What happens if part of your law practice is shut down with a stroke of a pen?
Erik Cocks, M.B.A.
Marketing Director, Growth Officer, Marketing Strategy, Content Marketer, SEO, Paid Search, Social, Video, Demand Generation, Market Strategy
Is your practice ready when the law directly affects your marketing strategy?
A proposed bill in Florida (SB 118) that essentially allows for the automatic sealing of criminal history records is heading to the desk of the Governor this week. Even if this doesn’t pass, it should get your thinking cap on as you manage your practice.
If part of your firm’s revenue stream relied on marketing to get records sealed, how would this affect you? Even if you are not a criminal defense attorney, what law could change that would immediately and adversely affect your business? Yes, laws change all the time, and these types of changes don’t happen overnight, but are you ready?
As a marketing consultant for attorney practices, I saw this potential law and instantly went into marketing triage mode and began thinking about how firms (and the people that handle marketing like me) must stay ahead emerging laws and all the things that would have to change if new laws pass. There are a couple thousand people in my Florida area that search for “record sealing” type services every month and at around $6 per click for paid search, your ppc and natural ranking strategies will be affected if this activity dried up.
There would still be some searches for those not affected by the law, but you might no longer need an attorney dedicated to handling these cases. Also, at a lower volume, the workflow you set up to handle these cases (intake , paralegals, etc…) may really affect your margins.
If you are working with a marketing partner, how are they engaged with you to help you? Are they part of the team, or are they just a vendor who is going to turn off some keywords in AdWords? Or, are they partners in being proactive in helping you come up with a NEW strategy that will capitalize on the change and turn it into something you can benefit from while helping your prospective clients? It’s never fun when the marketing is shifting and you find that your competitor is doing something that makes you tell yourself “I should have done that…”.
Does your firm have quarterly planning meetings about the practice? Discussing what changes could be on the horizon in your practice area, how you can create prosperity for your firm and protect yourself from negative changes is critical. If you have other professionals you are working with, they should be in the meeting as well, as the most successful firms have partners not vendors, especially if you are a small firm. Your CPA would want to know ahead of time about potential cashflow issues if a law was looking like it was going to pass that stopped 25% of your practice and it was going to take you 3 months to make up that revenue.
Attorneys today need to keep an eye on the trends that are happening in their area and plan for them rather than reacting to changes. Developing a formalized system for planning, marketing, and adjusting your strategies to prospective change is imperative. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just used.
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7 年I believe, one of the worst enemies of any industry, is the industry's lobbyist. Too much faith is put into them looking after your best interest...then too late, you discover a law or regulation has been put into place, which restricts your business. Or worse, puts you out of business. I've seen this with the Chiropractic industry about 15years ago. I saw it happen to the Pharmacies, in the last five. Just recently, I've seen this happen to Osteopaths, who are being frozen out of the insurance system. It really, requires our own diligence, when it comes to what is going on, which effect us. But too often, we're too busy in our business to realize, the Barbarians at the Gate. -Lauren (Open to Invitations)