Strategic expansion in a legal firm

• Main Author: Guzman, Hercules T., Jr.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Law firms—Marketing; Law firms—Finance; Strategic planning; Strategic Management Policy
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_manorg/91
• Institution: De La Salle University

This Action Research addressed the issue of declining revenues in our law firm, Gruba Guzman, at the time of the COVID-19. To increase revenues, we needed to add new partners to our law firm. In Cycle I, we focused on presenting our firm to prospective partners to convince them to join our firm. We used the Strategic Planning Framework Using Top-Down Planning (From Vision to Strategies) and Bottom-Up Planning (From SWOT to Strategies) by Morato (2007) as a marketing tool to explain and identify our legal firm to prospective partners. As a result of this intervention, we attracted two (2) law partners to join our firm. In Cycle II, to further boost our revenues, our team focused our effort on closing client referrals. As we noted that lack of online presence was a constraint, we applied the online marketing framework by Taken Smith and Smith (2019) in creating a webpage for our firm. We also noted the limitations set by the Code of Professional Conduct for Philippine Lawyers related to marketing of legal services. We created a website linked to social media accounts to increase visits to our webpage. Our second intervention was a success since we were able to close one (1) client referral with the help of our firm’s website. Overall, the marketing strategies that we adopted were effective in attracting partners to our firm and in closing client referrals that would help boost our firm’s revenues.