1. Because I didn’t know what else to do
2. Because I wanted to make a lot of money and law seemed like a good way to do it
3. Because I really wanted to help people

I fell into the latter category.  I always wanted to be a lawyer because I thought it was my best chance of helping people who couldn’t help themselves.

And, like many of the others I know who share that calling, it didn’t take me long to figure out that the outdated model of practicing law was simply not going to work for me.

It was too painful because deep down inside, I wasn’t helping people.  I was preparing form documents for them and sending them on their way knowing those documents were unlikely to work when their family needed them.

I had considered being a litigator, but I quickly saw that I wouldn’t feel as if I was helping people then either because even when they win a case, it’s the rare client who comes through litigation and out the other side happy.

The reality was the practice of law can really suck.  The constant grind of billable hours, cranky clients and antagonistic opposing counsel, and trying to keep up with all of it ourselves is a reality none of us expected when we fell in love with the idea of a career in law so we could make a difference for our clients.

I’ve heard it called a soul crushing existence.  But, it doesn’t have to be that way.

And, it’s time for you to do everything you can to discover how to do things a whole lot different than you have up until now.

Unless you make some radical changes to the way you practice, your livelihood is seriously at risk.

If you keep the same old practice model in place, the day is coming when your clients will discover they don’t need you – businesses like Rocket Lawyer® and LegalZoom® will put you out of business.  Your job is on the line.  Not because they are better than you, but because they are better business people than you and they have nearly unlimited marketing budgets.

Can you compete with that?  Maybe.  It depends if you are willing to step outside your comfort zone and start seeing yourself as the lawyer you went to law school to be instead of the lawyer your business model has forced you to be.

To be continued …. Next week, in the continuation of this article I’ll share the specifics of:

How you can become indispensable to your clients and command higher fees that your clients are happy to pay;

How you can utilize the concept of collaborating with your biggest competitors to leverage the marketing power of the online legal document providers to your advantage;

What love has to do with it.

Related posts:

1. How to Be the Indispensable Advisor Your Clients Love
2. Why I Left My Million Dollar Law Firm to Coach Lawyers

If you are practicing with the new law business model, your clients love you and want to send you business. You just need to make it easy for them.

Here are three ways to do it:

1.  Ask for the referral:

At the end of your first meeting, when your clients are thrilled with the process you’ve taken them through because they feel so relieved you are going to be taking care of them and their matter, ask your clients to send them anyone you know who is just like them.

The best way to do this is to get three of your business cards.

On one of your cards, write your cell phone number and tell your clients to call you on that number in case of an emergency.

Hand them the other two cards and tell them they are for friends or family just like them who need your services.  It’s that simple.

2.  Ask them to host you for an event:

We teach our Personal Family Lawyers to do guardian naming workshops as one way to generate new clients.

Some of them are hosting these events in the homes of their clients for their clients’ friends.

“Show your friends how much you care by helping them name legal guardians for their kids just like you did for yours.”

It’s an irresistible offer, especially if you give anyone who hosts you a discount of their legal work.

How could you apply this to your practice area?

3.  Establish a membership/maintenance program and give clients who enroll a discount on legal work for other family members:

Once a client works with you, figure out how you can put them on an ongoing membership/maintenance program and as one of the enrollment bonuses, give family members a discount on legal work.

We would give our clients a 50% discount on parent’s legal planning and as a result I ended up often doing legal work for the whole family.

It was totally worth it because I knew that the initial up front free I collected from a client was only a small part of the lifetime value of each client to me.

Do you have other ways to increase the number of referrals you receive from clients?

If so, let me know and I’ll share them with the group.

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1. Step Out of the Box (and Your Practice Area) and Make a Difference

And yet for the vast majority of lawyers in private practice, that’s the case.

Lots of work and not a lot to show for it at the end of the day, whether that day is the end of the month, the end of the year, or the end of a career.

This email series will lay out how you can experience something different.

Before I get into it, there’s something I want you to know.  I will always be straight up honest with you.  That’s how I live my life and that’s how I run my businesses – straightforward, direct, no B.S.

I always tell you like it really is.

Everything you are doing to run  your business right now probably feels hard, really hard.

But, it’s comfortable.

The things I am going to suggest you do as part of this email series are pretty easy things to do once you know what they are.

But, they are likely to create short-term discomfort for you.

Change is hard.  For everyone.  And especially for lawyers.  It triggers our control issues.

But, you have to change or you’re going to stay stuck.

Here are some of the things that are keeping you in the rut:

1.  Continued focus on how bad the economy is and using that as an excuse to keep you from moving forward.

Pay attention to how often you talk about the economy or how hard things are right now.

2.  Taking every case that walks through the door.

It’s nearly impossible to build a streamlined business that allows you to work a reasonable schedule unless you strategically focus on serving a narrower group of people than you likely are right now.

Now, I’m not saying to stop taking the work that is keeping food on your table, at least not yet.  Over time though you will need to narrow your focus, master serving one group of people with excellence and then, if you want, you can expand to additional groups.

3.  Invest resources in building your business before the revenue is there.

This can be the most difficult one for lawyers.  We want to build our practices out of revenue without investing in the business.  I wish it could work this way, but for the most part it can’t.  Building a business almost always requires an out of pocket financial investment.

Here’s the great news … you don’t have to buy a franchise or invest in someone else’s business, you are your very best investment when you’ve got the right tools and resources and the commitment to making it work.

One of my clients invested in one of those quickie massage places you see springing up everywhere – at $50-$75 a pop, she’s got to work hard to get enough business to make it work.  And, she’s doing it!

Your transaction fees are far higher than that, so the next time you feel frustrated, think about that poor massage parlor owner and know that if she can do it, so can you.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing specifics on how you can get out of this rut and into the kind of action that will really make a difference for you.  In the meantime, watch your mind for the self-sabotaging thoughts that are keeping you stuck right where you are.

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Fortunately, I also get to talk with a lot of lawyers whoare NOT struggling for clients. They’re struggling with  too much business and needing to get their systems caught up to the client flow (that’s the last frontier before really having it all).

And while I’ve got some guidance for those of you in that boat, today I want to focus on those of you struggling for more business because if you don’t have business, you’ll never get to phase 2 before you go out of business.

Now, I know a little about going out of business. I’ve watched lawyers do it more than once and one time, unfortunately, up close and personal, after the guy I sold my firm to couldn’t make a go of it and closed up shop.

So I know what will run your business into the ground faster than you can say “wait a minute, where did all my money go?”

And I can see the lawyers who are headed into the station of no more business as opposed to those headed to phase 2 and one major step closer to the lives they really want in which they are serving the clients they love without stress and not worrying about the day to day details of running their business.

So, what’s the difference?

Continue reading In Danger of Going Out of Business on Lawyerist.com

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So, here’s what I recommend:

1. Set up a private gmail account and only give the email address out to your family members and closest friends. Do not sign up for any email newsletters, special offers or anything else with your new private gmail account.

2. Hand your public email account over to an assistant. If you have an assistant in house, give him/her the password
so that s/he can begin managing the account for you. If you don’t, this would be a perfect opportunity for you to start
working with a virtual assistant who can manage your email for you.

3. Give your assistant specific rules about how to handle your email. Here are some ideas that should get you
started:

• filter all newsletters into a special folder that you can review periodically (except of course the Law Business Revolution Weekly Briefing Memo, which you’ll always want to review as soon as it comes out each week )
• filter all listserve/forum emails into separate folders you can also review periodically.
• respond to all client emails the same way that phone calls would be handled – either schedule an appointment, pass the request on to the person who needs to handle it with a tickler to follow up and make sure it’s been handled, or send to your private email inbox to review. If sent to your inbox for review, make sure your email assistant schedules you time to review the item on your calendar.
• respond to all emails from opposing counsel or other colleagues in the same way – indicate message has been received and either schedule appointment for follow up or schedule you time to review and indicate the follow up that is necessary.

This should get you started and get you out of email overwhelm.

I’d love to hear what questions you have about managing your email and your law business. Let me know.

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1. How to Let Go of the Biggest Time-Suck of Your Day

To generate more leads, get more prospects to YES and increase your fees in a time of price-slashing and economic hardship, it’s time for you to begin focusing on VALUE and OUTCOMES instead of the specifics of your legal service.

It goes back to a point I made in last week’s article about how you can raise your fees, even in a tough economy.  If you give your prospects no other reason to choose you outside of price, you’ll wind up being price-shopped right out of business.

But, there is another way.

When you begin focusing on the VALUE you provide and the OUTCOME client’s will experience when working with you, there is no shopping around .

Let me give you a simple example of what selling OUTCOMES, as opposed to legal services would look like for the small/micro business owner market:

Prospect:      I can form my LLC online for $150 or with a lawyer who charges much less than you do; why would I pay you more than   the guy down the street?

You:     Yes, you can absolutely form your LLC online for $150 or with that guy down the street for a few hundred bucks, but I’ll ask you two questions: 1) are you sure you really need an LLC?   In many cases, forming an LLC is the wrong choice and could cost you thousands of dollars.  And 2) do you really want to put your business in the hands of a cut-rate lawyer?

Where and how you incorporate your business entity is just the first of many choices you’ll have to make if you want to grow a business that will fulfill on its mission and support your family without putting your personal assets at risk.   When you go online or with a lawyer who doesn’t do anything more than complete form documents for you, are you going to have somewhere to turn when you have questions or when things come up in your business?  Or are you going to make decisions that could turn costly because you didn’t have the guidance of someone you trust?

When you work with me, I’ll make sure you ask all the right questions and get the answers you need to build a profitable and sustainable business.   That’s not something you are going to get from an online document service or a guy who completes some documents for you and sends you on your way.

You don’t really know what you need and what you don’t need and the cost of overlooking things you don’t even know about will be far higher than the fees you’ll pay to work with me.

As your lawyer for the life of your business, you’ll never have to worry that you are paying too much in taxes or for insurance you don’t need or that you have to sign an agreement without getting it reviewed because you are concerned about what it will cost you to contact me.

You get the point.

We have shifted the discussion away from legal documents or even pricing to instead talk about the outcome.

In fact, this is so important that I’m going to hold a contest.

Post in the comments below regarding what you see as the outcome(s) we are selling and will be basing pricing on in the above script.

Everyone who comments and gets the right answer will be entered into a drawing for my Client Attraction System, which we just sold for $997.

I’ll be discussing more about selling outcome instead of focusing on legal services and price as it relates to serving the small business community on Thursday, March 18th at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST.  Join me.  I’ll also be giving you information on how to join our Creative Business Lawyer program.  Our beta class is already getting inquiries from entrepreneurs looking for a Creative Business Lawyer for their business.  For more information and registration details, please visit: http//www.lawbusinessrevoluton.com/cblcall

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1. How to Be the Indispensable Advisor Your Clients Love

When the phone starts ringing as a result of your marketing efforts, you are beyond happy and consider your marketing investment to be money well spent.

But is it really?

Not until you master the art of turning those phone calls into money in your pocket.  Unfortunately, many of you are losing a whole lot of coin because you are investing in marketing without making the same investment in conversion.

Fortunately, converting leads into clients won’t cost you much more money than you are already spending to attract those leads, but it does require an upfront investment of your time and energy.  Best yet, once you get it down, your lead to client conversion process can run without you.

The place to start is to get a crystal clear understanding of where you are right now.  Here’s what you’ll want to do:

1. Over the next month, make a commitment to collect the data you need to track your numbers.
2.  Have whoever answers your phones log every phone call.

3.  Require that all calls inquiring into becoming a client be recorded on a prospect intake form, which captures how the person heard of you, all of their contact information, specifics about their situation and whether they made an appointment.

4.  Use a spreadsheet to then track how many actually made it in for their appointment and finally how many of those callers became paying clients after meeting with you or the other attorneys of your firm.

Each week, sit down with your team and review your lead to prospect conversion number (this is the number of phone calls you received that turned into appointments) and your prospect to client conversion number (this is the number of appointments made that turned into clients).

If these numbers are not both at least 75%, don’t spend any more marketing dollars until you  fix your client engagement problem because otherwise you are pouring money down the drain.

I can’t stress enough that there is NO POINT in spending money on marketing if you are not doing as well as you can to convert your prospects into paying clients once they pick up the phone to call your office.

In the next few weeks, I’ll cover all of this in more detail.  Until then, here’s a few diagnostic clues to find the “leak” where your prospects may be getting away during the client engagement process:

- Your phone is not being answered in the correct way

- There is no system to follow up with prospects who want more information

- There is no system to follow up with prospects in the time period between when they make an appointment and come in to your office for their appointment

- You are not following a script during your client engagement meeting

We’ll cover each of these and more in depth in the coming weeks, but until then start by collecting hard numbers on what’s actually happening in your office so you’ll be ready for the fixes as they are presented and understand which fix you need to focus on.

You may be quite surprised by what you discover once you begin collecting your numbers.

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Hopefully by now you have a rough list of stats compiled that tells you how effective your overall client engagement process really is (and if you missed last week’s article, you can find out how to gather those stats here). But for the purpose of this lesson on client intake, I want you to grab that spreadsheet and focus on the number of prospects that called your office last week vs. the number of prospects that set up an appointment with your firm.

If you’re not showing at least a 50 % conversion rate and preferably 75%, you need to take a closer look at how your intake is being handled.

There are 4 essential do’s and donts that dictate this process and if you violate any one of these principles, you will see a direct downward impact on the number of appointments you set each month.

To ensure you are getting the absolute best results from your intake process, take some time this week to implement these principles in your own firm:

1. DON’T be your own intake specialist! You must have someone besides yourself answering the calls from prospective clients. Most people are intimidated speaking directly to an attorney and quite frankly, there are much better uses for your time. So whether you hire someone in-house or contract with a virtual intake specialist, commit to stop doing intake from now on.

2. DO provide a detailed script to your intake specialist-  Your intake specialist should be using a script for every phone call which explains your services, conveys the value of your initial meeting and encourages prospects to say “yes” to coming in for an appointment. You never want your intake specialist to come up with this information on the fly, and it’s up to you to write a script that will achieve those goals.

3. DON’T discuss numbers on the intake call! When done right, your intake specialist should NEVER have to discuss your fees on the intake call. In fact, a good intake specialist using a great script won’t even need to give a price range! But, at all costs you want to ensure that the prospect doesn’t feel as if you are avoiding the “how much will it cost” question or they’ll flee faster than you can say boo. The only numbers that your intake specialist should have to focus on are what it will cost your prospect to NOT meet with you and the value of your initial meeting that they’ll be getting free.

4. DO follow up with prospects that don’t set an appointment after the initial phone call- Whether you send a warm letter, email or welcome packet via direct mail, this constant communication helps people on the fence eventually pick up the phone and call. Studies show that it takes up to 5 “touches” or contact with a firm for a prospect to take action—so don’t give up if the prospect doesn’t say “yes” right away.-

And don’t forget to track your numbers this week as you start making some of the changes I mentioned above! I want you to see with your own eyes the impact that automation and client engagement systems have on your bottom line and how simple direction in this area can change the effectiveness of your firm forever.

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1. Don’t Spend One More Penny On Marketing Until You Read This……
2. How to Revamp Your Client Service System in 24 Hours or Less
3. The Key To More Client Referrals

Consider your expectations at an expensive, five-star restaurant, like the one I wrote about last week. In addition to terrific food, you expectvalet parking, impeccably clean bathrooms, and friendly staff just waiting to say “yes” to your every request. It’s the little extras that justify the big check you happily pay.  If you had that same great food in a dive bar, you’d expect to pay a whole lot less.

You see, it’s the experience that justifies the added expense.

So why would things be any different in your service-based business?

If you want to attract prospects in droves and command fees you deserve, you need to provide a unique experience that your prospects and clients can’t get just anywhere.

But, if you are like most of us lawyers, your left-brain desire to appear “professional” leaves you looking just like everyone else.   Unfortunately, that’s the kind of thinking that will find you losing ground quickly in the new economy.

To help you with this, I’ve outlined three steps you can take immediately to “wow” your prospects and set yourself apart from the crowd in a way that will create immediate results.

1. Know your target audience and create an experience right from their first contact with you-

To begin with, it’s critically important to narrowly define exactly who you serve. Know your market inside and out. What brands do they like? What books do they read? What keeps them up at night?

Then, design every interaction (from advertising to networking to how your phones are answered) with your target market in such a way that they know you really understand them and that they can trust you.

You signal this by doing little things like setting your office up so that it appeals to their tastes. My market was upscale, affluent parents of young children. So, I moved my office into a renovated historic home in my community, kept a scented candle burning at all times, met with my prospects at a Pottery Barn table instead of a fancy desk or conference room table, and had children’s toys available at all times.

These small gestures went a long way in earning my prospects trust and helping them to see me as a nurturing extension of their family who was going to hold their hand through the most important decisions of their life (no matter how expensive my fees seemed at the time).

2. Capture their emotions with your “firm story” – A big focus of the new economy is the power of story. Your story should give your prospect a brief history of yourself, how you work and how you are different. Your story should last between 3-7 minutes and resonate through your whole firm – from your marketing pieces, to your pre-meeting package, to your team members. And when done right, this will be the crux of creating a ‘wow’ experience because the client will immediately understand why you are the perfect lawyer for them and they couldn’t shop you if they tried.

I suggest using short vignettes to paint a picture of how you used to be and what happened to make you into the lawyer you are today.   Your story should be human– letting your client know you’ve made mistakes along the way but are devoted to helping clients in their shoes. And most importantly, you want to finish up by illustrating what this means for your prospect and how your transformation into a new kind of lawyer will impact their life or business for the better.

3. Take control of each meeting – Part of the ‘wow’ experience is the ability to stay in control of your interactions with your prospects without being overbearing or pushy.   A server at a fine restaurant already has the chair pulled out, napkin ready and water poured before you can even say hello. You need to be on your game the same way in order to convey absolute confidence in your firm and the services you offer.

To do this, you’ll want to have your prospects come to the meeting prepared – what kind of homework can you give them to do in advance? Plus, create an agenda that will allow you to take control right from the beginning and get right down to business in a non-intimidating, friendly way. Have a folder with all paperwork you need prepared in advance (including homework you assigned to your prospect or client prior to the meeting and working tools, such as your engagement letter and method of payment form). Remember—you are going into this with an expectation … be prepared for the expectation to be fulfilled.

This is just the beginning of how you create a “wow” experience for your prospects and clients, but it’s a great start. I’ll continue on this theme next week and we’ll talk about how you can continue the wow experience once your prospects turn into clients and how doing so will get you off the marketing merry go round.

PS – many lawyers get confused between their target market and their practice niche. Don’t make this mistake. Focus on who you serve first and foremost and design an experience the people you serve will want for themselves and their friends and family.

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2. Kick-start Your Creativity in 3 Simple Steps
3. Pre-Sell Your Prospects with a Killer Pre-Meeting Package

Some lawyers handled his business matters, one allegedly drafted a will in 2002, some lawyers worked on his criminal “dream team” during the molestation case, while others took care of his civil matters that surfaced almost daily as he feel deeper into debt.

Yet, as of this writing, it appears no one bothered to step out their traditional “lawyer” box to put all the pieces together and make sure his kids and money were truly protected should something happen to him.

And even if a Will does turn up, what’s important for you to know about all of this is that this happens every single day. Parents die unexpectedly or find themselves unable to care for their kids and there is no documentation to ensure the children end up in the care of people the parents’ would have wanted and that their money gets handled in the way the parents would want.

Every time it happens, it’s an absolutely unnecessary tragedy and this is a great wake up call for all of us as lawyers to understand that we are there to guide our clients holistically, regardless of what they’ve contacted us for.

No matter what type of law you practice  – criminal defense, bankruptcy, divorce, employment, business – if you have clients who have children and assets (which of course you do), you need to take a minute and say, “Hey, this is going to seem kind of off topic, but I ask this of all my clients because it’s so often overlooked, have you named legal guardians for your kids, in writing?  If not, I can help you with that.”

THAT is how a five minute conversation will make you someone’s lawyer for life.  That is how you make sure your client is truly taken care of–and THAT is how you change the world.

I don’t care if you refer them to a local estate planning attorney you have a relationship with, a Personal Family Lawyer or send them to our free site, http://www.kidsprotectionplan.com, but you need to do something instead of letting your clients try to figure out things on their own.

It’s time for us to stop letting families fall through the cracks because our industry has become so specialized.  Take a minute and explain to your clients that whether they have $1 or $10 million dollars, as long as they have a child, they need legal planning to protect their family.

If nothing else, you’ll sleep better at night knowing you tried.

PS. Make sure you check out GASSPO as your surfing the web this holiday weekend. It’s a member-only site that has incredible business growth and personal development strategies, resources, opportunities and support from peers, mentors and experts (which happens to include yours truly!) I have arranged a special $100 discount off the GASPPO membership fee just for my personal contacts. If you choose to become a GASPPO member, you must use this coupon code link with the code affgasspo to get the special discount. The discount is valid for 7 DAYS ONLY and will no longer be available after July 7th. Enjoy!

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