Blog posts: other

In the good old days of legal practice, effective marketing meant being good at your job, and once in a while taking clients out for long, expensive and boozy lunches. That, at least, is what a senior partner at an international law firm once told me. Those days, if not entirely mythical, are long gone. In this post I'm going to look at the nexus between internet marketing and legal services. I'll consider how the peculiar features of legal businesses affect the marketing of legal services online.

The success of most contract negotiation processes can be measured by: the quality of the resulting contract, in terms of faithfulness to the parties' intentions, proportionality, certainty and clarity; the length of the process and the costs incurred during the process; and the resulting attitudes of each party with respect to the contractual documentation and, more importantly, each other. Although not every contractual negotiation can be measured against these principles - for instance, dispute settlement agreements are rarely going to lead to mutual respect - they hold good for most.

I'm often asked whether a lawyer is needed for a particular contract job, or whether a template document would be adequate. It can be a frustratingly difficult question to answer. In seeking out legal services, small businesses usually want reassurance that they are "covered" for legal risks, but aren't necessarily interested in learning about the exact nature of those risks. However, all business involves risk, and no contract is perfect.

How should you go about choosing a commercial solicitor? At a minimum, you should be looking for someone who is expert in the relevant area of law, works efficiently, avoids errors, is able to communicate effectively with everyone else involved in the matter and produces documents and performs other work promptly and in accordance with any agreed or imposed timetable.