I recently participated in the LMA/ Bloomberg Law Survey (you can participate here before March 7th) on trends in legal marketing, business development, pricing, competitive intelligence and knowledge management.  I know, quite the range of topics. MarkGediman and I blogged a fair bit last year about the Bloomberg Law survey results, and I don’t doubt that the same will happen this year too.  In fact, I am already blogging about it.  The survey questions lead the participant through a series of questions with ranges on how much has changed within marketing and BD departments in the last three years.  Items like competitive intelligence, knowledge management, pricing and process improvement are lumped into the same survey as more traditional marketing efforts such as content marketing (rebranded client updates if you will), and public relations.  Are all of those things being delivered by Marketing and Business Development Departments?  Does that make sense?  Perhaps we should make kitchen sinks while we are at, or be both the umpires and the hotdog vendors…For many years, I have suggested that a key to a firm’s competitive advantage is better collaboration amongst its administrative teams, from BD to Marketing, KM to CI and Accounting, all of whom seem to play a role in this year’s Bloomberg Law Survey. Perhaps the silos are breaking themselves down as market forces are creating the imperative to share while the technology keeps getting better, making it easier to share and work towards a common goal of increased efficiency and smarter client service. 

The survey also attempts to determine changes in headcount and budgets for Marketing and Business Development Departments over the past 24 and coming 24 months, as individual line items and as part of the firm collective headcounts and budgets. Very interesting. I would like to think and will post eventually about the CI’s role (and others) in shifting from a cost centre to lead generator and sales pipeline for firms.  I am hopeful that the survey results will reflect this position as well.  The results will be shared at this year’s annual LMA conference April 11-13th 2026, in Austin TX.

Stay tuned, I expect there will be much more here to blog about soon!