LISI’s Director of Client Service + Marketing Rae Ritter sat down with Adrian Lürssen, Co-founder and Vice President of Strategic Development at JD Supra. They dive into the evolution of content generation – and how to harness the power of analytics to drive your marketing plans. They also touch on D.E.I., the signs of progress, and why we should be doing more.

Rae:

Hi, I’m Rae Ritter from LISI. And today I’m excited to be joined by Adrian Lürssen, the Co-founder and Vice President of Strategic Development of JD Supra. Thanks for being on.

Adrian:

Thanks for having me, great to be here, nice to see you.

Rae:

Nice to see you. So we saw each other last at the LMA22. And, you know, I was looking back at LinkedIn, LinkedIn tells me we’ve been connected for 10 years. But who knows, we may have known each other even longer than that.

Adrian:

Yeah, crazy, time really flies.

Rae:

So in case there’s any one of our viewers watching, or reading or listening in, can you tell us a little bit more about what JD Supra is?

Adrian:

Sure, we are a distribution platform for the kinds of thought leadership produced by law firms and other professional services companies, organizations. People put their content, firms put the content on JD Supra and it is distributed out depending on the subject matter to subscribers who have signed up to receive sort of opted-in to receive the latest news and analysis of the day and in a huge variety of issues to do with compliance and regulation and the law. And then we provide the sort of intelligent data to allow firms and organizations to make sense of that visibility that they get with prospective clients, clients, meaningful referral sources, and anyone else who can help support their marketing and business development efforts through the consumption of their incredibly smart thought leadership.

Rae:

Excellent, so it’s something that I’ve been subscribed to for a long time, I find it really helpful to, you know, organize content that I receive and I know are, you know, our lawyers, our clients, and their clients really appreciate getting that in a direct format. So thank you for co-founding that.

Adrian:

I’m gonna interrupt you and just say that, it’s also not lost on me that I’m recording something that will actually also be on JD Supra by the nature of the fact that you guys put your content on it to reach an added audience. And as I told you, when I saw you in Vegas, at LMA, you guys produce a lot of amazing thought leadership for the kinds of people that we work with, to make sense of their marketing and business development needs, around digital media and all of the rest. And so I’m really pleased to be on this call. But I’m also really, really pleased that your content passes through our channels, because it’s so valuable and so good.

Rae:

Well, thank you. I’m only one of a big team that works on our content. And I know we work really hard to put out meaningful information. I’ll say, you know, a long time ago, when I joined the legal marketing industry, I didn’t know where to look for thought leadership on legal marketing, because it was such a niche and I’m sure there are other people just in the whole industry of legal marketing or in law, who found the same thing. No one likes getting, you know, 500 newsletters in their inbox every day and to be able to pick the channels you want.

Adrian:

Yeah. It’s working out I think for a lot of the recipients and everyone else so.

Rae:

So today on, “News + Views + To Do’s” we’re going to ask a few questions, the same questions, we always ask about what is going on, in your world and the legal marketing. So our first question is, what news would you like to share with our audience?

Adrian:

It’s a great question, thanks for asking it. You know, for, there’s always a lot going on all the time in this industry, and certainly at JD Supra. One of the things that excites me the most is seeing the work of our dev team around analytics API. They, we’re finding ourselves in a position now, we’ve had an API for quite some time. Our system is built on it in many ways. But we’re actually working with agencies who have the same clients as our to deploy their, our clients analytics API on their behalf to… And in short, what that really means is that their analytics is now, are now portable. So they can incorporate what they’re learning about their readership on JD Supra into any dashboard of their choosing elsewhere. CRM, what have you, and we’re starting to partner with agencies that are using this API to build out interesting things on behalf of their clients. And so for example, you know, as many people know, at LMA Vegas JD Supra hosted a dinner with Passel. Passel is one of those agencies with whom we are starting down the road of API work on behalf of clients around analytics. The other thing that’s just sort of exciting from newsworthy point of view is what we’ve already discussed, which is that you and I saw each other recently at a conference. So the LMA conferences back–

Rae:

In person.

Adrian:

Yeah, it’s fantastic and, you know, I was part of, I was a very small part of the large hole in 2020 for the conference. I was part of the content programming committee, when Joel Hughes was President and got to watch all of the hard work by so many people to pull up off the conference and watch it disappear at the last minute because of what we just went through. And so I understand just how much work goes into this conference and I don’t know how you feel, but I thought 2022 was a phenomenal return. And in so many ways, great. And so yeah, the other exciting piece of news is, it looks like in person and that fashion is back.

Rae:

Absolutely yes. And I’m so excited for it. I think some of the, you know, one of the things I really liked about this conference was there were some new formats, there was a Fishbowl, there were some just the way the panels were run, were a little bit more interesting. I mean, there were some of the typical formats that I think we get a lot out of, but it was, there was definitely a new take on it. And for me, that’s one of the most important things. I wanna take, I wanna learn, take it back with me and see something I haven’t seen before and I think, LMA22 I loved it.

Adrian:

Yeah, every time I see Adam [Severson] servicing at a conference, other than just enjoying his company, I always tell him how important I think his role is in this community, because he’s been at it for so long. And he was the moderator of that Fishbowl. And it just kind of reinforced my view, he sort of like, has a depth of knowledge, has a lot of seniority, has years of experience and he could just, you know, not come. Or be at the bar while everybody’s. But instead there is as a moderator marshaling the thoughts and insights of a whole bunch of other people. And it’s just, it was terrific, it was good.

Rea:

Yeah, and a lot of people got to come up and share their ideas and questions. That was a very cool one.

Adrian:

Yeah, hopefully more Fishbowls.

Rae:

I think there will definitely be more Fishbowls based on that success. So our next question is, what do you see changing in the legal industry? And what is the impact?

Adrian:

So my answer so far, I’ve sort of been sort of close to home and global. And I have two answers that are in the same vein, here. And sort of on it, in a sort of, an immediate close to home sort of answer to that question, has to do with the way in which we see the people that we work with the organizations that we work with, respond to what it means to get the kind of visibility that they’re getting for their content. With clients, prospective clients, members of the media, anybody who has sort of value in marketing and business development efforts. In the early days of my business, and thought leadership and blogs and all of the rest, I think that the key objective had more to do with reaching more people than anything else. And over time, as that became a, as the dust settled on this notion that like, “Oh, you can actually get a lot more readers for your work.” The questions changed somewhat, and sort of became, okay, I’m getting a lot of readers, but what can I do about that? And we sort of saw fundamentally a shift in that answer so that the production and dissemination of content online wasn’t simply a communications and marketing initiative, but actually had tremendous benefit for business development.

Adrian:

So over the last several years, what we’ve seen is an internal shift, where marketers and communications folks are very interested in what happens to the work. But the impact of that work as it reaches a larger audience really has tremendous value for BD people. So I talked about analytics API, that’s one of a handful of things that are happening. The other is just seeing people have many more roles, wanting to have login and access of building tools to facilitate that. So you don’t just have somebody who’s in charge of PR is interested in the reach of content and how it meets media outlet. Logging into JD Supra and looking at the analytics. You also have industry team leaders, practice group, BD support teams, looking specifically for the opportunity that arises in companies and industries around the content that’s being produced by their firms. And I think that that’s a fundamentally important question being answered right now.

Rae:

What are they doing with that information? When they’re looking at these dashboards and finding that data, how are they using it?

Adrian:

It’s a fascinating question and it just depends the answers are endlessly anecdotal. And there are actually some case studies that we have on our resource center that talk about some of this. It influences content strategy for one thing. So for example, you find yourself, you find, there is on JD Supra two forms of intelligence, there is, my organization, my firm produced this content, who read it? Which people, people in which companies? Companies in what industries? But there’s also in the aggregate, the entire span of readership on JD Supra, millions of readers, so we’re able to derive some pretty interesting industry insights. So one answer to that question, for example, is a firm who had a client already, who used data to determine that the client was actually deeply interested in something that they weren’t representing them on and weren’t writing about.

Adrian:

And I don’t remember the specifics, you know, could be anything sort of attorney-client privilege, whatever it was. And so what they did, this is a high-value client with a state appoint, they reached out and sort of said, you know, we serve you on XYZ. But we could actually do for your entire legal team, a webinar on concept, ABC, which is the one that they realized that we’re very interested in. And the team was like, the client was like, “That’s incredibly thoughtful of you, we actually care about that greatly, we would love that webinar.” Did the webinar, got work as a result of it. So it’s, moments like that it’s, but that’s just one data point across the entire spectrum. Sometimes it’s also sort of realizing that people in financial services, in this quarter are hyper-interested in this following trending topic. So just going deep on a handful of, of posts and videos about a specific topic and the supply of things.

Rae:

That’s excellent. So what would you change, here’s my next question for “News + Views + To Do’s.” What would you change, or what should change that you think is taking longer than we’d like or longer than it should, in the legal market, in the legal industry?

Adrian:

Interesting. So I have two different answers to that. The first is that I think that the firms out there, for example, who hear what I’m saying about the sort of deployment and use of analytics, firms who are not doing that. Sometimes the reason for it is just resources, we don’t have the time, we don’t have enough people. There are things that everyone can do, you can schedule a half an hour, once a month, or half an hour, twice a month, and look at analytics and disseminate them and sort of say to a practice group leader, you know, your clients are about this right now. The next time you call them here are three conversation starters. That’s actually something that one of our clients does, sort of like they disseminate. So there are things that you can do that don’t take a huge amount of time. But I think that anybody who isn’t interested in the opportunities within their analytics for growing business should start investigating ways to make that happen. That’s the first thing.

Adrian:

The other is what we were talking about earlier. You know, we’re both at this conference and I’m a person who’s, you know, I’m a white male, I’m over represented in every facet of life. And so I’m very hesitant to talk about things that I’d rather just listen and support other people’s voices and but DEI obviously matters to everyone. Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion and I want to hear from more people about that more often and keep the pressure on because, what has been made clear is that law firms clients care about this issue greatly. And the question is that the rate at which law firms are changing in that regard, which is why whenever we can we publish any voice that we can about this issue of DEI and moving it forward. The one thing that I would add to this conversation about what’s new, what’s exciting is, going to LMA Vegas and seeing that in the two years that we’ve been apart and haven’t gathered in person, something seems to have happened. There was an interesting and very good to see, and there I say exciting makeup of the people there, there was more diversity, there were more people of color and super interesting, senior roles participating in the education. And I reflected on this with a couple of people who put the conference on and they had noticed too, and we’re very pleased to hear it and I think it was one of the most heartening things that I’ve seen. And so an answer, specifically to your question, I think DEI, just don’t let up the pressure, let’s enact that change. I personally support it and I wanna hear about it more than talk about it, it’s not, I don’t really feel like it’s my place, but I do wanna reflect that Vegas, in a very meaningful and positive and happy way seems to be showing that things are changing within firms.

Rae:

I noticed that too. And there were, there were several programs on that topic, it wasn’t just, like, we got an obligatory one topic. There were several and they had different goals in each of those. I mean, I and I, not for nothing I appreciate you raising that because this is a conversation that everyone needs to have and you know, we have clients come to us all the time and say, “We’re not, we have these diversity goals, but they’re still goals, and we’re working on them. And we haven’t achieved them yet.” “But how can you help us with our marketing or a website, or you know, those types of things?” And it’s, even though it’s a delicate subject, it’s something that we need to keep talking about, right? And reinforce that it’s important to everyone. And if it’s not a priority for a firm, then, you know, I think they’re, we’re seeing and we’ve seen data on this, that there can be serious financial ramifications, because it’s important to that firm’s clients, whether they like it or not, so.

Adrian:

Yeah. It’s sort of like, it’s very hard for me to talk about I’m, I grew up in apartheid era, white South Africa. So I was born just into a historical position of privilege. And I’ve sort of come to realize that what I can do is support and listen. And that’s what I’m mainly interested in. But I don’t think that you can talk about LMA 2020, Vegas without noticing how significant the diversity seemed to be relative to other years and relative to how necessary it is in this industry. It was just, you know, it, we shouldn’t even be having this conversation, we should be having a conversation about smart people sharing smart thoughts. And it shouldn’t matter in least, what gender they are, or what skin color they are, but here we are, and we’re doing it and it’s yeah, it’s good to see that it’s a step, it seems as though it’s a fairly significant step in the right direction during the course of the last two years when we haven’t been gathering.

Rae:

Yeah, and I think what you said, it’s relative to other years, we’re not saying that, you know, it was, that something has been achieved or maybe there’s been progress. So, more to do, more to do there.

Rae:

All right, so our last question for “News + Views + To Do’s” is, what advice would you like to share with our audience?

Adrian:

I wish my children would ask me this question more often. But different topics. You know, another thing about the last two years that is fascinating for me is the way in which, so again, JD Supra has been around for more than 10 years, it’s sort of approaching 15 at this point, and one of the things that I have said, since the beginning of time, as I’ve been invited to speak places in my capacity at JD Supra, is that, in an age in which everyone has the technical means to say something, it’s really enviable to be in a position where you actually have something to say, and that’s where we find many of the thought leaders in the space. Lawyers actually have a lot to make sense of, for very key people, clients, and prospective clients, and all of the rest. And it’s kind of a perfect marriage of technology and information, need to know information. And so this has been said, in theory and abstract for years, and everybody has generally acknowledged it and I think that one of the, there’s nothing positive to say about the last two years in terms of the pandemic. But one of the glimmers of hope maybe that showed itself, among others, is that this notion of lawyers, thought leaders, and professional services, making sense of chaos on behalf of a very specific group of people, couldn’t be any more true.

Adrian:

So we just rarely saw, from the point of view of JD Supra, which sits on a lot of content from a lot of sources, making sense of a lot of issues. And over the last several years, over the last two years with COVID that began with insurance and force majeure, and went on to mask mandates and all manner of issues at HIPAA and just everything to do with what’s happened over the last two years and more. It has become really clear from the readership and the quality of the readership, that sort of, again, just clients, prospective clients, that it couldn’t be more true that lawyers have something meaningful to say, to add to the conversation. And so I share that as maybe an obvious point to everyone that what’s important, is getting it right. And so even today, after all these years of people sort of visiting the world of thought leadership and insight and commentary from law firms and professional services, oftentimes, people mistake breaking the news, making sense of the news. So sometimes you’ll see firms just kind of reporting what everybody already knows. And other times, you’ll see firms introducing this news that has been reported, and then making sense of it on behalf of their clients. This happened, and here’s how it impacts you. And this is what you should do as a consequence. And that kind of, a minute lets see this technology, if we can work with my water glass, I’m trying to get water glass over to you. I’m sorry that you’re coughing. My point is simply that, making sense of the news is what people should be doing not reporting the news. And that is, in the details, thought leadership as a value add.

Rae:

So you have this unique view into what? What people are not just writing about, but what people are actually reading. It’s interesting angle on the trends that are really interesting, and that are really resonating with people that otherwise, you know. We write things that we think people care about, and you get to find out what they actually do, so.

Adrian:

Well, you said it really well. You said succinctly what I have sort of meandered around in this entire conversation and that’s exactly right. And that’s a very profoundly important insight about how analytics supports content efforts. So, you know, the beauty of the digital age is that you no longer have to hope for what people are interested in, or guess what people are interested in, but data supports what people are interested in. And it’s such a large and noisy information landscape that when you learn that people in a specific industry are actually interested in this, or people in a company that you’re serving are actually very interested in the subject. Then you write about it and write about it again and write about it again, one piece of content is enough, isn’t enough, a series is is what you’re going for. So yeah, having actual meaningful insight into what your readers and clients want is everything.

Rae:

That’s awesome. Yeah, you have such a cool view of it. Well, Adrian, thank you so much for sharing your insights with me and our audience today. This has been super informative and interesting. And thanks to our viewers, we appreciate you listening in and watching and catch us the next time on, LISI’s News + Views + To Do’s.