Houston-based energy law firm Bracewell has overhauled its business development operations using legal knowledge management technology, changing how the firm creates proposals, tracks opportunities, and wins new clients.
The firm’s success story centers on Foundation, a platform that became part of legal tech company Litera in 2021. After three and a half years of implementation, Bracewell’s leadership credits the system with significantly changing their approach to client development and marketing operations.
From simple database to marketing command center
Paul Grabowski, Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer at Bracewell, initially viewed Foundation as a straightforward solution for building a “Deals and Matters” database. This database serves as both a sales tool for attracting new clients and a method for identifying internal expertise across the firm’s engagement history.
However, the platform has evolved far beyond its original scope, according to Grabowski:
Since we introduced what was then Foundation, we’ve been able to tie it into our accounting system, our client intake system, and our financial research feed from S&P Global.
That means we can paint the full picture of what we do with that client, or in that area, so Foundation is effectively our marketing knowledge center, where all of our proposals, our pitches, our RFPs, all of our content, all of our awards and recognition, submissions, and so on is now in one place and always up to date.
I think it’s been a real game-changer for us as a professional services company.
Solving long-standing industry challenges
Bracewell operates across 11 global offices, serving clients in Finance, Infrastructure, and Technology sectors. However, the firm’s specialty lies in energy law, providing counsel on energy finance, project development, and emerging sectors like battery storage, carbon capture, and offshore wind projects—reflecting its “We Know Energy” tagline.
The challenge of maintaining accurate, up-to-date client engagement records has plagued the firm for years. Grabowski, drawing on two decades of legal sector experience, has witnessed multiple failed attempts across the industry to solve this problem.
We are in an industry where we have to sell ourselves, and when you’re asked to put together a proposal, an RFP, a pitch, brochure, etc., having that information to be able to tell your client – or prospective client – this is the type of work we’ve done, short and to the point, was always a significant lift on the part of the business development team, to keep that correct and accurate and up to date.
The frustration has been industry-wide, as Grabowski explains:
This is a road I’ve been down eight or nine times over my 20 years in this sector. Here, we’ve tried to do that in an Access database, Excel, Word documents that get written over hundreds of times, but nothing really worked.
The Foundation solution
The breakthrough came through collaboration between Grabowski, the firm’s CIO, and Senior Director of Knowledge Resources, along with Barry Solomon from Foundation/Litera:
We had an opportunity to really kind of take a step back with our CIO and our Senior Director of Knowledge Resources and decide what was the best path forward.
I’ve known Barry Solomon from Foundation/Litera for many years, and he was the first one to really kind of take a step back and say, how can we solve this problem?
And it became readily apparent that this was not only just going to be a Deals and Matters database, but a knowledge center for our entire Business Development and Marketing ops team.
Transforming daily operations
The implementation began with importing 15 years of matter history, immediately unlocking new operational capabilities. The impact on daily business development activities has been substantial, according to Grabowski:
Like I said, this has completely changed how we in Business Development do our jobs. Number one, we can just put materials together better; we have more ability to research when someone says, Hey, do we have any maritime experience, I’m pitching XYZ clients?
The materials themselves are better, but more importantly we have the ability to track what we are doing. We can tell you about 99 percent of every pitch, proposal, RFP, brochure that goes out of our firm, where it’s going, who it’s going to, and then we can tie it back to actual new matters being opened.
An RFP sometimes can take days to put together because it has to be specific, you can’t give canned responses. So, the ability to look at past content, build that in in a timely fashion, is so beneficial.
Beyond proposals: supporting firm growth
Jacqueline Madarang, Director of Marketing Technology and Operations at Bracewell, highlights additional benefits extending beyond proposal creation. The system generates internal reports that help leadership identify opportunities while serving as a valuable resource for talent onboarding by preserving firm culture and history.
The platform has also facilitated geographic expansion:
When we opened the Paris office last year, we had the materials ready and so when the guys went out to meet with clients, they were armed with all the information they needed. We can also make loading and refreshing bios for new and departing people so much easier, too.
Looking ahead, Grabowski sees Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration as the natural evolution of legal technology. Litera has been incorporating AI capabilities into its products, aligning with Bracewell’s vision for enhanced client service.
When a client comes to us, the one thing they want to ask is, Why should I hire you? So we are always looking for ways to perfect our knowledge base and make that easy for us to answer, and I see a continual evolution happening here with AI becoming a tool to enhance and strengthen how we can answer that question.
The enthusiasm for AI-powered enhancements is clear:
When it comes to AI, I keep seeing more and more use cases. I wish my budget was unlimited because I would like to do a lot of things with it!
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