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.