Lawyers finally start considering an holistic approach to serving their clients

For a long time I have advocated that lawyers should reach beyond the narrow confines of their legal specialism in order to meet the wider needs of their clients and also to be innovative in developing new services - which seems particularly important with the threat of massive changes in the legal market as a result of the Legal Services Act.

On the private client side of the market I have suggested that solicitors leverage their trusted adviser status that they have with, for example, elderly clients to provide a range of related services such as property and contractor maintenance or a care homes check up service to reassure distant family members. Having psychology training in the past I couldn't understand why lawyers managing particularly stressful situations - such as divorce, redundancy, major accidents and bereavement - didn't work in collaboration with mental and physical health advisers to provide a more holistic solution.

So it was with great delight that yesterday I attended a lunchtime session, run by an eminent psychiatrist from The Priory, for the lawyers and support staff at Seddons solicitors. The purpose of the fast overview of the world of psychiatry (covering topics such as affective disorders, anxiety, stress and addiction - how to spot potential problems and the likely treatments available) was both as a responsible employer to ensure that staff were aware of the dangers of mental illness that affects one in four of the population at some point in their life but, more importantly, how the lawyers can identify such problems in their clients and then refer them to the appropriate help when required.

It's a small step towards an integrated psychology-physical-practical-legal solution but an important one.

Lawyers move from the dark side into marketing

Whilst drafting an article on the future challenges for those with marketing careers in the legal profession for Legal Marketing magazine, I pondered on the trend of qualified and experienced lawyers moving into marketing careers.

Many years ago it was suggested as an alternative career to returning female lawyers who did not want to try to cram a six day legal working week into three days or for those whose firms felt that they could not be part time litigators. More enlightened firms saw it is a neat way to resource the business development team with people who really understood the product, wouldn’t have to battle to gain acceptance and buy-in from busy lawyers and who could hold their own in a conversation with in-house counsel. And anyway, how often do you have to deploy your hard won marketing theory and professional qualifications in a law firm anyway?

So it was interesting the other day to provide some sales coaching to one such lawyer turned business developer at a City firm. Essentially, he was a formerly high profile lawyer who had been relieved of his fee-earning targets and given the full time task of driving a pan-European team to focus on key account management. With little more than one or two days training in selling.

So I talked through some relatively simple tools to help him guide his team towards developing a structured analysis of those clients, set some clear goals (to focus attention and report back on progress), undertake research and compile client profiles and prepare some preliminary account plans with support from some issues based campaign planning. And I threw in some ideas on how he might get the partners in the various departments and countries to devote the necessary time and attention to helping his team effectively cross-sell into their highly protected clients. I have no doubt that he will deliver some stunning results in a relatively short amount of time.

So it doesn’t take much to get a lawyer up and running with some standard tools so that they can effectively do the job that many marketers spent years studying and perhaps decades honing their skills. But I felt uneasy. The reason is that professionally trained marketing people know that the starting point is always the client. And his or her needs for the future. And that we must start with really developing our knowledge of that client and identifying ways in which we might add real value to them. Non-marketers start from their own perspective – “what I want from this client is XYZ”. A fundamentally different approach. Furthermore, trained marketers will be attuned to how the initiatives aimed at one or two key clients might impact on the rest of the client base and even the firm overall and be grappling with a multitude of strategic issues spanning service development, market development, internal communications, pricing and brand development. So I don’t think that we will see the metamorphosis of lawyers into marketers as a threat, more like an additional texture to the rich weave of marketing in the legal sector.

Some of the other challenges explored in the article include: the digital revolution, the divergence of marketing and business development, the emergence of awareness and relationship roles, the need for coaching experience, the increasing value of international experience and the opportunities presented by the Legal Services Act.

Professional service marketers face challenging syllabus change

On Wednesday evenings after a hard day in the office between 6pm and 8pm, a group of dedicated young marketers from the professional services sector study hard for their Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) professional qualifications in the lovely Barclays building in Canary Wharf. As well as some students from Barclays there are large and small, international and domestic firms of accountants and lawyers represented.

Whilst the particular diploma course that they are studying is tailored to the particular needs of professional services marketing (through Cambridge Marketing College), they do have to cover the normal syllabus of the qualifications – which means that they also develop an understanding of consumer and industrial marketing methods and case studies.

Yet the syllabus is about to change. The current syllabus builds on the knowledge of the previous level – it has a kind of elegance although some found it repetitive:

Certificate
• Marketing fundamentals
• Marketing environment
• Customer communications
• Marketing in practice

Diploma (The courses are currently available for professional service marketing and designed for the average age of students between mid to late 20s. Currently general students can choose either a three hour examination or an assignment of 7,500 words)
• Marketing planning
• Market research and information
• Marketing communications (this is the one that I am presently teaching part- time)
• Marketing management in practice

Post graduate diploma (This is positioned as a Masters level course and some see it as an alternative to an MBA)
• Strategic marketing decisions
• Analysis and evaluation
• Marketing management processes
• Strategic marketing in practice

In future, the diploma and post graduate diplomas will be as follows:

Diploma
• Marketing planning process (Marketing plan preparation assignment. This is similar to before – a focus on the marketing audit, segmentation, targeting and positioning and marketing planning in different environments/markets)

• Project management in marketing (Work based project assignment. This is a major but well timed departure from before – as increasingly in the professions I am being asked to assist on project management training. Risk management is also covered in some detail)

• Delivering customer value through marketing (Exam on pre-seen case study. Happily, this seems to have more emphasis and linkage between innovation, product development and branding which is somewhat lacking in the current syllabus. It also appears to address ROI and contractual requirements of channel partners more effectively. But marketing communications is now just one element of this paper)

• Managing marketing (A work based assignment. This now addresses marketing infrastructure, quality and effectiveness measurement in a more coherent way. The section on managing marketing teams looks suitably pragmatic – particularly in the international context and there is finally material on operational finance).

Post graduate diploma – stage one
• Emerging themes (This addresses the point that marketing is undergoing phenomenal change and will continue to do so in the future – delivery will be through master classes, podcasts and webinars but essentially self-managed learning). Assessment will be based on the writing of a journal article.

• Analysis and decision (The stretch from marketing audit to strategic audit and financial and risk analysis play a key part. Pre-seen case study examination)

• Marketing leadership and planning (Helping to see how to implement strategic initiatives at Board level. Assessed on a work based project)

• Managing corporate reputation (Aspects of the communications process – particularly brand - have been returned to the post graduate level to reflect their increasing importance in today’s market. Assessed on one compulsory task and one elective from three options).

Post graduate diploma – stage two
This paves the way for Chartered Marketing status. Students must adopt one of the emerging themes from stage one and, through a programme of facilitated self-learning, prepare a work project. This will be assessed in three phases – project definition, project implementation and assessment and self-review and professional development plan. The focus is on developing practical and business skills and the influence of modern coaching is evident).

It still seems a little light on the huge impact of the digital marketplace and digital marketing methods but maybe as the materials are produced this will be addressed. Also, there is still a lack of sales and business development content to really meet the needs of the professions - although CIM would probably argue that it offers a similar course structure for those in sales and account management roles.

Overall, it seems that professional marketing qualifications are really growing up and recognise that marketing has developed into a more sophisticated function which has a much greater role to play at Board level in commercial and NFP development. I look forward to meeting the new “graduates” in due course – they should be very impressive marketers.