The Ultimate Blueprint | Law Firm Business Development Strategies

A common question that arises quite often in most gatherings for attorneys is: What is a business development strategy? The follow-up question is whether law firm business development is just a common term for law firm marketing. Business development and law firm marketing are two separate entities.

What Is Business Development, and Why is it Important for Law Firms?

Business Development is the process of pursuing strategic opportunities for your company. Law firm business development means the implementation of strategic and systematic methods to create regular growth avenues for the firm. The growth opportunities include building new relationships, identifying new revenue streams, and finding new sales opportunities.

Law firm business development includes expanding your firm geographically or creating procedures for your team responsible for client onboarding to follow up with the firm’s prospects.

Law firm business development also involves leveraging strategies to gain more clients, but instead of focusing entirely on sales to on-time clients as with the case in marketing, your firm builds bridges, establishes meaningful relationships, and expands revenue streams that are sustainable and will serve the firm for a long term.

How can law firms identify new business opportunities and potential clients?

As a law firm, there are various approaches you can include in your business development strategy. One of the ways to identify new business opportunities and potential clients is by having a suitable brand identity both online and offline. Your brand as a law firm is how you intellectually portray the purpose for which your firm was created. The goal for your law firm business development strategy should be to optimize your law firm on the internet.

Improve your SEO to make potential clients find you easily. Having an active and appropriate social media presence on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or any other platform that works well for your law firm is also necessary.

Brand your stationary, email signatures, and business cards to leave a lasting impression on any client you interact with. Create value for your clients by informing them on legal matters through a strategic blog.

The blog posts should be engaging and informative, and not just posts created for the sake of content creation.

Conducting regular market analysis helps you understand the target clients for your law firm. Decide on what you offer as a law firm, and to the specific audience. Analyze your firm’s strengths and weaknesses, then leverage the strengths that will make you attract more clients and sustain them.

Appropriate planning of Lead Generation and Conversion activities is necessary for identifying business opportunities and new clients for your law firm. After analyzing your target market, the next task for your law firm is to identify the potential sources of the leads that you are targeting as a law firm. Here, you can increase your social media engagement with your firm’s potential clients by regulating posts, boosting posts, and conducting polls and questionnaires to get feedback and opinions. Your firm’s representatives should attend regular law conferences and related events to network with more potential clients.

Most importantly, enhance the client relationship and manage your client feedback using appropriate CRM tools. Look for the best CRM tool for your firm. Your law firm needs a secure client relationship and management platform such as CoraLegal that can support the firm in gaining new clients and sustaining your firm’s regular customers.

What role do networking and relationship-building play in law firm business development?

Making appearances at networking events such as conferences should also form part of your law firm's business development strategy. Conferences and networking events help your employees learn new strategies for legal practice, improve the business side of legal practice, and assess legal technology advances that your firm can adopt.

CoralLegal has compiled several must attend legal technology conferences that provide a learning and networking environment by sharing the best practices in law firm business development and marketing with every law firm that wants to stay ahead in the legal practice.

The conferences include the American Association for Justice Annual Convention, the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, The ABA Techshow, and the Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference. These conferences are a great way of making headway with legal practice.

Firms with effective relationship capital management can increase their influence levels among target audiences and generate more leads and referrals.

Networking is an essential part of a law firm business development strategy that helps in building and maintaining relationships with clients. 

How can law firms establish and maintain strong referral networks with other professionals?

Despite the existence of several great online marketing tools, customer referral is still the most reliable way of acquiring new clients. New clients trust testimonials from the people they know, such as their friends or relatives, and not feedback that they might have seen on the Instagram handle or Facebook page of your firm.

One useful tip to establish and maintain a strong referral network is to provide exceptional service to your current clients. It is your ethical duty to deliver good service, and it is also the best way to run a successful law firm. Satisfied clients will find all kinds of reasons to refer their friends and relatives to your firm.

Consider building strategic relationships with other professionals. Client referrals can be unpredictable. Therefore, make referral arrangements with other attorneys and professionals who can refer clients to your firm. In return, you can offer these professionals referral fees or any other incentive.

Leverage your social media and email marketing to keep in touch with your clients. Consistent communication is important for building relationships. Create targeted social media posts and email lists, and send out personalized messages to your clients. By communicating consistently, your clients will always remember your firm whenever they need legal services.

What are some best practices for managing client relationships and improving client satisfaction?

A strong relationship with your clients earns their trust and makes them re-engage with you whenever they need legal services. Communication is the best way to build a strong firm-client relationship. Handling many clients, however, can be a challenge for any firm, whether growing or established. Having the most efficient customer relationship and management tool is, therefore, essential.

CoraLegal is an important CRM tool that enhances best practices for managing client relationships and improving their satisfaction. The platform enables law firms to securely share documents, collaborate remotely, and organize projects.  CoraLegal all-in-one client portal is simple and easy to use. Find out how CoraLegal can take your firm to the next level by booking a free personalized demo with a product expert today and try for 30-days free!  

What role does thought leadership and industry reputation play in law firm business development?

Think of thought leadership as a must-have strategy to enhance business development for your law firm.

An important element of thought leadership is high-quality content that can position you as an expert in your field of operations. The key aspects of thought leadership content should include information on industry trends, educational content, industry content, inspirational content, and opinionated content.

Thought leadership establishes brand awareness and authority, strengthens the SEO of your firm, and helps attract more potential clients. You should dedicate resources and time to thought leadership to achieve exponential growth.

How can law firms business development measure the success of their efforts and make data-driven decisions for future growth?

As a law firm, you can track the success of your business by measuring key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are necessary for the evaluation of your firm’s performance and success. KPIs supply the important data and knowledge needed to answer key management questions and quantify performance. Some of the KPIs include client acquisition and retention trends, data on billing and revenue, employee productivity, and operational efficiency. You should analyze KPI data to determine the success of your law firm and position yourself for future growth.

Analyze the KPIs that provide your law firm with a comprehensive performance report and clear data on important information such as the number of clients acquired and retained, billable hours, net promoter score, conversion rate, testimonials, and revenue streams.