Small Law Firms, Solo Practitioners, Technology

The 3 Rules To Getting Clients Online

Getting clients from YouTube, Facebook, and other non-traditional sources is not as hard as you think.

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social mediaThe last year has been good to me. I got clients off of YouTube, Facebook (I know because I get messages on my business Facebook Page when I’m running an ad campaign), and other non-traditional sources. Although I am sure others are better authorities on the topic, I want to share what I’ve learned this last year so that the readers of Above The Law have a competitive advantage over the rest.

  1. If you have been out of law school for over two years, no one cares about what you did in school. Take if off your website bio. It hurts you more than it helps you. I understand that you are proud that you were on the moot court board or were the treasurer of your 1L class, but clients do not care about that at all. Unless you’re focusing your marketing efforts on representing current law students, no one cares about the moot court board. And if you are targeting clients who are six figures in debt and have a just-enough-to-be-dangerous knowledge of the law, you need to look for a new target. Keep that stuff on your résumé, because employers care about it, but clients do not. In fact, if you are two years out and you have so few professional accomplishments that you need to start talking about what groups you were in back in law school, your potential clients reading your site are going to wonder if you are the right choice. Two years is the outside amount of time you should keep it on your bio, but you should start thinking immediately after you start working about taking it off and replacing it with accomplishments.
  2. Know your audience and target your audience. Put yourself in the role of your target audience. Are you a plaintiff’s employment lawyer? Pretend you are a person who has been discriminated against. What Google searches do you do? Probably not “wage and hour attorney California” or “labor and employment counselor at law.” That’s how lawyers talk. Who is your ideal client and what would they google to find you? Try “paycheck dispute lawyer” or something more simple like that. Now, what do they find when they get to your site? Is it more stuffy legal talk, or does it immediately answer a question they have, or show them where they can find the answer on your website? Assume that visitors to your site are going to spend about 30 seconds there, and if they can’t find what they are looking for, they will go onto one of the other 100 websites that showed up in the Google search results for lawyers with your specialty in your area. People coming to your website are going to have three main questions: (1) do you seem intelligent/capable, (2) can you help me with my specific problem (do you do my area of law and have you had any good results in the past), and (3) how much do you cost? That’s about it. So create your website so that it answers those questions and make those the focus. Do I have to read paragraph after paragraph in your About Me section about your dedication to excellence and the highest standard of client care to mine for the answers to those three questions? No one coming to your site cares about that fluff language. Get to the point. You have 30 seconds before you lose the site visitor.
  3. Use pictures of yourself. I don’t know if you have ever sought out legal counsel. I have, before I was a lawyer, and the process was frightening. I’m reading online bios, I’m searching for top lawyers in various trade journal “top lawyer” lists, and I have no clue who is actually good. And it’s a huge decision. It’s not like choosing an Uber. You are choosing someone who is going to either do a great job for you or ruin your life or your business if they miss a deadline. It’s actually hard to trust someone with a decision like that if you can’t look at their face. Putting a picture on your website or social media makes you a person, a human being. People expect there to be pictures of you online nowadays. If there are no pictures of you online and you have an online presence, I’m going to think, “What is this person hiding?”

These are my top 3 tips for now. I’ll supplement throughout the year. If you have some tip that works for you, let me know.

Jeff Bennion is a solo practitioner at the Law Office of Jeff Bennion. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of San Diego’s plaintiffs’ trial lawyers association, Consumer Attorneys of San Diego. He is also the Education Chair and Executive Committee member of the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section. He is a member of the Advisory Council and instructor at UCSD’s Litigation Technology Management program. His opinions are his own. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by email at jeff@trial.technology.

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