Tag Archive: Marketing

LawBiz® Legal Pad: Why Marketing Matters for Lawyers, Part 2

Ed shares some thoughts on electronic marketing and offers ideas on how traditional marketing can help you stand out in the crowd.

-You are more likely to be remembered, thus contacted, if you reach people on a personal level.

-Differentiating yourself will lead to increased :
–calls by clients and prospects
–meetings
–calls from the media
–meetings
-And most importantly:

More money in the bank.


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LawBiz® Legal Pad: Why Marketing Matters for Lawyers, Part 1

Factors to Consider When Marketing You Firm:

-Have a Marketing Plan
-Consider the commonality between you and prospective clients.
-Play the Numbers Game
-The more people you can get in front of; the better the chance of someone engaging you.
-Build a quality referral sources
-Understand that people learn differently
-Connect with other professions who share your market


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Licensing of tax preparers

The IRS lost its appeal to institute competency exams for as many as 700,000 paid tax preparers. The federal court said the IRS lacked the authority to impose the new rules without congressional authorization. While this argument would not likely hold water as concerns additional licensing requirements for lawyers, the arguments used rang a bell.

For example, i) the proposed regulations were onerous; ii) the proposed regulations would have put thousands of mom-and-pop tax preparers out of business.  On the other side of the coin, the IRS needed to weed out ill-trained and incompetent tax preparers.

Paid tax preparers fill out 60% of all U.S. tax returns and the government has found significant problems over the years by the work done by this group.

The arguments are all to familiar and can be super-imposed on the legal profession  where more than 60% of the practitioners are solo.

The question always is "how good does good have to be?" What would these people do if they couldn’t find a tax preparer (substitute attorney) at a price they could afford to pay for work that was substantially correct,even if not perfect?

I would like perfection … but even the best lawyers from major law schools (in my experience) are not perfect … are always at a price that most of us can’t afford to pay. As one of my mentors has said, don’t shoot for perfection; when you’re 80% good, go! 

Related to this, though by a stretch, I listened to an NPR program in the last couple of days that talked about teenage suicide, a growing epidemic. The psychologists maintain that the stress caused by our current generation seeking perfection, and then realizing they can’t reach that goal, is the catalyst for many suicide attempts.

To the IRS and to the Bar: Define "competence" so our professionals can attain the standard and the average American citizen can afford to engage professional assistance.


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Don’t send your clients elsewhere

Linda Popky, marketing consultant of Leverage2Market, writes her Top of Mind piece this week about a serious marketing blunder, as follows:

“…. (T)he local Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH) store featured a great buy on a tabletop propane heater….There was only one problem. A propane heater naturally requires propane to work. And even though OSH carries small portable propane tanks, they didn’t have the ones in the proper configuration to fit the heater. Whoops.

“So making this (purchase) work required an additional trip to … Home Depot (to get the correct propane tank) … Driving your customers to visit your competition to complete their product experience with you (is) not the best way to keep the flames of loyalty burning bright.”

As Linda suggests, make it easy to do business with you, not hard. Examples include answering phone calls quickly (as on the first ring) and messages returned promptly (no later than the next day. Being astute in The Business of Law® will create loyal clients.


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Pick Up the Phone!

While doom-sayers proclaim that the legal profession’s problem is too many lawyers, practical experience often tells a different story.  A friend recently shared this story with me:

“When we needed an immigration attorney, only one returned our calls of enquiry from the several my husband called locally, (she got our business) and when we were looking for a lawyer for wills and other family matters recently, only one was interested in the bread and butter stuff we’re looking for help with.  Couple this with the ‘non-lawyer’ who dealt with our house sale (very efficiently) in the UK, as consumers we see the ‘lawyer’ crisis differently!”

There may be an oversupply of lawyers for jobs at Biglaw (the high paying positions too many law school graduates still want), but the demand (the bread-and-butter business with the Main Street folks who can’t pay $1,000 an hour legal fees) is still there.

My friend’s experience suggests this simple solution for any lawyer worried about having enough business:  pick up the phone! The teachings of my father many years ago come to mind.  When the phone rings, and you respond, you will be hired. But, if you don’t respond, you won’t be hired. This is similar to the adage that if you don’t swing the bat, you can’t hit the ball.

Marketing efforts are designed to make people aware of you and to encourage them to call. But all the effective marketing in the world won’t make up for calls missed or not promptly returned.  Service is fundamental.  If clients want you, it’s because of the quality service you can and should provide.  If you’re there right from the start it shows what you will do going forward.

 


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The lawyer crisis from the other side

I wrote recently about the great chasm between lawyer supply and demand for legal services. I suggested that this is an age-old problem only because many lawyers are courting a very small market segment, the large companies of the world. The bulk of the consuming public has less ability to pay but still great need. And the Bar hasn’t yet figured out how to incentivize lawyers to serve this need.

But perhaps the real issue is not so much the supply, but rather the lack of service provided by lawyers. The following several instances were reported to me from one who had repeated unpleasant interactions with lawyers. It’s a shame that she had more than one such experience, but most people can identify with what happened to her.

"When we needed an immigration attorney," she says, "only one returned our calls of inquiry from the several my husband called locally. When we were looking for a lawyer for wills and other family matters recently, only one was interested in the bread and butter stuff we needed addressed." She continues by making the further observation, "Instead of using a lawyer, we used a ‘non-lawyer’ for our house sale; she was very efficient."  She concludes that "… as consumers, we see the ‘lawyer’ crisis differently!."

Lawyers get a bad rap deservedly in too many instances!


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Ageism Is Not the Answer for the Legal Profession

For the 2013 academic year, law school admissions were headed for a 30-year low, a decline driven by student worries about rising tuition, debt load and unemployment after graduation. Potential law students increasingly understand that today it is a fool’s gamble to spend many thousands of dollars in the hope of getting a well-paying job at the end of three years, and as they pursue other careers the legal profession will shrink.

Demographics present another way to reduce the supply of lawyers. There are more than 1.2 million lawyers in the United States, at least half of them sole practitioners and some 400,000 poised to retire by the year 2020. To suggest that this latter group should be treated differently from any other group in the organized bar would create allegations of ageism and prohibited discrimination. However, a metric that is applicable to all lawyers, such as “competence in professional skills,” is safer ground. Of course, if this metric also achieves the basic goal of reducing the number of lawyers, by implying that older lawyers are less competent to serve clients, so much the better.

The problem with this metric is that it is never applied uniformly. If we look at new lawyers, those who have been admitted to practice for three years or less, there will undoubtedly be many who are not “competent,” despite the fact that they have passed the bar exam. What is the competence metric for “older” lawyers? Do they have to pass another bar exam? If yes why should age be the factor that determines whether they have to take a new examination? If not, what might it be? There is no examination at anywhere in the time spectrum of a lawyer’s career that requires such an examination.

It is the rare lawyer who has not thought at some point, “My opponent is not very good.”  Often this is another way of saying, “My opponent doesn’t seem very competent.” This is impressionistic only, but to be valid it must be applied throughout the entire career life cycle.

It is not accurate to automatically assume that older lawyers are more careless, have too many distractions and make too many errors leading to discipline.  Young lawyers are closer to the teaching of the rules of professional conduct than are the older lawyers. But, that does not assure that all younger lawyers are competent to offer the advice they’re asked for … and, with MCLE, older lawyers generally keep their skills up. Regardless of lawyers’ ages, the majority of the complaints against the profession relate to careless dealings with clients… Age is not a determining factor in such a scenario.

 


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