The focus on reducing costs is a significant trend across the legal vertical, mainly due to economic uncertainty. Feeling pressure from corporate hierarchy and finance teams, many corporate legal departments are shifting from outsourced legal services to an in-house-first model. Additionally, legal department leaders are turning to technology to reduce corporate legal spending, both on internal costs and outside legal consultants, ALSPs, and other providers.
These corporate teams are turning to legal operations experts to help make technology decisions and streamline their teams. Legal Ops experts implement strategies to reduce the amount of human intervention using automation, workflow management tools, and AI. For example, products like workflow and contract automation tools are popular because they require less time, experience, and legal knowledge to complete larger workloads. When marketing to corporate legal teams, your should emphasize how your technology delivers value at lower costs than traditional legal work.
Additionally, you’ll want to highlight features that reduce the risk of bringing operations in-house. Management and compliance teams will appreciate transparency, such as audit logs and reporting. Customizability, onboarding, and support programs will win over operations teams often tasked with implementing new technologies. Take the time to understand the stakeholders at the buyer’s table to communicate the benefits across the organization. For example, Legal Dive demonstrated the ways in which in-house eDiscovery benefits legal teams.
You can reach these corporate buyers directly online through email and social media. Make one-to-one connections, perform detailed prospecting, and increase brand awareness with LinkedIn instead of more costly marketing channels. After prospecting on LinkedIn, you can also connect with potential buyers through direct email outreach.
Associations are also a great way to network and build brand awareness. The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) have extensive networks of corporate legal personnel, legal operations specialists, and others in the vertical. Consider our article on marketing through associations for some great ideas for engaging with these networks.
As with Big Law, this trend will continue well past the current economic uncertainty. Adjusting your marketing accordingly is a great way to position yourself for the future of corporate legal tech.
