Thought leadership: how to overcome budget constraints

According to Passle’s 2024 Legal Marketing Leadership Survey, published in August, managing partners and CMOs at 200 of the top law firms in the UK, US and Canada said their top priorities for driving growth over the next 12 months were investing in digital and becoming thought leaders.

But how best to go about the latter?

The days of simply producing regular legal briefings for general counsel that outline how new laws may apply to their business are over. While there is still value in such content, law firm CMOs are increasingly targeting a wider group of senior business executives for whom legal jargon is just a barrier to doing business.

These business leaders are demanding certain ingredients in the thought leadership being served up to them:

 

– Insights founded on credible research

– Truly unique ideas, insight and storytelling

– A clear and compelling narrative

– Solutions to specific business challenges; and

– Case studies that back up your recommendations

 

One established approach to achieving this is to invest in data-driven thought leadership. But what does that mean?

Traditionally, many firms have adopted what we would refer to as a “quantitative” approach to data: that is to say, they invest in the surveying of various ‘stakeholders’ in a particular sector (i.e. investors such as investment banks, pension funds, private equity and venture capital – depending on the sector) and then develop a compelling narrative from those findings.

Whether conducted in-house or via an external agency (such as Lextel), this can involve soliciting feedback from between 100 to 1,000 market ‘participants’ across multiple regions of the world. The net result is a report, typically between 5,000 and 6,000 words in length, based on survey findings, background research and qualitative comments from the surveys (with charts summarising survey data and feedback).

While these types of data-rich reports are favoured by general counsel and senior business executives – many of whom will only hire lawyers/law firms that have demonstrated subject matter expertise – they come with their challenges. Here are three to be aware of:

 

– Survey responses – qualitative comments from respondents are often a mixed bag. Not every survey respondent will elaborate on their tick-the-box answers with the sort of prose Shakespeare would be proud of. Indeed, in many cases, English will not be the first language and some of the nuance can be lost in translation. Use in the final report of the most insightful and fulsome comments doesn’t necessarily suggest the omission of many others. Oh yes, and they’re almost always submitted on an anonymous basis making it impossible to assess their relevance.

 

– Budget – one law firm Comms head once told me that their firm’s approach to thought leadership was often “a budget in search of an idea”. While many firms are rightly allocating significant budget to thought leadership, the reality is that these budgets are often a fraction of those enjoyed by other professional services firms (such as the large accountancies). And yet, law firm content is very much competing for the same “quality eyeballs”. Start with the idea, and then find the budget.

 

– Multiple stakeholders – one way that legal marketers try to secure additional budget for a major campaign is to tap multiple practice groups or regional groups within the firm. While this can be effective, it can also create headaches. For example, each group that has contributed budget is naturally invested in the outcome and will want the campaign to be tailored to their goals. But achieving this result for multiple practice groups, or regions, can dilute the messaging and subsequent impact of the campaign.

 

An alternative approach to generating compelling thought leadership content is what we would refer to as the “qualitative” methodology. This involves deep-dive interviews with a dozen or less market commentators with a defined set of issues (some, but not all, of whom will be from the ‘buy-side’), and then presenting the findings to your firm’s own experts for their insights and analysis.

One advantage of this more “qualitative” approach to thought leadership is that it can be more cost-effective than a “quantitative” survey-style approach (and therefore more suitable perhaps for a single practice group with limited budget). It can also be more enlightening (assuming you have employed interviewers who have experience in asking the right types of questions) as it enables you to sense-check a proposed angle with a small group of stakeholders and articulate their (attributable) views on where the market is going or where the challenges lie.

In addition, this “qualitative” approach minimises partner time (enabling them to focus on what they do best) and empowers the firm to respond more quickly to market trends with topical insights (rival firms will no doubt be circling similar themes but may favour a data-rich survey approach, which can turn into an expensive fishing exercise).

Senior business executives, including general counsel, spend a significant portion of their working week staying up to date with the latest news and trends. According to Passle’s 2023 General Counsel Survey, many GCs use their law firm’s website as their main source of information, with more than half (52%) visiting it at least once a week and a further third (34%) at least once a month. However, just 8% of GCs thought that law firms delivered enough timely, relevant content to the market.

Connor Kinnear, CMO at Passle, noted: “Clients want law firms that can keep them updated with relevant news and demonstrate their expertise in an engaging and accessible way. The obvious platform for this is a law firm’s website and those who don’t value the importance of regular, relevant content updates are missing a trick.”

He added: “Whatever platform you’re using, strong content is key. Thought leadership, in particular, can help firms differentiate themselves and, in such a crowded and competitive marketplace, is fast becoming essential for those who want to stand out.”