We have been using gamification at Passle for many years now, with great results.

We take new clients through a ‘Proof of Value’ stage to show how easy it is to create expert content, setting up an internal competition to nurture the habit of creating timely posts using our platform. 

But what is gamification?

Gamification can be defined as the application of game elements in a non-game context - using typical elements of game playing such as point scoring, competition with others, rules of play - and applying them to other areas of activity. It is often deployed as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service and foster behavioural changes.

"Gamification is often used to draw professionals out of their comfort zones. This helps employees develop new skills and engage with other members of the firm in a beneficial way. Gamification offers incentives — such as firm-wide recognition — to lawyers and other staff. This can promote efficiency and teamwork among employees as they work towards a common goal: increasing firm profitability."

Gary R. Markham, Chief Executive @ Bilr, from Why should law firms care about gamification? 

Using gamification in law firms

Take a listen to Lisa Simon (Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer at Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie, and former president of the Legal Marketing Association) discussing her gamification initiative that she uses to drive healthy peer-to-peer competition between attorneys and new business development in the JDSupra Market Leaders Podcast (June 2018): Using gamification to fuel business development activity.

She discusses how peer-to-peer competition helps drive activity and form habits:

"One of the things we have found is that the attorneys have really appreciated the disciplinary nature when they have to go about doing something like this ... where you put some sort of a timeframe together around the gamification, say at six weeks and it really makes the attorneys get more disciplined about their business development activities... They might have to fill out a form and turn it in once a week so they can rack up those points and look at the leaderboard and see how well they are doing. 

They continue to try and follow that discipline even after the game is over, so you can really create that habit of doing business development activities throughout the week or the month."

Lisa Simon, Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer at Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie

Another insight into how gamification is being used with legal companies to drive engagement comes from Jill Huse (Partner & Co-founder at Society 54, and former president of the Legal Marketing Association). Listen to the Furia Rubel podcast episode of On Record PR: For the fun of law firm biz dev: Gamification and coaching (April 2020). 

Jill discusses how she has used gamification to drive business development:

"As legal marketers, we’re always trying to figure out how to track things more accurately and using our CRMs. It’s challenging to be able to anecdotally get from our attorneys what they’re doing, to be able to draw those connections. When you put something like a gamification strategy in place, they want to tell you because they’re getting points for it. It’s also about the fun of it. And it’s about people engaging in something where they’re going to create more long-lasting habits that are going to effectuate building business within their law firms."

Jill Huse, Partner & Co-founder at Society 54

Passle and gamification

Our ‘Proof of Value’ gamification plan allows the experts in a company to create business development content in a timely fashion, and helps create those long-lasting habits.

The initial competition has always been set up and managed by our experienced Client Success team on behalf of our clients. But now at Passle, we are in the process of developing a client-facing version of our competition tool (to be available to clients through their admin dashboard), which will allow administrators to set up and run their own client competitions whenever they like: to focus on specific areas of business development that they would like to push with their internal teams, or to introduce new users to the Passle platform and build a habit of creating timely BD content.

This new competition tool will allow administrators to create internal teams, set a timeframe, select the rules and assign the points. Once activated, the tool will automate the results, allowing the administrator and participants to see the leaderboard. All you need to do is decide on the prizes!