Intro
Many law firms encounter the same issue: how do we empower our subject matter experts to create content that stays on brand and isn't too characterless?
Just because you start working in a law firm as a marketer doesn't mean you instantly have all the knowledge of a lawyer. Therefore, you need to use the expertise you have in-house to create content. But you can't be everywhere, especially when you have 3,799 collaborators to work with. So, how do you translate all that knowledge into content that people will actually want to read? Welcome to the content conundrum.
“We have 3,800 people at Pinsent Masons, spread across 28 different locations internationally.”
We had a chat with Peter Aitchison, Senior Brand & Marketing Executive at Pinsent Masons, a multinational law firm. Throughout this conversation, Peter revealed a couple of interesting challenges his team faced when it came to content:
- Keeping track of the content everyone creates within the business
- Maintaining consistent branding across various offices and regions
- Collaborating with lawyers and other subject matter experts in content creation
You've probably encountered one of these challenges before—we all have. As the conversation continued, Peter shared how Foleon helped fix these issues.
So far, to date, Pinsent Masons has:
“Foleon provides all the required criteria that a Legal business needs for a safe, secure, and risk-free approach to creating consistently beautiful and engaging documents. Will we be telling our law firm competitors about Foleon? No - selfishly, for us, it is a great differentiator within the legal industry!”
Peter Aitchison, Senior Brand & Marketing Executive at Pinsent Masons
Shaking up a saturated legal industry
The legal industry has been around for quite a while now (only about 900 years), so shaking things up can be a bit of a challenge.
“The traditional problem many companies face is the reliance on tools like PowerPoint or external agencies. There's often a gap between high-quality and self-serve materials”
But, on the other hand, when you're always facing the same challenges, it can be quite frustrating.
Keeping up with who creates what:
“We had a challenge with marketing material creation—who was creating it, and how often.”
Sharing in-house expertise while maintaining brand consistency:
“In a law firm, we have many lawyers and subject matter experts, and really, it's the people and our knowledge that sells the business. But our team isn’t filled with content creators. We needed a solution to make nice-looking documents while ensuring brand consistency, allowing our people's knowledge to shine through in our documentation."
Tracking content performance:
“There was no way to measure the effectiveness or ROI of the document and ensure the brand guidelines were being followed or the required regulatory/legal information was being used correctly, or at all.”
Long story short — it wasn't the ideal setup. Pinsent Masons wanted to find a way to solve these issues and stand out in this saturated market.
Collaboration & Governance in one platform
In such a big business, scaling content creation is a must, and good collaboration and governance are fundamental to enable that.
Different workspaces per team
With 28 offices, keeping track of what everyone creates can seem impossible. But after implementing different workplaces within Foleon, Pinsent Mason was able to empower different teams to create content while maintaining brand consistency.
“We have seven workspaces within our Foleon platform, used to segment our different offices in various regions globally.”
Making everyone a reviewer
As Peter explained, not everyone among their 3800 collaborators is a content creator. Yet, it was still important to transcribe the knowledge that they have in-house into the content they produce.
“Our Foleon account includes every member of staff as a reviewer, allowing our publishers to share documents with anyone in the business.”
With Foleon, you can add anyone as a content reviewer to the platform. This allows subject matter experts to quickly review content that's being created and leave their feedback directly on the platform without having to change anything themselves. The Review Mode was a real game-changer for Pinsent Masons.
“The comments/review feature allows anyone to add feedback to documents at any stage, which is invaluable.”
Global governance
It's clear that the team found that Foleon's governance capabilities were a major breakthrough.
“The improvements that we've seen within Pinsent Masons have been around the brand governance, the brand consistency, but also the engagement that our people within the business have with our brand.”
One feature that particularly helped to achieve this global consistency was the Brand Kit.
“The Brand Kits are truly an unsung hero for us. Introduced earlier this year, they allow us to switch between different brands with the flick of a button. This feature saves us a significant amount of time and makes a big difference in our workflow.”
Templatizing
In the spirit of scaling their operation, the design team created a library of templates that everyone could use to create content quickly.
“With a templated approach, our business development and subject matter experts can focus on content while maintaining the desired look of the documents.”
Time & money saved
One of Pinsent Masons’ standout achievements was the creation of their responsible business and ESG report. By using Foleon, Pinsent Masons managed to save £40,000 in agency fees by producing the report in-house. The ability to create compelling, high-quality content without relying on external agencies has been a game changer for the firm.
In fact, in only 7 months, they’ve produced an impressive 390 Docs using Foleon, further showing how the platform has scaled their approach to content creation.
“We got cost estimates from four creative agencies to produce the interactive document. And we know that by creating the content in Foleon ourselves, we saved the business over £40,000. ”
The bottom line
The firm has not only streamlined its content creation process but has also fostered a culture of innovation and efficiency across its teams. With significant savings on agency fees and an impressive volume of content produced, the benefits are clear.
Peter added with a touch of humor:
“Foleon provides all the required criteria that a Legal business needs for a safe, secure, and risk-free approach to creating consistently beautiful and engaging documents. Will we be telling our law firm competitors about Foleon? No - selfishly, for us, it is a great differentiator within the legal industry!”
The teams are well-equipped to continue navigating this complicated industry while standing with amazing content!
Discover Pinsent Masons' amazing ESG report right here.
Do you also want to establish brand governance while saving money on agency fees? Chat with our team, and we can explore what options are available to you!
