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Law firm marketing is coming of age



Law Firms’ Marketing May Finally Be Growing Up; Competitive Pressures Cited

There was a time when marketing by law firms was legally limited to hanging out a sign or lunching and golfing with prospective clients. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down restrictions on lawyers advertising in 1977, but it wasn’t until this month that a large, mainstream firm ran an ad on national TV.

The legal profession’s acceptance of marketing has been slow, almost grudging. But competitive pressures from both within and without in recent years have spurred an interest in and commitment to marketing among firms.

“Initially, it’s been the big firms, but now the mid-size firms are catching on, too,” said Jennifer Jones, the Newport Beach-based senior vice president of West Coast business development for Herrmann Advertising Design/Communications, which specializes in marketing law firms.

One reflection of this new attention to marketing is the salaries being given to marketing directors at the largest firms. Last year, The American Lawyer magazine reported,with a sense of wonder,that recent hires to those positions were getting $300,000 to $400,000 a year.

Certainly the most visible effort,and the best funded, according to many in the profession,is Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP’s 2-year-old initiative to make itself known as a firm for technology and emerging growth firms. That effort culminated this month with the debut of a TV ad on CNN.

“At the stage we’ve now reached, the advertising primarily is focused on branding,” said Kathlene Lowe, Brobeck’s managing partner in Irvine, adding that the TV spots are “unprecedented” in the profession.

With animation by Venice-based Digital Domain Inc., whose other credits include “Titanic” and “The Grinch,” the Brobeck ad depicts a sleek train hurtling headlong through an icy landscape toward a mountain, when a god-like hand descends from the clouds and creates a pass for the train to roll straight through. The tagline is the motto Brobeck has used throughout its campaign: “Brobeck. When your future is at stake.”

David Geyer, a former executive at J. Walter Thompson in Los Angeles and marketing director at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC who now heads Brobeck’s marketing, said the effect of a TV ad is hard to quantify. But “we’ve received solid playback from our clients and attorneys. It’s resonating throughout our target sector, emerging growth companies,” he said.

He added that the firm’s targets “are the most sophisticated buyers. I believe they will equate a sophisticated message with sophisticated service.”

Indeed, the ad is a far cry from a fast-talking lawyer sitting behind a desk and urging injured, fired or DUI-cited viewers to call his office,the state of the art in TV legal advertising for two decades.

Also a far cry from the historical norm is Brobeck’s marketing budget: $3.5 million for the TV spot alone, plus maybe another $2 million or more for print ads, its Web site and corollary materials.

“That’s hugely different than at other firms,” said Jolene Overbeck, the Los Angeles-based national business development director for Latham & Watkins.

Geyer noted that law is “a profession where the time-honored way of developing business is personal relationships, and only recently have some firms become large enough to afford to build a brand by traditional marketing means.”

But Merry Neitlich, managing partner of Irvine-based JM Associates, which consults with law firms on marketing, said the profession spends less on marketing as a percentage of expenditures than most industries: about 1% to 3% of the budget at most firms, compared with 7% to 9% in most other sectors. Neitlich said she recommends that her law-firm clients fund their marketing in the 3%-to-5% range.

Jones also noted that until recently many managing and senior partners seemed to think that “stooping” to advertising would diminish rather than enhance their standing with their clients.

“There was a fear of what clients will think about how the money is being spent,” she said. “But when we survey their clients, the overwhelming attitude is ‘Hey, we have to advertise. We know why it’s important.’ ”

Jones also said that many firms’ clientele is diversifying, so their marketing needs a broader reach.

“They used to be the in-house counsel,” she said, and advertising was concentrated on those magazines that target corporate counsel.

Now, she said, the potential clients include the chief executives of start-ups and sometimes even department heads, such as human resources directors. Many are Gen-Xers, raised on TV and sophisticated advertising.

“Age-wise and socio-economically, they’re more diverse,” she said, and what appeals to them is “more sophisticated concepts in the creative.”

“It’s an opportunity to develop some extremely sophisticated ads,” she said, adding that intellectual-property practices, with their wide range of clients, have an especially fertile field to cultivate.

Morrison & Foerster’s ads featuring a surfer and the shortened moniker “mofo”,which run in tech-oriented magazines such as Red Herring,are an example of appealing to a younger audience, she said.

Jones also said the push by financial services firms, especially accounting’s Big Five, to create European-style multidisciplinary practices that include a full range of legal services is spurring major law firms to begin branding to try to pre-empt the field in public perception.

Overbeck said that advertising is just one component of the full spectrum of marketing, which also includes public relations efforts, direct mail and targeted marketing to existing clients. But it is advertising that has had “a real burst” in the past few years.

As for the marketing by other law firms, she said, “probably 80% is not very effective. Firms are not willing to spend what they need to spend to create an effective campaign, they don’t use the right outside people, or their message is muddled.”

She said firms that are strategically focused and “know where they want to go” are most likely to have good marketing. Those that are not sure what they want in their marketing or in which the partners micromanage the marketing are the least successful, she said.

“Brobeck is focused,” Overbeck noted, “and it’s done a very good job of branding itself as a tech-oriented firm.”

But Brobeck’s approach isn’t for everyone, she said.

“The image you want to project differs from firm to firm based on their strategic objectives,” she said. “Advertising will work better for some than for others.”

As for her firm, Overbeck said Latham & Watkins’ aims are two-fold: raising the profile of the firm in target sectors and outreach in international markets.

Jerry Cooksey, marketing director in the Newport Beach office of Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear LLP, reacted to the Brobeck ad by noting that “the general public is not our market.”

Nevertheless, he said, “Everybody’s kind of waiting to see how it shakes out. Law firm marketing is interesting in that everybody is watching everybody else to see what they do.”

Geyer said he doesn’t expect a rush to TV among law firms, at least not for a while.

“I think we’re likely to see a pattern similar to what happened with the Big Five, when Arthur Andersen started using TV,” he said. “About five years later, the others joined in. I don’t think it will take as long (with law firms), but having been through the process, I can tell you it’s a long one.”

As for the future, Geyer said, “we try to differentiate ourselves, and will do that one way or another. The field is full of providers that essentially offer the same services, so you have to find a way to stand out.”

Jones also cites “differentiation” as the latest buzzword in legal marketing, and she thinks mid-size regional firms might be able to do that more easily than the international giants.

“They can stake a geographical claim,” she said. “A lot of the appeals now are geographic or industry-oriented. There’s a move (among mid-size firms) to more niche marketing.” n

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