Law Firm Marketing | Financials and Other Questions

It's officially the last day of the year. I've already posted my law firm goals for 2011, which you can read here, so it's time to do a little reflecting back and a little question and answer. Here we go!

2010 Financials

This one is going to be short and sweet. My goal, I believe, at the beginning of the year, was to gross $100,000. I came up just short of that goal at about $96,000. Not too bad for the first full year as far as I'm concerned.

Now, I know what you all want to know - how did that break down month by month and with expenses? I hate to tell you this, but I don't know yet. I'll do a month by month calculation once I do my taxes and I'll let you know. I can tell you that my monthly expenses were about $4,000 for January through October, and about $6,000 the rest of the way. For me that adds up to about $52,000 in expenses. Means I netted about $44,000, and that feels about right.

Stay tuned for the month by month breakdown. It will give you a glimpse into the topsy turvy world of owning your own practice.

Starting a Law Firm Right Out of Law School

I got this question two or three times this week and I've gotten it a few other times in the past and I thought I'd talked about it before, but I haven't. So here it goes.

I think starting a law firm straight out of law school is fine - if you lay some ground work first. Pardon my french, but when you graduate from law school you don't know shit about being a lawyer. It's just a fact. But, you can help that out by doing some things while you are in law school.

First, get some experience. Go work for someone, even if it's for free. Decide the area of practice you want to be in and start calling those people up asking for work. Volunteer to do it for free until they feel like paying you something. The money isn't important, the experience is. And the great thing about volunteering is the lawyer you work for won't have to feel the need to make money off of you. That means you have the opportunity to sit in client meetings, go to court, and see how everything really works. You know how to write a research memo, you need to figure out how to sign clients up and what to do after they sign up.

Second, with all that free time you have in law school start working on your internet presence. Start a blog that is related to your practice and start writing. Check out my law firm marketing site to see the basics of getting started so you do it right. Blogging will not only help you get found on the internet it will help you learn some of the ins and outs of your area of practice.

Third, create a business plan. It doesn't need any financial projections (though start up and estimated monthly expenses are nice). The key is to think about what you are going to do to let people know you exist and how you are going to differentiate yourself from everyone else that is already out there.

Fourth, find a mentor. No matter how prepared you are to face the world when you get out of law school you are going to have some questions that need answering. You will face situations where you don't know what to do. It's nice to have someone to rely on (reasonably) to help you out. This would be a legal mentor, not a business mentor.

Fifth, and finally, find someone you can talk business with. I've got a buddy of mine who started his own firm about the same time I did. He and I meet up about once a month to talk about business. We talk about what's going on with our firms, what problems we are facing, and how we can fix them. It's important, I think, that this person be outside of your firm. Though you should be having these talks with a partner if you have one, you need an outside view of the situation to help you see things more clearly. This should be a no-bullshit relationship too. If they think you're acting like a child or slowly walking your law firm off a cliff, they should have the confidence to do so (respectfully, of course).

In addition to those five things, I do have one more recommendation - get some help from my buddy RJon. If you haven't read all the posts, RJon is a law firm management and marketing expert that I met when I first opened my firm. I bought his product, which was then titled "the revenue doubler" to help me start my firm. This product is like a law firm in a box - it gives you all of the tools you need to successfully open a law firm, from the business side of things.

Well, RJon finally got wise and has started a new program devoted to helping people that are starting a law firm. He's put together a bunch of free videos entitled "The 6 Most Common, Costly & Frustrating Mistakes Most of Us made when Starting a Law firm." The link is here. The videos are free so go check them out. I guarantee you will take away some extremely valuable information.

Additionally, RJon has a program called "How to Start a Successful Law Firm in 90 Day or Less." Although I haven't been through the entire program, he's been kind enough to let me inside to see how it works, and it's great. The thing about this program that is different from others is that you have not only written materials but group phone calls and one on one calls with RJon where you can pick his brain.

I had a one on one with him this week and he helped me shape a lot of the direction for my 2011 goals - the information is that good.

That's my little plug for him. In the interests of fairness he did let me into the how to start a law firm program for free if I promised to talk about it here. But if you've read this blog long enough you know I won't endorse something unless I think it's actually helpful - that's the whole point of this blog.

If you have any more questions about this, let me know. I know when I started I had a bunch.

SEO Questions

Here's a question I got from someone:

You asked for some questions and I have a lot. I'll focus on SEO.

1. How many calls a week do you get from the search engines?

2. How many clients?

3. How long did it take you to rank high?

4. I have an attorney with 3000 backlinks to his page. I'm sure he used an SEO company from India, because most of the links are blog comments and are senseless. Is this something I can overcome on my own, or should I hire an SEO company to spam blogs?

Let's take these one at a time.

1. How many calls a week do you get from the search engines?

Sadly, I don't have really concrete answers for this. I would say anywhere from 1-5 for DUI, 5-10 for traffic, and 1-2 for criminal. I'm going to start tracking this better in 2011, so I should have some better numbers for you.

One thing I want to point out, though, is that typically my potential clients are qualified. What I mean by that is they know a lot about me, have a good feeling about me, and generally want to hire me. I make no bones about the fact that I'm not the cheapest attorney out there, and that scares away a lot of price shoppers.

2. How Many Clients?

Again, tough to say. I'd say I get 1-5 traffic clients a week and about .50 DUI/criminal clients a week. My average fee for a DUI is $4,500, so by doing the simple math, if I signed up one a week (50 weeks) that would get me $225,000. Not bad. That's what I'm working toward for this year - one new DUI/criminal client a week.

3. How Long Did it Take You to Rank High?

This is a tricky question, because the answer isn't going to be the same for everyone. A lot of it depends on the competition in your area for a specific keyword and the sophistication of your competition (the sophistication part will be address in the next answer). My situation provides the perfect example.

I started my firm in June 2009. I put in about 2 months of work before that on the DUI keywords (DUI lawyer, etc.). It took me about 10 months to get to number one, and I've been there ever since. And my strength is growing.

For traffic attorney keywords, it took me about two weeks to get to number one.

The difference is competition. A lot of people want to be number one in DUI so there is a lot more clutter to get through. And there are more people that know what they are doing because of the lucrativeness of DUI law (and I'm actually not talking at all about attorney - the most unsophisticated group of people with regard to internet marketing out there - but think avvo, law.com, findlaw, etc., it pays for them to be high in the search rankings).

So, my answer to this question is, it depends. But you aren't going get any higher if you don't start working on it today.

4. Should I Hire an SEO Company to Spam Blogs?

NO! Let me put it to you this way, if any question you ever ask includes the words spam, fraud, or kickback, the answer is probably no.

I told the person that asks this question the truth about commenting on blogs - it's useless for SEO purposes. If you want to be social, fine, comment away. But Google's going to make you work to get the authority you need to be number one in the search engines, and commenting on blogs isn't it.

The best way to get to number one in Google is to create great content and then let Google know that you are the authority for that content by linking it to your site.

And, to answer the specific question, for example, I would wager that one link from this blog would outweigh all 3000 of that attorneys spammy comments. Why? Because if it comes from here it means something. Anyone can comment on a blog.

I think that's it for now. If you have any other questions, please let me know!

Oh, and Happy New Year!