Recently, we conducted research into how well professional services firms such as lawyers and accountants go about winning new business. This found that law firms, in particular, were weak at planning, managing and measuring their new business development and marketing activity.
Let us consider the top 50 UK law firms’ fee income for 2002-03. The Chartered Institute of Marketing says marketing budgets are typically set at between 2%-5% of fee income. When you apply this figure to the top UK law firms, this amounts to somewhere between £15m and £40m a year being spent on marketing. Take this figure alongside our research findings and it suggests that the legal profession is making a significant investment in marketing but without real planning, management or measurement of that expenditure.
