Marketing budgets in law firms continue to soar but firms are failing to grasp the opportunities offered by the digital age and still devote much of their spend on more traditional methods, new research has claimed.

A survey of 24 firms with between 25 to 250 partners, conducted by recruitment consultancy Laurence Simons International, found that practically all of them had increased their marketing budgets for 2006. In most cases, the increase was around 10%, although one firm had boosted its spend by an extra 22%.


The report revealed that firms with more than 100 partners typically spend between £14,000 to £15,000 per partner on marketing, although one firm spends close to £19,000 per partner.


The majority of the firms questioned focused their marketing activities on formal and informal events, sponsorship and developing new business from existing clients. Few firms invested heavily in advertising, e-marketing or their Web sites.


Firms spent between 30-50% of their total marketing budgets on events, and as much as 40% on sponsorship, the survey found. Web and e-marketing accounted for 1-10% of the budgets, and 2% was spent on advertising.



London firm Glovers was one of the exceptions to this trend, devoting 15% of its marketing spend to Web and e-marketing initiatives. Philip Eyre, the firm's marketing partner, said its site was now the firm's primary marketing tool as clients increasingly tended to make their decisions about legal service providers based on information from the Web.


Clare Quinn-Waters, head of Laurence Simons' marketing recruitment team, said: 'Legal marketing still seems to be governed by a "gentlemanly" code of conduct and departments have little or no time for what they appear to regard as the kind of aggressive or obtrusive behaviour seen in other fields.'


However, Chris Hinze, chairman of marketers' association the Professional Services Marketing Group, said: 'Unless you are prepared to spend to spend large amounts on advertising, there is no point bothering and Web activities can be expensive too.'


He advised: 'Don't write off the old-fashioned things, because they may actually work.'


One of the most effective forms of marketing is to create a good reason for talking to the client, such as running a seminar or workshop on new legislation, Mr Hinze added.