What Lawyers Need And How MSPs Can Sell To Them
By Jim Roddy, VP of Marketing, RSPA
The general public may be frustrated with today’s litigious world, but those legal wranglings could be a boon for solutions providers. “Successfully Winning In The Legal Market With Managed Services” was the title of Charles Tholen’s presentation Thursday at the ASCII Success Summit in Chicago. Tholen is the president and CEO of managed services provider (MSP) Cognoscape and an active ASCII member.
Legal Market Needs
Tholen highlighted scheduling and email during his talk as particular needs of the legal market. “Schedules are very important to attorneys,” he said. “There was a glitch with the iPhone that would accept appointments but not schedule them, and that made attorneys freak out. I know one firm that has their secretaries print their schedules on paper two months at a time to make sure they don’t miss anything.”
Many in the audience agreed that mobility and email are tricky in this vertical because lawyers want to stay connected at all times. And they save everything — no exaggeration. “All attorneys are going to have their smartphones and their tablets, but beyond that, lawyers think email is a repository for everything they’ve ever done,” Tholen said. “It’s difficult to build a server that can handle more than a few attorneys. They become challenging.”
Tholen’s complete list of legal market IT needs is below:
- Client management
- Matter management
- Document management
- Time and billing
- Back-office accounting
- Practice management
- Docketing
- Court/government websites
- eDiscovery
- Trial preparation and presentation
- Scan/print/fax
- Office productivity
- Telephony
- Mobility
How To Sell To The Legal Vertical
As with any vertical, keys to entering the market are understanding the terminology and how the organizations work. Tholen said the biggest difference between the legal vertical and other markets is that “their time is literally money,” he said. “Firms like our Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) program because even with the best warranty service, you will be down for four hours. With a $1,000 an hour attorney, think how many computers they could buy with that downtime.”
Tholen recommended solutions providers participate in the organizations where lawyers congregate. Among these groups are the ALA (Association of Legal Administration), the LMA (Legal Marketers Association), bar associations, and legal charities. “We do fun things with them,” Tholen said. “We sponsor the hospitality suite at the conferences where local lawyers gather. It’s easy for us to do that. These are tight knit groups. They ask each other which vendors to recommend. If you build relationships with them, it will pay dividends for you.”
Tholen also recommended solutions providers work with what he called “synergy partners,” which would include managed print and traditional print providers. “Big Xerox dealers are very focused in the legal world. They work with the people you want to be getting deals with,” Tholen said. “We share leads with each other and consider them a vendor partner.”
Understanding the decision-making process inside of a law firm is also important. “You can’t just rely on the firm administrator to get your sale all the way through,” Tholen said. “Try to meet with the technology committee and managing partners so you can see it all the way through.”
The ASCII Success Summit – Chicago is being held May 27-28 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago. It is one of eight solution provider-focused conferences ASCII will host in 2015. For more information on ASCII, go to www.BSMinfo.com/go/InsideASCII.