Will law firms convert to a system where they utilize sales professionals to sell their services to clients, as financial services, accounting firms and other professional services industries have? What are the considerations?
Looking at the pros of using sales professionals, law firms would be able to have their attorneys focus entirely on practicing law, and not losing potential revenue by devoting billable hours of attorneys to developing business, networking, drafting pitches and proposals, and presenting them to potential clients. This would allow firms to develop a complementary department adjacent to the attorneys- similar to marketing and business development - where professionals would work with individual attorneys on developing relationships with clients, gathering the necessary information and strategy to prepare pitches and proposals, and going into clients to present their pitch. Would lawyers welcome this change or would they have difficulty acquiescing their business to non-lawyer professionals? If they welcomed the change, would this result in more robust revenues because lawyer time would be freed up? Or would there be a decrease in revenues because non-lawyers would be selling services to in house counsel, and this could potentially be damaging to the firm's reputation and relationship with their clients?
On consideration is how to determine who would be viable candidate for these sales professional positions? Financial services sales professionals are required to have Series 7 and 63 certifications, with additional certifications required depending on the types of products being sold. Would law firm sales professionals need a JD or would they just need familiarity with the law? When looking at third party legal vendors such as Lexis Nexis, Bloomberg Law, LPOs and other legal service providers, what qualifications or skills and experience is required? Often times former attorneys do end up working for these types of companies, but not all employees have a JD or have practiced law. How is this different from what would be required for sales professionals selling legal services to in house counsel? Does in house counsel look to only have lawyers pitch their services or would they be accepting of non-attorneys selling a firm's legal services? How much legal knowledge is required to make a pitch or develop a relationship with a client? Is it just generalities and the intricacies of the legal work is done once the work commences, or is there discussion of legal concepts that would require an attorney to be making the presentation? Or would it work better if the relationship partner accompanied the sales professionals on their pitches in case specifics come up?
Another consideration is developing a secondary track at law schools for legal sales professionals that would be less than the 3 years and cover both legal concepts and selling strategies? Some law schools are now revamping their programs to include areas of expertise such as business management, project management, legal technologies. Would developing a sales track be any different? Would this be part of earning a JD or could this, and the other topics, fragment into other individual programs which would not require the same years of schooling and state bar admittance as JD? Law schools are currently under fire for the significant expense in attending and the inability of law students to be hired for positions that would justify such an expense. There are only a limited number of high paying, AmLaw 100 positions for first year associates as law firms scale down their junior hiring as the leverage model is no longer effective and clients are no longer willing to take on the cost of training junior lawyers. Developing these secondary programs would allow individuals interested in the legal profession earn degrees that would help them gain employment at law firms but in a different capacity than attorneys. Legal IT professionals, business development professionals, legal project managers, and sales professionals all could be developed career paths at law firms.
As law firms continue to struggle with the changing business model caused by clients and the general business environment, they will test out different ways to continue their profitability and success. An internal sales team could be beneficial in selling their legal services and changing the way the firms conduct their business - allowing their lawyers to do what they do best: practice law.
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