A recent survey of corporate counsel by Greentarget showed that articles, speeches, bios and blog postings – content that commonly lives on law firm websites – were among the “most important” in helping companies evaluate outside counsel for hire (see chart below).
This finding should cause every law firm to pause. Why? Because it means that law firms directly control 3 of the top 4 criteria by which in-house counsel evaluate their attorneys. Wow.
As I see it, based on this data, every law firm marketing department should be focusing on two things:
- Producing good content: This involves encouraging attorneys to produce more and better “thought leadership” content like articles, speeches and blog postings.
- Better presentation of content: This primarily means beefing up the firm’s website to make thought-leadership content more accessible. The focus of this effort should probably be improving and expanding the attorney bios.
Greentarget asked 164 in-house counsel to indicate the importance of various criteria in helping them research outside attorneys and law firms for potential hire. The number in the right-hand column shows the percentage of respondents that deemed that criterion to be among the “most important.”