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!

Law Firm Marketing | Goals for 2011

Before I even get started I want to thank everyone for their questions, comments, and emails. They are all greatly appreciated. In a lot of ways my talks with you help me learn more about the business of law and starting a successful law firm and where I want to go in the future. Your participation is key to this blog's success, and it does not go unnoticed.

As you can see, this post is going to be about my goals for 2011 - my business goals for 2011, at least. And just so you aren't waiting on baited breath for Friday, Friday's post will be about two topics people have asked about - my yearly financials and starting a firm right out of law school. I thought I'd spoken about starting a law firm right out of law school but it doesn't look like I have. Sorry.

So, here we go, the annual "goals" post (every site has one it seems).

1. Gross $250,000

Looking at it on the computer screen, it seems like such a big number. Though I'll talk about it more on Friday, I'm going to gross just under $100,000 this year. That means I want to increase my revenues by about 150% (I'm not a math whiz so cut me some slack if I'm wrong). That's a lot. But it's not that hard, if you tackle the problem in the right way.

Broken down, I need to make about $20,800 a month. Broken down further, I need to make about $4,150 a week. I think that's entirely possible. But it's going to mean ramping up my marketing efforts even more, honing in on my ideal clients, and then showing them why I am worth what I'm asking for.

It's an ambitious goal, to be sure. But it's reachable. And it will drive many of the goals you see below.

2. Roll Out One New Location Based Website a Month

I'm a DUI lawyer and I'm number one in many Google searches for my major city's keywords. But there are a lot of other large cities nearby that are just waiting for me to take over their search queries. Creating a new site for each location allows me to focus my marketing efforts on those keywords and jump to the head of the pack quickly. It will also significantly increase the potential pool of clients, the number of calls, and, at the end, the number of clients I have.

And the great thing is, this is pretty easy to do. I've already got most of the content for each site at my old site. I just have to tweak it for the geography and it's ready to go.

To give you an idea, right now I probably have access to about 300,000 potential eyeballs (the major metropolitan area I'm in). If I reach my goal of expanding my websites, I'll have access to $3,000,000. That's a pretty big jump.

3. Have My Assistant Working For Me Full Time by March 1

Getting from part time to full time isn't that big of a jump, really. All I have to do is bring in enough money with the time she saves me to pay for her. Was that as confusing as it sounded when I wrote it?

Think of it this way, if I can bring her on full time she can manage the phones and calendar for me all day, every day. She can take care of the minor questions from clients that don't really need me. And that frees up a lot of time for me to do other things, like work on launching the website for that month, promoting a seminar I'm doing, or dreaming up new ways to churn up business. That isn't very hard to do.

I'm just hoping the year starts out fast enough for me to hire her full time without having to lose a lot of sleep over it.

4. Locate Long Term Office Space

Right now my office is serviceable, at best. My lease is up in May, and I'd like to find some space that we can settle into for a while. If it had an extra office for potential expansion that would be great too. But I'm really looking for a place we can settle into and start to make the firms. Right now, at only leasing for a year at a time, it feels like once we get settled in it's time to start looking for a new space.

5. Revamp the Website

It's that time of year to tweak the website. Or, maybe more than just a tweak. My website works well - people call. But I think it could work so much better. Remember my buddy RJon that I've talked about in the past? I spoke with him on the phone yesterday and he had a couple of good ideas. Here they are:

1. Figure out the rules of professional conduct in my state with regard to testimonials, and possible, get at least one video testimonial and put it on the first page of the site right at the top.

2. Create more tools to educate potential clients about what they can expect when they come into my office and what their charges mean for their lives. This includes written and audio materials, in particular a kind of interview to answer the most common questions people have about their DUI case.

As a side note, RJon pointed out a great side effect of providing all of this information. Not only does it make potential clients ready to hire you before they come into the office, but it screens out people that are only shopping for information.

3. Finally, create a button(s) on the site to provide access to these materials for only the small price of providing your name and email address. This will help identify potential clients and help them understand the benefits of using my services over another firms.

In addition to those things I also want to tweak the site in a couple of other ways, namely putting my picture back up, tweaking the language on the site, and updating my profile to reflect what's been going on the last year and a half and let people know that I'm not the only one working here any more.

6. Join Toastmasters

If you didn't know, toastmasters is an organization that is dedicated to the spoken word. There are toastmasters groups all over the country that meet bi-weekly or monthly to work on their speaking skills. I plan on joining one of those groups.

I think most people initially join these groups because they want to conquer a fear of speaking in public. That's not really my motivation. If you ever played sports, you know that practice makes perfect. Same with public speaking. In a courtroom in front of a jury isn't really the proper place to work consciously on getting rid of that "um" you put into every sentence. Toastmasters is.

7. Create a Sustained Social Media Presence

I don't think social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can generate you a lot of business by themselves. But I think they can do a great job of keeping your business and what you do at the top of the mind of your clients and potential clients. I've got it set up right now where a post on facebook automatically generates a post on twitter and post on LinkedIn. All I have to do is come up with something interesting to say every day and I'm good. My goal is to do just that.

8. Explore Alternative Marketing Methods

This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but I don't have a lot of alternative marketing channels working right now. I rely on the internet and referrals almost exclusively. And, while it's been treating me well up to this point, I know deep down that the more pots in the fire you have the better (or something like that - fill in your own analogy that works).

There are a couple of things I've been thinking about that I'm neither ready to implement or tell you, so they will have to wait. But there are some other things that are probably worth exploring. One of those things, which I've just learned can be quite effective, is bathroom advertising (if done right). For me, that's a pretty low cost, high gain type of activity. Another is really pushing free seminars for how to deal with cops. There are a whole bunch of groups out there that would love to hear about that (particularly since my presentation is both informative and funny).

9. Create Checklists and Implement Systems for Everything

In my mind, this might just be the most important goal of all. And, it violates one my goal writing rules - drilling down into specific things that need to be done to either define the goal clearly or actually reach the goal. So I'll try to do a little bit of that here.

First, the checklists in general. I can already tell my legal assistant is good. And while I hope I can get her to stick around for a long time in the role she is in, at some point I'm going to have to find something else for her to do (my preference) or she is going to leave (not my preference). Either way, that means at some point someone new is going to come in here and have to figure out how to do everything, from answer the phones to file a notice of appearance to handle a call from a current client. Checklists can help make any necessary transition seamless and (sorta) easy.

Checklists can also help streamline the entire process of running and managing a law firm. For each DUI case, for example, there are a set of things that need to be done. A checklist not only helps to confirm that everything has been done but helps to remind everyone what needs to be done. It also provides an easy way for me to show potential clients all of the things I am going to do for them that other lawyers wouldn't. That's invaluable.

Now, systems. This is a little bit different, but still equally important. In my mind systems relate more to the business management side of things than checklists (which I would describe as the business practice side). Systems to me include tracking finances, tracking marketing measurables, tracking lead generation, tracking potential client conversion, and anything else that provides information related to how the business is running (including client management). I don't have too many systems in place right now, and I need some.

That's it. Those are my goals for this year. Piece of cake, right? Of course not. But that's the point of goals. And, to make things easier on me - to help me remember my goals, I'm going to write them up on a big dry erase board where I can see them every day.

If you've made it this far I know you've got questions or comments. Hit me! Oh, I do have one request, if you've got a comment or question that relates to a specific post, please post a comment instead of sending me an email. I'd love to get a little dialogue going with all the readers, and that's so much easier when we have a place for conversation - the comments!

Starting a Law Firm | Randomness

I've been sitting here for about fifteen minutes trying to figure out what I was going to write about starting a law firm, and I can't really think of anything. None of you out there in the "blogosphere" are writing me with any questions, so I don't have anything to write about. Because of that, I'm just going to write. If you don't like it, ask me a question so I have something to write about. Here we go.

I Watch Entirely Too Much TV

I think we all have vices, little things that pull us away from being productive. For me, it's TV. I can get sucked into any number of shows at any time of the day. Movie, reality television, documentary, sports event, it doesn't matter. If I can see the least bit of potential for it to be interesting, I'm watching. And I need to stop.

One of my goals for the upcoming year is going to be to watch TV differently. No more plopping down to see what is on and getting sucked in for hours. I'm going to have several shows that I TiVO and I'll watch them whenever I sit down. If there aren't any of those, I'm going to go do something else.

My Website Hasn't Been Working Properly

One thing that gets lost in the shuffle pretty quickly when you start a law firm are all of the things that need to be maintained once they are up and running. For me, my website is integral to my business success. I've been in the top position for some important search terms in my area for a while now, which is great. The only problem, though is that my web hosting service sucks, and my site isn't loading much of the time. That is potentially costing me thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

So, to remedy that, we're switching hosting providers as soon as we can. Hopefully the site will be fully functional soon, and I'll be fielding a bunch of potential client calls because of it.

My Phone System Hasn't Been Running Smoothly Either

Some of this has to do with the new assistant I've got (who is crushing it, by the way - oh, and she's stumbled onto this site, I think to spy on me, so I'll turn the tables on her here - now go watch Christmas Vacation!). When she came on I wanted to have a set up where she was on the phones while she was here and the virtual assistant was on the phones when she wasn't. It's taken a little tweaking, but I think we've finally got the right set up. What are we doing? Glad you asked.

I have two Google Voice numbers, one for the east side and one for the west side. Until recently, I just had both numbers routing to my cell phone. I'd answer them when they rang, and I had it set up so I knew it was coming from the Google Voice numbers. When I got the virtual receptionist I forwarded the main number to them and kept the little used one forwarding to my cell phone.

When I hired Kelsey, I set us up on Skype. I wanted to have a phone system that would allow us to transfer calls between us, to forward to a cell phone if necessary, and one that could grow and shrink with our needs. And Skype seemed to work perfectly for that (plus it's really cheap). I'd never used Skype before so it took a little getting used to. And it took a little tweaking to get the phones to ring long enough before going to voice mail and to set up the system so that going from real life assistant to virtual assistant was seamless. We've finally got that done, and here' what we do.

I've got the Google voice numbers now set up to forward to the Skype numbers at all times. When Kelsey is here, the phone just rings in the office. But when she's gone, she clicks one button and all calls that come into our Skype account are forwarded if they aren't answered within 5 seconds. This ensures enough time for the call to reach the virtual receptionist, and makes switching between people seamless and easy.

By the way, you have no idea how much tweaking that actually took to execute.

Accountant

I'm in the market for an accountant. For more reasons than just this firm.

Here's the thing, I think that once you start one business, you can't help but constantly have your eyes open for other opportunities to get into new ventures. And that's exactly what's happened to me. In addition to the law firm, I've got a budding search engine optimization business going (and, technically, one I could start if I wanted to that would help law firms actually get the search engine results they were looking for), and I've got another business in the works related to helping lawyers get paid by their clients (wouldn't we all like to make this process easier?).

Two of the ventures I'm doing on my own, but the third is with a partner. And with all of that activity means there is going to be a lot of money coming and going to and from a lot of different places. And I'm not smart enough to keep track of it all. So I need an accountant. Know one?

Okay, that's all for now. If you have questions, ask. Have a Merry Christmas!

Law Firm Marketing | Putting in the Work

If you haven't learned this already, then you should know, owning and running a law firm is much less about the practice of law than you think. There is so much other stuff that goes into it that takes up your time, and you have to tend to those things if you want to be successful. One of these things is marketing. And it's an important thing.

I've got to be honest with you, I've been slacking off a little bit lately in the marketing arena. See, business is coming in fairly steadily now, and it's so easy to just sit back, relax, and take what you can get. And if that is all you want from your practice that's great. But that's not all I want. I want more.

Because I want more, that means I need to devote more work to marketing my law firm. I need to not only continue to do what I've been doing, which works and works great, but to continue to branch out into other areas that can also generate business. And I need to figure out what those other branches are (because I don't yet have a great grasp on that, either).

I've become a bit obsessed lately with start ups, entrepreneurs, and other people who have generally made their own money, and I keep seeing a recurring theme - they busted their ass for a long time to get to where they are. There was a lot of toil, a lot of hard work, and a lot of long hours throughout their climb to the top. And that's what it takes to succeed in this business too.

One thing I've learned in only a year and half of being open is this - no one is going to give you anything, but there is so much out there for the taking if you just go and get it. Seriously. It's that easy. But where people fall short is they see the kind of work that it's going to take and they just don't have the institution to do what it takes to get where they want. At the end of the day it takes a ten effort to succeed, and most people have trouble getting to a five.

I guess at the end of the day this post is less for you and more for me. I need to put in the work, I'm going to put in the work, and I'm going to crush this next year...