How Buyers of Legal Services Select a Law Firm, Part 3 of 3
Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Most buyers of professional services start out with a good sense of what they are looking for in an outside firm.

The top 10 criteria the buyers in the study said they used in evaluating and selecting an outside firm include:

There are four takeaways for me from these findings:

1. Demonstration of your expertise matters! There are several ways to show your level of technical expertise prior to even meeting with potential clients, including:

  • Develop highly focused white papers that focus on a specific industry or type of company your firm wants to target.   
  • Give seminars at trade associations.   
  • And at the top of my list, develop a targeted blog that is filled with content.

2. Larger firms do not have an immediate advantage over smaller firms as only 5.6% of buyers chose that as one of their top criteria. If you're in a smaller law firm and you are competing against larger firms be sure to emphasize your availability and flexibility. It will often trump any perceived benefit the larger competitor has due to their size and reach.

3. I was surprised personal relationship was not ranked much higher, perhaps because many of these buyer's companies were larger and have a more detached approach to selecting outside professional service firms. We all recognize the importance of building rapport and relationships with prospects as well as clients, but relationships rarely replace results.

4. The one thing most law firms are most afraid of, pricing themselves out of the market, is actually at the very bottom of the buyer's decision making criteria. Only 4.2% of participants noted price was critical to selecting an outside firm. Hands down, experience and demonstrated expertise were the top things that lead buyers to select one firm over another.


See also: 

How Buyers of Legal Services Select a Law Firm, Part 1 of 3     
How Buyers of Legal Services Select a Law Firm, Part 2 of 3    
 

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