Law Firm Business Development Is More Than Relationship Building – Above the Law

Lawyers must plug in to the details of their legal work to be successful advocates for their clients, sometimes at the exclusion of minding the fundamentals of running a profitable business. One of the keys to this financial success is maintaining a healthy pipeline of new business opportunities that will drive future revenue growth.

The 2023 Hinge Research Institute High Growth Study, which studies the activities of high growth law firms, found that high growth firms stay ahead by being informed about industry trends, emerging legal issues, and market dynamics, anticipate client needs with data-driven insights, and target business development efforts with personalized outreach. 

It’s crucial for law firm leaders to recognize that modern business development and marketing go beyond traditional referral-based strategies. It requires the use of next-generation technology tools that go to work on your firm’s behalf to mine all available data and identify new business prospects.

Leveraging Tech

Most firms know the power of Client Relationship Management (CRM) software as an engine to drive firm revenues and business performance. By centralizing client information and offering valuable insights, CRM systems can significantly improve a law firm’s efficiency and drive its growth. For example:

• Client profiles can store detailed information about clients, including contact details, past matters handled and communication history;
• Event management tools can track key metrics such as attendance and cross-sell opportunities; and
• List management can segment firm prospects and contacts into specific growth categories.

But growth-minded law firm leaders know something extra … it is actually relationship intelligence that fuels and protects the business development pipeline.

What is needed is a next-generation CRM application that can surface crucial intelligence derived from relationship data, which can in turn help law firms build stronger relationships with clients.

Next-Gen CRM for Law Firms

InterAction, a LexisNexis product, pioneered CRM in the legal industry in 1993. Last year, LexisNexis released InterAction+, a new cloud-based CRM solution that accelerates business growth in law firms of all sizes. It is the only legal CRM platform with exclusive LexisNexis content that uses relationship intelligence and reveals new business opportunities for a competitive advantage. By leveraging LexisNexis legal content and data, law firm leaders can prospect for new business from both existing and prospective clients who may benefit from the firm’s capabilities.

TechnoLawyer, which recognized InterAction+ as a “Hot Product” for 2023, published an insightful review of the product in which it called out some of the key integrations between its CRM tool and powerful LexisNexis content, including the following:

• InterAction+ lists litigation activity for clients and prospects using data from Company Analytics, one of the Context tools from LexisNexis. Law firm users can sort this information with filters such as the name of the outside counsel, practice area and jurisdiction — then drill down further for more details on any specific result.
• InterAction+ tracks all clients and prospective clients that a firm would like to monitor and is now integrated with Nexis Newsdesk to surface convenient links to news articles on the web that contain real-time reports related to those target companies.

Aja Hendrix, marketing technology manager at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, told TechnoLawyer that her firm has “experienced a significant increase in repeat or add-on business” with the assistance of InterAction+ for driving business development.

Uncover Data for Prospecting Clients

InterAction+ was built from the ground up for the cloud with a modern user interface and is designed to tackle the fundamental shortcoming of traditional CRM software: the lack of data for prospecting.

InterAction+ is available to law firms of any size and existing InterAction customers can add the cloud-hosted solution of InterAction+ with minimal effort. Click here to view a 60-second video introducing the InterAction+ cloud-based CRM solution.

Click here to request a free demo of the platform.