More searching, more finding, more solving, more refining, more efficiency – this is future law.
There was an interesting piece on the Legal Futures site that I read today, More people searching for legal terms online.
Why is this happening? Have people just discovered the law? Have people just discovered the internet? Or do people have a need and their first instinct is to go to that most valuable piece of digital real estate..that box in the top right corner of any browser and start searching out solutions to their problems.
What is going on is exactly what is going on everywhere. More searching, more finding, more solving, more refining, more efficiency. This is the ‘click:solve’ culture that all of you reading this now accept as the relative norm.
Law firms may think it is enough just to have a standard brochure website. But this is a crowded market and even with precision SEO, the market will make it’s own mind up. And making up of minds is now moving into the time space of seconds…”see it, like it, want it.” So making your site a compelling capture tool is going to be strategically critical.
Remember - just because a consumer starts finding online does not mean they always have to be served online <- VERY SIGNIFICANT
Consumers (you and me) will decide on this “more…” culture. We will all decide what works and what doesn’t because we are all part of the platform. Whilst law firms will have less control, they will have some and the smart ones will have a lot. So it is important to get your product and position right.
And when consumers find what they like leave it to them to spread the word through a myriad of social tools based on how you helped them, how you solved their problem. Don’t go and hunt them down and get in their face.
Human beings don’t like to be hunted they prefer to discover.
You don’t need to focus so much on the social, you need to focus more on the solution, making sure it is accessible, transparent and relevant.
Leave the choice to the market, just make sure option is more compelling than your competitiors.
I picked up the article on the Law Society Gazette this morning that Lawyers are “optimistic” over legal services reform.
Yet another small step in the right direction. Are we seeing a shift from the ‘Tesco Law’ doom view to one where brands enter the market and create awareness? I think we could be.
More information, more relevance, more education leads to increased awareness. The next move should be to start to create the efficiency landscape where that awareness can go park and solve.
This is a landscape that you as a law firm and/or lawyer have a right to stake your claim but you also have to make sure that you can survive in it. Do not assume that just because you are there now that this means you will be there later.
This means thinking about how that landscape will grow and develop. The landscape will be unforgiving and unsentimental.
In the efficient landscape the buyer will make available choices and match their need to the appropriate solution.
I started talking last week about the efficiency landscape. What do I mean by this?
My thinking stems from David Cushman’s piece last year about the 21st century organisation which I advise you read. David’s point is
The role of the 21st century organisation will be to become a platform. A platform to enable people to find each other, talk together, act together and change the world together, niche by niche…and if you aren’t in the business of starting fires, then pretty soon you aren’t going to be a 21st century organisation.
The ‘platform’ should not, in my view, be seen as solely online. Your physical office is part of the platform. You and your colleagues are part of the platform.Your clients/customers are part of the platform. The latter are very powerful if you can get them to peer-to-peer market for you with the info-ray AKA social media, (yep that’s right social media exists for them to ‘work it’ for you not for you to ‘work it’ at them).
For me a solely online offering for many industries, and here I am interested in law firms, is as restrictive as one that offers face to face only. People, (clients and solicitors), come together as required and that could be online, telephone or face to face or a combination of up to all three.
Best option is to offer a combination of all to suit the need of the client and the solicitor. Efficient/convenient for both parties. It will be up to the individuals, client/solicitor, to determine where this engagement starts, is conducted and is concluded and each of those stages could be at different parts of the platform.
We all are aware of the theories of the Professors Susskind and Mayson about how technology will be delivered into this sector to increase efficiency and that law firms need to start to think more about the distribution chain than they perhaps have been up to now.
Quite right too but how can that actually, as in day to day reality, be done?
Online delivers an array of opportunity from the aggregation of firms via panels such as Quality Solicitors, search sites, which I think we will see more of, and the deployment of technology like DirectLaw that effectively takes the strain and plugs into the buying styles or patterns of the market.
The shaping of the legal services market is going to speed up, lots of entrants will come in, some good, some not so good. The landscape will change as we all contribute and shape it. We will all, in our way, contribute to its efficiency.
I have talked before about integration specifically around your website. Over the next year or two law firm websites will start to come into their own because of such integration and functionality.
Today law firms are starting to create their own efficiency landscape.
For a law firm this presents huge opportunity because if you invest some time in planning you can start to create an efficient landscape for your target market. Don’t forget, targeted markets love an efficient landscape.
The smart firms are waking up to this potential first and grabbing market share before the “me-too’s” arrive. They are investing their time well.
This will be valuable time spent internally optimising (forming/norming) then externally optimising (performing) because when we are talking about that word ‘online’, if properly deployed, it has the ability to grow a business exponentially. The news for late starters is that they may gain momentum but they may find it tougher to catch up with the early adopters.
Some in the legal profession are dismissive of online engagement. All the boxes that they put an ‘x’ in I can probably put a tick in…but that is a separate discussion. My big point is that it is surely wise to go where your market goes. Talk the language that your market talks. Then let the tech take the strain and deliver those clients to you in a way that you want.
As ever, I would welcome and value your thoughts.
Law firms have a lot to gain by ‘creating’ a market and online provides an efficient landscape
I did a blog piece last week where I discussed the whole idea of integrating drafting technology into your own website. This is very significant and important. Why?
Visitors to your site today will access information. With drafting integration they can access information + solution. Subtle but BIG SHIFT and (possible) game changer.
So why does this matter? Well it,
- means that you maintain control of your marketing message (informing, engaging, capturing), tweaking and refining it to suit which,
- means that you can create richer and powerful landing pages to utilise for SEO which,
- means you can create the efficiency landscape for your Practice that drives the relevant client to the relevant solution, (face to face, phone, online or a combo of all three),and
- it is affordable for firms of any size.
So you can capture, solve and migrate to in-office as required from your website. Clients can choose to complete and securely submit a rich initial draft to your desktop – think about the time/cost saving of them doing it and not you.
That, say one hour, initial sit down and draft with the client time has just dropped off your cost base for those clients who like that way of engaging with you, (ie people who transact on the web and unless you have been on a desert island with no 3G or broadband there are quite a lot of them).
You then have the job of refining it via online or face to face. This is where you start to motor…here is where you are adding VALUE. THIS IS YOUR KEY DIFFERENTIATOR. And that’s value delivered more efficiently.
The bottom line is that at all times you as a law firm remain in control of the process and the document.
So I think law firms have a choice,
- do nothing, wait to see what happens and adapt/survive (reduced destiny control) or
- deploy engaging, relevant participation tools and start to create a market for your services with the reach and accessibility of online to enhance existing methods of engagement (increased destiny control).
I say go deploy and create your market.
It’s a funny thing change. We think of it as dramatic but invariably it tends to happen without us realising.
Ten+ years ago noone knew of Google, YouTube, Facebook et al.
Did that change happen overnight? Did we wake up one morning and go “Oh my God I must search for…”
We just took it for granted. It just happened. We all made decisions about those services. Some of us were at the cutting edge of discovery. Some of us relied on our peers and some of us think it is tosh and ignore it completely. We all became educated to possibilities. All of us have made choices.
For consumers (you and me) we had to be told or informed about these facilities. None of us woke up and said “I need to publish video online so simply must build a platform etc” We became educated about what was and was not possible.
We chose to be educated and absorbed the information because what we were being told was, (and is), useful to us. We will stop listening to the ‘teacher’ when it ceases to be useful.
We also came to realise that most of the ‘not possible’ might be available in the future because those clever geeks would recognise a need and find a solution to match it. In fact the really really clever ones created a solution for a need we didn’t even know we had.
This has happened throughout history. It is just a bit supercharged now as our information channels have got ultra fast.
All the time we are refining and tailoring. All the time we are deciding about this application or that one. Just take Twitter. A whole variety of applications to read a very basic concept. Different apps that try to make the experience even richer, pushing to make it more engaging, more intuitive and more relevant.
The point being that we are in (relative) control, we are educated, we make the choices within the confines of what is on offer. We can disengage, re-engage with the same provider or find another one, all in a couple of clicks. We have power.
The provider (law firm) increasingly has less power, is more and more disenfranchised in the ‘choice’ process. They have to educate us more as to why we should use them as opposed to someone else. If they get their education message wrong then that provider could become toast.
Specifically for law firms I would suggest that you need to look at the tools that are available to you and think about how you can deploy them and educate your market to use them.
Whether you like it or not, or even believe it or not web delivery is going to play a big part in legal services delivery for the same reasons that it does in other industries. These are; inform, capture, engagement and efficiency. Making sure that deep, rich and relevant data is sent to relevant places.
Inform seems the one that you may be doing now through your websites, but are you? Informing is easy. Informing by messages that consumers choose to listen, say with language and presentation, now there’s a skill. The ‘language’ of a lawyer is not necessarily the same ‘language’ of a consumer or potential buyer of your services.
Go stake your claim because there is only so much land to grab. If you don’t grab it, someone else will.
Part deux: Law firms CAN influence who consumes ‘online legal.’ But only if they offer it.
Yesterday I blogged about how The market, not lawyers, will decide who to consume ‘online legal’ from. So what chance law firms who don’t offer it?
Today I want to expand that out. As in all things there is a choice. Not deploying online is a choice.
When I say the market will make a choice that is actually a good thing. But my overriding point is that if you do not have something available for the market to choose from then you are effectively missing an opportunity.
My concern for law firms is that ignoring something like the Internet could be great strategic mistake.
Perhaps you think having a brochureware website is enough. Maybe for now…not for much longer.
As I have said before, the Internet is not ‘the next big thing,’ it IS the big thing. It has just landed in your part of the forest and it is not going away. You probably thought it was just about having a website and that email stuff. You may even have thought about that social media thing. What use social media for a law firm who doesn’t have a true engaging online platform to connect it in to?
Future (they are going live now) law firm websites will be about delivering efficiency, engagement, capture and for the early adopters, differentiation. You know all the usual stuff about running your business to make a profit.
I also think a strategic mistake that law firms could make is to be ‘all things to all people.’ Firms need to start thinking about where they want to position themselves. If you want to attack the commoditised or even the more bespoke market then you need appropriate kit, marketing focus, measurement tools etc that are compliant and efficient that are well beyond just a glossy front end website. You need back office functionality that manages process and keeps you in control.
You also need to ‘let go’ of this Tesco Law obsession. Be smart, be entrepreneurial and start controlling your own destiny. Sure Tesco may deliver the £49 will but I would argue there is money to be made in people who don’t like Tesco. Maybe that is 10% of the market. Maybe the 10% prefer to balance price with a bit of old fashioned value. Think about delivering to the 10% rather than becoming a slave to the 90%. Deliver to the 10% better and smarter than anybody else and let your competitors crash and burn.
Whether online legal engagement is offered through Tesco, Co-op or your firm is a big area of debate. This is a market and as in all markets consumers will decide what they want, where from and how they want it. You just need to make sure they know what you are offering and you know what they want. Dead simple eh?
ps I get asked a lot about online being some kind of ‘instead of’ to traditional methods of engagement. IT IS NOT, it is an add-on because the firms of the future will have multiple engagement routes; in office, phone or online all of which you can migrate from and to.
Time for another vid? I did a blog elsewhere looking at the implications of ignoring the online opportunity called “Law Firm A v Law Firm B.” The market and consumers will be the big influencers on how the legal services market is shaped. So if your offering is not focused and offers choice of engagement you could soon be off the pace.
Some food for thought. Remember your biggest threat is not major brands…it is other law firms.
As ever the video is here to make you think and stir up some comments.
I was going to write a blog post but got a bit bored drafting that so I pulled out the Canon and decided to freak you all out and start dropping in a YouTube vid.
My essential point is what is starting to happen is that law firms are not taking our DirectLaw platform and using it as some kind of satellite service. They are being much smarter than that. They are integrating the functionality directly into their own websites. Why is this important? Because they can create multiple landing pages with documents built in for clients to try, to buy, to draft and to submit for the intellectual value add of your advice. And they can create an SEO and social media strategy that connects everything up.
I’ll demo the functionality on a live site next time, but this movie should give you a flavour.
If you have problems viewing this try clicking here.
Okay not great lighting, but the core message is there.
The Great SEO Debate for law firms
A lot of law firms I talk to always bring up search engine optimisation, SEO.
It’s a valuable tool and used well a very valuable tool.
But lets look at it a different way. How valuable is it if it directs ‘the buyer’ to a site when they cannot interact or is say a brochureware site? How does the client engage, buy or interact? Yes they could drop an email. Yes they could fill in a form. Yes they could phone the firm up. But in the main web surfers come to sites for a reason, usually to get something, to solve a problem or to find a solution. They don’t come to read how wonderful or clever you are. They also expect to have a solution ( or at least a significant start to one) waiting for them; click it, engage with it, submit it…then carry on with their life.
The thing about websites and consuming on the web, (which is just about all of us or at least those that are reading this) is that we are now in a ‘click and solve’ culture and if someone clicks on your site and the solution they want is not readily available or easily accessible the chances are they will move on very quickly, trying to find their solution. No ‘clickable’ solution and you could start to look a bit dated.
If that ‘solution’ is not all that apparent, complicated to understand or written in a language that is not crafted for ‘the buyer’ then the SEO has done it’s job in getting them there but the website has failed in navigating them to their solution.
Lets change the dynamic. Lets say you have ‘clickable solutions.’ The clients journey to their solution is now more focused, efficient and elegant. The law firm can capture rich client data and productive work because the client has refined and delivered it to their desktop.
Remember, websites for law firms, in my opinion, should not be seen as a tool for online-only engagement. They are primarily to be used as a capture and initial drafting tool. Once the client is captured they can then be migrated to the high value engagement functions of phone and/or face to face. But as most people will instinctively Google for a solution would it not be wise to focus on having a space in Google world that has real meaning to the search?
But the law firm can also build relationships more efficiently via a true online portal and get the client to extoll your services, (just like every other online service industry does)…then social media really comes into play for law firms as peer-to-peer recommendation is the most compelling (and most cost effective) marketing tool of all.
I think SEO is a very clever tool. But it is one of many tools, both online and offline, that law firms need to deploy so they can forget about being big or small and focus on being smart.
Please let me know what you think.
As in life, as in Twitter etc
I had a long chat with a friend the other day about Twitter. I have decided to post and get these thoughts out in the open. I am no expert in the field of social media and personally I would be suspicious of anyone who says they are.
So here we go…three things that annoy me about Twitter.
- Followers. I couldn’t give a monkeys if I have 12 followers or 12,000. Makes no odds to me. What matters, as in life, is not the number of ‘friends’ I have but what those ‘friends’ are saying…or things we can do to help each other. I choose my friends in the real world because they are engaging and interesting. And as with ‘real word’ friendships, it has to be a two way communication thing. In the main I do the same on Twitter. Plus having thousands of people that you follow only congests your timeline which could mean that you miss something that would have been useful and/or interesting.
- #FF is a real bug bear of mine. On the one hand it is lovely to be socially validated by someone, (although slightly diminished when you are one of say 20 in a #FF tweet). So I am recommended by someone I sort of know to a load of people I don’t know who then probably follow me but never engage with me? What’s that all about?
- RT or the re tweet. I am not against re tweeting per se…hell I even do it myself from time to time. But people who spend 90% of their time just re-tweeting other people’s stuff are not very engaging to me.
My absolute favourite moments on Twitter are when people I don’t know Tweet me and say “hi, could you help me or explain x” or I Tweet the same to someone and they help me back. Or people do normal people stuff like share a joke, a bit of self deprecation or a dash of sarcasm. People who 10 seconds earlier I never knew.
Viva (proper) conversation! Viva (beautiful) language! Down with endless, pointless noise.