Recently, in an effort to become more transparent to clients and prospective clients, one of the world’s largest law firms, K & L Gates LLP, released detailed results of its financial performance to the public.
According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, “K&L Gates Chairman Peter Kalis said the move was intended to boost transparency at a particularly challenging juncture for the legal profession. Many law firms are finding it tough to increase profit as clients continue to push back on prices amid sagging demand for legal services.”
K & L Gates should be applauded for its efforts to pull back the curtain on the inner-workings of the firm. This gesture was authentic and likely will have positive results for the firm in terms of justifying costs and expenses to its vast array of high-profile clients.
If a global behemoth such as K & L Gates is feeling pressure to share this type of data with the public in order to justify its rates, it tells me that clients want firms to justify their value through more frequent and meaningful sharing of information.
Our experience tells us that numbers and financial disclosures aren’t enough, especially if you don’t have the resources, clout, credentials, reach and pure horsepower of a firm like K & L Gates.
Professional services organizations can truly demonstrate their value to clients by telling their “Story” with a capital “S.” In other words, why should a client choose your firm over another? What is distinctive about the way you and your people do business? What are your values? What sets you apart? Michael J. Newman is an associate at Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller. His recent contribution to The Legal Intelligencer takes an in-depth look at the potential power of story for attorneys.
“As attorneys, we know that stories make a difference in our work of advocacy and persuasion,” Newman writes. “Recent scholarship bears out this professional intuition. Neuroscience is discovering the incredible ways that stories impact and stimulate the brain. Because the brain is predisposed to organize experiences in narrative form, storytelling is an important tool in influencing people. In contrast, when presented with bare facts and statistics, people only become further entrenched in their own point of view — this is known as the ‘backfire effect.’ Put another way, stories are far more effective than argument and facts at changing people’s minds.” 
To use legal parlance, data, in both quantity and specificity, are merely a support argument for your services. Transparency in terms of cost and account activity should be table stakes for all professional service organizations. Of course your clients should know what you’re charging them for during each hour of work billed.
But this level of sharing is a jumping off point and not the end game, because it doesn’t demonstrate your value to clients.
Our conversations and experience with professional service organizations in the financial, consulting and legal spheres tells us that prospective clients want to know the names behind the figures and the people behind the titles on the walls and doors.
One of the best ways for professional services entities to tell their authentic stories continues to be through strategic media relations. Spending money on advertising or special client events can be part of the mix, but it will never reflect your thought capital.
When assessing their strategic marketing and communications needs, professional service organizations such as law firms and accounting firms have shared the following with us in both written RFPs and through formal conversations. They want an agency to help:
- Develop a strategic public relations plan to best position the organization with appropriate target audiences
- Determine an appropriate mix of local, regional, national and industry/ trade media outlets to achieve the desired positioning
- Position organizational thought leaders as experts on key topics to targeted audiences
- Develop an understanding of and raise awareness of the organization’s key areas of expertise to target audiences
- Place appropriate personnel as expert sources on topics and trends that are timely in the news cycle
The best way to accomplish these goals is clearly through targeted media relations outreach. Data about the significance of the issues we position to the media are important, but the people who can answer the questions this information raises are more crucial.
Clients, more than ever, want to know the “who” and not just the “what” behind your services. That’s where WordWrite and its relationships with the media are best positioned to help a professional service organization grow its business.
Download our whitepaper to learn more about the power of storytelling in business communication.
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Jeremy Church is an account supervisor for WordWrite Communications. He can be reached at jeremy.church@wordwritepr.com and on Twitter @churchjeremy.
