Blume aims to help legal services clients grow and flourish

By implementing Blume’s data-led intelligent systems and solutions, law firms improve efficiency, boost their bottom line and ultimately drive real competitive advantage

As founder and chief executive officer of Blume, Dez Derry is leading one of the UK’s leading customer acquisition specialists in the legal services sector.

The business, which currently employs 100 people at its office in West Didsbury, has just completed its first acquisition of Online Legal, as it looks to strategic mergers and acquisitions and organic growth to achieve turnover of £30 million by the end of 2023.

Derry started out as a one-man band offering digital marketing consultancy services in 2012—building websites, creating video content, and implementing multi-media campaigns for law firms. Recognising a shift in the market, he pivoted his business model and operations in 2017 to concentrate on using his team’s in-house marketing expertise to acquire cases on behalf of his law firm client base. A new startup phase began—a customer acquisition specialist working exclusively in the UK legal sector.

Following a private equity funding boost, 2022 has presented Derry with new opportunities to strengthen the business and grow in new areas, particularly around the adoption of new innovative technologies and extending its product range.

To reflect this new phase of growth and its wider service offerings, the business rebranded to Blume from mmadigital last month.

Here, Derry discusses some of the significant developments that have shaped the sector in the past few years and looks at what the future holds for both the personal injury market and his business.

Dez Derry, founder and chief executive officer of Blume

How is the personal injury market performing?

According to the IRN’s UK Personal Injury Market Trends Report 2022, the market was worth £4b in 2021, a slight rise of 1.8% on 2020. The wider legal services sector remains one of our most important industries, contributing to around 3% of GVA to the UK economy.

Despite its resilience to many economic impacts, the landscape has transformed dramatically over the past 10 years with the introduction of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, fixed costs and the Ministry of Justice portal, and this pace of change looks set to continue.

The COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching impacts on all areas of our personal and business lives and the personal injury sector was no exception, with a decline in the numbers suffering injuries that warranted the involvement of a personal injury lawyer. However, the market is now seeing renewed growth and optimism, and has bounced back sharply.

By and large, the personal injury market remains as competitive as ever, but tighter margins for law firms mean that they need to be more innovative in their approach to remain profitable, in particular when sourcing new business.

What next for the market?

The last two years have seen unprecedented challenges for the UK economy, from the disruption of the pandemic and Brexit-related effects to the war on Ukraine, double-digit inflation, and soaring energy prices—all contributing to a cost-of-living crisis.

Clearly, these factors will impact massively on our spending habits, and are also likely to have a bearing on damages awarded for personal injury claims plus claimants’ appetite to progress with claims.

Maintaining profitability is always a priority, but today it is considerably more pressing for the legal sector. A combination of the current economic climate, tighter margins, more competition and increasing client expectations means a higher demand for improved productivity. As such, greater flexibility and more efficient use of resources is more critical than ever before for firms to assure better return on investment.

Market consolidation will continue to be a key driver when facilitating growth, as many firms continue to feel the squeeze on the back of events such as the pandemic, cuttings costs and the new small claims limit. There are also major concerns that the government’s proposed extension of fixed recoverable costs, and its intention to introduce this to most clinical negligence claims valued up to £25,000, will have a major impact on many firms within our sector.

Customer acquisition remains a vital part of the growth strategy and financial health of a law firm, and while there has been a considerable contraction in the number of authorised companies delivering the service in recent times, this has been a positive move. The introduction of a more robust regulatory framework by the Financial Conduct Authority has driven up standards and boosted consumer protection.

Given its delayed adoption in the legal sector compared to many others, we are also now seeing more firms embracing new technologies to work more efficiently and securely. There are myriad software and tools that firms can use to streamline processes and improve nearly every aspect of the job, and this only looks set to accelerate as firms increase technology investment.

How has Blume adjusted to challenges and changes?

Blume is growing at a rapid pace and diversifying into what we offer our panel firms. As digital transformation gathers pace across all market sectors, essentially changing the way we do business, we have been quick to respond to the opportunities and challenges presented in the sector.

Securing private equity funding from Rockpool Investments earlier this year has enabled us to invest in our data and technology capabilities with the goal of increasing efficiencies for our clients, so we can streamline processes and they get a better return in investment. We are building a team of product experts to drive service enhancement opportunities to improve internal workstreams and the overall client experience.

Our rebrand was not just about a new name, logo and website, it was a chance to evaluate everything we do and to reflect real strategic changes in the business. The new brand underpins our core focus of helping businesses grow and flourish, and we are in an excellent position to better meet the needs of our panel firms and their customers.

Innovation is about finding new and better ways of doing things and is vital for all our continued, sustainable prosperity. By implementing more data-led intelligent systems and solutions, the firms we work with can improve efficiency, boost their bottom line and ultimately drive real competitive advantage.

Image sources: Canva and Blume

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