 | Brum deal: Former Birmingham Law Society president Diane Benussi promotes legal life in the citySteven Jonas, president of Birmingham Law Society and a partner at Jonas Roy Bloom, is chairing a session – ‘Promoting your legal community’ – on this growing trend at next month’s Law Society annual conference.
Mr Jonas’s law society dreamed up ‘Advised in Birmingham’, an initiative designed to promote the range of legal expertise in Birmingham and the West Midlands area to potential business clients throughout the UK and internationally.
Another aim is to alert the local media and the national and international press of the expertise in the region, and to help attract more clients and improve recruitment and retention of high-calibre staff.
Mr Jonas says: ‘It’s a super initiative. It brings together the various organisations who have an interest in promoting Birmingham into one umbrella enterprise. It has helped build up a very strong legal community.’
The group – which includes barristers, members of the Institute of Legal Executives and judges, as well as local solicitors – runs seminars, liaises with regional bodies charged with bringing more investment into the region, holds conferences and even hands out T-shirts and sticks of rock bearing the Advised In Birmingham logo.
The group has also just produced a CD featuring local legal luminaries such as CBI chief and one-time Birmingham solicitor Digby Jones, waxing lyrical on the joys of living and working in Birmingham. This will be sent to any Birmingham Law Society member who wants it, together with another CD demonstrating how it can best be used to bring in new business.
Mr Jonas says: ‘We are attempting to calculate at the moment how beneficial the Advised in Birmingham brand is. The trouble with projects of this kind is that one feels obliged to measure the benefits within six months or so – you have to take a long-term view.’
Stephen White, a senior partner at Cobbetts and a board member of pro.Manchester – an initiative with similar aims to Advised in Birmingham, only boasting membership from other professions such as accountants, bankers, surveyors and so on – agrees that the benefits of such groups are hard to quantify.
He says: ‘It’s always difficult to measure the effectiveness of these things. When people come to you, there is often an element of luck or because of a word-of-mouth recommendation. You can shout to the rooftops about your firm or your profession, but you don’t know if it’s actually bringing in business. You just have to keep plugging away.
‘Pro.Manchester is us trying to set out our stall and say to buyers and potential buyers of our services that we have all the professions represented here in some strength who can deal with all your needs most of the time.
‘There may be occasions when specialist advice may be required from the City of London, but most of the time we have the ability and the resources to deal with it here rather than seeing people going off to the City. There is no need to get "City advice" – they can get it here and more cost effectively.’
Mr Jonas says the initiative has garnered a good response both from its members, other parts of the profession, and from captains of industry.
Liverpool Law Society president James Benson says: ‘At the beginning of the year, I decided it was the right time to consider the promotion of legal services on behalf of the legal community as a whole, so enhancing the more straightforward marketing of our individual practices.
‘I have been much impressed by Birmingham Law Society’s efforts in raising its profile through Advised in Birmingham and I would wish to achieve something on similar lines. The national Law Society’s new [advertising] campaign reflects the need to market and promote legal services in a manner that will avoid provoking the contempt of the media and other agencies.’
Such initiatives, says Mr White, will not necessarily do much to improve the image of lawyers among the general public. ‘Lawyers have got a terrible reputation – perhaps just a shade above accountants in some senses.
‘As between ourselves and other professionals, we have a reasonable standing anyway because we understand each other, having the same sort of stresses and strains. I’m not sure groups like pro.Manchester are going to change the views of the man on the Manchester omnibus, but if we’re talking about corporations and in-house lawyers, they tend to be more sophisticated, they understand the profession better so we don’t have as much of an image problem with these sorts of people.’
Mr Benson says the benefits of promotion in Liverpool are considerable. ‘Apart from generating new work and preventing the slippage that Liverpool has suffered in recent years, the strength, integrity and reliability of the legal arm of the city’s professional network encourages confidence.’
Mr Jonas says: ‘Goodwill is invaluable for lawyers, particularly since there are certain sections of the press which don’t have anything good to say about us. So to find that not only people from our and other professions but also captains of industry are appreciative of what you’re doing is very satisfying.’
He says such appreciation for the legal profession outside London does not necessarily extend to the legal press. ‘We try to keep the legal press in the loop, but they seem to be so London-orientated that they don’t express much interest,’ he says.
Mr White says there are big advantages of a body which promotes all the professions instead of just the legal profession.
He says: ‘It’s a bit of a club for the professions and it’s great for networking opportunities to come in contact with people from other professions. If it’s just for the legal profession, it’s a bit stale.’
Advised in Birmingham seems to agree and is now in talks with Birmingham Forward – which promotes the professional, financial and business support services in the area, rather than just the legal profession – about joining forces.
Mr Jonas says: ‘One of the problems is that Birmingham Law Society has limited resources. We feel we are coming to the end of how far we can push it to promote Birmingham so we are in talks with Birmingham Forward about forming an organisation which promotes Birmingham professions as a whole. The time has come for the concept to grow up.’
Former Birmingham Law Society president, Diane Benussi of Benussi & Co, is a director of Birmingham Forward. She says that when Anthony Collins – who was Birmingham Law Society president before Ms Benussi – thought up the Advised in Birmingham tag, it was always envisaged that it would be rolled out to cover all professionals giving advice in the area.
She says: ‘We just want to get as much work into the city as possible. Whoever gets the work gets it but it’s good for the city that more work comes in.’
She says that despite the unique closeness and spirit of co-operation within Birmingham’s legal community, it does not take away the ‘edge’. She explains: ‘Senior and managing partners meet to discuss what’s going on and talk about problems but this doesn’t stop them being fiercely competitive.’
Mr Benson says: ‘Liverpool has a long tradition of intense competitiveness amongst its lawyers. However, the regeneration of the city and the forthcoming Capital of Culture celebrations, and the need to service the expanding commercial and financial sectors, has created a more unified approach to attracting and retaining legal work within the city.’
Mr White says: ‘There are two strands to a group like ours. There is the overall objective of trying to persuade people to use the professional expertise in Manchester, but then every member obviously very much has their own agenda to promote their own firm. It moves from the unselfish to the selfish.’
None of the organisations currently have a formal quality control check on potential new members. Ms Benussi says: ‘It’s always a problem. If any lawyer is in trouble, we all suffer. We did consider going down the quality control road but we felt in the end that the general feeling we are trying to create might suffer.’
She adds: ‘Groups like these, where everyone is singing from the same song sheet, is a bit like having a football team going out together. It’s created a feel-good factor.’
Lucy Trevelyan is a freelance journalist
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