Building a Law Firm | The Next Steps

I think the time has finally come to make the transition on this blog from starting a law firm to building a law firm. I'm two and half years into this wild ride and it's time to make the next step. What is that next step, you might be asking? Well, I'm about to tell you, and, in my mind right now, I think there are approximately four parts of the plan. As always, if you can think of more, let me know.

Step 1 - Online Marketing

If you've been reading this blog then you know I love online marketing. I'm actually helping a couple of you out to improve your own search engine ranking. But, as I've talked about here, it's not just about being able to get to the top of the search rankings. Once you're there, you've got to have the kind of message that resonates with people and gets them to call you. For me, that message needs to be tweaked. I'm not getting nearly the calls that I should from my website and I want to improve that.

Here are just a few statistics (taken from my Google Analytics account). The search numbers are going to be a little bit skewed, but they I think paint a realistic picture of what I'm working with.

In the last 30 days (from September 13 to October 13) I've had 351 visits to my DUI website. 304 of those visits were unique. Of those total visits, 696 pages were viewed, or 1.98 pages per visit. The average time spent on the site was 1 minute 42 seconds. The bounce rate is 65 percent, and 81 percent of the visits were new visits.

Of those visitors, 156 came from Google, 46 came from my main website (a click through), and 21 came from this blog (probably to just check it out). Seattle DUI attorney was used 24 times to get to the site, dui attorney seattle was used 22 times, dui attorney was used 12 time, dui lawyer was used 10 times, seattle dui lawyer was used 7 times, and bellevue dui lawyer was used 5 times.

Okay, so what does all of this mean?

In a nutshell, what it means is I'm getting about 80-100 visits to my web site each month from people that are looking for something to do with DUI attorney. I can tell you with certainty that I am not getting 80-100 potential calls per month. In fact, I'm getting a small fraction of that. That means something is wrong with my message. So, we need to tweak the message.

Here's what I plan to do in the next 30 days with my website:

1. Revamp the message so it's more powerful than it currently is;

2. Incorporate video on the front page, of me, explaining what we do and how we do it; and

3. Testing to see what works and what doesn't, and going from there.

And, although I gave you just he numbers for the DUI site, I plan to do these three things with all of my websites.

Step 2 - Offline Marketing

Right now my offline marketing is minimal. And there's one reason for that - it's outside of my comfort zone. No, I don't really have any problem meeting people and bullshitting with them, but I like to have a plan to make progress toward a specific goal. And I'm having trouble putting that together with my offline marketing.

At the end of the day I know there are a dearth of potential referral sources out there in the form of bail bondsman and those that work in the entertainment industry (I'm talking about bar owners and bar tenders, waitresses, etc. - get your head out of the gutter!). But I don't have a specific plan to reach out to them - until now.

Here's the plan for the bail bondsmen:

1. Reach out to the one's I know and the one's I see in court and take them out to coffee;

2. Find out who they refer business to and why;

3. Find out their primary means of getting them business;

4. Get their information and get them on our newsletter list;

5. Find out ways I can help them get new clients;

6. Set up a quarterly event for bail bondsmen to come and do something fun sponsored by the firm;

7. Become the person they refer business to.

That sounds like a pretty good plan, right?

Here's my bar owners plan:

1. Reach out to the bar owners I know (a couple);

2. Offer to do a presentation for them and their staff that is two parts. Part one is an overview of dram shop laws - what to do to keep the bar from getting sued. Part two is an overview on how to avoid a DUI conviction.

3. At each event get contact information of everyone present - add them to mailing list.

4. Sit down with bar owner after and ask if they like presentation - get them to set up my cards somewhere in their bar (preferably behind the bar for staff to hand out if the need arises);

5. Ask them to call two of their bar owner friends and tell them about this great presentation I did so I can do the same thing for them;

6. Rinse and repeat.

I'm sure there are some steps missing in between, because I'm doing this on the fly, but that's the gist of it. Doing that alone will increase my exposure to the market immensely, and will help me make some true connections with people out and about.

Step 3 - The "Building" Part

The "building" part of building a law firm includes the first two steps, but this is where the rubber meets the road. It's time to get some more people working for the firm.

Yep, that's right. It's time to expand. But, and you know this if you read this blog regularly, I've got some money issues (personally). I don't like to spend money needlessly, and I don't like the idea of taking on a full time associate (at least right now). So, what else is there to do (besides hiring an associate)? Glad you asked.

And, before I explain what I'm going to do, I wanted to give a shout out to RJon, my business coach (and resident law firm management guru), for talking through this with me. And, in case this all just sounds so easy to do and I make it sound like it's just been a joy ride to even come up with this plan, it hasn't been. This is a scary step for me. It's almost just as scary as opening up in the first place. I am taking another step into the unknown, and I'm a little intimidated by it, to be quite honest.

I've had this plan in my hands for at least 6 weeks. I've talked to several people about it, but I just haven't been able to pull the trigger on it. Well, now's the time to do it.

The plan is this - hire someone of counsel to take care of some of my cases. Yep, that's it. Pretty easy, right? My hang up, though, is that I don't want to lose any quality of representation. In the law, as you know, your reputation is everything. Mess up enough cases and people will start telling others how bad you are. I don't want that to happen with my new associate attorney.

And it won't because I've come up with a plan. Here it is:

1. Find a solo practitioner that is a good lawyer but could use some more work;

2. Check up on them to make sure they are as good as you think they are (licensed; no bar grievances of substance; know how to work a case; know how to handle themselves in court; etc.);

3. Get them on board to help you out with a case from time to time (help them understand that these cases have certain perks - they are guaranteed payment, they don't have to sign them up, they get to be true "lawyers" - all they have to do is abide by a few rules);

4. Next case that comes up give it to them as a test case;

5. Here are the ground rules: meet in my office or in court (not at their office); when correspond with client, done on our letterhead or via our email address; bi-weekly status reports to see what's been going on; all work on case logged in case management software;

6. If they suck, they don't get another case. If they do well, they get another case.

The advantage of this type of arrangement is the solo practitioner gets to keep pretty much all of their autonomy. I don't care when or how they do the work, just that it gets done and gets done well. The advantage for me is it frees up more of my time to work on building the business.

I'm already in the process of making a move on step three. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Okay, that's all for today. As always, your comments and questions are welcome. If you think I've left something out let me know. If you think one of my ideas is brilliant let me know. If you think one of my ideas is dumb keep it to yourself (just kidding - let me know). Until next time...