Win more clients

The Critical Need for an Experience Management Platform

The competition for outside legal services is incredibly intense, with traditional law firms facing pressure from boutique firms, accounting firms, and alternative legal service providers. To remain competitive, relying on static Excel spreadsheets and Word documents is no longer sufficient for tracking and updating firm experience. An integrated, automated experience management platform (EMP) is essential to run an effective marketing and business development program that saves time and drives profitable growth.

Why Experience is a Law Firm's Greatest Asset

Ultimately, lawyers and law firms sell their experience, and clients pay for that experience. Clients are risk-averse and believe a proven track record of relevant experience reduces the risk of unfavorable results. Without actual, real-life experience to showcase, a firm or lawyer has little to differentiate themselves from any other licensed attorney. Because sophisticated buyers often want services delivered better, faster, and cheaper, it is critical for firms to have an accurate inventory of their most relevant experience ready at a moment's notice.

The Hidden Costs of Manually Tracking Experience

Tracking down experience manually results in significant amounts of lost and nonbillable time for both attorneys and support staff. Lawyers waste time sending firm-wide emails to find specific jurisdictional or industry experience, while marketing staff can spend up to 60 hours compiling this information under tight deadlines. On average, responding to RFPs takes over 20 hours of administrative and nonbillable time. For a firm answering 50 RFPs a year, this manual process can easily cost $300,000 in lost nonbillable time.

Connecting Siloed Data for Better RFP Responses

Winning an RFP in a hypercompetitive market requires tailored responses, strategic pricing options, and specific case experience. Unfortunately, this vital information is usually housed in unconnected, siloed systems, such as time and billing platforms, CRM software, and HR databases. An automated EMP allows these disparate systems to communicate, seamlessly pulling together necessary data without the manual administrative burden.

Best Practices for Selecting and Implementing an EMP

When selecting an EMP, firms should ensure the platform has high ease-of-use ratings, appropriate ISO security controls, and the ability to maintain ethical walls to protect confidential client information. Because the legal profession is risk-averse, firms transitioning to the cloud can ease into the process by starting with a pilot program focusing solely on publicly available data, such as United States-filed litigation. It is also critical to involve risk managers, IT professionals, and the general counsel during the vetting and procurement process.

Strategic Uses for Your EMP Beyond RFPs

Once implemented, an EMP provides strategic value far beyond just answering RFPs and preparing for pitches.

• Lateral Hiring and Integration: Firms can identify workflow trends by industry or jurisdiction to assess where new lawyers are needed, and then use the platform to quickly connect new hires with existing lawyers who have complementary experience.

• Referral Tracking: Adding incoming and outgoing referral sources into the database helps firms nurture important relationships and demonstrate reciprocity.

• Client Reviews: Firms can easily pull performance metrics and data on how they have performed on specific matters for annual client reviews or panel guidelines.

• Strategic Planning: An EMP dashboard can reveal long-term revenue patterns, helping firm leadership quickly identify and address decreasing realization or workloads from key clients.