Little by little, legal marketing is gaining strength and is becoming more and more necessary in the daily actions of Law Firms, but it is also a constant that has not been an easy task and that still faces great obstacles that are not They allow the development of legal marketing that has among so many objectives, to improve the relationship of lawyers with their clients and to seek new business opportunities.
If we look at the reality of the vast majority of law firms in Spain, we can realize that they are pigeonholed into a mentality in which an office exists in itself and worse still, it subsists by itself, because it covers very specific and necessary needs. that "always" will bring you customers and benefits. This is where we find the main obstacle for legal marketing, fighting against the inflexible mentality of some lawyers, who instead of seeing marketing as a growth and positioning strategy, they find it as an expense, something unnecessary and that will not bring any kind profit.
Unfortunately, this mentality does not allow the market to grow constantly, while some Law Firms are realizing the great need to work as a company, delimiting their services and with this, the market, we find Law Firms who do not want to make that leap and remain stagnant, gradually halting the growth of the sector.
Another of the great obstacles that legal marketing faces is the belief that doing communication is doing marketing, thinking that maintaining communication at a graphic level or through the Internet with your clients or potential clients is doing marketing strategies, it is a serious mistake.
Communication is just a tool that marketing uses to transmit a series of strategies that previously had to be carried out with a certain number of objectives and an action plan to follow them, communication is then the ideal instrument to keep our clients informed and collaborators. That is why communication budgets are established on many occasions and unfortunately they do not have the desired results, as there is no solid basis for the why and why of communication, it is almost certain that if it does not fail, it will not have the profitability that it would have been achieved if a good strategy had been planned and communicated correctly.
An external factor, but no less important, is the market. We are facing a market that little by little is changing the vision of seeing the law firm, We are trying to see it as a service provider company that can use all the tools that any service company is used to using, without being judged or discredited for lack of quality. However, it must be borne in mind that on many occasions, it is necessary to break with the vision of "my lawyers for life", this is valid when the service received is of quality and in accordance with the price (another tool marketing) you are paying for it.
But what happens when more and more law firms stop being generalists to start specializing.
It does not mean that you should always leave your lawyer alone, simply that the market must be open to any possibility of change, be flexible, when the service you can obtain is more specialized and with better results. This is a great and arduous process of information and market formation, which is only the task of legal marketing and its actors, the law firms.
The poor application of marketing strategies in some of the law firms is another of the great obstacles that legal marketing faces. A simple case to cite is, setting rates, since there is great competition in the market and a latent need for recruitment, law firms sometimes enter into a price war, the only thing they are doing is devaluing the profession and the service, if added to this we say that this is what is communicated to the market, we enter, in a great dilemma, to what extent the use of legal marketing is distorted, and this unfortunately can be detrimental, not only for the competition that it takes place among law firms but also for clients who are unintentionally exposed to this type of strategy.
That is why the task of legal marketing is to determine what type of law firm we want to have, what type of market we want to approach, and what strategies we want to apply.
In conclusion, we can say that legal marketing is in an emerging stage, not because it is something new, because marketing in law firms has always existed, but because it is being recognized as such, parameters are being established to be able to visualize it as a strategy With the application of tools that benefit law firms, it is therefore necessary to be flexible in the face of the changes that the market offers, take that leap to optimize resources and facilitate work in the face of the most specific needs that our clients are discovering..
