Exclusive: Passle Launches Intelligence Map to Visualize Cross-Selling Activity within A Law Firm

Passle, a technology company that develops thought leadership and cross-selling tools for law firms, has unveiled a new visualization tool for its CrossPitch AI platform that promises to make cross-selling activity in law firms visible, actionable and measurable for the first time.

The Cross-Selling Intelligence Map, released today, creates a network diagram showing how thought leadership content flows among a firm’s attorneys across different offices and practice areas.

The Intelligence Map aims to address what Passle characterizes as a major revenue leak: 84% of law firm business development and marketing professionals believe their firms are missing cross-selling opportunities, with 99% estimating this costs them at least 10% of annual revenue, according to a Passle-commissioned study.

AI to Drive Cross-Selling

The map is an expansion of the company’s CrossPitch AI, which it launched in June and which uses artificial intelligence to analyze attorney-authored thought leadership content, such as blog posts, articles and client alerts. Using attorneys’ public-facing biographical information, the system automatically identifies which colleagues might have clients interested in that content and sends them personalized email notifications with AI-generated summaries.

“The AI reads the thought leadership that’s been created in the firm and it reads the bio pages, profile pages of all the attorneys at the firm and it matches the two together,” James Barclay, Passle’s CEO, explained in an interview with LawSites last week.

The notifications include an 80-100 word summary so attorneys can quickly understand the content’s relevance without reading the full article.

To supplement what the AI gleans from their public bios, attorneys can add an “enhanced profile” within Passle where they specify topics of interest in natural language – such as “anything about the pharmaceutical industry” or “artificial intelligence.”

A firm’s business development teams can set a relevancy threshold (typically 70-75%, according to Barclay) to control how many notifications attorneys receive, balancing comprehensiveness against information overload.

The platform also generates pre-written “I saw this and thought of you” emails that attorneys can send to clients with a single click, requiring only that they add a personal greeting.

Visualizing the Invisible

Building on this Crosspitch AI platform, the new Intelligence Map launched today transforms this notification data into an interactive network visualization.

Larger dots represent more active attorneys who create and share more content. Connections between dots show where thought leadership is being shared across the firm. Light and dark patches reveal areas of high and low activity.

Users can filter the map by location, practice area or industry, and use a timeline slider to track changes over time. This allows leadership to see insights such as whether a newly acquired lateral hire or practice group is integrating into the firm’s knowledge-sharing ecosystem or remaining isolated.

In his conversations with large law firms, Barclay said, they always want to know how they can show collaboration among attorneys and practice groups, particularly in the wake of a merger or acquisition.

This map, he said, lets them do exactly that, in a visual manner.

The Cross-Selling Challenge

The map addresses two fundamental barriers to cross-selling that Barclay sees time and again in firms: awareness and trust.

“We don’t know what our colleagues know, and we need to know that,” Barclay said. As one managing partner told him: “I kind of knew what the people on my floor knew. I didn’t really know what the people upstairs or downstairs knew. And I certainly didn’t know what L.A. or London was talking about.”

The trust barrier is equally significant. “I’ve just spent 15 years building a book of business and I don’t know if I want to introduce Jenny, who I haven’t heard of, to my client,” Barclay said, describing how that trust issue might inhibit attorneys from cross selling.

By repeatedly exposing attorneys to colleagues’ expertise through relevant content summaries, the platform aims to build both familiarity and confidence.

He described an attorney, Alice, receiving alerts about her partner Oscar’s articles on autonomous vehicles. The first time she receives it, she might barely notice it. The second time, she might think “Oh, that’s interesting, Oscar’s still writing about autonomous vehicles. That’s kind of cool.” By the third time, she might realize she wants to get in touch with Oscar.

Eliminating Guesswork

Since launching in June, CrossPitch AI has been adopted by 29 law firms, including Barnes & Thornburg, Loeb & Loeb, Manatt, and firms from both the Am Law 200 and UK Top 50. Passle reports that open rates for CrossPitch notifications average 42%, more than double the 18% industry average for legal marketing emails.

“With CrossPitch AI, we’ve eliminated guesswork and replaced it with a data-driven roadmap showing where our insights will have their greatest impact,” Trish Lilley, chief marketing and business development officer at Barnes & Thornburg, said in a statement provided by Passle. “This fact-fueled approach allows us to deliver optimal value to our clients by bringing the right people together faster.”

Notably, CrossPitch AI only analyzes publicly available information, such as published thought leadership and public-facing attorney bios, to avoid any concerns law firms might have about providing an AI tool with access to confidential client data or internal firm documents.

“Vendors like us come along and say, hey, we’ve got an absolute silver bullet … and all we need to do is go into all your most secret stuff and learn it and read it and don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” Barclay said.

Passle has deliberately taken a different approach, using only public-facing sources of content.

Not only does that assuage firms’ fears of exposing their data, but it also enables them to implement the product much more quickly – within just a week, Barclay said.

The AI platform can work alongside any content source and does not require firms to use Passle’s separate thought leadership platform.

Integrating Lateral Hires

Beyond general cross-selling, the Intelligence Map specifically targets lateral hire integration – a persistent challenge given that approximately 50% of lateral hires leave within five years, by some industry estimates.

For a lateral who cost $750,000 to several million dollars to recruit, the map can show managing partners and business development teams whether that attorney is becoming known throughout the firm by creating and sharing expertise – or remaining disconnected from potential cross-selling relationships.

“The reason you’re here,” Barclay said of lateral hires, “is essentially to cross sell. You build your book, you bring your book and you make sure that other people know that you’re there and that we can sell off the back of you and your knowledge and what you do.”

What the Map Cannot Show

The Intelligence Map tracks three types of activity: creating thought leadership, receiving notifications about colleagues’ content, and taking action on those notifications (clicking through to articles or sharing them). Business development teams can drill down to see why specific attorneys were matched with specific content, based on what the AI extracted from their bios.

However, the map does not capture follow up – whether recipients of a notification actually contacted the content authors, introduced them to clients, or generated any cross-selling revenue. It visualizes key indicators of cross-selling behavior rather than outcomes.

“It’s not necessarily [that] we’re going to be able to say, okay, there was a $3 million deal done because a notification was sent,” Barclay acknowledged. “But we know that those notifications will definitely help.”

The tool represents a bet that making previously invisible knowledge-sharing activity visible will drive behavior change, even without directly measuring revenue impact. Whether that visibility alone can overcome the structural and cultural barriers that have made cross-selling a perennial challenge in law firms remains to be seen.