How To Use Client Success Stories To Gain Trustworthiness

Client success stories come in two main flavors: long-form “case studies” that identify a legal problem and detail the strategy that led to a successful resolution, and short-form “testimonials,” typified primarily by client reviews. To effectively leverage your history of success in handling complex cases to signal trustworthiness, your law firm will likely need to incorporate both types into a comprehensive branding and positioning plan.

Case Studies: Managing Client Confidentiality

A law firm case study has to be managed carefully due to the high standards the legal profession demands for client privacy and of course the distinctively privileged character of attorney-client communications. Although some marketing experts may advise you to simply request a waiver from the client, keep in mind that not all marketing experts are aware of state bar associations’ ethics guidelines. The presumption is that as an attorney it is precisely your job to anticipate the potential risks of unnecessary exposure that your client might not know or think to look for, and protect their interests even at the expense of growing your practice.

Communicating With Your Marketing Team

Even the most well-intentioned marketing professionals will not typically be coming at a case from the same perspective, but you will in all likelihood want to work with a dedicated marketing team to ensure that your case study is presented effectively, with a strong understanding of your target “audience” (your law firm’s ideal clients) and appropriate integrations of keywords, reference links, and supporting visuals or other accompanying media. What this tension between protecting client confidentiality and showcasing legal expertise will often mean is that you need to start the process by having an honest and detailed conversation with your marketing team about the information that is public record (often plentiful in cases that were resolved through litigation, but much less common when a successful outcome is achieved by way of a favorable settlement), the information that is not public but can safely be anonymized to present the shape of the case without disclosing any of the client’s particulars, and what must remain absolutely private.

Approaching Case Study Development as a Collaboration

Having this kind of conversation at the outset of your collaboration can help to prevent endless requests for additional details that you are obliged to repeatedly decline. Working with an agency that has a substantial history with marketing legal services specifically may also help to streamline parts of the process, since these professionals will have some familiarity with the strict ethical guidelines attorneys must follow, but in general you can expect to work more closely with your marketing team on a case study than might be needed with a blog post that merely summarizes some aspect of law germane to your practice area.

Gold Stars: The Value of Client Reviews

While a case study provides an in-depth look at how your law firm tackled and resolved a challenging legal problem, client reviews and similar testimonials offer prospective future clients a glimpse at what past clients’ experiences have been like. “Experiences” is a key term here.

Testimonials Are the Personal Touch

Case studies specify verdicts and settlement amounts; these are the outcomes usually reported in the “results” portion of the published case study. They matter; nobody wants a lawyer who cannot achieve favorable resolutions to the issues that led them to seek legal counsel in the first place, and generally speaking people looking for an attorney like to see that the legal professional they are about to sign an agreement with can provide coherent explanations of what they do and why. Ultimately, however, many clients are going to care not just about the decision reached in their case, but about how it feels to work with a specific attorney or law firm.

A “Happy Customer” Is a Calling Card

This emphasis may be strongest in practice areas that tend to involve a significant degree of personal stress for the client, such as family law or personal injury, but even the driest company executive is likely to prefer working with a law firm whose reception desk runs efficiently, with a partner or associate who is attentive not just to the immediate matter for which they have been retained but to how the issue currently on their desk fits with the client’s long-term goals and business plan. Reviews from previous clients can convey impressions of how stressful or reassuring or frustrating it is to work with a firm in ways that no case study, no matter how meticulous, ever could. Ideally, therefore, your law firm will use both formats to create an identity for your practice and your staff in the minds of potential clients before they ever book a consultation.

Telling a Good Story: Painting a Picture of Your Law Firm’s Excellence

Trial lawyers who have spent years honing their rhetorical skills before juries know the value of a good story. Even if your practice rarely takes you to closing arguments, however, constructing a compelling narrative about how your firm serves clients can have a powerful impact on both the number and the quality of contacts you receive. Remember that the magic of storytelling is to assemble multiple pieces of information and pull them together in a way that creates a whole worth more than the sum of its parts. Combining case studies and client testimonials effectively tells a true story about “who” your practice is and why prospective clients should trust you with their concerns. To achieve the greatest benefit, however, you need to start with good parts.

Soliciting Reviews

One of the most important steps you can take toward effective law firm marketing is to make requesting client reviews a standardized part of your post-closing workflow. Some of these reviews will inevitably be “bad,” but the reality is that unhappy clients will often find a way to leave negative reviews whether you explicitly ask for their feedback or not. Satisfied clients, on the other hand, are statistically less likely to seek out review opportunities, so actively soliciting feedback from clients as a matter of course puts you in position to “dilute” the rating effect of negative reviews, while also helping you to collect written materials your firm can use as testimonials.

Understanding Clients’ Priorities

Work with your digital marketing agency to select client reviews that focus on some of the key factors that attorneys’ clients consistently report as important. Promptness, responsiveness, and efficacy are typically high on the list; you will notice that only one of these items is directly concerned with case outcomes, whereas the other two are measures of how the client perceives their interactions with the attorney from intake to closing.

Collaborating With Experts

A single review that outlines how your firm took time to analyze the client’s problem, make sure the person in your office understood all of the legal options available and the potential risks and benefits associated with each, and then communicated throughout the process until the case was resolved can be worth thousands in slick marketing copy. Choose reviews that offer insight into why working with your firm improved clients’ peace of mind even while their cases were still pending. Make sure your marketing team knows to anonymize the material before reproducing it for use on your law firm’s website or in social media posts (there will likely be nothing you can do about information the client decides to include on a public review platform like Google) and discuss with these professionals how they see each sample fitting into your firm’s overall brand story to ensure you are on the same page.

“How We Did It”: Making Meaningful Examples From Challenging Cases 

For many attorneys, the cases that most immediately seem worth recounting are those that involve interesting legal questions not encountered on an everyday basis. These can be, but in many instances are not, the cases that will make the most useful material for prospective clients. Keep in mind that the more intricate legal considerations your law firm needs to navigate are likely to be of interest first and foremost to your fellow attorneys.

Demonstrating Awareness of Client Concerns

Discussing the details of these cases (redacted as needed to protect client confidentiality) can absolutely be a great way to build your authority and enhance your professional reputation, but may not do much to represent your law firm’s acumen to potential clients unless you accompany these complex analyses with case studies focused on matters more accessible to the non-expert. To truly turn past experience into present trustworthiness, aim for a balanced approach that shows you are ready to handle cases at any level of complexity while also providing easy-to-follow examples of how your firm has handled challenges familiar to the general public.

Assessing Your Audience

The sophistication of your core client base can be an important factor to consider in choosing case studies. Obviously you will be in the best position to assess the legal knowledge of the individuals who actually take a seat in your office, but you may want to talk with an experienced legal marketing expert as you review possible cases to present, for two main reasons:

1. Even with a world of experience, it can be difficult to attain the shift of perspective needed to approximate the background knowledge and thought processes of another person when it comes to an area with which you are deeply familiar and they are not.
2. By definition, the individuals with whom you meet for even an initial consultation are those who have already decided to give your law firm a try. A professional marketer may be in a position to build a profile of prospective clients that captures not just those you hear from, but a larger share of individuals with similar legal concerns who visit your law firm’s website and click away without making contact.

Of course, there is one other very important reason to consult an experienced law firm marketing agency, preferably one who has on staff or regularly contracts with an experienced copywriter: How a case study is framed and explained can make an enormous difference in the degree to which non-experts understand the issues involved and how much they are able to appreciate the challenges that make the outcome in this particular instance a feather in your law firm’s cap.

The Cornerstone of Trustworthiness

Most of you will understand this already, but there is one final point that bears emphasizing: No client testimonial, no case study, no verdict rendered or settlement reached will gain your law firm trustworthiness in a client’s eyes if you do not show yourself to be trustworthy. From reception through intake to communication over the course of a case, the honesty and integrity with which all the members of a law firm’s staff treat each client build a cumulative impression that anchors your relationship with that client, but also fosters word of mouth in living rooms and at dinner tables never reached by Google reviews. Often it will be your duty to give bad news, and it can be tempting to cringe a little, thinking about the potential for negative reviews. Building trustworthiness is a long game, however, and over time the clients to whom you give sound advice, whether it is pleasant or not, will become the most compelling ambassadors your law firm could recruit.

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Annette Choti, Esq., has over two decades of legal experience and is the Founder & CEO of Law Quill, a concierge legal marketing agency for law firms.  Annette authored the bestselling book Click Magnet: The Ultimate Guide To Digital Marketing For Law Firms, hosts the popular Legal Marketing Lounge podcast, and founded Click Magnet Academy where she teaches professionals to leverage the powerful LinkedIn platform. As a sought after speaker for Bar Associations, Legal Associations, and Marketing Conferences, Annette provides legal marketing insight along with an entertaining twist. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or directly through email at [email protected]