Mine your law firm’s awards submissions for thought leadership topic gold
Many law firms spend obscene amounts of time, energy, and money each year crafting awards submissions for Chambers, Legal 500, Law360, ALM/Law.com, and other organizations and media outlets that have reputable awards programs.
These submissions are expensive to produce because of the time it takes to complete them. That time comes at the expense of non-billable hours when attorneys are involved, project fees when outside consultants are involved, and opportunity costs and delayed completion of other projects 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 impactful ways they can do so is by looking for 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 a springboard 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 including in an awards submission, your colleagues are obviously proud of how the firm’s attorneys approached the matter and how they resolved it.
In future thought leadership content, you and/or your colleagues 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. You and/or your colleagues could talk about the best practices for handling that kind of matter, or the challenges you/your colleagues faced and overcame to secure a successful resolution for the client.
If you or your colleagues 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 you or your colleagues 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 you/they 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, whether they’re economic, business-related, societal, or legal. The thought leadership could tackle, for example, opportunities in the industry your attorneys believe exist, upcoming challenges industry players could face, or interesting transactions your attorneys are seeing.
By pulling out industry-specific insights you and/or your colleagues have gleaned from the matters your firm is including in your awards submissions, you and/or your colleagues could position yourselves 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 required innovative approaches to legal issues or business issues, they could inspire future thought leadership content regarding those approaches.
Did you and/or your colleagues successfully bring or defend legal claims based on new theories?
Did you and/or they approach a particular deal, or a deal-related issue, in an innovative way?
Did you and/or they take a novel approach to working with regulators that was successful?
If they did, you and/or your colleagues could create thought leadership around those innovative approaches. And, you could absolutely do so in a way that does not give away your or the firm’s secret sauce, nor that discloses privileged and confidential information.
Innovative uses of technology
On a related note, did your firm nominate matters for awards for which you and/or your colleagues used new technology? Or, did you/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, you and/or your colleagues could talk about the technology itself as a trend in resolving legal matters. You and/or they could talk about the best practices for using that technology, misconceptions about using the technology, and could even compare and contrast different ways to use the technology.
Depending on the technology, how you and/or 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 you and/or your colleagues to regularly create content devoted to it, such as a blog, an email newsletter, or a podcast.
While all forms of technology will differ as to how widely adopted they become, 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 commonplace) legal technology.
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 that’s 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 that looked a bit different than how teams are normally staffed?
Were matters staffed in a unique way across practice groups, industry groups, or offices/countries?
Did your colleagues use outside service providers in an interesting way?
What about teaming up with other professionals? Did your colleagues work with people in the community, or non-profit organizations, or other 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 often pour resources into their awards submissions each year. If they want to get more bang for their buck out of them, they should look closely within them to find inspiration for future thought leadership content.
Unlike the once-a-year marketing and business development bump that winning awards provides, thought leadership has an ongoing 24/7/365 impact on attorneys’ marketing and business development efforts.
It’s a more effective long-term strategy for building relationships that lead to new client matters than simply winning awards.
Thinking about bringing on an outside writer to help your law firm strategize and create compelling thought-leadership marketing and business development content? Click here to schedule a 30-minute Content Strategy Audit to learn if collaborating with an outside writer is the right move for you and your firm.