what's going on in this field there's so many legal Tech Solutions we have lots of tools also on the marketing front with the use of AI common one that is currently being used I suppose is Chap GPC but for busy lawyers I think it could actually help to get a few things done a lot quicker on that front what sort of most effective tool for business development or marketing that you can see that the lawyers can be promoted the best piece of marketing and business development that you can do for your firm is to take a step back and start with the fundamentals [Music] welcome back to Monday legal my guest for today is Barbara conin hering and she uh runs a Consulting business with a company called Nexel I know her since she used to work as a director of marketing and business development in altamimi enco welcome and thank you very much for coming and joining Monday legal well thank you for having me it's a pleasure you worked in in in Europe and then you worked in the in Qatar and then you worked in the UA with big law with local firms and you worked in coming from the receptionist and then starting Business Development and then leading a transformation in in ins um was was quite a significant turn and in the last 15 years I think business development for law firms in general have changed a lot um I remember my dad is a lawyer and I remember very well the technology that we used to use at that time when I was uh at the same age of my son now and I've seen that we were using U technology and Business Development were basically very um very much my my dad he was the head of Business Development and he was the head of SES the the one man show it was was only him there were no departments and there were no marketing um how how do you see the change in in the profession itself in the last 15 years have developed yeah it's a very good question and I I I can actually very much relate to that because I do feel a part of um you know obviously my sort of like quick growth within different roles across the sector is a testament to you know the sector also being so much more open to Business Development and marketing um and the business actually you know wanting to have that resources and recognizing that this is an essential part of the business and I think we talk a lot about the business of law rather than you know a law firm because a law firm essentially is no longer only for lawyers I think um you know quite some time back that used to be the case and it made sense a lot but now we recognize you know competition is rising um there's so many factors that come into play to make you a successful business and in the current day and age you know we need to we need to keep up with that and a law firm is actually a proper business right and I think a lot of Law Firm Partners they are eager to grow and they're eager now to run a law firm as a business rather than practicing the law um alone and I still I think there is a bit of a balance but you know I'm I'm very pleased actually to see that we're making that move I don't think we're really quite there just yet if you compare you know law firms to for example uh product-based corporations or other Mega sort of like service-based corporations um very much more sales-driven entities I mean I think law firms are still a little bit behind on that front but they've made huge ways in order to get to where we are now which is fantastic yeah I think also on the lawyers personal branding themselves have have changed a lot and usually it was a very strict uh profession where we dress in a certain way we talk in a certain way we appear in certain events and we don't really go on social media and we don't U advertise our services in a in a specific Manner and even there were some jurisdictions where there are a lot of restri on Advertising for lawyers exactly and um but I've seen a significant change worldwide about this and um is this driven by the consumer Behavior or is this driven by the necessity of changing how the marketing and business development for low firms um is is happening nowadays I think it's a bit of both because yes uh consumer behavior um you know even if law firms corporate firms they work with uh with corporate so it's very much businesses to business we still work with people right it's a people's business and with the general evolution of marketing over the years I think the expectation of people as to how they're being approached has also changed so as a legal consumer um or consumer of Legal Services um this has also changed the perception of a law firm for example and how you want your Law Firm to you know disseminate certain information for example we now called this marketing right so a a um a client of a firm they might want to be approached in certain ways like being sent lots of information uh about particular updates on the law Etc whereas maybe you know a couple of years ago this wasn't necessarily the case in that way what what sort of most like what sort of way that you have seen it most effective because you worked with big law you worked with International firms and you worked in in in local uh firms as well of course El Tamimi is a loc of fir on on on a big scale but uh there are some smaller or tier two or even tier three law firms what sort of most effective tool for business development or marketing that you can see that the lawyers can be promoted can be sold to the public um in all these tiers yeah it's um it it's it's a great question I think um from my personal experience regardless if you're small or big um you need to have the foundation in place and I've now especially in the last couple of months been you know approached by quite a number of Law Firm owners uh smaller uh but also sort of like midsized um to get some advice on pieces of marketing or Business Development work and I always take a step back because um a lot of the times I hear from Partners in particular they would say oh we need to be you know like this other law firm we also need to be hosting a conference and like this other law firm we now also need to be seen in all these magazines and we need to attend these conferences and we need to fly out for the IBA and we need to be present everywhere but I think we always the best piece of marketing and business development that you can do for your firm is to take a step back and start with the fundamentals ask yourself questions like why why am I here and what am I doing how am I doing it so these Basics um and often they are in your head you know what you're doing but write them down and see the bigger picture as to how you fit into the market and only then you will be able to Market yourself to Market your firm to Market your services because at the end of the day you have to identify a particular audience that you're going to address and if we can't do that then you can shout out loud um through a megaphone or you know just generally get a crow of people together but the message will not be received because they're not the right people that you're going to approach and I can tell you that so often throughout my entire career whether that was with the big law um with midsized with you know Regional firms um it's the same principle that I see all the time oh Barbara this is a wonderful opportunity it's only going to cost us $1,000 they've asked me to speak um we should go for it so my first initial reaction is always okay wonderful I'm sure you're flattered and you deserve this Etc because the ego is also a part of the process but then we have to take a step back and think okay so the people that you will be speaking to in that particular conference are they going to help you to achieve your ultimate goal oh Barbara what do you mean I'm like surely you should have goals you have goals for your business you've got goals for your practice you need to understand like where do I need to be in the next year or maybe in the next three or five years and then question yourself is this opportunity going to help me achieve that and if the answer is no don't do it it's a waste of your time we know your time is precious we know your time is costly so don't go for it if it does help you to achieve you know a better bottom line and achieve your goals then surely this is something to look into but only if you know that the people that you're going to speak into to could potentially be people that might buy your legal services if they are not the people then you know it's it's an absolute waste of time and money so finding a potential customer potential client or branding in in the right way or giving the right exposure there must be um the ultimate goal in the end so without um without a reason or without a successful um Target it whatever is whatever you're doing is not very successful correct yeah and this is why usually markets are in in other organizations they would talk about we need to identify the Persona right we need to know who we're going to Target this is when you start to think about how can we reach this audience that's your marketing piece how do we get in front of them and in our world in the legal world it's often knowledge sharing right it's writing articles it's understanding like what keeps their minds occupied our clients what keeps them up at night what is it that makes them thck and that what we need to um get to before we go into the marketing on the other hand I mean that's very very interesting and I think it's uh it's one of the most uh important aspects is that we know that the time and the efforts and resources we're spending is in the right direction and targeted to the Right audience um the other thing that I I I I got from your talk is that there's a lot of homework internally that has to be done by the firm and changes that has to happen internally so that they're ready for the market so what sort of effective tools or effective ways that the law firms have to change internally in order to be able to uh be um in a better position I think um a lot of this starts with mindset um so it's a change management piece around the perception of Business Development and marketing by uh Partners potentially partners that have been around for a very long time we see this quite often whether it's maybe some um you know some friction or maybe they take more traditional approaches um you know some of them have been practicing for so many years that they obviously have built a wonderful reputation and expect you know clients to come to them for who they are and what they're known for I think there's an element of that but we have to obviously also appreciate that the market is changing as we said earlier and our clients are becoming more sophisticated and more demanding as well and they will be comparing you know one firm over another and whilst you might be you know as good as you are um because we've worked with you or because you've got a great reputation um you're not the only one that's just a reality and sometimes there is other drivers for um our clients to buy your services it could be you know economical it could be um because the firm has certain policies in place or it could be that you know your firm is just not part of the wider procurement process of that particular organization so so many elements that come into play so it's it's actually super important to keep that in mind I would like to take your advice on on what on um on on one very important uh topic that often we lawyers when we sit together we we discuss what are you doing now we either say we're notw working or I'm doing a video content um applying for this award I'm writing a lot of Articles and I have my blog what what sort of most trendy or most uh likely um sort of direction that lawyers can get business off because the ultimate goal for us is to actually get more clients yeah I I see a lot of firms investing so much into Awards and nominating all their lawyers and they go to these Gala dinners and nice nice events flashy and we got this award but nowadays there's so many awards all around by all these big companies and even the small ones are doing Awards and every now and then I get one email is like congratulations you've been awarded Boutique for of the UAE of the 2024 things like that is are endless even when when I when I talk about video content which is very very popular right now everybody's creating video content but 90% of the video content is about topics that actually are not a money maker we just would like to get more likes and more shares and and more uh exposure out there but the topic itself that they're talking about I know very well that it's not what's paying the bills for the lawyers so what sort of effective ways lawyers or law firms should focus on will we talking about lead generation or actually branding them themselves in the right way yeah there was no uh one-size fits all that's what I would say because it really depends on again going back to the foundation of the firm uh with that comes the goals and objectives that the firm set and I feel um it you need to make sure that you can achieve your goals right and some firms they will have you know very um uh achievable goals that don't require as much marketing effort for example because they they know their audience very well they're already in front of them and this applies mostly to very sort of like Niche firms who have a very strong network of bespoke people that will buy their services but if you go to you know full Services firms for example this is where the marketing part becomes really quite interesting um also I would say with uh firms that you know deal with private clients for example because you can tap into the uh business to Consumer type of marketing which is again takes a requires a different strategy now I would always say that um whilst no no there is no solution for everyone it needs to be tailored depending on the goals and objectives of the firm the size of the firm obviously also budget plays a huge role um when you said you know I get so many invites for the awards yeah of course you do and you you should you know you should actually get invited to many ofs because you're doing great work um but then you don't want your full marketing budget to be consumed by you know fleshy Awards and recognition in that way I would always try to keep a balance like do you really need this back to the point of do you feel that this opportunity is going to support your bottom line but taking this back I do think um things like lead generation call to action uh account-based marketing are things that law firms are massively overlooking and the power of these are huge and I can see this back to I actually ventured out into another business which is very much consumer to Consumer based so I had to take a step into this world to understand how marketing works for that side and whilst I'm doing that there are so many lessons I learned and how clever things are set up it's almost like psychological magic and that is happening behind the scenes that trick us almost to get into this buying process and through the sales funnel and I'm really looking for ways how we can translate that into the use of you know the the legal industry because I do feel we're lagging behind a lot on that front and there's so much opportunity and even when I pronounce the words like do you have a call to action uh Barbara what's that EXA and I have to explain like okay so every time now we're just being a shopping window your website looks smashing your Awards is fantastic but what is it going to do with you like how how is winning an award going to impact you to get more business can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now with KNX because you mentioned that you have started this uh recently and I would like to learn a little bit about it yeah of course so um I set up my consultancy so I um had a couple of people actually approach me um after I left the firm and yeah now I'm just giving my advice out to you know some smaller firms who need it uh but also nexl and Nexel I work with them now for a couple of months and I used to have um Nexel is a um a CRM system it's a lot more sophisticated I don't like the word CRM because it's actually for me it's a essentially a cockpit for law firms to do everything and to control everything with regards to the commercial side of the business so this goes back to um you know marketing account-based marketing um relationship management you know running your key client programs for example um Revenue management um making sure that you've got a proper pipeline filled up with opportunities opportunity tracking but we also work with firms who have you know lead um generation campaigns uh like bpc campaigns online uh with forums we bring them back to the website so that the BD marketing team can effectively vet those leads really making sure for the business that there is an actual opportunity and then move these opportunity opportunities to the sales pipeline um so it's um it's a bit of a a beast that can do so much but it's it's massively affected and we've seen most firms who starts to use nexl they have actually uh managed to improve their bottom line just because the data tells the story the data tells you effectively everything you need to know to make more informed decisions why are we investing our time and money in this client why do we do that what's the reason for it and if if the data gives you the positive answer as in yeah now it makes sense this is the backing of it so we should continue to do that wonderful but it could also be the other way around and then you actually come to know I'm wasting my time on particular accounts I need to move away from those and I actually need to invest my focus on other ones um so that's what Nexel does and I'm a huge fan I had implemented it with um with the firm I worked for uh and now I have the pleasure of you know advising a couple of firms across imia and the US on uh on their V marketing processes within within Nexel going back to the golden world that everybody is talking about right now ai legal Tech tell us what's going on in this field there's so many legal Tech Solutions there's so many uh legal AI Solutions everybody is talking about it even the most um wellestablished and traditional uh technology companies that are doing uh legal Solutions are talking about implementation of AI how do you see this changing the market or enhancing our work very interesting um so I I can approach this on two different fronts so as part of my consultancy work I also work with Jameson legal Tech um and they obviously have uh their foot in uh in the Dubai legal Market uh from a recruitment point of view but also uh from a technology point of view so they work with lots of different Tech vendors and I do pick up bits when I speak with um their vendors but mostly when I actually speak with in-house Council so I have a lot of discussions with in-house Council around the use of technology for the in-house legal function and how they see this but also what is their expectation with regards to the use of AI by law firms and how they want to see this reflected in simple things like work output the quality of work uh but also the invoices um it's a really interesting discussion and there is a lot of um a lot of evolvement obviously on a daily basis I would almost say but when I bring this back to Business Development and marketing then I would say there is you know a plethora of tools now available to not only help the BD marketing teams to do things a lot more efficiently uh but also for the use of lawyers to basically get you know overviews and oversight of Market data analysis back to our first point around targeting for example and understanding your audience you don't have to shift through lots of web pages and Company data to you know paint that picture you can now just use tools that are available to you to do that at you know quite low cost as well so um for firms to actually not use it yeah I really don't understand why you wouldn't do it because it's there and then when I speak about tools like Nexel for example um they have ai integrated and I think most of these CRM tools nowadays they will have some form of AI that will be used but in the uh in the example of nexl uh on the mobile app you could simply just open it up look up a company and click on the AI tool and then it will basically give you a full overview of all the engagements all the interactions that have been had with that particular company so ared you've been seeing so and so this company a couple of weeks ago um talked about XYZ based on the notes that you've put into the system the meetings that have been had but also Paul uh from your team has also been visiting them so before you get into the client you will now see exactly the latest news of the client uh but also who's been visiting this client what was talked about any outstanding opportunities that you have for them Etc so that's also a form of AI where we try to enrich data that we already have uh with data that is for example publicly available to make our lives easier and then we have lots of tools also on the marketing front um with the use of AI the the most you know Common one that is currently being used I suppose is Chet GPC um I mean I use it on a on a daily basis and I'm not shy to say I don't think it's something that is embarrassing I think it's something we need to embrace but I do feel that it depends on how you actually use it um so it's as good as you get out as what you put in so if it still requires a lot of thinking like I can't just ask it to draft a marketing plan for example I need to prompt really carefully to be very precise on all the elements I just mentioned so a lot of thinking has been going on uh beforehand but for busy lawyers I think it could actually help to get a few things done a lot quicker on that front so if you wanted to get a few ideas for marketing for example you can actually based on the goals that you've set for yourself what you want to achieve but also knowing your market and your target audience if you Fe that into the system it will probably give you quite a decent sort of like step plan as to the things that you could possibly do you would also want to you know fet it and make sure that it doesn't speak any nonsense and it's not going to work but I've tried it a couple of times and it actually gave me quite interesting uh outputs that I I feel can be used yeah yeah yeah I couldn't agree more I mean Ai and the use and and as you rightly said the easiest and most re most popular tool is chat gbt and it saved a lot of time for a lot of professionals just needs to know how to use it or spend a little bit of time and a little bit of training on knowing how to prompt and how to ask the questions to in in the right way or for even think with you like give you some ideas or brainstorm in a in a in a way and uh and and pry is a um um a very effective tool for everybody reviewing spelling mistakes grammar um exactly but also I would point out um the data that we can now get from the tools that we use like your Billing System for example and even if there were firms who would keep their uh billing their client databases Etc on simple tools like Office 365 on where Excel and you name it there are AI tools out there that can actually make sense of the data by combining it in certain ways and I think that is really powerful because it gives you effectively um the the Baseline for more strategic thinking and also to be able to make more informed decisions going forward so if you can identify certain patterns based on the data that you you know would be working with or that you have at hand um then you would know oh actually I'm going in the right direction or no I need to you know change my course because I see this is not working and this goes into so many different things if I look at law firms for example a billing patterns but also you know Revenue um and also check in um you know utilization of lawyers versus Revenue write offs write Downs um why is this happening can we identify a trend you know clients paying late um but also it it basically can give you the bigger picture as to the health status of a particular client and whether you are warranted to actually invest in this particular client or whether you should probably take a step back and focus on others so the data point combined with AI I see there as a huge opportunity potentially for the future as well do you think the lawyers are ready honestly I feel like we are overwhelmed we have to catch up with all the changes that is happening in the legislation and in the regulations in the whatever we are uh working and we have to catch up very quickly with the changes of the economics of every place we work in and we have to catch up as well with the technology and we have to catch up again with the business development and marketing bigger firms are may be more resourceful and more um able to do that with lots of uh departments and lots of uh employees and staff and so on but big law and the big firms are not driving the market the real Market is the solo practitioners and the boutique firms because that's the mass that's the big number of um of of of lawyers uh in in every market and in with all honesty we are overwhelmed I'm coming from a boutique size and I'm telling you it is it is not so easy uh what what what sort of solution can we come up with what sort of um um advice can you give to the smaller firms yeah I I feel you because I I think I can relate in the sense that I as I said I've set up another business as well which is a consumer to Consumer business focused on Road Safety we're on a training for children and we have a track where people can rent a bicycle and Etc so um every it's me it's Barbara's business effectively and Barbara is doing everything so uh I also know that you know I I have very limited time I uh need to be very efficient I've got staff on site to actually do the activities with the children but for me it's the back end work right it's I need to do my accountancy I need to do my my billing make sure that my revenues are G my um systems are up and running all the time the booking system uh I have to do the marketing um whilst I'm a marketer you know by profession um as I said consumer to consumer marketing is a whole different ball game and you know reading into how to create like really interesting reals for Instagram and stuff like that I I wasn't really interested in that because I never had to do it and now I have to do it and I have to take a step back and learn and whilst I'm in the process I do feel um it has benefited me to actually do get in touch with professionals who can help you out and whilst it it might look like quite a significant investment it is saving in so many different ways so it's saving obviously my time so I can focus on growth um but it's also making sure that we do things professionally in the way that they should be done because if I do it I'll probably do it half as good as a professional who's trained in doing something will do it so if um there was a way of making budgets available and I know you know we've got fine lines and we need to make sure we we keep the margins up Etc um but I have sensed this is a major it made a major difference for me to actually work with professionals who know their stuff and I can see the company grow because of that if I try to do everything then I will be running into a brick wall and my growth is going to stagnate I'm going to get depressed because you know I feel frustrated that I can't do it all um but I know that I need to do certain things to get to a point and again this comes back to knowing and understanding your goals and objectives right if you've got certain goals of growth and development then it's inevitable that you will need to get support to be able to achieve that if you are very content and happy with where you are and the work is just coming in and this is what it's going to be then I think that's absolutely fine so this is why it's very important to determine your goals and objectives from the beginning um hiring professionals to do that job I think is crucial um they are around and they have been there for a long time they usually come with a lot of experience and they can bring so much to the table and I also do appreciate that particularly for lawyers you go to law school and what do you learn the letter of the law but you don't learn how to do business and it's something that you know people who've gone to business schools for example can bring to you as a as an experience that can help you out that can at least have those discussions with you to challenge you and as a team make things better um as you get on and if you if you don't have these Financial Resources to do so then you know there is a plethora of tools available back to your technology and AI uh deck I think that can help uh to make certain waves but what I found is I need then a lot of time to look into these tools to get myself trained into these tools and the question is is that level of investment of my time worthwhile for a sustainable future or is my investment of money and time better investment invested in someone who can support me along the way thank you very much valuable information and I'm pretty sure I will personally apply some of your advices uh for my firm and I uh I hope you enjoyed uh being with us thank you so much it was an absolute pleasure thank you thank you very much please listen to these advises take note of uh the the advises uh Barbara gave us today and um see you next week