Client: A highly respected, long-standing 55-attorney firm in a mid-south city was experiencing increased legal competition from Am Law 200 newcomers in their local marketplace. The aggressive law firm advertising and business development and legal marketing activities of the (relatively) new firms were beginning to erode this client’s family-owned and middle-market client base.

Need: We began by conducting a Needs Analysis to understand how efficiently the firm was using its financial and human resources, how they were perceived in the market, and how their law firm’s business development efforts compared to competitors. We then conducted and compared a Client Base Analysis and a Local Business Market Analysis to identify what market segments offered the greatest growth opportunities for their law firm and where our client had the strongest existing foothold.

Result: Based on our research, we identified three existing practice areas with growth potential and identified existing and historical clients with potential in those areas. The resulting legal marketing plan laid out a cross-selling plan for the law firm over the first 12 months and a focused external business development plan for the second 12 months. Knapp prepared the marketing plan, trained an in-house marketing person and is currently overseeing the execution of the plan.

Coaching & Training: In order to ensure that our plan was successful and mobilized all of the client’s resources, we conducted an attorney business development training seminar entitled, “Developing Your Own Business Plan,”* and to date, Amy Knapp has conducted six months of individual coaching sessions for 16 attorneys. The program has been deemed very successful by the client with several new client engagements in the first two months.

*Skillful Means Marketing contributed content for this seminar.