Every attorney wants a purely referral-driven business, from solo practitioners to partners at Sullivan & Cromwell. (And why not? A reputation that brings business to you is incredibly attractive!)
How Small Law Firms Find Clients in the New (Digital) World
For most small practices, though, this just isn’t reality.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve talked to a number of small law firms—all between 1 and 10 attorneys—and not one has achieved that dream of a 100% referral business… or anything close to 100%, for that matter.
Here are some of the obstacles these firms are facing when it comes to acquiring new clients—and how they’re overcoming them.
Deciding where to spend time & money
In a law firm with under 10 attorneys, resources are tight—you can’t afford a “try anything” approach, so it’s important to invest only in marketing that really drives business. As Michael Nalu observes,
It’s very easy in today’s world to throw a lot of money at marketing firms, SEO programs or online advertising. Figuring out which will provide the best return on investment is often difficult and takes some trial and error.
But in-person networking can be even more costly—they can be incredibly time-intensive. “You can spend a lot of time at these functions only to find that you are not making the kind of connections that result in referrals,” Nalu says.
Building relationships that drive referrals
There are two keys to building building a referral-driven business:
- staying in touch with past clients, prospective clients, & other contacts (maintaining top-of-mind awareness), and
- making sure your contacts know the full range of your services.
Denise Glinatsis Bayer explains this well—she says she’s always working to make sure her past clients understand that she practices in a variety of areas—so that people she helped with copyright law realize she can also help with estate planning, small business strategy, and so on.
Providing excellent client service is the best way to obtain client referrals.
— Tom Simeone, Simeone & Miller
One sometimes overlooked place to get referrals is from other attorneys. This can come in one of two forms—taking on overflow from a larger firm, or simply getting a referral for work another attorney doesn’t want or can’t take. Tom Simeone suggests that the best way to encourage this second kind is to let other attorneys see how great your work is (e.g., using case studies) and by making sure word gets back to them from your happy clients.
Showing prospective clients that your firm is right for them
With so many options available, it’s tough to show would-be clients that you can deliver the best experience & outcome for them. As Simeone says, lots of attorneys “make claims about having experience, providing good client service, and generally providing great representation”… but not many actually deliver it. Persuading prospects that you aren’t all talk requires more than a nicely worded Web site.
Industry changes (out with print, in with Web)
For most of the attorneys I talked to, one change in the industry has dwarfed all others in the last few years—the death of print advertising.
Kevin Landry put it this way:
Our client acquisition has dramatically changed—from Yellow Pages advertising to online advertising and social media channels. This seachange in client acquisition and marketing methods has been widespread in the industry.
Where firms used to be able to take out an ad in the Yellow Pages and wait for the phone to ring, they’re having to be much more proactive today.
How firms are overcoming these challenges
With the move toward online methods for client acquisition, where are firms seeing big payoffs?
An email newsletter can be a huge boon in generating referrals—it lets your firm not only tell your contacts about new things you’re doing (and keep them up-to-date on all the ways you can serve them & their referrals), but it lets you provide value to them. If you can share advice—not even legal advice—from recent experience, you’ll be doing better than just staying top-of-mind—you’ll be growing your relationship.
For instance, if you primarily serve small businesses, what better way to build your referral network than to focus on small business needs in a bi-weekly email? You can share tips on marketing, management, cash-flow, and so on, and in doing so, ensure that the next time your audience needs legal help, they won’t look anywhere else.
Email is also the best way to show clients that you aren’t all talk—that you really are dedicated to great service.
Imagine this—the next time a prospective customer comes to your Web site looking for, say, a divorce attorney, your site doesn’t just say “We help clients get the divorce settlement they deserve,” but you also offer a free email course on the top 5 things people need to know going into a divorce case. The person reading will see you as the most helpful firm around—and the odds are great that you’ll be hired.
Social media
We found that social media channels are very effective ways to open a dialogue with prospective clients.
Online channels, and especially social media, have been very effective for Kevin Landry. Landry uses social media to start conversations with people already looking for help.
For instance, if you’re a personal injury attorney, you might watch for people were tweeting about phrases like “dog bite” or “hurt at work.” (You can use Twilert to monitor Twitter for key phrases like this.) Then, if you can respond helpfully, you can start those people down the path to becoming a client.
Blogging & answering questions
Since starting his practice in 2009, Simon Johnson has gone head-first into marketing his practice online—he’s one of the top bloggers on Lawyers.com, having created over 2,700 posts there, and he responds daily to questions on Ask a Lawyer.
While we don’t deny [sources of referral business], they have become the minority now that we have optimized our digital approach.
— Craig Streaman, Consumer Action Law Group
Because of those efforts, the majority of his business today comes from “Internet walk-ins”—people who found him online and now want to work with him. That business leads to future referrals, too—Johnson says he’s noticed a snowball effect from his work getting his practice out on the Web.
Micro-sites (Web sites for a specific practice area)
Most firms have many areas of practice. The problem is that when a prospective customer is searching for, say, help with business law, they might discount a “general practice” attorney in favor of a specialist.
After all, why would they go to someone who just does a little bit of business law, when “the other guy” has a practice devoted to business law?
To overcome this, many practices are setting up “micro-sites”—Web sites dedidated to individual practices. For instance, Grabel & Associates has their main site, which talks about all their lawyers and all their practice areas, but they also have micro-sites dedicated to criminal appeals, drug crimes, driver’s license restoration, and so on.
Networking
“New media” certainly isn’t the only way to drive business for your firm, though. Denise Bayer says most of her clients come from more traditional channels—people she meets in person at networking events, through pro bono work, and so on.
Not all networking is helpful, though. Paula Schaefer says she’s become much more selective about the networking she does.
The first year of solo practice, I attended a wide variety of business networking groups but discovered that many of the attendees were only interested in pitching their products and services and not interested in developing a business relationship.
Shane Fischer agrees—he’s found he gets much more business from organizations he joins out of a personal interest than pure business networking. He says,
I’ve gotten referrals from my amateur stand-up comedy as well as my poker group simply because the people liked me and trusted me, and because they got to know me in a much more informal setting than an official business event.
His advice: whatever organization you join, do it because it’s something you enjoy.
What the future holds
You can bet on it—client acquisition for small law firms is going to continue to be an online game.
As prospective clients increasingly take to the Web to find the help they need—and as the competition discovers this, too—differentiation will be key. People’s preference for attorneys with a narrow specialty will only grow stronger, so that’s one area you can differentiate your firm. Another, of course, is your client service.
To the extent that a firm can provide incredible service before a person has become a client, that firm will differentiate themselves in the most powerful way possible. This kind of helpfulness (or value-adding advice) can take a million forms—among them, blog posts, email courses, articles, case studies, and webinars.
As St. Francis of Assisi said, “It is in giving that we receive.”
Free, instant access:
No-BS strategies for getting more clients
If you’re ready to start getting more clients from your Web site—clients that don’t require hours of legwork on your part to bring in—sign up for our free email course, Supercharge Your Firm’s Lead Generation.
Then, over the course of the next couple weeks, we’ll show you the exact techniques we use to build a well-oiled marketing machine that brings in clients while you & your firm sleep.