How To Get Clients As A Lawyer
Shamil Shamilov
Husband, Father & Founder at dNOVO Group | Passionate About Growing Legal, Medical & Home Services Businesses
34% of legal clients hit search engines to find an attorney. 46% don’t rely on recommendations. 86% do additional online research on the lawyers they’re considering.
Or in other words:
What are you going to do about it?
Number two. Obviously.
Because you’re a lawyer, and you don’t sit idly by and wait for a stroke of good luck. That’s not how you got to where you are today.
So buckle up, because you’re about to learn how to get clients as a lawyer with clever digital marketing tactics.
How Do Clients Choose Law Firms?
First things first, we need to give you an overview of the inner workings of the mind of a savvy legal customer.
You can’t develop a solid digital marketing strategy without knowing your audience and understanding what they are looking for in a lawyer.
Skipping this skip is a terrible idea — it’s what leads to so much marketing spend going to waste ($37 billion to be exact).
You don’t want your budget to bump that figure in next year’s report.
Now you should know that a lot of research has been done on this topic, and if we really wanted to, we could write a 10,000-word post on it.
But that wouldn’t be helpful or efficient for you, so we’ve distilled everything we know into two sections below…
In a nutshell
Have a good look at these two bar charts:
One:
And two:
They might not be the sexiest graphics you’ve ever seen, but they summarize hours of research by legal marketing experts.
Here’s what they tell us:
The importance of five factors – pricing, responsiveness, reputation, personalization, and the usage of modern technology.
Let’s go over what these factors mean:
We’re going to break down why these factors are important in the next section. Stick with us if you’d like to learn more, or skip to the next section to get straight into our best strategies to get clients as a lawyer.
The five key factors in a bit more detail
Responsiveness and communication
Lawyers aren’t engineers or architects –?you can’t let your plans do the talking for you.
You need to clearly articulate and explain everything to your clients, regardless of the amount of legal knowledge and experience they might have.
And to make things worse, they’re more than likely reaching out to you in a situation that we can politely and calmly refer to as “not ideal.”
This is where you can make a real difference and distinguish yourself from the 64% of lawyers that don't bother picking up the phone or answering emails.
You should:
Of course, time is money, and you might think you’re too busy to answer every single query from a prospect.
But the rewards more than make up for it, especially when you consider that 58% of customers only contact one lawyer at a time, and 42% report hiring the first lawyer they speak to if they like them.
Cost-effective legal services
Legal clients are price-sensitive and demand value for their money. Obviously.
But it’s amazing how many lawyers seem to avoid talking about their customers’ number 1 concern.
Avoiding the price conversation isn’t a solution because sooner or later, you’re going to have to talk about it. And at that point, you’ll have lost the goodwill and trust associated with price transparency.
Plus, you'll also take calls and waste time on leads that might have never called you if they knew your fees.
That’s a pretty big lose-lose scenario in our minds.
So this is what we recommend (and what clients desire):
Roche Legal from York, England does a fantastic job at all three of these points, so definitely check them out if you need some guidance and inspiration.
Personalized service
Once upon a time, legal clients turned to lawyers for transactional relationships.
“How much property tax do I need to pay?” “Can you sort my will out?” “Can you help with our employment contracts?”
In return, they received legal advice and a bill. But this is no longer enough.
Clients now expect their law firm to be a long-term partner and consultant. Someone trustworthy who they can ring up at any time of the day for legal advice.
And no, not just any odd advice — you need to deliver valuable advice. This requires you to really understand your client, their business (if you’re providing commercial legal expertise), and their internal processes.
Use this question as a litmus test for your services:
Am I providing my client with clear, actionable legal advice they can’t get anywhere else?
If the answer is yes, your customers will be impressed, and your relationship will blossom.
Experience and reputation
When someone reaches out to a lawyer, they’re going to be vulnerable.
They’re likely facing (or thinking about) emotionally stressful situations, regardless of whether it’s a personal or business case.
They need help they can trust.
And since they don’t know you, they’re forced to rely on one of three things — your experience, your reputation, and recommendations from their own network.
The good news is that you can influence and control all three elements.
How?
By:
Tech-enabled
Here are four stats to get you thinking about legal tech:
Stunned, right?
So are legal clients, and that’s why they expect you to be tech-enabled (and they’re prepared to pay more for the better service associated with it).
So suit up and either get legal software for your firm or think of ways you can use your existing tech stack more efficiently.
How To Get Clients As A Lawyer and Connect With Your Target Audience
Now that you’re clear on what people want from a lawyer, it's time to focus on the other side of the coin – how to get legal clients by giving them what they want.
We’ve already given you a few quick pointers in the previous section (which you’ve hopefully noted down), but we’re going to take our advice a lot further here.
By flipping the perspective from “what do legal clients want” to “how do lawyers find clients,” we’ll use our research-backed knowledge to inform your digital marketing strategy and help you reach and convince the right target audience.
By the way, we’ll follow the same structure as before, starting off with an executive summary table and then getting stuck into the details.
Executive summary of the seven strategies
1. Master the art of gathering online reviews
We’ve been through the importance of experience and reputation, so it’s no surprise our very first strategy is to leverage the power of public, independent online reviews.
It’s easily the most effective way to show prospects that you’ve built up a reputation for excellence in your niche.
Why?
Because 90% of people base their purchasing decisions on them, and a further 79% value online reviews as much as a recommendation from a friend.
Other communication channels will never have that much cut-through. No matter how hard you try.
And out of the many options available, Google is the best platform for collecting reviews.
Your prospects will immediately see your star rating when they search for your law firm, and they’ll be able to scroll through reviews with just one tap.
Don’t believe us?
Then try it out. Type “Moore Law Firm Alabama” into Google.
This is what you’ll see:
Impressive stuff from a law practice that’s got online reviews down perfectly.
领英推荐
Seem way too easy?
It does, because we forgot to mention one thing…
You need to persuade your clients to leave you a review on Google. If you don’t bother, most people won’t bother either – unless they have something bad to say.?
Here are a couple of solid review-collection tactics:
Other pro tips:
2. Leverage both PPC advertising and SEO?
Reviews work like a charm, but they have one pretty big drawback.
Prospects need to know your firm’s name in order to find them. Before they pass the stage of brand name awareness, they won’t do you much good.
You need to do something that grabs their attention earlier in the buying process.
And that something is PPC (pay-per-click) advertising and SEO (search engine optimization).
Both strategies propel your website to the top of search result pages and drive people to click on your site before knowing anything about you.
But what’s the difference between the two?
Let’s explain with an example.?
Say you Google “personal injury lawyer ontario.” You’ll see a page that looks like this:
The top three results are paid PPC adverts, while all the other results are organic results Google has handpicked because they’re the best at resolving the searcher’s query. These get there through a complex process known as SEO.
Both play an essential role in a law firm’s digital strategy.
Generally, PPC adverts deliver the bulk of online traffic (58% according to the research) and start the awareness process, while organic results have one of the best conversion rates (4.2%) in the game.
You can learn more about PPC here and SEO here, but we recommend you open these links now and only read through them once you’re done with this post.
3. Build a high-performing website
SEO and PPC are fantastic tools, but they won’t work if they lead your prospects to a sub-par site that looks dated and sketchy.
Your prospects will be like:
Then they’ll hit the back arrow and jump to the next lawyer Google has recommended.
This is why we always include "build a slick, modern website" whenever we answer the question, "How do lawyers get more cases?"
Your site influences everything you do online, as ultimately, all roads will lead your customers back to your website. And from there, they will contact you.
Do they want to read your blog after searching for a keyword on Google? Your website.
Do they want to find out about your experience? Your website.
Are they interested in pricing? Your website.
Do they want to skim through some case studies? Your website.
Do they want to reach out? Your website.
Convinced?
Then ask yourself and your clients if your site is good enough.
If the answer is yes, then pat yourself on the back.
If it’s no, then you should commission an agency to build your law firm a high-performing, beautifully-designed website that’s:
4. Reply quickly (and answer the phone)
Legal clients are a seriously impatient bunch. And things only get worse when they’re facing a pressing legal matter.
So the lawyer that responds first and gives them the attention they need will win them over and be more likely to seal the deal.
The slower lawyers lose out, no matter how strong their marketing is.
It could well be that your beautiful website and your excellent PPC and SEO campaigns aren’t leading to high ROI because you’re not replying to your prospects quickly enough.
They enjoy your content and reach out, but before you know it, they get tired of waiting and find someone else. This might sound like a long process, but in 56% of cases, it only takes a week for someone to decide on a lawyer.
What can you do about it?
Answer faster.
How?
By implementing a mixture of the following tactics and technologies:
5. Be flexible with your legal services
People aren’t just impatient; they’re also highly demanding.
And you can't really blame them. We've lived in a world of abundance for so long that everyone expects a perfect, tailored solution to problems.
So use this to your advantage.
You have a lot to gain by demonstrating you're flexible and accommodating your clients' needs.
Give them multiple payment options, so you avoid people shying away from your services because you don't take credit cards or because they don't have the full sum at hand.
Give them the option to work remotely only, something an incredible 79% of consumers are interested in nowadays.
Give them à la carte service options and target the 47% of legal clients interested in hiring an attorney to review pre-prepared legal documents (like those you get from LegalZoom).
Give them fixed-fee packages and take the financial strain out of your relationship, demonstrating you’re committed to transparency.
But don’t stop there; go out and ask a portion of your clients what they’d like to see and then deliver it.
Nothing works better than a lawyer actually listening to their clients.
6. Write a blog
Writing a blog is a good idea.
Writing a legal blog is an even better idea.
It’s a low-cost, high-ROI strategy that’s capable of:
Only 27% of law firms bother running and maintaining a blog, mainly because it requires a significant time and energy commitment.
But here’s the secret:
You don’t need to write your own content. You can outsource it to capable content writers that’ll take care of your posts for a far lower hourly rate than you could ever achieve.
Plus, you could spend that time working on cases and clocking billable hours, so you’d easily cover the cost of the posts and more.
You just need to know where to find the right writers.
Hint, hint, you could ask a specialized marketing agency like us, dNOVO.
7. Get on social media
Last but not least, you should build a presence across the social media platforms your target audience uses daily.
Facebook and Instagram are the two most obvious choices as the vast majority of social media users have a profile and interact regularly.?
But don’t stop there; do some more research on your customers and try to unearth a couple of slightly less saturated platforms they use.
It could be LinkedIn if you’re dealing with corporate clients, Twitch if you’re working with streamers or, more generally, in the tech industry, or TikTok if you have a younger client base. Or maybe even Clubhouse if you want to reach out way beyond your current network.
You’ll never know until you take the time to ask your customers and do a bit of market research.
Why is it worth the effort?
Because Facebook and Instagram are clogged with adverts, it’s expensive to advertise and hard to cut through all the noise.
Need some inspiration?
Then check out these accounts:
Conclusion: Consider Expert Help With Your Legal Marketing
We know our seven strategies on how to get clients as a lawyer are a handful.
Even for us, and it’s our full-time job.
So we don’t expect you to do everything in your evenings and weekends.
Your practice, no matter if you’re a solo lawyer or a multinational team, needs someone to take over your time-consuming marketing efforts.?
The most cost-effective and hassle-free choice is to hire a specialized agency with a full range of proven digital marketing services.
Reach out if you'd like to learn more or if you have any questions on anything related to your firm’s online presence and lead generation strategies.
P.S. head over to 20 Effective Internet Advertising Strategies for Lawyers if you’re up for learning even more about effective digital marketing strategies.