Do law firms want free client development and marketing solutions?
The message of Mark Britton, CEO of Avvo, kicking off Avvo's Internet marketing conference, is that, with the advent of Web 2.0, lawyers ought to be looking at free very and low cost client development solutions to market their services.
Is that what lawyers really want? Is free or marketing for dollar a day in the best interest of you as a lawyer? Is it in the best interest of your law firm? Is it what you really want?
Sure, the Web has brought us some incredible tools that lawyers may harness at little or no cost.
- Consumer and small business lawyers would be foolish not to avail themselves of completing profiles, and using the question and answer features, in the Avvo and Justia lawyer directories.
- A LinkedIn profile is a necessity for any lawyer, consumer or large business based, and the groups and answers features of LInkedIn can be very fruitful for networking.
- Twitter, when used strategically, can be be a very effective relationship building and brand building tool.
- Google local search may be worthwhile depending on the density of lawyers in your locale and the type of law you do.
- A link from the DMOZ directory and/or the Yahoo Directory ($299) to your blog or website is worthwhile for SEO purposes.
- JD Supra allows you to upload articles and pleadings.
- Facebook can be a an effective way to enhance relationships and build communities.
But if you're a lawyer trying to get the top of your field and trying to reach financial independence for you and your family, is your goal to keep your client development spending down to a dollar a day?
If you're focused on honing your skill and expertise as a a lawyer, while at the same time addressing your client's affairs, do you have the time to tinker with the free and low cost Internet marketing solutions?
Britton says all these "Web 2.0" tools are easy to use. Look at the above list of Web 2.O and social media tools. Do you know what they all are? Do you know how to use them for client development purposes? Do you know how to use them in a way where you don't embarrass yourself? Do you know how to use them well enough to burn political capital in your firm by advising the firm's leadership that the firm ought to embrace these tools?
I talk with thousands of lawyers and hundreds of law firm leaders a year. I observe what lawyers are doing online as much as anyone. Not only don't lawyers and law firms now how to use these 'free tools,' but a lot of them, including law firms with huge marketing budgets, embarrass themselves through the foolish use of these free and low cost tools. In response to lots of lawyers who have told me they are getting seen online, I ask them "Is that a good thing?" It's often not.
I practiced law for 20 years. I found that lawyers and law firms who invested in themselves to improve themselves as a lawyer and invested in their marketing and business development did markedly better than other lawyers.
I laud Avvo for what they are doing in offering lawyers a free directory. While serving as a VP of Business Development for Martindale, I could never get Martindale to send their people out to educate lawyers on Internet Marketing. Avvo and Britton are doing a good job of such lawyer education. There's probably 200 lawyers sitting in front of me in Seattle at Avvo's Internet Marketing Conference.
But free marketing services or doing your law firm's client development for a dollar a day, less than a can of coke costs, seems terribly misguided. Especially for a lawyer who has invested seven years in getting an education. And especially for a professional who is holding themselves out to the American public as someone they can trust to address their most important and personal affairs.
Hiring someone to help you do what you're not good at is a concept Americans are very comfortable with. You as a lawyer expect people to hire you, when perhaps they could incorporate their own business or do their own divorce.
Buying services and solutions that cast you in a better light, make your life easier, and allow you to accomplish your goals is something lawyers do every day. Lawyers buy software, lease offices (as opposed to practicing at home), hire associates and legal assistants so they can do more work for more - and better clients.
Free and low cost can be good be good for lawyers. Especially when compared to the expensive services offered by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell and Thomson FindLaw whose services often under deliver.
But I'm not sure free and low cost is what American lawyers are looking for. What do you think?
These are some good thoughts and I'll "second" them. I deal mainly with larger firms, doing corporate & securities work. Although these firms have become cost-sensitive these days in a terrible economy for firms across the board, I don't think corporate lawyers are looking at the costs so much as the effectiveness of the marketing.
That is, to the extent they really understand marketing at all - which for quite a few corporate lawyers, that is not the case...
Kevin -
I think Mark is stepping in the trap of merely looking at the cost of the technology. The bigger expense for most firms is the implementation, training and oversight it takes to get the technology up and running.
Since most lawyers still think in terms of the billable hour, they need to add the billable hours they lost learning the tools into the cost calculation.
Of course if the technology is free or cheap, then the overall cost is less. If the tools are easy to learn how to use, then the lost hours for learning are also reduced.
Lawyers are some of the most cynical people I know, and I think most believe "there is no such thing as a free lunch." If "free" is Avvo's pitch, they won't get far with their target audience.
As for actual costs, opportunity and other related costs are far from zero with all the new tools. I can't even begin to calculate the hundreds of hours I've spent learning the most basic best practices for social media. The new tools are fascinating, effective and far reaching, but they are far from free, especially at this stage.
Kevin: I agree with some of yours and Doug's sentiments. And I'm still a believer in you get what you pay for.
The fact remains that all the Web 2.0 services (or even LexBlog's) are only as good as what the lawyer puts into it. Not even blog on the LexBlog network is successful -- mainly because the attorney hasn't invested the time needed to make it.
All of these things are merely tools, neither good or bad: It's how you use them that will determine your ultimate success.
Excellent article. Unfortunately, the article presents a problem of lawyers all over the world and not just in the U.S.
in Israel for example, marketing awareness among lawyers simply do not exist
Kevin,
I think that in regard to internet marketing there are 3 classes of lawyers: those who will use free or low cost tools to develop a web presence, those who will pay an SEO firm to do it, and those who will do nothing. The latter class will be in trouble because up to 82% of people use search engines to find local businesses, including lawyers. You imply that lawyers who are focused on honing their skill and expertise do not have time for internet marketing. I believe that the two can go hand in hand. I believe that you can hone your skills while blogging or writing educational articles for online publications, and then bring awareness of your publications through LinkedIn and Twitter. A lawyer can pay someone else to develop his web presence, but look how that backfired for Findlaw. You pointed out that they didn’t even have a lawyer writing their blog posts. I think that solo practitioners and small law firms have a great amount to be gained by sharing their personalities and expertise online with the use of free internet tools.
Thanks for the comment Kelly. Think you missed a category of lawyers.
Those lawyers who use the Internet to network to demonstrate their expertise and personality, but want to pay a professional to help them. Those lawyers do it to make sure they use the Internet in a more professional fashion, to avoid spending a lot of time doing things that do not work, and to avoid embarrassaing themselves.
Free can be good, but it seems to me to come at a hidden cost. And most professionals expecting to achieve more appreciate that you need to invest in yourself.
Kevin
I know Mark from having interviewed him when Avvo was getting started. You remember: the controversy over ratings, exposing derogatory ethics opinions, letting anybody comment on a lawyer, etc.
But ethics complaints are already public and most of the negatives thrown at Avvo by skeptics had in fact been part of the experience of getting online for at least a decade.
What chafed lawyers was that they were being outed involuntarily; you could ignore your Avvo profile if you wanted, but what if prospective clients did not?
But I'll tell you - our profession has been opaque for so long that the prospect of finding out which of us is naughty and which is nice just seems like an absolute good. Doesn't it?
Don't get me wrong: I'm not a fan. Avvo traded in the First Amendment high-ground to build a lawyer super-market. I got your right to free speech right here.
Despite all that, do I advertise with Avvo? I'm not telling.
- MH
Dear Kevin,
I think lawyers want, if not all, at least some free client development and marketing solutions. But just as there is no such thing as a free lunch; the free client development and marketing solutions require a lot of work from the lawyer to make them useful.
I am addicted to reading your blog and I use your platform for mine and in the year I have been posting, it has taken as much time as any course in law school. It is not what you pay, or don't pay, for client development that matters; it is the time you put into it. And every lawyer is well aware that time is money.
Best,
Nancy
The internet allows you to screw up in front of far more people in a far shorter amount of time than ever before.
I think that blogs, twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are all extremely helpful tools if you know how to use them, but if you don't, they can have devastating consequences--and nothing is ever entirely erased from the internet.
Even if you want to do the work yourself, it's always a good idea to hire someone who knows what they're doing to teach you the best processes, help you create a plan, and get you started.
I don't really get the point of your article, but we generate 75% of our business from the internet, and are not even ranked top 30.
We have gros revenue of more than $5M and started 8 months ago, we don't think lawyer should try to advertise aggressively on the net, it all comes to reputation of each individual attorney working for you.
So how do we turn that into $10M a year?
Eventually, it will become a standard in the law industry for firms to invest substantial capital in internet marketing campaigns.
Kevin’s point, though not explicit, is that free and low cost internet marketing strategies, play a small role in a successful internet marketing campaign. Development and implementation of a comprehensive, coherent, and effective internet marketing plan, however, cannot be done in-house and will not be free or low cost.
With few exceptions (mostly in the personal injury realm), attorneys and law firms do not possess the expertise or in-house talent to develop, execute, and maintain a coherent marketing plan. How many law firms do you know that employ print media writers, video production crews, website designers, graphic artists, website content writers, photographers, and SEO specialists? Although few, if any, firms employ personnel with these specialized skills, firms nevertheless believe they can create, implement, and maintain an effective marketing plan in-house.
In addition, most attorneys are not convinced that an internet marketing campaign will generate a sufficient return on investment to justify the expense. In truth, the ROI on an effective internet marketing campaign dwarfs the return on other law firm marketing projects and activities (e.g. attending trade shows, tickets to sports events and concerts, sponsoring golf tournaments, sending attorneys to give speeches at seminars and other events).
For a variety of reasons, attorneys in their 40s and 50s are not comfortable with making a substantial investment in an internet marketing campaign. Eventually, however, attorneys who are 30 today will make marking decisions at law firms, and sophisticated internet marketing plans will become standard in the legal industry.
Law firm’s reluctance to embrace internet marketing, presents a great opportunity for attorneys who are the first to do so (i.e. it is easy to beat competition that does not enter the race).
Many Personal Injury and Criminal Defense firms have embraced internet marketing and invest substantial capital every month to maintain and improve upon their internet marketing campaign. Other firms will undoubtedly follow suit.
Excellent article! I agree with point that you discussed in your article as it is common topic for all the lawyers around he world.