Earlier this month, we were interviewed by Capital+ (a leading-edge marketing consultancy) to share our views on how law firms should adopt new technologies to facilitate business development opportunities.
Capital+: As we know, “social listening” is the gathering, monitoring and analysing of live social conversations on the web, be it on social media, news channels or other relevant websites. From your experience, is social listening relevant to the legal industry? If yes, how so?
uMax Data: Yes, social listening is an unintrusive way to understand people and the society. With the average person spending more than 7 hours per day online in 2021, their interests, aspirations, purchase behaviours etc. are all information that can be gleaned through social listening.
With social listening tools, legal practitioners can effectively explore business opportunities, promote their firms, keep track of brand image, conduct research on cases and conduct competitor analysis.
Let’s take our online platform LawMiner® as an example. When our users do a search with the keyword “divorce” on LawMiner®, they will retrieve a list of results from all social and legal sources in a compartmentalised manner, as shown in the screenshot below. They can look at the results from different sources by clicking the respective tabs (note: the date range used in this example is 1/1/2022-31/3/2022).
Besides looking at judgments and legislation relating to the selected keywords, our users can check if there is anything relevant on social media or news websites. Charts of insights are generated automatically together with the search results, covering buzz, favourability, and distribution of news/posts, thus building up a holistic knowledge map. These charts also act as shortcuts to the original third-party websites. Our users can then see, for instance, if anyone is looking for legal advice from a lawyer in relation to divorce.
Our users can also see at a glance how often particular judges or lawyers dealt with divorce cases within the date range by reference to a “word cloud”, saving the tedious research for tracking experts, as demonstrated below.
Capital+: I agree, a law firm’s marketing plan isn’t complete without social listening. Making sense of social listening can be difficult, but knowing exactly how your firm will benefit and which software tools are best for law firms is where to start. I would also add that a firm’s digital visibility (website, search ranking, social media) should also be staples of effective marketing. 82% of legal clients choose their lawyers based on positive online reviews. Therefore, it’s important to be proactive about managing your digital presence.
John and Darren, in your opinion how do law firms best understand their market position and their competitors?
uMax Data: Receiving awards from or being ranked highly by renowned institutes (such as The Legal 500, Chambers and Partners) in the field can prove that you are a market leader. The other finalists will likely be your closest competitors. That said, small or medium-sized law firms, which represent the lion’s share of law firms in Hong Kong, may never compete for awards or law firm rankings, and yet can still be quite experienced in their areas of practice. For these firms, we would suggest that they look for other reliable data to ascertain their market position and that of their competitors.
Take the litigation practice as an example. LawMiner® uses historical data from Hong Kong legal judgments as an objective criterion to assess the performance of law firms in any given area of practice. Our logic goes like this: the more frequently a law firm appears in judgments about, say for instance, companies winding-up cases, the more experienced that law firm is in the area of insolvency.
Figure 1 below is a graphical illustration of the work of a law firm (let’s call it “Law Firm A” for the sake of illustration) in 2021, showing how frequently it dealt with different kinds of cases. One can easily see that Law Firm A mainly dealt with criminal cases in 2021. Clicking on the charts, in fact any chart on LawMiner®, would lead our users to the original third-party websites bearing the data, and in this case the Judiciary website, where they can study the relevant judgments closely.
In figure 2, we look at firms that are as active as Law Firm A in litigation for competitor analysis. Our users can easily ascertain Law Firm A’s market position relating to criminal practice and find out who its competitors are and whether any newcomers are catching up from behind (note: names of law firms are obliterated).
Capital+: Having access to tools like LawMiner® can equip a law firm in demonstrating its depth of experience to its customers and prospects by effortlessly creating charts of insights. These visually appealing assets could be great bases for a firm’s thought leadership program.
Can you share some tips on how lawyers can go about identifying trending topics in their area of practice and maximise thought leadership and brand awareness?
uMax Data: You don’t reap without sowing. You have to spend time and effort to communicate more with people in the industry, read more insightful articles, and pay more attention to the voices of stakeholders. That will inspire you to come up with unique insights.
Adoption of technology could be a catalyst in the process. With real-time information collated from a vast variety of sources such as social media, news channels, government departments and regulatory bodies, LawMiner® allows practitioners to stay abreast of current trends and developments through a single platform. They will be able to do searches for specific content within social media, which is not easy on search engines. They can set up alerts to keep informed of topics of their concern.
Further, our platform allows users to create charts of insights which can identify the trends of cases. For example, the figures below show the total number of judgments in relation to some common types of cases in recent years. Practitioners may create topical pieces to share their insights on, for instance, why there was a surge in cases of constitutional and administrative law cases, or employees’ compensation cases, in 2021.
Lawyers can instantaneously extract valuable information that would otherwise only be available with tedious research. They can then make use of such information to form unique insights for sharing, building up their thought leadership.
Capital+: That is a great example. we spend a lot of time speaking with lawyers and legal marketers about their content strategy. Most of the conversation focuses on the content that they are writing and how they are going about promoting that content. As lawyers do also tend to be more technical in their ways of communication, I would stress that it is important to start building your thought leadership program with the purpose of identifying your audience and topics that truly concern or interest them.
Let us end with one final question. What can law firms do to enhance their image as a more forward-thinking and tech-savvy?
uMax Data: In recent years, Hong Kong is dedicated to promoting online dispute resolution and legal cloud services. A new e-filing system has been launched and remote hearings are getting prevalent in our courts. Technologies will continue to play a crucial role in the delivery of legal services. If law firms want to be seen as forward-thinking and tech-savvy, it is important for them to keep an open mind and be ready to be proficient in different types of legal technology.
They can make use of technology to capture data that are valuable to their clients and share it in a reader-friendly manner. A common example we have come across — criminal lawyers may wish to share with their clients the sentencing patterns for different criminal charges in the Magistrates’ Courts, but find it difficult to collate such data because there are no judgments publicly available except in high-profile cases. This can actually be done easily using our platform, as shown in the figure below.
Thank you Capitial+ for inviting us to the interview and our sincere gratitude also goes to Ms Pel Lee (Consultant – Legal at Capital+) for all the arrangements.
About Capital+: Capital+ is a leading-edge marketing consultancy in the legal, asset management and SME communities. Run by a former lawyer alongside experienced legal marketers, Capital+ is uniquely positioned to serve the evolving business development needs of law firms in Hong Kong. Through brand differentiators and marketing innovation, Capital+ helps emerging law firms cut through the noise and rise above the competition. Schedule a free appointment here.
About LawMiner®: LawMiner® is a novel platform launched by uMax Data Technology Limited for legal market insights, and a social listening tool for legal practitioners. It utilises cutting-edge big data and AI technology in gathering data to provide all-round market analysis in relation to the legal industry. Specifically customised to the unique bilingual environment, LawMiner® aims at enhancing the competitiveness of legal practitioners, academics, students, researchers, and policymakers by providing them with industry analysis and helping them keep a close watch on industry updates. If you’re interested in reviewing a demo of the LawMiner® platform, register here.