Un-Billable Hour: Business Management Strategies for the Busy Lawyer Around the Community Table

As marketers of solo and small law firms, most listeners are aware of the importance of online reviews in today’s marketplace. Almost every potential client will research a lawyer or law firm’s reputation before even picking up the phone. Whether on Facebook, Google, Yelp, or other review sites, every business should know what is being said about them online. Furthermore, we can increase positive feedback and promote it through social media, our websites, and across other platforms. So where should we start? In this episode of The Un-Billable Hour, Christopher Anderson interviews Michael Veinbergs, CEO of Mach4Marketing, about law firm reputation management and marketing, the importance of your website, rankings, and reviews, and specific things lawyers and firm employees can do today to get started. Topics Include: Working with your online reputation before marketing Bad reviews and client snap judgements Reputation management versus marketing Reviews as a search engine ranking factor Syndicating good feedback across social media Responding to positive and negative reviews Marketing on all channels including Avvo, MerchantCircle, Yelp Winning at customer service: give them something to rave about

Solo and small law firm owners spend plenty of time and money marketing their services each year, whether online, through networking, or offline advertising. But many lawyers are not seeing the return on investment that they would like. So with over 600 thousand solo and small firms in the U.S. today, what does it take to stand out among the crowd? In this episode of The Un-Billable Hour, Christopher Anderson interviews Mark Cerniglia from Spotlight Branding, an internet marketing and branding firm for lawyers, about the practical steps attorneys can take to manage their brands and market online successfully. Topics include: Building your law firm’s notoriety Transcending lawyers’ reputation as intimidating Information and resources to create credibility and trust How to create the right video content Using social media for branding Newsletter marketing and top-of-mind Blogs to answer potential client questions Providing value versus giving away your knowledge Maximizing referral sources What a marketing funnel looks like Necessary components of a website Internet marketing no nos

Christopher Anderson interviews Michael Carroll, a professional liability insurance expert. Carroll describes specific insurance products that lawyers should examine, policies that may or may not benefit a small or medium firm practice, and how making relatively inexpensive changes now can affect your potential malpractice lawsuit later.

Although Lawyers are under increasing pressure to be mobile, transparent, and organized, many solo lawyers and law firms regularly lose money tracking time and expenses, billing, and organizing documents and calendars. Cloud-based practice management solutions are often suggested as a way for lawyers to increase efficiency, track costs, and get paid properly while keeping your clients happy. In this episode of The Un-Billable Hour, Christopher Anderson interviews Susan Harman from LexisNexis Firm Manager and attorney and analyst David Houlihan about how practice management technologies can benefit the performance of lawyers and law firms.

Court deadline rules can be incredibly complicated, particularly for civil litigators, and even the most meticulous lawyers and legal assistants can miss an important date. Federal, state, and local courts can all have individual rules, and even some federal courts are different from district to district and within divisions of the district. In this episode of The Un-Billable Hour, Christopher Anderson interviews Carol Lynn Grow and Jack Grow from Law Toolbox about the risks inherent in deadline-driven practices and why it is important to manage law firm risk with rules-based docketing. They discuss malpractice claims and explain how the technology can reduce your firm’s risk which often reduces malpractice insurance rates. Rules-based docketing, they explain, can collaborate with the cloud-based softwares you already use, like Clio, Office 365, or LexisNexis Firm Manager. Tune in to hear about how the software works, which practice areas can benefit from using it, and how lawyers approach cost recovery.

In this episode of The Un-Billable Hour, host Christopher Anderson interviews Broel Law Group founder Erik Broel about what it means to build an “A Team,” how attorneys should hire and train their staff, and the underlying qualities of becoming a successful leader. Broel suggests that lawyers chart out and develop a position clearly before beginning recruitment. As resumes come in for the position, he says, it is best to create a series of tests for problem solving, attention to detail, temperament, etc. in order to filter through many applicants. Through the interview and selection process, Broel talks about the job, his law firm’s culture, and discusses how the position will improve the candidate’s life. In this way, the person hired is already invested in the improvement of the firm itself. Becoming this type of leader takes a lot of work, but it is worth the time and energy spent. Make changes one step at a time, Broel says.

All lawyers should start focusing on intake and lead conversion, since it is the easiest and cheapest way to increase revenue. For the purpose of this podcast, lead conversion happens when prospective clients are turned into paying clients. Lead conversion is just a part of intake, the process or system that takes a potential client from the point of contact with your law firm to signing up to be a paying or retaining client. Most lawyers believe themselves to be very good at lead conversion, often boasting up to a 92% conversion rate. However, these lawyers are only counting leads that are already sitting in consultations, who need the services the lawyer provides, and with adequate money to pay for them. Actually, a lead is anyone who clicks on the law firm website, calls for information, or is referred by an existing client. If these leads are measured and analyzed properly, there are very simple changes a law firm can make based on that data to dramatically increase revenue. In this episode of The Un-Billable Hour, Christopher Anderson interviews law firm marketing expert Stephen Fairley about the importance of lead conversion and client retention, the mistakes most law firms are making, and some simple and more complicated solutions to increase intake success. Fairley defines a lead as a person with whom the firm has never done business, who needs the services they provide, and who contacts them by phone or online. Once this potential client makes contact, he explains, conversion rate drops by 400% after 5 minutes. He recommends that every firm have an established non-lawyer and non-paralegal employee responsible for responding to every lead and setting up appointments. Tracking your firm's intake process is incredibly important, Fairley explains, because you can use the data to make small changes with big results. If a law firm is looking for a place to start, he says, they should record all contacts and hire a secret shopper to give some outside perspective. Stephen Fairley is the founder and CEO of The Rainmaker Institute, the nation's largest law firm marketing company specializing in marketing and lead conversion for small to medium law firms. He has developed "The Rainmaker Marketing System" which has helped more than 10,000 attorneys nationwide who have leveraged his system in building their businesses. Fairley has written two international best-sellers and is academically trained as a clinical psychologist. Prior to focusing on the legal marketplace, Fairley ran two successful small businesses and over a period of 14 years and he has become a nationally-recognized legal marketing expert. He has spoken numerous times for over 35 of the nation's largest state and local bar associations and he has a large virtual footprint with a highly successful rainmaker legal marketing blog.

Consumers and clients believe customer service has become increasingly bad, yet most businesses believe their customer service is above average. Lawyers are certainly not exempt from this. However, in the age of Twitter, Facebook, and smartphones, unhappy customers are able to share their bad experiences to hundreds, thousands, even millions of people in real-time. So how do law firms, solo lawyers, and other businesses combat this influx in technology and potentially harmful online information? There's no trick, loyalty program, or hack that will work. Lawyers, and all other people providing service, will just need to create a good experience for their clients and customers across the board. In this episode of The Un-Billable Hour, Christopher Anderson interviews customer service consultant Peter Shankman about how clients are changing the way they respond to bad service, the part technology plays, how businesses should respond to this change, and his view for the future of online reviews. Shankman begins by explaining the change in the way businesses have sold their products and services for the last 60 years. With the advent of the internet, people are more skeptical of advertising, and are able to connect with each other and interact in real-time. If one unhappy client shares his/her experience on social media, hundreds of people will see it. Shankman discusses transparency and genuine apologetic responses as the effective ways for lawyers to respond to these bad client experiences. However, in order to make clients fanatics, lawyers need to simply communicate with them and treat them with respect, and the client will brag about the good service to others. In the next four years, Shankman expects even online review sites like Yelp and Tripadvisor to become less relevant to business reputations than social media sites like Facebook, Google+, or Twitter. The most important point, Shankman emphasizes, is to consistently treat your clients decently and with respect. When your customer has an amazing experience, they will want to share. Peter Shankman is an author, consultant, entrepreneur, and the owner of several multi-million dollar companies. He speaks to companies all around the world about how to provide amazing customer service and how to take advantage of the social conversation economy that he believes will be driving the global commerce engine over the next 100 years. Shankman has worked with hundreds of well-known companies and brands, as well as many other companies around the world. His newest book is Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans.

Most lawyers are technicians; they want to provide legal services but cringe at the necessary step of selling them. There is a negative connotation of sales and marketing in the legal field. Lawyers often feel like they are trying to convince a potential client to pay for something he or she does not really need. But what if lawyers began to think of marketing as a network of trust and sales as connecting a person with legal needs to the right lawyer? While many lawyers would embrace this as an idea situation, few know where to start. What steps should solo and small firm lawyers take to ethically and effectively sell their services? In this episode of The Un-Billable Hour, Christopher Anderson interviews networking expert Bob Burg who wrote a book about successful marketing techniques called "The Go-Giver." Burg describes a different sort of marketing in which the lawyer provides value to the consumer in the form of comfort and trust. By shifting the focus of the practice to the consumer's needs, the lawyer creates an environment in which people want to pay him/her for the legal services they already need. In order to do this properly, Burg explains, the lawyer must recognize five "laws of stratospheric success," or systems for evaluating the success of their practice: value, compensation, influence, authenticity, and receptivity. These laws are based around the idea that authentically and genuinely putting others first will inevitably be profitable for a valuable legal practice. Burg does not mean giving away services, however. He encourages lawyers to do some research; ask happy clients what qualities about the service they found valuable build upon those qualities for future marketing techniques. Bob Burg is a sought-after speaker at corporate conventions and for entrepreneurial events. He has written the well known business marketing books Endless Referrals and The Go-Giver. His latest book is entitled, Adversaries Into Allies: Win People Over Without Manipulation or Coercion which discusses how to master the art of Ultimate Influence. Bob is an advocate, supporter, and defender of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve.

Many lawyers believe they are not benefiting from the time and money spent on marketing their firm. Online marketing can seem complicated and time-consuming and most lawyers do not want to seem self-promoting so hiring marketers seems like the best option. However, the fact is that marketing a personal brand is both necessary and not as hard as it seems. Especially in solo and small practices, lawyers are marketing their reputation every day by building relationships online and in their offline communities. But in a field where everyone is doing the same thing, where should a lawyer start and how does he or she stand out from the crowd? In this episode of The Un-Billable Hour, Christopher Anderson interviews legal marketing consultant Mary Beth Monzingo about the importance of marketing a personal brand, how lawyers can start building relationships and connections with potential clients, and tips to a successful online marketing strategy. Monzingo encourages lawyers to market themselves at all times whether working with a client on a case or while engaging in outside hobbies and activities. Additionally, lawyers need to attend networking conferences, connect with other lawyers, stay in touch with law school alumni, and be an active part of associations and organizations. Online, lawyers should be available on most social media outlets, create valuable content, have a "call to action" on their website, and always maintain a consistent presence. Monzingo encourages every lawyer to spend 2-5% of their revenue on marketing in order to see an increase of 10% or more. And, don't forget, consistency is key. Mary Beth Monzingo is the managing partner of Monzingo Legal, a consulting company for legal marketing and management, business development, and law firm recruiting. A specialist in helping lawyers start and build their law practices, she has consulted with hundreds of attorneys in structuring successful firms, implementing marketing departments and strategies, and recruiting top talent for expansion and growth.