Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog

When you're Minneapolis-based law firm with 150 litigators, and your competition is Kirkland, Winston and Jones Day, how do you convey in an eyeblink that you are a national litigation contender?

With the help of two innovative, persistent and innovative law firm marketing pros, Faegre & Benson created an interactive map in Flash that displays their representative national litigation experience.

"We represent clients in 46 or 50 states, and we didn't think anyone knew about it," said Adam Severson, Director of Business Development and Marketing. "Our lawyers were complimentary and surprised -- they didn't know we had all this experience."

The entire project was done in-house with no out-of-pocket cost. "It says we're a national litigation firm and you probably didn't think we were," he said.

Work began when Rachel Austin joined the legal marketing team as Business Development Communications Coordinator. In 2009 she started with a list of 40 cases. She spent the 18 months digging through the firm's experience database and RFP collection.

"I  went to the litigators and asked them for their best cases," she said, and she built the total to 532 cases. Meticulously she weighed them according to the result, whether it set a precedent, the size of the client, the recency, the risk and value to the client and the importance of the firm's role.

Now she has 600 cases and here's an example:

Simply visit www.faegre.com/flashmap.aspx, pick a state and pick a matter to get the details. Each new case is put online just like adding a new lawyer bio in the firm's website content management system, created by Saturno Design.

"Before lawyers would say they’re too busy," Rachel said. Then Adam held internal launch parties in Minneapolis and Denver to build enthusiasm. "Now every lawyer wants every one of their cases on the map."