Lawyer Monthly Magazine - July 2019 Edition

www. lawyer-monthly .com Third of GCs have plans to introduce new or en- hanced diversity targets for external counsel to meet According to a survey of in-house teams in-house lawyers by NewLaw ser- vice provider Lexoo in conjunction with Legal Week, it is socioeconomic diversity that requires the most improvement by law firms and ALSPs. The re- search suggests that while gender has dominated discussions around diver- sity in the legal industry, in-house lawyers believe both socioeconomic and racial diversity now re- quire more improvement. When asked which area of diversity requires the most improvement by law firms and ALSPs, 48% of in-house lawyers picked socioeconomic diversity. Meanwhile 24% chose black and minority ethnic diversity and 17% picked gender diversity. “Elitism has long been considered an issue at law firms and accord- ing to in-house lawyers it is now a bigger problem than gender diversity. Law firms have a tenden- cy to hire and promote those individuals that best reflect the culture of the organisation but it seems they no longer match the culture of their clients,” comments Dan- iel van Binsbergen, CEO at Lexoo. “By creating a competitive and trans- parent market aligned with the interests of the customer, we will foster a culture that rewards performance rather than privilege.” The research also found that while the majority of businesses are leaving it to law firms to improve di- versity within their organi- sations, a third (34%) have plans to introduce new or enhanced diversity tar- gets for external counsel to meet. Furthermore, nearly a third of in-house lawyers have changed or turned down external counsel for not presenting a diverse enough team. “It is encouraging to see that some businesses are taking steps to improve the diversity of their ex- ternal counsel. Ultimately, those firms with the best reputation for diversity will appeal to the widest pool of potential candidates and will be best placed to attract and retain the best people,” continues Daniel van Binsbergen. Lexoo surveyed 86 in- house teams at major cor- porates and high-growth businesses covering a range of sectors. Some of the country’s most well-known medi- cal and clinical negli- gence firms are losing out on valuable online business due to low en- gagement, lack of au- thority and low brand awareness among its customers according to a report from digital marketing agency Stick- yeyes. The report, which ana- lysed 278 of the most common and money- driving search terms across the UK medi- cal negligence sector saw Fieldfisher, Medical Negligence Experts and Slater and Gordon los- ing ground to the on- line market-leader Irwin Mitchell. Lack of content plays a huge role in explain- ing the lost ground with brands having to com- pete with over 13,000 pages of content and an average of 1,556 words across each page on irwinmitchell.com . This helps to establish the brand as a source of credible, relevant con- tent which serves the needs of the audience, a key ranking factor for Google. Indeed, Irwin Mitchell has more natural, non- brand search visibility than the next 20 brands in the analysis com- bined which can be at- tributed to number one Medical negligence firms missing out on easy-wins due to gaps in digital strategy Socioeconomic diversity requires most improvement according to GCs NEGLIGENCE DIVERSITY (and often number two) rankings for over 94% of the keywords analysed including ‘medical neg- ligence solicitors’, ‘medi- cal negligence claims’ and ‘medical compen- sation’. Both Fieldfisher and Slater and Gordon score well in many areas of organic search but, en- gagement seems to be the area that is most adversely affecting their visibility, most notably huge bounce rates. This means that the content that they’re offering isn’t engaging audiences to explore their sites further which is also reflected in disappointing average times on site which is lower than many of their core competitors. The Medical Negligence Experts is the third most visible brand in the anal- ysis but, it is let down by a general lack of pages across their site. It also has lower brand aware- ness in organic search which could be down to the lack of content around non-commercial search terms which aim to engage with a cus- tomer at an early stage of their journey. Alex Howland, Client Strategy Director at Stickyeyes said: “The standards now ex- pected from custom- ers and search engines continue to increase. Many of Irwin Mitchell’s competitors score well in areas of relevancy and user experience but, challenges are faced around engagement, authority and brand awareness. Many of these brands are turning to paid search to make up for their lack of visibility in or- ganic search but, whilst this channel clearly has a place as part of a wider digital strategy, a heavy reliance on this channel alone can result in high lead and custom- er acquisition costs. Encouragingly many brands have the right foundations in place to generate good levels of traffic from organic search but, by adapting their content and search strategies to focus more heavily on issues such as user intent, they should be able to claw back some valuable online real estate to generate more volume and bet- ter quality of business online.” You can download the report, including Top 20 rankings and recom- mendations at: https:// www.stickyeyes.com/ resources/search-spot- l i gh t -med i ca l - neg l i - gence/ 13 Monthly Round-Up JUL 2019