Featured · Strategy
Strategy is the list of things you have decided not to do
Most documents titled marketing strategy at law firms are lists of intentions. They name the channels, the aspirations and the audiences, and they exclude nothing — which is what makes them comfortable to approve and useless to act on.
A strategy is a set of choices, and a choice is only a choice if something was given up. Four of them do almost all the work.
The four choices
Each requires giving something up, which is why they are so often avoided. A strategy that costs nothing to agree is not one.
Which matters you are pursuing — and therefore which you are not funding, even though the firm still takes them.
Which clients you are for. A firm trying to be right for both a distressed individual and a corporate buyer will speak convincingly to neither.
What you are competing on: price, speed, specialism, access or reputation. Trying to lead on all five reads as leading on none.
Where you will be found. A firm cannot be everywhere, and choosing search over referral, or the reverse, changes everything downstream.
Write those four down and the channel decisions mostly answer themselves — which is the sign you have a strategy rather than a list.
The resistance to these choices inside a partnership is not irrational. Each one appears to close off revenue, and the partner whose practice area is not being funded has a real objection.
That is precisely why the choices have to be made explicitly and jointly, with what is being given up written down. A strategy that has not been argued about has not been agreed.
What a non-strategy looks like
These documents are common, sincere and unactionable. Recognising the pattern in your own is the first step.
Every practice area listed, because excluding one would have required a conversation.
Objectives no one could ever declare failed — raise our profile, strengthen the brand, become known for quality.
A channel list with no budget attached to any item.
Audiences described as everybody who might need a lawyer.
Competitive positioning that any firm in the country could have written about itself.
And no statement of what the firm is deliberately not doing, which is the fastest way to spot the problem.
Making the choices stick
The document is the easy part. Holding the choices through a year of pressure is the whole exercise.
Make the four choices in a room with the partners, and record what each one excludes as explicitly as what it includes.
Name the practice areas not being funded this year, and say plainly that this is a funding decision rather than a judgement on the work.
Give whoever runs marketing the authority to decline requests that fall outside, and back them the first time it is tested.
Attach a number to each choice, so it can be shown to have worked or not.
Set a date to revisit rather than allowing continuous relitigation, which is how strategies erode.
Expect pressure in month four, and treat holding the line as the point rather than as inflexibility.
Review annually and change deliberately — one choice at a time, on evidence.
And keep the previous version, so the firm can see what it decided and why.
The value of a strategy is almost entirely in the arguments it forces and the requests it lets you decline. A document that produced neither has not yet earned the name.
FAQs
What makes something a strategy rather than a plan?
Exclusion. A strategy is a set of choices, and a choice only counts if something was given up. A document listing every practice area and every channel with nothing excluded is a list of intentions.
What are the four choices?
Which matters you are funding, which clients you are for, what you are competing on, and where you will be found. Write those down and most channel decisions answer themselves.
Why do partnerships resist these choices?
Because each appears to close off revenue, and the partner whose area is not being funded has a genuine objection. That is exactly why the choices must be made jointly and explicitly, with what is given up written down.
How do we spot a non-strategy?
Look for a statement of what the firm is deliberately not doing. If there isn't one — and if the objectives could never be declared failed — you are holding a list of intentions.
How do we hold the line?
Give whoever runs marketing authority to decline out-of-scope requests, and back them the first time it is tested. Expect pressure around month four, set a date to revisit rather than allowing continuous relitigation, and change one choice at a time on evidence.
End Note
The comfortable strategy document is the one nobody argued about, which is also the one that will not survive its first collision with a partner's enthusiasm in April.
Make four choices, write down what each excludes, attach a number, and back whoever has to enforce it the first time somebody tests it.
Key Takeaways
A choice only counts if something was given up.
Four choices: matters, clients, basis of competition, where you are found.
Name the practice areas you are NOT funding, in writing.
The absence of a not-doing list is how you spot a non-strategy.
Expect pressure at month four; holding the line is the point.
