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Six Ways Thought Leadership Can Support
Your Law Firm’s 2025 Strategic Plan

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Thanks to its versatility, thought leadership can play a pivotal role
in helping law firms execute on their 2025 strategic plans.

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With the calendar having turned to 2025, many law firms—including perhaps yours!—are ready to execute on their shiny new strategic plans they paid an arm and a leg for (either in fees to a consultant or in their attorneys’ lost billable time).


Other firms—including perhaps yours!—don’t have a strategic plan per se, but their equity partners have a general sense of the direction they want their firms to go in 2025 and will instruct their colleagues accordingly.


No matter what form your firm’s strategic plan takes, your firm can employ thought leadership to help it execute on that plan.


Here are six ways thought leadership can support your firm’s 2025 strategic plan.
 

#1: Thought leadership can help your law firm double down on its established practices


When your firm’s strategic plan calls for it to continue growing its established practices that clients, referral sources, and the local or national legal community already know it for, consistent thought leadership regarding those practices can help reinforce the firm’s stature and position in the market.


Every time a past, current, or prospective client or referral source sees one of your firm’s attorneys publishing thought leadership regarding one of its established practices, that content reminds them of your firm’s qualifications to be seen as a go-to firm regarding those practices and/or the industries it serves.


#2: Thought leadership can help your law firm bring in the matters it wants more of


When attorneys at your firm publish thought leadership content about the matters they want more of as set out in your firm’s strategic plan—which should be content showing they have the requisite knowledge and wisdom to assist clients with those types of matters—they’re positioning themselves to clients and referral sources as ready, willing, and able to take on that work.


Regardless of your firm’s size or type, your attorneys’ content can serve as an indicator to past, current, and prospective clients (and referral sources) that they are expanding their practice or pivoting to a new one.


The best part about using thought leadership in this manner is that it’s fail-safe.


If your firm’s attorneys write content regarding a new area of the law or a new industry they’re planning on moving into, but their move into that practice area doesn’t pan out, no one’s going to care. Clients and referral sources will just look at that content as content the attorneys were writing as part of their general marketing and business development efforts. They will not think less of your attorneys or your firm if your attorneys’ or your firm’s content changed focus for a bit.


#3: Thought leadership can help your law firm bring in matters in an industry it wants more work in


On a related note, by producing thought leadership regarding industries your firm wants more work in as spelled out in its strategic plan, your attorneys can position themselves as knowledgeable about those industries and able to help organizations in them with their legal and business issues.


This content need not be focused on legal issues, though it certainly can be. Content regarding developments and trends in an industry can show industry participants that the attorneys producing that content have their fingers on the pulse of that industry. This positions the authors as people who are familiar with industry-specific legal or business issues, and who can thus help an organization in that industry solve the legal or business problems they’re facing.


#4 Thought leadership can be a tool your law firm’s attorneys use to build bonds with current or would-be referral sources, co-counsel, and other third parties


If your firm has identified in its strategic plan referral sources, co-counsel, or other third parties it wants to build or cultivate relationships with, your attorneys can co-produce thought leadership with those individuals as part of their relationship-building efforts.


That might mean co-authoring articles, inviting individuals to appear on an attorney’s videos or podcasts, or something else entirely. Whatever the final product, co-producing thought leadership provides an opportunity for your attorneys to get to know a third party, show them that the attorney is knowledgeable and wise about issues relevant to the third party (which would be the topic covered by the co-produced content), and help that third party market themselves (once the content is published) in a way they likely wouldn’t have done themselves and probably aren’t used to.


Those third parties will remember the generosity of your attorneys co-creating the content with them, and will likely find ways to reciprocate that generosity—including by giving them, or referring to them, new client matters.


The only wrinkle is that your attorneys—or their colleagues or outside service providers—should do the heavy lifting on the content creation and editing. Even though the co-created content would include the third party’s knowledge, insights, and opinions, they should have an easy, frictionless experience where all they have to do is show up.


#5 Thought leadership can support your law firm’s recruiting efforts


If your firm’s strategic plan addresses recruiting particular types of attorneys and/or staff, your firm’s thought leadership can help position it as an attractive place for those attorneys and/or staff to work.


Of course, substantive thought leadership can persuade prospective lateral attorneys and staff that your firm should be worthy of their consideration as a potential new employer based on the knowledge, wisdom, and insights the thought leadership conveys about the work your firm does for its clients.


But thought leadership that focuses on your firm’s philosophies and stances on business-of-law-type initiatives and practice-of-law-type initiatives like professional development, remote working, pro bono, parental leave, and the like can signal to prospective lateral attorneys and staff that your firm would be the right fit for them when it comes to additional considerations beyond the areas of law your firm practices or the industries it serves.


(This past May, I went deeper into the idea that thought leadership can be a talent magnet for your law firm. You can read that article here.)


#6 Thought leadership can support your law firm’s strategic plan calling for more . . . thought leadership


Rare is the law firm strategic plan that doesn’t address marketing and business development. 


Rarer still is the firm whose strategic plan’s marketing and business development elements do not encourage increased publication of thought leadership.


By publishing thought leadership to support executing on your firm’s strategic plan, your attorneys also satisfy what is likely to be another aspect of that plan: publishing more thought leadership to support their marketing and business development efforts!


Thought leadership as a strategic plan sidekick in 2025


No matter what your law firm’s strategic plan has to say about the areas it will prioritize to help it accomplish its business goals—or the form your firm’s plan takes—thought leadership can help your firm, your attorneys, and your administrators execute on that plan and accomplish those goals in 2025.
 

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Wayne Pollock, a former Am Law 50 senior litigation associate, is the founder of Copo Strategies, a legal services and communications firm, and the Law Firm Editorial Service, a thought leadership ghostwriting service for Big Law and boutique law firm partners, and executives at organizations that serve the legal industry. He can be reached at waynepollock@copostrategies.com.

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Reprinted with permission from the January 7, 2025 edition of The Legal Intelligencer/Pennsylvania Law Weekly © 2025 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-257-3382 or reprints@alm.com.

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Copo Strategies is a national legal services and communications firm, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1650 Market Street, Suite 3600, Philadelphia, Pa., 19103, to be exact.

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©2025 by Copo Strategies, LLC. Copo Strategies® and the gavel-megaphone logo are registered trademarks of Copo Strategies, LLC.

 

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