Promoting A Small Law Firm - Newsletter, Referral Service, Web Site

Quick hits on Promoting A Small Law Firm

By Richard R. Lozano , Esq., an attorney in St. Louis, Missouri and president of PowerAdvocates, Inc. Www.poweradvocates.com. Reprinted with permission by The LawMarketing Portal.

Here are some quick hits on how small firm attorneys are marketing and my thoughts:

Newsletter: Hands down the best marketing your firm can do is to mine your existing client base. This brings no comfort to the younger law firm that doesn't have a client base, but it is a lesson all attorneys learn at some point: don't forget to take care of your existing clients. Every client that considers you their attorney, is a potential source of referrals to every person they come in contact with. Keeping your name on the forefront of their minds can be as simple as sending out a quarterly newsletter. Today, this can be accomplished by e-mail, drastically saving time and costs.

Referral service: Most local bar associations run a lawyer referral program. I had moderate success with this while building my practice. Often the referral service takes a percentage of your fee. Some services do a better job than others at marketing themselves, which translates directly to how many calls you will get.

Web site: Your firm must have a web site. People expect legitimate businesses to have an online presence. Your web site is your flagship web presence, so make it a good one. Some attorney web sites are so horrific they chase business away. Use the firm brochure test: if you could print your web site, would it make good print material that you would be proud to put on your waiting room coffee table? Also, make sure clients can find you by promoting your web site well, particularly through search engines and online directories. See below.

Online directories: There are literally hundreds of online directories out there. These are essentially online phone books with listings of attorneys. Determining which ones you should be in should begin with you searching for an attorney in your area of practice in your city in the top 15 or so search engines. What directories pop up? Do you see their banner ads? Which directories have the top positions? The directories you see in your search results are the same ones your potential clients will see. Make sure you try a few combinations of search terms. Get your firm listed in the directories that are doing a nice job of promoting their sites.

Colleague network: Some attorneys develop a network of colleagues with a loose affiliation for the purpose of sending business back and forth. When the attorneys' practices don't overlap, this can be a nice arrangement. States have varying ethical restrictions on referral fees, so read up on them.

Seminars: Estate planning attorneys have done well sponsoring free seminars. They give free information to the public and bank on picking up some business from the attendees. Defense and business attorneys may also benefit from this type of promotion (i.e. 'Protecting your business from the slip and fall').

Yellow pages: A marketing arms race. If you can't be in the first several pages, don't bother, no one will see your ad. If you do insist on spending the money, make sure your ad is different from the others. The most effective ad I have seen is an attorney in St. Louis who took out a full page ad and only used a small box in the middle that said 'workers comp only'. Their ad rep told me they got fantastic results doing this.

Radio: Another marketing arms race. Be prepared to spend loads of money branding your firm or don't bother doing this. I've heard some attorney radio ads that run a few times and disappear. The name of this game is branding, which is best done by saturating the market through redundancy. If you're going to do it, go big.

Print: Attorneys love advertising in local television guides. I'm not sure why, but I guess some are getting the results they want. My experience with this type of advertising is you will get a lot of price shoppers who are mostly concerned with how little you will cost them, not a good foundation for an attorney/client relationship. That's a whole topic in itself. Some do billboards, which can work if you have an easy way for the casual observer to remember your phone number, web site, etc. (i.e. 555-OUCH).

Pre-paid legal: I haven't had a positive experience with this yet. Pre-paid legal companies are quasi-insurance companies that charge a membership fee for access to their group of attorneys who provide legal services at a discount. Sounds good in theory, but I haven't seen it work in practice.

Insurance defense: Some firms build entire practices doing contract work for insurance companies. The pay is low but steady. Be careful accepting this type of work because you might conflict your way out of lucrative plaintiffs cases in the future.

Concept litigation: Some plaintiffs lawyers are smiling right now. This is where you discover a cause of action on your own and find a plaintiff. I happen to know an attorney who made a few million doing this on one case. He read about an attorney general consumer investigation and knew his neighbor had done business with the company being investigated. Believe it or not, there are nationwide networks of attorneys devoted to sharing this type of information.

Direct mail: Waste of time. There is a specific group of people at any given time needing your services and sending out vast amounts of direct mail looking for them is an inefficient wild goose chase. You're better off positioning yourself to be where you think they will come in looking for you.

Forum expert: Some attorneys do well as the expert in a call in radio show or newspaper column. While those gigs may be hard to get, anyone can sponsor an online chat room or message board for little investment.