Aaron Garcia
Aaron Garcia is the Marketing Coordinator at Ackert Inc. Aaron comes from a varied background that has included working as a professional photographer and music producer as well as running an amateur sports team. At Ackert Inc., he is responsible for many processes including marketing campaign execution, video / blog content creation, and graphic & web design. His role also includes product troubleshooting and vendor relations, go-to-market planning and market research. Aaron started his career in eCommerce bicycle retail industry sales, which later led him down the marketing path. During his role at an industry-leading retailer he was instrumental in a large-scale rebranding initiative. He managed and executed product photography for the company as well as a wide variety of original content including video, blog and social. His efforts contributed to unprecedented growth in the company during his role. Aaron holds a BA in Economics and Administrative Studies from University of California, Riverside.
Is bigger better? Here are the strongest business development strategies for large law firms.
Large law firms, broadly defined as boasting a lawyer count of 700 attorneys or more, have a number of advantages that smaller law firms simply cannot offer. A large law firm has the unique ability to insulate itself from risk by diversifying its portfolio, not only in terms of clients but talent offerings as well. Internal resources are also generally abundant, allowing the firm to place attorneys with highly specialized skills where they are needed most.
Large firms capitalize on their size to provide a laundry list of services and talent that smaller firms cannot offer, combined with more organizational bandwidth. However, they often suffer from severe cases of cultural momentum. This affliction tends to hinder innovation and adaptation through large-scale changes that could otherwise help the firm keep pace with fluid market conditions.
How can large firms capitalize on their market?
Our 2018 Market-Wide study of Business Development Demographics reported some interesting statistics: law firms that considered themselves "large" found several distinct patterns in business development strategy that, when coupled with a specific strategy for each lawyer vintage, drove the most revenue.
Strategies for Large Firms by Lawyer Vintage
Lawyer vintages play strongly into which BD activities will bring the greatest return – the primary influencing factors being (1) the scope of the lawyer's experience and (2) the size of their network.
Best Business Development Strategies for Senior Associates at large firms
Senior associates' books benefit most from sales and BD coaching. While a larger firm may be able to bolster business development efforts with large-scale marketing campaigns and personnel lawyers often benefit strongly from some targeted business development coaching. Large firms can lean on their name and reputation to do some of the marketing, but attorneys are well-served by maintaining an entrepreneurial focus. Interestingly, one of the top 5 strategies for senior associates is succession planning, which remains an afterthought for many law firms despite aging partner populations.
Best Business Development Strategies for Junior Partners
Junior partners are also good candidates for coaching but they tend to mature into client-focused business development methods earlier than junior partners at smaller firms. Key client teams were cited as a very strong business development strategy for Junior partners – with the larger-scale clients that large law firms service, a key client team can be the difference between keeping the client and losing the business. Junior partners are well-served by handling accountability on this front.
Best Business Development Strategies for Senior Partners
A noteworthy difference is the appearance of thought leadership on the list of key strategies for senior partners. Thought leadership is the one and only marketing-oriented activity that made the top five list for any lawyer/firm cohort in our 2018 study. All other activities fall squarely within the realms of client development or business development.
Learn More
Download our free BD Demographics White Paper to learn more. The full white paper includes complete statistics on the most successful industry groups, practice areas and business development strategies, from "most effective" to "least effective."
Click below to download the white paper.
