B2B marketers are rethinking event strategies & budgets. 🤔 Fuel ROI with webinars in 2025. Read the Forrester report

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Dentons | Case Study | ON24

B2B marketers are rethinking event strategies & budgets. 🤔 Fuel ROI with webinars in 2025. Read the Forrester report

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Get started

Dentons moves in-person CLE program into the digital world with ON24

  • 50% attendance rate

  • Positive anecdotal feedback from clients

  • Attracted several hundred new clients

Capabilities

Industry

Use Cases

  • Event marketing

Number of Employees

  • 10,000+

About

Dentons is the world’s largest law firm, delivering quality and value to clients around the globe. Dentons is a leader on the Acritas Global Elite Brand Index, a BTI Client Service 30 Award winner and recognized by prominent business and legal publications for its innovations in client service, including founding Nextlaw Labs and the Nextlaw Global Referral Network. Dentons’ polycentric approach and world-class talent challenge the status quo to advance client interests in the communities in which we live and work.

Introduction

Dentons is the world’s largest law firm, delivering quality and value to clients around the globe. They pride themselves on a polycentric approach, and dedication to providing world-class talent for clients and life-long learning for their attorneys. Events and conferences have always been an integral part of Dentons’ business model, as they provide invaluable opportunities for legal communities to learn from industry experts, stay up to date on current legal and ethical issues and challenges, earn CLE credits, and connect with potential clients and one another.

Problem

Lacked a digital event and engagement strategy

Until Covid, the U.S. team hosted 100+ events a year, most notably in-person CLE courses for attorneys across the country. “Continuing legal education is big for lawyers, whether they are working for a corporation or private law firm,” said Bonner. Now, the team would need to find a way to bring their CLE and event program into the digital world.

As a company who had always taken pride in offering these physical events and workshops for their international legal community, navigating the digital world was a challenge. “My team had to really pivot,” said Bonner. “We’ve never used or been involved in any sort of virtual event planning prior to Covid. When we started researching our options, we felt super nervous because we’re not tech people. We’re people people!”

In addition to navigating the digital-event world, Bonner and her team would have to prepare their attorneys to present on these new digital platforms, and prove to potential attendees that these digital events would still be worth their time. “Our audience consists of senior level executives, in-house counsel, jurisconsults, and C-level execs,” said Bonner. “It’s hard to ask them to take time away from their busy days on behalf of our firms.”

"Continuing legal education is big for lawyers, whether they are working for a corporation or private law firm.”

Susan DeLeva Bonner, Senior Events Manager

Solution

Scalable digital experiences with bingeable content for various
personas

Dentons used ON24 Webcast Elite to offer CLE webinars and digital experiences across the United States. “We wanted a platform that went beyond video and slide sharing. ON24 allowed us to include branding, videos, polling, Q&As and additional content offers to keep audiences
engaged.”

With these webinars, the Dentons team was not only able to provide continued-education opportunities to their in-house attorneys, they were able to drive engagement with fully-branded experiences rich with interactivity options. Attendees of these events were able to ask their questions in real time, network with clients and peers, earn CLE credits and stay on top of the latest trends affecting the legal industry.

“ON24 provides really in depth analysis on contacts post-events. What did they click on? How long did they look at it? What content piece was visited the most? That intel can actually help shape future events,” said Bonner.

To set their attorneys up for success as presenters, the team puts together educational webinars designed to help them “dress the part and showcase themselves in the best light possible.” To make sure webinar discussions serve the widest audiences possible, the team builds speaker panels diverse with attorneys of all ages, gender and race. They also include “at least one non-lawyer” to round out the discussion, and provide the most value to attendees who prefer to hear a variety of perspectives.

To provide attorneys with networking opportunities, digital breakout rooms are assigned at each signature event in which attorneys can connect with potential clients and one another. “Being that they can’t meet each other in person we wanted to create opportunities to connect, even if it is virtually.”

Results

With ON24, Dentons has produced and delivered 12 virtual events, attracted several hundred new clients, and achieved a 50% attendance rate.

“A successful event is one that gets our contacts and clients engaged and participating,” said Bonner, and the team has done just that. By baking surveys, polls and Q&As into their experiences, the team is able to collect real-time feedback from attorneys on their current pain points and interests. This immediate feedback helps them ensure that the content they serve is always relevant, up-to-date and valuable.

“It’s crazy to think that at the beginning of Summer, we were so nervous to navigate the world of digital events,” said Bonner. “Now we got this all down! It’s been interesting but, learning this as a backup to our in person events has been pretty extraordinary.”

"My team had to really pivot. We’ve never used or been involved in any sort of virtual event planning prior to covid. When we started researching our options we felt super nervous because we’re not tech people. We’re people people!”

Susan Deleva Bonner, Senior Events Manager

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