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Your goal in marketing as an attorney should be to attract better quality clients as well as a greater number of clients. Your focus is on both quality and quantity.
If attracting the ideal client means you have to become some kind of circus sideshow, you should probably rethink your career choice.
The lawyers we see on bus stop benches or billboard with cute phone numbers (you know what I’m talking about, they spell CASH or PAIN) are a joke. They harm the legal profession and they harm those of us who make our living trying to help LEGITIMATE attorneys build a law firm.
Your law firm is a business but it is also a profession. Attorney marketing should be designed to build relationships with clients. The sleazy, cheesy, pursuit of fast cash from people who are often in a difficult situation is deplorable.
In the medical community, the creed of DO NO HARM governs at all times. As a combative measure to the onslaught of bad attorney marketing that exists, I tell friends who need a lawyer to follow the same practice as if they were selecting a medical specialist.
First: They should ask their family physician for a referral. In the case of a lawyer, they should ask a lawyer they trust for a referral. The lawyer who handled their real estate closing knows a criminal attorney. The attorney they use for their business transactions knows a divorce lawyer. The lawyer who prepared their will knows someone who can help with a tax matter…and so on…
Next: The client should check licensing body for disciplinary action. Every state has a governing body that regulates the conduct of lawyers. In Florida we have The Florida Bar. The Bar’s website has a member search area which allows clients to check the disciplinary history of any lawyer in the state. It also allows the attorney to complete a profile. As an attorney, you should fill in complete profile information and encourage prospective clients to check your credentials at the site.
Third: Interview them. I tell friends to ask the tough questions of their prospective attorney (not about the matter at hand but about the attorney’s experience and background). Would you let a surgeon cut into you without meeting them first? Only in an emergency. The same should hold true for a lawyer.
Finally: The attorney should provide references and contact information from past clients. All attorneys should have at least three references they can provide to prospective clients. Even attorneys in highly secretive and confidential practices should be able to point to three people, somewhere on the planet, who will vouch for them.
Smart clients will not hire an attorney base upon a billboard or a bus stop bench. An attorney who is good at marketing would never allow his firm to place that kind of advertising. DO NO HARM also holds true to when it refers to your profession.