Law Firm Technology - Supporting Business Development Initiatives

Article written by Melania Wenstrup

As firms grow, awareness of their institutional knowledge and strengths diminishes proportionately. There is a growing need to readily identify resources and expertise within law firms for proposals or informal opportunities that address client needs. The technology I use has a direct impact on my work output and overall productivity. Many marketers are not satisfied with their current knowledge sharing processes. Few firms have good processes in place to track and report on proposal activity or return on investment (ROI) accurately. I recently attended the LMA Capital Chapter’s Technology Matrix – Building Effective Knowledge Sharing and Using it to Plan Strategy and Track ROI event. The luncheon included three panelists from top DC law firms that are leading the way with knowledge management solutions. Catherine Bishop, my firm’s Chief Marketing Officer, helped lead a discussion that used our firm’s marketing technology systems as a demonstration on how we are addressing the issue. The event was tremendously informative and provided great insight on current law firm technology and how expertise matrices significantly impact business development.

My firm, Blank Rome, is in the process of rolling-out a powerful new knowledge management interface that will aggregate vital information from a number of databases. Our goal is to manage the business development processes (i.e., communicating with clients/prospects, requesting collateral, managing opportunities, creating pitches, conducting client research, measuring the success of programs, etc.) more efficiently. As we continue to grow and our service offerings become more complex, we want to ensure consistency of approach and deliver effective marketing materials that enhance our firm’s brand. Our marketing technology has allowed business development to produce more effective and targeted marketing materials as well as determine where our efforts are best directed in the future.

We have created a firm-wide technology matrix to power our business development initiatives. This system integrates our InterAction relationship database with our client financial records and the time & billing systems (we use Elite and Carpe Diem). When a new matter opens in the time & billing systems, key contact and matter information automatically get pushed into InterAction. The integration makes it easy to use financial records to produce reports that analyze clients by services, revenue generated, trends and market share. Data analysis collected from these reports allows business development to focus on our most profitable clients or practice areas with the highest realization. We also use InterAction’s Activities feature to retain records of contacts, conversations and meetings with an individual or company. The system enables us to use InterAction to track matters, opportunities and identify and leverage relationships. It also allows our team to track and update projects in real time. InterAction also gathers information from Employee Relationship Management (ERM), and other HR systems. It organizes enhanced information on relationships and reveals who at Blank Rome knows whom in our client and prospect companies. We also have customized our Web Content Management System (CMS) to harvest information from InterAction for data mining. Our business development team is now able to extract enriched information from CMS to analyze the firm’s existing situation, predict trends, recognize opportunities and manage the execution of strategies. This helps to improve the firm’s decision-making process when approaching both strategic and tactical marketing activities and monitor and measure results. The information housed in CMS rolls-out to provide content for the firm’s website as well as PitchBuilder, used internally to create pitches, proposals, brochures and various collateral marketing materials. We now spend less time on assembling materials, finding and formatting content and more time on analysis and counsel. Finally, we are developing an intranet portal, calling it The Mother of All Portals. The Mother Portal will pull information from both InterAction and CMS and interface with attorneys, staff and clients. The Mother Portal then collects, organizes and manages attorney experience and expertise so it is easily searchable and quickly retrievable firm-wide.

Integrated technology solutions provide the institutional knowledge that enables marketers to analyze, plan strategy and to propose and manage winning ideas that generate a return on investment.

Article written by Melania Wenstrup, contact: Wenstrup@BlankRome.com. Ms. Wenstrup graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in International Business Management and Business Law. She has also attended the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, where she focused her studies on relationship marketing.