Recently we met with a Partner at a regional law firm in the UK. Their leadership team had been investing time and resource into establishing the firm in a new practice area. They'd hired wisely, hosted networking days internally and promoted the new practice area externally and within the firm itself for more than a year.

All this was done at great cost, but as a key growth area, the firm could see the potential. They'd done everything right.

We met the partner at the peak of these efforts. They had been feeling very positive about their position, and were confident that their efforts would pay off.

The pardon the interruption email ruined that positivity.

Jump to the day of our meeting, the partner had recieved a “pardon the interruption” email. Another senior colleague in the firm was asking;

"Please pardon the interruption. Are we aware of any other law firms who we work well with and have capacity to help my key client with [the area our partner had been trying to setup for 12 months"]" 

Despite being a relatively small, regional firm, and despite all the efforts of the marketing and BD teams, and despite all the new hires and effort put into the launch, the partner sending the email still did not know what it could bring to the table.

How to avoid the pardon the interruption email

The firm we'd met with had done all the right things. But in a busy firm, where colleague attention is scarce, getting the message through takes persistence, the right infrastructure and a focus on building a better connected firm.

1. Cut through the noise with tailored alerts

Rather than a lack of communications, most firms struggle to build awareness because too many irrelevant communications create noise. A barrage of emails with all the announcements from around the firm quickly ignored, a mass blast around every team is more hinderance than help.

Instead, we recommend a small number of hyper tailored emails. Only send updates that align with the recipients areas of practice and industry expertise. When you do send them, tailor the content of these emails on an individual by individual level to make it clear to them why this is important for them, and for their clients. 

Our product, CrossPitch AI, does this by matching an update to the bio of the recipient, and then tailoring it to each recipient. Only recipients that are above the relevance threshold recieve the update, and it is 100% tailored to them.

2. Provide an effective search

“Pardon the interruption” happens when people within a firm do not have a more effective way to find the right people. Search, both internally between colleagues and externally for clients has been a real weakness of law firm infrastructure. It's really hard to get right, but so important to ensuring that the firm is connected and aware of what is possible.

A good search should be at least as effective, and much faster than a pardon the interruption email. To do this you need to allow natural language search. An example is a search for “renewables” needs to return results for “energy law”. 

People, both clients and internal audiences, do not search for things as your firm labels them. They use a huge variety of terms. You need to accommodate that. Really understand what people are searching, and be sure to offer results that match their intent, not just their search term. 

Our product, CrossPitch AI, uses a natural language, vector search to match the intent behind a search, rather than simply the search term. A real example is below - this ended in a matter being brought by the searcher to the colleague they found.

3. Follow & Connect

Trust and awareness are not built by any single activity. They are built over time by consistent actions. That expensive partner retreat needs to be supported by infrastructure. A new practice launch needs repeated promotion.

Similarly, your search needs to offer a longer term call to action. Finding a colleague once is fine, but allowing a lawyer to connect to colleagues and actually establish a network is essential to building a better connected firm. 

A search that ends on the search page leaves behind the most important mechanism for long term collaboration.

CrossPitch AI brings a call to action into your internal search. Lawyers are not just able to find their colleagues, but are able to build long term connections. These are the fabric of the collaboration that firms are trying to build, and they are the real secret to eliminating the “pardon the interruption”.

Building a better connected firm doesn't happen overnight, it is a culture powered by the right infrastructure. The payoff is more than worth it. A better connected firm is more valuable to clients, and a better place to build a career.