SWOT For Lawyers
A SWOT analysis is a useful tool to help you plan for your marketing.
SWOT is an acronym and here’s what it stands for:
- Strengths: characteristics of your small law firm that give it an advantage over others
- Weaknesses: are characteristics that place your firm at a disadvantage relative to others
- Opportunities: elements that your marketing could exploit to its advantage
- Threats: elements in the environment that could cause problems for your firm’s business
To begin, think in terms of how the internal workings and offerings of your law firm potentially connect with the external marketplace. When what your firms offers is in demand in your marketplace, it’s considered a good strategic fit. So, for example, if you have a DUI defense practice in a region that doesn’t have any roads or automobiles, that would obviously not be a good strategic fit.
Next, keep in mind that you’re going to establish the objective of the marketing for your law firm after you’ve completed your SWOT analysis. Your objective could simply be to get more new clients. It could be to obtain a certain type of new clients (ex. ones that have cases worth at least a million dollars). Focus on your next wave of marketing and not on the overall life of your firm. We’ll return to this part in a moment.
Define your SWOTs
Before that happens though, you’ll need to make sure you’ve defined the SWOTs for your law firm as specifically and thoroughly as possible. Then, identify the objective for your next round of marketing (exs. raise brand awareness, promote recent case victories, drive potential new clients to contact you). Use your SWOT to inform and help define the objective of your marketing plan. It can really help if your marketing objective is definable and attainable.
