There’s thought leadership gold in your law firm’s awards submissions. Go find it.
Many law firms—perhaps yours!—spend significant time, energy, and money each year crafting submissions for awards presented by ALM, Chambers, Legal 500, and other organizations with reputable awards programs.
These submissions are expensive to produce on account of the hours not billed when attorneys are involved, project fees paid when outside consultants are involved, and the opportunity costs and delayed completion of other projects that arise when a law firm’s in-house marketing and business development team members are involved.
For that reason, firms often look for ways to get the biggest bang for their buck out of their awards submissions.
One of the most effective ways they can do so is by finding inspiration for future thought leadership content that’s hiding in those awards submissions. Those submissions could launch dozens of future thought leadership articles, blog posts, social media posts, and videos, providing fuel for attorneys’ marketing and business development efforts.
Here are five topic areas for future thought leadership content that are hiding in your law firm’s awards submissions.
“Best practices” / “How we did it”-type content
If your firm deemed the successful resolution of a matter worthy of inclusion in an award submission, your colleagues are obviously proud of how the firm’s attorneys approached the matter and resolved it.
In future thought leadership content, your firm’s attorneys could walk through how your firm approached that particular matter and resolved it, or how to approach similar ones, in a way that’s educational, non-promotional, and does not disclose privileged or confidential information. Your firm’s attorneys could talk about the best practices for handling that kind of matter, or the challenges your firm’s attorneys faced and overcame to secure a successful resolution for the client.
If your firm’s attorneys can explain these concepts in an educational, non-promotional way that shows how your firm was knowledgeable, wise, and innovative (more on that later) with its approach to a client’s legal or business issue, your firm will signal to similarly situated clients that they should consider contacting your firm’s attorneys when they face similar issues.
Industry-specific insights
If your firm is including in awards submissions the work its attorneys have done for several clients in the same industry, there’s a good chance the attorneys can extract interesting insights regarding that industry that they’ve gleaned from the work at the center of the submissions.
These insights, and the subsequent thought leadership crafted around them, could tackle trends within the industry, no matter whether they’re economic, business-related, societal, or legal. The topics your attorneys could cover include business opportunities in the industry that they believe exist, upcoming challenges industry players could face, or interesting transactions they are seeing or expect.
By discussing industry-specific insights your attorneys have gleaned from the matters your firm is including in its awards submissions, you will position them and your firm as the go-to people and firm that industry players should contact when they have legal or business issues they need assistance with.
Innovative approaches to legal conflicts
If the matters your firm submitted for awards consideration required innovative approaches to legal issues or business issues, they could inspire future thought leadership content regarding those approaches.
Did your attorneys successfully bring or defend legal claims based on new theories?
Did your attorneys approach a particular deal, or a deal-related issue, in an innovative way?
Did your attorneys take a novel approach to working with regulators that was successful?
If they did, they could create thought leadership around those innovative approaches. But don’t worry, they could do so in a way that wouldn’t give away their, or your firm’s, “secret sauce,” nor that would disclose privileged and confidential information.
Innovative uses of technology
On a related note, did your firm nominate matters for awards for which your attorneys and staff used new technology? Or, did they use technology in an innovative way? If so, that could be another source of inspiration for future thought leadership content.
Aside from discussing how your firm used the technology, your colleagues could talk about the technology itself as a trend in resolving legal matters. They could talk about the best practices for using that technology, misconceptions about using the technology, or they could compare and contrast different ways to use the technology.
Depending on the technology, how your colleagues used it, and whether there’s the potential for it to be used more frequently down the road, there may even be an opportunity for your colleagues to regularly create content devoted to the technology, such as a blog, an email newsletter, or a podcast. New technologies won’t always be adopted by the masses, but the number of law firms publishing e-discovery and AI-related blog posts and newsletters show what’s possible with thought leadership programs built around emerging (and eventually commonplace) technologies.
Innovative approaches to staffing
Finally, if your firm nominated matters for awards for which your colleagues took innovative approaches to staffing, that is yet another source of inspiration for thought leadership content hiding in your firm’s awards submissions.
When I say “innovative approaches to staffing,” I’m referring to attorneys, support staff, and outside service providers.
For example, was there a multidisciplinary team involved in one or more matters that looked a bit different than how your attorneys normally staff client teams? Was a matter, or were matters, staffed in a unique way across practice groups, industry groups, or offices/countries?
What about teaming up with other professionals? Did your colleagues work with people in the community, non-profit organizations, or service providers (think accountants, communications professionals, etc.) in a way that was vital to successfully resolving a client’s matter?
If so, your firm’s innovative approach(es) to staffing matters could also be fodder for future thought leadership content.
There are thought leadership opportunities lurking in your firm’s awards submissions
Law firms devote significant resources to their awards submissions each year. If they want to get more bang for their buck out of them, they should look within them to find inspiration for future thought leadership content.
Unlike the once-a-year marketing and business development bump that winning awards offers, fresh thought leadership published all year long provides weekly and monthly opportunities for attorneys to get in front of past, current, and prospective clients and referral sources, and to show them that those attorneys are the ones they should call when they or someone they know needs assistance with a legal or business issue.
Wayne Pollock, a former Am Law 50 senior litigation associate, is the founder of Copo Strategies, a legal services and communications firm, and the Law Firm Editorial Service, an award-winning thought leadership consulting and ghostwriting service for Big Law and boutique law firm partners, and executives at companies that serve the legal industry. He can be reached at waynepollock@copostrategies.com.
Reprinted with permission from the May 1, 2025, edition of The Legal Intelligencer © 2025 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-257-3382 or reprints@alm.com.
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