Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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Editor’s Note:  The following is a guest post from Evanston divorce lawyer Joshua Stern.

There are countless websites that promise to deliver traffic to a lawyer’s website. There are some services that go a step further and promise to connect potential clients with a lawyer. In fact, if you have an Esq. after your name, odds are at least one company has told you about the “thousands of visitors” that come to their site every month looking for a lawyer.

Wouldn’t you like to be the one they call?

 When I set out to write this post, I intended to discuss a variety of online referral sources by name. The problem is that there are too many of them. Instead, I am offering my rules for creating an online marketing strategy. Specifically, what NOT to do. These are 6 rules I have used since I started my practice:

1. Never Pay for Leads; Ever. Companies that promise to connect you with clients are incentivized to acquire as many “leads” as possible and then charge you by volume. It’s your job to convert them. The problem is, as anyone who has watched Glengarry Glen Ross knows, the leads are weak. The company has no incentive to screen the potential clients because then it would lose its unique selling proposition, which is volume.  Additionally, many of these companies only give you access to the leads, they won’t pair them with you. That means you will spend your time combing through “leads,” competing against other attorneys to contact these “potential customers” first.  To make matters worse, the “potential clients” are the ones who categorize their legal problem. Many of the leads will be miscategorized. Worst of all, these “potential customers” aren’t obligated to use the referral service. It’s distinctly possible that they will have found counsel by the time you contact them.
2. Stop Caring about “Strategic Partnerships with Google.” Everyone has a “strategic partnership with Google.” Here’s the link where you can register your business as a partner with Google. It is a ubiquitous, and thereby meaningless, distinction. Don’t pay extra for it and don’t base your purchasing decisions on it.
3. Leave Blind Faith at Home. If a company tells you they will get you to the top of Google’s search results, make sure they tell you how. Think of it this way: would you ever hire a travel agent that promised to get you to Paris but wouldn’t tell you how? How about a doctor that gave you a prescription without a name? Of course not. You wouldn’t because you’d be certain that you wouldn’t get the results you were promised or you would acquire them in a less than desirable way. Companies that promise results but won’t disclose their methods will either underperform or will use “black hat” SEO, meaning techniques Google frowns upon. While the former outcome is a waste of money, the latter is even worse. Your site may completely disappear when the next algorithm change comes out. Worse yet, if Google finds your SEO tactics to be in violation of their Webmaster Guidelines, they can impose a manual penalty. Remember the JC Penny fiasco of 2011?
4. Don’t Buy What Your SEO Company Has Already Sold. Speaking of SEO, remember: there is only one #1 result in any Google search. Even if you find the perfect SEO company, you need to be certain they aren’t representing your competitors. Otherwise, you and your competitor are paying for the same thing, and only one of you can have it.
5. Why Are You Listed in that Directory? For those of you who don’t know, directory submissions used to be an easy and reliable SEO tactic. There are more directories online than you can fathom and many of them allow you to list your site for free or for a nominal fee. Google rankings used to be influenced by the sheer volume of directories pointing back to a particular website. Those days are gone. Directories, generally, have little SEO significance. There are exceptions. By and large, you want niche directories or highly reputable directories. A niche directory would be something like Findlaw. A trusted directory might be something like the Yahoo! Directory or DMOZ (Google it). If you don’t have time to make that assessment, ask yourself this: “is this directory listing likely to result in phone calls or clicks to my site?” If the answer is no, don’t list your site. Also, stay out of bad or shady looking directories. You wouldn’t hire a lawyer based on the recommendation of an intimidating and ragged looking stranger and most users aren’t going to use a directory that looks like some late 1990s Geocities monstrosity.
6. Don’t Stop. Online marketing is not something you can do in fits and spurts. You are trying to establish and maintain your professional reputation on the internet. It helps if you enjoy it, but no matter what, stick with it. Don’t underestimate the importance of momentum in marketing.

Online marketing can be confusing, but its importance will only grow. As lawyers, we have a tremendous opportunity to share our knowledge with the rest of the world, helping clients and strangers alike. We are fortunate that there is a demand for our training and that by helping others, we are given the opportunity to improve our reputation and grow our businesses. It’s the perfect marriage.

My 6 rules of what not to do when marketing yourself online should help everyone save some money and will hopefully free up capital to be redirected to more profitable marketing channels. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email.

That’s the trick…quickly ascertaining and differentiating between the ‘potential clients’ from the junk, no?

An inexperienced, no staff, ‘true solo’ over at the Linkedin Solo Attorney Practitioner’s Forum raised this question and there was a great discussion full of wonderful tips from lawyers of varying experience levels and practice areas about the art of handling potential new client calls. Here are some thoughts I culled from the discussion and my many, many years of practical experience…

Personally my preferred method of handling initial telephone calls from potential clients when my legal assistant is working is for her to take the call and then schedule the potential client for a 15-minute Mini-Consultation at a set date/time in the future with me. I hate playing phone tag and constant interruptions are hugely damaging to my ability to get substantive legal work completed. The Mini-Consultation is free of charge.

What if you have no staff and the person answering that first phone call is YOU?

I’d suggest thinking about these initial calls as 2 parts sales and 1 part ethics.

I’m selling 3-4 potential services…1) an initial, in-office, paid consultation; 2) a present full/typical legal representation; 3) a future full/typical legal representation; or, 4) goodwill and possible future referrals.

One poster in the forum referred to these sorts of consultations as “20 minute advertisements.” You don’t get a much more captive audience than the person who has made the effort to find you and call you and now you’re having very personal conversation with this person. I think that’s a great thought to have in mind when these sorts of people give you a ring. I could envision a strong sales/attorney whose role is only to take these initial sales calls and conduct initial sales meetings.

Of course some callers are just trying to pump you for free legal advise or are just price shopping. If it smells like this type of caller, very quickly mention “I charge X per hour and need a Y retainer…would you like to hire me?” Also, ask where the caller got your telephone number. If it’s a strong referral from your best friend you likely want to give more latitude versus the person who did a random Web search.

There is a segment of lawyers however who decline to discuss a potential case with a potential client except in-office, for a fee. The mind-set here being your time is valuable and also a good point made that I agree with is that often the initial legal advice given is the most valuable legal advice. In other words much of the initial advice where often very large, macro-level decisions are made is often the most critical lawyering done with a potential client and thus you should be compensated for such valuable advice.

And I suppose eventually that’s where all lawyers would like to be…getting compensated for the maximum possible % of their time. In my opinion the ideal to shoot for is a practice that both runs itself and that sells itself primarily through marketing to current/former clients and referral sources.

As for the 1 part ethics, well the question is how would this initial caller be classified and might this initial caller possibly hurt you?

In Illinois our rule 1.18 of the Rules of Professional Conduct likely would define these callers as “Prospective Clients.” Your duty to these Prospective Clients is very similar to your duty to former clients which is basically the potential conflict of interest scenarios and you’re not allowed to represent another person or interests opposed to a prospective/former client.

This sort of initial, brief telephone conference shouldn’t give rise to an attorney-client privilege generally although the use of a non-engagement letter following these brief conversations or meetings would be recommended. If not these innocuous phone calls could move towards legal malpractice scenarios.

What camp are you in when it comes to these telephone inquires?

Here’s an informative video from LawBiz’s Ed Poll on this important topic. As usual some useful takeaway points from Ed. So he says NEVER do not charge for the initial consultation. But his advice on what and how to charge for the initial consultation is a new-to-me concept (at least the “how” part of it). Here’s a previous post I wrote on the subject, Initial Client Prospect Meetings:  A Third Way, with some questions I consider when deciding whether to charge or not charge.

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!

My initial word association with a “Third Way” would be Tony Blair’s centre-left Labour Party government in Great Britain and his attempt to meld a different sort of political alternative to the extremes on the both the left and right. Although that’s not a wholly inaccurate description of my political leanings this ain’t the Politico so lets talk growing your law practice and specifically initial client meetings.

How to handle initial meetings with potential client prospects is VERY IMPORTANT to your practice but I don’t think there’s a real clear black/white answer on how to handle these and specifically, to charge or not to charge. Here was a previous post and an earlier evolution of my thinking on this matter. Generally the debates I hear and have had within my own mind are should you offer free initial consultations or should you charge for all meetings. A brief summary of my thinking (see link above) being that in the early days of your practice you’ve got plenty of time and should offer free initial consultations to more recent times as the practice fills-up you’ve got to charge for every minute of your time.

However, is there a third and better way? These are 3 questions guiding our current Initial Prospect Meeting Policy:

1.  What’s the source of the prospect and/or how did the prospect find you? The underlying thought here is to treat your best referral sources well indirectly though their referrals. Meaning, I’m much more liberal about offering a free initial client meeting to the person who got my name from that great referral source who sends me a new prospect every month versus the new prospect making a cold call and having no previous relationship to the Firm.

2.  What’s the case potential and/or why does the prospect want to meet? Simply, might your 1 hour meeting turn into thousands of dollars of profit in the future or is the prospect looking for your expertise limited to that initial hour meeting with no potential for future payoff. Now you might say that there’s potential future payoff just from a prospect meeting with you (just getting to know you) but personally that’s too indefinite and unlikely for my taste.

3.  What’s the Trade-off? Here I’m talking Opportunity Cost:  What’s the value of the next-best choice available when you obviously have several options of how to spend your time.  This question is why I think this whole subject-matter tends to change and evolve because your law practice like any business is a sort of living thing that constantly changes and evolves. So say six months after opening my doors if I’m balancing between organizing my office, creating legal forms, or taking a free initial prospect meeting I’d say the free meeting would be the best available cost. However, these days there’s a better chance that I’m choosing between actual billable legal work versus a new prospect meeting and trading $200 for that hour versus $0 isn’t usually a tough call.

Is there a 4th Way??

**Update** GAL re-posted here some ideas from Ed Poll:

The issue: whether to charge a prospective client a fee for an initial consultation, the meeting before being engaged. The wisdom of charging in this situation has long been debated, and it comes down to three fundamental choices:

1. Free initial consultation
2. Paid initial consultation at the lawyer’s regular rate, exclusive of any subsequent engagement
3. Paid initial consultation at the lawyer’s regular rate, with the payment applied to the total bill if the consultation results in an engagement.