Consider the business owner client who has used a firm only for litigation now being met with a cross functional team of attorneys selected to address everything from labor issues to personalized estate planning services. It takes a quantum of leadership to view the success of a client in a nonproprietary light, particularly when adding transactional services to the litigation client. Some firms have gone first in adapting old marketing tactics to the new paradigm. For example, some firms no longer give seminars to groups of clients. Instead, they structure the delivery of expert advice based on the current issues faced in business.
Attorneys know day to day what is happening in the lives of important clients.
For one firm doing insurance defense work, that meant inquiring of the client as to their progress on internal Y2K issues. Some, but the burgeoning area of practice is more transactionally oriented. The firm is now integrated into the insuror's product development and underwriting to help protect it against future Y2K claims. Go to some law firm web sites, and you will see this principle of expert advice dispensed for the clients' benefit in their being able to subscribe to specialized news letters delivered electronically to their electronic desk top. Stretch the paradigm one step further and you witness law firms asking for advice.