GA Legal and Focus Funding: two propositions, one commercial model

The brief

GA Legal and Focus Funding were two closely connected professional-services businesses preparing to establish themselves in the legal market.

GA Legal was a new commercial law firm operating in Perth and Brisbane. Its principal areas of practice included commercial litigation, property, construction, planning and development, land compensation and administrative law.

Focus Funding was a private litigation funder created to help claimants and their lawyers finance meritorious legal claims. It combined funding with access to legal, financial and forensic expertise throughout the life of a matter.

Each business needed a clear proposition, a consistent voice and website content that explained how it created value for its clients.

Our role was to develop those propositions and translate them into two distinct but complementary bodies of content.

Finding the idea that connected both businesses

The two organisations performed different roles, but they shared a common commercial philosophy.

Clients facing complex legal problems rarely need an abstract explanation of the law. They need to understand what they can do next. In significant disputes, they may also need the capital, people and specialist resources required to pursue that course of action properly.

GA Legal would give clients practical legal advice and a clear plan of action. Focus Funding could provide eligible claimants with the financial resources and multidisciplinary support needed to carry that plan through.

This gave the two businesses a connected commercial story: advice that led to action, supported by the expertise and resources needed to reach an outcome.

We then gave each organisation its own distinct expression of that idea.

Positioning GA Legal around advice clients could use

GA Legal wanted to distinguish itself from conventional firms that appeared remote, theoretical or insufficiently attuned to the commercial consequences of legal advice.

The firm’s first point of difference was practical judgement. Its lawyers would not simply explain the law, identify a series of risks and leave the client to decide what happened next. Their advice would include a recommended course of action and concrete next steps.

We captured that proposition in a simple central promise:

Legal advice you can act on

That idea gave the firm a platform broad enough to accommodate its different areas of practice while still saying something meaningful about how it worked.

We supported it with a series of related messages:

• next steps rather than academic arguments
• a pragmatic, business-first approach
• minimum disruption and maximum commercial value
• personal relationships built on understanding
• consistent access to senior lawyers
• robust representation when litigation was necessary, and
• local knowledge supported by broader commercial experience.

Giving a new firm a coherent digital presence

We translated the GA Legal proposition across its principal website pages.

The homepage introduced the firm through the problems its clients needed to solve rather than presenting a conventional list of legal capabilities. It connected each major practice area with a practical client outcome.

The About page explained the firm’s approach in greater depth: understanding the client’s business, giving advice that put the client in control, avoiding unnecessary disputes and defending the client’s interests forcefully when litigation was the right course.

We also made sure each service page connected technical capability with the decisions, risks and practical outcomes that mattered to audience it was aimed at.

Creating one firm from eight individual profiles

Lawyer profile pages were an important part of establishing the new firm’s credibility. The lawyers brought different backgrounds, qualifications and areas of expertise, but their biographies needed to feel as though they belonged to the same organisation.

We created a common profile structure and rewrote eight biographies around relevant expertise, experience, qualifications, representative matters and professional strengths.

This made the individual lawyers easier to assess while giving the new firm a consistent voice. We also adapted the profiles when the practice-area structure changed, ensuring that the people and service architecture continued to support each other.

Extending the proposition beyond the website

We developed a separate capability statement that brought together GA Legal’s positioning, principal services, values and team.

It was designed as a flexible business-development document. The firm could use the complete version when it needed to present its full capabilities or select the most relevant sections for a particular opportunity.

This meant the central proposition was not confined to the website. GA Legal had a consistent story it could carry into direct approaches, proposals and other client communications.

Positioning Focus Funding as more than a source of capital

Focus Funding presented a different communications challenge. Many potential clients would have had little understanding of litigation funding, while lawyers and experienced claimants would want detailed information about the funder’s process, criteria and role.

The supplied material explained how funding worked but did not yet establish a compelling reason to choose Focus Funding over another provider.

We identified active involvement as the organisation’s most meaningful point of difference:

In litigation funding, active involvement means better outcomes

Focus Funding would not simply provide finance and disappear. Its multidisciplinary team would remain available throughout the claim, contributing strategic advice and specialist support where needed.

The team brought together solicitors, barristers, forensic accountants, financial professionals and corporate advisers. The proposition therefore combined financial capacity with the professional resources required to help a claim go the distance.

Making litigation funding understandable

We developed a simple six-page website structure covering the homepage, About, Services, Process, Frequently Asked Questions and Contact.

The content explained:

• what litigation funding was and how it worked
• which litigation expenses could be funded
• the kinds of claims Focus Funding would consider
• how applications would be assessed
• what information an applicant needed to provide
• how the funding arrangement affected control of a matter
• how the funder received a return, and
• what happened if a funded claim was unsuccessful.

We organised the assessment process into three clear stages: preliminary review, detailed diligence and agreement. This gave applicants a simple journey through what could otherwise feel like an opaque and intimidating process.

The copy also made the organisation’s investment criteria transparent. Potential claims would be considered according to their legal merit, commercial merit, likely costs and the quality of the legal team involved.

Writing for claimants and their lawyers

Focus Funding needed to reach two interconnected audiences.

For claimants, the content explained how funding could help manage legal expenses and cash flow, provide access to suitable lawyers and experts, reduce financial risk and allow a meritorious claim to be pursued properly.

For solicitors and barristers, it showed how funding could give clients the means to continue with worthy claims, provide greater confidence that professional fees and disbursements would be paid and make additional expert resources available.

This was important because legal professionals were not merely participants in funded proceedings. They were also an important source of potential applications and referrals.

Building the content around decisions

Across both businesses, our work extended beyond writing the visible copy.

We defined the purpose of each page, the audience it needed to reach, the actions it should inspire and the other pages to which it should lead. The copydecks included proposed URLs, search keywords, meta titles, meta descriptions, headings, calls to action and internal links.

We worked with the emerging brand and website designs, conducted discovery with the businesses’ principals and adapted the content as the practice structure, priorities and tone evolved.

The result was not simply a collection of pages. It was a connected system in which the proposition, services, people, process and calls to action all supported the same commercial story.

The result

GA Legal and Focus Funding launched with distinct positions that explained both what each business did and why a client should choose it.

GA Legal was presented as a commercially minded firm offering practical advice, clear next steps and direct access to experienced lawyers.

Focus Funding was presented as more than a source of finance. It combined capital with active involvement and multidisciplinary expertise, while making a complicated service easier for claimants and legal professionals to understand.

Together, the two bodies of content expressed a broader idea: professional advice becomes more valuable when clients also understand what to do next and have the resources required to do it.