More than two thirds of law firms are unhappy with the quality of new business enquiries they receive, a digital marketing agency claims. 

According to a report titled The State of Digital Marketing in Professional Services, 97% of law firms surveyed said they receive at least one new business enquiry per month. However, 70% of these said they are not happy with the quality or quantity (or both) of the enquiries.

A total of 370 professional services firms, including 70 law firms, were surveyed for the report published by Propero Partners. 

James Noble, partner at Propero, said: ‘The fact that law firms aren’t happy with 70% of their new business enquiries is significant – that’s a lot of wasted time and effort dealing with enquiries which aren’t right for the business. Bad quality or a low number of leads can point to a firm which isn’t doing enough to engage with the right people.’

The responses also showed that more than a third of law firms either do not convert any new business enquiries, or do not measure how many enquiries are converted each month – the highest rate of non-conversion in the professional services industry.

Noble believes that the number of law firms not measuring their conversions is alarming. ‘You need to know where leads come from and what brings them to the point of converting to better understand the needs of future prospects. Firms are massively missing a trick by not recording this information,’ Noble said.

The most common method of receiving new business enquiries was through web contact forms (77%). Phone calls direct to the firm accounted for 68% and events 48%.

The report also shows that most lawyers are engaged with social media, with 90% of those surveyed having a LinkedIn company page and 84% having a Twitter account.