Starting a law firm means that you have to know how to develop a legal marketing plan. As I’ve discussed in prior posts about law firm marketing and legal internet marketing, the duty to market your firm never ends.
Now, this concept is nothing new, and I suggest you check out the Nolo Legal Marketing Blawg for a plethora of wonderful tips on law firm marketing. I hope to add more to the excellent discussion on that blog.
To that end, I wanted to open a dialogue related to developing a legal marketing plan. You do have a legal marketing plan, don’t you? At my prior law firm, a lot of discussion revolved around whether an attorney was a rainmaker or not. Often, in my experience, this revolved around whether the attorney was actually a good lawyer. What I mean by this is, there seems to be a conception that attorneys who are good at marketing themselves are not the best lawyers. The rationale seems to be that lawyers who are good lawyers don’t spend time marketing because they are too busy thinking about the law. I want to dispel this myth. You can be a good marketer and a good lawyer.
First, solo lawyers know that they need to market themselves in order for their firm to survive. I suspect that many firms have people who are more adept at rainmaking and they bring in business for all of the other lawyers in the firm. This was certainly my experience as a firm associate. However, I found I was bringing in a lot of work, but I wasn’t getting a lot in return – thus, the starting my own law firm gig and this blog (however, that’s another story I won’t digress on here).
Ok, so how do you develop a legal marketing plan if you are not at a law firm and there is nobody who brings in the work for you? That is the rub. The first step is focus. What do I mean by focus? I mean, you need to think about your niche area very strongly and then you need to market directly to that chosen niche area.
For my law firm, I have chosen family law and trust and estates for three main reasons (1) family law brings in immediate work which equals money and (2) estate planning is something I enjoy and would like to focus on full time at some point and (3) I have prior experience in these areas and I think I am good at them. Are those the best reasons for choosing a niche area? I don’t know, but I know that legal marketing means focus and I intend to focus on them. I don’t necessarily recommend either of those areas – you should do what you like and what your are competent at.
So, once you have chosen your niche, you need to start to develop a legal marketing plan on how you will get others (your potential clients) to notice you and your law firm and then call you. There are many different ways to get people to notice you, but you should be careful to be ethical and garner the right kind of notice. You need to get your name out in your immediate community in a positive way. This takes attending business related functions like the Chamber of Commerce in you area or other community/business related activities. This means creating relationships.
Another good source of legal business is other lawyers. Lawyers often have conflicts of interest or cases they can’t (or don’t want to) handle. If you are starving, another lawyer may throw you a bone. You may not want the bone, but, if you are just starting a firm, you need to take what you can get at first. Thus, your legal marketing should be focused on things like bar association meetings, continuing legal education, and other practice related seminars and conferences.
I won’t go into all of the different areas for this post, I just wanted to give you an idea that you first need to chose your niche area and then drill down the focus. I plan to continue writing about the theme of law firm marketing in this blog and this was the opening salvo on my ruminations. Learning how to start a law firm and market your firm is an evolving process and I intend on sharing my thoughts as my law firm evolves.