Law and Justice

Posts Tagged ‘Tips’

Creating a law firm marketing plan is critical to the long-term financial success of your practice. One of secrets of highly successful attorneys is that they make time to plan for the future. We recommend meeting at least twice a year to evaluate achievements, set new goals and work on your law firm marketing plan.

I was recently coaching a partner in a small west coast law firm about their plans for this year when he said, I’m not sure I see a point in setting goals because everything seems to quickly conspire against us and we easily get so caught up in the day to day operations of the firm that we don’t have time to focus on our goals. Then by the next time we meet, the priorities have all shifted.”

Perhaps you can relate. It’s easy to set goals; the hard part is staying focused on them long enough to accomplish them.

Here’s the first three power tips for lawyers to stay focused and achieve your law firm’s marketing and business development goals.

Here are the first three power tips.

Tip 1. Have a Written Plan. If a goal is important enough to have, then it’s important enough to write down. Carve out 2 hours, get out of your office, turn off your cell phone, and go somewhere creative and relaxing. Here are some of the areas to consider:

o Financial goals for your business. Do to just focus on the money, focus on how you will get there. If your average trademark client spends $5,000 with you, how many new clients will you need to break $500,000 this year (answer: 100)? That works out to about 2 new clients per week. Unless you want a volume law practice, you will need to develop a way to up sell clients into higher end services.

o Practice Area specific goals How many new estate plans do you want to do in the next 6 months? How many new trials are you willing to take on this year?

o Marketing Goals All the top law firms in the country recognize the importance of marketing and business development. You need to set measurable marketing goals. I will meet with 4 new referral sources every month. How are you going to meet them? Who is going to set those meetings up? Who will do the follow up?

o Strategic Business Goals This is where you start to think big about your practice. Challenge yourself, how can you come up with another $100,000 this year? How can you go from your current 5 referral sources to 30 in the next 6 months?

o Personal Goals Perhaps you need to schedule a vacation for yourself every quarter. Maybe you have an idea for a new business venture. What place does your family, friends, and significant other hold in your life?

Tip 2. Make Sure You’re Written Goals are S.M.A.R.T. Goals. This is a well known acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, and Timed. A good goal needs to incorporate all of these criteria. It is not sufficient to say I want to be a millionaire lawyer. That statement may be measurable, but does not include time frames, it does not lay out a specific game plan for how you will accomplish this goal.

An example of a SMART goal is: I want to meet in person with a minimum of 4 different potential referral sources every month for the next 6 months and ask them to send me business.

Tip 3. Ask Someone to Hold You Accountable. Accountability is key when it comes to keeping your marketing commitments. Whether it’s your firm partner, an attorney in a different firm, or a law firm marketing consultant, set up a regular time to meet with someone you trust and who has your best interests at heart and request they keep you accountable. Simply knowing that they will ask you about your progress every week can make a big difference to a lot of people.

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Attorneys are famous for wasting their time following up on bad leads. These are prospects who are not a good fit or who are not likely to hire your law firm. Another big mistake lawyers make is targeting the wrong market, usually too large of a market. What percentage of the people you follow up with come to your office for an official interview? And of those, how many actually sign on as clients?

Successful law firm marketing includes determining which people and businesses are not currently interested in your service and which are just not good prospects. Remove these dead ends from your contact lists and don’t waste your time trying to win them over.

You probably have a very low percentage of prospects turned clients. And with the limited hours in your day to get everything done, you simply can’t afford to waste this kind of time! These 5 simple steps will help you turn more prospects into clients. Incorporate these into your law firm marketing strategy and watch your conversion rate grow.

1. Separate Your Contacts from Your Prospects

Learn to identify people who are genuinely interested versus those who simply are not saying “no” out of politeness. Listen for the signals that distinguish a real prospect from someone who is simply price shopping or worse (using you to obtain a lower fee from another lawyer).

Create a list of questions to disqualify contacts focusing on the criteria of “need, want, afford.” Remove those contacts who don’t meet these qualifications, and focus your energy on solid prospects.

2. Interview Your Qualified Prospects Directly.

Are you consistently talking directly to your prospects (versus their gatekeepers and time-wasters) and pitching them your services? What’s your closing ratio? What percentage of people come to the interview versus become clients? Make sure you are speaking to the real decision-maker.

3. Strengthen Your Presentation Skills

Improving your presentation skills will go a long way toward winning over new clients. Strengthen your phone skills and develop better phone scripts. Learn to recognize “buy questions.” Be prepared to ask for the sale at the end of the presentation. Take a presentation skills seminar and focus on benefits and results more than services and features. Work harder at identifying your target’s points of pain and using them clearly and consistently to demonstrate the value of your services. Become more fluent at speaking their language. Develop a list of critical questions to ask prospects you present to. Don’t talk as much: listen more.

4. Give Prospects a Call to Action

After an interview, do you actually ask your prospect to commit to the sale? How soon do you follow up with people after the interview? What do you send them to encourage them to buy from you versus the competitor and buy from you now versus waiting?

Make sure each prospect receives one clear call to action. Make it easy for them to follow. Ask for their business!

5. Follow Up After Your Presentation

Follow up with a thank you letter or e-mail within 24 hours of the interview. Be sure to end every interview with action steps (e.g., what each party agrees to do as next steps and when they will do it by). If you agree to do something, be sure to do it before the deadline. (This may be a way they are testing you to see if you will respond to their needs). If you are a business lawyer, have a process for writing successful proposals. Immediately set a reminder to yourself to contact the hot prospect in a timely manner.

Add these five simple steps into your law firm marketing plan now. You’ll see

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I would have never bothered to read an article like this at a time when it would have mattered because, unfortunately, I didn’t think about how to get into law school, as early and often as I should have. Indeed, if you’re already more than half way through undergraduate school, you may want to look for advice somewhere else.

If, however, you are one of those chosen few youngsters who know what you want to do in life years before you have any business knowing such things, then I’ve got a few words of advice that will help you get into the law school of your dreams.

Although much of this will seem obvious, please take it to heart and try to understand why following these tips can make your life much easier in the future.

Tip #1 – Your GPA

The premise of this article relies on the assumption that you haven’t yet had the opportunity to screw up your college career yet. As such, you must make every effort to maximize your grade point average (“GPA”) during your undergraduate years.

Others will lie to you, but the truth is that your GPA, coupled with your LSAT score, are the most important factors in determining your admissibility to whatever law school you choose. Let me put this another way – your GPA is much, much, much more important than where you go to school, what activities you participate in, what classes you take, who your grandpa is, etc.

So if you are going to undergraduate school for the sole or primary reason of going to law school, take classes and pursue majors in which you can excel. Your high GPA will make life much easier when it comes time to apply to law school.

Tip #2 – Start Preparing for the LSAT Now

About 60% of prospective law students will do nothing or next to nothing to prepare for the Law School Admission Test (“LSAT”). Another 39% or more won’t do anything to prepare until six months or less before their test date. If you get started now, with literally years to perfect your understanding of the test and the time-proven strategies for maximizing your score, you have an excellent chance of getting a score that will virtually guarantee your admission to any school.

Anyone who has been through the process will tell you that the secret to success on the LSAT is practice. I’m not going to discuss the test and its components in any detail, but it is sufficient for me to say that the LSAT test does not test your knowledge of anything. Instead, it is designed to test your ability to think in certain ways.

Anyone can learn how to excel at thinking in these ways, but it takes lots of time and lots of practice. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the few months before most people take the LSAT is a hectic time. In addition to preparing for the LSAT, you may be preparing your law school applications, finishing your final college courses, and rejoicing in the prospect of your impending graduation.

The result of all this is that even those who think they are preparing extensively aren’t even coming close to practicing as much as you could if you start now. So my advice is that you begin reading all the practice materials you can, completing practice tests and even attending LSAT prep classes now.

Changing the way you think – or training yourself to think in a certain way – is a demanding and (biologically) a lengthy process. If you give yourself years of preparation you will demolish even your smartest competitors who have spent just weeks or months learning how the LSAT works.

Tip #3 – Do Interesting Things

In the event even your best efforts don’t result in a 4.0 GPA and 175 of the LSAT, you will find yourself in need of the law school admission advice found in my book, Covert Tactics for Getting Into the Law School of Your Choice.

As you will learn, students without premier numbers are given an opportunity to plead their case for admission via a personal statement, interview and/or personal visit. When it comes time to make that case, you should have something interesting to say.

Thus, much as you should prepare for the LSAT now, you should begin gathering ideas for you personal statement now. Don’t “volunteer” just for the sake of volunteering, but seek opportunities to do fascinating things that may – or may not – reinforce your desire to go to law school.

This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author’s name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

To learn more about the the techniques and strategies you can use to get into the law school of your choice, visit http://www.coverttactics.com.

Crime does not pay and if you have been charged with a crime in the State of Texas, then you know that all to well. It does not matter what you have been charged with because, in all cases, there will be legal costs and restitution fees, besides jail time, in most cases. The cost for your crime will put you in the poor house for sure and for that reason you should contact Dallas criminal law attorneys.

A Dallas criminal lawyer is an expert in criminal law with years of education and experience. If you are facing a DWI charge or were in the possession of drugs, a Dallas DWI attorney can help you fight your case in a court of law. A narcotics sales charge can carry some very heavy and stiff penalties, besides possible incarceration. A criminal law attorney does have the knowledge, skill and experience to get jail time and legal costs lowered or even get your case thrown out of court.

You must do your research on any Dallas criminal lawyer before you hire one. Any lawyer will tell you that there are the best qualified attorney to handle your case but that is not always true. First, you need to look for a lawyer that will not charge you an initial consultation fee. Most lawyers will not. Next, you should look at their track record. What is their percentage of cases won? If it is not very high, then move on to another potential lawyer. What about their fees for taking your case? Can you handle what they will charge? Those are questions that only you can answer.

Dallas criminal law attorneys will have a a whole slew of questions to ask you, so be prepared to answer to the best of your knowledge and be truthful. Any lawyer is at their best to defend you when they have all the evidence against you in order and that are true and factual. The job of the attorney is to disprove the state, because it is the responsibility of the state to prove you are guilty.

People can tell you that crime does not pay and the way to stay out of trouble is to not get into it in the first place. The person charged with a crime is the only person that can say for sure, that yes, they committed the crime. If you committed the crime, then paying the consequences is what you will need to do. A  Dallas DWI attorney or a criminal lawyer can help defend your rights while you go through the unpleasant process of having your case presented in a court of law.

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With the uncertainty of the economy, legal marketing agency Beyond All Reasonable Doubt Marketing is advising law firms to take a serious look at their budgets. While marketing, advertising and public relations dollars frequently are cut to reduce expenses, marketing experts agree that a down economy is actually the time when marketing efforts should remain in place, and if anything, be enhanced.

“When other law firms reduce their spending and cut their marketing, they have less presence in the marketplace,” explains BARD Marketing founder and president, John Sailer. “This means the time is ripe for a savvy law firm to grab market share – to reach the audience that is still there but who is hearing from fewer of your competitors.”

When planning your law firm’s budget, you should start by identifying how much you want to spend. While there are no hard and fast rules across the different types and sizes of law firms, it makes sense to budget your marketing as a percentage of expected revenue. Several studies have pegged overall law firm marketing budgets to be between 2 percent and 3 percent, with leading firms spending 5 percent or more.

Second, prioritize your initiatives by looking at both costs and expected benefits. This is easy if you tracked your efforts in past years. Remember that some of the lower cost initiatives may bring strong value while some of the higher cost initiatives may bring very little value. With this said, it is imperative to track outcome of every initiative.

BARD Marketing is experienced in budgeting and planning for short- and long-term marketing and advertising plans, and enables law firms to achieve and track ROI for their marketing activities. For more information or to request a report on Yellow Page Advertising Costs and Effectiveness, please visit www.bardmarketing.

You receive your contest entry back. You are so excited! You look at your total score: 20/100. How is that possible? You want to throttle a couple of the judges. Here is a few of their comments:

* Have you ever read a book in your life!!

* Your characters are TSTL (too stupid to live).

* Is there a lower score than 0 for Manuscript Mechanics? I’d give it to you if I could.

I mean, you only have three published books, a Master’s degree in English, and a job editing making $90.00 per hour. You sit in front of your computer screen, blinking at your returned critique, your eyes still frozen on those four little letters TSTL.

Suddenly you take a deep breath, push back your chair, and head for that box of Rocky Road (how appropriate) ice cream to comfort that bruised ego. Then it hits you. Just who judged this entry anyway? You return to your computer and find it was an unpublished/trained critiquer. You give a huge sigh of relief. Whew! Who cares what they think. But then you realize that this critiquer is still a reader. Oh, no. Your shoulders sag.

Who Make the Best Judges?

I’m sure we all agree it is not the grudge judge—another author with a vendetta against contest judges. STAB! STAB! STAB! It is also not the author who knows nothing about writing and wants to gain all their experience by reading someone else’s work. (All comments left blank.) Maybe you’re saying to yourself you would like every judge to be either an editor or a multi-published author. That may not be the right answer either. Surprised?

Many published authors and editors lead very busy lives. They don’t have the time to provide a lot of critique. It’s hard to get exactly what a critiquer is telling you with a 3/5 score unless they leave a comment because only then can you learn.

The best judges tend to be those who take the time to point out their reasoning for their scoring with kind explanations (notice I said kind). They also point out positive strengths about your work.

Why Judge a Contest?

You can learn a great deal about writing from reading. (I’m sure you’ve heard that one before.) A good place to do it is reading contest entries. We all know how important those first few pages are, and boy is it easy to spot someone else’s mistakes. The more you are willing to help others see their mistakes, the easier it will become to spot them in your own writing.

What Makes a Good Judge?

Of course it is someone who will put a little time and thought into it, but here are more specifics:

* Critique doesn’t mean to criticize. The definition of critique is, “an instance or the process of formal criticism”. But come on. Do we really do that to each other when we are face-to-face in our critique groups discussing our own work? What I think any writer is looking for is good honest help—constructive criticism.

* In one of my entries a judge was so critical of my characters that she said the heroine was an air-head and the hero was a moron. I had given the heroine the character flaw of being spoiled by a rich, over-protective father and the hero an unknown diagnosis of ADD which both characters overcome by the end of the book. It is also a light-hearted comedy. Did the judge take into account that I said my hero was an expert in his field? Hmmmm. Did the judge take into account that the heroine was escaping a controlling father, starting a new business, and had bought a run-down home that needs restoring? Not sure.

* There again, you as the writer need to determine whether to take a judge’s comments with a grain of salt or decide whether you haven’t done your job telling your story.

The Dos and Don’ts of Judging

1. What’s in a point? A numbering system is a great way of scoring, but what does it really tell us? Sure the contest coordinator has assigned general comments to each number like a score of 5 means, “READY FOR SUBMISSION” and 1 means, “CHUCK THAT SUCKER IN THE GARBAGE”. Something like that.

Don’t plan on judging if you can’t back up that number with a reason for it. It needs to be valid writing criteria—something specific. If you can’t identify to the writer what is wrong, how are they going to learn from it? And if you can’t identify what is wrong, how are you going to learn?

2. Don’t get a bighead. You are on a roll, marking up that manuscript left and right. You want to help this writer become the next best-selling author. The fact is, you still haven’t considered you may not know everything there is about writing yourself. Think humility. Sure you want to point out what you know but try not to come off like Mr./Ms. Perfection. Remember to make your comments, but realize they are your suggestions to the writer–not the Ten Commandments.

3. Have a heart. A writer can learn from what they’re doing right, not just what they’re doing wrong. It never hurts to point out what a writer is doing well. It can only make them better, and it makes you both feel good.

You are not going to be happy with every judge who scrutinizes your work. Being unhappy with their critique doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them. If you receive two low scores and one high on dialogue, don’t be so conceited that you assume the high score is accurate. It’s not hard to figure out that your dialogue needs work. Sifting out important information is what we do as writers. If the judge criticizes your characters, you need to figure out why they felt that way.

After years of writing romantic suspense with serious subjects of murder, abuse, etc., I decided to write a much more light-hearted, humorous book where the villain wouldn’t go so far as to kill and the characters are a little less serious about the situation. Because it still has a protagonist and the heroine’s life is in danger, I submitted my entry under romantic suspense. The judge criticized my villian as weak and my hero and heroine as being dim-witted.

Should I throw the book away? On the contrary. Instead I analyzed the bigger picture of what was being said. I realized I was targeting the wrong genre.

Now you can head to the freezer for that box of ice cream but this time to celebrate. You’ve learned that even the raunchiest critique can benefit you if you look for the positive in it. On the other hand, if it is really malicious and you just can’t figure out anything positive the judge could have been trying to tell you, then print it off, rip it to shreds, stomp on it, and then set it on fire. That should help.

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