demonstrate high quality work, which would serve as the basis of its legal directories efforts going forward.
Submissions support
The client wanted to use The Marketing Legal as the main focal point for directories submissions for the period of a year, to put in place best practice templates for each practice area.
In previous years, submissions had been put together by fee earners and coverage of the firm’s practice areas was patchy and inconsistent. The firm had implemented a new marketing strategy, which involved hiring a new team. The team had not previously handled directories submissions and needed guidance.
The Marketing Legal was hired to work on all nine of the firm’s practice area submissions, producing high quality work that adhered to the requirements of the directories in a researcher-friendly manner.
The firm will have access to a legal directories insider for the period of a year. It will result in a consistent work product and mean that the firm can submit to all relevant legal directories categories, rather than a few of them and provide structure to the new marketing team’s directories output that the can implement in future years.
Team development and training
The Marketing Legal delivered two training sessions to the team providing actionable insights into the process.
The first session centred on the process of putting together a submission from start to finish and included strategies for collecting deal highlights from practice groups, creating ranking arguments for the firm and individuals, presenting information in a researcher-friendly manner and best practice for referee spreadsheets.
The second session related to how to get the best out of communications with the directories. This session focused on the general purpose of interviews, how to get an interview, how to prepare for an interview, a detailed breakdown of standard interview questions, common mistakes lawyers make during interviews. It also covered communications after guide launches and how to query ranking decisions.
The training gave the marketing team a head start when putting together submissions, drawing on the expertise of a legal directories insider. This is the first step in putting together an efficient, replicable process for directories submissions and interview preparation throughout the year. We also assisted with the creation of keystone documents, including interview preparation guidelines and model submission content.
Conclusion
With the help of The Marketing Legal, the client can put in place a long-term strategy for handling legal directories, with the benefit of our inside knowledge.
The firm will be able to increase the number of submissions it enters and improve the overall quality of its output, through the templates we’re putting in place and via the training we’re offering the team. This will significantly improve the efficiency of the submissions process for the firm giving it the best chance of improving the visibility of the firm and its lawyers in the Legal 500 and Chambers.