Starting a Law Firm | Marketing a Law Firm, Part 1

One of the things that you will notice when starting a law firm is that it’s stressful not knowing where your next client will come from. As you can imagine, this will last for several years because you won’t have gathered enough of a referral network to create an expectation of receiving a certain amount of clients every month through your network.

Because of this stress, one thing I am working very hard on is marketing my law firm. I’ll borrow from the How to Start a Law Firm blog, which is an excellent blog and I suggest you read it, when I say that my law firm marketing campaign is three-pronged: land, sea, and air.

The land and air portions of my marketing efforts are similar to what you will read in the other blog, but clearly the specifics will differ. Basically, the air part involves internet marketing – trying to drive my website up the search engine rankings. Since Google is increasingly the search engine of choice for many people, I concentrate on what I think Google wants to see. I’ve researched this, probably too much, but the experts call it search engine optimization, or SEO for short. I’ll go into more detail in a later post, but SEO can generally be divided into two categories: on-site and off-site. On-site is what you actually put on your website, while off-site is the behind the scenes stuff including getting quality links to your website.

The land portion of my law firm marketing efforts involves meeting people face-to-face, emailing everyone I know, and generally letting everyone I come into contact with what I am doing and that I am looking for business. I think I value this portion a little more highly than some internet marketing purists, but to each his own.

The sea portion is a little different. It’s a long term project and it involves creating the perfect client experience. From the materials I offer on my website to the initial phone call to the closing letter and beyond, I want to create an experience for my clients that surpasses their expectations. Through the perfect client experience, I hope to generate client referrals. This is a long term project and I’m still working out the kinks.

Remember, I had to learn how to start a small law firm very quickly and wasn’t able to do all the planning I ideally would have had that not been the case. So I’ve had to do the original planning while trying to get clients and grow my business. Things are looking pretty good right now but no matter what, in business and in life, you can’t get complacent. I’m always looking for ways to continue modifying my plans so that they are constantly improving.

Next up, Marketing Part 2, where I will show you the details of marketing a law firm.

Starting a Law Firm | Office Space - What I Do

One of the first things you will need to do when planning for starting a law firm will be to select what you want to do for office space. In this installment of how to start a law firm, I'm going to tell you what I do. This may not work for everyone, but I'll let you know my thought process as well.

As far as I'm concerned, there are four types of office space. Traditional office space is when you go out and find some space by yourself, lease it, and that's that. Traditional office space is too expensive for me, and I never even considered it because I didn't have any clients (and therefore no income) when I started a law firm.

Shared office space is when you get a group of people together and share the costs associated with renting space. While this is slightly more palatble financially for me, I ultimately concluded that I still couldn't afford shared office space when starting out. Also, while I looked into this option, I found that most of the space available was being subleased by some other tenant, or leased by the owner, and they seriously overpriced the space for how much I thought it was worth. Shared office space would work though if it led to referrals.

I thought about the home office. But, due to my practice areas (i.e. family law, criminal defense, DUI defense, etc.), I didn't want my clients coming to my home.

Lastly, there is virtual office space. With virtual office space, you get a dedicated and professional address, answering service, and mailbox. You can also rent out office space by the hour, if needed to meet with clients. Finally, the cost is very cheap, which is music to a new firm owner's ears.

I use the virtual office space option. For me, it works. I do most of my work out of my house, then meet with clients and receive my mail at the virtual office. The building and office is very nice, and the receptionists are great. They are eager to help me. It does get a little annoying having to go there to check for my mail, but for a small fee I could have it forwarded to my home office. So far, it hasn't hurt business either.

If you are searching for advice on how to start a small law firm, I highly recommend looking into the virtual office option for office space.