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!

Starting a Law Firm | MasterMind | Printers | Nolo.com

As you can see from the title of this post, there has been a lot going on around here lately. And, there is actually more to come (I just don't have all day to write on this blog, so I'm going to break it up). There's a lot of good information in here, and I hope you enjoy it.

Printer Review - HP OfficeJet Pro 8000 and HP LaserJet P1102w

I may have written a printer review on here before, but I am required to do so now. My printer quit on me on Monday, and as luck would have it, it was at a time when I really needed it. The printer I used to have was an HP OfficeJet Pro 8000. I think I've probably had it for about 16 months. It had been acting up nearly the whole time, failing to recognize paper in the chute, not knowing which tray to print out of (I bought an extra tray) and generally being a pain in my ass. But I'm not paper heavy, so I dealt with it.

Finally on Monday it just quit working. It told me it had a paper jam, but it didn't. It told me to do all of this stuff to fix it and it didn't work. Then I got online and found out that many other people had been having exactly the same problems I was. So, this is a negative review of the HP OfficeJet Pro 8000. Stay away from it if you can.

In search of a new printer, I knew I wanted two things - ease of use and reliability. Believe it or not, one of the major pains I had with my old printer was having to take the paper out whenever I needed an envelope and inserting an envelope. I wanted to avoid that time suck with my new printer. So I did.

I've only had the HP LaserJet P1102 for about 3 days, and so far it's working like a dream. It's got a wireless set up, and so far I've had zero problems. And it has a letter feed built into it, so every time I need a letter I just slide one in and print away. I'll update the review later, if necessary. But it looks like this one's a keeper (and it only cost me $100).

MasterMind Session in Seattle

If you read my last post (and I know you did!) then you know that a colleague and friend of mine, RJon Robins, was in town doing a CLE on starting a law firm and law firm management. I'd actually never me him before, though I'd spoken with him many times via email and telephone, so we decided to meet up, and while he was here, we decided to do this mastermind thing. I must say I had a great experience.

We did the mastermind session over dinner with two buddies of mine, RJon, and his wife. A mastermind session is in essence a meeting of like-minded business owners who get together to discuss, without reservation, their businesses and how to make them better. When you're in it it kind of feels like you're facing a firing squad. A lot of your empty assumptions are questioned and put to the test. But when you emerge from the session you have not only a fresh outlook on your business but some real world ideas and solutions to help your business flourish and grow.

Want more details? Okay.

The three of us (RJon didn't face the firing squad, only my two buddies and I) started out by writing down the top three problems we have with our business right now. My top three were: (1) too much time doing administrative tasks; (2) no working system to effectively manage cases/time; and (3) increasing the regularity of potential client calls. I told the group this, and then we dove in.

But the key here is that we didn't start with solutions. We started by diagnosing the problem. Why am I spending so much time doing administrative tasks? Because I don't have anyone else helping me? Why don't I get help (obvious)? Because I'm afraid of expending the money on help and then not making the money to pay for that person. Why am I afraid of that? (and this is where the real breakthroughs come in - changing your business and way of doing things won't happen unless you get to the root of the problem and work on that) Because I have an idea in my mind that money is something to be held onto tightly, not parted with easily, and I want to make sure I'm getting value for what I'm paying. Ding - light bulb moment, because this isn't the most beneficial way to think about money and your law firm.

After identifying the underlying potential problems, we talked about what our relationship with money should be like. And, to be honest, it's something I know, but not something I can easily put into practice. And this is something we can all be cognizant of (which is why I'm writing about it here). We should think of money like a drug dealer does. Yeah, I said it.

How do drug dealers think of money? First of all, I'm not talking about the guy selling dime bags on the corner. I'm talking about your higher ups. Think Johnny Depp in the movie Blow. He got into the drug business as a low level drug runner. But, instead of taking his money and stashing it away (or blowing it on drugs) he used it as leverage to make more money. Then he used that money in the same way. For him, money wasn't something to be hoarded, it was something to be put to work.

And that's what I need to do. Put my money to work, to free up my time, so I can make more money. Think about it like this. I can have someone help me out administratively for $15/hour. If someone is doing this work, I can do work that brings in at least $100/hour. That means by spending $15 an hour I can make $85 an hour. Those are numbers I like to see.

I bet you're wondering what I'm doing about this aren't you? Don't worry, I'll talk about it tomorrow.

Nolo.com Update

By the way, if you've made it this far in the article, thanks. I appreciate the reading. Up next, as you can tell from the headline, is an update on my experience with nolo.com. I'm writing this because I received an email from them probably a month ago inquiring as to the status of my subscription to them. They wanted to know if I'd noticed any more leads coming from them.

Sadly, I have not.

Here's the thing about using services like this, though. It's impossible to really know exactly where your leads are coming from. If you ask people, they rarely remember ("the internet" is a common response) because it's not that important to them how they got to you, unless it's a referral. In a different market with a different kind of practice it might really pay off for you.

But here's another thing to think about - and this goes to the mastermind session. If you are paying $130 a month (which is about what I'm paying) and that gets you one case a month (which it might), then you've potentially paid $130 to make $3000 or whatever your fee might be. Is that worth it? It probably is. Every law firm marketing tactic doesn't have to hit a home run. A bunch of singles will still get you a bunch of runs.

Starting a Law Firm in the Northwest? Then You Must Check This Out

If you are here, reading this blog, then you have already taken one great step toward starting a law firm. You are thinking about it, you are researching it, and you are dreaming about it. Good for you. But at some point in time rubber must meet road. And there is no better time than the present if you are thinking of starting a law firm in the northwest.



I've talked about this guy before, but next Friday, October 15, in Seattle at the Rainier Square Conference Center Rjon Robins will be giving a day long presentation (broken up into two parts) about how to start a successful law firm. He is joining up with the King County Bar Association to put this presentation on, and if you have any thought of opening up a law firm you must attend.



I won't make you go back and read the original post I wrote about him, but about a year ago I purchased from him a revenue doubler system. I like to refer to it as starting a law firm in a box. It came with a bunch of manuals, a bunch of CDs, and a once a week group telephone meeting with him to discuss what was going on. I give him and his information and advice a lot of credit for helping to get me to where I am.



The presentation is broken up into two parts. The morning session is called "How to Start a Law Firm" and the afternoon is called "How to Grow a Law Firm." Honestly, no matter where you are in the state of your law firm, it would do you well to attend both sessions.



Oh, and by the way, just to make things clear, I am not being paid in any way whatsoever to promote this seminar, though if you go I will probably be there. I just know what a great help it can be to those starting out and I wanted to take the opportunity to let you know about it. You've been so informed.



Hope to see you there!

How to Start a Law Firm | Trust Account Management

If you've been reading any of my posts you'll quickly see there is a lot of information on here about starting a law firm. That makes sense, because that's what this blog is about. But, if you dig a little bit deeper, you might notice that there is some critical information missing. I talk a lot about the business of a law firm and the things you should do to get started. I talk a lot about marketing and putting yourself out there. But I've really failed to talk a lot about one thing - what to do with your money when you sign someone up, particularly in civil cases.



And there's a reason I haven't talked about trust account management for your law firm - I don't know much about it.



Well, today is your lucky day, because a friend of mine has just created a video series dedicated to trust account management. His name is Rjon Robins. I would refer to him as a starting a law firm guru. He worked for the Florida bar association law office management program for several years and has taken his knowledge international. When I first started my law firm I purchased a program of his on doubling your revenue, and I was blown away with all of the content. Click here to see my Rjon Robins review.



Before I get too far, though, I do want to make one piece of information known - Rjon asked me to write about his new program on my site. The links you click will let him know that you came from my site. The reason for this is simple. Rjon wants to know where you've come from and how you got there. And we have set up an agreement for Rjon to thank me if you ever decide to take advantage of some of the paid programs he has to offer.



If you've been reading this blog, you know that I don't normally put affiliate type of information up here. In fact, I never have. But I wanted to this time for two reasons. First, I don't know about IOLTA account management. Second, I know Rjon knows what he's talking about and I trust that you will learn as much if not more from him than you do from me. The goal of this site is not to make money, but to chronicle my experiences and help those that want to start their own journey. I wouldn't put this information on here if I didn't know it was going to help you when you start really planning how to start your law firm.



If you go back to my original review of his revenue doubler system, you'll see I participated in that about a year ago. In that time I've sent him countless emails asking him questions. He has helped me with issues like out of the box law firm marketing, law firm website design, and phone systems, among other things.



The great thing about Rjon is that he always gives you a bunch of information for free. Great information. And I've actually looked at this video just to make sure it keeps up with all of the other free information of his that I've viewed (it does). So go check out this video on law firm trust accounts, learn about some of the pitfalls of not managing it correctly, and thank me when everything I promised you here is true!