Gideon Legal

Automated Intake for Law Firms

niche practice

Marketing, Messaging

Range Rover: Reduce Your Practice Areas to Reduce Competition and Stress

Most law firms have too many practice areas.  That’s the 10% or 20% of the caseload that most law firms maintain, that usually gives them the most trouble, and generates the least income.  That’s the 80-20 rule, you know.

If you eliminate those practice areas, and instead focus on the 80 to 90% of your practice that gets you the most revenue anyway, and try to leverage that, you’ll likely end up making more money, and reducing your stress, to boot.

Why?

Because the more niched your practice is, the quicker you can get through the work, because you do more of it, and know it inside out; and, that means more money, as you work through cases at a more rapid rate than your competitors.

Because, by niching down, and focusing on what you do best, instead of what you do ‘just okay’, your professional reputation will become more refined, and you’ll get more clients who will deliver high-value cases into your practice.

Because you’ll have your substantive work process down-pat, you’ll make fewer errors, and so will your staff.  That means that you will effectively reduce your malpractice risk.

More money, less stress. 

Now, that’s the dream.

And, all it takes is reducing down the commitments you dislike or try to ignore anyway.

Sounds like a win-win.

Marketing

Limited Scope: No, Your Law Firm Is Not Trying to Convert Every Client

There’s a famous scene in ‘Jaws’ that sort of predicts an obvious deficiency of the heroes, when Roy Scheider suggests, ‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat’.

For sure, Americans love big things.  The bigger, the better.

And, law firm owners tend to think the same way: Let’s get as many clients as we can, in as many areas as possible.

But, that’s not the goal of any business.  And, holding yourself out as the solution for as many people as possible opens you up to further competition, and likely means that your message will be unfocused.  That shit might work for Amazon, but not for your local family law firm.

So, drilling down on client avatars makes sense, to figure out who it is that you want to work – and, who you don’t.

Creating a niche practice is another way to refine your message and eliminate competition.

Being your authentic self in the way that you market your law firm will certainly turn some people on, while turning others off.  So, roll the dice; and, let folks self-select to work with you.

Product-market fit can mean a lot of things; but, in the law firm context, many lawyers aim too broadly.

Maybe you just need a smaller, more well-equipped boat.

Marketing, Messaging

How to Talk to Legal Consumers Now, Underview: The Relationship of Legal Consumers to the Legal Industry

In our recent series about educating legal consumers for conversion, we reviewed the importance of being transparent with clients about fees (including the total cost of representation), clearly elucidating expertise (including in niche practice areas) and educating clients about the legal process.

But’s it’s also useful to talk about why these three aspects of client conversion are at the forefront of modern law firm marketing.  What a lot of attorneys tend to overlook or ignore is the massive experience and education gaps between lawyers and consumers as respects the legal industry.  Many consumers only utilize a lawyer once in their lifetimes.  It is the rare legal consumer (perhaps a small business owner) who is a serial user of law firm services.  There are, of course, a bunch of people who will never hire a lawyer, or will only hire a lawyer to create a will or buy a house, for example.  Given that reality, it’s not a surprise that legal consumers are looking for guidance, primarily, when they reach out to a law firm.  And, they’re seeking that guidance, at what may be the most stressful period of their lives.  The lawyer those potential clients choose will be a helpful resource, who can provide answers, as well as curing the chaos in what, again, is probably the most painful segment of that person’s entire life.  It’s important that practicing attorneys always keep that in mind.

Add to the general lack of knowledge about the legal process the fact that most legal consumers know very little idea about law firm pricing.  And, given that legal services are shockingly expensive, in comparison to almost everything else consumers pay for, that sticker shock has to be alleviated by some level of price certainty.  In point of fact, it’s very difficult to get someone to pay for legal services if their main comparison for pricing consumer services is a Disney+ subscription that costs less than $100 per year.  Making the argument that a legal consumer, especially an unrefined one, should pay more than 3 or 4 times that for a single hour of an attorney’s time, is a difficult and continuing sell.  Even on subscription services, law firms aren’t cheap.  Truly, then, every conversation a lawyer has with a client is a sales conversation.  How can you convince your potential client that these fees are actually and consistently reasonable?  How do you convince your clients that they’re still receiving value, when they get the bill . . . and, after a contentious meeting . . . and, when something does not goes as planned . . .  Fortunately, lawyers are good at making arguments: they just need to get better at making these sorts of arguments.

In the end, a law firm’s primary responsibility for lead conversion and client retention is the same: consumer education is paramount.  And so, it’s time for law firms to focus on what they can teach their potential clients, and so set the tone for the entire attorney-client relationship to come.

Marketing, Messaging

How to Talk to Legal Consumers Now, Part 2: Expertise

In this three-part series, we’ll discuss how lawyers should talk to today’s legal consumers across three primary areas of interest: money, expertise and the legal process. These are the categories in which legal consumers have the most urgent questions.  And, it’s imperative for law firms to increase their chances to convert leads to clients by addressing each of these broad topics in ways that place the law firm in the most favorable light possible. In part 1, we addressed how lawyers should talk to potential clients about money.  Now, we’ll turn our attention to how attorneys should best express their expertise.

Lawyers have been excelling at part of the expertise-selling component of marketing for quite some time now.  The other half?  Not so much.

What law firms are really good at is optimizing their attorneys’ experience.  I mean, look at any law firm bio page, and it’s all there.  The blue ribbon educational experience.  The dope internships.  The community involvement.  The bar association participation.  The awards.  Lord, the awards.  Super lawyers.  AV-rated lawyers.  Super-duper lawyers?  The point is that law firms are very good about hitting consumers over the head with information about how special their lawyers are.  It’s been the primary marketing posture for law firms since at least the early 70s, when law firms were formally allowed to advertise.  And, it works.  Clients want a lawyer who evinces expertise.

Of course, where potential clients are accessing that expertise is changing.  Traditionally, attorneys have ground down their bios with such fare; but, they have not extended all of that to other online profiles.  So, since more mobile searches are taking place in applications than ever before, it’s more important than ever before to also place this sort of information about their expertise on social media profiles, review platforms and other webplaces that aren’t their websites.  The information that a legal consumer can access about a lawyer from the law firm website should be accessible elsewhere online to the same degree.  Consistency, attached to a call to action, is extremely helpful, in this case.

That still, though, only addressees the extension of a lawyer’s general expertise to the further flung recesses of the web.  Legal consumers, however, also want to know about a lawyer’s specific expertise.  Specifically, they want to know how an attorney can help them with their particular issue.  Legal consumers, in order to hire a lawyer, have got to feel like the lawyer they will be working with can be their guide on a journey.  Is the lawyer going to be able to answer the specific questions the would-be-client has about her case?  In other words, does the lawyer have a niche practice, and to what degree?  In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to hire a literal sherpa to lead you through the streets of Manhattan, a legal consumer doesn’t necessarily just want a personal injury attorney — he may want someone who specializes in motorcycle accidents.  Or, he may be looking for a divorce attorney . . . that specializes in mediation.  Or, perhaps he wants a litigator who’s focusing on claims related to yachts.

This all cuts against another tenet of traditional law firm marketing: that you open yourself up to take more cases, not fewer.  Many law firms still exist as general practice firms precisely in order to cast wider nets.  But, settling on a niche that works serves to reduce direct competition, and is also an effective way to drive revenue in that segment.  Furthermore, it answers the only real question a potential client has about a lawyer:

Can you help me with my case?

Marketing, Messaging

How to Talk to Legal Consumers Now, Part 3: The Legal Process

In this three-part series, we’ll discuss how lawyers should talk to today’s legal consumers across three primary areas of interest: money, expertise and the legal process.  These are the categories in which legal consumers have the most urgent questions.  And, it’s imperative for law firms to increase their chances to convert leads to clients by addressing each of these broad topics in ways that place the law firm in the most favorable light possible.  In part 1, we addressed how lawyers should talk to potential clients about money.  In part 2, we covered the methods by which attorneys should express their expertise to leads.  In this last part of our series, we’ll relay how lawyers are best positioned to cover legal process considerations with potential clients.

As we went over in Part 2 of this series, law firms have traditionally been excellent at displaying the expertise of the firm, as well as the expertise level of specific attorneys within the firm, including for niche practice areas — even if that tends to break down when one exits the law firm website, where the vast majority of that information exists.  But, even so: attorneys are becoming more aggressive about using social media to promote themselves, even if law firms at large have not necessarily caught on so well.  However, having expertise, on its own, delivers only limited value.  Attorneys have to also convince their clients that they can be their guide through the legal process.  In sum, lawyers can’t just be good at what they do: they also have to communicate to leads and clients what it is that they do, in a way that a lay person would understand.

Legal consumers, as it turns, don’t just want a good attorney.  They also want a good attorney who can explain the legal process to them.  Legal consumers don’t just want to know the destination; they require evidence of the steps it takes to get there.  They’re like FitBit addicts.  Nevertheless, attorneys are very reluctant to provide their leads with information about the legal process, because they’ve been conditioned for years to avoid giving consumers more than just a taste of how the sausage is made, and because they are concerned over legal ethics.  However, neither eventuality is insurmountable.

In terms of ethical obligations when speaking to leads (you can talk about pretty much anything you want, anytime you want, with existing clients), it’s all about keeping those leads apprised of the current status of the relationship; so, yes: this is very much like the early days of Facebook.  Just make sure you have potential clients click through or sign onto disclaimers before you speak with them about the legal process generally  — not their specific cases, or case hypotheticals.  Then, when the rubber meets the road, sign them up via an engagement agreement, or move on, and send a nonengagement agreement, to confirm that no attorney-client relationship commenced.  And, really, that’s what this is all about: making sure that the potential clients is consistently aware that there is no attorney-client relationship, and that that acknowledgment can be documented.

Most lawyers would not be confused with effective salespersons.  And, many lawyers think of the term ‘selling’ as an ugly one.  This is not entirely surprising, though, for a profession that has only been allowed to sell to the public for a little less than 50 years.  And, lawyers still adhere to the old tenet that you don’t give away too much, that you leave them wanting more, while every modern sales mechanism, especially content marketing via social media, is about sharing more and more discreet information about what businesses do.  The real fear for most lawyers, however, is likely those DIY client — the ones, they fear, who will represent themselves.  But, that’s probably an unrealistic fear, too.  If the attorney relays all of the complexities about what they do, a potential client is not going to say: ‘Awesome.  I’m just gonna go to law school now, and will let you know how all this went in five years.’  The far more likely scenario is that, if you do a thorough job explaining the legal process to your potential client, you will have cemented your expertise, and made it more likely that that potential client will ultimately choose you.  Plus, if you make what you do sound really difficult (which it is) your potential client is far less likely to try it on their own.  And, in any event, most legal consumers who actually reach out to a lawyer are substantially motivated to hire an attorney, and don’t manage their legal problem on their own.  They want help: the question is how willing you are to provide that help, and how soon.