Law and Justice

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Your law firm’s best marketing tool is your client base. “Reality-based” marketing is taking the lead over campaigns that once dedicated millions to hiring paid celebrities to promote your services. Why? Clients are “real” people who can tell “real” stories about how your business helped them, inspired them or offers the most desirable services.

Adopt a system for ongoing interviews with past and present clients that will help you shape your marketing message, personalize it and win your firm new business.

In addition to creating a powerful marketing tool, you also will have established a system to continually improve or expand your services. Don’t just ask clients what they like about the firm; ask them how you can make things better for them if they don’t like your firm, or ask if you should expand services.

Major law firms will spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on full-time or outside personnel to create and conduct client reviews, and much more incorporating findings into marketing tools. If you’d be willing to use some sweat equity and not dip into your budget, then solo attorneys and smaller law firms can capitalize on their client reviews that were successful.

5 Easy Steps to Market Client Reviews

1. Adopt a client interview system. The 500-lawyer firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll (www.ballardspahr.com) in Philadelphia hired a full-time “client interviewer” this year, utilizing the services of a veteran journalist to conduct regular interviews of existing clients to learn how to improve services. The goal was to capture unbiased results. Solo entrepreneurs and small law firms can use this approach without incurring the additional expense of hiring another full-time staff member by taking steps to ensure that a client questionnaire is unbiased in the questions asked, and open-ended to allow clients to volunteer comments.

2. Integrate positive client responses into your marketing campaign. Personal testimonials are a powerful marketing tool, and clients you interview can become your chief selling point. It’s not enough to only ask clients what they like or do not like about your small firm; ask if there was a problem that was solved for them. With their permission, fine-tune their response into two to five paragraphs, and post this information with a photograph (to further personalize your client testimonial) on your Web site and in your brochures and other handouts.

3. Integrate client testimonials into your advertising campaign. The 13-office firm Sedgwick, Detert Moran & Arnold (www.sdma.com) was a first-place winner this year at the Legal Marketing Association’s annual award ceremonies in Boston for its promotional series of internal posters that became external marketing materials. The “Women’s Forum” campaign featured on client and attorney relationships with breezy copy and attention-getting photographs of lawyers and clients.

4. Make client reviews part of your long-term marketing mix. The time you invest in capturing client reviews and using them as marketing tools can also become a strong addition to your annual reports and to permanent features of your Web site with special sections designed to focus on client testimonials.

5. Update client reviews every year. Every year, update client reviews. Your goal is to seek additional reviews from new clients, and also to revisit clients already interviewed for new comments and new insights on how to make your client interview process better. You can determine if you are providing the services your clients really want, while getting their active feedback and simultaneously building trust and loyalty while using your marketing to create new business.

Law students would tell you that law school is a “jealous mistress,” which the faint of heart should best live without.  It is for this same reason that the selection process is more rigorous and the application to law school more competitive, especially if you are aiming for the top law schools in the country.  If law is your passion, then there is one more thing that you need to work hard on aside from having an outstanding GPA and getting an excellent LSAT score: turning in a top-notch personal statement.  

A personal statement is also known as an admission or application essay.  Typically, it is a two-page essay which sums up the reasons why you want to go to law school.  Some law schools, however, may set a minimum or maximum word and page count.  The rules of writing a personal statement typically vary from one university to another, so it is best to stick to the format required by the law school of your choice.  A law school may also assign a specific theme or question that you should work on, while others usually allow applicants freedom to choose what topic to discuss.  Whatever is required by the Admission Board of the law school that you are eyeing, your main objective should be to make your personal statement stand out from thousands of essays.

How to write a top-notch personal statement   

Even if you have superb writing skills, it would be a good idea to check out sample personal statements for law students.  Try to search for sample personal statements of those who have made it to the law school of your choice, so you will have a better grasp of the essay structure and organization that the Admission Board prefers.  The more samples you read, the better it is for you.  Try to determine what elements they all have in common.  Effective personal statements often explain the applicant’s personal goals clearly and show consistency of purpose by stating his or her motivation for pursuing law school, which is then supported by activities that match these reasons.  

Do your research on the background of the law school.  Find out which values and principles they consider most important, and make sure that you present yourself as a good match to these.  

What to avoid

Although you should make it a point to tell the Admission Board why you are a suitable student, never lie in your application.  Although an interview may not be part of the selection process of some law schools, most universities do conduct interviews.  If you have padded or lied in your essay, the interviewer is bound to find out, and this will just jeopardize your chance of getting into law school.  

Similarly, keep yourself from copying sample personal statements and substituting the items with your own information.  It is dishonest and will make you less confident during the interview.  In addition, your essay will lose its personal touch and uniqueness, which are important factors when catching and holding the reader’s attention.  Do not go overboard with the creativity.  Keep in mind that it is law school you are applying to, where conciseness and sensibility are highly valued.

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What do I need to know first about law firm Internet marketing?

“In modern business, it is not the crook who is feared most, it is the honest man who doesn’t know what he is doing.” Pablo Casals

There are tons of vendors out there who want to sell you websites and law firm Internet marketing services. Most are honest people who simply don’t know what they are doing. In many cases, they are attempting to sell you something that is overpriced and that won’t produce you any new clients at all, let alone good clients. The attorneys I have worked with report to me that the whole Internet marketing process confuses them. They don’t know who to believe. Some have spent considerable sums already on websites with little or no results. I aim to stop all that. So keep reading.

Do I need law firm Internet marketing?

Yes. According to Reuters News Services by 2007 there will be over nine million legal services searches done online each month. Additionally, prospective clients and clients expect you to have at least a website or think you may be behind the times if you do not. Finally, while the yellow pages are not a good attorney marketing vehicle today they are going away since people are searching the Internet and not going to the yellow pages.

What is/is not law firm Internet marketing?

Having a website is not law firm Internet marketing. At a minimum you do need at least a “brochure website” of a few pages, however, that website is unlikely to get you new business and is definitely not Internet marketing. The rest of this article (in four parts) is going to help you get clear on what Internet marketing is all about.

Where does Internet marketing begin?

Law firm Internet marketing begins with you becoming an educated consumer and then keyword research. Researching your practice’s best keywords will tell us what words your prospective clients are using to search for legal services on search engines, what legal services your prospective clients are the most interested in, what your prospective client is thinking, how to attract these prospective clients to your site at the search engine instead of going to your competitors site, what your competitors are doing/not doing, what content to write for each of your top keywords (recommend writing a page each to at least the top 20 keywords), what are the words to use for PPC law firm advertising and how to begin search engine optimization. If you have not adequately completed keyword research using software tools like Wordtracker you have not done adequate keyword research and are likely to fail at your law firm Internet marketing.

You mentioned, “…what content to write for each of your top keywords…”. What are you talking about exactly?

I am talking about what is known as the CTPM model of Internet marketing developed by Ken Evoy M.D. in 1997. This model works because it is in total alignment with how the Internet works. The C is the first part of the model and it stands for Content – create in demand content (you determine what is in demand from the keyword research). The T is Traffic – attract targeted traffic. The P is for pre-sell – pre-sell the targeted traffic (using such things as newsletters, RSS feeds, free downloads, e-books, autoresponders, audio, video, and teleclasses). The M is Monetize – this is where you convert these pre-sold prospective clients to clients easily.

You mentioned, “…tools like Wordtracker…” with respect to keyword research in law firm Internet marketing. What is Wordtracker?

Wordtracker is a software tool that can be used to thoroughly research your keywords. Wordtracker is at least arguably the best keyword research tool in the marketplace and there are others. You can go to http://www.Wordtracker.com to get all the details. Your vendor can use this tool easily and should use it for keyword research to put your law firm internet marketing on the right track from the beginning if at all possible.

You also mentioned “…how to begin search engine optimization.” What is meant by search engine optimization (SEO) and exactly what is it and how does it fit into law firm Internet marketing?

There is no mystery in SEO in particular and law firm Internet marketing in general so don’t let anyone bamboozle you on that one. As I said earlier SEO begins with appropriate keyword research. If you have not done that you are dead in the water since this is the foundation of everything that comes after in law firm Internet marketing. The next step is the “C” or content mentioned earlier in the CTPM model. You will need to write “keyword optimized” content to each of your top 20 keywords or another way to say this is writing your content in the way that search engines want to see it so they rank you higher than your competitors. Your content needs to fit together in a site plan (the term site plan refers to in what order your pages will appear and how they link to one another) that has an appropriate pyramid type structure. This pyramid type structure includes your home page (the peak of the pyramid) themed keyword phrase being supported by all the tier two pages (the next layer of the pyramid) and their tier three pages (usually the base of your pyramid although you could go deeper) support them resulting in higher rankings for all of your pages. There are some technical aspects to SEO as well like the use of clean HTML, heading text, meta tags, alt tags, site map, etc., however, mercifully I won’t go into those since they should be known to your technical person. The bottom line is put nothing in the way of the search engines spiders (spiders are sent out from the search engine to “read” the sites on the Internet) being able to “read” your site like fancy flash pages get in the way big time for instance. To know more in depth about keyword optimization you can go to http://www.Wordtracker.com where they have a really fine Keyword Research Guide if you want to know more of the details. All of what I just told you is known as “on site optimization” strategies for law firm Internet marketing. There is also “off site” optimization as well involved in SEO. Off site optimization means getting one-way links from high-ranking pages of other sites that are related to your top 20 keywords (there we are again with that keyword research being vital) that link to your site. Search engines see these links like a “vote” for your site. The more high quality “votes” you have the higher they will rank your site. The term “link popularity” is used to describe this process in law firm Internet marketing. The royal road to high quality links is having (here he goes again) keyword researched and keyword optimized quality content on your website. You get these links from website directories, article directories, online forums, press releases, etc. I left out reciprocal links because most SEO authorities think they are no longer worth the effort since they are difficult to get and don’t really contribute much (or can even hurt) to your page ranking.

We have completed the first part of law firm Internet marketing at this point. In part two we will go into Google Page Ranking, dealing with your competitors, RSS, the factors surrounding costs of law firm Internet marketing and more. I am committed to you being a master of law firm internet marketing at least to the point you will get new clients from your efforts and not get taken to the cleaners by vendors who may not know any better.