useful ways to differentiate your firm's clients

* How to identify and cater to your firm's top 20 clients. Your clients can be categorized in many ways, marketing consultant Deborah McMurray and Barbara Harrison Kaye, marketing director at New York City's Proffitt &
Wood, explain in a recent issue of the Legal Marketing Association's magazine, Strategies: The Journal of Legal Marketing. The authors note that there are a number of useful ways to differentiate your firm's clients: by industry; company size; revenue to the firm; frequency of hiring the firm; how many firm practices they use (service area utilization); how many other law firms they use and for what services (competitive intelligence); typical service teams required to handle work (senior partners, associates, paralegals); average matter value; and the average time they take to pay their bills. "Armed with this history and trend data, the marketing department can point out the structural impediments to profitability in the delivery of services to certain types of clients, especially those that fall in marginally profitable or unprofitable categories," the authors explain. Solutions for clients that pose a challenge to firm profitability, McMurray and Harrison write, include: bonus billing for unique services; staffing modifications; packaging your firm's services differently; or developing new services to meet changing marketplace or industry needs.