In today’s law firm environment, legal marketing professionals hold the dual role of preserving value as well as creating value. One of the best ways of accomplishing both goals is to take full advantage of technological innovation while minding the inevitable limitations that exist in law firms, such as budget constraints and reluctance to accept technological advancement. From website development to social networking, the right technological tools can steer law firms to align their system capabilities with their clientele needs. By taking advantage of such tools as analytics and systems of engagement that raise the level of awareness, legal marketers can justify technology budgets and get shareholders and partners on board with the tech express.

Steps Legal Marketers Must Take Before Investing in Technology

Analytics: Measuring Data Integrity Holistically to Determine Performance Impact

Legal marketers must ensure that vendors provide detailed, structured analytics for marketing optimization purposes. Analytics deliver the data while metrics and dimensions can be queried together to measure performance. Analytics as a system allow legal marketers to analyze data and determine whether the technology garners a return on investment. In addition, the description of performance guides legal marketers in the decision-making process to predict outcomes and drive efficiency. It remains up to legal marketers to ensure that analytics are providing valuable knowledge and being used to improve business performance as well to justify investment into technology.

Analytics only fulfill their purpose when providing holistic and accurate data. They must present a clear understanding of a complex structure, likened to looking at the world through a keyhole. No one metric will account for all of the data in totality so the goal is to view the data holistically to get the full story. Moreover, data integrity remains essential to the equation as far as the quantification, quality and presentation of analytics.

Analytics are comprised of a two-prong system: how comprehensive the data serves as only the start—the challenging part is for the legal marketer to use context to asses and model the data. Because the function of marketing metrics is ultimately to gauge performance impact, every metric should remained nuanced enough from which to derive a take-away point. For instance, a metric may show that one legal project took two months to close while another similar project took two years to close. Because no two matters are the same, the metric and dimension should be nuanced enough to present variables accounting for the disparity. In its barest terms, the legal marketer wants to determine that she spent x time and resources for a y amount of value.

Business Intelligence and Systems of Engagement

Legal marketers must also select technologies that commoditize knowledge work, which serves as among the most strategic activities taking place within the law firm. IT systems in the past, known as systems of record, have focused heavily on technological features and processes rather than users. These systems are used in everyday business operations to compile, automate and store data and, while important, are not conducive to collaborative work amongst attorneys or interaction with clients.

In contrast, emerging IT systems called systems of engagement, which are the future of technology-led business innovation, raise capability to a higher order and allow for immediate and streamlined communication. As such, systems of record host processes while systems of engagement touch people and drive more interaction among colleagues on top of just maintaining data. This is not to say that systems of records are rendered obsolete—in fact, by using both systems of record and engagement to monitor transaction and interact with the data respectively, the full value of technology is tapped. Hence, legal marketers can take all of the data coming from the interactions mixed with the meaning derived from translating the data into insights to product true innovation.

Written by S. Merchant

The information in the this article was gathered from the Inside Counsel’s 2013 SuperConference from presentations by:  David Cambria, Senior Director, Enterprise Information Management, CDW; Mike McGuire, Corporate In-House Counsel, Axiom; and Pamela Woldow, Partner & General Counsel, Edge International.