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Marketing, Messaging

Get Out: Why Lawyers Love Referral Marketing and Why They Should

Law firms love in-person referral marketing for the same two reasons lawyers love most things: (1) it’s always been done that way, and (2) it’s comfortable for them.  Generally, lawyers rely on tradition and ease as explanatory for just about everything they do.  In many ways, these two things have come to define the practice of law.  And, the proposition holds for in-person referral marketing, which is still (far and away) the method by which most law firms are built and maintained.

But, there’s another, more subtle reason that lawyers should love referral marketing — and, that’s because it’s not directed at prospective clients.  So, it serves as a great way to market a law firm with gloves off, as it were.  As soon as an attorney attempts to directly engage a client, burdensome solicitation rules come into play.  But, if you’re getting most of your business from referral sources, you need not engage those referral sources via the same rules. You can directly approach a referral source and say pretty much anything you want to them, in the interests of accessing a client pipeline. Under a regime that discourages direct client solicitation in a number of ways, this is the next best thing: to acquire a reliable mouthpiece.  And, that’s the main reason why clearly elucidating your business proposition to your referral sources, nailing down calls to actions and referral patterns and continually educating your referral sources on what you do is so essential to any thoroughgoing lawyer marketer.

Such it is that, for most lawyers, the most direct path to new clients is around them.

Marketing, Data Security, Technology

Great Barrier Reef: Modern Customer Service is About Breaking Down Barriers

You may have heard that there are now a majority of states that have adopted new legal ethics rules insinuating that a lawyer’s competence includes knowledge and understanding of legal technology.  And, although you’d probably never hear this from anyone on any accredited CLE panel, this seems to also include technology for marketing, inasmuch as that extends to data retention and security.

But, the broader idea of a lawyer’s competence extending to marketing technology is a new concept.  Does it also mean that an attorney should understand how to wield marketing technology effectively?  Maybe, maybe not.  But, you should treat it as such anyway — because for most attorneys the thing that’s going to put you out of business is not that you undergo an ethics investigation, it’s that you don’t make enough money, often enough.  That’s directly related to your marketing strategy and tactics, of course.

And, while the notion of generic technology competence is something lawyers have had a difficult time wrapping their heads around, marketing technology competence is a little easier to understand — to wit: In order to be a competent legal marketer, you should always be seeking to reduce the number of steps a potential client needs to get to you.  For example, if you can reduce a step in your intake process, do it.  If you can make it easier for your clients to pay you, do that too.  And, if you can create a more compelling payment arrangement by fixing costs, and taking the guesswork out of calculating lawyer rates, do that thing also.  Of course, in some cases, it may be appropriate to add steps to reduce barriers, like when you build out an effective client journey, for new law firm clients who may never have interacted with a law firm before.

Modern law firm consumers are more impatient than ever.  They don’t have time for your accolades; they just want someone who is going to solve their problem.  So, position yourself as a solution point; and, then continue to educate your client through the course of your relationship.  This is not about burnishing your war chest; it’s about focusing on helping people.  And, isn’t that why literally everyone went to law school?

Marketing, Messaging

What’s Your Problem? Marketing a Law Firm Effectively is Simply About Addressing Pain Points

I have terrible news: your clients don’t give a shit that you’re a Super Lawyer.

Generally speaking, potential law firm clients aren’t interested in how many awards you’ve won, because those kind of industry standard competency qualifiers are meaningless to them.  It’s not like people understand what it means to be a ‘Super Lawyer’, like they understand what it means to be a ‘Super Bowl MVP’.  I mean, sure, a layperson could identify the fact that a ‘super’ lawyer is probably better than an ‘average’ or ‘awful’ lawyer.  But, what leverage does being maybe slightly better than average bring you?

Selling any type of service, including legal services, is more about how well you focus on your clients’ issues than it is about how well you compensate for your own. (You’ve got your AV rating, and your overpriced sports car . . . but, that’s better than a spray tanning addiction, I suppose.)  So, it pays (literally) to think about how to identify your clients’ problems in a way that resonates with them.  And, here’s an easy strategy for meeting your potential clients’ needs when they’re searching online: Think of the 10 most frequently asked questions that your existing clients have, and create content consistently on that subject matter.  Since those clients are mostly plugging in long form questions related to the serious problem they want resolved, like ‘I was injured at work, can I sue my boss’ — not ‘tort law Cincinnati’, by the way — if your content answers that question, and is titled in a similar fashion . . . Guess what?  You’ve become a highly relevant and sought-after search result.  Keep doing it, and you become even more relevant, and even more sought-after.

And, while picking the right questions is important, you also need to be sure that your message resonates with your potential clients.  So, don’t write like a lawyer, write like a layperson — or, in a way that a layperson understands.  And, if you can help it — don’t farm out the content work.  Do it yourself; and, that will make you more authentic, and seem more accessible. 

Law firms often tend to reflect on their own comfort, rather than their client’s — but, getting out of your comfort zone is the key to developing your modern marketing chops.

Marketing, Messaging

99 Problems, But a Niche Ain’t One: Why Niche Practice Works So Well for Law Firms

It’s really hard to sell everything, unless you’re Walmart.  And, when you’re Walmart, your whole thesis is that you sell everything cheaper than everyone else.  Of course, that’s not a particularly great way to run a law firm.  As a lawyer, you want to differentiate yourself based on your practice areas and expertise.

It’s difficult to try to sell multiple practice areas, though — especially when they’re not easy to knit together into one narrative.  Let’s say you practice divorce, criminal law and worker’s compensation.  What’s the defining thread among all those things?  And, how do you construct a website that doesn’t look like shepherd’s pie?  It’s hard to be pithy and to the point, in an environment with impatient consumers who require that, when it takes you some time to explain what to do.

The remedy, which is utterly frightening for many lawyers, is to sell one thing.  The standard operating procedure for law firms, is to take as many shots at selling as many things as possible, because that’s the best way to increase your chances of actually getting conversions.  That strategy might work in the NFL Draft; but, it doesn’t work for a law firm.  That’s in large part because law firms are almost always built on referral marketing.  And, for referral marketing, you need a compelling pitch.  Your referral sources can’t say ‘You should check out my friend’s law firm.  They’re awesome.  They do literally everything.’  It’s far more compelling to have someone say, ‘Oh, you need to go see my friend Sheena.  She’s the best divorce lawyer I know.’

It turns out that scarcity is the play.  And, you can also extend that notion to leverage areas where there is a coverage gap.  Instead of setting up just another family law firm, try something you like that no one else has tried yet.  Invent a new practice area out of a specific unmet marketplace need, and exploit it.  This is moneyball for legal.  The reason most lawyers (especially those starting practices) don’t do this is because they’re super scared of the initial build.  Yes, it does take a while longer to grow a niche practice in which you do one thing differently; but, if you can master that brand/branding, and you’re the only person who does it, then you’ll eventually start to rake in the cash — especially if it’s a national practice area.  Yes, the snuggie is stupid, but if you’re the one dude who started making snuggies, then you probably did alright for yourself.  See also: Thneeds.

Creating and investing in a niche practice takes courage.  However, the reward for long-term thinking is often what the award for long-term thinking usually is.  Consider your benefits about to be reaped.

Marketing, Analytics, Technology

Rate of Return: Law Firms Should Update Their Pricing on the Regular

For all the popular legends out there about how attorneys are bloodsucking leeches, the truth of the matter is that most lawyers don’t charge enough.  And, the fact that middle class consumers can’t keep up with legal fees is more about the stagnation of wages, than it is about the cost of legal services, which definitely don’t even keep up with inflation.  In fact, most solo and small firm lawyers are petrified to raise their rates, because they know how far middle class Americans are strapped for cash.  That’s because the vast majority of solo and small firm attorneys are middle class Americans themselves.

All that being said, lawyer rates are mostly below market.  And, one of the main contributors to that fact is that law firm rates generally remain static for years.  If you want to make some more money in your law firm, a really simple solution is to raise your rates up, just a tick.  Many attorneys think that, in order to revamp their pricing that they need to make a big upward change, tacking on at least $100 per hour to all rates — but again, much of that is driven by attorneys’ lack of a consistent process for raising rates: in other words, if they did it more often, the changes wouldn’t have to feel so dramatic.  What if you raised your rates $10 per hour?  Or, $25 per hour?  Doesn’t that make more sense?  And, what if you did that regularly, so it can all add up?  Do you think anyone would complain?

So, why don’t you give it a shot?  At least once a year, review your rates, and adjust them upward, just a little bit.  Even if you only adjust by the annual inflation rates (2.2% in 2018), you’ll make some more money next year, while simultaneously avoiding the pitch fork-toting crowds outside of your front door.  Let’s say that you charge $200 per hour.  Adjusting that rate for inflation ramps you up to a whopping $205 per hour.  Now, multiply that number by the amount of hours you work.  If you bill 1500 hours each year, you just made $7500 appear out of thin air.  That’s real money.  Not that you have to steamroll that back into your business.  You can use that to pay for the vacation you never go on.  Not only that, but you probably have more wiggle room than that slight upcharge, especially if you haven’t updated your rates in a long time.  Change that figure to $25 per hour and you’ve made an additional $37,500 over the course of that year.  That’s enough to pay for an assistant.  In cases like this, simple math leads to big results.

Of course, you know your law practice better than I do, so you should endeavor to adjust your rates based on more than just national inflation rates.  Which areas in your practice are hot/trending?  Where is there a need for ‘emergency’ services?  How much experience do you have?  What are your direct competitors charging?  How much do you invest in technology and how efficient and secure are your practices?  What do your local ethics rules say about how rates may be set?  When you sit down on an at-least-annual basis to reset your rates, do so as a team (if you have one), and come to a consensus on what you can — and what you should — charge.  Then, aggregate it all into a fee schedule, and don’t deviate from that.

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