July 06, 2021

contracts contract lifecycle management marketing strategy

The below article distinguishes “niche” and “breadth” when describing how ALSPs/law companies need to decide go-to-market strategy. I don’t think it’s that much of a Hobson’s Choice (where we get a choice between one thing or nothing).

Law companies that have a broad array of offerings likely have deep experience and expertise in some domains and simply expertise in others. For example, let’s look at the continuum of services in a contracts business process offering portfolio.

From intake through execution and post-execution obligation management, there exists a bevy of services law companies can provide. None are world-class at all of them, and only some are world-class at some of them (I had to re-write that a few times to not confuse myself)! However, customers typically have acute needs that drive initial engagement with a law company. It could be migration of legacy contracts into a CLM, selection or implementation of a CLM, redlining, and review of SaaS agreements, creation of playbooks for review, harmonizing disparate templates into one, etc…

If a law company is expert and experienced at any (or multiple) of these, then it can serve the customer productively by delivering a solution that solves the acute need. However, the law company needs to plan for success and be prepared to expand its solution to the customer if (1) the work product excites the customer and (2) the processes and technology framework established would deliver greater ROI to the customer if expanded beyond the initial scope.

In some of these cases, the law company likely has or has access to expertise that can help the customer. In partnership with the customer, the law company should develop and deliver a solution that adds significant value. The value of both parties leveraging the investment in the relationship, the knowledge the law company has developed on the customer, and the processes and technology platform deployed far exceed a customer trying to select “best of breed” and then independently attempting to integrate them.

As such, my experience tells me that if a customer starts with consuming a “niche” or specialty offering from a law company, it is highly likely the same company can offer broader services – as long as they have some critical mass, access to capital, talent, and a cogent understanding of the business need.

Customers may not be relegated to a Hobson’s choice – at least not when working with Elevate. Elevate offerings are broad with deep expertise in a number of key domains that enable solutions to specific problems. Whether it is responding to a large scale eDiscovery request, implementing a CLM system, providing outsourced managed review of complex contracts, deploying a software solution for managing legal department support requests, or helping a law department source a talented lawyer for a year to support increased volumes of work, Elevate can (and has) provided solutions. Each of these solutions is interconnected with related solutions so once a customer develops trust with Elevate, they can easily leverage our portfolio of offerings across the legal services continuum. As such, there are no bad choices.