Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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Forgive me for the sales pitch but please understand I’m not pitching for bar associations, I’m pitching for the specific benefits YOU can get from a couple of local bar associations. On the general topic of leveraging a bar association membership, let me direct you to Ten Tips For Making Your Bar Association Dues Work For You & Leverage Your Bar Membership for Marketing.

But more specific for you Illinois/Chicagoland folks, some timely “specials” from the Bar:

ISBA’s Meet Me at the Bar. The Illinois State Bar Association is offering a FREE 6-month membership for any non-members who haven’t been members for the past 2 years. Great bar association & IT’S FREE!

Chicago Bar Association’s Lawyer Referral Service. This is either my best or a close second best source of business…if you can qualify, SIGN-UP NOW! I think bar association lawyer referral services are generally good and rather inexpensive forms of marketing where there’s not much to lose. But the CBA really differentiates itself by the marketing it does for the referral service. It does a combination of Google, print media, and cable TV advertising that really gets the phone ringing. It’s $200 per year and I probably earned $5,000 from that $200 investment last year.

Saw this comment left recently and I thought I’d make light of it. I don’t mind doing a little advertising for the guy if it helps SIC readers:

I just stumbled across this blog and thought it was the right place for this info. I am a criminal defense lawyer in New York and use the number 1-800-ARRESTED. I have started licensing the number for other cities and states. It will make existing advertising far more effective and is an amazing cornerstone around which to build an ad campaign. People always remember the number and it tells people what you do in an instant. If you’d like to talk just dial the number and if my firm answers it means no one has it in your area. Ask for Ken and I’ll go over how it works. It’s cheap, yours for as long as you want it and is the best number for a criminal defense practice without question. Give me a call. Ken Keith

I’ve never been an “800 Number” guy but that sounds like a good one for criminal attorneys. In the family law practice area I’ve heard of a person or two who’ve retained their lawyer by calling 1-800-DIVORCE. I know a lawyer friend of mine actually who has the 1-800-DIVORCE telephone number for the Chicago area and I think he does pretty well. Personally, I don’t like divorce and think it’s something vile and something to be avoided so not something I want as my most visible marketing strategy.

Personally I’ve given greater consideration to various vanity Web domains and redirecting those sites to our Firm’s main Web page. I think that will be part of our marketing strategy as we add a new practice area in comings months…more on that to come.

Anyone using domain redirects successfully??

And Now, the Tricky Part:  Naming Your Business. We’ve written about the ethical issues related to law firm naming in the past here but it still seems to me that there’s a real dearth of creativity when it comes to the law firm names that I see.   Quick, how many firms do you know that don’t simply include some lame/uncreative use only of a practitioner’s or various partners’ last names? I think I know two, other than the gentleman profiled in the WSJ article. The piece includes 12 examples of different companies and their strategy in company naming. I’d suggest that is an area ripe for innovation and an instant marketing advantage for someone starting a practice.

Divorce lawyers:  Facebook tops in online evidence. Not a bad place to start if you have a dicey case particularly with child custody issues.  Good old social media! The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers says 81 percent of its members have used or faced evidence plucked from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, including YouTube and LinkedIn, over the last five years. I have. Some examples from the piece:

– Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children.

– Husband denies anger management issues but posts on Facebook in his “write something about yourself” section: “If you have the balls to get in my face, I’ll kick your ass into submission.”

– Father seeks custody of the kids, claiming (among other things) that his ex-wife never attends the events of their young ones. Subpoenaed evidence from the gaming site World of Warcraft tracks her there with her boyfriend at the precise time she was supposed to be out with the children. Mom loves Facebook’s Farmville, too, at all the wrong times.

– Mom denies in court that she smokes marijuana but posts partying, pot-smoking photos of herself on Facebook.

How to get more business:  20 tips on marketing the small law firm (page 10). Plenty of ideas, pick a couple and implement now. A couple easy ones:  *Get out of the office & *Get your newsletter on track on a consistent basis (at least quarterly).

Taking the Leap to Self-Employment. Good piece really taking a hard look at the challenges of self-employment. You must be motivated to sell a product or service for which there’s demand & the business idea should be based on expertise you already have. Good teaching point for lawyers, you’ve got to be marketing like crazy early in the history of your practice and can’t be learning your business idea from scratch at the same time. The light at the end of the tunnel:  Even in the face of failure, most entrepreneurs are not willing to give up. “Once they taste having more control over their lives,” he said, “they almost never go back.”

In Law Schools, Grades Go Up, Just Like That. And finally a mildly humorous story from our current, touch economic climate (perhaps I need to take a look at my law school transcript)…

One day next month every student at Loyola Law School Los Angeles will awake to a higher grade point average.

But it’s not because they are all working harder.

The school is retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market.

Specifically, what should be the “niche” subject matter of my law practice…that’s the question. I’ve been puzzling on this for some time with concerns that my practice might be too general and not niche enough. Plus I’ve read a couple nice posts from Chuck Newton and Martha Newman about boosting profits by going niche. And I often find myself returning to Jim Collins’ “Hedgehog Concept” from Good to Great.

Over at Top Lawyer Coach Martha’s post is, A Niche Practice Positions You as Expert in Your Field of Practice. Her 5 reasons for going niche:

1) You’re perceived as an expert; 2) You’ll make more money; 3) You’ll dominate with less competition; 4) Your marketing will get easier; and, 5) You’ll be remembered.

Chuck lists 4 Steps to Snowball Your Law Firm Profits and look at reason #2…Niche Your Practice. Here’s his definition of a “niche practice” and why:

This is a matter of taking your strongest and most profitable practice area or cases types and concentrating on those. The purpose is to increase those cases that pay you more, and take less of your time, while decreasing those cases that pay you less and consume most of your time.

Sounds great, more money and less competition. So what’s holding me back? Why is it difficult to narrow my practice towards a very specific niche?

I think my trepidation stems from 2 concerns:

A.  Narrowing my practice areas will limit my potential pool of clients.

B.  What if I pick the wrong niche.

Currently my practice is some 70% family law and 30% real estate transactions. I’ve been thinking of dropping my real estate practice for a while…it’s not particularly profitable and I’m not particularly passionate about the subject matter (See Jim Collins re:  PASSION). But 30% of my income is still a decent chunk of change. Do I just lop it off in 1 fell swoop? How long before the niche momentum (marketing/expert/less competition) replaces that 30% or more?

Letter B may be scarier…I think a part of me hangs on to my smaller practice areas as a way of hedging my bets.

So, I’m moving towards a niche practice, likely slower than I should be. I’ve been branding our firm as the Family Law Office of Peter Olson on the Web and telephone marketing for a while. With me, the question likely shouldn’t even be between family law and real estate but rather how can I get ever more niche within the family law field.

Hard questions; touch choices…my search continues.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Thanks for the great comments and links to some other articles on “niche practice”…there must be something in the water this week. Checkout MyShingle & Build a Solo Practice.

I picked-up up the above recently because I don’t love selling and although over time I have realized the central role of rainmaking in building a law practice, let’s just say I came to that realization reluctantly and a tad slowly. My experience is that most lawyers tend to fall in one of three categories when it comes to rainmaking:

*1. Lawyers who view “selling” as beneath them and “not something that Professionals do.”

*2. Lawyers who engage in rainmaking but approach it in an inconsistent and disjointed manner.

*3. Great, natural and consistent rainmakers.

So if you’re in category #3 you’re probably all good and if you’re category #1 I’m guessing you were graduated from law school prior to 1980 or you probably need a more fundamental shift than can be obtained from some 200 page marketing book. But if you’re in category #2 like me, I think The Reluctant Rainmaker can provide some smart, long-term organization to your rain-making efforts.

Author Julie Fleming is a former patent attorney and currently provides attorney coaching development over at Life at the Bar.

Here are my 5 favorite “take-aways” from The Reluctant Rainmaker (get the book for more!):

1.  The RIGHT Business Development Priorities. Meaning, what client prospects should be the focus of your Rainmaking efforts…a) Current clients; b) Former clients and referral sources; c) “Warm” potential clients and referral sources; and lastly, d) Strangers. Without being too emphatic it’s hard for me to think of a situation where small law firms should spend much time at all marketing to strangers. I ran an advertisement for some 6 months early in my sole practitioner days in a Chicagoland senior publication with the only return on that investment being one initial client meeting. The critical point:  It’s SOOO MUCH easier and more efficient (meaning cheaper) to generate new business from people who know you versus strangers.

2. Create Your Business Development Plan. Creating this sort of a roadmap for your marketing efforts is likely what most of us stuck in category #2 are missing. Checkout The Reluctant Rainmaker Business Development Plan Generator.

3. Make a Great Biographical Sketch. Why is it that something like only 15% of attorneys have real client-friendly/focused biographies whether on the Web or in written materials? When I get a new case or transaction I’m always curious about the opposing counsel and checkout their profiles on the Web and I sure think potential clients are doing the same before retaining counsel. The Reluctant Rainmaker suggests including a photograph, areas of practice, wide-ranging narrative (including things like practice area description, special skills, leadership roles, and personal interests), and a separate section listing representative clients, articles written and/or speeches given, and bar/industry/community memberships.

4. A Simple Classification System for your Marketing Activities. So is what you’re planning and doing a high/medium/low yield activity & is it fast or slow yield? For example, a law review article may be high but slow yield whereas a “legal update” newsletter to your list of clients/former clients/referral services is probably high/fast yield. And you probably want a mix of high yield slow and fast since like in the example above although your legal update might bring in some business quickly a law review article likely has more staying power and reputational benefit long term.

5. 5 Great Elevator Speech formats. This is golden and something every lawyer needs a better grasp of…the big 5:  a) The benefits-focused description; b) The practice, client-centric description; c) The Unique Selling Proposition intro; d) The provocative statement; and, e) The “you know how” introduction.

And don’t forget this recent post, Why Don’t You Write More, inspired by The Reluctant Rainmaker…because every lawyer has some text sitting around waiting to be re-packaged.

Pick-up The Reluctant Rainmaker today!

Meaning, get out of your office, meet people, and Grow Your Practice! This can be a real struggle for small firm lawyers generally and particularly for people who tend to be introverts…and if you don’t face the problem it can be a practice killer. Here’s an older post, Do You Make These Mistakes, describing the conflict between the “worker bee” mindset conflicting with the business owner/rainmaker/CEO mindset. And if you’re like me and lean a tad toward being an introvert, it’s often easier to do that great legal work than it is to get out and meet people.

But unless you’ve got a critical deadline tomorrow, you MUST put those social engagements and professional networking events ahead of your day-to-day legal work...because you never know who you’re going to run into.

Here’s a personal example and a true story:

Some two years ago my wife and I attended a 1st birthday party for the child of some friends of ours. Quite frankly they aren’t particularly close friends of ours and they live a fair distance away from us…but we went anyways. And I met another person there who was very personable who happened to be a financial planner and we struck up a conversation and subsequently got together for lunch. Shortly thereafter he referred a friend of his to my office to represent this guy buying a home (he’s actually referred several clients to me over time). Then at the closing I met several other colleagues who had also been referrals of the financial planner to the buyer…both the Realtor and mortgage lender. Interestingly, this Realtor who I met through the financial planner has also become a great referral source for me. I’d also expect that the 5 or so clients who I’ve worked with as referrals from the financial planner and Realtor have been pleased with our work and likely the sort of people who will get my name in front of their spheres of influence over time. This financial planner and Realtor are now probably among my top 5 business referral sources.

So one dumb birthday party has turned into some $6,000 in legal fees and likely considerably more to come in the future. One new client or new case or new professional referral source can literally change your life. How many law firms out there just sort of took off simply from the success of one individual client or business? It can happen. There’s always time to do more work, but you may never have an opportunity to meet that single person again if you don’t GET OUT THERE!

Saw a great bunch of videos from ABA’s Techshow with the full article here and all 16 speaker presentations here.  These are 6 minute presentations that answer the above, so, what is the future of law practice…

I honestly have no idea who Jack Newton is but the presentation is, What a law firm can learn from Zappos.com. The take-away…customer service. You can differentiate yourself as legal services become more of a commodity through providing great customer service.  His last slide tagline:  YOUR LAW FIRM IS A SERVICE COMPANY THAT HAPPENS TO SELL LEGAL ADVICE.

And from our friend Carolyn Elefant, The Lessons of Tommy Supreme.  That’s a great lawyer/entrepreneur/blogger story that I was not familiar with at all. So this sole practitioner Tom Goldstein built a niche appellate practice that eventually was bought-out by BigLaw’s Akin Gump. Some take-aways:

• Power of Free – he did lots of pro bono work to raise his profile up front…could you do this? Or give-away a free publication?
• Boot Strap – he started as a home office guy…don’t throw away money on “fluff.”
• Niche Practice – you standout & marketing is cheaper because you’re only trying to reach a niche & you’re the expert not just some generalist.
• Hustle – you’ve got to go get those clients and be unconventional sometimes.

As someone who was a professional writer (and life long bibliophile) long before I was a licensed attorney I’m constantly amazed at both the dearth of writing I see undertaken by lawyers and the poor writing skills that I observe in my colleagues. I’m not sure where the fault lies, a legal writing course is part of the typical 1L curriculum. However, my recollection of my first year legal writing course is that it focused mostly on teaching the format of various legal documents (legal research memo, client letter, appellate brief) and not on writing mechanics. For me, a couple years working in a newsroom, reading for pleasure constantly, and William Zinssner’s On Writing Well have under-girded any writing skill I’ve developed. Alternatively you might just might spend a year reading the works of Oak Park’s own Ernest Hemingway.

But why write more?

Because a single, well-written article can pay huge dividends for you from reputation building to client marketing. I’ll steal a phrase from Julie Fleming’s, The Reluctant Rainmaker which I just finished (review and maybe author interview to come), “Repurposing Material”  or simply writing once and using your work product many, many times. Sure, an outside publisher isn’t going to want to re-publish something that has appeared elsewhere but you can manufacture plenty of “downstream” uses from referral source mailings, blog posts, client newsletters, and more. Let me talk-thru a personal example and then list some ideas that you might pursue…

One Article:  Multiple Benefits

This tale is a bit more lawyer rather than client focused but I think the principles are universal and I’ll touch on another more client-related article I wrote a bit more below. FIRST, In January 2008 my article, I Hung My Shingle:  What I’ve Learned in 2 Years of Solo Practice, was published in the IL State Bar Association’s General Practice, Solo, and Small Firm Section Council newsletter. It was a several thousand word piece with 10 tips on starting a solo practice and that publication has a subscriber base of some 7,000. SECOND, in March 2008, the Illinois Bar Journal wrote an off-shoot piece picking out some highlights from my original piece. The Bar Journal goes out to some 30,000 members of the bar association. THIRD, on 5/5/09 I posted a slightly revised version of the article on this blog, What Worked and Didn’t Work for Me:  A 2-Year Synopsis. Obviously getting something out of the Web really kick-started things. Although some of the more “prestigious” legal publications are great for a resume line, those publications generally aren’t freely available on the Web which hurts their marketing benefit to you. Currently, the blog post has 11 comments (likely one of our more popular posts) and I’ve gotten innumerable personal contacts from people with follow-up questions and more importantly relationships formed. FOURTH, the director for continuing legal education with the ISBA specifically referenced the blog post in asking me to host, Brick by Brick:  Building a Law Practice in Challenging Times. This was great fun and in terms of personal marketing brought great prominence to me and the program is still being sold today. FIFTH, The ISBA also included the post as part of its New-Admittee Virtual Coffeehouse program which brought even more traffic to SIC. SIXTH, although harder to specifically define, all of the above has and continues to pay huge traffic dividends to this blog and to my Internet prominence in general.

How can you use this general “repurposing” idea to grow your practice? Or, simply, how can you start with a single article and use it over and over and over for more clients and clients and more $$ and $$?

One Article = More Clients

If your goal is to attract more clients, think about the breadth of potential audiences when planning your “base article” topic. Is there a topic that with a little “repurposing” could be attractive to lawyers, referral sources, and clients?

In February 2007, I wrote an article entitled, Pay Yourself in Residential Real Estate Transactions, published in the ISBA’s Real Estate Section Council’s newsletter. I of course posted a version of this over at Closing Chicago Real Estate and I did get a re-post from a local real estate agent. Further, I mailed copies of the article to some 50 real estate professionals and referral sources. I also used a version of it in our Firm’s client newsletter. Sure, the original writing and research is hard work, but then the re-packaging and re-use of your writing is easy and the potential for business generation is BIG!

Easy Action Points

• Write better & write more.
• Distribute your writing to clients & referral sources.
• Get your writing on the Web (on a non-password protected site) for traffic-building and Web prominence.
• Use your articles again and again (break it up if need be) via client newsletters and blog posts.
• Consider paid writing sites like Ezinearticles.com to expand recognition even more (and put a few bucks in your pocket).

The general step is to position yourself as a sort-of “Go To” source for your clients, former clients, and colleagues for all types of legal/professional advice and referrals. The simple, specific action step is to keep an ever-expanding attorney (and general professional) referral list for lawyers outside your region and outside your practice areas.

Then develop the client trust and make sure people know that all of their legal/business/financial questions should start with a call to you and then big things happen like this…

First, you encourage greater client contact and client conversation. Even if this call serves only as a referral to someone else your relationship with the client is improved and your advice is deemed more valuable. Plus, this additional client conversation allows for you to probe the situation and new legal work is often discovered.

Second, you get to know the other professionals on your referral list and you often might find yourself creating some productive referral sources back-to-you. I know of a couple established firms where I’m on their referral lists and it’s great for me. Other professionals, a lawyer’s best client source.

So get to know some other lawyers, start keeping a referral list of lawyers by geographic/practice area, then communicate your “resource” to clients and lawyers alike and….

REAP THE BENEFITS!

Well, there’s about 8 hours left in 2009 as I jot down a few thoughts here in the Central Standard time zone. Can I say that New Years Eve is a non-event for me…not sure why although it may have to do with the fact I’m more of an early morning person than a late night person so the concept of staying up past midnight to see fireworks or some lighted ball dropping isn’t quite the cat’s meow for me. But the one thing I do enjoy about the transition from year-to-year is the opportunity to reflect on the last year and plan ahead to the next year.

Here are 4 Final Thoughts for 2009 from one Solo (attorney) In Chicago…

Steady Income Sources are Nice and/or Cash Flow is King. I’d guess that like with me, this is a huge struggle for many solos. I think a lot of it stems from the fact that sole practitioners tend to be more dependent on individual clients than larger law firms. And if these individuals are anything like some of my clients they’re not always rolling-in-the-dough which equals paying their lawyers in dribs and drabs. It’s hard to lawyer like that and it’s hard to live with that. Can you find some steady sources of income to create an “income floor” that you can count on each month? Over the last 6 months or so the combination of my work as part of the Cook County Domestic Relations Division Referral Program (run through the domestic relations division of the Circuit Court of Cook County per rule 13.8b) and as an arbitrator through Cook County’s mandatory arbitration program have allowed me to create more a floor under my income. Not huge dollars but at least I have knowledge at the start of each month I can count on say $1,500 of income that isn’t dependent on a client’s payment that month. Might there be some court-appointed options that you can plug into? Or is there a way you can gain some business or entity clientele with more repeat business to supplement your individual clients?

Marketing/Selling is Key. Here’s a fact they don’t teach ya in law school:  The lawyers who make the most money aren’t the best legal practitioners rather the lawyers who make the most money are the best salespeople and marketers. This fact is of the utmost importance if you’re starting/building a law firm. I’m just about at a point where I’ve located the marketing sweet spot in terms of really getting the phone ringing regularly with new client inquiries. The big 3 marketing channels that work for me are:  1) Current/former clients (reached via personal meetings/contacts, annual mailing, and monthly Constant Contact e-mail newsletter); 2) Other professionals (reached in many ways like category #1 plus memberships in local Rotary and LeTip chapters); 3) Bar Association referral services. For me categories #1 & #2 are where the action is BIG TIME. Other areas I’m pondering are better Internet-based ads and targeting the evangelical Christian community which I’m active in better. I’d hope to maybe do an interview with some small firm attorneys and their Google AdWords experience. I see them up on this blog and they just seem so generic that I can’t imagine why/how they’d be effective plus I’ve heard of some bad experiences…I suppose it’s all about the correct keywords, no?

Under-Billing:  A Problem with Solutions. This is becoming less of a problem for me as my self-confidence grows, I see the quality of work I do vis-a-vis other attorneys (and vis-a-vis their billing rates), and I do better with regards to items 1 & 2 above…in other words these things are all interrelated. Lawyers under-bill because they might not think they’re very good lawyers but I’m starting to see I am a pretty good lawyer. And as I build some steady income sources and effectively open several effective marketing channels I’m not as worried about losing that 1 client if I quote too high of a fee because there will be others who will happily compensate me for the quality of work that I do.

Use Friendly But Aggressive Billing Communication. I like where I am right now with regards to our billing communication and follow-up. And I don’t say that theoretically, I say it meaning we’re getting paid well and our receivables are reasonably low. What’s working for us? It’s one non-lawyer’s job to mail our bills our each month and to follow-up with clients at specific time increments if there has not been payment. And this isn’t some a-hole collection agency (I’ve sworn off of them) rather it’s a friendly member of our staff making a reminder call. Full and accurate communication in your billing is key too…the description on your bills is as important as any of your in-court legal writing and probably more. I bet most clients are reading your bills more closely than a lot of judges are reading your pleadings. Eventually you must withdraw and bring your fee petition if there’s non-compliance. I haven’t crossed the sue-my-ex-clients bridge yet, BUT, if you’re in area like under the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act where you can bring a simple fee petition as a pleading like anything else in the case you’ve got to do it. Clients seem to act if you’ve got a judgment against them and a wage deduction’s comin’.

SEE YOU BACK HERE NEXT YEAR!