For years professional services firms of all sorts have embraced the Webinar as part of business. A way to attract customers, disseminate thought leadership and provide valued content to existing customers.
The exception for a long time was Law Firms. I don’t know how many times over the past decade I have heard:
“You see in the legal space the Lawyer needs to meet to client in person… The webinar doesn’t work for our firm”
The irony was never lost on me that I too needed to be in a boardroom to sell to a law firm and many of these meetings were booked after the contact I was meeting participates in a webinar! But I digress for much has changed over the past year or so and the webinar is finally being embraced by the legal industry and more than they are doing an excellent job utilizing it.
Here are the trends we are seeing that are driving adoption
“We don’t get the audiences we used to”
A staple of Legal marketing since before the dawn of the Webinar has been events. Often these events are educational in nature and serve as a way to get customers and prospects into a room with the Lawyers to listen and mingle and essentially look to drum up business. As is the case with every industry the number of people who will physically leave their office to attend one of these events is dropping and the webinar (for some legal marketers) is becoming a necessary evil to reach the audiences they once did.
Since necessity is the mother of invention they quickly learn that the average legal webinar attracts more than 100 live attendees and with archive and synch ovation the viewership numbers for what was essentially and afterthought out performs the in person even 2 or 3 fold from a viewership perspective
Most importantly this virtual audience is generally not an audience that you would have had if you didn’t offer the webinar. They are from out of town, out of country or presently working with another firm and showing at your event is like “cheating on their girlfriend” attending a webinar is more like checking out your profile on Facebook – it is just easier
So the webinar in essence reaches the most important audience – a new audience with potential for new business
We need a more streamlined way to offer CLE and PD programs
Continuing Education events are a huge driver for any legal marketers event calendar. The trend seems to be that administering the credits or (credit redemption information depending on where your event is accredited) is an extremely manual process. The webinar platform can streamline this process providing viewers with immediate confirmation of course completion and where required their CE certificate. As important to the process is the recording. Most every webinar platform will host a recording of the event. Now customers, internal firm resources and even prospects who are looking to your firm as a source for CE content can easily access these events and once again access credit information without manual intervention from your team
“We struggle with content marketing of any kind because the Lawyers are so busy lawyering they don’t make the time to contribute”
The smartest guys in the room need to take time away from billable hours to contribute to content marketing and generally speaking it gets put off and firms of every size struggle with this dichotomy. As we outlined here a few weeks ago the Webinar can be a massive catalyst for your content marketing strategy
Law Firms are like anyone else, they live Ina world where their clients and prospective clients Google for information before calling and want to self educate before engaging. Those legal marketers whole once told me the Webinar will not work for their firm are now coming to understand that the Webinar does not win them business – but it does start conversations…often in person which eventually does lead to business
Here is what you can expect from a legal webinar program in North America:
