Page 9 - PIC Magazine Issue 25 - Autumn-Winter 2025

Empathy Meets Eff iciency
There’s also a human side to consider. In clinical
negligence or catastrophic injury claims, intake is
more than admin, it’s the start of a life-changing legal
process. When enquiries are mishandled, the cost isn’t
just reputational, it’s operational. If fi rms waste time on
unsuitable cases, teams become overstretched, and
pipeline predictability drops.
One way to mitigate this is through qualifi ed, empathetic
triage - usually handled by trained contact centre teams
or legal intake specialists. Done well, this early-stage
fi ltering saves fi rms signifi cant cost and resource down
the line, as only relevant, high-intent matters make it
through to the legal team.
This is another area where collective or hybrid models
can help. By separating marketing from vetting - and
ensuring both are run professionally - fi rms can better
control one of the most variable (and often overlooked)
stages in the legal process.
Data And Dashboards:
The Missing Link
From a costs or commercial perspective, one
of the frustrations many fi rms face is the lack of
visibility around marketing ROI. It’s not always
clear how many leads became clients, at what
cost, or over what time frame. This opacity can
make it hard to forecast acquisition budgets -
or spot when they’re spiralling.
Better use of data is helping to change that.
Firms that invest in real-time dashboards,
either through internal platforms or third-party
systems, gain greater clarity on campaign
performance, lead conversion, and cost per
matter. More importantly, they can make faster,
smarter decisions about where to spend next.
In many ways, this mirrors the evolution of
costs law itself - from reactive to strategic. As
with costs budgeting, the goal is foresight and
accountability. Marketing should be no diff erent.
www.pic.legal Autumn & Winter 2025
Marketing isn’t
just a growth tool.
It’s a cost-control
issue. And one that
increasingly requires
rethinking.
Integration Beats Intensity
One of the strongest trends in legal marketing
today is integration. Gone are the days when
SEO, PPC, lead handling, and analytics could
run as separate functions. The best-performing
fi rms - and the most effi cient operations - treat
marketing as an interconnected system.
That means designing intake processes with
client experience in mind. Aligning analytics
with campaign decisions. Embedding
compliance into marketing strategy. And
crucially, ensuring that what happens at the
top of the funnel doesn’t compromise what
happens at the point of instruction - or cost
recovery.
This isn’t about scale for its own sake. It’s about
making each pound work harder, and each
matter count more. Which, in a post-reform
legal economy, should be the shared priority
of both lawyers and costs professionals.
A Final Thought
For costs lawyers and legal fi nance professionals,
marketing is a direct cost - just not one that’s usually
recoverable. But it shapes the numbers all the same.
It determines how consistently work fl ows in. It
aff ects the kind of cases a fi rm takes on. It infl uences
internal utilisation and resource planning. And,
in some cases, it can be the diff erence between
a profi table caseload and one that stretches
operational risk.
As the economics of legal practice continue to
evolve, so too must our view of marketing. Not as
a standalone activity, but as part of the broader
system that underpins cost control, profi tability,
and long-term viability.
Smarter marketing doesn’t just
generate more work. It protects the
value of the work you already have.
PARTNERS IN COSTS
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