According to a survey as part of the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference, attorneys and law firms across the United States are placing more focus on legal content creation and business development.
In fact, 94 percent of legal professionals surveyed said that they are ramping up their efforts in these areas, with nearly 70 percent reporting that they are feeling pressure internally to drum up more business for their firms. Competition from other law firms and new billing models are also driving this increase in content marketing, according to respondents.
For the most part, it appears that big firms are the ones really catching on to the need to boost their legal content creation, with organizations that have 200 more more employees being the most likely to hire staff solely for marketing purposes in recent months.
Another interesting trend the LMA survey found was how social media is impacting content marketing strategies for attorneys and law firms. Respondents indicated that a lack of staff resources has led to a need for lawyers themselves to take on numerous social media-related tasks, which can be time consuming and tends to distract from caseloads. Outsourcing legal content creation was not mentioned in the study, but it could play an important role as law firms look to reduce the burden on their attorneys.
The other key takeaway we saw from the LMA survey is the evolution of the relationship between attorneys and marketing professionals. Firms are relying on marketing teams for a wider variety of tasks, especially content creation and online marketing. Most attorneys seem to agree that these relationships need to be productive and positive for firms to truly generate new business through content marketing.
So what might all this indicate when it comes to legal content writing and digital marketing? There appears to be a real opportunity for more law firms, and even their marketing agencies of record, to outsource copywriting and other content development to reputable, third-party service providers.
Although the number of copywriting services out there that can handle legal content creation is somewhat limited, these partnerships could be invaluable toward saving on costs and ensuring attorneys and firms have a steady stream of quality, informative articles, blog posts and other content they are providing to their target audiences.