There's a funny thing in thought leadership. If you wrote a brilliant 10,000-word treatise on the latest regulatory changes in financial services and sent it to your client, it would likely have less impact than if you sent them someone else's analysis with 100 words of your own commentary.

The leading academic authority on competition law couldn't email your client their latest paper with the same business impact as you sending that same paper with a few paragraphs explaining why sections 3 and 7 matter to their upcoming merger.

The original author did the harder intellectual work. But you're creating more situational value. This isn't to say that more in depth thinking isn't worth doing, but it's revealing something fundamental about how advisory relationships actually work.

Authority & Value

When you share content with added narrative, you're simultaneously saying "I know what's happening in the market" AND "I know your business enough to tell you what matters."

It's the essence of what clients actually pay for: not just legal knowledge, but judgment about how that knowledge applies.

Consider what happens when a partner at Smith, Smith and Smith sends a client an article about supply chain disputes with specific commentary on contractual exposure. First, you're signaling you're reading what matters. You're current. You're thinking beyond your case files. But more importantly, you're doing the translation work that transforms legal information into business insight.

You're saying, "Among all the regulatory noise, this creates risk in your operations. Here's specifically what you should be considering in your supplier agreements."

By adding your interpretation, you're not diminishing the original author's authority, or your own. You're actually superseding it in a specific context. The journalist wrote for 200,000 readers; you're writing for one general counsel. In that narrow but crucial domain, your commentary becomes more valuable than the source material itself.

During our research into General Counsel content consumption, we found that 64% of General Counsel are more likely to request a conversation with a lawyer by name after reading relevant articles they have written. The specific commentary attaches the judgment to you as an individual. The treatise-writer has depth. The commercial lawyer has relevance. When your client opens their email at 7am between meetings, relevance wins.

The Anti-Transaction Signal

While business development thinking is changing, much of it still comes across as transactional. The credentials presentation. The "we should catch up" coffee. The capability deck. Every interaction is structured around winning the next instruction.

Sharing annotated content flips this entirely. It's advice without a matter number. It's strategic thinking without a billing code. It's demonstrating you understand their business when there's nothing in it for you right now.

The signal this sends is remarkably powerful to in-house teams: "I'm thinking about your commercial challenges even when I'm not on a retainer."

It reframes the relationship from panel lawyer to trusted advisor, from external counsel to someone who genuinely understands the business context behind the legal questions.

This matters especially in the current market where General Counsel aren't just buying legal expertise. They're buying judgment about which legal issues actually matter to the business. 

The stakes are clear, our research into General Counsel found that 48% of General Counsel say they will not work with a firm that does not actively demonstrate subject matter expertise through its content. Content isn't a nice-to-have; it's a prerequisite for being on the panel. A Dechert partner who sends relevant, contextualized content is demonstrating that judgment in a way that no credentials presentation ever could.

The Thought Development Signal

The third effect is more subtle but perhaps most important for law firms: curated commentary is visible commercial thinking. It's proof you understand business, not just law.

When a BCLP partner regularly shares content with perspective attached, they're essentially publishing their commercial judgment in real-time. Clients can watch you connect legal developments to business implications, develop positions on emerging risks, and refine your thinking about their sector. Over time, this creates something more valuable than technical expertise. It creates demonstrated business understanding.

Think of it as compound interest for trusted advisor status. Each piece of shared commentary is a small deposit. The returns aren't immediate, but they accumulate. The data backs this up: our research into General Counsel showed that 61% prioritize suppliers who keep them up to date with the latest industry developments and best practices. 

Six months later, you're not just "our real estate lawyer." You're "someone who helps us think about how property law intersects with our business strategy." 

You've become the priority supplier before a formal pitch even begins.

The Format Is The Message

What makes this especially relevant now is that in-house legal teams are drowning in content but starving for curation. 

The numbers tell the story: we interviewed 200 General Counsel, the research found that 77% of General Counsel spend eight hours or more per week reading content to stay up to date. They're actively looking for information during those early-morning email checks. The constraint isn't access to legal updates. Every firm sends updates. Every legal publisher has alerts. Every professional body has guidance notes.

The real scarcity is sense-making. Which regulatory change actually affects our business model? Which case law matters to our risk appetite? Which consultation should we respond to?

Yet the same research reveals that only 8% of General Counsel believe that law firms currently deliver enough timely, relevant content to the market. This is the opportunity. Most firms are sending generic treatises. By adding your 200 words of specific business context, you move into that rare 8% of genuinely helpful advisors.

In that environment, the external lawyer who can say, "read this, skip that, and here's why paragraph 47 of this FCA consultation matters to your consumer credit portfolio" is providing a service that even the most brilliant legal academics cannot provide. They wrote for the market. You're interpreting for one business.

This is why technology hasn't solved this problem despite AI tools that can summarize any legal development. The value isn't in having read every law firm bulletin. It's in having read the right things and knowing which parts matter to which clients in which moments. That requires judgment, commercial understanding, and relationship context that remains fundamentally human and fundamentally valuable.

Making It Work

The mechanics matter here. This only works if:

• Your commentary demonstrates commercial awareness, not just legal analysis. "This changes the regulatory landscape" is less valuable than "this creates exposure in your German supply contracts that we should review."
   
• It's specifically relevant to their business, not generic sector commentary. The tighter the connection between the content and the client's actual strategic challenges, the stronger the signal that you understand what they're trying to achieve.
   
• You're genuinely helpful, not manufacturing touchpoints to stay visible. General counsels can immediately distinguish between "I thought of you when I read this because of your European expansion" and "I'm forwarding things to hit my BD target."

And this isn't optional. The survey data is unequivocal on this point: 100% of General Counsel feel that law firms have a responsibility to keep their clients and prospects informed about news and developments. Sharing annotated content isn't "marketing" in the traditional sense. It's a core part of the service. Clients don't see it as a touchpoint; they see it as the firm doing its job.

Done right, sharing content with narrative changes what you are in the relationship. You become a commercial advisor who happens to be a lawyer, not a legal technician who occasionally thinks about business. A strategic partner, instead of another law firm.

And in an age where legal expertise is increasingly commoditized, that might be the scarcest, most valuable thing you can be.

The statistics cited in this article are drawn from Passle's ongoing research into General Counsel content consumption and legal marketing effectiveness. You can access their full reports and insights You can access the full report and insights here.