In the early years of my LMA membership (almost 20 years ago), conferences, seminars and even brown-bag luncheons were targeted towards marketing professionals working in big-city, large corporate defense law firms. I was 23 years old and the marketing director of a six-attorney plaintiff personal injury and medical malpractice firm based out of Waukegan, Illinois. The only plaintiff personal injury law firm employee I remember meeting at an LMA event was a solo practitioner or a legal secretary assigned to marketing duties. It’s possible I was the only plaintiff’s marketing director in the country at that time—or at least it seemed that way.
Without a large marketing budget or staff, the average plaintiff firm in the 1990’s was limited in how it could promote itself. Some lawyers purchased office space next to the courthouse to attract walk-ins. Some lawyers used Yellow Pages advertising or Martindale-Hubbell listings. Others parlayed the signing of an interesting case or a big result into a press release, which they walked over to the courthouse and handed to the legal beat reporter. His desk was in the middle of the lobby.
If you were a small firm marketing director, chances were your salary represented most of the marketing budget! If you wanted to stay employed, you had to be seen as a value, and you needed to generate business… quickly. One of the ways I created value was by learning QuarkXPress. This allowed a convenient and cost effective way to develop the building blocks of our business development, which included a new logo, business cards, client newsletter, firm brochure and a website. The website, one of the first plaintiff sites in Illinois, was basically an electronic brochure.
Like all law firms, great content drove the success of marketing, and in order to write great content, you needed a clear understanding of the firm’s best cases. Much of my time in those early days was spent reviewing client flies. Afterwards, I’d sit down with the lawyers to discuss the important nuances of these cases. This tedious work not only provided invaluable information for our marketing efforts, it helped develop mutually respectful relationships with the firm’s lawyers.
The attorney meeting also gave insight into the case process. Unlike marketing professionals in large defense firms, a plaintiff marketer needed to reach lay individuals rather than corporate decision makers. Our clients were rarely represented more than once (due to the catastrophic nature of a case), and a case could take many years to resolve. Since a firm only got paid if it won, cash flow to re-invest into a marketing budget wasn’t always available. The luxury of cross-marketing clients to other practice areas, or the benefit of a client’s monthly retainer fee—both reliable staples in defense firms—weren’t available. Marketing needed to generate dozens of unique case leads each month just to find a meritorious claim that could be won.
When marketing did generate a lead, the firm had minutes to respond, as average prospects “shopped” four law firms simultaneously. The first firm to get the prospect on the phone typically won. If a prospect was interviewing lawyers face-to-face, you dropped everything and drove to their home. Assuming you were skilled enough to secure a contract, it could take months to collect records and get expert reviews. If those reviews were favorable (only 20 percent were) you still needed to convince a defense attorney to settle it. If not, you tried the case and hoped a judge or jury decided in your favor. If you won at jury trial (90 percent of plaintiff medical malpractice cases are lost), the case could still go through a lengthy appeal process where the verdict could be reduced or even overturned. If you lost the case, you also lost all the money you invested -- often hundreds of thousands of dollars. The client could terminate the relationship at any time. This was a tough business model.
It wasn’t all gloom and doom, however; a plaintiff firm marketer did have a few advantages! You developed an idea, researched it, and presented it. Approval was typically done on the spot by the managing partner, unlike larger firms where this process could involve dozens of people and months to finalize. Second, since you were forced to be resourceful, you learned each aspect of the marketing mix from the ground up. You were never pigeonholed into a specialized area of marketing. This proved critical later in my career. However, the biggest advantage might simply have been the service you were marketing. Our clients were catastrophically injured individuals: a victim of an intoxicated driver; a brain damaged baby; an abused grandparent; and thousands of other equally tragic circumstances. I’ve found there’s nothing more rewarding than helping an injured victim.
As cases came in, our tactics and budget expanded. Today, plaintiff marketing professionals use television commercials, Internet (numerous websites, re-marketing campaigns, electronic advertising), radio, magazine, mass transit, billboards, newsletters, public relations, social media, direct mail, videos, blogs, sponsorships, scholarships, and mobile technology trends to attract thousands of new business development leads each year. The marketplace allows smaller law firms an opportunity to market nationally as well due to the popularity of mass torts.
I’ve had a front row seat to this amazing growth thanks to pioneering plaintiff firm leaders who, early on, appreciated the need for professional marketing, the LMA for their efforts in providing quality educational options, and groups like PILMMA who focus solely on plaintiff’s legal marketing. In my opinion, plaintiff marketing directors are among the most knowledgeable (project diverse) and successful (by new cases and fees generated annually) legal marketers in the country today, regardless of firm size or practice type. I’m proud of the plaintiff firm marketing opportunities now available for the next generation of legal marketing professionals.
TJ is the chief operating officer at Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard, P.C. (www.salvilaw.com), a Chicago plaintiff’s medical malpractice, personal injury and wrongful death law firm. The firm has obtained more than $900 million in verdicts and settlements on behalf of injured clients. In addition, he recently founded The Michael Matters Foundation (www.MichaelMatters.org) to increase the public's awareness of glioblastoma brain tumors, and raise funds that will be used to provide financial and emotional assistance to Chicago area individuals who suffer from the inevitable impacts of this disease.