1. Education over perspiration What is litigation? Do your current clients know a) that you exist and b) what you do? If the answer to either or, worse, both questions is “probably not” or even “no”, you need to tell them. Look through your firm’s database and identify the clients most likely to require litigious services and ask the lead partner for a warm introduction. This gives you a chance to make contact, build rapport and drop in some well-chosen anecdotes relating to previous actions you’ve concluded for clients in a similar line of business. The purpose of these meetings is education, not to sell. Let people know you exist and how you could help them if the need ever arises. And – better still – farming your clientbase is easier, less time consuming and more productive than chasing new prospects will ever be. 2. Change your stance, think ‘avoidance’ Most people think litigation is scary – it’s expensive, it’s time consuming and any action will be confrontational and unpleasant. People don’t want to get into a situation where they have to litigate.

When you talk to contacts and clients concentrate on providing practical tips on how to avoid getting into that situation not on what to do once you are in it. It may sound like psychological mumbo-jumbo but it works. People will assimilate you with saving them money and anguish which will in turn make them more disposed to using you should the need arise. 3. ‘How to ...’ With that in mind, could you prepare simple 1 page bullet-points outlining such practical advice? A simple range of top tips that’ll give potential clients the watch-outs in their particular situation? This resultant sheet gives you something useful - maybe even novel - you can: Send out to both current and

prospective clients

Append to your page on the website that will (presented properly) improve your position in the search engines

Distribute via LinkedIn and Twitter

Email over to follow-up with new contacts

Use to win speaking slots or article space in the right publications

10 ½ ways to market litigation Tenandahalf top tips: August 2012

4. Get in early All too often litigation is seen as the last throw of the dice, “we’ve tried everything else, now we’ll have to get the litigators in”. Quite often the polar opposite is true. Getting a litigators point of view earlier can result in a different course of action, a course of action that will settle the matter more quickly and, as a result, at a lower cost than progressing every legal avenue before ending up at litigation. The only thing is, do your clients know that? One of our clients has gone one stage further by producing a flow chart for one of their repeat clients showing them exactly where to get the litigation team involved. Yes, it’s slightly reduced spend by action but they now receive a much larger number of instructions which means the client’s total legal spend has actually increased. 5. RRM – referrer relationship management Everyone has heard about CRM but for a litigator it’s your referrers that are the lifeblood of your practice. Separate your contacts into three groups – your best referrers (‘Key Business introducers’), your tier 2 and those who you think could introduce much more and make sure you diarise meetings (phone and face-to-face) throughout the

year, the frequency of which would be according to their importance. Keep in contact with email and LinkedIn in between times. And once you’ve set your diary – stick to it. And remember your referrers must be internal and external. Make sure you manage your key relationships within the firm as well as in the business community in general – your colleagues have the ability to refer a large volume of work but you need to manage them. Maintain your visibility with continual discussions and don’t just make contact as and when you need work. 6. Your clients have networks too Your referrer relationship management should end with your network – all of your clients have networks around them and all of those contacts are potential clients (even the other solicitors they know as they could be conflicted out of a potential action). If you concentrate on three things:

doing the best job possible

remaining communicative, responsive, approachable throughout

staying in touch after the conclusion of the action

your clients will recommend you to their contacts when their regular conversations uncover the right circumstances. And the best bit? This extra layer of advocates will produce new work with no cost of sale.

7. Get in on team meetings And speaking of advocates, there are none better than your own colleagues. The only thing is do they know exactly what you do? And are you always front of mind in case their clients need you? Find out when your firm’s departmental meetings are and make sure you invite yourself to speak. Stress the benefits your colleagues’ clients will enjoy by getting you involved early, tell them the spectrum of work you do using specific examples (including the successful outcome), explain the types of work you want and the clients you work best with. To generate the best level of return this can’t be a one-off exercise, it’s something you will have to repeat regularly throughout the year. 8. Internal seminar programme Pretty much every firm in the UK now runs a regular seminar programme for clients and prospects but how many of these seminars include contentious content alongside non-contentious? Whatever the subject is, there has to be a related litigious viewpoint you can add to make sure the audience you have worked so hard to put together are exposed to the skills of your litigators as well as your solicitors. And when you begin your face-to-face follow up with prospective clients or key strategic targets make sure you take representatives from both the contentions and non-contentious sides so the contact gets a complete view of the services your firm offers.

9. Sell the firm When you’re out and about networking (however you approach networking) it’s hard to talk about litigation or to introduce yourself as a litigator because of the rather clichéd perception of litigation. Instead, just talk about the firm. Have your firm’s key selling messages to hand and use them. People will be willing to see you again when you follow up if they’re interested in the firm … as long as you don’t linger too long and get on with the most important rule of networking, get on with the person you’re talking to and leave a positive impression. 10. Have another string to your bow Following on from the previous point, some litigators now have a second string to their bow (corporate and commercial or commercial property for example). This is what they use to create interest and build rapport with new contacts. The transactional angle gives you something tangible to promote, a service the prospect will immediately understand and – because the forum in which you’ve met them would be relevant to this second string – would probably require.

This gives you legitimacy to follow up and maintain contact which in turn will give you a platform on which to start explaining the litigious side of your practice for when your help I needed in the future. 10 ½. Publicise your successes Are your clients made aware of your successes? Do you get column inches in your firm’s newsletter or, better still, a turn at sending out your own short newsflashes outlining your most recent success?

Do you make sure your profile on the firm’s website mentions significant wins and case studies that package those wins? Adding this type of information gives your current clients a reason to come back to your webpage and also makes you more search engine friendly which should attract more new prospective clients. If you’re not communicating what you do and how well you do it you will be missing out on new opportunities from two of the most prolific generators of work – your clientbase and the internet.

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