An Additional Law Firm Marketing Resource
There is an additional law firm marketing resource you may not be familiar with. Each weekday I post a new law firm marketing video on my legal marketing video blog.
Be sure to bookmark Legal Marketing for Lawyers. This is a great website that includes different and relevant information on law firm marketing. It is updated Monday through Friday.
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EmailObjective Criteria For Selecting a Law Firm Marketing Expert
There has been a great deal written about who is a good law firm marketing expert and who is not a good law firm marketing expert. If I were looking to hire someone for help with law firm marketing I would ask the following questions:
What is the track record of the law firm marketing expert?
All claims of success should be substantiated. Make the law firm marketing expert show you results of his/her own personal efforts. They should have a booming business themselves if they are truly expert at attracting business. Ask for a client roster or financial information. Let’s face it, if they are successful why would they hesitate to reveal this information?
If they cannot do it for themselves, how do you expect them to do it for you?
What is the system you will use to help me grow my law firm?
Do not work with someone who will just wing it. You want to see a framework that they will be following to deliver results. Even marketing experts who follow a customized approach have a framework they use to help their clients get started.
If they do not have guidelines for their own work, how will they help you?
Can I speak with a former client?
Every law firm marketing expert has clients who have left him or her. You want to interview these people. You want to find out if the relationship broke down because of the law firm marketing expert of because of the client.
Why do you do what you do?
The motivation of the law firm marketing expert is critical. Certainly you want to hear about the passion this person has for participating in the success of others but you also want to hear that this is a business. Everyone is motivated, at least to some extent, by the need to make a living. Ask this question to see if the consultant is going to be upfront about that.
There are at least a dozen other questions you should ask a law firm marketing consultant before you hire him/her and beyond their qualifications it comes down to a matter of personal taste and preference.
Legal Marketing: Can You Be a Part Time Expert?
When it comes to legal marketing there are lots of folks who will take your money. Many of them claim to be experts because they run a law firm. This means that being a “marketing guru” is a part time job for them…kind of like selling Avon or running an early morning paper route. If it were me, investing my hard-earned money, I would not want to work with someone who took marketing so lightly that they did it like the kid who watches your house while you’re on vacation.
If you are giving some thought to working with a legal marketing expert here are three questions to ask the part time guru:
If your law firm is so successful and satisfying why are you working part time as a marketing coach?
Look around your neighborhood. Think about your circle of friends. How many of them have part time jobs? Those who do probably need money. If their main occupation provided them with enough income would they be working a second job? When you see the part time legal marketing guru, ask him why he needs a part time job.
How long have you been studying and practicing this thing known as marketing?
Most attorneys-turned-marketers or attorneys-turned-part-time marketing-gurus attended a few marketing seminars, bought some marketing-in-a box programs and turned that stuff into their own offering. Is that bad? Not necessarily…if they are leading a marketing study group. But most of them are claiming to be the legal marketing authority.
You can’t claim to be a master of something if you simply attend a couple of courses and listened to some audio tapes. You have to have lived and breathed it for years. Author Malcom Gladwell, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success shared research that reveals that expertise comes from practical application of a principle, strategy or tactic for at least 10,000 hours. So how can the part time guru claim expertise?
How many people from diverse practice areas have you lead to business success in the past?
This really is a key question. These part time gurus may have a dozen techniques that work in personal injury practices or in family law practices but that doesn’t mean they will work in your law firm. Legal marketing is a general term. Just because this part time person can teach you marketing techniques that work in one kind of firm, do not assume those techniques will work in your law practice.
In the end, you will be paying full price for your law firm marketing coaching. You deserve someone who works on legal marketing full time.
Legal Marketing Is Necessary
Legal marketing is necessary. If you want to be successful as a lawyer you need clients. There is no debating that fact. There is no other way to get clients other than through legal marketing. Yet lawyers debate the necessity of legal marketing constantly. Let’s get something straight, if you are a lawyer and you ask someone to work with you, that is legal marketing. If you ask someone to refer you business, that is legal marketing. If you win a case and you tell someone about it, that is legal marketing.
For those of you who are sticklers, here is a definition of marketing from Webster’s Dictionary: Marketing is “the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.” You are promoting, selling and distributing your service if you hand out a business card. Every lawyer is involved in legal marketing in some way. Period. End of debate.
The law is a profession and a business and as such legal marketing is highly regulated. This is a good thing. As a society we want people to have the best representation available. Legal marketing helps them make an educated choice. In fact, legal marketing is necessary for clients to make the best choice. If lawyers weren’t listed somewhere (yes, even a listing on your local bar association’s web site is marketing) people would not have every opportunity to make a good decision.
My grandfather always said that anything worth doing was worth doing well. Until law schools start teaching you how to attract clients, you have to learn somewhere. You can try to figure it out on your own, but that’s precisely the reason most attorneys have a limited income. Legal marketing is both an art and a science. It involves psychology, math, ethics, statics, and advanced writing skills. You can’t pick it up on the street and hope to be as effective as someone who has studied it for a lifetime.
You spent $100,000 on law school. Why won’t you spend 25% of that learning how to attract the clients that can help you recoup your investment? Isn’t it time you stopped limiting your earning potential?
Lawyer Marketing Consultant Choices
If you are a lawyer looking for a marketing consultant you have lots of choices. Lawyer marketing seems to be a topic that is gaining interest these days. The downturn in the economy, big law firm layoffs and the growing popularity of the Internet and Social Media have driven lawyers to ask for help with marketing.
As the number of lawyers looking for marketing assistance increases, the number of people who are willing to take their money is also increasing. This means selecting a lawyer marketing consultant just became more difficult. While there are many excellent, qualified people who can help you with marketing your law firm, there are also people who are peddling garbage. These people make us all look bad.
Here are the people to watch out for as you seek assistance with lawyer marketing:
Social Media Coaches
Anyone who tells a lawyer that social media is a standalone marketing strategy is a charlatan. Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn and other social media tools can play a role in marketing but they need to be integrated with the marketing fundamentals and your overall strategy. Social media is just media. There are two other aspects involved in good lawyer marketing: Your message and your target market.
Social media coaches are usually “one trick ponies”. This means they know how to get you 1000 friends on Facebook but they can’t tell you what to do once you have them.
Business Coaches
If you want to learn about how to build a law firm from the guy who works with the local Deli Owner and the local Car Mechanic than a business coach is a good choice for you. Hiring a business coach to learn about lawyer marketing is like using a hammer to drill a hole in a piece of wood. I guess it can work but it is not the best alternative.
Business coaches apply set methodology to each client. Everyone is working with the same template. They use their “system” as a differentiator but ultimately it doesn’t work for professional services, let alone highly regulated, high profile lawyers.
You can compare a lawyer hiring a business coach for help with marketing to a patient with a brain aneurism going to a podiatrist. Seeking help is the right thing to do but you will be working with someone who is focused on the wrong end of the problem.
Part Time Lawyers
These people really bother me. Most often, they go to a marketing seminar and they buy some kind of kit in a box. They then spend a weekend adapting that material to the practice of law and they offer themselves out as an expert in lawyer marketing.
Here’s a question: If they were so good at lawyer marketing, why would they want to share that information with you? Wouldn’t you think they would use their great marketing prowess to build their own law firm? Why do they need a part time gig selling stuff to lawyers – like Amway or Tupperware?
Former Lawyers
These folks are the worst. They used to be lawyers and they couldn’t cut it or they were disbarred. Now they are holding themselves out as experts in lawyer marketing. How do these people expect to have any credibility at all? They are frauds, plain and simple. They are not truly successful law firm marketers because they have little to no experience in marketing and they are no longer lawyers.
Who Should You Hire?
You are probably expecting some kind of pitch for my services now. You will not receive one. I take on less than 20 new clients for one-on-one coaching in any given year, so I am not the ideal choice for most people. Instead I recommend you go through this website with a fine tooth comb and implement some of the ideas you can find here. They are free and there are over 500 pages of them. You can also visit:
Watch all the free video tips on that website. Combined, these websites will give you better information than most of the people listed above.
You don’t have to spend money for help with lawyer marketing. You just need to do a little research and take some action.
Five Reasons Not To Hire a Legal Marketing Consultant
This is an article I probably should never have posted on my website but it contains information so important – to me and to you – that I just couldn’t help myself. There are lawyers out there, some of whom are reading this right now, who should never, ever, hire a legal marketing consultant. In fact, these people should probably never hire any kind of coach or advisor, but they should ESPECIALLY avoid hiring a legal marketing consultant.
If you are wondering why I would try to talk anyone out of hiring an expert in legal marketing, the reasons are below:
Do not hire a legal marketing consultant if you don’t believe the law is a business and a profession.
There are many attorneys out there who subscribe to the theory that says if they: “Just be a good lawyer, business will find them.” Nothing could be farther from the truth and these people could not be more delusional. Occasionally I will get a call from someone in this camp. I am not certain why they call. Maybe it is because they want to debate me. Maybe they think they can get me to take up a different career. Maybe it is because they secretly need help and they don’t know how to ask.
Your law firm is a business. If you want to make money in your legal business business you need to have a legal marketing plan. A legal marketing consultant can help you put that plan together and he can help you execute that plan.
You should not hire a legal marketing consultant if legal marketing is not a priority.
Legal marketing takes time. If you are not willing to dedicate time to it, you should not do it. You will need to spend between 20 and 30 hours per month on legal marketing activities. That’s 5 to 8 hours a week. Some people spend more time than that just driving around. But if you feel that you can’t spare it, don’t hire a legal marketing consultant.
Don’t hire a legal marketing consultant if you are not open to trying new ideas.
What you have done in the past doesn’t matter. When it comes to legal marketing, you probably have not done it correctly. You may have tried ideas similar to the ones I’m going to share with you. In fact, you may have tried those exact ideas. But you probably did them incorrectly otherwise you would not have a need for more business. If you are going to spend the money on a legal marketing consultant, the least you can do is take his advice and give it a try.
You should not hire a legal marketing consultant if you are not willing to spend good money to get good advice.
This is a big one. Everybody thinks they are an expert on legal marketing. There are dozens (if not hundreds) of lawyers out there who couldn’t cut it as a lawyer who are now calling themselves legal marketing consultants. There are also lawyers out there who are legal marketing consultants in their spare time. Here is the question that begs to be asked of these folks: If you are a lawyer and you are so good at legal marketing, how come your practice is not full and you are not working full time as a lawyer?
Someone who has been attracting clients for their entire career, someone who teaches others how to do the same, someone who has actually built a law practice for others, will not be inexpensive. If you are looking for a cheap marketing fix, go buy a book at the bookstore. If you want advice that works, advice that is customized to your law practice, advice that you can use today to get clients today, you need to spend some serious money.
Don’t hire a legal marketing consultant if you are not willing to be patient.
Change does not occur over night. Just like there is no pill you can take that will make you thinner, smarter and sexier overnight, there is no quick marketing fix. If you can’t allow six months to a year for your marketing strategy to pay off, you shouldn’t hire a legal marketing consultant. Look, if you were hiring a personal trainer to get you body into shape you wouldn’t hire him and expect results in two weeks. The same is true with a marketing makeover.
A good legal marketing consultant can help your law firm grow. It is not uncommon for a law firm to double or triple its billing while working with a legal marketing consultant. They key to success lies between your ears. If you are willing to do the work and you make it a priority, you law firm will benefit.
Miami Lawyer Marketing Coach: What To Look For
Believe it or not there is more than one Lawyer Marketing Coach in Miami. In fact, there are all kinds of Business Coaches who work with lawyers in Miami and South Florida. Selecting the right person for lawyer marketing help can be particularly challenging in Miami.
Here are three things you should look for in a Miami Lawyer Marketing Coach:
References. Check the lawyer marketing coach’s references thoroughly. If they can’t refer you to other lawyers they have helped, run away. Don’t accept any excuses (many inexperienced lawyer marketing coaches will hide behind the confidentiality of their work). A good lawyer marketing coach will have several references he can share with you.
Writing. Read some of the things they have written. The way a person writes is the way they think. If the lawyer marketing coach’s writing is organized, clear and follows a logical thought pattern, their thinking probably does as well.
Education and Experience. Look for a combination of education and experience. As a lawyer, you are highly educated. You want to work with someone who is going to challenge you on an intellectual level. Look for someone with an advanced degree who has significant experience working with lawyers as a lawyer marketing coach.
Miami is a great city and it is known for glitz and glamour but it also has a significant amount of fakes and frauds. If you are looking for a Miami Lawyer Marketing Coach, do your homework. You’ll be glad you did.
The Lawyers Who Don’t Need Marketing and Business Strategy
If you work in a law firm – particularly a big law firm – you may not need to know how to originate new business. Someone may feed you business. And they may do so for years and years.
You will probably make a respectable salary and you will get to do meaningful work, some of which you’ll enjoy.
If you work for yourself, own your own law firm, you may not need to do much in the way of marketing. You may be able to go directly from a public position (Prosecutor’s Office or Public Defender’s Office) into a practice where your reputation delivers clients to your doorstep on a steady, regular basis.
Both of these options are true career paths that thousands of lawyers have worn over the years. Many of the lawyers that follow these paths make a good living.
There is one challenge with these two paths: They leave an awful lot to chance.
With the big firm path, you never have the opportunity to control your own destiny. You constantly wait for someone to deliver work to your office, you say thank you, and you kill yourself for no glory.
On the second path, you have every opportunity in the world at your feet. You can take whatever cases you’d like. You can charge whatever you’d like and you can work whenever you’d like …
…if you know how to attract and retain clients.
Note: Being a good lawyer is not a strategy. Being a good lawyer is a prerequisite for any attorney who owns his/her own firm. If you stink as a lawyer, your lousy reputation will overwhelm any marketing efforts you can possibly employ.
Being a good lawyer and promoting yourself minimally (putting up a website and attending a few local events) will help you expand your reputation and get you to a comfortable place financially.
If you want to make more money, mid six figures to seven figures and beyond, you will need to do some marketing and set a sound business strategy.
That means creating a message and targeting a specific market with that message. It’s not necessarily advertising…it is marketing and business strategy.
The bottom line: If you want to top out at $150,000 - $300,000 per year, that’s great. Continue to work for someone else or start your solo shop and rely solely on good fortune and your reputation.
Risky but possible.
If you want to make $500,000 and beyond (I have several clients who make multiple millions of dollars per year in law firms they own, with less than 10 employees) you need a sound strategy and you need marketing.
Need help with this? Think I’m wrong? Give me a call.
Dave Lorenzo 888.692.5531
Business Strategy Coaching Takes Law Firms from Good To Great
I was at a high profile networking event last week and I was introduced to a successful attorney as “a fantastic marketing consultant” for attorneys. The attorney shook my hand and said something like:
- “Why would a good attorney hire a marketing consultant? If you are a good lawyer your reputation should deliver clients right to your doorstep.”
At that point I explained that I worked as much on business strategy as I did on marketing and that seemed to make more sense to my new friend. But his statement got me thinking about why successful attorneys have hired me in the past (only about 20% of my work comes from start-ups and I work with few attorneys who are actually in danger of failing).
After giving this considerable thought (and talking to two-dozen clients) here are the six main reasons why a successful attorney would hire a business strategist:
They are working too many hours. They’re pretty sure that if they left for a vacation, or even just took a day off, things wouldn’t work anywhere near as well as they do now. If you’re ready to work a whole lot less, a good business strategist can show you how. Our proven process has worked for hundreds of clients. It helps shed some light on the things you should be doing and the things you should be delegating to others or outsourcing completely.
They are ready to make a whole lot more profit. Sometimes a law firm requires so much effort that the partners begin to ask; “It is worth it?” We have identified hundreds of ways for you to make more money – regardless of your area of specialty. We can help you with business development, team building, advertising, firm growth, building firm equity, helping Partners with business development and cross selling, developing business systems and jump starting billing.
They are ready to build a team of people that can grow and run the firm without the day-to-day involvement of the principles or founder. Good help is always hard to find. We have a proven process for recruiting, training and keeping the best people. Not only does this make your life easier, it helps your firm run effectively and efficiently.
They can’t keep up with the changes in their market. They know that firm growth follows personal growth, but they don’t even have time to keep up with the day-to-day changes in their area of specialty – let alone the changes in the local competitive environment. Business education has moved into a new realm, with business mentoring and coaching taking over from traditional books and seminars so you get the right information at the right time. We call it “Just in Time Learning”. You get what you need specifically for your law firm - not a bunch of academic theories.
They need someone to hold them accountable, someone to demand a profit, to demand results, someone to push them to do what is necessary to take the firm to the next level. Being a business owner, a law firm owner in particular, can be a lonely job. Having a sounding board, a mentor and coach, a friend to talk with about your business problems is just a small part of what we do, but often it is the most valuable.
They need someone who can see the forest for the trees, an outsider who isn’t blinded by Big Law and by too many years of being told “that’s the way it’s always been done.” Outsiders can often provide the “secrets to success”. The reason: Running your own firm is like any part of life; often you need an outsider to see the simplest of things. Often you need someone to ask the tough questions. We can provide the objectivity you need to make the best decisions for the long-term health of your business.
Those are the six reasons why my most successful law firm clients engaged me. The one thing I noticed was that marketing advice was not specifically mentioned. My clients mostly highlighted the business and personal strategy work as the main reason we worked together.
In fairness, I do give quite a bit of marketing advice and that is the reason most of my clients initially seek me out. But the strategy aspect of our work is something that cannot and should not be overlooked.
Thanks to all who helped me answer this question. For more information on my new Strategic Advisor Program, please visit:
http://www.rainmakerlawyer.com/site/coaching
How to Pick a Coach to Help Build Your Law Practice
Many attorneys are turning to business coaches to help them develop solid business plans or law firm marketing plans. This is a great idea but selecting a coach to help you build your practice can be a difficult decision. There is no licensing agency that regulates coaching. There are a few groups that “certify” people to be coaches but the criteria set by these agencies are often arbitrary and self serving.
There are a few franchise business coaching companies that provide coaching models. The intellectual property that these companies have developed is good but often remedial – especially for logical process oriented folks.
Any of these solutions might serve your purposes. The question is: How do you know if you coach is qualified to work with you?
Here are some things to look at when deciding who to work with to help you build your practice:
Look for a structured coaching format and a proven process.
A good coach has a curriculum and good diagnostic tools to help identify “need areas” for their clients. Although everyone has different needs and every practice is a little different, taking a focused approach is important.
Ask your coach how you will decide what to focus on first in your work together. Ask them about the “basics” of their coaching work. They should talk about helping you with goal setting, sales and marketing strategy and work/life balance issues. This stuff is important and it is the “bread and butter” of coaching. The coaches that use the franchise systems will have these basics covered and they will follow a structured diagnostic process that will help you get started quickly. Coaches who freelance (or just wing it) may have a difficult time honing in on the key issues that you need to focus on to move your business forward.
Ask about the coach’s background.
Every coach has a FIRST client. But it doesn’t have to be YOU!
Don’t work with a coach who has never helped build a successful law practice. Your coach should know what success looks like in order to help you succeed. Sure, it’s true that your coach’s main job is to get you to believe in yourself - and you don’t need experience to do that – but for credibility purposes you want to work with someone who has walked a mile in your shoes. If you are an executive, you should work with a coach who has experience in the executive ranks of the corporate world.
If you have a special problem, look for a specialist.
If your problem is in sales and marketing, look for a coach with expertise in sales and marketing. If you have finance issues, look for an expert in finance. If you have trouble hiring and keeping staff you should look for someone who has expertise in that area. Specialists can address your issues quickly and effectively.
Ultimately, there are many, many qualified people out there who can coach you. The key is finding someone who is a good match for your needs
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