In a recent Platforum9 session, Stijn Van Oirschot, co-founder of KLERQ, shared key insights on how law firms can streamline their business development efforts through better knowledge management and technology integration. Drawing from his experience as both a business development professional in law firms and now as a legal tech entrepreneur, Van Oirschot offered a practical perspective on turning BD teams from reactive service providers into proactive strategic advisors.

The Challenge: Managing Knowledge in Siloed Organizations

Van Oirschot identified a fundamental challenge that affects BD efforts across the legal industry: law firms often struggle to effectively track and leverage their collective experience. This challenge stems from the siloed nature of legal practices and the difficulties in centralizing knowledge.

“We once did an exercise at a Dutch law firm with around 50 lawyers,” Van Oirschot recalled. “We asked the 10 partners in the partner group meeting to take a piece of paper and tell me what the person sitting on their left, their colleague partner, was doing in the last quarter. Only one or maybe two came up with a sufficient result and the rest had no clue.”

This knowledge gap directly impacts business development efficacy, as firms constantly talk about cross-selling and upselling opportunities but lack the fundamental understanding of what they could actually be selling across practice areas or offices.

From Reactive to Proactive: Repositioning BD Professionals

A central theme of Van Oirschot’s discussion was the need to transform how business development and marketing professionals function within law firms.

“We believe that business developers and marketing people in a law firm should be more like proactive advisors,” he explained. “I think nowadays, many of them, definitely not all, but many of them are reactive. ‘Throw it over the shed and do the dispatch or the submission for me.'”

This reactive positioning undermines the potential strategic value BD professionals can bring, especially considering that many have advanced degrees in communications and marketing. Van Oirschot suggested this requires a cultural shift where BD professionals need to “start challenging” lawyers rather than simply executing requests.

“Instead of, if you get a request, just coming with the list of all the credentials you can find, come with a question,” he advised. “Most lawyers I’ve worked with like to be challenged, but we simply don’t feel comfortable enough to do so.”

This might include questioning whether the firm should pitch for every opportunity that comes along, acting as a “guardian” to prevent wasted time on pitches with little chance of success.

Technology as an Enabler: Experience Management Systems

Van Oirschot described how KLERQ, the platform his company developed, addresses these challenges by creating a centralized database for managing the firm’s collective experience and content.

“There’s great content in law firms either written by the lawyers or by the marketing team, but if you centralize this, you can reuse it in your pitch, in your submission, on your website, for your socials,” he explained.

The tool leverages AI to help firms better manage and repurpose their content: “What the AI does is that it takes the content you already have and tries to rephrase it into the actual topic you need.” This capability helps BD teams quickly develop specialized content for different contexts, from attorney bios to sector-specific pitches.

Beyond content generation, AI can also help identify the most relevant experience to highlight: “AI now can say, I have 50 cases in a certain industry for the corporate M&A team, but I already can see based on your criteria, what is their best credential to use.”

The Directories Dilemma: Rethinking Submissions

The discussion touched on the resource-intensive process of submitting to legal directories like Chambers and Legal 500. Van Oirschot noted that firms are increasingly questioning their approach to directories rather than submitting by default.

“More and more law firms, and I’m really happy they do so, start asking questions like, ‘Why would we submit for this directory?’ instead of just doing it,” he noted. “If we want to specialize ourselves, maybe we should be doing a little bit more cherry picking.”

He also highlighted the inefficiency in the current process: “The things you deliver to the three or four major legal directories are basically the same, but they want them in a different format, which is hugely time consuming.”

This inefficiency presents an opportunity for technology to streamline the process while also encouraging a more strategic approach to directory submissions overall.

Integration with CRM: The Relationship Data Challenge

When discussing the technology landscape in law firms, Van Oirschot emphasized the growing importance of CRM systems but highlighted a critical cultural barrier to their successful implementation.

“I think the only thing I see going wrong more or less on a weekly basis is that law firms want a CRM, but forget to ask the fundamental question within the partner group: are we at the point that we are willing to share all our contacts?” he observed.

This unwillingness to share relationship data can undermine the entire value proposition of a CRM: “I’ve seen CRM systems implementing with only Chinese walls. It’s like a CRM system per person, which is basically yours.”

The insight demonstrates how technology implementations in law firms must address cultural and structural challenges to be successful.

Cultural Transformation: Where to Begin

When asked about firms that succeed in creating more collaborative cultures, Van Oirschot emphasized the importance of hiring BD professionals who can challenge the status quo:

“I think it starts with being or daring to hire people on, let’s say the fee burner position, that are not always saying ‘yes’ and ‘please,'” he suggested.

He also highlighted the role younger lawyers can play in cultural change: “I think it starts with letting the young generation in on some points. The young generation fuels the competition, and if they open up the culture with hiring a few people, lawyers and non-lawyers who are able to challenge each other… this openness starts with the younger people.”

Looking Forward: The Evolving Role of Legal Marketing

Looking ahead, Van Oirschot noted encouraging signs that marketing and BD professionals are gaining more strategic influence in law firms.

“We come across marketing directors who now have quite a serious vote in the law firm and who are able to drive change,” he shared. “The law firms now see that you have to take these people seriously because they can also go somewhere else.”

With this increasing recognition, Van Oirschot described how his company is now collaborating with clients on more sophisticated initiatives like visualizing rankings, developing referral strategies, and tracking cross-border referral patterns: “Most law firms have no clue. They throw work towards a certain country and they don’t track if anything comes back.”

Conclusion: Data-Driven Change

The discussion revealed how streamlining business development in law firms requires a combination of cultural change, strategic repositioning of BD professionals, and smart technology implementation. By centralizing and better leveraging their collective experience, law firms can make their BD efforts more efficient while also enhancing their strategic impact.

As Van Oirschot summarized, the future belongs to firms that recognize the strategic value of their marketing and BD professionals, equip them with the right tools to access and leverage the firm’s collective experience, and create cultures where challenging conventional wisdom is encouraged rather than discouraged.