Law Marketing – How To Increase Your Revenue By An Average Of 27%

by: Henry Harlow
Law marketing is not that complex. It is much easier than becoming a lawyer! Here is a brief listing of law marketing items in order of importance telling you how to get more than a 27% increase on average in revenue within one year using marketing for lawyers well.

1. Raise client fees by at least 5% now – most attorneys can do so, however, they don’t know it. Marketing for lawyers involves understanding pricing strategies and techniques.

2. Capture all billable hours – many attorneys are not keeping contemporaneous time. They are doing it at the end of the day, the end of the week or even the end of the month. Plus they are “writing down” their time from fear the client will protest the amount of time so they cut the time. There is at least a 5% to 10% increase in revenue here for many attorneys. You will have less law marketing to do if you get paid for the work you are doing now.

3. Begin to bill for legal assistants – I still find solo and small firm attorneys who are not billing for legal assistants time. In marketing for lawyers it is a good strategy to bill for legal assistants given the way managers and entrepreneurs make money is by leveraging themselves on the work of others. Additionally, it is in the best interest of the client to have the least expensive yet appropriately competent staff to do the work if possible.

4. Begin to hold your team accountable for billable hours – start small with requiring 20 hours per week of billable time and then move it up to 30 hours per week over time. Do figure out a bonus plan for them as well to give them an incentive to hit the mark. Failure to hold staff accountable is often caused in law practice management by the desire to be liked. Managers are not always liked although they don’t have to be feared either.

5. Begin to have all timekeepers doing only timekeeping work and hire a secretary/receptionist to allow them to focus on billable time. In marketing for lawyers your timekeeping staff needs to be focusing on the timekeeping not non-billable work that can be done by less costly but competent staff.

6. Hire some team/more team – some solos don’t have any staff and many solo/small firms do not have enough/the right staff.

7. Identify your top two or three revenue producing practice areas and limit your practice to those practice areas. Do only law marketing into your two or three selected practice areas.

8. Refer out (if ethically appropriate) or at least stop taking C & D clients and get A & B client files moving faster with more referrals coming in due to the happy A & B clients telling others about you. This is one of the best law marketing strategies since it gives velocity to your word of mouth with good clients who are loyal to you not loyal to your price.

9. Begin relationship law marketing to existing A&B referral sources that will result in more business fast as well as asking them to introduce you to their A&B colleagues that will result in more A&B referral sources.

10. Getting a handle on time management will enable the attorney and the team to get more billable hours in the same work hours and/or more velocity on contingency cases thus more revenue. This also means less marketing for lawyers time needed or more time for law marketing if needed.

11. Begin to ask clients for referrals (multiple times, multiple ways and in systematic ways) and ask clients to introduce you to other influencers they know. This is a stellar marketing for lawyers strategy.

12. Create a website that works on the CTPM model. Don’t know what the CTPM model is? See my website under the Internet marketing tab for openers.

13. Begin using law marketing direct mail strategies – here I am talking about regular mailings to your database at the very least and consider other direct mail strategies particularly to potential referral sources.

14. Begin using marketing for lawyers radio advertising – this can work well for some in small markets or if you can target your client market accurately it works well in a larger market.

15. Begin using law marketing TV advertising – only if you are in a smaller market or can target well on a cable channel is my best advice and never do TV advertising before you have done all of the other things above since you may have no need if you did all the other things above.

Well, there you go. Law marketing is not that complex to understand. It is a more difficult to implement of course thus the value of coaching. I have written two free e-courses designed for law marketing. One is on time management/productivity that addresses the points above in more depth so don’t think it is not about law marketing. The other e-course is on client development that addresses in depth more about law marketing. Pick them up now on my website at the resources tab. After all they are free and you can use the money I would imagine.


About The Author

Henry has individually coached well over 500 attorneys. You can get more free, in depth and objective information on increasing your revenue while reducing your work hours available now at http://www.law-firm-marketing-coach.com