How COVID-19 Is Impacting Law Firm Marketing and Business Development Teams

Lee Brookes • February 15, 2021

SURVEY POPULATION

In September/October 2020, Calibrate Legal (in partnership with Totum Partners in the United Kingdom) surveyed first-chair marketing and business development (BD) leaders at 127 law firms in North America and the United Kingdom. Annual revenues for the responding firms ranged from 8 million USD to 2.5 billion USD.

The survey was intended to benchmark law firm marketing department sizes and understand firms’ planned responses to COVID-19 within their marketing/BD teams (MBD).

DEPARMTENT SIZES AND RATIOS

The research covered 5,098 marketing and BD (MBD) roles at the participating firms. The average ratio of partners to marketing and BD staff members at all participating firms was 9:1. The lowest ratios (correlating to the best resourced marketing and BD teams) were found in the 500M USD- 1B USD revenue group.

SPONSORSHIP BUDGETS SET TO PLUMMET IN RESPONSE TO COVID 19

All sizes of law firms are planning to de-emphasize sponsorship marketing in the wake of COVID-19. On average, 82% of the respondents stated that they intended to reduce sponsorship budgets.

IN-PERSON EVENTS WILL BE DE-EMPHASIZED, BUT REMAIN

A SIGNIFICANT PART OF FIRM'S MARKETING MIX

Not surprisingly, the responding firms have already decided to reduce their reliance on in-person events in the wake of COVID-19. But they were far from unanimous on how far this reduction will go. Forty-six firms stated that they anticipated reducing their number of planned events by 50% or more, but 49 more firms foresaw much smaller reductions — 30% or less. Despite COVID-19, it appears that in-person events remain an essential part of the responding firms’ marketing mix.

DIGITAL MARKETING BUDGET PREDICTED TO SURGE

On average, 84% of the responding firms plan to increase their budgets for digital marketing programs because of COVID-19. This result was broadly consistent across all sizes of firms

A WAVE OF MARTECH HIRES IS COMING

More than half (69) of the responding firms stated that they planned to increase the size of their marketing technology (martech) teams in the next one to two years. The respondents identified a total of 72 planned full-time equivalent (FTE) martech hires, with an average of 1.6 hires per firm across all revenue groups. This is consistent with the projected increase in digital marketing spend identified above.

MARKETING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT SKILLS WILL IN GREATER DEMAND

POST-COVID AND THOSE THAT WON'T

The participating firms believe that demand for skills in traditional law firm marketing tactics, such as directories/awards, events and conferences, will decline in the next one to two years. Increased demand is expected for skills in revenue generation activities, such as pitches/proposals and digital marketing.