CASE STUDY -- How a Mid-Size Commercial Firm Developed And Implemented Its Strategic Plan

by  Jeanne M. Hammerstrom

Why Develop a Plan:

Strategic planning has been a common sound byte for the last decade. Law firms have been planning, perhaps not "strategically," for years; and those plans make nice desk coasters or attractive bookends in many attorney offices. Our firm determined that a five year strategic plan was needed. This plan would have clear goals, objectives and an implementation process. The firm needed to have a plan that outlined the direction of management as well as the marketing of the organization.

Where To Start -- How To Organize the Strategic Planning Committee:

"Committee" is a bad word for any marketer. But you need a committee to develop a strategic plan. It is not a one-person project. To begin, the firm needs to select a strong business-oriented leader to organize the effort. In our firm, it was a shareholder who was formerly outside counsel as well as in-house counsel for a large corporation where he had developed several plans for the company. This shareholder also has worked on developing strategic plans for a number of his clients. Most importantly, the firm wanted someone who was going to be a long-term member of the organization. With his leadership an eight-person, ad-hoc strategic planning committee was formed consisting of shareholders, associates, and the marketing director. The selection of committee members was very deliberate -- shareholders who had leverage in the firm, associates who were the future of the firm, and generally, attorneys who were eager to participate in the firm's future growth.

Creating the Plan:

After several brainstorming meetings, pen was put to paper and the following bullet points helped in creating the plan:
bulletStart with the SWOT approach to outline the goals (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).
bulletIdentify what you want or need your growth areas to be. Make sure to do your research on your market, whether it's national, regional, or local. What areas do your markets show as growth areas? Focus on your clients and your clients' industries not your practice areas.
bulletDevelop a set of goals and plans including management issues, profitability forecasts, client service requirements, etc.
bulletWith the help of the marketing department, do research and acquires supporting data for your plan. Include historical information on clients and practice or industry areas, geographic statistics, and growth patterns of the firm over the years. A national survey of regional law firms which indicated and ranked the various firms by recognition of their specific practice areas was very helpful to us.
bulletDefine who your clients are, their industries, and who you want them to be, and who they want to be.
bulletKnow your competition -- don't take for granted that you're the best firm in a certain practice area or region. It is good to know which of your competitors have business relationships with your current clients and prospects.
bulletInclude a list of people or organizations who can help you get to where you want to go (accountants, consultants, etc.). Use your resources and relationships.
bulletFinally, assign a deadline for implementing the plan and who will be responsible for implementing the plan.

Creating Attainable Goals:

Your firm needs to know what it wants to accomplish with its plan. Be specific in identifying your goals. For example, we want to increase revenues and/or profits by so much in this time period; we want to increase staff by a certain percentage and we want to include these additional practice/industry areas to our current marketing effort. Ask yourself the following questions:
bulletWhat are short term and long term goals (again make them attainable)?
bulletWhat support do we need from the management and administration of the firm?
bulletWhat role does marketing play in this overall plan? (it will be significant)
bulletHow are we going to measure the success of our goals and the overall strategic plan?

Implementation of the Plan:

Here's the tricky part. The plan has been brainstormed, it's been written and it even has goals that appear to be attainable. Now we need to implement all of these great ideas. The work of the Strategic Planning Committee is done. It is now the responsibility of the Managing Shareholder, Board of Directors and/or Management Committee and the administrative staff to implement. Specific assignments need to be made and deadlines given. Because I am a non-billing person, I took it upon myself to take a large portion of the plan as my responsibility. However, I needed the support of those attorneys heading up the various industry and practice groups as well as the Marketing Shareholder in order to make things happen. The marketing implementation process included developing an entire client service program. This program consisted of client assessment surveys; arranging visits to top clients by the managing shareholder and myself; communicating with the various industry/practice groups; and assisting with their marketing efforts.

It has been a year since our plan was developed, and I can say that we have had significant progress with the implementation process. The marketing goals are on track with where we anticipated them to be and firm management issues are also progressing. Our goals have generally remained the same, but we have enhanced or combined some of them.

Become Involved

Marketing Directors need to become involved with a firm's strategic planning. If you know that one is being developed, step up and ask to participate. Your contribution will be very valuable and quite frankly a "non-legal" approach to the planning process is helpful. Think like a marketer and business owner -- you can assist in your firm's successful strategic plan.

About Jeanne M. Hammerstrom

Jeanne M. Hammerstrom is the Director of Client Services for the 60-attorney, Pittsburgh law firm of Tucker Arensberg, P.C. She has been involved in law firm marketing for over nine years and is the current president-elect of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association. She is a frequent writer and lecturer on professional services marketing. Jeanne received her B.S. in Communications from Clarion University of Pennsylvania.