The potentially overlooked key to helping IP legal professionals unlock advancement

What attributes should today’s intellectual property lawyer possess to distinguish themselves and their firm in a crowded market? Legal expertise? Clearly. Industry experience? Ideally. A commitment to continuous personal development? Almost certainly. Business development and marketing acumen? Perhaps not on everyone’s bingo card.

But that is where Michael Coston has identified a need in the legal market, and is now addressing the gap through a company that he founded in 2019. The CEO of the business advisory firm Coston Consulting, which specialises in the legal sector, has channelled more than 50 years of combined experience in senior business development and marketing roles at law firms in pursuing the vision.

The Elevate Curriculum, an online programme that Coston Consulting launched in January 2024, is centred around developing IP legal professionals’ networking, marketing, and cross-selling skills, with a particular focus on associates and junior partners. Such attributes are, Coston believes, potentially differentiating factors that could help an IP lawyer to progress and become a more valuable asset for their firm.

The programme is designed to address the growing demand that Coston has observed among law firms for structured professional development in business development and client relations. “As law firms are becoming increasingly competitive, they’ve been fighting for market share and looking for ways to deepen their client relationships and position themselves for new client development opportunities,” he says. “These are fundamental skills that lawyers need to develop and enhance. It made sense to have a self-study tool to support the firms who are trying to provide these types of professional development trainings to their lawyers.”

The broad applicability of the subjects in the Elevate Curriculum means that even boutique law firms could benefit. “Our industry is not exclusive to large firms,” Coston notes. “There are many smaller firms who don’t have the budgets to hire the best consultants or to have the most elaborate professional development training programmes, and I think that Elevate closes that gap for some of the smaller firms who want to equip their lawyers with the best practices and skills to advance their work in BD and marketing.”

Coston believes that these skills have particular relevance in the IP field. “Having come from McKool Smith [the US litigation firm, where he served as chief marketing officer for ten years], which has a very deep reputation in intellectual property, I have a keen awareness of how competitive it is in terms of market share and how important it is, because you have so many companies where their IP is their lifeline,” he says. “Their IP is their most important asset.

“Organisations have become increasingly selective about the firms that they’re hiring to advance their intellectual property goals, so investment in having lawyers understand the importance of BD and marketing is critical.”

The Elevate Curriculum has a core curriculum and an advanced curriculum, both of which are delivered through means such as video learning modules, quizzes, and checklists. The topics covered include maximising your profile on LinkedIn, how to approach event attendance, and making a business pitch.

“The core curriculum covers the fundamentals of knowing how to navigate your firm and how to tap into the value propositions that your firm has in order to leverage them for client development opportunities,” Coston explains. “It also focuses on profile raising. How do you build your brand? How do you make connections? How do you be seen in a competitive market and maximise your network? And then leaning into LinkedIn. Increasingly, LinkedIn is an important tool for visibility. It’s also important for client development.”

“Our programme is distinguished from others because it focuses on associates and junior partners. The advanced curriculum goes more deeply into business development and client relations. There’s a segment on how to nail your pitch when you have an opportunity to pitch for business. And then how to cross-sell in our industry. Typically, many law firms struggle in how to cross-sell their products and services.”

The above allusion to an acute understanding of the legal market, born from extensive experience at the intersection of legal practice and marketing, influenced Coston’s decision to establish his own consulting firm. “I have always been entrepreneurial,” he says. “So I took a step out and rolled the dice and started to build the team. When I opened up the company in 2019, it was just time for a transition. I had been in a number of law firms. I wanted to create a firm that focused on the things that I was passionate about: business development, marketing, and inclusion and culture work.”

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work remains integral to Coston Consulting’s provision. The area has been the subject of much debate recently, with the Trump administration and companies such as Meta and Amazon rolling back, or even shutting, DEI programmes. However, Coston has a confident outlook on the future of DEI and how the legal community will respond. “The headlines are reading as if these organisations are 100% cancelling DEI,” he says. “I don’t think that’s entirely true. I think that organisations are taking a closer look at their DEI programmes and seeing what’s working. They’re seeing what’s not working. They’re seeing what’s potentially in violation of certain expectations and rules set by the Supreme Court and they’re trying to figure out how to navigate through it.

“I’m actually optimistic, because I know that many law firms are really committed to this work and they’re not abandoning DEI; they’re re-evaluating and re-approaching it.”

From helping lawyers to level up their business development skills to advancing firm culture and attorney engagement initiatives, Coston and his team are evidently intent on shaping a more competitive and inclusive future for law firms worldwide. To that end, they are now working on new ways to deliver the Elevate Curriculum. “We are in discussions with a number of professional and bar associations to have Elevate be made available to constituents across broad demographics,” Coston says. “We have also entered into an arrangement with SCG Legal, which is a law firm network organisation with about 12,000 attorney members across the world. Their members can tap into Elevate at a discounted rate. Our goal now is expanding awareness of Elevate and to open up channels for access to it.”

Aside from training IP legal professionals in business development, Coston Consulting is clearly keen to apply the principles as well.