Oil and water. Orange juice and toothpaste. Apple and Microsoft. Lawyers and marketing…?

While the first three pairs definitely don’t mix, we keep hearing horror stories about how marketing teams and legal teams aren’t working well together either.

We often find that, despite their common goals, there’s a chasm between legal marketing teams and the firm lawyers they support or the product sales groups they’re promoting. There may be a disconnect—or no communication at all—between lawyers and the marketing staff that’s ready and willing to help them build their book of business.

Why is that the case? We have plenty of ideas, but we’d like to hear what you think.

That’s why we’ve put together a short survey on the topic. We want to hear from both sides: marketing folks as well as the legal teams they serve, and people affiliated with both law firms and legal service providers. We would love to hear from you and your colleagues, so please share the link. The more information we get, the better our results will be.

We’ve designed the survey to take less than 10 of your (billable) minutes to complete. We’ll keep your information confidential, but we’ll aggregate the data into a paper we’ll release later this year.

Want to know more? I’ll also be speaking on the topic of how marketing teams can bridge the gap with lawyers at the upcoming meeting of the Washington chapter of the Legal Marketing Association. I’d love to see you there.

When: March 21 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Where: Troutman Sanders LLP, 401 9^th Street NW, Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20004.

Please register and join me there. I look forward to hearing about your experiences and seeing you later this month.

In the meantime, feel free to drop us a line or to give us a shout to talk about your biggest marketing challenges.

(More) tips to improve your content marketing

What’s new this week in the legal industry

More companies are increasingly focused on rooting out bad behavior
Why your legal team needs a legal hub
Law firms better get ready for the metrics

Some reads to celebrate International Women’s Day

So, what has Scribe been up to this week?

Coaching two brand-new mock trial high school teams to victory at the state competition
Researching computer-assisted review protocols
Analyzing the use of analytics in law department operations (very meta of us)
Evaluating how law firms can run more like businesses
Editing a white paper on nonprofit certification

Need help building a bridge between your legal and marketing functions?

Friday scribbles: how can marketing and legal teams accomplish their business development goals?