The Conversation: Jamie Wallis

Seasoned legal marketer Jamie Wallis, (CMS, Baker & Mackenzie, Addleshaw Goddard and most recently DLA Piper), has a provocative idea for us all: legal marketers should challenge the finance-led annual budgeting process. He sees an inherent disconnect between how firms market themselves to the outside world on the one hand, and on the other, how internal financial targets often incentivise the lawyers to go in the opposite direction.?

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He explains it like this: "Firms will happily spend hundreds of thousands of pounds promoting their 'deep sector expertise', persuading clients and prospects that they understand their business and legal issues in the special context of the industries they're working in, promising a "holistic" approach from a cross-practice team rather than lawyers working in silos, and providing a '360-degree view' of their business and the challenges and opportunities it faces." This rhetoric ringing bells with anyone? Yes it is with me too! ?"Yet", he continues, “All their financial metrics - so budgets, return on investment and especially the formal profit-and-loss assessments - are done department by department and practice team by practice team. Hardly ever by sector group. This is an unhelpful disconnect. It means that even where partners agree that the firm’s sector focus is the more strategically important, because it’s what clients buy in to, the firm itself is not managed this way… and when it comes to pooling resources for sector-oriented campaigns, no-one wants to give up much (or any) of their budget.”

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In fact Jamie thinks law firm marketing is?usually?far too tied to the annual budgeting cycles anyway. Now we all know that the ultimate aim of any marketing programme is to improve the flow of profitable business to the firm, so to that extent it’s only right that finances should be the big measure of success. But Jamie has a strong belief that this preoccupation is often so great that novel ideas and innovations only get a look-in if they fit perfectly with the firm’s financial and budgeting cycles. ?“For many firms, marketing starts with a blank sheet of paper, a notional target revenue figure, (usually based on last year’s income plus a percentage), and a simple message to all the lawyers and teams to work out for themselves how to deliver to that income figure.?I'm not sure that enough thought and market intelligence goes into working out where the real growth opportunities are and then investing in them.? So often, the marketing budgets get split up between the practice groups, the sectors and the locations/offices to keep everyone happy, but that dilutes the marketing pots and you end up with a high number of watered down activities that are not necessarily effective.??Whereas instead, what should happen, is for the starting point to be a robust business plan underpinned by a rigorous professional process, with the marketing plan flowing directly and naturally from this.”

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After more than 20 years in the profession, Jamie looks to use his experience to?shape the marketing budget to create clearer outcomes. “In the past, where firm's have had go-to-market strategies via sectors, as soon as I was able, I oriented?the budget much more towards?sector teams, rather than practice groups or local office budgets - and the transformation was immediate! I was really able to see the behavioural change I had wanted for so long, putting an end to ‘silo thinking’ amongst the lawyers and finally seeing true collaboration across all the areas of the business.” Now, we all know this is exactly what clients are asking for.

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?“If you want my Golden Rule for making sure law firm marketing plans are delivered on the ground, as strong in practice as in theory, this is it!” ?Thanks Jamie. Food for thought indeed.

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