Tag: Marketing

How Attorneys Can Overcome the Fear of Cross-Selling

Being able to help your client with multiple legal issues can be a boon for your firm. After all, it generally takes much longer to develop new relationships than to maintain existing ones. The opportunity to cross-sell to clients by keeping them “in-house” after resolution of a matter, is one that shouldn’t be passed up. Extending this relationship should always be the goal because it’s frankly cheaper, not to mention more effective and efficient to nurture an existing relationship than to cultivate one from scratch.

Overcoming Attorney Fears About Cross-Selling

The above shouldn’t imply that there aren’t valid concerns about cross-selling, both within your firm or through collaboration with attorneys outside of your firm. Some of the common fears or objections to cross-selling to a client you’ve built a relationship with include:

  • Fear of losing the client to another attorney or firm.
  • Fear that you’ll refer a client and the other attorney will not be successful.
  • Fear of sharing compensation.

The fear of losing a client to another attorney or firm is legitimate. However, if the client came to you for a “one-off” legal matter, it is entirely possible that with or without your referral to a trusted colleague, they will pursue a bid from another firm or attorney anyway. So, you really have nothing to lose in this regard.

As for the fear that you’ll refer them to an attorney within or outside of your firm and that attorney won’t do a good job, thereby making you look bad—the best way to overcome this is by sending your client to someone who has a vested interest in ensuring that you continue to send referrals to them.

Finally, in regard to fear of sharing compensation, simply agree ahead of time to a compensation split with the attorney with whom you plan to collaborate.”.

While it is true that there is some risk that all three of these fears could potentially materialize, when compared to the potential benefits to be reaped by collaborating with other firms or other attorneys, the potential pros overwhelmingly outnumber the cons.

Client Benefits of Collaborating with Other Attorneys

You’ll notice that from here on out, we will replace the term “cross-selling” with “collaboration” because the last thing your clients need—who are coming to you for help during a possibly negative or complex time in their life—is to be upsold anything. Your role as counsel is to be a trusted advisor and confidant not a salesperson working on commission.

As a trusted advisor, with your client’s best interest in mind, your role as counsel is absolutely to point them in a direction or guide them to a colleague either within your firm (this is ideal as you can begin to build teams), or at another firm who can help when a legal matter arises that is outside of your wheelhouse. This is particularly true today as specialization in a niche practice is prevalent. In sum, your clients deserve access to the best experts available.

Collaboration also reduces the number of vendors that your client has to work with. Whether you team up with a colleague in your firm or partner with an attorney at another firm your client will see you as a team. They won’t feel as if they are adding yet another advisor and ensuing legal fees.

Collaboration also helps you better understand the business of your client. By working outside of your primary or preferred practice area with another lawyer, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of your clients’ overall needs, business, etc. Knowing as much as you can about them will make you a better and stronger advocate.

Clients aren’t the only party to benefit when you decide to collaborate with a colleague—attorneys benefit by maintaining the existing relationship, learning to work as a team in an area of law that isn’t a primary focus and by earning income from an existing client.

Tips for Successful Collaboration with Other Attorneys

Here are a few strategic “dos” that should help you successfully collaborate with other attorneys:

  • Determine compensation share from the beginning.
  • Take time to get to know the other attorney outside of the scope of the case.
  • Create a communication plan, including method and frequency.
  • Clarify roles from the outset of the collaboration.
  • Develop a reporting/information sharing protocol.

And one major “don’t”: Turn a client over to another attorney and then disappear.

When done correctly, collaboration leaves every practice better off. It’s not just “more money for more products.” It is far more cost-effective and efficient to maintain and grow an existing relationship than to develop new business, and it’s often in your client’s best interest. It’s also an avenue for team building and an opportunity for reciprocal referrals, which can only help your law firm.

© 2019 Berbay Marketing & Public Relations

For more on attorney marketing, see the National Law Review Law Office Management page.

National Football Players Association Joins Forces with the National College Players Association in Effort to Market Name, Image and Likeness Rights for Student Athletes

The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) has announced a partnership with the National College Players Association (NCPA) to jointly explore the marketing and licensing of all college athletes and how they can be paid for the use of their name, image and likeness through the NFLPA’s licensing affiliated entity, REP Worldwide.

Seeking to maximize the value of California’s Fair Pay To Play Act, recently signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom, which has empowered California student-athletes to seek financial opportunities relating to the marketing of their name, image and likeness beginning in January 2023, NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith stated, “We are proud to partner with the NCPA and offer the services of REP Worldwide to offer all athletes the same world class service that NFL players receive. For the first time, a legislature has indicated that these students have rights just like everyone else and we support this continuing movement towards fairness. Regarding the NFLPA’s new partnership with the NCPA, Smith added, the new relationship

“will explore opportunities for merchandise, gaming and other officially licensed products. We will also review how recent developments impact television broadcast revenues in pursuit of fairness.”

Ramogi Huma, former UCLA Bruins linebacker and current NCPA Executive Director, commented as well. “I am grateful that college athletes will finally have representation that cares only about fairness for the athletes.” He continued, “We are on the right side of history and invite the NCAA’s commercial partners to join us. It’s time to embrace a new beginning.”

Despite the announcement of the partnership, the potential relationship between these two entities and college athletes is still unclear.

While representatives of the NFLPA and NCPA continue to express their future role as one of “representation,” college athletes as a group are not viewed as employees and are neither unionized nor legally recognized as a collective group. Neither the National Labor Relations Act nor the Fair Labor Standards Act recognizes student-athletes within their definition of employee.

How and if, the NFLPA, Rep Worldwide and the NCPA can represent all college athletes and serve as their collective voice in exploring group marketing opportunities is a question that remains to be answered.

Jackson Lewis P.C. © 2019

For more on sports representation, see the National Law Review Entertainment, Art & Sports law page.

Collaboration That Works: 2017 LMA Technology Conference Midwest

The event will be held on September 25th and 26th at the University Club of Chicago. Check out more about this years Technology Conference Midwest and LMA!

 

The National Law Review is proud to be this year’s Metabyte Sponsor!

5 Killer Online Marketing Strategies for Law Firms

Certainly by now we can all agree that the Internet has transformed the legal industry, from how you market your law firm to how legal services are delivered. Still, for many lawyers, the Internet is a confusing place with so many options that can either make you or break you. So let me help simplify things for you. Here are five online marketing strategies that are gold when it comes to delivering leads and boosting your brand:

Laptop on a desk, Online MarketingNarrow your choices. Unless you have an unlimited marketing budget, you can’t do it all — SEO, social media, pay-per-click, content marketing, email marketing, etc. If you throw a little bit at everything — the shotgun approach — you are wasting your money. Instead, focus on two things: (1) where your potential clients are, and (2) what you can measure. You have to be able to measure your success (or failure) to discover what works for your area of practice and to be able to build on the successes.

Use Facebook ads. There are 1.4 billion monthly Facebook users and half of those log in every day. One of the most powerful features of Facebook is ad targeting, the ability to layer targeting options on top of one another to create a highly specific audience. This enables you to target locally and get your ads in front of people who need your services now. Facebook ads are low-cost, so you can experiment to see what resonates with your potential clients and then repeat what works.

Capture leads with what you know. There is a vast amount of basic information you know that prospects want. And there are a number of tools available for you to disseminate this information to them, including blogs, eBooks and free reports. Offer these in exchange for contact information as added value and the leads will follow.

Think mobile. If your law firm website is not already optimized for mobile, make that happen fast. Mobile-friendly sites perform better in search results and also provide a better user experience for prospects.

Automate your lead conversion. A comprehensive law firm marketing program that embraces multiple marketing tools – SEO, PPC, ads, email marketing, social media, blogs, etc. – means leads come in from many different sources. If you don’t have an automated way to deal with them, leads will slip through the cracks and all that hard work and financial investment will be for nothing. Small law firms lose tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars every year because they aren’t tracking their leads and quickly following up with them. Mid-sized law firms are losing millions. Lost leads also hurt your reputation with your referral sources if they supplied the referral and your team doesn’t follow through on the lead.

© The Rainmaker Institute, All Rights Reserved

2016 Update to Top 25 Law Firm Website Clichés to Avoid

As a group, lawyers are quite literal, often too literal for good marketing.

As a result, more than half of law firms simply illustrate their website home pages with the obvious icons that represent the general concept of “Law,” like columns, jury boxes, striped books, rowing, and “Smiling Lawyers.”

The four most-prevalent explanations seem to be:

(1) “Our website developer recommended this.”

(You apparently hired the wrong developer.)

(2) “We didn’t know what else to do.”

(Then find someone who does.)

(3) “Well, if everyone else is doing it this way, it must be right.”

(Does your business card say “Lawyer” or “Lemming?” Stand out! Excel!)

(4) “No one hires us because of our website. It doesn’t matter what it looks like.”

(It’s a bit circular to create bad marketing, then say, “See, marketing doesn’t work.”)

Your marketing should set you apart. 

Good marketing can help you stand above the crowd.  It can show how you are different, or add more value than your lookalike competitors. But doing exactly what all the other firms do simply buries you in the anonymous middle.  Sure it’s “safe,” but safe doesn’t create market leadership.

Here’s a random accounting firm’s website, illustrated by tax forms, a calculator, eyeglasses, a pen, and paper with columns of numbers. Do you feel assured that their CPAs will find the innovative solution to your challenging financial issues?  Are you compelled to read the “About Us” section or click to learn about their Services?

(Really, think about it — how do you feel about their skills and creativity?)

Website, Design, law firm website

That is, if your website’s home page shows a skyline or column, aren’t you telling visitors that (1) your firm is average, and (2) there’s nothing worth reading inside?  If you want to claim to be an A-tier firm, then you must look like it — and a photo of a handshake, building, or chessboard won’t cut it.

There are no exceptions — unless you’re a Wachtell or Cravath. 

With their hard-earned reputations, they have nothing to prove. Bad marketing doesn’t hurt them as much as it does most other firms.  But keep reading if your firm doesn’t yet possess a Wachtellian level of credibility.

So here they are, the 25 most typical and tedious photos law firms use — followed by what I think these icons actually convey to the average website visitor.

The Top 25 Visual Clichés:

[The Image:]  1.  Globe/Map (Always featuring North America)

Globe, World

[What it means:]  “We did a deal in Toronto once.”

2.  Firm handshake (Usually diverse in some way. Rarely two white men.)

“We’re your partner.”

3.  Building (My favorite is when it isn’t even the firm’s own building.)

“I did it, Maw! I work in a building!” 

4.  Smiling lawyers (See “The Smiling Lawyers Website Trap” blog post here)

“We must be smart, because obviously we’re not photogenic.”

(The worst are the group shots. Play the “Find the most-uncomfortable lawyer” game.)

5.  Skyline (or alternating skylines, for firms with multiple offices)

“We work in a city!” 

(Is that a dispositive hiring issue? Has any prospect ever thought, “If I could just find a law firm that worked in a city — that’s the firm I’d hire!”)

Generic, City Skyline

6.  Gavel (often resting on a striped book)

“We’re small-firm lawyers with a cheap template website.” 

7.  Columns/Courthouse

“We’re a law firm — here’s our column.”

(Yeah, we get it. <yawn>.  This category also includes empty courtrooms and jury boxes.)

Court House, Columns

8.  Light bulbs (formerly incandescent, now they’re swirly energy-efficient fluorescents)

“We have good ideas.” 

(One such “good idea” might have been hiring a better branding firm. Just sayin’.)

9.  Chess pieces (the king is often laying on its side)

“We’re strategic.”

(Why is the king sitting in the middle of the board so early in the game here?)

Chess, Board

10.  Diverse conference room (Everyone is perky and gorgeous. There’s “one of each.”)

“We know how much clients value Diversity.  So we spent $25 on a stock photo.”

(Other “Diversity” options include flags, crayons, colored pencils, and a circle of hands.)

[That’s Part 1. We’ll detail clichés #11-25 next week in Part 2.]

ARTICLE BY Ross Fishman of Fishman Marketing, Inc.
© 2016 Fishman Marketing

Seven Ways a Blog Can Help Your Law Practice

blogFor many attorneys, maintaining a blog is like eating kale – we know it’s really good for us, but we just can’t seem to get all excited about it. But if eating kale was the best possible way to get your law firm coffers to overflow status, I bet you would be digging into a plate of it every day.

And so it is with blogging, which is one of the best possible ways for you to dramatically increase your lead flow, improve your firm website’s SEO and traffic count, and build a sterling reputation online – all of which can lead to a healthier bottom line for your firm.

Many attorneys I speak with feel they should be blogging, but are not really sure why. Here are 7 ways that blogging can help your law practice:

  1. Increase client engagement. A blog provides an opportunity for you to open a dialogue with prospects and clients and share with them more about who you are, what kinds of legal issues you can help them with, and why they should hire you.

  2. Improve SEO rankings. Blogs are the number one way to add new content to your website, which search engines like Google reward with higher rankings. Over the last few years, Google has favored larger websites with more content over small websites.

  3. Humanizes your firm. People don’t want to hire faceless companies. They want to know they are cared for personally. Blogs provide you with the opportunity to tell the stories of clients you have helped (leaving out their real names and identifying information to protect the innocent), and nothing is better for putting a human face on your law firm. Include videos in your blogs to really humanize your firm.

  4. Showcases your areas of expertise. Regular blog posts keep your website up to date and relevant, letting prospects know you are on the leading edge of emerging legal trends. You can highlight the areas you truly specialize in.

  5. Market segmentation. If your law firm includes more than one practice area, you can segment this more effectively by creating blogs for each specialty area and speak directly to those targeted prospects.

  6. Repurpose content. Your blog posts can be effectively repurposed for free reports, e-books and in your monthly newsletters.

  7. Build trust. Current research shows that 81 percent of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs.

ARTICLE BY Stephen Fairley of The Rainmaker Institute
© The Rainmaker Institute, All Rights Reserved

Gamification in Thought Leadership; not Just a Game: Education, Good Habits and Competition

gamification in thought leadershipFor the past few weeks, Pokémon Go has been a conversation starter.  The game has made headlines for getting kids out of the house bike riding and taking walks, and everyone seems caught up in the craze.  If you’ve been to a museum, or a park, or a shopping mall lately, you’ve most likely seen people bent over their phones wandering around talking about Pikachus and Rattatas. If the game has taught us anything, besides the location of the nearest PokéStop, it’s the motivational power of games.

It’s no secret that it can be a challenge to get attorneys to commit to a thought leadership strategy. It takes time away from billable hours and it can take awhile to see results. One intriguing strategy is gamification—game mechanics applied to non-game situations to encourage users to behave in a certain, desired way—to get marketing initiatives off the ground. Heather McCullough1 of Society 54 is an expert on gamification platforms, so NLR reached out to her to get our questions about gamification and thought leadership answered.

An important ingredient in any gamification initiative is buy-in. Heather says, “It is important to have an internal champion who will help to lead the effort and encourage participation. I have seen time and again efforts fail because they are being led by the Marketing or Business Development department with little to no visible support from management or other attorney(s).”  It is key that firm leadership indicate their support for the efforts, and nothing communicates that better than consistent, active participation in the efforts.  This visible approval and leadership can help encourage buy-in.  Having an enthusiastic participant in a leadership role can encourage participation firm-wide. This helps get the ball rolling before the fun of the game –and the spirit of competition– takes over.  Heather shares, “ We have a client whose managing partner is the champion for their gamified business development efforts and he communicates regularly with the attorneys about the competition – who is doing well, who needs to improve and then sharing some best practices which can help everyone improve their efforts. This firm not only seen tremendous buy in from the attorneys but also are realizing real monetary returns from their efforts.”

McCullough made it clear that any gamification strategy had to be clearly thought out—it is not just a game. It is important to understand your goals: what do you want the final product to be?  McCullough  says, “It is incredibly important to know what the firm is hoping to accomplish with the increased effort around writing thought leadership and design the gamification strategy with that at the center.”

For a thoughtful, effective, educational gamification strategy, it’s important to remember the unique challenges of thought leadership development, as well as the best practices for content.  Folding good thought leadership principles into any game is an important tool to maximize the efforts.  Heather says, “When we design gaming platforms for our clients, we always include thought leadership efforts into the activities available. . . this includes research, writing, publishing, repurposing and educating his/her peers on the issues discussed.”  Breaking down a large task—like writing for a blog—into smaller pieces—and rewarding those pieces can make it easier to get started.  If it’s easier to get started, more content is created.  Additionally, breaking the process down allows attorneys to see opportunities to create content on their own, again increasing the amount of content produced.  As McCullough points out, “The effort of writing is most important because there are many avenues to distribute content, even simply adding it to the individual attorney’s bio. With more content for a firm to choose from for distribution, the success will come.”

Creating thought leadership can be a very solitary process–but that doesn’t mean that it can’t get competitive. Heather says, “Attorneys are amazingly competitive and while the actual act of writing is a solitary endeavor, game-like elements can be incorporated into the process and competition can happen among the individuals and points can be awarded for a variety of different components.”  What those components are can be up to the individual goals of the firm–but it is a solid strategy to reward good habits so the game encourages good habits–and also educates attorneys about what those good habits are.  For example, McCullough says,

There is a plethora of ways that writing can be rewarded and rewarding for the attorneys involved.  For example, writing for a business audience vs. a legal audience (no legal-ease, please), keeping the article under a certain number of words, writing one article and then providing the specific content that can be used on various platforms (e.g. condensing the message to 140 characters for Twitter and also providing a solid synopsis to be included on LinkedIn), or co-writing with an attorney from another practice area.

Along with encouraging behavior, gamification is a great way to encourage attorneys to educate themselves about good practices.  Heather says, “I believe that you could use gamification elements, such as badges and status symbols, to ‘reward’ attorneys for participating in educational sessions. Additional badges and status symbols could be provided to attorneys who chose to lead the educational sessions which encourages enhanced participation and preparation.”  The educational sessions are great chances for top-content producers at the firm to share their secrets, and to share the firm’s overall strategy for content production.

As with any initiative, gamification is not something to set into motion and then walk away.  It requires nurturing and re-evaluation to make sure your original goals are still being met by the game.  Heather says, “Many companies who have used game elements to improve or increase desired behaviors have reported  fantastic results. The gamification aspect served to not only motivate the individual(s) initially but also proved to help sustain the efforts longer term. That being said, there is a natural fatigue that happens with any new effort so steps should be taken to regularly shift the parameters of any of game, reset certain elements and also maintain consistent dialogue with participants to uncover areas of improvement.”

Understanding your goals and defining them can simplify the design process and bring your efforts to bear on the behaviors you want to encourage.  The sky’s the limit–creativity is a tremendous asset in designing a gamification program, and generating something that helps meet your needs and brings fun, excitement and competition into the firm is completely within reach.

ARTICLE BY Eilene Spear of The National Law Review / The National Law Forum LLC
Copyright ©2016 National Law Forum, LLC

1 Heather McCullough is Certified in Gamification by the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.  She has spoken about Gamification within law firms, along with her business partner Jill Huse, from coast to coast.  The National Law Review had the opportunity to hear Heather and Jill speak at the recent LMA Midwest Legal Marketing Technology Conference.

5 Ways to Use Email Drip Campaigns to Convert Leads [INFOGRAPHIC]

Is everyone who calls your law firm ready to hire you right away? If someone downloads a free report from your website, does that mean they are ready to commit to hiring you? Not likely. In fact, research shows that more than half of leads are not ready to buy at the time of first contact, which is why you need to nurture those leads along a specific path to becoming a client using email drip campaigns.

We have used drip campaigns for years for our clients for one simple reason: they work! Research shows that companies that are good at nurturing leads enjoy 50% more sales at a 33% lower cost than companies that put no effort into lead nurturing.

Since email is a one-to-one communication, it can be personalized for whatever stage your lead is in the buying cycle. It is much more effective than blast email campaigns that don’t take your prospect’s buying journey into account. In fact, personalized emails generate up tosix times higher revenue than non-personalized (blast) emails.

This infographic from Eliv8 provides five different email drip campaign opportunities to help you increase your lead conversion rate:

5 Ways to Use Email Drip Campaigns to Convert Leads

ARTICLE BY Stephen Fairley of The Rainmaker Institute

© The Rainmaker Institute, All Rights Reserved

Wasted Time and Money: Top 10 Ways Firms Squander Precious Marketing Resources

effective marketing top 10At the conclusion of a recent presentation I gave to a local bar association, an attorney in the audience asked how law firms are wasting their marketing dollars. “After all,” he said, “our firm only has a limited amount of money for marketing, and I want to make sure we are spending it wisely.” I was honest, and told him that, in my opinion, many fine firms are squandering their marketing dollars by the bucketful. And it’s often in the same familiar ways.

Let me begin with the assertion that, for most lawyers and law firms, effective marketing is all about personal relationships. It’s not about brochures, advertising or other marketing gimmicks. It’s especially about relationships with existing clients and referral sources. Consequently, I almost always recommend that a law firm begin “marketing” by making darn sure its clients are satisfied. If they are, they’ll be loyal to the firm and come back when they need legal counsel. Beyond that, they’ll tell their friends and business associates about you. Too often, firms get caught up chasing prospective clients, forgetting about solidifying and expanding relationships with the clients they already have.

After ten years of experience marketing legal services, I have developed some strong views on what firms are doing right and wrong. But before writing this article, I thought I’d post that attorney’s question to the 1,000-member law marketing listserv, a cyber-community of law firm marketing directors and consultants. The responses came back fast and furious and I’d like to share our collective opinions with you.

So here we go – the “Top Ten Ways To Waste Money Marketing Your Practice,” in David Lettermanesque ascending order of wastefulness.

#10 – Random Acts of Golf and Lunch

Golf and lunch are fine marketing activities, very conducive to relationship building. But playing golf with an endless array of acquaintances who don’t have the ability to hire or refer you is hardly an effective use of your marketing time. Nor is that monthly “skins” match with your brother-in-law and his drinking buddies. The profession’s top rainmakers have a plan — even if only in their heads — when they go on their boondoggles… er, I mean, marketing ventures. They have determined who they want to get to know better and, from there, they develop a systematic plan to go about building and enhancing relationships with them. The key word is plan.

#9 – The “Really Big Show”

Reminiscent of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland deciding to “put on a show,” your firm decides to present the mother of all seminars. Over 300 people spend a half-day listening to you and your partners talk about the latest changes in state law. It was great. Problem is, there was very little follow up. When it comes to seminars and similar events, we suggest that you consider smaller, less formal and more interactive sessions. Think about a seminar series, focused on a particular industry, where participants get together repeatedly. This way, the follow-up is built in. Wasted Time and Money.

#8 – Other One-Shot Wonders

Come to think of it, forget about any marketing activity that does not include follow-up. All the marketing events that your firm sponsors — seminars, open houses, holiday parties, and the like — should be looked upon as relationship building platforms. And personal follow is the key to making them work. All participating attorneys should follow up with at least two or three people at each event, focusing on folks who can help them achieve their objectives.

#7 – Brochures and Newsletters That Cure Insomnia

Good brochures and newsletters have their place among effective marketing tools. But who wants to read mindnumbing tomes about the history of your firm and its 14 practice areas? Not me, and not your prospective clients either. Keep the copy concise and easy-to-read. Use bullet points whenever possible. Hire a talented graphic designer who will produce sharp, attention-grabbing marketing material.

#6 – Invisible Advertising

No doubt, print and broadcast advertising works for attorneys with consumer-oriented practices (like family and personal injury law) and I’d recommend an ad in the Yellow Pages in a heartbeat. But things like traditional “tombstone” ads and “one-time” ads in a newspaper or magazine are practically worthless. Studies show that it takes 7-11 impressions before somebody will recall seeing your ad. Consistency and frequency are essential. Here again, hire a good graphic designer and stay light on copy to make sure your ads are noticed. If you want to advertise, do it right.

#5 – Holiday Chochkes

Ahhh, the holidays. Talk about getting lost in the shuffle! Effective marketing strategies get noticed and stand apart from the crowd. The holidays are far too busy a time for your cards, parties, and gifts to be fully appreciated. However, if you must send holiday cards, by all means, sign them personally!

#4 – Directories, Directories and More Directories!

Over the past ten years, law firm directories have sprouted like cattails in the Everglades. Unfortunately, most have little marketing value. Decision-makers simply don’t use them very much. In fact, our friends on the listserv think that only a few directories, such as LawOffice.com, Martindale-Hubbell and Best’s (for insurance defense counsel), are worth the money. Bottom line….hold on to your cash.

#3 – Vanity Letterhead

We’re talking about the kind that features every lawyer’s name on the masthead. Every letter becomes two-pages long, and each time a lawyer joins or leaves the firm the old supply gets chucked and a new supply is ordered. Often, the new letterhead is out of date even before it comes back from the printer! Most firms have abandoned this practice and yours should, too. Consider adding a snappy firm logo and/or a splash of color. Don’t worry, it’s OK.

#2 – PPPPs (Powerful Partner’s Pet Projects)

Our #2 money waster was sent in by Bev Davis, chief operating officer for a well-known Oregon law firm….and you know exactly what she’s talking about! The firm’s $5,000 contribution for a table at the “Belles of the Confederacy” Dinner Dance, for example. Powerful Partner Jim thinks it’s a great idea. (So happens his wife is on the Board of Directors.) PPPPs are rarely budgeted and are hardly ever consistent with firm-wide marketing objectives. They tend to consume vast quantities of money and staff time. A firm-wide marketing plan goes a long way toward reducing the number of PPPPs. Show Jim the plan and just say no!

#1 – Consultants Who Don’t Know **** About Law Firms

Law firms are a different kind of beast — big egos, lots of democracy, convoluted compensation systems and, in many cases, a disdain toward marketing. Yet, I see it happen time and time again. “We hired Sally because we liked the work she did for our big banking client. But she never could manage to implement much of anything around here.” When it comes to building consensus for a new idea or getting people to focus on non-billable activities, there is nothing quite like a law firm. It takes someone who’s been there to make it happen. If you decide to hire a consultant, hire somebody who has a successful track record working with law firms like yours.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this round-up of marketing blunders. Perhaps you recognized one from your own firm’s recent efforts on the list. My objective was to help you think about how you and your firm can more wisely spend your marketing dollars. After all, you have limited resources. My best advice….develop a proactive, firm-wide marketing plan. See you at the 19th hole!

ARTICLE BY John Remsen, Jr of The Remsen Group

Copyright 2016 The Remsen Group

Law Firm Business Strategies: 4 Keys to Breaking the 7-Figure Barrier

It’s no surprise when laid-off lawyers or law school grads who can’t find a job hang out their own shingles, but there are even more attorneys heeding the siren call to start up their own firm in order to achieve a better work-life balance (if that even exists).law firm marketing business strategy

You may feel at times that starting a law firm is counterintuitive when it comes to finding balance in your life. However, if you build it right, running your own firm can be a highly satisfying way to employ yourself and serve clients the way you’ve always wanted.

I have personally trained over 18,000 lawyers on how to manage and market their firms more efficiently and effectively. I have probably helped more attorneys break the seven-figure barrier in revenues than anyone else. I’m not telling you this to brag, but to share with you the keys to breaking the seven-figure barrier based on my experiences.

Key #1:  Run your law firm like a business.

You studied the law as a noble profession, but to break the seven-figure barrier, you must run your law firm like a business. As a solo practitioner or the owner of a small law firm, your primary focus – after gaining competency as an attorney – is to understand and apply the key principles of business development, operations, management and law firm marketing every single day. There are 10 major parts every successful law firm owner must focus on – in this order:

Marketing: The purpose of marketing is to generate leads. There are a wide variety of ways to do this. All of them work, but they are not always suited for all situations, practice areas or attorneys. Find three-five different ways that work for you and use them frequently. Not every attorney will be a top Rainmaker, but everyone can do something to grow and market his or her practice.

Sales: The purpose of sales is to close the deal or sign up the client. Once you start generating leads, you must become better at getting prospects to become paying clients.

Services: Once you have become proficient at generating leads and closing the deal, you must perform the services for the client. When you fix your marketing, then you have a sales problem. When you fix your sales problem, then you have a services problem. See how this works?

Staff: When you become successful at marketing and sales, eventually you will also need more staff to do the work. You cannot hire just any staff; they must be the right staff for you. What kind of culture do you want your firm to have? Who will best fit that culture? Develop a list of qualities and characteristics you need your team members to have.

Systems: Policies, procedures and systems allow you to scale to the next level. Without written systems you cannot scale your business. You will hit a breaking point. It may be at half a million or more, but eventually you will experience a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering because you didn’t invest in creating written policies, procedures and systems for your law firm. You need written systems for every major part of your business. From marketing and intake to money and metrics, it all must be logically written down so even a brand new team member who knows nothing about your business can follow it.

Space: After you start hiring the right staff because you have more clients to serve, eventually you will need more office space to house them. Far too many attorneys get caught up in renting a much bigger or nicer space than they can afford in an attempt to “keep up with the Joneses” or give off the appearance of being more successful than they are. The pleasure you may gain from a fancy office is nothing compared with the worry of making those big payments every month. Don’t strap yourself with too many financial obligations and be careful about signing longterm agreements, especially when you’re just starting off.

Money: Very few attorneys went to school to become a bookkeeper or an accountant, but to manage a growing business you must know how to manage your money. You need to know the basics of finances for small business, from reading a profit and loss statement to analyzing your cash flow. Being an owner means other people are depending on you to manage the money wisely.

Metrics: To consistently break a million dollars per year in revenues, there are over a dozen numbers you must be monitoring and measuring consistently. Here are a few of them – unique website visitors each month, leads per month, average cost per lead by marketing channel (PPC, SEO, TV, radio, print, etc), appointments your team sets per month, show up rate to your appointments, conversion rate for initial consultation by attorney, average cost per client acquisition by marketing channel, cost of goods sold (COGS) per practice area and profit margin per practice area. This is not a comprehensive list, but if you know, measure and track each of those metrics every month, you’re on your way to comprehensively monitoring your business.

Strategy: While having a great strategy is necessary, most attorneys spend too much time developing a strategy and too little time implementing the strategy! Get some leads in the door. Make the sale. Collect the money. Do great work. Obtain some referrals. Wash, rinse and repeat! Then work on your next level strategy.

Self: Upgrading yourself is the last, but most important step. You need to read business growth books or take classes or seminars if that fits your style of learning better. Hang around other successful business owners. Join a mastermind group of successful attorneys. Push yourself outside of your comfort zone. You will never build a multimillion-dollar law firm by staying inside your comfort zone.

Key #2: Focus on a Niche

When you’re in the startup phase (from $0 to about $250,000), you face a never-ending challenge of taking whatever business comes in through the door in order to pay the bills or concentrating on one area to build a niche practice. It becomes a question of short-term focus versus longterm survival – and I realize that most solos need to balance both in order to make it.

However, the faster you can start focusing on one to two practice area niches, the faster you will go from having a job ($0 to $500,000) to creating a practice ($500,000 to $1M). When people see you as a jack of all trades (the generalist approach), they also perceive you as the master of none. People will pay more for a specialist because they see you as an expert. People will refer more to a specialist because they aren’t afraid of you stealing their clients or competing with them. Contrary to popular belief, this approach does not limit you. It helps to focus your marketing and business development efforts.

There are many ways to select a niche, but it must be small enough to be realistic, yet big enough to have enough potential clients in it. For example, being No. 1 divorce attorney in all of the Phoenix metro area is not realistic. There are far too many entrenched and successful competitors to ever achieve this. However, you could be the No. 1 divorce attorney for entrepreneurs and small business owners in the East Valley. Here are a few other ways to select a niche:

  • ServiceNiche: DUI attorney for licensed health care professionals; estate planning and asset protection for doctors and dentists; tax attorney for the self-employed; business transactional lawyer for real estate investors; business immigration law for the hi-tech industry; business law for health care providers; and IP and trademark lawyer for small business owners.

  • Industry Niche: Technology, agriculture, doctors, transportation, restaurant owners, manufacturing, construction, energy, or real estate development.

  • Geographic Niche: Phoenix, Gilbert, Tempe, Chandler, Scottsdale, or the East Valley.

  • Specialty Market Niche: Privately held companies, Fortune 500, physicians, white collar executives, blue collar construction workers, franchise owners, bicycle accidents, fitness centers, Spanish-speaking clients, developers, or commercial lenders.

Review your top 10 client list (either by amount of revenue/fees generated or in terms of how much you enjoy working with them). Then, look for any similarities. It may not be apparent at first, but keep asking questions and you will find it. Building a niche around a solid client base is one of the fastest ways to differentiate yourself.

Read Part 3-Law Firm Business Strategies: 4 Keys to Breaking the 7-Figure Barrier (Part 3 of 4)

ARTICLE BY Stephen Fairley of The Rainmaker Institute
© The Rainmaker Institute, All Rights Reserved