Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Marketing

  • Law Firms Providing Unbundled Services Online to Meet Public Demand

    Gary Munneke, Chair of the Law Practice Management Committee, at the New York State Bar Association has written a thought-provoking article entitled “Dueling Sanctions . . .  And More” in a recent NYSBA publication.  He refers to an incident reported by the ABA Journal  about a law firm that came under heat from another firm for providing unbundled, self-help legal documents to individuals through the firm’s website. 

    By now our profession should be able to admit that we know consumers are going online in large numbers seeking out online legal services.  Typically they end up at an online legal service company that provides state-specific legal forms without attorney review.  In the worst cases, they are attempting to Google their legal needs and cut and paste together documents that they can’t afford an attorney to help them with. 

    Wouldn’t it be better if the public knew they had an alternative to these options and could actually obtain unbundled legal services from a licensed professional?

    Realizing that self-help legal forms and other free, educational legal content can be used both for the benefit of the public and as a marketing tool for the law firm, some attorneys are beginning to offer self-help services and resources through their website.  This gives them a competitive advantage over law firms that do not offer this online. 

    In many cases, the pro se individuals discover after downloading the forms that they could really use an attorney’s help in proceeding.  They end up going back to the firm that was willing to provide them with the DIY method first without charging them a $200 hour consultation first.  The attorneys posting these self-help documents on their websites realize the current availability of legal forms online and have identified the public’s interest in DIY legal assistance. 

    While firms some offer these forms for free, the attorney in the case discussed by Munneke charged $19.95 for the unbundled legal forms.  That has the potential to pull in a little extra revenue for the firm in addition to some potential prospective clients.  Not a bad marketing strategy that keeps that firm in the running with the online legal service companies.  Law firms that do not offer unbundled legal services, online or off, should reconsider how their firm is adapting to changes in the legal marketplace. 

    As Mr. Munneke writes in his review of this trend:

    Many services, some run by lawyers and law firms, and some not, make available a cornucopia of information, forms, and interactive advice. Although many law firms have eschewed online legal services delivery systems, and use their websites as online billboards, the trend in practice is for more firms to provide more services online. These online services will siphon legal work from pure bricks and mortar law firms in coming years.

    There are two trends here that should be closely watched in 2011:

    1)  The delivery of unbundled legal services is gaining renewed popularity, and

    2)  Elawyering methods, such as the use of a virtual law office and client portals, are growing as lawyers recognize their ability to use the technology to meet a consumer need and create a more efficient and cost-effective delivery of services.

  • Social Media for the Legal Professional

    This past weekend I presented a CLE session for the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys (NCAWA) annual meeting on the topic of social media for legal professionals. Anyone involved in virtual law practice needs to understand social media and how it can be used to market a virtual law office, but also about how online clients might attempt to contact the virtual lawyer using these methods and how to tactfully handle that.

    I’ve had online clients attempt to “friend” me on Facebook or chat on Twitter, but I’ve created a policy for my solo virtual law practice not to “friend” or “follow” clients and to let them know up-front that I won’t use unencyrpted or non-secure methods of communicating with them. Most of the relationships I have within the legal professional are for the most part created and conducted completely online using whatever social media app is trending at the time. It’s an invaluable part of my professional networking so I enjoyed the opportunity to share some of my methods and recommendations at the NCAWA Annual Meeting.

    This presentation covered the basics of social media how-tos with a healthy dose of “watch out for x” and “monitor y”. I also provided suggestions for creating consistent online reputations for law firms using social media and discussed how attorneys might implement social media policies for their firm and educate firm members and even clients about procedures the firm has adopted for the use of social media.

    Here are the slides from the presentation. The final slide has a list of recommended resources for further reading up on the topic.

    Social Media and the Legal Profe

  • Pop-Up Disclaimers on Florida Attorney Websites?

    Take a look at the new Florida State Bar rule on attorney online advertising, 4-7.6 “Computer Accessed Communications.”  In particular take a look at page 10 of the PDF. The ABA Journal also ran an article this week on the rule.

    Fortunately, the State Bar is holding off on the rule enactment until August 16th in order to hear additional comments after groups from the FTC to the ACLU claimed it violates First Amendment rights. If you are an attorney licensed in Florida, where were you when this was going through the comment stage?  Now is the time to chime in.

    Here’s a snip-it. Try to keep your mouth from dropping open when you get to the last line: (more…)

  • Marketing a Virtual Law Office – Guest Post for Mass. LOMAP

    The second post in my three-part series on virtual law practice has been published on the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program (LOMAP) blog.  This post discusses how to market a virtual law office while complying with state bar rules and regulations regarding law practice marketing and advertising.  From the post:

    Marketing a virtual law office requires some out-of-the-box thinking. It also requires careful balancing of the application of non-traditional marketing methods with continuing compliance with state bar rules and regulations regarding attorney advertising. Where state bars are silent on specific forms of online advertising or the use of technology, attorneys must interpret existing advertising rules and regulations to fit the context of modern-day practice. …

    While in many ways the strategy for marketing a virtual law office does not differ substantially from the strategy for marketing a traditional law firm, the methods for advertising a virtual law office are most often online options, and are mostly digital, rather than paper-, or phone-, based. The methods used to market the virtual form of practice must be utilized with consideration as to where the prospective online clients are coming from and as to how the firm will deliver legal services to those clients online. In some cases, the marketing of a virtual law practice may cost less than the marketing of a traditional law firm.

    However, there are also unique risks associated with marketing unbundled, online legal services. Forms of online marketing and methods of building a brand change rapidly, as the technology underlying the internet and marketing on the internet shift over time. Before you begin to market your virtual law office, you must understand what your firm’s comfort level is with respect to using and keeping up with technology (and that “keeping up” includes addressing prevailing security issues, like those implicated by Massachusetts’ new data privacy regulations); you’ll also need to have a grounded knowledge in your state bar or ethics agency’s stance on attorney advertising and online marketing. …

    Continue reading the rest of the post on the LOMAP blog and look for the final post in the series that will cover ethics concerns and how to mitigate the risks.

  • Lawyerist Guest Post: Marketing Unbundled Legal Services in a DIY Economy

    Here is a link to a recent guest post I wrote for the Lawyerist blog about marketing unbundled legal services. It has basic advice for the virtual law practice providing unbundled legal services to clients online.  From the post:

    How do you market a law firm as a provider of unbundled legal services? As with all attorney marketing, the practical considerations must fall in line with the ethical requirements of our profession. To market unbundled legal services, a firm might consider the following:

    And then it goes on to discuss each of these topics in more detail.

    1. Size up the competition

    2. Plan out unbundled services and packages

    3. Invest more in online marketing

    4. Network, network, network

    5. Educate prospective clients

  • List of Sites Containing Tips to Market a Virtual Law Office

    In a recent blog post, I discussed how an attorney with a VLO can attract paying, online clients to a VLO.  As promised, below is a list of websites and blogs that provide useful marketing tips and resources for solo and small firm practitioners.  This list only includes sites that provide marketing resources and tips.  I could build a long list of other services and sites that an attorney could join in order to market his or her virtual law practice,  such as sites that help to raise the SEO of the VLO website or blog.  Hopefully, the sites listed below will point you towards many of these online tricks of the trade. 

    Most of the resources below are geared towards a traditional law practice and some of them are not even related to the legal profession specifically, but with a little creativity the tips found in them could easily be used to market a virtual law office.  If I had oodles of free time, I would love to explain in detail how each of these sites and resources can be useful to a virtual law practice.  Instead, I’m just putting it out there and inviting everyone to explore and use their imaginations.  Or better yet, if you become befuddled, contact the folks that run these blogs in person.  Some of them are really kind, helpful individuals who are attorneys themselves and contain a wealth of valuable information and experience to share.  As always, I welcome suggestions to add to this list.  

    [Tip: Since most of these sites are blogs, it might save time to check out their categories section or run a search on their site specifically for marketing tips.]

    Sites with Tips on Marketing a Virtual Law Office”
    1.  Lisa Solomon’s Legal Research and Writing Pro Website and Blog 

    **Lisa is hosting an upcoming teleseminar, PR 101 for Lawyers: How to Write Direct-to-Consumer Press Releases That the Media Will Also Love.  This will take place on November 18 and will be presented by Joan Stewart, a/k/a the Publicity Hound.  Details for this are on her website.

    2.  The Publicity Hound Blog & Tips of the Week Ezine

    3.  Susan Cartier Liebel’s Build a Solo Practice, LLC

    4.  Grant Griffith’s Home Office Warrior, Home Office Lawyer and Blog for Profit 

    5.  CopyBlogger

    6.  ProBlogger

    7.  Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World

    8.  Carolyn Elefant’s My Shingle

    9.  Ed Poll’s LawBiz Blog & Ezine

    10.  Stem Legal – “Building Web Profile for the Legal Industry”

    11.  The PR Lawyer

    12.  Law Marketing Blog 

    13.  Kevin O’Keefe’s Real Lawyers Have Blogs

    14.  Legal Marketing Blog

    15.  Brett Trout’s BlawgIt

    16.  Ben Glass’s Great Legal Marketing blog

    17.  Gary Vaynerchuk‘s blog

    Resource to Join

    Solo Practice University  (Opening soon, this web-based educational community will provide online courses related to marketing law practices.)

  • How to Get Online Clients – Marketing A Virtual Law Practice

    I’ve been working closely with attorneys who are launching web-based virtual law practices powered by VLOTech.  I provide them with marketing suggestions and tips based on my own virtual law practice experience and share lessons I’ve learned from such wise attorneys as Lisa Solomon, Susan Cartier Liebel, Grant Griffiths, and others who have been generous in sharing their time and marketing wisdom with me. 

    One of the most frequent questions I receive from attorneys considering opening a VLO is “How can I be sure that I will get online clients once I set up a VLO?”  I thought I’d share my response here for the benefit of others who are interested in learning how to obtain online clients for a web-based virtual law practice.

    How do I get paying, online clients to my VLO?

    The goal of a VLO is to provide legal services to the public online.  From the attorney’s prospective, the primary goal of a web-based virtual law office is to generate online client revenue for his or her law practice. My VLO is my law office.   I handle everything through the web-based system.  It is the sole place where I retain, meet with and work with my clients.  Some attorneys are combining VLOs with traditional law practices, so they will do a combination of meeting with clients online and in a physical law office.  Others are taking their VLOs completely web-based. 

    So how do I get prospective clients in the virtual door?   I use many of the same marketing techniques that any attorney would use after hanging his or her own shingle, except I market my VLO website address rather than a physical law office address. Most of the advertising I use for my VLO is free.  Instead, I pay with my time and dedicated energy.  

    I’ll use my own virtual law practice as an example of how I began pulling in paying online clients.  Right after my VLO launch, I emailed simple press releases to local papers and then to the technology, legal and news editors at the papers in larger cities in my state announcing the opening of my VLO.  There are media lists that you can purchase online that will tell exactly who to email the press releases to, but you can do the footwork yourself which is what I did.  I announced in my release that I was opening a virtual law office and explained why this was beneficial for the public, their readers.  Editors realized that this was useful information for the public and helped spread the word.  Once you get one article or even a blurb written about you, that article has the potential to be picked up by other media outlets.  This is what happened in my case and the press spread from there. 

    The press releases are just one example.  Each publication that came out regarding my VLO resulted in about two weeks of new online client activity.  I also used and continue to use a lot of free online postings that direct people to my VLO.  Of course I am careful about my wording in these posts so that I comply my state bar’s rules for advertising and avoid the unauthorized practice of law in other jurisdictions. 

    Some Early Mistakes

    Initially I made the mistake of entering into a contract with Lawyers.com for a $2,000 a year listing that came with a tacky splash page to my VLO.  Because I didn’t have the advertising budget of BigLaw or even a smaller established firm, I couldn’t pay them enough to get a “top” listing under any practice area categories and was limited to listings in the city where I am physically located only.  The result was a total cost of $2,000 for one paying client the entire year from that service.  Today I have the free listing with them which is satisfactory.  I also have a free listing with FindLaw.  These companies will try to scare you by saying that without a listing clients will never find you online in any search engines.  Not true.  You can build your own web presence if you stay dedicated to your marketing strategy.

    Today I boost my search engine ratings for my VLO by blogging about my practice, by using free listings and by sharing my legal knowledge with others through forums, listservs and other social networking sites.  Recently, Grant Griffiths wrote a blog post over at Home Office Lawyer about using blogs to pull clients into a home office which you might want to check out.  I also donate estate planning packages or small business counseling sessions to silent auctions or raffles for organizations, such as MOPs, SBCs or other groups that might be interested in estate planning or small business assistance.  This leads to referrals, but often not for several months after I’ve donated the legal work.  Again, these methods take time, but they are free and have resulted in a growing client base that’s built on referrals from other attorneys and existing clients.

    Ongoing VLO Client Development

    Just as with any solo practice, I have to make an effort every week towards client development.  What I do this month may not pay off with online clients until three months from now, but as long as I keep it up I have a steady client base.  I think that’s pretty typical of most small businesses whether law-related or not.

    Currently, the only traditional advertising that I commit to is for a local parenting magazine ad for $190/month.  It has consistently and easily paid for itself so I keep it.  Other than this local publication, the rest of my marketing is conducted online on a regular basis and is geared towards the entire state since my potential client base extends outside of the town where I reside.  

    I have created an online client development to-do list.  At the end of every other week, I commit to going through each of the steps to maintain a steady client base in the future.

    How Long Will It Take To Build A VLO Client Base?

    To be honest, a VLO is not much different than hanging a shingle on a traditional law practice.  It will probably take six months or longer of marketing the virtual law practice before there will be a steady online client base.  However, it depends on what state the virtual law practice is located in and how dedicated the attorney is to his or her online marketing plan. 

    The clients are not going to magically waltz into the VLO just because you set up a website or blog and add the web-based VLO.  It takes time and significant effort.  However, in my experience, it is worth it.  After three years of practicing law online from my home office, I find that most of my new clients come from referrals from other online clients.  I can stay busy now working with clients on the VLO and be less aggressive with my marketing strategies.  That said, I still keep and revise a business plan and marketing strategy, and stick with my client development to-do list to ensure that my practice will keep growing. 

    VLO Marketing Strategies

    As I mentioned above, I provide VLOTech clients with more detailed information and tips for how to specifically market a VLO using online methods.  I ask others attorneys practicing with a web-based VLO to provide me with the strategies that they have found work best with pulling in paying online clients to their VLO.  Then I compile these tips to share with all of the VLOTech attorneys.  

    In addition to these tips, there are a great number of marketing resources online for attorneys to learn from.  Many of these resources are geared towards the traditional solo practitioner, but they can easily be modified to apply to marketing a VLO.  My next post will provide a list of these blogs/websites and resources.

  • Solo Advertising – Needs vs. Wants

    I recently commented on The Dreams of a Solo to a post here about how the needs versus wants when starting a solo practice are a fine balance that every solo needs to think about before getting in over their heads.

    I didn’t have too much difficulty in determining my technology needs from wants. With the web application, I could just use the computer equipment I already had, even though dual monitors would be swell as would a new Blackberry and a MacBook Air. [Note to self: I need to update my tech “wish list” again before birthday.]

    The most difficult part for me in determining the needs versus wants in opening my virtual solo was figuring out what advertising I really “needed.” Advertising expenses can quickly get away from you if you count the cost of new office announcements to other attorneys and membership in different organizations as a form of advertising. These don’t even reach the public, just build an attorney network that hopefully results in referrals.

    Online versus traditional advertising was my biggest challenge. I erroneously thought that I had to have a listing in the Yellow Pages. Big mistake. Kevin at Real Lawyers Have Blogs recently posted here about how ineffective this is for solos. He’s right. Google is the new phone book. Even if the YP ad came with the online listing that linked to my vlo, it still was not worth the $2,000 plus annual contract. I think I was under the impression from working at my previous firm that it was just what law offices did to have a “presence” locally. Well, if your office is virtual that doesn’t matter so much.

    Online directories, such as Lexis’ Lawyers.com also proved to not have a good ROI. Unless you can afford the extra cost to “bump” your listing up to the top (i.e., have a BigLaw advertising budget), I don’t think it was worth the expense. The service occasionally resulted in a prospective client but that wasn’t worth the monthly bill and tacky splash page to my website.

    I think it took me a good year of figuring out what I really “needed” for advertising to build a decent client base and then keep the business momentum going. I’m still working out the perfect balance. I suspect that, like everything in life, the need-want balance with my virtual practice will always change a little each year.

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