Thought leadership: the lawyers are coming, but haven't arrived

By Fiona Czerniawska

For almost 15 years, we’ve studied the downs and ups of thought leadership published by consulting firms.  But at a recent event in London I was struck by the number of lawyers (and their marketing teams) talking about this subject.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised: Norton Rose Fulbright interviewed 80 senior industry executives to produce its survey of the food and agribusiness sector (we’re always telling consulting firms they should do more of this type of research) and the resulting report is interesting to read and stunning to look at.  Baker & McKenzie’s website even looks like Deloitte’s and its report on third party supply chain risk would give any Big Four firm a decent run for its money.  Its material looks great, some has been produced in conjunction with a reputable third party (such as the Financial Times) and much is based on reasonably robust research.

But there are plenty of lessons consulting firms have learnt which could be usefully applied by law firms.  A fair amount of stating the obvious is going on (do supply chain managers really need to be told to be wary of using suppliers in high-risk markets?) which suggests that law firms struggle to get their most senior (and busiest) people involved.  Both Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Norton Rose Fulbright simply present the reader with a long list of ‘stuff’, forgetting that most readers have little time and plenty of choice.  Much more could be done to talk up the experts – consulting firms are just starting to wake up to the power of putting a human face on their thought leadership.  Several law firms offer premium content to clients or people that register, a practice which has pretty much died out in the consulting industry as firms realised that the imperative is to publicise expertise not to hide it under a bureaucratic bushel.

But perhaps the biggest difference is in overall approach.  One of the big debates in the consulting industry at the moment is the extent to which you should ‘curate’ your content: combining articles into more sustained campaigns, for example, or bringing in content from third parties or material in different formats over a period of time.  That’s not happening in the legal industry yet: most material takes the form of standalone publications and there’s little sense of rationale evident in the choice of topics.  As a result, many firms put their best content cheek by jowl with their worst.  Taking a more strategic, top-down approach, rather than hoping that serendipity will yield results, is probably the single step law firms could take if they want to catch up with the consultants.