Easy and Effective Marketing Tools for Building a Prosperous Legal Practice

Today's legal landscape is filled with rough terrain. With the prevalence of information and forms on the internet, many people serve as their own legal counsel, without any legal training. Businesses that have been hard hit by the economic downturn are forcing law firms to reduce their billable rates. Law firms are not hiring or are downsizing, yet law schools continue to turn out large numbers of graduates. Gone are the days when a lawyer could put out a shingle and, with a bit of expertise, run a lucrative practice. To be successful today, lawyers need to run their practice more like a business. They need to develop effective systems, understand financials and continuously market themselves to build a sustainable practice, all while performing legal services for their existing clients. Not an easy task. In this book, we focus on the marketing issue, as without effective marketing, even the best run firm will not survive very long. We approach marketing from two angles: becoming a rainmaker and positioning oneself as an expert. Obviously, law firms need clients, and rainmakers are the ones who bring clients in to the firm. To be an effective rainmaker requires, among other things, being able to promote and sell one's services. We describe a four step process and provide many tools and techniques to enable attorneys to improve their marketing skills and their relationship-building skills so they can become better rainmakers and build profitable law practices. We don't stop there, however. We delve into another powerful approach for attorneys to market themselves called content marketing. Content marketing consists of providing information that demonstrates that the creator knows the subject matter and that provides value to the audience. The attorney who produces information products thereby positions himself or herself as an expert and gains the appreciation of the recipient who benefits from the information. Such information products significantly enhance the attorney's credibility and visibility, leading more people to retain him or her. We provide a number of tips for producing effective content marketing and discuss ten types of information products, as well as some of their pros and cons. We know that most attorneys would prefer to focus on the practice of law, and not on the business of building a legal practice. We have kept this book short so it won't take long to get through, and we have stocked it with easy, effective and economical techniques to help you grow your practice quickly.