Reading ‘How law firm marketing & business development teams can deliver in a pivotal year‘ by Elizabeth Duffy on the Thomson Reuters site, I was struck by the following two stats:

• On the client side, demand for legal services is projected to remain strong — 41% of clients say they plan to increase legal spending this year, and only 20% expect legal spending to decline.
• On average, law firms are allocating 1% to 2% of revenues to marketing & business development budgets.

So, 41% of your clients are saying they plan to increase their legal spend this year, but you [as law firm management/managing partner] are only willing to allocate 1 to 2% of revenue to your business development and marketing efforts (which must be an all time low in the B2B sector). 

And, let’s keep in mind that’s business development + marketing combined. 

And, we all know the big winners in that expense allocation equation are marketing, not business development – the funnel, not the conversion.

But, like anything in life, law firm business development teams cannot succeed if they are not properly funded. If you want to:

• pick the low hanging fruit
• grow your share of client wallet

or any variation thereof, you need to make sure you invest in this critical function – and, frankly, 1 to 2% of revenue ain’t going to cut it!

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