The resilient rainmaker: top five service-delivery changes to transform your advocacy plan and leverage legal marketing makeovers in 2012.

• Author: Downey, Marguerite G.

"Resilience, not luck, is the signature to greatness."

--Jim Collins, author of "Good to Great"

Fact: We have seen dramatic changes in the legal marketing industry throughout the years The greatest of those changes is that we have a legal marketing industry that is vibrant, growing and more valuable than ever

It is also a fact that some lawyers are resistant to change Many just don't like it. But some, with the proper persuasion and enough innate vision of their own, embrace change Why, they even actively promote change

It is those attorneys who, like the sharks they are so often compared to in the most negative of connotations, understand the fundamental truth that to swim--to move with or against the current--is to live, but to remain idle is to die.

And, in this economy, that vision may very well separate the competent attorney from the competent attorney who has a paying client. With competition so fierce among both U.S. and international firms to represent viable clients, it is the role of the legal marketer to implement an advocacy plan on behalf of his or her firm to corner its share of the market.

Developing such an advocacy plan for a law firm is much easier said than done. It goes beyond outlining a yearly budget or posting a blog or two. The most important features of an effective advocacy plan is to take into account a thorough understanding of both the law firm that you wish to promote as well as the external environment in which that firm operates (i.e., existing client base, potential new clients, potential competitors and the financial ceiling of the practice area).

To better aid legal marketers in developing the right advocacy plan for their firms, let's examine five service-delivery changes that are transforming the legal marketing industry today: strategic technology, trend-spotting, influence, thought leadership and involvement What follows is an analysis of the likely impact that these top five service-delivery changes will have on the law firm of tomorrow.

Strategic Technology

It is no surprise to begin this list by identifying the use of technology as an important part of our marketing arsenal A critic would even suggest that it is not even really a change in how we do business But as the outlaw Billy the Kid might say to the cowpoke standing next to him at the bar of the

Santa Fe saloon, "Strapping a six-shooter to your hip doesn't make you a gunfighter." I contend that having a pretty website or uploading the occasional podcast does not make one technologically advanced either.

In the Old West, most everyone carried a gun, but very few were truly proficient in firearms or had mastered the art of the quick draw. Fast-forward to today's high pressure legal frontier where everyone has a website and a Twitter feed but few firms actually wield their technological resources strategically . It really isn't enough to randomly update a podcast on the website, post a link to a practice blog to your attorney's LinkedIn profile, or tweet a link to your JDSupra or Lexology article without being able to make sense of what you want to share.

We need to learn to cut through the chatter to transmit the desired thought-provoking messages strategically. Lisa Gansly argues in the April 25, 2011, Wall Street Journal article "Making Sense of It All: Getting Knowledge...