"How do you turn busy experts into recognisable thought leaders?"

That was the question at today’s PM Forum webinar, where Passle's Will Eke was joined by Rebecca Boyd from Marks & Clerk. I recorded the session and there was too much good stuff not to share, so here’s my summary.

Why content matters more than ever

It all starts with the client. Passle's General Counsel Survey, in which 200 GCs took part. Only 1 in 12 said their law firms keep them properly informed with relevant, timely content. 

Will shared a story from a pharma GC who was getting the same generic updates from all five firms on their panel. The message back to those firms was blunt: “You know us enough to cut through the noise, be authentic, be helpful, tell us what it means to us.”

GCs read, a lot. The average GC spends the equivalent of a full working day each week reading content. Most of that happens in their own time, though. As Will put it, your content is probably being read “whilst my clients are putting their kids to bed”, or just before a dog walk. That should change how experts think about what they write.

Then there’s AI search. Our marketing team looked at which lawyers Google’s AI Mode recommended across a range of practice areas and cities, and 72% of them were publishing regular thought leadership. Claude showed a similar pattern (find the research here). Will’s takeaway was simple: “Get your experts writing. Otherwise, they’re not visible.”

He also shared four tips for showing up in AI search:

1. Publish under the expert’s own name.

2. Be specific about practice area and location.

3. Write with substance and back it up with real figures.

4. Stay current.

He was also clear that “it’s still person to person business”. Clients are looking for people, not firms.

The four building blocks

Will walked through what a successful program needs: 

1. Experts who are empowered to write.

2. A simple workflow for approval and governance.

3. Distribution through multiple channels. Email, LinkedIn, newsletters and platforms like Lexology and Mondaq are where your clients are. 

4. Feedback for the authors. He called the feedback loop “the fuel that keeps a very successful content program going”. It’s also the stage where a lot of firms fall down.

How Marks & Clerk made this work in practice

Marks & Clerk started a rework of their thought leadership approach in 2021. A pilot group of 26 attorneys was chosen to prove the process and demonstrate the impact to the firm. Their managing partner backed the project from the start, and Rebecca was clear about how much that mattered: “I think that was a key turning moment, having that support.”

The pilot group was deliberately mixed across seniority and practice areas, so nobody could dismiss the results as a fluke in one team. Within a few weeks they’d published over 50 pieces. Rebecca was honest that some of that early energy may have been novelty, but the data gave them what they needed to push wider.

The rollout was slow and steady. Rebecca said the key was “keeping the why and the what next in mind”. She admitted they weren’t sure about gamification at first, “but actually a bit of internal competition really worked for us.” She was also big on celebrating wins: “Shout about it. They might not say that they appreciate it, but I think they do at the end of the day.”

Five years on, Marks & Clerk have published more than 2,800 pieces of content and driven over 31,000 social referrals back to the website, and 84% of their fee earners are now writing. Their Canadian team, has already seen up to four times more content since coming on board.

The real world wins

Rebecca shared five case studies of content turning into results.

• Giles Pinnington, a partner at M&C, noticed a target client kept raising the same issues at networking events, so he started writing about them and sending the articles over. “He wasn’t expecting a reply. It wasn’t salesy or asking for a call.” When that client needed advice, he was the obvious person to call. Will picked up on this: whenever experts ask what they should write about, the answer is “what are your clients’ pain points?”

• An article on generative AI and deepfakes turned into a long run of press interest and eventually a speaking slot at INTA. Rebecca called it an evergreen piece that “just kept running in the wins.”

• One of their trademark attorneys vlogged from Davos, and the content went live while she was still on the ground. It gave the team the confidence to try more video.

• Trainees are encouraged to write from day one, often starting with event write ups. Rebecca acknowledged “it’s probably quite scary to put your thoughts out there” as a trainee, so they make it easy to start small. Senior lateral partners get the same treatment and use the platform to build their name in a new market.

• And over the summer, a run of short articles on sport led to an enquiry and two new clients within two weeks. When asked how they’d found the firm, the clients said they’d been searching online and Marks & Clerk kept appearing in LLMs.

The key takeaways

Above all, Will reminded everyone that it’s “a cultural mind shift and attitude change”, and you have to keep driving it.

From the Q&A

A) On quality control, Rebecca said everything goes through marketing before it goes live, but “never want to stop someone writing if they’re keen.” That approval process is what gives authors confidence: they know “there’s going to be eyes on it before it goes live.”

A) For a firm starting tomorrow, her advice was to get senior sponsorship, find your internal champions, and keep showing authors what’s working and what isn’t. Her final question for every expert: “What do you want to be known for?”

A) Will also made the point that this isn’t only for big firms. There are firms with fewer than ten people using Passle.

Thanks to Rebecca, Will and PM Forum for a really useful session!